 Hello, hello, hello, and welcome. My name is Meron Kilili. We are DM25, a radical political movement for Europe. And this is another live discussion with our coordinating team featuring subversive ideas you won't hear anywhere else. And today we're looking at the war in Ukraine. It's been over a year since we last tackled this topic on our live stream. So here are some quick facts to put you in the picture. Over half a million military casualties on both the Russian and Ukrainian sides. Over 30,000 civilian casualties. Hundreds of billions of dollars given to support Ukraine's war effort from the West, from the US, from NATO countries. Millions of people displaced. Damages in Ukraine exceeding $150 billion. Russia now controls a fifth of Ukraine's territory and population and the war has been stuck in a bloody stalemate for months. Now you might think it'd be time for a ceasefire and for peace talks, as DM25 has pushed for since Putin invaded Ukraine in February, 2022. Yet negotiations to end the war appear to be further away than ever. In fact, tensions have been ratcheting up between Russia and NATO, especially in recent weeks. French President Macron refused to rule out sending troops to Ukraine, provoking a backlash. Schultz, the German leader, stated that British soldiers are already fighting there. Putin warned of nuclear consequences if NATO intervenes. His leading critic, Navalny, died in custody. The New York Times exposed CIA spy bases along the Ukrainian border near Russia. And both the US and Europe are stepping up their military support for Ukraine, although to what end it's uncertain. So with far right parties surging across the EU ahead of the European elections in June and Donald Trump likely to return as US president, what do these latest developments in Ukraine mean for Europe and for the world? Is a direct confrontation between nuclear powers unavoidable or does the possibility for a negotiated peace still exist? Our panel, including our own Yanis Varoufakis and our crew of activists, experts and thinkers and doers from across Europe will be weighing in on this topic. And you, you out there, if you've got thoughts, rants, comments, things that pop into your head, then please put them in the YouTube chat and we'll put them to our panel. Yanis will be joining us a little bit later today. Let's hand the floor over now to Karin Dorego, our lead candidate for our German bid in the European election in June. Karin, floor is yours. Thank you, madam. So the worry of Ukraine is at a critical point. After two years, the landscape is weaker and hence is in a precarious position. He doesn't have soldiers anymore. The economy is suffering. The international support has decreased because now the focus has shifted to Palestine. And the latest decision to build a defensive line at the borders of over 2,000 kilometers reveals that the hope for a victory is more far now than ever. If you want to be optimistic, then it's exactly when a situation stalls that there is space for negotiation. Unfortunately, Zelensky doesn't decide anything anyway, seems to refuse any dialogue because the claims he does over Crimea are totally unrealistic. And the USA keeps sending any kind of military equipment without ending. Russia is doing its usual propaganda. And in Europe, Macron, who's up on the lion are calling for an increasing weapons, weapons production, sending troops. I recently read that the Italian Defense Minister declared that Europe has a low-productive capacity for weapons and it should be increased. So when our politicians speak about helping Ukraine, it is such a hypocrisy. It's a huge lie. They are sending our money to the US, to the top five armed companies in the world. And these companies are owned by investment funds. There is where our money is going. We the only hope that they will get a slice of the cake in the end in the reconstruction phase. So all the attempts to show the situation through diplomacy have been sabotaged from the West from the beginning. They were lying on the power of sanction and on the ability and the power of the Ukrainian army. And now Ukraine risks to be sacrificed in this geopolitical battle. To answer to the question of our live stream today, is there a risk of nuclear war? Well, as long as there have been atomic bombs, there will always be the risk. Let's be honest about that. Since the Second World War, they have been used as a deterrent and it's exactly what Putin is doing also right now. He wants, I don't really think he will start throwing bombs without any reason. But if we think that this arms race is going to end the war, then we are really making a huge mistake. And we need to do everything possible to stop the madness of these war mongers in Europe and in the United States, because it's really too late. With Meta-25, one of our most important points is exactly to call for disarmament, to get Europe out of this imperialistic logic and to propose a new frame for the international cooperation because every person, every population deserves nothing but peace. Thank you, Karen. Amir, Amir Kia'i, our policy coordinator based in The Hague. What's your take? Thank you, Mehran. My take is that we actually have to accept that it's going to continue for a while. There's been, in this too, more than two years now. And of course, even longer if we talk about 2014 and all the internal strife and internal civil war, et cetera, there has really been very little, if any, moved towards resolving this through political or diplomatic needs. And this is the direction that has been set. And