439. The Pro-Putin President: Are Zelensky and Europe sleepwalking into disaster?

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Coming up on today's show, Trump was saying he was going to end the war in 24 hours.

He meant by giving Putin what he wanted.

Trump is on Putin's side on this and always has been.

It's all about whether anyone can trust Vladimir Putin.

And it seems to me that the only person in this equation who is remotely minded to trust Putin is Trump.

And then it's the question of whether you can trust Trump.

What if Trump just doesn't care about Ukraine?

Doesn't care about NATO, doesn't care about Europe?

His gut instinct is, screw Ukraine, it's really part of Russia anyway, it doesn't really matter.

Even if Putin proposes a deal and Trump gets behind it, Zelensky won't accept it.

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Welcome to the Rest is Politics with me, Rory Stewart.

And with me, Alistair Campbell.

And first half, All Matters Ukraine, after another big episode of the Trump Reality TV show.

And second half, Gaza.

And then we'll perhaps go a bit more domestic when we get to question time.

Let's start on this.

So our super keen listeners will have picked up up that we did an extra episode on Saturday morning.

So live after the Putin-Trump meeting in Alaska.

We're now recording 48 hours after that.

In the time since, and people will remember, nothing really was said at the end of the Trump-Putin meeting, but there was massive anxiety from Zelensky, of course, the Ukrainian leader, and the European leaders, who then jumped on a plane, dropped everything.

I've never seen anything like it, how quickly these guys clear their schedules and get on a plane to get out to Washington to try to sit down with Trump and presumably to return.

I mean, I guess to my central analogy, which is that I think always the momentum of Trump, the rolling boulder, is heading in the direction of Putin.

But over the last eight months, again and again, the European leaders in Zelensky try to sort of stop it and keep saying, please give us security guarantees.

Please give us a ceasefire.

Please don't sign up to what has seemed almost since November, the inevitable deal deal with Putin.

I imagine when Trump was saying he was going to end the war in 24 hours, he meant by giving Putin what he wanted.

But anyway, over to you.

What's your sense of what's going on?

I mean, it's all about trust now, isn't it?

It's all about whether anyone can trust Vladimir Putin.

And it seems to me that the only person in this equation who is remotely minded to trust Putin is Trump.

And then it's a question of whether you can trust Trump to stay engaged, to stay interested.

Look, I thought the outcome of Alaska and the optics of Alaska were both horrific for Ukraine and for Europe.

I think that's why you did see this extraordinary action of Macron, Mertz, Starmer, Maloney, Stubb from Finland, Rutter and von der Leyen all feeling, oh my God, we've got to get this show back on the road.

I think the significant shift that's happened since that meeting, if you remember, Trump went into the meeting in Alaska saying he would be very unhappy, there'd be severe consequences if he didn't get a ceasefire out of Putin.

Ceasefire not even discussed.

So therefore he comes out with a new line, which is basically

we don't go to the ceasefire, we go straight to a peace agreement and we go straight to security guarantees.

Okay.

So he's sort of totally reframed the kind of the positioning of this thing for obvious reasons from

the optics and the substance of Alaska.

So for obvious reasons, the European leaders were very alarmed, very worried, very anxious about what was going on.

The reason why the European leaders were so horrified is that they had had a call with trump two days earlier in which he had absolutely promised not to do that and they had somehow convinced themselves that they had a deal with trump that that trump then broke as soon as he sat down with putin and so a lot of the last two days i guess has just been trying to reverse and get back to where they thought they were on friday and i also know he is very impressionable he does have the ability it's the what it's the thing that lots of people who know him well say is that he he actually doesn't enjoy confrontation.

It's why he won't have enjoyed that meeting with Zelensky that Vance triggered it.

It's probably why Vance was kept in his box.

So the Europeans know that the best chance to maybe, at least at the margins, get him to shift a position, to give them a bit more time to do the things they're trying to achieve.

get in the room with them.

And, you know, that's what they did.

You talk about Trump being the boulder, but the boulder is kind of moving a little bit like he moved on that red carpet in Alaska.

It's sort of going a little bit sideways rather than a straight line.

So what the Europeans said is we cannot have a repeat of Trump Vance beating up Zelensky in the White House.

Have you said thank you once this entire meeting?

No, in this entire meeting have you said thank you today?

Therefore we have to kind of be there like a bit of a bolstering shield.

Before they went to the White House, first of all, for the bilateral with Zelensky, then with the broader meeting with all the European leaders, they met at the Ukrainian embassy.

They clearly decided, I think, that whether we like it or not, and it's pretty clear they don't all like it, we're going to have to do a bit of, you know, backside kissing.

So they did a lot of that.

This wouldn't be happening without your leadership.

Thank you so much for getting Putin to say whatever he said, and at least to be talking about security guarantees.

