pro-ukrainians, many were driven out or silenced. listening to the mood in kyiv right now is vehement. so many people have died. so much has been lost. almost 500 kids have been killed. cities like mariupol have been pulverized by russian aviation and russian bombs. and there is no mood for, for, for dealing, for negotiations with putin. they re determined to liberate everything, including those areas we re talking about in the east. and it also includes crimea. i think it s going to be a really interesting point, let s say ukraine comes close to crimea. is that a point that washington, whether it s the biden administration or some other administration, phones up zelenskyy and said time to stop and settle, because the ukrainians are determined to cary on. it s a question now for the west, how far does the west back ukraine? until the end or short of that? and owen, from your sense, and in your book, you spent a
negotiation eventually and acknowledge that the ukrainians have been determined to fight to the end, and fatally and dangerously for ukraine. and there comes a point where russia has enough manpower and weaponry just to make any further military advance bloody. that s what mark milley said. it s not the world we want to live in, but we do live in. mark milley predicted a long, bloody stalemate. i think that s probably what is going to happen, just because of the volume of russian military and hardware and sort of meat that they can throw into the grinder. we have to leave it there. we will be back. this was fascinating. thank you both. next on gps, the headlines seemed like they were straight out of fiction. but dozens were arrested this week for allegedly plotting to overthrow the government of germany. we ll explain the story behind the headlines in a moment.
on wednesday, in a meeting with russia s human rights council, vladamir putin said of his war in ukraine, it s going to take a while. later when pressed on the use of nuclear weapons, putin said russia wouldn t brandish them like a razor, but wouldn t commit to not using them first. and said that the risk of nuclear war was rising. i wanted to talk to two people who have spent decades studying russia, and both have new books about the war. duke harding is a reporter for the guardian and his latest book is invasion. owen matthews also joins me. you ve been in kherson and ukraine very recently and spent a lot of time there. what is your sense of the state of the war in this sense, which is, you always hear about the ukrainians having extraordinary
lot of time talking about the kind of the mentality that let putin to adopt these fairly extreme views on ukraine. is it possible that putin is going to get to a point where he will be willing to negotiate? i think the issue for putin is that he just wants he is willing to throw as much at this war as it takes to not lose it. and he s it s very clear when you talk to people who, you know, second, third-tier people in that kremlin administration, they all assume that the west is going to lose interest. and that s not totally irrational by the way, because that s what happened before. that s the problem with this war, is putin has seen the future will be like the past. in the past, they took crimea in 2014. a year later, angela merkel was
rather cynical view that we have something, you have something, we trade. of course, it sets a precedent for ukraine. putin would like nothing better than to sit down with joe biden, decide the future of ukraine, decide the future of eastern and central your as if it s the 19th century, with a map where they draw, you have this, i have this. and he thinks everything can be negotiated that way or it s a conspiracy. it s his classic kgb brain, and this is a moment involving alleged kbg operative who has been sitting in jail for 12 years. that image of them drawing up a map, that is what stalin and churchill did, they drew up a map and assigned percentages of innuancfluence that russia and u.s. would have. this is a hostage situation, blackmail. russia has been at it for a long time.