Foundation for defense against democracies. Im going to have to pull my troops because you will not give me the ammunition i need to fight the ukrainians. This is an extraordinary thing. Imagine the u. S. If two generals went after each other in the u. S. Army on the record like that. Amb markarova during this very difficult time when russia reinvaded ukraine the war, they started the war with us in 2014. Even in the face of this war, all russian criminals, armed forces and other groups which call themselves mercenaries, but of course, they are there because the russian government told them and russian president told them to be there. Have always been bragging about how they will take back moot. The fight in the east has been particularly brutal. To see him publicly on the record attacking other parts of the war criminal group that is waging the war in ukraine is saying the truth, first of all, that he is disclosing the fact they are running out of ammunition. That means sanctions are working. It also means that there is an opener for us to continue with what we have to do to liberate our country. How shall we look at this and we ukrainians look at this . It proves all the priorities which we are working with u. S. First and foremost, but also allies, more weapons to us, more financial and other support for us to be able to faster liberate our land, but also more sanctions to russia. This is what we should be thinking about. We have to double down, because we can win it faster. I think we shall see more of this. What are russians fighting for their . There are many more of them. They have more equipment here and lets not underestimate the enemy. All of our soldiers, men and women, who have defended our homes, there is a very clear motivation there. This is the only home we have and we will defend them with every thing we have. What is their motivation . Unfair war and war crimes in ukraine. There is none. Let me get to you to elaborate on this. Some of the bigger questions. Would i be one to think of this war as ukraines word independence . Amb markarova yes. You would be right. We have been occupied. It is very much our war for independence. For our territorial integrity and sovereignty, for our right to exist. If you listen to putin and everyone from russia, they have been very clear about their objective. Essentially since we became independent in 1991, all the countries that became independent who were occupied by the soviet union, other countries, they have always seen the breakup of the soviet union as a good thing. Some think that generations of ukrainians something that generations of ukrainians fought for. Russia is the only country where consistently the message from russian leaders, this has been the greatest tragedy and they want to reconstruct. It goes deeper than the soviet union. When you listen to them, you clearly hear that soviet union or russian empire or the Russian Federation now is something they want to expand and reconstruct. Again, return older nations and older countries that they were able to occupy at some period of time. For us, our fight for independence never stopped. We became independent together with finland in the fight. We fought for it even after the war was over. People in ukraine fought for independence and all the way up until 1989. In 1991, we thought to create and do institutional reforms. Russia tried to change it. The orange revolution in 2004 and the revolution of dignity, the reason for that was both times before the revolution, russia was able to install prorussian government officials who wanted to return to the russian integration reoccupation , rather than continue the path of european integration. People of ukraine repeatedly said, no. In the referendum in 1999, or the elections in 2004 or 2013 and 2014 and when there was nothing else we could do. We went out and the public and say, no. It is all about freedom and independence. My theory on putin, i am sure you thought about who he is and what he believes. It is my pet theory, i have been following russia for more than half a century. He sees himself as the czar. It is the czars duty to bring all the russias back together. The empire under the czar, his mission in his part of his life, what do all of the russias mean . It means belarus he can say maybe instead of know, sometimes. Maybe. He would like the baltics. He would like because extent. He would like central asia. He took everything back and more. I think that is what he sees himself as trying to do, restore the russian empire because he is the czar. He is both yvonne the terrible and ivon the terrible and the great. Amb markarova i think it is probably part of that. Unfortunately for him, he is not a czar. [laughter] amb markarova today is not 19th century. The world is different. The ideas that empires could be successful in the 21st century, i just are just not physical. We see it. With development of nations, with corporations we have between ourselves, with the freedom of press, the social media and everyone having access to this and being able to record and show like his own did yesterday how can you create something that is so outdated . That was not even visible at the beginning of the 20th century . That is why the empire started collapsing. I do think that putin and his closest allies, xi jinping and allie communion, they are empire builders. There is a chinese empire. Xi jinping is part of the chinese empire. Definitely once an empire and has one in lebanon and syria. These are empires of the 21st century. Whether they succeed or not, my question is very much out. I think it is important to make the case that ukraine both is a separate nation from russia, putin denies that, and has a right to be a separate nation from russia. Maybe just talk about that for a minute. Amb markarova of course. First, we existed before russia was created. If we had more time, maybe i would do a separate discussion on the histories of ukraine or kyiv has been in the center of european history. There is a lot to discuss in so many centuries dating back to 2000 years ago when we adopted christianity in ukraine. We have separate language. We identify themselves as ukrainians. We always thought of ourselves as a different people. There was definitely a separate country and separate nationality. Despite the fact that we were occupied by literally almost 400 years, because after the fall of when peter the great was able to take it and did exactly what we have seen in mariupol and other places. He destroyed the whole city and he killed everyone, including children. We are separate people. The difference between ukrainian and russian is almost exactly the same as between spanish and the french. It is a different language. We see now, especially with russians who engage in the illegal war in ukraine on the battlefield, how