In this Deep Dive with Lt Col Daniel Davis, we break down the ultimatum issued by Zelensky and European leaders to Vladimir Putin.
As the pressure builds, the geopolitical landscape shifts, and the stakes for peace negotiations rise. Davis offers an expert perspective on the evolving tensions and what comes next for Russia and Ukraine.
📉 Will Putin yield, or is the conflict set to escalate?
#Zelensky #PutinUltimatum #RussiaUkraineWar #LtColDanielDavis #Geopolitics #UkraineCrisis #EuropePressure #PeaceNegotiations #DeepDive #Diplomacy #Ukraine #Russia #EuropeanUnion #ConflictResolution #MilitaryAnalysis #UkraineWarUpdate #Moscow #Kiev #PoliticalTensions #GlobalPolitics #RussiaEuropeRelations
As the pressure builds, the geopolitical landscape shifts, and the stakes for peace negotiations rise. Davis offers an expert perspective on the evolving tensions and what comes next for Russia and Ukraine.
📉 Will Putin yield, or is the conflict set to escalate?
#Zelensky #PutinUltimatum #RussiaUkraineWar #LtColDanielDavis #Geopolitics #UkraineCrisis #EuropePressure #PeaceNegotiations #DeepDive #Diplomacy #Ukraine #Russia #EuropeanUnion #ConflictResolution #MilitaryAnalysis #UkraineWarUpdate #Moscow #Kiev #PoliticalTensions #GlobalPolitics #RussiaEuropeRelations
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NewsTranscript
00:00we have breaking news to share with you on this saturday afternoon ukrainian president
00:06volodymyr zelinski and four european leaders have issued an ultimatum to the russian federation
00:14i'm not making this up they have demanded that putin agree to an unconditional 30-day ceasefire
00:20by monday by monday i i i had to double take a double check on this when i saw the headlines
00:30when i saw some of the comments i thought i surely have misread this because i saw i i know that a
00:35lot of these guys were meeting over the weekend they they made some statements yesterday uh on
00:40may 9th on because they were trying to upstage the russians uh victory day parade and all that
00:44that was to be expected and i frankly didn't pay much attention to it i mean what are they going
00:48to say it's anything new well apparently they have something new and in fact just this afternoon
00:53the washington post is reporting that ukraine and its allies have demanded a 30-day ceasefire
00:59backed by the threat of sanctions so according to the washington post today leaders of the western
01:04nations including the united states demand saturday that moscow implement an unconditional 30-day
01:11ceasefire in ukraine starting monday may the 12th if the kremlin fails to comply the leader said they
01:17would strengthen sanctions against russia's banking and energy section the zelinski said quote we
01:24together demand this from russia we know that the united states supports us in this ukrainian
01:31president volodymyr zelinski said standing alongside zelinski and kiev were representatives of the
01:36coalition of the willing which includes british prime minister kir starmer french president emmanuel
01:41macron polish prime minister donald tusk and german chancellor friedrich metz said that the russians
01:48must stop all attacks by ground sea and air on monday and you just have to i i i'm sorry you see i'm
02:00actually struggling to find words to say this i i still cannot believe what i'm reading these are the
02:06guys that have been on a complete unbroken route militarily tactically on the ground for i i think
02:14it's over 30 months now consecutive months with no exceptions even on the when when ukraine tried to
02:20have an offensive and they they broke into uh to the korsk area in august of last year stayed there for
02:27seven or eight months uh but at the end it was a complete and utter failure they tried to break into
02:31belgorod that has been failed they have tried again just in the last week or so to go back into
02:37korsk that has failed as well meanwhile on the eastern front the the progress continues to go to
02:43the west because russia continues to to accelerate its activities and i showed you several times in the
02:50tactical uh updates over this past week where there was a couple of days in particular the only two days
02:56i saw the numbers one that the russians had uh reacquired 20 square kilometers one day 29 square
03:02kilometers of territory on another day single day and i don't know what they did the rest of the time
03:07i don't know if it was more than that or less than that but we can understand because of the contacts
03:11and the attacks continue on that some number of square kilometers continues to be lost so the pace is
03:17continuing to pick up now on on may 9th russia put on this demonstration of of strength uh they have
03:24closing ties with militarily with north korea uh deepening ties especially with drones and some
03:31of the other uh help they're getting from iran uh their president xi jinping is still in moscow right
03:38now as i understand it uh they're continuing to talk about deep deepening uh military uh cooperation
03:44certainly economic cooperation and other things who knows what's really going on behind the scenes but
03:49they're still still sitting there talking because they have an interest in six in both russia and
03:55china succeeding so everything certainly appears that it's on this track for russia now again this is
04:02also in light of the fact that just a few weeks back you had the u.s general cavoli the uh the leader of
04:10the uh the u.s central not central command u.s uh european command who who told uh the united states
04:17congress and we put that on the screen there where he said that the that the russian side with its allies
04:22are out producing artillery shells by a factor of three over the cumulative west everything that we
04:28can do we know for sure because the the ukrainian commander sersky has said that they cannot even
