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Rock Rachoń 18.05: Some European leaders want to help Russia “save face”

The latest episode of Rock Rachoń is dedicated to Germany, France and Italy’s apparent uneasiness with the possibility of Ukrainian forces making significant progress in the ousting of Russian troops from Ukraine as well as the current situation in the Kharkiv region and in Mariupol.

Russian forces were hit with 455 casualties and lost 80 pieces of equipment after falling into a Ukrainian ambush on the Donetsk river on May 11. The Russians were crossing the river on a pontoon bridge when they were caught in Ukrainian artillery fire.

Winning in Kharkiv does not end the military struggle as heavy fighting continues in the Donbas region while Mariupol is lost as Azovstal defenders announced their withdrawal from the steelworks.

Meanwhile “Emmanuel Macron’s hotline with Vladimir Putin seems to work as if nothing happened,” Mr Rachoń remarked, adding that according to Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy “Macron tried to convince him that Ukraine should give up land to Russia so that Putin can save face.”

Mr Rachoń said that “Macron’s words seem to be a reflection of the broader attitude of western European elites toward Russian aggression in Ukraine. France and Germany seem to be keen on giving up Ukrainian territory to Russia for the sake of maintaining good old habits of European policies with energy trading, weapons deliveries and other businesses as usual.”

“I have not heard President Macron offering the beautiful island of Martinic or Corsica to Putin as a face-saving territorial souvenir,” Mr Rachoń said, recalling that the French president had not been so vocal about the Russians’ involvement in the Mali coup d’etat in early 2022 “right before Macron decided to withdraw his troops from this former French colony.”

The German chancellor and Italy’s PM prevaricate

“Olaf Scholz, the German Chancellor, does not look happy with the development of the situation in Ukraine as well,” Mr Rachoń noted. When asked a question about whether he thinks Russia should withdraw from Ukraine’s occupied territories, the Chancellor gave no simple answer.

This stands in stark contrast to US Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin’s take on how Russia should be dealt with, explicitly, he said that the US wants “to see Russia weakened to the degree that it can’t do the kind of things that it has done by invading Ukraine.”

Like Chancellor Scholz, Italy’s Prime minister Mario Draghi was also evasive when asked whether Italy would be able to pay its due Russian gas payments while not breaking sanctions. “There is no official pronouncement of what it means to breach sanctions. Nobody has ever said anything whether roubles payments breach sanctions or not… It’s such a grey zone here… The largest gas importer in Germany has already paid in roubles and as a matter of fact most of the gas importers have already opened their gas accounts in roubles with Gazprom,” the PM said. Mr Rachoń remarked that it was ridiculous that the Italian PM, also being former governor of the European Central Bank, could not “understand the nature of sanctions when it comes to the currency, the weakening of the rouble and the Russian economy.”

Hungary, Russian gas and Western Europe’s double standards

To discuss the general situation in Ukraine and also the matters of Russian gas, TVP World was joined by Mykhailo Samus, security defence and security analyst, consultant and researcher of international relations, national resilience and new generation warfare, director at New Geopolitics Research Network.

The secret behind Ukraine’s victory in the Battle of Kharkiv when the Ukrainian troops pushed the Russian, and also allegedly the Donetsk and Luhansk People’s Republic, forces back to the Russian-Ukrainian border, is that “Ukrainian forces carried out a counter-offensive in their direction while elsewhere they are conducting defensive operations,” Mr Samus said.

To learn more about the tactical and strategic details of the battles going on in Ukraine right now, click the video at the top of this page.

Michał Rachoń’s guests were Mykhailo Samus, security defence and security analyst, consultant and researcher of international relations, national resilience and new generation warfare, director at New Geopolitics Research Network, and Matthew Tyrmand, Polish-American economist, columnist and social activist.

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