Welcome to today's program. My name is Glenn Dyson. I'm a professor of political science and Russian foreign policy.

With me is Alexander McCurice from the very popular Duran podcast. And the guest today is the excellent Alistair Kruk.

Welcome, sir. Thank you very much. Pleasure to be with you.

So, yeah, please correct me if I'm wrong, but your background includes, I think, almost 30 years in

MI6 with British intelligence. You've not only been a British diplomat, but you also have

background from EU diplomacy as an advisor of Javier Solana, which was the highest representative of the EU's common foreign and security policy.

And also, yeah, I guess from the top echelons of democracy, you also have a lot of experience with negotiations, de-escalation and peace negotiations.

So I guess if there's one thing sorely missed in the past 18 months, it's really been diplomacy and de-escalation.

So it's greatly, yeah, certainly great to have you on today.

And I guess to address the problem of finding a political settlement to the Ukrainian war,

we wanted to start by speaking about this article you recently published called Hotel Ukraine.

Sure, you can check out any time, but you can never leave. Obviously, they referenced the Eagles, Hotel California. But you argue that all the participants in the

Ukrainian war, be it Russia, Ukraine, the United States and the Europeans, have all to some extent

boxed themselves in as there's not really an exit out of this conflict.

I was wondering if you can elaborate or explain.

Yes. I mean, the purpose of Hotel California, which was themed to me out,

because in all my experience in these sort of conflict, you know, you know, it's easy to get in and everyone assumes getting out is just as easy.

And so hence the sort of title, which is, you know, you're always welcome to come.

We are always received you, however, in conflict, but, you know, you can never leave the hotel. You won't get away. And I think this is what I'm suggesting for, both for the United States and, well, Europe is just an adjunct to the United States.

But it's also the case even for Russia is not so easy to get out of this conflict either.

But the main thing that I was trying to raise this is my experience of sort of negotiations.

I've done many ceasefire negotiations and hostage negotiations as well at times on behalf of governments.

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