The problem where we are now, I think, is that so if you take Kier Starmer's reaction and his response at the end of the day, which I thought was fair and balanced, he basically said, we're at least talking about security guarantees and now the hard work begins on what that means.

And we're talking about the possibility of a trilateral meeting.

The only thing I've been able to pick up that I've not seen in the media from any of the people who were there is that it was Putin on the phone call with Trump in the middle of the meeting with European leaders who suggested starting with a bilateral meeting with Zelensky.

Now, I don't know quite what to read into that, but it seems that that is what gave them some sort of confidence that Putin was at least talking about it.

However, the Kremlin line is, they said they had a very frank and constructive discussion.

Now, frank usually means not very friendly, and they then talked about setting up a new process of negotiators to talk about the possibility of the meeting between Trump and Zelensky.

So, more drama, more theatre, more announcements of process, but very hard to assess if it actually adds up to very much.

I'm going to play a devil's advocate maybe and push harder and say there's a pretty good chance, and if I was

really forced to predict, I'd say that Trump is on Putin's side on this and always has been.

And I think we're misreading in a way.

I was listening to our friend The Mooch saying, you know, how come

Trump got so outmaneuvered by Putin?

You know, it was three to zero against him.

And what I thought is that maybe we're looking at it the wrong way up.

Trump is only outmaneuvered if you assume that what Trump is trying to do is support Ukraine or take the European position.

I mean, there's no doubt the Ukrainian European position was outmaneuvered.

But what if Trump just doesn't care about Ukraine?

doesn't care about NATO, doesn't care about Europe, and what he really cares about is having good relationships with Russia and potentially getting some minerals deal and business deals in Russia.

In which case, from his point of view, the art of the deal he's making doesn't really have anything to do with defending Ukraine or Europe.

But we're sort of imagining that in Trump's mind, he's back in, you know, the 1980s in New York, and somehow Ukraine and Europe are his company.

But his company is the US.

But Rory, if that's the case, why doesn't he go much closer to the J.D.

Vance position?

And J.D.

Vance looked very miserable yesterday.

He was made to sit at the children's table.

You had

the BT with the leaders there, Trump sitting with all the leaders.

And then over there behind that side of the table, I spotted Jonathan Powell and some of the European diplomats who were there.

And then over there, you had J.D.

Vance, Rubio, Besant, Hexeth, Susie Wiles.

And it really did look like this is for the big people.

And you sit there and you don't speak.

And in the meeting in the Oval Office, I think it's quite interesting.

Yes, there was a lot of fuss made of the fact that Zelensky wore a suit because last time he wore his kind of, you know, the uniform that he's been wearing since this war started.

But the other thing that was very, very different is J.D.

Vance did not open his mouth.

So I think Vance was told by Trump to stay in his box.

Rubio looked very nervous at both meetings, I thought.

But I think a lot of this depends on you're basically saying they don't care about Ukraine and he only wants to help Putin.

If he doesn't really care, why go through all this effort?

I wonder whether, I mean, look, getting into Trump's psychology or Putin's psychology is very difficult.

Well, it's what all the leaders were doing yesterday.

Yeah.

Let's say, broadly speaking, your analysis is that the things that he cares most about now are fame and money, but he's got more money than he used to.

And that he has certain sorts of beliefs, of which the strongest one is he loves tariffs.

Second one is he doesn't like immigration.

And third, but maybe not quite as strong, is the belief that the world is divided into spheres of influence and big countries get to do what they want in their backyard.

And basically Russia gets to do what it wants backyard.

But if it's a slightly less strong belief than his love of tariffs and his hatred of immigration, then

he's facing a concerted effort by an enormous amount, not just of European allies, but NATO, a lot of the Republicans, a lot of American public opinion who are skeptical about Russia.

So, although his, I think, his gut instinct is, screw Ukraine, it's really part of Russia anyway, it doesn't really matter, everything would be much easier.

And anyway, they're never going to win.

I think that's another very important part.

He thinks that Putin is winning.

Ukraine's doomed.

The way to get peace is just to let Putin get what he wants.

But the reason in eight months he hasn't quite got there is that he quite enjoys probably having all these European leaders jumping on planes to see him all the time.

He loved it.

He loved it.

And he probably feels, well,

I don't care enough really about this issue to totally throw in my whole weight behind Putin.

But if you were to grab him one-on-one, I think he hasn't changed his position, which is still Ukraine's really part of Russia.

This isn't relevant to the United States.

If we get to sell some weapons to Europe, great, but that's not that important to me either.

And I'd like the Nobel Peace Prize.

And the easiest way to get peace in inverted commas is to take the aggressor's piece.

And the most straightforward sort of piece is, dear Putin, have some more territory and stop fighting.

Yeah.

Of course, so much that we talk about Trump psychology, but a lot of this is about what Putin thinks.

It was really interesting.

During the pool spray at the top with Zelensky, and oh my God,

I did try, Broy.

