Ep. 2185 - My Journey To Ukraine and My Interview With Zelensky
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Why did Ben Shapiro travel to Ukraine during the war?
Well, folks, a big question I've been getting since we released the trailer for my interview with President Vladimir Zelensky of Ukraine is, why go to a nation under fire? Why take your crew and take that risk? And the answer is simple, because the truth matters and facts matter. We want you to be smarter and know more things. That's what this show is for. You, our Daily Wire members, deserve the truth. This is the kind of journalism your support makes possible. This is the community that fights for your values. Join us right now at dailywire.com slash subscribe. So, Last night, Vladimir Putin's Russia blanketed Ukraine with missiles and drones in what was perhaps the largest-scale air attack on the country since 2022.
One missile apparently struck an apartment building in Kyiv and killed nine people and wounded another 63. This, of course, is a war zone. A little bit earlier yesterday, the Trump administration rolled out its proposed outline for a peace deal between Russia and Ukraine. This was being negotiated in London. It's a peace deal under which Ukraine would have been forced to accept Russian annexation of Crimea. That's the very southern portion of Ukraine that is on the Black Sea, as well as control of eastern Ukraine. Russia is currently in control of large swaths of eastern Ukraine and has been since 2014. It would have removed NATO membership from the table for Ukraine. Ukraine obviously is interested in joining NATO because that would mean that an attack on a NATO member would allow for Article 5 invocation, meaning other countries would have to come to Ukraine's defense. The deal would prevent Ukraine from becoming a NATO member. It would have provided... little or nothing in the way of security guarantees for Ukraine.
So the proposed Trump deal did not obligate the United States to come to Ukraine's defense or even allow for the EU's defense of Ukraine. Maybe they could have, maybe they couldn't have, but that was unclear. And it also would have full-scale ended sanctions on Russia. So clearly this peace deal It gave Russia a bunch of things that Russia was looking for if it had been accepted by Ukraine. Russia has not accepted a peace arrangement along any of these lines. You should be clear about this. Essentially, the proposal that was published was the United States, Europe, and maybe Ukraine kind of negotiating against themselves because there's no one else at the table right now. Now, Zelensky rejected handing over Crimea legally because that would be making a major legal concession without actually getting anything from Russia in return. If you preemptively say Crimea is now part of Russia, you've now said it, and Zelensky doesn't want to do that. He has accepted the Trump proposal for a 30-day ceasefire without any preconditions. It has been true for weeks.
Vladimir Putin has not. not for one second, which is why last night the Russian missiles were falling on Kiev. They're also falling on Lviv, which is in the western part of the country. It was a bad night in Ukraine. Now, Putin, again, has at no point actually given any sign that he truly wants the war to end. If you want the war to end, the question is, Will Zelensky accept an end to the war? And will Putin accept an end to the war? Zelensky has said he will. Putin has given no sign whatsoever that he actually will. Instead, it seems like he's slow playing this thing. He seems to be biding his time, waiting for the United States to pull out of negotiations and out of funding Ukraine entirely.
And that's a bet that could pay off given the Trump administration's repeated statements that if no deal is accepted, the United States will simply walk away from the table. Here was Vice President J.D. Vance saying just that yesterday.
Well, I'm going to echo something Secretary Rubio said, which is, look, we've issued a very explicit proposal to both the Russians and the Ukrainians, and it's time for them to either say yes or for the United States to walk away from this process. We've engaged in an extraordinary amount of diplomacy, of on-the-ground work.
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