if we look at the recent comments of Macron, initially, I think personally, I was also a little bit skeptical because Macron likes to talk things up a bit. But now, I saw reports today about French TV channels, displaying a graph of Ukraine and highlighting scenarios of where French troops could be placed in, for example, things like that. So it's getting to that point of the narrative is getting much more serious about placements of French troops, et cetera. So it looks like we're on another round of escalation and further militarization of this conflict but also of other conflicts. So we see this in Gaza. There's again, no pressure being applied on Israel at all to resolve this diplomatically, et cetera, politically. And we will also see this, and we see this in Haiti, for example, with again, no pressure to resolve anything diplomatically. Even Kenya is getting brought in now and to supply policing troops to Haiti. They're under a lot of pressure from the Americans to do that. So we see this American guns first approach being applied everywhere. There's a problem, guns are the solution. That's how it is at the moment. And look, the realities of the base political philosophy of the United States is on the gun, shoot first and talk later, and is shaped by sort of a totalitarian view of the world in terms of trying to control everything. So we having these reference points that just point to us that we are looking at a further conflict. We're not gonna see peace in that sense. Except of course, what can we do and how we can use our public pressure and our public voice and et cetera, et cetera. And we can come to that later on in the hour that we have. Thank you, Amir. Yannis has just joined us. Yannis, who is yours? Hello, everyone. Hello, everyone. Regarding the question of the likelihood of nuclear war and of this combination of a First World War, trench warfare and Afghanistan. Because this is what, remember, on the first week after Putin's invasion of Ukraine in our regular live stream, this is what we were saying. We were saying that this is going to end up as a combination of trench warfare in the style of the Great War, the First World War and something like Afghanistan. And this is exactly what is happening. The difference here is that the narrative that Joe Biden adopted personally, and I'm not sure that it was the Biden administration. The thing is, to a very large extent, Biden himself and some people very close to him. And I'm saying that, I'm casting doubt on whether this is a general Joe Biden administration attitude because they've tried, his people tried to roll it back, to backpedal. And then he pushed forward again. What am I referring to? The threat that issued, the proclamation that Putin will be dragged through the International Criminal Court, which is by the way a court that the United States does not recognize, which is hypocrisy magnified to such a level that it is ridiculous. But anyway, this is not a question of whether Putin should be dragged through the International Criminal Court. I would like to see him in the International Criminal Court personally, but I would also like to see Tony Blair and George W. Yubush and even Barack Obama. Actually every American president, since let's say JFK should be dragged through the International Criminal Court. But that is not the point. The point is that once you tell one of the combatants in the Ukraine war who owns 1,550 nuclear warheads that his defeat will mean his end of days being spent in a prison in the Hague. Essentially what you are doing is you are telling him that if you lose the conventional war, fire your nuclear weapons. This is the message from Joe Biden. This is why Joe Biden is such a clear and present danger for humanity. Will it happen? Look, ever since we invented as humanity atomic weapons and then nuclear weapons and then hydrogen bombs and then proton bombs and so forth, that has always been the great unknown. Those who have their button, press that button, knowing that it will be the end of humanity. That is a question that no one can possibly answer. What we do know is that the West has taken a regional conflict that should never have been allowed to take place, to occur and which should have been quelled immediately by means of the proposals that we, DM25 have been, or along those lines, a similar proposal, that doesn't have to be the precise proposal, DM25, but something along the lines. Essentially, a trade, Russian troops go back to barracks where they were before February 2022 in exchange for the neutrality of Ukraine. Independence, but neutrality out of NATO, just like Austria remained out of NATO during the whole of the Cold War and that allowed Austria to actually develop very nicely along the lines of social democratic or liberal democratic lines. So that is the, my answer to the question is, how likely is a nuclear war? We have no idea. But what we know is that Joe Biden has, with the help of the whole of NATO, the unthinking and unquestioning attitude of European leaders, they have all been complicit in creating a nuclear threat out of an awful humanitarian catastrophe in Ukraine. But let's have a look at what Amir was saying before. I didn't catch most of what you said, Amir, but not all of it. Apologies for my late entry transport problems. Okay. The problem, as I see it, comrades, friends, is that a warmonger's Europe has already taken shape as a result of the Ukraine war. Amir spoke about Emmanuel Macron playing a very silly catch-up game in relation to Le Pen. Macron is facing obliteration in the European