I fed in to every person I could think of who had any influence in this.

Please, can we not have a pool spray at the top with Zelensky?

But it happened.

If you listen very carefully, Rory, you heard Zelensky when Trump was obviously going to take questions.

Zelensky said, he sort of whispered, let's make it short.

And Trump said, short, very short.

It then went on for about five years.

He took questions from Marjorie Taylor Greene's boyfriend about every three minutes, including about policing, in mailing, balloting, all sorts of nonsense.

I thought Zelensky was quite clever.

When he reached in for the envelope, I thought, oh, Lord,

who's the Ukrainian king who's going to give a state visit to Trump?

But in fact, it was a letter from his wife to Melania Trump.

We obviously think about Trump a lot because he's in our heads all the time, because he's on our phones and on our TV screens all the time.

Putin, we see a lot less of.

But here's Rory.

Literally, why have you just been talking?

The other Rory in my life, my son, he sent me this tweet.

Have you seen this?

It's a tweet from Medvedev, former president, still a...

you know, we don't know how important he remains in the Putin sphere.

He wasn't there at the meeting, but this is his tweet this morning.

The anti-Russian warmongering coalition of the willing fails to outplay Trump on his turf.

Europe thanked and sucked up to him.

That is true.

The question now is: which tune the Kiev clown, that's Zelensky, will play about guarantees and territories back home once he's put on his green military uniform again.

So he's trolling Zelensky, he's trolling the Europeans.

I mean, we talk about Putin being a sort of barbarous dictator.

Does Medvedev put that out there with Putin's blessing or not because if he does he's basically taking the piss i think he is taking the piss and i think if i were putin i'd be pretty confident at the moment that things are going in my direction that these european meetings are just froth i mean i'm i'm increasingly coming to the view on lots of fundamental things with trump including tariffs, but also what we'll get on to, I think, maybe when we talk about this in question time, some of his internal repression stuff, that he's actually surprisingly consistent.

And the reason that we get confused is because he'll send out posts on truth social saying things like, I'm getting fed up with Putin or he's got 50 days and I'll put sanction on, but never actually happens.

It's the same with Israel.

There were moments where everyone was like, oh, he's getting really annoyed with Netanyahu.

He didn't visit him on his Gulf tour, etc.

But fundamentally, it feels as though he is never actually going to punish either Russia or in fact Israel, whatever they do.

And that's because at some level, he's kind of on their side.

Yeah.

On the Russian thing, it's also really worth emphasizing that Putin, rightly or wrongly, seems much, much more confident now about his military position.

So I was looking at some of the statistics around recruitment.

And the Russians are consistently recruiting about twice as many people a day.

as the Ukrainians.

And it's really remarkable.

Part of this is about the incredibly generous payouts that they're making.

Yeah.

So in Russia, you can normal person on about $900 a month.

So, so you know, £750 a month.

So in British terms, very, very much well below the minimum wage.

But soldiers on the front line earn much more than their British equivalents.

If you're on the front line, you get $2,450

a month salary, so nearly two and a half times median income, $30,000 signing bonus, then you get special money for, you get $12,000 if you get a medal, you get money if you get tanks and helicopters, and when you retire, you get a guaranteed $1,100 pension a month for the rest of your life.

That's a really significant thing, and they don't seem to have any problem recruiting.

At the same time, there have been these breakthroughs.

There was a breakthrough in Povorovsk, which begins to seem to threaten nearly 10 miles worth of breakthrough, which is forcing the Ukrainians into a very, very narrow corridor to one of their central...

logistics bases in the east.

So I think if you're Putin, you're sitting there thinking, in the end, the war's going in my favor.

In the end, I know that, yes, the Europeans will continue to buy American stuff, but there's going to be less American stuff, less American focus.

I know that there is no U.S.

appetite.

So you talked about Vance.

I don't know whether you saw his interview on Sunday.

He said.

I think the president and I certainly think that America, we're done with the funding of the Ukraine war business.

But if the Europeans want to step up and actually buy the weapons from American producers, we're okay with that, but we're not going to fund it ourselves anymore.

That basically is what they mean by security guarantees.

We will make weapons and you lot can buy them.

Yeah, over to you on that.

So that's the final thing.

So this security guarantee story, remember Macron in his meeting with Trump, which I think is now back in February, thought that he'd got security guarantees out of Trump.

But if you listen to Trump, there's no detail on what these guarantees are.

And if I were Putin, I would think, well, this isn't anything like Maloney's Article 5, NATO, you know, attack on one, it's an attack on all.

And if it remains ambiguous, it's not really a deterrent, is it?

Those press conferences are utterly horrific because the journalists just don't do their job.

You have people like this, Mr.

Marjorie Taylor Greene, who was actually talking about going for a walk with MTG around Washington.

Thank you, Mr.

President.

It felt so safe.

