What future for Ukraine? Your questions answered. Global News Podcast teams up with Ukrainecast for a special Q&A, in a week that has seen US military aid halted. Can Trump and Zelensky get back to talks on a peace deal?Jackie Leonard will be joined by Ukrainecast's Vitaly Shevchenko, the BBC's Ukraine Correspondent James Waterhouse and Chief International Correspondent Lyse Doucet.
Full Episode
From the BBC World Service, this is a special collaborative edition of the Global News Podcast with our colleagues from UkraineCast. I'm Jackie Leonard and in the studio we have UkraineCast presenter Vitaly Shevchenko and our chief international correspondent Lise Doucette and in Kiev we have James Waterhouse. We are recording this edition at 16 hours GMT on Friday the 7th of March.
That's 1,108 days since Russia's full-scale invasion of Ukraine. Events are moving very fast and we'll be putting your questions to our experts and trying to unpick some of the issues that have come to the fore in the last week. Now, we want to get through as many questions as possible. So let's begin with Denise.
Hi, my name is Denise and I'm from Auckland, New Zealand. I'm exploring worst case scenarios. And my question and concern is what happens if US stops supporting Ukraine and eventually they will have no choice but to surrender to Russia.
Now, for the last three years of war, America has been Ukraine's largest donor. The decision to freeze military aid follows that very public disagreement in the Oval Office between Volodymyr Zelensky, Donald Trump and Vice President J.D. Vance. James, if we begin with you, what if the U.S. never restarts its military support? Would a Ukraine surrender be the most likely outcome?
Well, I mean, what any Ukrainian will tell you on a Kiev street is that they would never surrender. I mean, the idea of sticking it down in weapons and allowing Russia to occupy, take over the country, install a puppet regime is, and as always has been, a non-starter. I think when you speak to those in military circles...
It is accepted that Ukraine could probably fight on for months, maybe a little bit longer. But that is the reality, such as the quality and quantity of what America does provide. Now, it is true European allies as a whole. have donated more military aid collectively than America.
But when we're talking about American intelligence, its quality, the broad scope of it, we're talking about sophisticated long-range missiles like HIMARS, which have been pivotal for Ukraine's war effort. I think without that, and we saw this when there was that big disagreement in the US Congress about a military aid package for Ukraine, when that was delayed,
Ukraine lost land and lives as a direct result. You know, the eastern town of Avdiivka, it was a fortress at one point. It fell because you had Ukrainians, along with their own manpower issues, run out of kit and be forced from their positions.
I think rather than surrender, it may well deteriorate to a point where Ukraine would have to engage in a far less or an even less arguably favourable peace deal where they would have to, for example, meet Russia's continued demands that it would have a shrunk military, that President Zelensky would be forced from power, that any NATO talk would be paused completely and that there would be no foreign troops in Ukraine.
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