Parliament elections in the hands of Le Pen. His whole project of creating a new force in politics is clearly failed. And his second term is essentially deflating like a burst balloon. And now he has a new hobby horse. And that is to call upon the French to prepare for war against Russia, which is completely out of character, even by Emmanuel Macron, just goes to show the desperation of the man and the extent to which he really doesn't mind jeopardizing peace worldwide just in order to find another hobby horse because every other hobby horse he had, like the idea of a political union, a fiscal union, a federal treasury and so on, all ideas that were more or less reasonable. They fell by the wayside and now he's replacing them with a wholly unreasonable and a clear and present danger to humanity of a policy. So using Putin's stalled Ukraine war as a pretext, he has replaced this. Remember how he came to power with his vision of a political union. A lot of the ideas he had stolen from DM25 and I can attest to that. I'm not, this is not me being on behalf of DM25 overly optimistic about our influence, but I do know because he actually told me himself, even the idea of citizen assemblies, which he used in order to wear the gilet jaune, if you remember, he took a lot of ideas from DM25, which is not a problem except that he completely misconstrued and essentially distorted them. But he replaced this vision of a political union, however distorted it was, with a vision of a war union. That's why he sees now the European Union and it's not just him, Charles Michel, the president of the European Council, you've read his letter, I'm sure, recently. He's now calling for European Union targets. Not just targets, but a whole project, which begins with EU targets for us as the European Union to buy twice as many weapons from European arms dealers by 2030, you saw that. And how to pay for that? The European Union is bankrupt. They can't afford to pay for anything. We have the industrialization or have a German fiscal situation, which is pathetic. The answer is he will pay for the weapons using profits from Russian frozen assets. So that would be, which of course is by the way, something that the European Central Bank completely disapproves of because that would be a very serious danger for the Euro areas credibility as a safe place for oligarchs to put their money in. Again, I'm not passing the judgment, I'm simply stating it. He even mentioned the idea of a Eurobond. Can you imagine that? We don't have a Eurobond for making our European Union, Monterey Union and Palatine pool to the majority, but he wants a Eurobond in order to pay for guns and ammunition. And he even wants the European Investment Bank. Did you hear that? That is the epitome of EDUC. He wants the European Investment Bank to secure loans or to guarantee loans that will go into buying weapons. Now, the European Investment Bank, I know that I was a governor of the European Investment Bank some time ago, has a clear limit. It's in the charter to make productive investments. Investments like bridges and things that increase incomes. Now, he's asking the European Investment Bank to spend money to give loans, to build ammunitions that hopefully will not be used unless of course we want to use them. And then, but then who pays for them? Who will repay the loans to the European Investment Bank? Now, a German order liberal, like, you know, the spirit or the ghost of Wachem Schäuble would be up in arms against that. And, you know, in this letter, Charles Michel tries to sell this to us as a way to create jobs and growth. Can you believe that? Remember Junker? The Junker plan, which was completely unconceived, ill-conceived and financially made no sense. The idea there was to invest in green technologies, in things that, you know, in digital technologies. Now, that has gone, the Junker plan, and we have the Michel plan, where, you know, another pipe dream for boosting investment in technology and innovation will go, however, it will follow the Hitler path, not the Roosevelt path, right? Not the new deal of Roosevelt, but the Hitler path of creating growth through defense spending, through building armaments. You know, I mean, the only way of concluding this, to say that, on the one hand, Macron, and on the other hand, Michel, are painting a picture of the European Union. That even the radical center of two years ago, a year ago, would not recognize anymore. To put it slightly differently. Vladimir Putin's greatest triumph is that he changed the DNA of the European Union. He changed the way the European Union establishment thinks of itself. And the only good news for Europeans and the world is that the European Union is incompetent. So in the same way that the Junker plan fizzled out and nothing happened, well, I hope that the Chalmisch bill and Emmanuel Macron plan will fizzle away. It probably will, because incompetence is guaranteed the European Union. But it is a very sad day when the prospects for peace in the European Union and in Europe generally, and the prospects for some sanity depend on incompetence, ruling in the final analysis. So if you take together this war union with the white superpowers, outer border, the frontier, we went from financialized cosmopolitanism, this was a situation before 2020, let's say, to an ethno-original white supremacist nationalist Europe. Consider this, and this is how it finished. Let's suppose that Michel gets his way and we build the defense industry and we borrow money from the European investment bank to do so. Then how do we sustain