This is John Batchelor, conversation with Victoria Coates of the Heritage Foundation about Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov's remarks that they're not interested in giving Zelensky a stage to perform on and that Ukraine is not a win or lose situation.

Victoria answers in complete sentences about Lavrov and his ambitions,

mentioning, of course, Peter the Great. His Victoria, having fun with the ambitions of the

Kremlin through the presentation of Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov. more of this tonight. Right. I mean,

in Lavrov, I mean, you're kind to call him a diplomat. You know, he's been a henchman to Putin for

a quarter of a century now, and we can all think back to his greatest hits, like the reset button

with Hillary Clinton, among others.

But I think, you know, the Kremlin has created something of a problem for itself here.

Their premise for this war is that there are large pieces of Ukraine that are ethnically Russian,

that Ukraine is an invented country that's not

real, that it is, its government is illegitimate, and that it should be part of Russia.

That's what Putin is pushing for here. He wants to be a hero of modern Russia, you know,

take his place in the pantheon that he sees of figures like Peter the Great, but also Stalin,

who expanded Russian territory and specifically did it in Ukraine.

So I think that's, you know, having pushed that narrative for three and a half years of war, really for 10 years of war now, to suddenly negotiate with the president of Ukraine, you know, it's a problem for them, logically.