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Hello and welcome to the Americano podcast, a series of discussions about American politics, power and prejudices.

It is 2025 and Donald Trump is president once again of the United States.

We will, of course, be following the moves of the Donald's and his second administration very closely. However, it won't just be politics for us this year. We'll also talk a lot and cover

American culture, life and the arts.

I should also remind you, because my producer Natasha will not let me hear the end of it,

that we are on Spectator TV. So head to our YouTube channel to watch that.

We're going to be talking about Donald Trump and Ukraine, of course.

I say, of course, because everybody seems to be pulling their hair out at Donald Trump's latest statements on resolving the Ukraine conflict.

Peace is on the cards, but Donald Trump has got into a war of

words with Vladimir Zelensky, which culminated last night in a true social post, in which he

called Zelensky a failure, he called Europe a failure, and he has been accused in recent days

of saying that Ukraine started the war.

I'm not sure that's fair, but we'll get into that in a bit.

I'm delighted to be joined now by Sergey Radchenko, who is a professor at the John Hopkins School of Advanced International Studies. He's also a spectator contributor and has posted

a piece which has gone up today on this subject, as well as by Owen Matthews, the spectators,

Russia correspondent. Sergei, I'll start with you. Give us your reaction to Trump's latest outbursts first.

Well, the reaction instead of outrage, I don't know how else you could react to something like

this. And I understand, you know, I'm a moderate. I think that this war is going to have to be

to have a negotiated solution. I i mean i authored a piece with

...