them? The only way you can sustain this industry is by creating wars that create the demand for replenishing those stockpiles of weaponry. So suddenly, what is appearing, what is being presented as a defensive strategy for Europe is becoming a warmongering strategy. This is why I said that Europe is becoming on warmongers delight. The language that these people now use is so inflammatory that if Le Pen had used that language 10 years ago, I mean, the whole of Europe, including these people, the liberal center, the Radical Center, we'd have lambastata. So my final point as somebody who intends to be a candidate in the European Parliament election allow me to wear that hat for a moment, is that if you good people out there vote for us for the European Parliament election next June, our pledge to you is that we are not going to rely simply on European Union incompetence to preserve peace. If you send us to the European Parliament, we will work tirelessly to defeat Macron, Michel, and for the lion, their agenda. And we are going to work in that manner meticulously, carefully, enthusiastically, day in, day out. Thank you. Thank you for that, Yanis. Some comments from the chat. Mark Bulmer says that diplomacy should be done with Russia, America, China, and the United Nations should take over the world's nuclear weapons or some major nuclear treaty. N.E. says that I'm afraid sending Russian troops back to pre-2022 lines is off the table in negotiations. Russia has made that clear several times. Kat Terrell says Boeing, General Dynamics, Lockheed, Northrop, Raytheon, Go Team, big arms manufacturers that she's citing there. And a comment from David here in our internal chat, which I think is useful, that there have been at least two known instances of computers falsely flagging Russia and the U.S. having fired nuclear weapons in the past. Let's not forget, it was the only reason, it was the only reason that prevailed by the people who didn't pass the info up the chain. Lucas, Lucas February, Communications Director based in Berlin. What's your take on all this? Thanks, Marin. So to begin by answering the question that's posed in the title of this conversation here, is nuclear possible? Is it likely? Well, I'm gonna repeat what everyone here said and said that I don't know. You'd be surprised to hear I'm not smart and then anyone else here and not preview for any information that no one else is. But I think what is really concerning are the several things that are very concerning. But one of the things that hasn't been mentioned yet tonight and it's a good, what David just said is a good segue into this is that I fear that what's been lost in recent years and in recent decades is a lack of appreciation for the possibility of nuclear conflict, which is something that was in people's minds all the time during the Cold War, of course. And we saw those instances that David mentioned there as good examples of points in which, well, these were sort of accidental points, but points nonetheless, where we came close to nuclear war and there were other far more geopolitical weight behind them that also brought the world closer to annihilation. That's not a good world to live in, of course, but we have to remember that those weapons still exist. But I fear that while the weapons are still there and ready to be deployed, we've lacked the respect for the destructive capabilities of those weapons. And I remember very early on in the war in Ukraine, in the early days after Russia's full-scale invasion, that a huge topic, there was a lot of people in the West advocating for a no-fly zone to be established over Ukraine by NATO, essentially. And I found that that was extremely shocking, like the extent to which that seemed to be a popular idea. And it begs the question for me, what is it that people think that a no-fly zone entails? Like, do you decree that a no-fly zone exists and then the enemy just goes like, are rats and then I guess we can fly out of place anymore? No, you have to shoot planes down. And in this case, you have to shoot down planes belonging to a nuclear power that has already shown a willingness to take a tremendous amount of political and military capital in this conflict in this region. So I fear that that was a very gross example of this sort of lack of appreciation for the threat of nuclear war early on in the conflict. But now you see it in many ways, it hasn't diminished in the slightest with this constant calls for more and more sophisticated weapon systems to be delivered to Ukraine, which of course, risk a tremendous escalation that again, could very well lead to nuclear conflict. And in this sort of like, ideological sort of good versus evil battle that exists in a lot of people's minds in the West, the question that I ask is, how many more lives need to be lost in order for a point, essentially, I guess, to be proved because what we see on the ground is a stalemate. The much law that counter-offensive it has stalled, it is tragic to look at how many lives have been lost. We're talking dozens of thousands of lives to win a few kilometers a year and there in the front line. It's a tragedy and how many more need to be lost until we feel that our point is proved because it doesn't look like this stalemate is gonna be broken. And if it is, it's going to be in a catastrophic way. It's not gonna be broken in a good way because again, the fact of matter remains that Russia is a nuclear power. And so this is all very concerning and another concerning thing is something that Yan has already spoke to a length is that