If you can walk around Washington safe with MTG, you know, then the place, thank you.

And then all this sort of nonsense going on.

And the guy from Fox News basically just trying to needle Zelensky the whole time.

But the other point, Raw, you say that about them being more confident militarily.

There's an amazing thing.

I don't know if you follow this thing that goes out pretty much every day.

The British Ministry of Defence, military intelligence, put out these kind of analysis of what's going on.

They get way more coverage around the world than they do in Britain.

But the one that caught my eye this week that went out, it basically says, if they carry on, based on the battlefield advances so far in 2025, it will take Russian forces approximately 4.4 more years to gain 100% of the four Ukrainian oblasts territory.

Now, just think about that, because what Trump seems to have fallen for with Putin is the idea that Zelensky will have no problem handing over the Donbass, which is two of those oblasts.

And somebody said yesterday that it's like saying to Trump, look,

decide who your biggest enemy in the world is and give them Florida and maybe throw in a bit of Texas as well.

Your friend from The Economist, Shashan Joshi, I saw him being interviewed on television yesterday and he said for Zelensky to hand over the Donbass would be suicidal.

So that can't happen.

That means that this really hasn't moved past stage one and Zelensky did not give any promises on that at all.

Again, the coverage has tended to assume that we're on the cusp of a deal.

The way it's normally described is there's like a pro-Russian deal.

And the pro-Russian deal would mean that Putin would get, as you say, the hood of the Donbass and Ukraine would agree to demilitarize, so limit the size of its army, not join NATO, not join the EU, and sanctions would be lifted on Russia.

So that's the kind of pro-Russia position, which is, I think, the position to which Trump basically favors in his gut.

And then there's the other position, which is the kind of pro-Ukraine deal, which is no recognition of the territory Russia's taken, freeze the front lines where they are.

Ukraine can arm as much as it wants.

It's got a free pass to join NATO and the EU and America will produce in the most optimistic scenario almost a kind of NATO-style guarantee for the security of Ukraine.

My guess is that neither of these things are going to happen.

My guess is that even if Putin proposes a deal and Trump gets behind it, Zelensky won't accept it.

And therefore, what you'll really have is a sort of frozen conflict, a kind of grey zone going on for years and years and years.

I was reminded thinking about this, our interview with the president of Cyprus and the way that he thinks about Turkish-occupied North Cyprus.

So obviously, from his point of view, he, in a way, is like Ukraine.

That was part of their territory.

The Turks invaded, they captured half the territory, and 60 years later, the Greek Cypriots are still saying this is an illegal occupation, we don't recognize it, get out.

But the rest of the world, unfortunately, is beginning to, I'm afraid, lose energy and think, well, facts are facts, and basically Turkey occupies North Cyprus, might as well have a two-state solution.

So there's a serious chance that that's the kind of world that you end up in in Ukraine.

Well, the other thing that we, you know,

when we talk about you can't work out Trump's psychology, but so much of this is about his psychology.

He doesn't stick with things for long.

So we're going to talk in the second half after the break, we're going to talk about Gaza.

Now, what's been happening in Gaza in the last 24, 48 hours, there's been some pretty consequential stuff going on.

But was there any mention of that yesterday in the long ramble that he he did in the Oval Office?

Because in his head, he's kind of already, I think, moved on from that.

He's now thinking, Ukraine is the episode I'm dealing with now.

That is what I've got to get fixed.

I've got to get a new storyline out every day.

And then eventually, I think you're right.

I think eventually this will possibly peter out.

Now, I don't think we should underestimate, by the way, the significance.

You know, we can laugh and say, oh, you look at them all getting on a plane and going to sort of kiss his backside.

It felt to me quite significant that the Europeans were there yesterday and that he felt this this need, for whatever reason, he went round the table basically saying something very nice about all of them.

And even though to some European eyes, it would have been puke-making to watch them say, we couldn't do this without you and blah, blah, blah.

One, they stopped short of any of the Nobel Prize nonsense.

But two, when you actually dig into what they were saying, there were some pretty substantial points being made.

The one point in the round table when Trump, I felt he's about to lose it, was with Mertz, because Mertz was absolutely clear, clear you cannot possibly go on with these negotiations without a ceasefire.

Likewise with Macron, Macron said, yeah, it'd be great if you can get a trilateral meeting, but then there should be a quadrilateral meeting where we should be there as well, because Ukraine's security is Europe's security.

So they were making some pretty substantial points.

And of course, the big point that Zelensky kept making repeatedly was security guarantees.

Now, what nobody did in public, but I suspect this is what they're now doing in private, is, is, okay, you've said security guarantees, let's drill down on that.

And you know, one of the most interesting, moving things I saw this week, I don't know when it was done, but it was an interview that Bill Clinton did with Miriam O'Callaghan, who's the Irish television presenter.

He was talking about the deal that Ukraine did to get rid of its nuclear weapons.