04:35force mobilize enough people to offset losses we know that the russian industrial capacity across the
04:40board is again according to cavoli producing 1500 tanks this year 3000 other armored vehicles
04:47this year nothing even close not by a factor of three but i'm not sure that it's it's even being
04:55offset at all on the western side does i've heard only a handful like 20 and 30 here and there
05:00are vehicles coming over armored vehicles from the west and uh whatever capacity ukraine has by itself
05:06is obviously badly damaged by the constant bombardment of russia throughout so one has to wonder
05:11what in the world are you talking about what what are you threatening them with we have threatened
05:18remember joe biden if famously right at the beginning of this war talked about how he was going to
05:23cripple russia was going to bring them to their knees and all these sanctions and what happened
05:29they rebounded they hit the western economy worse that's why you have uh robert fitzel from slovakia
05:36and and the hungarian prime minister robert uh sorry uh hungarian prime minister uh orbon always
05:42talking about they're really angry about the fact that they have to pay more for energy to be able to
05:47run their economy because of these sanctions and you see the german economy may already be in a
05:52recession but it certainly has something close to zero growth while the russian side even though it has
05:57high high interest rates and high inflation they also have high growth at about four percent
06:03dwarfing anything that the entire european union has been able to put together so everywhere you look
06:10economically militarily industrially the russians are on the top we have tried this folks the west
06:18has tried everything they can to sanction russia do you think that some new sanction now is going to
06:24work when none of the others did before i mean what rationale and logic is going on here i mean this is
06:29this should start to alarm us this should start to alarm us not just to get uh you know a roll of
06:36the eyes or uh well these guys are dumb this should start to alarm us the people that are in charge of
06:41the western world right now i'm talking like the main ones germany uk france these guys and now
06:49poland these guys are are just becoming more and more detached from reality and and one has to wonder
06:56what else or what other kind of decisions are they making with this kind of mentality that they're
07:02saying sit there with such arrogance and pompousness that they actually feel justified in issuing a demand
07:09to russian president vladimir putin at this day now i'm going to show you you talk about some arrogance
07:14here i'm going to show you this is what uh zelinski himself uh released just uh today also in in
07:21talking about how he's going to get this done yeah thank you thank you all for standing with us
07:28so today we'll focus on how to build and guarantee real and lasting security key points so today
07:35ceasefire backed with sanctions pressure strengthening ukraine's air defense and increasing international
07:43defense support for ukraine including the investment in ukrainian defense production security guarantees and
07:50contagions and of course we'll discuss our unity with the united states and backstop dear friends
07:56there's no need today to explain the whole situation in detail everyone understands what's happening and
08:03what needs to be done yeah but do they though do they understand what's happening what needs to be
08:09done because it sure looks to me like there's a lot of lack of understanding everybody understands the
08:14situation well i don't know i i kind of think that we do understand the situation here
08:19and it's very detached from reality from the ver from the version that you're trying to pass by
08:25i mean just you just look at the landscape you've already tried every kind of sanction in the world
08:32that you can imagine and and it didn't make any difference russia was hurt in some areas there's no
08:39doubt but they adjusted they made changes and then they got stronger as a result of it and now the
08:44and this is stuff that's out there all over the place in the west there's all kinds of scholarship on this
08:49it has made them if not sanction proof very strongly sanctioned resistance because they have
08:54mechanisms in place to offset the the leverage that the west would have on them what are you going to
09:00do now you're going to you said something about he said something about energy we have some energy
09:04sanctions okay what energy sanctions do you remember and you probably don't because many in the west
09:09have forgotten this by now but relatively early in the war we were going to bring them to their
09:14knees the russians to their knees because we were going to put these not just sanctions on oil but
09:20we were going to put a price cap on it so that they wouldn't be able to get enough money in there and
09:24their war machine would starve to death did you ever hear any did you ever wonder why you never heard
09:29anything after that did you ever wonder why the war machine wasn't brought to its knees why it didn't
09:34come to a grinding halt because russia figured a way around it like they always do every time you take an
09:40action that there has an equal and opposite counteraction on the other side it's not surprising
09:45it's not unusual this is how things work in the real world but now then we have experience and we
09:52can look at russia we can look at this situation we can see how they've mitigated against that threat
09:57so then what in now deep into the fourth year this war do you think you're going to do now that you
10:03haven't done before well as it turns out that there was there's a forbes reporter was in in russia
