 The foreign ministers of the G-20 countries recently met in Bali in Indonesia and as per reports there was a lot of drama, there were questions of walkouts, there were many allegations thrown at Russia for instance, but very little talk of peace. As the war is in its fifth month, we'll be discussing what happened at the G-20 summit as well as the situation in Ukraine in this episode of Mapping Fault Lines. We are joined by Prabir Prakash. Prabir, so the reports are quite in some ways amusing because Indonesia for instance which was the host wanted to talk about peace, it wanted to talk about the economic crisis that is there, energy, food, etc. But all this seems to have been overshadowed by the kind of posturing that we saw. And there's very little talk of what kind of negotiations could take place, what are the conditions in which discussions or talks of peace might take place, nothing of that sort, it's just a lot of posturing that we see. So how do we understand these diplomatic moves in the context of what's happening in Ukraine? Well at the moment there are no diplomatic moves in the context of Ukraine and that's what G-20 also makes it clear because here was a possibility, the Russians were there, the Chinese were there, the G-7 countries which have thrown Russia out of G-7, they were there and of course you had also the NATO, major powers of the NATO were all there. So this could have been at least a possibility to start discussing. Can we bring back negotiations and can certain movements that had taken place right in the beginning when Zelensky's government had met with the Russian government in Belarus, they had quite a number of rounds of peace talks and it appeared that something wasn't the offing but suddenly all that was about it and we heard that the Ukrainian government's position is Russia has to go back to its borders, they will take over of course the two controlled regions by which are the separatists, Donetsk and as well as Lugansk and also Crimea. So that was also put on the table by Zelensky. So that meant that there was no serious move towards any negotiated settlement and there was therefore no chance of anything else accepted by military resolution of the conflict at least in the near term. And that's what we seem to see that in this it's very clear the NATO group of countries also Japan included all of them believe that they can still win the war not on the ground but on the economic front of the financial front and the sanctions will finally force Russia to back off if not the Russian people who will be feeding the bite of the sanctions. All of this calculation still seem to be on and there is no retreat from the kind of collision course that NATO still is on with Russia. And as we have said a number of times this is not a war between Russia and Ukraine. This is essentially a war between NATO, its economic strength, its financial strength as well as its industrial military strength because it's the one which is arming Ukraine without which Ukraine would not have been able to fight. So all of this is really a battle between and the moment geostrategically NATO and Russia. And what we need to see is therefore that the G20 which did provide an opportunity for talks at least on the sidelines getting countries like Indonesia to intervene in this because we have no stakes either way into into this issues. But none of that or none of those opportunities were taken. Indonesia did make some effort, but it didn't lead too much. And it's very clear that as far as NATO is concerned, as far as the Western powers are concerned, they are still on the mode of what Biden had said. Putin needs to go, Russia needs to be weakened. This is basically the objective. And if that's objective, certainly this moment is not showing that this objective is any closer to fulfillment than when it started. And therefore, we don't see unless this objective changes. I don't think we're likely to see any peace process emerging. It's unfortunate because other countries seem to be taking a backseat and not intervening strongly enough to say, hey, you guys need to stop fighting. There is a threat of famine in the world, food is in short supply, energy prices are going up and a lot of the economies of the world are going to tank. And that includes Germany, France, Spain, Italy and Japan. Rabid, of course, you mentioned the situation on the ground and that has also been kind of changing. There have been developments, although they're not so much talked about now. We know that the Russians have taken over the whole of Luhansk. Now fighting is going on in the Donetsk Republic. So could you also maybe bring us up to date on what you see are some of the key developments over the past few days? As you know, one thing that we do not do is make military predictions or do analysis of what the military's battles are likely to be, where it's going to go. That's something that we let the actually the maps and what the both sides are saying. Trying to discern what probably is the reality in this fog of war. So if we look at it from all sides, what we seem to see is that there is a temporary pause after the fall of the two cities over in Luhansk on which this bitter battle was going on. So that is that is there with Lysishank that that part of it is concluded the fall of Lysishank to the Russian forces. Now it seems that you are going to see either a move towards Tarkov or a move towards the rest of Donetsk, as you said, that the 50% of Donetsk is also still under Ukraine control. And that's something that from the beginning, the Russians had said that they will aid these two provinces, Donetsk and Luhansk to achieve independence and protect their independence. So that does seem to indicate that Donetsk is probably next item on the agenda for the Russian military. If that is so, then the problem that they had, and that's one of the reasons that they have not attacked Donetsk, the Ukrainian forces frontally, is that it is an extremely well fortified area from all accounts that there is a lot of bunkers, various protective walls have been built. So effectively, the Ukrainian forces are hunkered down in this with a lot of protection and the frontal assault is not going to be so successful, at least it will be going to be costly for the Russians. So that's the kind of calculation is probably why they have not done or attacked the Donetsk Ukrainian forces. What has opened up, following up Luhansk is a move towards the, or move behind the main fortifications that the Ukrainian forces have, and therefore try and cut off their supply lines. And if that happens, then of course for them to take it from the back is probably a less difficult exercise than taking it from the front. So this would mean that those towns which are there at the moment, which would then be under attack, it seems that the