And he was basically saying, I feel really bad about that because I was part of persuading the Ukrainians to give up their nuclear weapons on the basis that Russia would never attack them.

Russia's now attacked them with the same leader.

That's this point about trust.

How do you possibly trust somebody who has broken so many promises and so many red lines?

And as you know, Rui, I'm in Germany and I picked up Die Welt yesterday, and there's an amazing piece by Garry Kasparov.

Now, Garry Kasparov, we know, is not a fan of

Vladimir Putin.

He's actually quite courageous, Kasparov.

I mean, his criticism.

I mean, those kind of Russian criticisms of Putin by a leading figure have ended up with people being assassinated.

Well, absolutely.

I mean, you know, you see comedians doing stories about, you know, who's going to fall out the window next.

No, Gary Kasparov, he is right out there and has been for a long time.

But the headline is, Putin is not the Hitler of 1938.

And what is the whole piece.

Essentially is about these comparisons were made between Putin and Hitler.

And he says, yes, you can make a comparison.

They're both evil regimes.

But in 1938, Hitler may have become an authoritarian leader in his own country, but he had not yet broken a massive series of international norms, which Putin has.

And he actually says, Chamberlain may have been naive, but you could be forgiven in 1938 for taking Hitler at face value.

He said it may have been cowardly, but it was rational.

And he says, the difference with Putin, we know.

We know from Chechnya, we know from Georgia, we know from Syria, we know from all the wars that he's fueling over across Africa.

And he has this wonderful line at the end.

And I think this is a message to the European leaders about Putin, but also possibly about Trump.

He said, we should do our best to learn from the past,

but this must happen with integrity.

Instead of looking for historical justification, we should ask, how do we want to be seen in in the history books of the future as spectators of authoritarianism or as defenders of freedom and democracy?

It's a very powerful piece.

That, of course, raises the big question, which is, are the Europeans playing this right?

And my fear is that they're putting all their focus onto trying to change Trump's mind.

And there's another strategy they could have pursued, which is to conclude in November, December, so six, seven months ago, that yes, they can try to change Trump's mind and it's worth continuing to try to change his mind and delay him.

But the likelihood is, the overwhelming likelihood is he's not going to come in on their side.

And therefore, what they should have been doing is using the seven, eight months to really rearm and sort themselves out.

Because there's a repeated pattern here.

Remember, if you're Metz, you announced just under a week ago that you'd had a meeting with Trump where five principles had been agreed with Trump, right?

And those principles were no peace terms or land swap without ceasefire, no legal recognition, security guarantees, keep Ukraine right.

And sure enough, two days later, the whole thing's broken again, right?

And this has been repeated again and again and again and again.

So what's worrying me is that if Europe genuinely believes that Russia is a significant long-term threat to Europe, and I think what we mean by that is that

if Russia takes all that it wants in eastern Ukraine, it is then emboldened, will be convinced that NATO and Europe are weak, and therefore the likelihood of them trying something in Lithuania or Moldova goes up.

And that unless Europe actually, within the next few months to years, really sorts out the lessons of Ukraine and how to defend itself against Russian attack, Putin will be opportunistic, right?

And that's going to be very, very difficult economically and politically in a lot of the countries that we're talking about.

And of course, Putin loses that.

The other thing that I think is just worth reflecting on, Trump has these talking points that he uses and uses and uses again, and then they get fed back by these poodle journalists that he travels around with.

One of them is this thing about, you know, I've ended six wars, okay?

Now, just this morning, so one of the six wars is the war between Congo and Rwanda, okay?

This very morning.

The main rebel group in Eastern Democratic Republic of Congo, the M23, has walked away from peace talks with the government, saying it will not return unless the authorities adhere to a previous ceasefire deal.

What did Trump say when Mertz raised the issue of ceasefire?

I've sorted these six wars without anybody talking about a ceasefire because these ceasefires don't always happen.

Now that shows two things.

One, he knows nothing about what's gone on between Congo and Rwanda.

He just wants to be able to say I've ended it because he had a meeting with the leaders and said how great they were.

But that one looks like it's falling apart.

He then said this other thing, Roy.

We're going to talk about Gaza later.

He said, I thought this was going to be the easiest of the wars to sort russia ukraine it's turning about to be the hardest but it's the last one on the schedule so

so in in his in his in his head he's obviously it's it's all it's all been sorted so just as we go to the break just final um thought we we talk about you know whether or not Trump is being naive, trusting Putin.

I don't think he's being naive.

I don't think Trump trusts himself.

I don't think he trusts anybody.

I don't think he's that kind of person.

I don't think that's how his business deals work.

I suspect he doesn't care, really, about what happens in Ukraine.

All that he cares about is getting some kind of deal so that he can talk about his Nobel Peace Prize and saving the US some money and getting some deals in Russia.

So in that sense, he doesn't really need to trust Putin.