10:09perhaps for this uh uh for the the may not celebration but uh somebody today went and said
10:14hey wanted to talk to uh dmitry peskoff and get their view to this and he said uh yeah we're aware
10:21of it we have to to think about that we have to think about that these are these are new developments
10:28uh so we have our own position yes definitely we we see that europe is confronting us europe is uh
10:37actually uh confronting us very openly we feel it we know it and then we we are quite accustomed to
10:47that do you think that russia can be pressured in this case well uh if you look during the history
10:54during the old history during the modern history you'll see that uh uh so russia is quite resistant
11:02resistant to any kinds of pressure yeah and he's he's he's right there too they're resistant to all
11:09kinds of pressure he's saying the same thing but we just talked about a minute they're aware of this
11:14they've they figured out ways they would resist pressure and and especially because of the battlefield
11:19situation i just described to you what what rationale can these western leaders have to say
11:27we're going to put pressure on you now that we think this time it'll work when it's the same
11:34categories even that has been tried before and and what do you think is going to happen to do does
11:40anyone in in that group actually believe that putin is going to go hmm golly fellas boy i didn't know
11:47you're going to actually hit me like this i didn't expect that but hey i had my parade so yeah we're cool
11:52to go okay fine sure we'll just go to a 30-day ceasefire russia has said from the beginning and
11:56never anything different that they would not do a ceasefire they called a uh lavrov calls it a road
12:03to nowhere putin himself in december said we're not worried about a ceasefire we want an end of war
12:08negotiated settlement that addresses the root causes and they say the root causes are nato inside of
12:15ukraine the treatment of their their ethnic or russians that are living within the area that
12:20uh in some areas that still are ukraine some that now they consider were etc and they're saying
12:26there has to be a demilitarization and a denazification and they say once you talk about
12:30all those things and sure we'll do that they've already said they're willing to entertain the
12:34possibility of a of a 30-day ceasefire but only if all of these details have been addressed first
12:39none of which have so obviously they i mean these guys aren't stupid they may be delusional but
12:45they're not stupid they they certainly know that there's no chance that vladimir putin is going to
12:49give in to any kind of a pressure from a position of strength at least i hope they don't i mean i
12:55mean i hope that this is just some sort of gambit some sort of play because they they want russia to
12:59to to reject this maybe like zelinski said in that clip i just showed you where he's saying well if russia
13:04doesn't agree to this and that'll show everybody who really doesn't want an end to the war well yeah i
13:10mean russia's not hiding that fact that's not something you have to discover they're saying no we're not
13:16going to end the we're not going to do a 30-day ceasefire that will only or that will primarily
13:20help the ukraine side why would we do that from a position of strength who would do something like
13:25that no we're going to keep the pressure on we've opened they've openly said that the russians have
13:30openly said we're going to keep the pressure on we had uh ambassador polianski i believe on on our
13:37show the u.n ambassador to russia now i pressed him on this and i point blank ask if you don't get
13:43through negotiated settlements what you consider your minimal terms will you keep fighting and he
13:48looked at me incredulously like well of course we will i mean we've never said anything different
13:52so they're not hiding this so these group of people can't not know what what's going to happen
13:59here so then the question is going to be what is their play there here then so putin won't accept it
14:05so come monday morning there there's not going to be a 30-day ceasefire and then what they're going
14:10to put these other sanctions on and what are the things going to happen do they think that's going
14:14to have some impact on the on the russian offensive because even some of the things they're talking
14:19about here air defense ultra additionally zelinski in some of these that same interview was talking
14:24about he wants more air defense systems he wants security guarantees uh he needs this industrial
14:29capacity to continue on this 2030 situation thing look folks you might not be a viable military five
14:37months from now forget about five years from now and if these guys think that russia's refusal on monday
14:44is any different than the refusal they're already saying so i know i don't understand what they're
14:48gaining here now the other wild card in this is the claim by both zelinski and uh the europeans there
14:56that america has agreed to this they claim that they made this ultimatum after talking to president
15:01trump now if that's true then we have another level of problem because trump has been talking
15:07about and we've been chronicling here that they're you know potentially days away from being ready to
15:13walk away if the two sides don't come together and make an agreement then we're going to walk away
15:18now it could be that the u.s is playing the europeans and zelinski by saying sure we'll agree to that
15:25and then when when russia doesn't then they'll say okay i said that we would walk if the two sides
15:31didn't come together this was our last play now we're walking i hope that's what's going to happen
15:35because if that's if that's what the play was there are better ways to do it i certainly wouldn't have