in a sense, the die has been cast as far as Europe is concerned, the conflict has already changed Europe in a lot of ways regardless of what happens in the future in terms of a potential resolution which of course we continue to advocate for diplomacy and unalignment and so on and so forth. Too much political capital has been staked in this new world that has risen and it is in Europe that has risen since February of 2022. And just like it doesn't help to back putting into a corner by using this sort of rhetoric that Joe Biden has been using, it doesn't make the world any safer. It doesn't help anyone, the Ukrainians, Russians, Europeans, nobody. The capital that political leaders in Europe have staked in their position and in their subservience to the interests of the United States at the end of the day, that's something that they can't back out of because that would mean the end of their political careers. So I think that what we should do is bring about the end of their political careers by different means to force their hand by replacing them in the European elections and in another elections to come. And that's why that's what our Meta25 parties are here for. So I again echo Janice's call for everyone out there to support us in this bid in June and well beyond June so that we can bring new people with different ideas and much less concern for our own political skin. As a matter of fact, we have none and we're proud of it. Thank you, Lucas. While you're at the floor, let me ask you something because I know that you're very active on the topic of Gaza and the massacre which has been going on there since October also being carried out with American money and weapons. In many of the activist circles that I'm in, when the Ukraine war, well, when Putin invaded Ukraine February 2022, there were many people who on the left who were very much Slavo-Ukrainian and Ukraine as much money as possible, they can win the war. Then after Gaza happened after October 7th and then what happened in Gaza continues to happen, those same people were very much in favor of the ceasefire in Gaza. I wanted to ask, I know these are two different conflicts but do you think that the Gaza, what's happened in Gaza has changed the calculation? Somewhat, is there more of an appetite for peace perhaps than there was before Gaza and might this also influence bringing about a negotiated settlement for Ukraine? I don't know, to be honest. I can only hope so. Let's put aside the sort of like the geopolitical calculus and what has happened in Gaza, how that might change your worldview in terms of power balance or whatever sort of geopolitical terms that you might want to use, but just on an emotional level. I think it has, I mean, I think and I hope that it has changed a lot of people's minds about the meaning of war itself because it is just, I feel that regardless of your political orientation has been impossible in the past few months not to see absolutely horrifying images almost daily coming out of Gaza. And I feel that, I mean, I cannot imagine how someone might be, you know, how you can't be shaken by this to your very core. So I can only hope that at the very least this raw, very unfortunate, very difficult emotional impact that I think a lot of people are experiencing might lead to a rethink on, we're talking about, you know, appreciating the potential horrors of nuclear war but also lead to a newfound appreciation for the horrors of conventional war as well. As you can even call this a war, of course, you can't really, but, you know, the master king of innocence, the civilian toll of military action. So my hope again is that even everything else put aside that this can also have an impact that we can take away that will help us liberate Palestine eventually in our lifetime but also to avoid war and, you know, be more willing to fight for peace, which I think is a art that has been lost a little bit in the past few decades, even amongst progressives. Thank you, Lucas. Eric, our political director, actually now based in Greece, not Brussels anymore. I'd like, I have a question for you. I mean, there's a kind of far right surge which is going on at the moment in the EU. Portugal, the Netherlands, and in opinion polls for the European elections. How might that impact the prospects of war or peace going forward? Well, Mechelen, that's a good question. We are in this tragic situation where some of the most reactionary backward political parties in our continent are positioning themselves as champions of peace. So, and you will see Macron as an excellent case study of this. Same with the IFD in Germany. My cat feels very strongly about this as you can probably hear in the background. Known anti-fascist, my cat. They're positioning themselves opposite to the establishment. So where the establishment has been gun-hole on the war has been following blindly the indications and the orders of NATO in the United States. The far right has been positioning itself opposite that, often due to close links to Putin and his regime, but not only. So that creates a very awkward situation for other progressive forces such as us because the tried and tested old technique that the establishment has had of creating a bipolar political space where you're either for one position or the other forces us to appear as if we are in agreement and on the same side as the far right. As fascist parties when we speak out against the war. So they oversimplify this by presenting us as being, I say us because obviously all of our mirrors and the M25 than equivocations to war have