The people who need to trust Putin are the Europeans.

But Trump doesn't actually think Putin's a threat to the United States.

He doesn't think this is relevant to the United States.

So I think this whole idea that Trump is being naive or outmaneuvered is slightly missing the point.

I think he's basically indifferent.

And the only reason that he feels like he's being naive and outmaneuvered is that he enjoys the flattery and the spectacle of European leaders groveling to him, which means that he never quite just gets behind the Putin deal.

But I think it would be a mistake to think he's on our side, but somehow a naive version of us.

Also, I don't think any of the leaders think that.

I think they've decided that as part of their strategy, they have to say that.

You know, I think if if you talk to them sort of away from the cameras, you know, I mean, Maloney was even rolling her eyes while he was talking at one point.

She's very, she's got a very expressive face that he was, I can't remember the issue, but she was sort of looking around the room.

There was another bit where Starma and Macron were sort of whispering to each other in a way that was like, you know, they clearly, they know what they're dealing with.

They've decided.

collectively whether they like it or not and I suspect it makes most of them feel sick they have to do this fattery stuff They have to say none of this could happen without him.

But I think there was enough yesterday of ultimately this is about Putin.

Putin has to be the one who makes changes because he's the one who offered nothing to Trump.

The other thing, Roy, you mentioned the Nobel Peace Prize a couple of times.

I've had an absolute brainwave on this.

Well, you know that people think the Nobel Peace Prize is always given to individuals, it's often given to institutions.

I think one of the reasons why Trump hates the United Nations and hates the European Union, they are both previous winners of the Nobel Peace Prize.

So here's my idea.

Yeah, go on.

The Nobel Peace Prize, open the envelope, is awarded to USAID.

There we are.

It's even better than your previous idea of Obama.

Because the reason why this is such a good idea, and here's the thing, Rory, you could say, and we invite the president to come to accept it on behalf of USAID.

Because sadly, after all the amazing work that it's done, it's not really the same shape that it was.

But the truth is, this is partly a serious point.

USAID, I would argue, has helped to stop wars because it's addressed the root causes of wars at times, poverty, famine, drought.

What Putin calls the Prvo Procini, the root causes.

The root causes, the root causes.

So I just think, listen, I think we need to get a campaign going on this.

You know, USAID for the Nobel Peace Prize.

Yeah, didn't you know that?

that often goes to institutions yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah no but i think that's a beautiful idea i i'm i'm supporting your campaign let's get behind that right see you after the break

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Welcome back to The Rest of Politics with me, Alistair Campbell.

And with me, Roy Schwitz.

So Alistair, we're now moving on to developments developments in Israel, which aren't just about Gaza.

It's partly about an announcement that has come from the War Cabinet that they're going to go into Gaza City, effectively clear out the northern half of Gaza.

But secondly, announcements from Smotrich that they're going to try to build an enormous settlement, which would tear what remains of the Palestinian territory on the West Bank in half.

And finally, protests against Netanyahu

in Israel itself, which some people think had as many as 400,000 people on the streets.

And I think the other one to throw in is Hamas suggesting that they're up for a ceasefire.

Absolutely.

Fresh in this morning.

Yeah.

Yeah.

So I think the protests are interesting because you said a couple of weeks ago, I think it was, that, you know, Israeli public opinion was...

was pretty solid

in support of the war at the basis of the war i think there is a sort of sizable chunk of public opinion who's pretty horrified by what's going on.

And the other thing that's happened recently is that there's started to be some coverage in Israeli media of the actual hunger, the starvation, the suffering on the ground, much more than there was previously.

So look, I think that we shouldn't overstate this, but I think that Netanyahu's position is not as strong as it was.

He has decided he's going to go all out, take the hold of Gaza.

That's the current plan.

But

I don't think it's as popular at home as

he might think.

So let me quickly come in on that.

I think this is a really interesting question.

And it slightly depends who you are talking to.

But there was a recent poll done at the end of July suggesting that basically 78, 80%

of the

Israeli Jewish population, in other words, not including Palestinian Arab Israeli citizens, believe, I think the quote is, that Israel is making substantial efforts to avoid causing unnecessary sufferings to Palestinians in Gaza.

So that's four-fifths of Jewish Israelis still believe that the IDF is being very proportionate, taking real steps, no unnecessary suffering is being caused.

And I think the second thing is that if you were to ask people about their support for a two-state solution or a Palestinian state, there's very, very little support indeed.

Again, I can imagine very similar numbers would say any kind of Palestinian state, any kind of two-state solution would just be a haven for terrorists and a repeat of October 7th.

Yeah, just to say that that poll was done at the end of July.

And when I do think there's been a shift in Israeli media coverage on this, not, you know, listen, there's always been some Israeli media.

I often quote Haretz, which are, you know, pretty tough on the net and Yahoo government.