15:39done it kind of i guess i won't say semi i guess deceptively against even our own allies i'd much
15:47rather be very clear and open about it but if that's the path it goes that's the least bad path
15:51sure we'll walk now we'll see what's going to happen i don't have any idea i don't have
15:55any insight of anybody in the administration in this particular issue so i don't know what's
16:00coming but that's certainly what needs to happen because if it doesn't if monday comes and we
16:07levy the or the europe's europeans levy these new sanctions and if we potentially add to that and we
16:12levy sanctions too then the white house has lost the leverage that it had it has lost the ability
16:19to later on then say we're going to walk away if you engage in sanctions and and go to what these
16:25and i add to what these european guys are talking about doing then now then russia's not russia's
16:31not going to listen to you anymore they're not going to talk to you because now then you're not
16:35trying to find negotiated settlement you're putting more pressure on them and we've already seen in
16:39the last week or so the u.s has added 350 million dollar f-16 package a 50 million dollar other military
16:45package the air defense systems and if now then they also add in this then it's good brush is going to
16:50say then you you're not trying to find anything you're trying to do just a light version of what
16:55the biden administration did and who's to claim them and then the only thing you leave them is
17:00said all right we're just now going to continue on we're just going to march maybe they're going to
17:04increase the pace but what you're going to do is you're going to guarantee more ukrainian men will
17:08keep dying in large numbers because there's i've not seen any evidence that the united states is going
17:14to have any kind of like a 61 billion dollar package like uh biden had a year ago this month
17:19so even if these these little nickel and dime compared to 350 million dollar f-16 packages only
17:26for the f-16s and and that that we've seen has had virtually no impact even on the tactical battlefield
17:31certainly not the operational or strategic and now then you know this if you talk about here's more
17:37air defense and it's just a pittance it was in a one air defense battery that was in israel now it's
17:41going to go there it's going to have a point help in one place in all of all of ukraine but it's
17:47having a consequence because if russia sees you keep doing these little nickel and dime things to help
17:53the ukraine side so you're not compelling them to come to an agreement you're not compelling them to
17:57reach a settlement and now then you are adding more sanctions on on the russian side that's what
18:03they'll see and so you're going to lose your leverage because now you're you're not seen even
18:08plausibly as somebody who can bring it to an end because you will have shown that the trump will
18:15have demonstrated that he can't rein in zelinski that he can't rein in the european leaders they're
18:22calling the shots because this is what they've been saying since he was elected and it's been trump
18:26who's been saying you know we might walk and we're trying to get a negotiated settlement these guys have
18:30never wanted a negotiated settlement they have always pushed for more more more weapons ammunition
18:36funding all the kind of stuff and that they want to put pressure on russia zelinski comically says we
18:42want to have a negotiated peace we want to have a peace a peace with honor all that kind of stuff
18:48except that his definition of that of course is the surrender on the russian side which is
18:53delusional there's no right a better way to put it there's no kinder way to put it there are worse
18:59ways i could have put it but that's the kindest one it's an outright delusional so you're guaranteeing
19:04that russia is going to keep fighting and you're guaranteeing that your men are going to keep
19:07done and you're guaranteeing that your country is going to keep losing the war you're going to keep
19:11losing territory whether fast or slow i don't know which we'll have to wait and see how it plays out
19:17but one of those two are the options there's not an option to where russia goes okay we'll stop
19:23i mean i mean it's ludicrous to suggest it but that's what these people are doing
19:27and so i i really really hope that they are that they were using president trump's name and his
19:33his positions without authorization and that he's really not behind this because if he is then there's
19:41going to be more trouble that's that's the story that we have right now all of this stuff is going
19:46to continue to evolve we'll see if uh the i hope that we find something to tomorrow on some of the
19:51sunday talk shows here in the united states uh where some of the senior administration officials
19:55usually go out and talk and and we'll be real eager to see if anybody talks about did we authorize
20:01this are we in agreement with this and if and if so how does that play into trying to find a negotiated
20:06settlement and then of course come monday morning we'll come back to you and give you the latest
20:10update latest information uh but i mean uh unless i am desperately wrong uh russia is not going to agree
20:18to a 30-day ceasefire the war will continue more ukrainians will die and and i'll be more frustrated but
20:24we'll we'll save that for money thanks ever so much for uh for coming and uh being and joining us
20:29here on this late saturday afternoon uh but i did want to bring you up today didn't want to wait till
20:33monday on all this uh so now you know what's going on you know as much as we do we'll see you next time
20:37monday on daniel davis deep dive
20:38you