This is John Batcher from a much longer conversation with Antonio Kullabasanu of Geopolitical

futures.

She's a professor in Bucharest Romania about the fact that Romania is now on the front lines with Ukraine wobbling

into the third winter of the war. What are the prospects for Romania going

forward given the NATO confrontation.

Romania is a member of NATO, it's a member of the EU.

It has been extremely helpful in getting grain and food to market from Ukraine blocked by the Russian fleet in the Black Sea.

However, the risk for Romania is enormous going forward and I ask Antonio to imagine the

withdrawal of support by the United States or by the EU or by NATO for Ukraine.

What does it mean for Romania?

Here's Antonio Galabashano in Bucharest.

And then the worst case scenario, what if the Ukrainians are no longer receiving help from the Americans because it's basically the Americans who have been helping Ukrainians to stand up and fight on the military side of things at least.

And what if Russia wins?

What if we will have actually Russia getting the Ukrainian Black Sea

coast? What does it mean for us as a NATO member? What does it mean for us as a NATO member?

What does it mean for the European Union?

And more importantly, what does it mean for the economy, again,

of Ukraine for this to happen considering that Russia taking the

coastline will basically mean that Ukraine whatever is left of it if anything will no longer be able to trade with the world because that's you know the lifeline for its trade.

So these questions are starting to be more public than they've been before.

Obviously, you know, analysts like you and I were talking about them even before we got to this and we saw the fatigue inside of Ukraine because this is like signaling a sort of a fatigue inside Ukraine and the political

problem inside Ukraine right now.

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