Russian forces are moving towards those targets, but slowly at the moment. So there is not going to be a declared pause, there is not going to be a succession of hostilities, the moves will still take place, but the major movements of forces may not take place till Russians have sorted out what they want to do next. They're also probably rotating some of their troops to out of the fighting at the moment, get new troops in, because after all they have only put in about 20% of their armed forces in this war. So therefore they have a lot of reserves who can be brought into the battlefront and some of the people who are already in the battlefront taken out. So it does appear that they are regrouping in that form. Initiative is very clearly with them. It's not with the Ukrainian forces, Ukrainian forces at the moment are more reactive than proactive. And of course, the other big question is how much arms and armaments has the NATO supplied to Ukrainian forces? How much of that is going to be effective? And how much after the last days of war, and that's really expended a huge amount of ammunition, designs and so on, how much of that stocks remains with them and how much can the NATO countries supply them? In this context, of course, the other question, like you concluded was really about what the Western strategy is right now, because now because we saw that there was a G7 meeting recently, we saw a NATO summit. The message was that we'll continue to support Ukraine, the UK for instance announced an increase in military support. There were talks of sending more US troops to Poland, for instance, increasing the size of the NATO force. Is it likely that any of this will actually have a substantial impact on the ground in Ukraine or is it just supporting and rhetorical measures? You know, moving forces into Poland or Lithuania or Estonia is really not the issue. The question is the war that's taking place on the ground right now. And if from whatever the reports we are getting and whatever, even the Western military experts seem to be concealing at the moment, that very conservative figures would indicate that Ukraine is able to fire shells, missiles at about one-tenth the numbers or one-fifth the number of Russian forces are firing. And they are running short of missiles as well as artillery shells. So given that, the question is how much of it can be supplied by the Western or NATO powers and what is their capability? Of supplying for the long run, if this goes on for three months, six months, what is the industrial capability of the United States and its other NATO allies to continue this level of supplies which Ukraine seems to need? We're not talking of money here because as you know, Ukraine has asked for $750 billion for the next one year. Now, we're not talking about that at all. We're just talking about simply the shells, the guns and so on. And if we take out this issue of a few Himalayas, which really doesn't make a significant difference to the frontal war, then what people have pointed out, and this is being pointed out by really think tanks, which are military think tanks in the West, not certainly any pro-Russian one. We have the Royal Services Institute, that itself has, for instance, put out a long paper saying that we are looking at the industrial capability of the Western countries to be able to supply this level of deliveries. And they said, if you look at javelins, you take a look at other designs that is being talked about, even simple guns, shells, all of this, that they said that they are burning out in a month what the United States can produce in six months in some of these cases. Some of the cases even worse. For instance, there is some talk about that one-third of the supply of javelins in the US had is now has been given to Ukraine. The question is really not that. The question is how many can the manufacture per year, even if they ramp up their production, and how for how long is this supply of missiles, shells, guns, all of that is feasible. And the argument there, again, not given by us, the paper I'm quoting, that indicates that it's an industrial capacity of the United States, of United Kingdom, and even of countries like France. They don't, they today are not geared up to fight a long war with, for instance, countries like Russia, what they have re-oriented themselves was for Afghanistan, for Iraq, for Libya and so on, which are really very different kinds of war. So that re-orientation of the war, and now suddenly being faced with a near parity power, military power, and a ground war, that the industrial, military capacities, and it's really the combination of the industry and the military, therefore the classical military industrial complex, that the strength in the west of that in terms of productive capacity is not there today. If they want to bring that up, it'll take at least two years, three years, and therefore what's happening is, as this war continues, NATO's ability to supply Ukraine is also going to weaken, apart from the fact that Ukraine has lost a lot of its younger people who have gone to the war, or who have left the country, both has happened, and as they weaken in the front lines, the supply of reserves increasingly are older people, territorial army, recruits, and even women now. So given all of that, the ability to fight is one thing, but the ability at the end of it is how much guns, how much bullets, how much ammunition, how much shells do you have, both at the moment are weakening. While comparatively Russia, we don't see that as yet. We see that they have only, as I said, 20% of their forces are engaged, and we don't see any let up in the amount of shells, etc. So it does seem to indicate that that parity is only going to get more and more skewed with this war continuing, and the West's ability to rectify that is not there, unless they conduct Heman's equivalent equipment, which are more advanced, but then the risk is Ukraine will use them to attack Russia, and then of course you can go beyond the conventional war into a possible nuclear strike issue. So all of this, of course, is why we need peace, why we need both sides to start talking. We need NATO to back off and come to the table. We need sanctions to stop. We need a whole lot of things, which no move is there at the moment, and I think that's the biggest loss that the G20 did not produce any move towards this. And this would be in retrospect, if we all live through the war and there is no nuclear holocaust, then it will be considered as a huge wasted opportunity where at least some start to these discussions might have taken place. Thank you so much for being very sobering thoughts about both the war and our collective futures. We will be looking at many such issues in future episodes of Mapping Fault Lines as well. Until then, keep watching NewsClick.