346. Lord Robertson on Putin's Propaganda, NATO's Future, and the Russian 'Surrender Plan'

Battleground

Goalhanger

History

4.6 • 703 Ratings

🗓️ 25 November 2025

⏱️ 20 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

Former NATO Secretary General, Lord Robertson of Port Ellen joins Saul, David, and Patrick Bishop for an authoritative briefing from the House of Lords. The former Secretary General also provides a stinging critique of the 28-point peace plan floated by the Trump administration, labelling the demands—which included territorial cession—a "Russian plan". Robertson also firmly refutes the narrative of a missed opportunity to bring Russia into NATO, dismissing it as "Putin propaganda," and highlights the Russian leader's early deception by pointing to his own signature on the 2002 Rome Declaration guaranteeing European territorial integrity. Robertson offers an assessment of NATO’s resilience, arguing the alliance is a "real bargain" for the US that is unlikely to be abandoned, but stresses the urgent need for Europeans to increase their defence spending. He concludes with the high stakes of the conflict: "If Russia stops fighting, there will be peace. If Ukraine stops fighting, there will be no Ukraine." If you have any thoughts or questions, you can send them to - [email protected] Producer: James Hodgson X (Twitter): @PodBattleground Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Transcript

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0:00.0	Hello and welcome to another special episode of Battleground Ukraine with me, Saul, David and Patrick Bischar.
0:19.6	Given the fast-moving events of the last few days,
0:22.1	we're delighted to have on the podcast direct from the House of Lords, Lord Robertson of Port
0:26.9	Ellen, Defence Secretary from 1997 to 1999, and Secretary General of NATO from 1999 to 2003.
0:35.6	More recently, he chaired the Strategic Defense Review for the Stama government.
0:41.2	So we're going to start up with the historical question. You met Vladimir Putin a number of
0:45.0	times during your stint as Secretary General of NATO and have said in the past that you think
0:51.0	that an opportunity was missed to bring Russia into the NATO fold,
0:55.0	at least partly because America had lost interest after the invasion of Iraq in 2003,
1:02.6	in broader kind of global questions. Do you still stand by that assessment?
1:07.6	I don't remember seeing that at all. At the second meeting I had with Vladimir Putin,
1:12.8	he asked the question, when are you going to invite Russia to join NATO? And I told him then that
1:18.7	countries didn't get invited to join NATO. They applied to join NATO. He said at that point,
1:25.8	that Russia was not willing to stand in a queue with a lot of
1:29.2	other countries that didn't matter. And I said, well, let's establish a relationship between
1:35.4	Russia and NATO and see where that takes us. So in many ways, that wasn't really an indication
1:42.1	of him wanting to join NATO.
1:44.5	I think it was a purely debating point.
1:47.4	But we did go on to create the NATO-Russia Council,
1:51.6	and that created a whole series of working groups,
1:54.4	which might well have led onto something differently.
1:57.5	But it coincided with Vladimir Putin getting angry over Georgia and taking aggressive
	...

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