been since day one, presenting us as being Putin lovers, as being dangerous utopians or whatever else have you. So it really obfuscates and confuses the narrative and the discussion making it very awkward for anybody to speak out against the war unless they be compared to fascists. This is the upside down tosy-turvy world that they created through this narrative. And it makes a lot of progressives hesitate to speak out against the obvious, right? So when that's something that we haven't, we haven't hesitated. We've been there since day one. We've taken the political, we've paid the political price for that. And this question also kind of guides, I think, the conversation to where it really needs to go, which is the, what is going on now in Ukraine to a certain extent also the massacre of Palestinians in Gaza. This is the result of the West doing what it's always done, which is to export its internal political issues. So in the US, you've got the incredible conflict between Democrats and Republicans who can't agree on a budget, but agreed last week to ban TikTok almost unanimously, even though they haven't been able to agree on anything else, which also kind of shows you where their main political fears of the US is right now, i.e. China, not so much Russia. So these conditions are basically exported internal conflicts, same goes as Yanis very well put it, for the case of France, where essentially Macron is trying to position himself against Le Pen, and therefore is driving his country, and unfortunately the rest of the European Union, therefore probably most of Europe deeper into this conflict, same situation in Sweden, which has joined NATO recently, that's a country where the far right, the Swedish Democrats has been triumphing election after election, and so on and so forth, because war has its own momentum. When parties, political parties, and especially governments, cannot handle internal conflicts, they try to shift the attention of the voters of the population of society externally to an external enemy, and unify therefore the population, the voter society against that external threat. That is basically what many of our governments are doing incredibly cynically, and very, very dangerously, in order to try a Hail Mary last throw of the dice before the European elections, to salvage whatever can be salvaged from their horrendous last few months and years of polls, most of the center is set up to fail against the far right. So basically what is currently being done through Ukraine and to a certain extent in Gaza and the Middle East, is trying to externalize these internal issues that Europe is facing, its own weaknesses, and throwing Ukrainians, Palestinians under the proverbial political war bus. This cynicism is what's driven so many of our fellow citizens away from voting at all, because they can see it, it's not the people are not dumb. And therefore I think our role in these elections is to show through exactly this stable and consistent position that we've had that there can be political voices who stayed true to what they believe, regardless of the political games that everybody else is playing. And through this stance, re-inspire a certain sense of hope in politics, not in creating immediate solutions, but electing representatives who will do what nobody else does, which is to say things the way they see it and represent people, regardless of the kind of pressures that they might be under. I think Yanis is very right in saying that we shouldn't lie to people and pretend that through the European Parliament we can change anything we can't. It's designed to be impossible to change anything through the European Parliament. But what we can do is to use that as a platform to speak out for what is right and create a bigger mass around some of these common sense things and an opposing poll to the onward march of the far right, because if we expect the establishment to do that, we'll just be seeing more of the same. Thank you, Eric. A couple of comments from the chat. Neil says, war is hell. Let the politicos do the fighting instead. Der Blinder notes that Mrs. Straks Zimmermann, a prominent politician in Germany's FDP party, wants to continue supplying all kinds of weapons to Ukraine. She's also on the board of Reinhmetall, which is the large German defense contractor. This is how politics is done in the EU, says Der Blinder. I did not know that, what you say. I can't verify it, but it would not surprise me. And Armando says, even the Pope was labeled Putinist, so carry on, guys, we need peacemakers. Panos, panos denos. Based in France, it was yours. Thanks, Mehran. Hi, everyone. I note that a couple of days ago, the UN Secretary General said that we are closer to nuclear war than we have been for decades. So that's one authoritative opinion. Also, a few days ago, we had Russian elections, and I noticed that Germany came out and said that they don't recognize the result because the elections were a sham, which probably they were. And then I tried to find out who accept those elections and who congratulated Putin for winning. And it was China, Turkey, India, Korea. Basically, it was much harder to find countries that did not congratulate Putin, even though he came out a winner with 90%, even though there were irregularities, even though his biggest political opponent died in prison. And what I'm trying to get at is that this person or this country has a lot of support throughout the world, in the global south for sure. And they also have a war economy. They have many military options. They can bring the war to