what is what do you think vladimir putin is up to? what is his calculus here? because it s certainly not what he has been saying was going to happen over recent weeks. z z . well, his objectives, he says, michael, are to demilitarize and de-nazify the country, ukraine. so demilitarize could be obviously, he has been taking out military installations, a airports, et cetera. de-nazify is kind of a different question. how do you do that? who does he define as nazis? you know, over the past weeks actually, for a very long time, the russian media have been talking about ukraine as a neo-nazi country. and today, in fact, and yesterday, there was there were constant reports about nazis both from world war ii and supposedly from today.
hang a left, hang a right, get out of here. it s threats and people are going to be frightened. they re going to want to save their children, elderly relatives, all those sorts of things. putin is relying all that have to empty out the towns and villages. he will have one that his military can steamroller through. this is the russian playbook. the russians are emerging from their talks. they said before, sergey lavrov, said before the foreign minister, before the talks began today, we re not going to hang around. we re going to double down on our demands. if the ukrainians don t come up with what we want. de-nazify, get rid of the military, change the leadership and smash the country. there just isn t anything really that looks realistic that came out of those talks that you can talk about having hope for ending the conflict right now,
good that there are discussions going on. what i m concerned about is when you look at the russian position, vladmir putin said he s sending his army into ukraine to demilitarize and de-nazify ukraine. they are getting ready to lay siege to kyiv. i m not sure we re seeing indications out of moscow it will be a serious approach. let s talk about military requests coming from president zelenskyy wanting to yjoin the european union. he spoke today and said, hedon just tell me you love me. show me you love the ukrainian people. here is what he said.
demille tearize or de-nazify. there are no nazis. we have a jewish president, for crying out loud. and putin knows he is trying to back zelenskyy into the corner. they have handled diplomacy as well as they have handled the military part. they said, yes, we can talk about a certain neutrality. we can probably discuss nato members. vladimir putin knows what he is really offering is capitulation by other means. ukraine will not fall for it after all the blood we have shed. not after that. after that, we will not be brought to our knee. unfortunately, we are out of time, but an absolute pleasure to talk to you both. thank you so much for joining us. we have do appreciate it. thank you, rosemary. thank you. still to come, as we