What is Putin's bottom line?
The Briefing Room
BBC
4.8 • 731 Ratings
🗓️ 27 March 2025
⏱️ 29 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
Securing peace in Ukraine is proving harder than President Trump first thought. Separate talks between US officials and Ukrainian and Russian representatives were held in Saudi Arabia a few days ago. But the tentative ceasefire they reached just for shipping in the Black Sea has already hit problems with Moscow demanding certain sanctions are lifted if it’s to comply. And achieving a full ceasefire that Russia will accept still seems as elusive as ever. David Aaronovitch and guests ask what Putin’s bottom line on Ukraine really is? Have his long term aims changed and what might he accept?
Guests: Vitaly Shevchenko, Russia Editor for BBC Monitoring Sir Laurie Bristow, President of Hughes Hall at Cambridge University and the former U.K. ambassador to Russia from 2016 to 2020. Angela Stent, Senior fellow at the Brookings Institution and a former US National Intelligence Officer for Russia. Mark Galeotti, writer on Russian security affairs and director of the consultancy Mayak Intelligence.
Presenter: David Aaronovitch Producers: Caroline Bayley, Kirsteen Knight and Bethan Ashmead Latham Sound Engineer: Rod Farquhar Production Coordinator: Gemma Ashman Editor: Richard Vadon
Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | BBC Sounds, Music, radio, podcasts. |
| 0:08.5 | On the briefing room today, we'll be asking a simple question about any possible end to the war in Ukraine. |
| 0:15.4 | There are talks in Saudi Arabia, talks in Europe, a stalled proposal for a full ceasefire, proposals for limited |
| 0:22.5 | ceasefires in limited areas. All of it made more complex by an absence of trust between |
| 0:28.4 | almost everybody involved. But in the end, any substantial peace will depend on one thing. |
| 0:34.7 | Vladimir Putin started this war. What will be his bottom line for ending it? |
| 0:40.2 | Step into the briefing room and together we'll find out. |
| 0:46.9 | First, let's trace the evolution of the Russian leader's attitude towards Ukraine. |
| 0:52.3 | Vitaly Shvchenko is Russia editor for BBC monitoring and co-presenter of the BBC's |
| 0:57.4 | Ukraine cast. |
| 0:59.4 | Vita Zhevchenko, what do we know about how Vladimir Putin first began to think about Ukraine? |
| 1:06.7 | I think there never was a time when he wasn't thinking about Ukraine. |
| 1:13.6 | Because for Vladimir Putin, and I have to say for a significant part of Russian society, |
| 1:22.0 | it doesn't seem as though they have genuinely accepted Ukraine as a sovereign state that is free to make its own |
| 1:32.7 | sovereign decisions. So what Vladimir Putin is doing now, I tend to see it as a manifestation |
| 1:40.6 | of a wider problem that is rooted in distant past. Centuries of Russian rule |
| 1:48.5 | in Ukraine. Ukraine or parts of Ukraine used to be part of the Russian Empire. To come back to |
| 1:55.1 | Vladimir Putin specifically, time and again for years, he referred to Russians and Ukrainians as one people. |
| 2:04.3 | Immediately before the start of his so-called special military reparation, |
| 2:09.1 | he wrote an article about the historical unity of the Russian and Ukrainian peoples. |
| 2:17.0 | The implication being that Ukraine doesn't really have |
| 2:21.8 | its own identity, language, history, culture, it's part of Russia. And thinking back to my own |
... |
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