But generally, the media that people are consuming on their phones or on television,

I don't think they've been getting the full picture.

I think that full picture is starting to shift on that.

And then the other thing that's happened, of course, on the international front, you know, we interviewed Arab Barghouti a few months ago, the son of Marwan Baghouti, who's this guy who's

seen as the possible leader of a future Palestinian state who's been in jail for decades.

And there was a truly horrific filmed meeting.

Well, I say a meeting.

It was like he was sort of there looking pretty gaunt in his vest.

Ben Gavira turns up at the prison where this guy's being held and basically just berates him.

And,

you know, so what every time you see, you were talking the first half about how, you know, we think that we're moving, Trump might be moving to this position or he's been moved to that.

And I think sometimes we like to think that about Netanyahu, that maybe he's trying to move because he's very good at reading politics and what have you.

But every time there's any sense that Israel, Netanyahu, might move, Ben-Gavir and Smotric are just out there,

I think, ever more extreme.

And, you know, and I know that every time we talk about Ben-Gavir and Smotrich, we get some listeners and some supporters of the Israeli government saying, you two guys are obsessed, you overstate their importance.

I don't think we do.

Here's the guy in charge of security going into a prison to berate the guy seen as a possible leader of a future Palestine.

And this is because Netanyahu made a deliberate decision to create a coalition bringing these people into his government and giving them these key positions, finance, security.

And therefore, his government completely depends on them.

If they leave, they can topple and bring down his government, trigger an election.

So

he's tied to them completely.

And as you say, that gives them real power.

You can see this if we go through some of the stories that we've been talking about recently.

So number one, this decision from the war cabinet to go into Gaza City really interesting because it's a decision which has been opposed by the Israeli Chief of the Army staff, who has made it quite clear publicly that he thinks that this

is tactically mad, that it won't achieve its objectives on Hamas, that it will risk the lives of Israeli hostages, and he's not sure that he's got the troops, the reservists, to be able to do this effectively.

Now, that plays into the coalition politics of Netanyahu, because of course he's reliant reliant on Chas as one of his coalition partners, who are an ultra-Orthodox group who very much believe the ultra-Orthodox should not be conscripted.

So that's an important part of the whole reservist picture.

Secondly, Netanyahu may be thinking about going into Gaza City because it's, I don't know, something to keep his coalition together or something to deal with Hamas.

But from the point of view of Smotrich and Bengavir, this is the first step in

getting rid of the population of Palestinians and colonizing the whole of Gaza, turning it into a whole settlement territory.

Now, again, it's an interesting move there because that's not part of their religious Zionism.

Their religious Zionism is all about the West Bank.

All the stuff that they're taking from the Old Testament about Israel and Judea is about the West Bank.

Gaza was where Goliath comes from.

Gaza was always not Israelite territory.

It was the kind of Philistine

fringe down on the coast.

In fact, in many ways, Smotrich and Bengave hate the people who live on the coast.

They associate it with liberals and Tel Aviv and topless bathing and parties.

They're very much religious conservatives, right?

Now we move on to the peace deal.

So there's the story that's come today that Egypt and Qatar and Hamas have now got Hamas to agree to a peace deal.

But it doesn't seem to me that there's much likelihood of that going through because Bengavir is completely opposed to any kind of peace deal of that sort.

And then finally we get on to the settlement.

I'd love to get your views on this.

So this settlement is called E1, and this is a settlement that has been talked about for certainly 30 years.

This is something that even Rabin was talking about.

It's a settlement which would essentially put Jewish settlers right the way in a strip between Jerusalem and Jericho in the east.

And by doing so, it would completely cut off the northern part of the Palestinian West Bank, so Nablus and Ramallah, from the southern part, which is Hebron and Bethlehem.

It would be be the end of any state.

Why are they doing it?

Well, they're doing it because Smotrich is making it quite clear that if people in Europe and Australia and Canada are going to recognize Palestine, he's going to make sure there's no Palestinian state left for them to recognize it.

Becko Bi.

Let's just put the two together.

Ben Gabir goes into a prison and berates Marwan Barghuti.

Meanwhile,

Smotrich, not just sort of let's do it as they've done over the years, let's build the settlements, build the settlements, build the the settlements he says they're put they're going to put 3 000 new homes into this particular settlement project to quote bury the idea of a palestinian state um and that's where we're at and and it's it's not a new idea and the only reason it hasn't happened in 30 years is because of american pressure i mean one of the most famous meetings between condoleezer rice and the israeli prime minister was about that settlement project yeah i mean The US has been clear for 30 years that that is the one settlement project that can never be built because it would be the end of any hope of a contiguous Palestinian state.

And it shows how much the world's changed because I don't think the Trump administration is likely to seriously oppose it.

And what about timing also, Alice?

It's very noticeable that you get a sense that Netanyahu knows that August is the time when most of these parliaments are on holiday.

and he's leading up to the UN General Assembly and he's going to just do everything he can.

