Hello and welcome to the Battleground Ukraine podcast with me Saul David and Patrick Bishop.

With Russia's full-scale and unprovoked invasion of Ukraine now three years old,

our worst fears about the new Trump administration have been realized. Not only has it frozen Ukraine

in Europe out of the start of the peace talks with Russia in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia, but Trump

himself has now doubled down on his earlier concessions to Russia and insistence that Ukraine

must cede territory and won't be allowed to join NATO anytime soon. double down on his earlier concessions to Russia, an insistence that Ukraine must seed territory

and won't be allowed to join NATO anytime soon, by insisting that Ukraine needs to hold

elections, labeling Zelensky a dictator, and blaming Ukraine for starting the war in the first

place. You really couldn't make this up, Patrick, could you? You couldn't. It's a complete inversion of reality, isn't it?

And it's, I'm afraid, say, a lot worse than we had anticipated.

We'd sort of held off judgment in the hope that people around Trump might be able to steer him onto a logical path, but that hasn't happened.

So, so much for Trump's slogan of peace through strength.

Instead, we've got exactly the opposite, a seismic overturning of Western strategic calculations

that have lasted really since the end of the Second World War.

And, you know, let's face it, a shameful capitulation to an aggressive

state that might well go down in history as not comparable to, but even worse than the

appeasement at Munich. In a moment, we're going to discuss with veteran war correspondent,

military expert, Robert Fox, where all this goes to next.

Robert's take on defense is second to none, I would say he's a real insider.

He knows all the players and he's part of the process himself.

But I will be hearing from him later.

But first, let's just recap on the events of the last few days.

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