the Balkans. Vucic yesterday or the day before, after signing an agreement with Russia, said that it's their decision when Serbia will invade Kosovo. They can bring the war to Transnistria, which is the eastern slice of Moldova. Like I said, they have a war economy, a hardened population. This is the power that Macron says has to be defeated. And that's why we don't exclude sending ground troops. Well, before they are defeated, they have many options, including tactical nuclear weapons. If they feel threatened, they will do that. And that is considered an escalation to avoid further escalation. Like we're serious about it. We're gonna use nukes. It's not the end of the world, but we'll do it. But everyone knows that this can really go out of control. So the point I'm trying to make is that the West insisting on their core narrative that the Ukraine cannot lose, that Russia has to be defeated and to rationally pretend that they can have a plan for this to happen. Is a bit of a scandal. The real scandal, the biggest scandal is that sooner or later, some scientists are going to announce that we have passed the point of no return in terms of the climate catastrophe. We probably have passed it already or we're gonna pass it soon. This is the existential threat for Europe and the world. This is the emergency. It's not nuclear war. I cannot accept that we are not dealing with this and we're dealing with this other huge emergency, which is the war, a nuclear war, which is completely artificial. I mean, it could be scaled down tomorrow. So if we pass the point of no return, what is Macron or Biden or Schultz gonna tell me that Ukraine had to win? And in the meantime, if this has happened, I know with the mathematical certainty that the country where I live will be a desert, all the forests are gonna burn. You're gonna have diseases, you're gonna have mass migration. Before that, you will have war, violence, and if you survive, you will be ashamed of the things that you had to do in order to survive. This with mathematical certainty. So we're facing this and instead, the headline is nuclear war, Ukraine must win and this and that. So I'd like to conclude with this. For me, it is the biggest scandal for any government to put any sort of national interest, whether it is for Ukraine, for their economy, for their dying empire or whatever, to put any national interest above the supranational interest of avert climate change and not treating this as a number one priority. Because this will go against their national interest as well and it is very clear. Thanks. Thank you, Panos. And further to what you just said, war is also terrible for the environment as well as the absolute horrors that it inflicts on populations. So I'm reading a statistic here that says that the first year of the war, the Ukraine war, was equivalent to roughly the annual emissions of Belgium. So bad news on all fronts. Let me just see who is next. Johannes. There we go. I lost you there, sorry, in the sea of text. Johannes Fair from Germany, thoughts yours. Don't worry, thank you. Yeah, I think by the way, that's one of the reasons why the big military industrial complex was never included in the Kyoto protocols and so on to not shine light on the awful, awful statistics that every military and especially of course, mores have on the climate. What I wanted to contribute with is a point that you asked earlier to look as if the war or the genocide, not the war that's happened, it's happening in Gaza, has made changes in terms of how we see peace and war and how parties positioning themselves on that topic. As Eric also explained in the past, suddenly the right wingers were trying to present themselves as the peace lovers. I think in Germany at least the situation in the last month and what's going on in the Middle East has changed that a bit because in the past already, for example, the son of Benjamin Netanyahu, he was quoted by the AFD, the right wing party in Germany online and shared those posts. So you can see the clear links there. And if you look at the policy of the German government, which is awful on this conflict, of course, if you look to the conservative party, the rhetoric is worse and that's the biggest opposition party in Germany. Plus, if you look then further right to the AFD, it is even worse when we were protesting last month outside the German parliament against the right wing search in Germany, both in the government and also in the polls with the fascist day party rising. Our chance were Israel bombardiert, Israel bombards, AFD uploadiert, AFD uploads. And that is the reality. And there has been a change in, yeah, of course, also unfortunately, even the progressives in Germany, there is just a too small part of it, of them, of us that are against this genocide actively and a lot of people are silent on it. But I think on that conflict, you can clearly see the old divide between the right wing pro-war and pro-support of these massacres and us on the left fighting against it. Thank you, Johannes. Daphne, Daphne Delcara, based in France. Hi, I just also want to touch upon something. There's been so much obfuscation about the clear consequences of decisions made by governments. Normally, this would be the press's job to communicate to the public. What are the consequences? What are the options and so on? But of course, this whole, be it Palestine or be it Ukraine, it's just been a complete dog and pony show from the start, where I don't know, Biden will say, oh, we are opposed to what Israel is doing as if they have no material relationships