So you'll get Gaza City, you'll get settlements.

You also also are getting stuff around Australian diplomats.

So the Australian representatives to Rumullah, to the Palestinian Authority, have now been declared persona non grata and expelled.

Why?

Because Australia didn't give a visa to one of the most extreme religious Zionists in the Israeli parliament who was proposing to do a speaking tour of Australia.

Now, the hypocrisy there, because remember, a Labour MP who tried to go and visit Israel was denied entry into Israel.

We did not respond by expelling Israeli Israeli diplomats.

So why are they responding to not allowing an Israeli MP into Australia by expelling Australian diplomats?

Okay, well let me give you one that's even worse than that.

One of the many sort of

kind of cartoon but dangerous characters in the White House circle at the moment is this influencer Laura Lumer.

The Americans have stopped the visas for sick children who were due to be coming to America for treatment.

And they have been bringing some children in from Gaza for treatment in specialist hospitals in the United States, because Laura Luma, who is a self-confessed Islamophobe, white supremacist, etc., and somebody who has President Trump's here, has been

raising merry hell about this issue on social media.

So,

as you say, we kind of operate by rules.

They operate by spasm according to whatever is being pushed by these influences.

The other thing I read in the German press yesterday, which was really quite stark, was an interview with the woman who leads one of the two organizations in Israel explaining why they moved to a position of saying this is genocide.

And it was setting out the process by which they did that.

And here's another thing that struck me this week, Rory.

This is something again in the Israeli media.

A general by the name of Aharon Haliva, who was leading military intelligence on October 7, said 50 Palestinians must die for every person killed that day, and it doesn't matter now if they are children.

Can I just, I mean, on that, because I was attacked for saying that I'd heard from a senior Israeli not long after October 7th that they believed they needed to kill seven Palestinians for every Israeli that had been killed and people suggested this was an anti-Semitic trope.

The guy said it to me quite openly.

And it's now clear that actually

the ex-IDF chief of military intelligence is saying 50 to 1.

He's saying they killed 1,000.

We're going to kill 50,000 people, including children.

And so it's interesting that he is that explicit.

And I'm absolutely, I'm just going to, I'm going to double down on this.

There are people within the setup who genuinely believe that the way they achieve deterrence is by killing many, many multiples of anyone that are killed, that this is what the whole thing is about.

But what's interesting, unfortunately, is that after October the 7th, somebody said to me, we're going to kill seven for everyone.

They killed seven for everyone, then they killed 20 for everyone, then they killed 40 for everyone.

Now they've killed 50 for everyone.

And it doesn't look like at the moment it's stopping.

However, one more thing.

Worth watching, maybe, the relationship between Netanyahu and the Israeli military.

The Israeli military, traditionally, is

by far the most respected institution in Israeli public life.

All Israelis do national service, women and men.

They are part of the founding of the state.

So many senior Israeli politicians have been generals or special forces officers.

And there is a real problem now emerging between Netanyahu and the military.

As we said at the beginning of this, the chief of staff is warning against what he's doing in Gaza City.

And now the defense minister is threatening to fire this chief of staff.

But he lost another chief of staff just a year ago who resigned on his conduct of the war.

He's fired his Shinbet chief, so his internal security chief.

And Israelis are going to be very torn on this because I think there are many Israelis who, given a choice between listening to Netanyahu and listening to the military, who they respect much more, will tend to respect the military.

Yeah.

Well, there we are.

And I guess my final point on this goes back to what I was saying about the way

the international media operates.

I mean, it is really,

I think it's terrifying the way that whatever Trump focuses on and engages in is sort of multiplied in terms of the public oxygen that it gets.

Now, Ukraine, him meeting Putin for the first time in years, I'm not denying remotely that that isn't newsworthy.

It is newsworthy.

The meeting in the White House over the weekend, of course, is massively newsworthy.

But it's almost like when Trump decides he's going to focus on something,

most of the world's media and certainly the Western media sort of, it can only cope really with that at that time.

And it means that other stuff gets forgotten.

And when, you know, here we are in a week, as I said at the start, where lots more death in Gaza, some really significant political developments as well.

But it kind of was playing second fiddle.

And Rory, I've got to say, Rory, I think we should start tomorrow with the fact that so many of our listeners and viewers, they were a bit pissed off that when we were talking about where does a radical centrist go,

in response to the voice note from young Jacob Stokes last week, that neither of us mentioned the lib debs.

We got a lot of flack for that.

So we'll come back to that.

We also need to talk, I think, about this.

the other stuff happening in America about redistricting and ballot rigging and gerrymandering and all the other stuff that's going on ahead of the of the midterms.

And I know you had a letter from the head of the education service at a UK Prison that you want to talk about as well.

So lots to get into.

See you tomorrow.

See you tomorrow.