What's next for Ukraine after Trump waives Russian sanctions?

The war in Ukraine is ever a portent, potentially, of a wider European conflict to come. NATO jets scrambled this morning in response to an unidentified flying object over Lithuania with residents in the central and northern parts of the country told to seek shelter. The order to shelter lasted about an hour. The government later said the object was likely a drone that had entered from Poland, Poland investigating the incident. But, of course, it's been a big week in terms of the wider geopolitics of the war, with President Zelensky expressing hope that a bill of sanctions against Russia can be revived in the United States. Meanwhile, U.S. President Donald Trump signing an executive order on Friday that blocked a sweeping new sanctions package targeting the Russian economy, telling Congress the pause was in the national interest. The sanctions were due to come into force today. Well, Kyry Rudik is a Ukrainian MP and leader of the Holos party, and Alexander Kara is a former advisor to the Minister of Defense of Ukraine, now director of the Center of Defense Strategies based in Kyiv. Kyry Rudik, can I just start with you? The news that the president decided to block this new set of sanctions against the Russian economy presumably must have been a grave disappointment from within Ukraine. Hello, Lewis, and thank you so much for having me. Indeed, the disappointment is here. However, I think it was expected after recent statements by President Trump What happened is basically Ukraine is punished for actually going along with the proposed ceasefire by President Trump. President Zelensky answered this call for energy ceasefire right away in order to stop all the attacks on Russia's energy infrastructure. Meanwhile, Russia did not even care to pretend that they are going along with the ceasefire. And then right after that, President Trump started putting pressure on Ukraine with the interruptions of the intelligence, with the interruptions of the Starlink service, which is critical for us right now. And we don't know how many people lost their lives just because Starlink was not working properly. And now we see that President Trump is not imposing sanctions on Russia and actually allowing them to sell their oil and now talking about them selling their gas. So it seems the opposite of the peace through strength that President Trump promised. But also that makes all of us to now to turn our heads to our partners in Europe and in the United Kingdom. The war is indeed on European continent. We see what kind of allies the United States are right now, and we need to make sure that in Europe we are standing stronger than ever. Obviously, one question which the British government is trying to revive and has been pushing for for a long time is this idea about using or taking advantage of Russian assets held by European governments to help fund the Ukrainian war effort. I think at the moment, interest from those assets can be used, but not the capital of the assets themselves. I mean, this is an idea which has done the rounds for a long time and different European governments have blocked it. Do you think there is now finally possibility of using those assets or getting progress on that? Yes, there are actually two key points here. The first is the 200 billion, more than 200 billion that are being stored in Belgium. And there are legal and there are political ways on how to extract these amounts and use them for the sake of Ukraine. so not just the interest but actually the whole amount but also there is a question about um the russian frozen assets and oligarch assets that right now are in the uk we have heard the beginning of the story regarding uh the chelsea um purchase and then now we didn't hear like what what was the end so the money are just sitting there and um and there has not been a progress on uh confiscating them from Abramovich. So I think we need to be working on both paths because right now we critically need resources, we critically need funds, and there are only two options. The first one, we will ask people who are supporting us, our friends, to get into their pockets to get additional support for Ukraine, or we will make the aggressor pay. And there is a proper way of making them pay, confiscating their resources, their money that are being right now stored in European countries. Kira Rudik there, Ukrainian MP and leader of the Holos party. Well, Alexander Kara, as I say, former advisor to the Minister of Defence in Ukraine, now director of the Centre for Defence Strategies based in Kiev. Alexander, thanks so much for joining us this morning. I suppose, taking the overall strategic view, the other frustrating thing, I would imagine from a Ukrainian point of view of many of the latest Trump moves is, of course, we were told by the Trump administration that one of the reasons that your government should buckle under Russian pressure was because that you would lose the war. But of course, what we've seen this week, and we've heard that Zelensky has briefed our own government on this, is that if you take the sweep of what's happened over the course of this year, Ukraine is largely on the advance. Thank you for having me, Lewis. First of all, if we have a look at what's going on the eastern front we were able to do for the first time in history actually to re-establish maneuverable warfare in time when the unmanned vehicles introduced the complete transparency and the kill zone expanded 25 kilometers each side so the third assault brigade was able to liberate several villages and actually improved our operational position on the eastern front. But the most important war goes with the long-range strikes, because for obvious reason, Russian financial and banking system is the center of gravity of this war. So, without money, it's not possible for Putin to keep his regime in place and to spend huge amount of money on the war. So that's why it's so important for Ukraine to target Russian energy infrastructure, export energy infrastructure, so they don't have enough hard currency inflow into the Russian war economy. And the second important part of that is us targeting the Russian data centers, because once again, they are at the center. They are the key nodes of the Russian financial, economic, and communication system. So we've been doing that. And we now see that Mr. Trump is trying to help. He just rushed to bail out Russia by asking Ukraine or demanding Ukraine unilaterally stop targeting the Russian refineries, even though it's not Ukraine with our strikes that caused the troubles on the global energy markets, but the Trump administration failed war against Iran. So now they are trying to exert pressure. And by withholding this assistance, first and foremost, intelligence sharing, and then the StarShield operation on our territory, not on the Russian territory, because Elon Musk didn't allow us to use Starlink to target Russian refineries. Well, I was going to ask about that, Alexander. How problematic and how damaging is this apparent slowness of the Starlink system? How damaging is that, I mean, in terms of defending yourselves against Russian into Russian strikes I mean will people and have people do you think died as a result of Starlink not being fully available to you I do think they they are unnecessary deaths of Ukrainian civilians and military because our interceptors I mean the UAV interceptors heavily depend on the Starlink services uh well the situation is such uh certainly we cannot shut down incoming ballistic missiles. For that, we need Patriot interceptors. Unfortunately, the Trump administration wasted a huge amount, half or two-thirds of their inventories in the Middle East, and they are not willing to provide us with any. And I believe they are not helping us to get those interceptors from the European countries. Some of them, like Greece, have a lot of them, and they are almost expired. So they are trying to exert this political pressure over Ukraine that we back down and Trump is helping Putin. But if you're talking about the Shahed drones, the jet powered drones, we used to intercept that with our counter UAV drones that are managed by those Starlinks. Not to mention that the whole front depends on the capabilities of the system for communication and other things, as well as the critical infrastructure in the affected regions. So it's hugely damaging to Ukraine. Alexander Karava, former advisor to the Minister of Defense of Ukraine, and before that, Kira Rudik, the Ukrainian member of parliament and leader of the Holod party.