with the Israeli government. And I'm like, oh, we're just saying it's bad, but why is nothing happening? And it's very similar with the war in Ukraine where it's like, oh, we must aid, we must, but like, and I'd like to come to what Lukas has said. Until when? When is it enough? Like, there's nobody is really drawing these boundaries in the public sphere, let's say. And that's why it's so important to have non-career politicians elected that can at least stand up and like present these lines. So I want to say all right, those number I came across, which was really interesting to me is that, so according to a survey done by the European Council for Affairs or Relations, whatever, only 10% of Europeans believe that Ukraine can win the war. That's a very shocking number to me. 10% only. So then we must ask, what's the next step, right? But nobody's like getting this real, concrete conversation going. But like when Macron proposes sending troops, then that gets really real. That's something that everybody can understand instead of weird aid mingled with like military where you don't really know what is what. People understand aid maybe as food, others understand that's weapons. So once Macron says sending troops, then we see like, for example, in the polls 76% of French people are completely opposed to this. So I think that's very important. Thank you Lucas for underlining that and I just want to give these little numbers. Thanks. Thank you, Daphne. A couple of final comments from the chat here. Mark says the military industrial complex should be retooled into the infrastructure development complex. The Goonie notes that NATO has never stated to where they would like to grow to. Patriotic EEC says people need to consider one scenario. What if the goal is nuclear war? And Sebastian asks something I often hear actually. If Russia wins and gets what they want and we let them, what is to stop them from asking for more and more? What's to stop them from invading the Balkans, Transnistria, et cetera? And as I hand over to you, Yanis, perhaps if you could tackle that question, because we often hear it, that Putin has imperial ambitions and just won't stop and negotiated pieces to his advantage, what would you say to that point? Well, there are a couple of questions. I'll answer that question, but first there's another question from the chat, and one or comment that Ukraine had inherited nuclear weapons from the Soviet Union, but it gave them up and wasn't that a stupid mistake on the heart of the Ukrainians or something along those lines? Well, to our friend who put that comment on the chat, I have a question. Suppose Ukraine had retained the Soviet nuclear weapons, what good would it have done? What good would it have done? They're completely useless. Imagine, again, the same scenario, February to 2022, Putin's troops invade Ukraine, and if Ukraine has nuclear weapons, would Zelensky press the button? That would be humanity's annihilation. So Zelensky, unless he was a madman, complete madman, would not press the button, even if the Russian troops are storming Ukraine. In a sense, nothing would have changed, because Putin would have already worked that out, and he would have gone ahead anticipating that Zelensky would not press the button, and the United States would not let Zelensky press the button anyway. So that's that question. Now, coming to Sebastian's question that, Mehran, you asked me to comment on. Okay, suppose that you're right, and Russia is a force that is unstoppable, and if they get their way in Ukraine, they will then storm the Balkans, Germany, Poland, whatever. Now, if you believe that, then you should be arguing for mobilization by NATO, German, French, American, Greek, Portuguese, troops on the ground to stop a Hitler-like Putin. If you believe that, go ahead and advocate that. NATO is not advocating that. All of Schultz is not saying no way. Yeah, they're going to be German troops in Ukraine. So you see the hypocrisy there? They're talking about Putin as if he's a Hitler that wants to take the whole of the European continent like Hitler wanted, and tried to, and almost succeeded. But at the same time, they're not prepared to do against Putin, that which they did against Hitler. So they don't believe it. If you believe it, advocate it. My estimation of Putin is that he's only interested in coalescing along Russia the Russian-speaking areas. Russian-speaking areas, like Donbass and Luhansh, which in his view, were taken away from Mother Russia after the 1991 disintegration of the Soviet Union. He doesn't have either the will nor the capability of moving beyond that. You could see that in Ukraine, he's thought. His war was a failure. He may be inching forward today after three years, but militarily he has not won, and he's nowhere near winning. And I don't think he has the capacity to do it. Now, let me look at it from a different perspective. The moment Putin ordered his troops in Russia, Dim-25, we came out with a very principled position. We were not neutral. We didn't say, ah, we don't take sides. Remember what we said? We're always on the side of the invaded. Whether the Ukrainians, the Yemenis or the Palestinians, we are always with those whose land is occupied by a foreign army. When Mariupol was destroyed and the theater, the beautiful theater was turned into smithereens and the hospital was bombarded with much loss of life by the Russians. We came out and condemned the Russians for that. But we were the only consistent political force because we did the same when Gaza was invaded, when the Gaza...