difficult it is for them to understand. They have no idea where they are. They do not understand. That is not the case, because in the modern world, we do not think in terms of nationalities. We think in terms of International Rules and the borders that are recognized by everyone. Our borders have been recognized by all the countries, including russia, in 1991. Our people, 92 of them, voted for independence in 1991. Actually, out of all former soviet union or soviet union occupied countries, we not only our parliament that proclaimed independence, we had a referendum. We ask our people. That also has to do with a very long, traditional democracy in ukraine. We always say we are democracy on steroids. Ukrainians, really free in expressing opinions. It is a very ukrainian joke. When you have two ukrainians, you have three point of use. We like to discuss everything. You see that in our relations with government in ukraine. People are not afraid to voice it. People are going to the elections, they elect their government and protect their choice as it happened in 2004 when the elections, they tried to steal the election and the president tried to proclaim himself and elect him president. We are different. I want to play devils advocate a little bit. Apologists for putin, people i would call isolationists, they may call themselves restraints. Putin was threatened because nato was getting close to his borders. Ukraine had not been accepted into nato, there was talk it would. He felt that was threatening to russia to have nato so close to his borders. Nato enlarging, nato expanding. Talk about why that is nonsense. Amb markarova there are several elements of that. First, nato was never in our region, was never expended. It was always individual countries that wanted to join nato. The enlargement of nato, the extension of nato look at any country that became members during the previous 30 years. All of them wanted to join. The people wanted to join. It was a very great, safe, decision for them to become members of the same family with the same value. Second, putin was never threatened by that. It is actually vice versa. Ukraine wanted to join nato. Since 2004, leadership has been clear on that. Unfortunately, leadership before that was not clear because after we broke out from the soviet union, the first people in ukraine, the first leaders for ukraine had been the previous soviet ukrainian leaders who became ukrainian leaders. Essentially, we did not build our own institutions from the start. All of them had been handmedowns from the soviet union. Forgetting about the Historical Perspective in a country that had been occupied for such a long time, centuries, power and government was not always something ukrainian. It was always russians who dominated in those. Since 2004, it was very clear to us that the situation is blackandwhite. You are either part of the civilized world were occupied by russia. We started working towards it, but we were still neutral. We were neutral in our constitution that was written. We were not part of nato, together with georgia. When we were not part of nato, that embolden putin and he attacked us in 2014 and again reinvaded us in 2022. We only formalized our desire to join nato in 2018 when we included that into our constitution, because more than 60 of ukrainians are in favor of that now. Before that, we cooperated with nato. We became in 2020, the partner in nato. That happened after russia attacked us in 2014. Look at finland. Look at sweden. The push for them, for their people to join nato, came as a response of russia. It is actually vice versa. It is not putin who is threatened. It is all of us, democratic states, that are threatened by russia. That is why we want to stick together. Again, i think we listen sometimes too much to putins explanations of why he did something. Sometimes, it is nato. Sometimes, it is ukraine that was going to attack him. Sometimes there are all kinds of lies, literally, lies. We have to call them that. The truth is very simple. He just wants to attack neighboring countries. He does it on a regular basis. That is the only way for him to consolidate the power inside the country and state president. We have to stop it. He is not stupid. He never thought german, hungarian, turkish troops would come and try to take over moscow. He knows better. Amb markarova who would want that . [laughter] who would want that. Something else that does scare him, i was an election observer for the last parliamentary elections in ukraine. He sees people being free. He sees people voting. What struck me as an election observer to the extent to which ukrainians were very proud, we are doing this right, let me show you by the way, there were prorussian in that election. I think they made up 13 of the vote rate i talked to people from those parties. Some of them were more prorussian. People could vote freely. For russians to see that across the border, i think saw that as a threat. Amb markarova absolutely. Free, democratic and prosperous ukraine. This is a threat to russia, because this is a bad example for his people. Ok. People are talking about a spring offensive, a summer offensive at this point. Spring is muddy in ukraine right now. There is only so much you can probably tell us. People are making productions, including a number of people who we think a lot of. Ben hodges retired you retired general, he thinks there could be serious successes in the spirit i know mark milley talked about ukraine has significantly enhanced capabilities to conduct offensive operations. Tell us what you can about planning and what you hope to achieve. I think it is important we can agree on this, the United States, americans, if they see ukrainians making progress, that is important. If they see stalemate, they will say, we have to push for negotiations because this is like world war i were nobodys getting anywhere. Amb markarova first of all, russians attacked our land. They are committing horrible crimes and atrocities everywhere. After we will we were able to liberate kyiv, we have seen what happens in the territories where russians occupy them. They are killing people. They are torturing people. They are raping people. They are stealing our children and forcefully deporting them to russia. And, simply destroying the city. Look at mariupol, look at the recent videos and shots that are available. Literally, the city does not exist. More than 90 of the city is destroyed. For us, it is not a question of when the counteroffensive and how many. The overall goal is to defend our country and liberate all ukraine. Within internationally recognized borders. It will take one counteroffensive or many, whether it will take days, months, weeks or years, it does not matter to us. The goal is clear, to restore territorial integrity and to phase as many ukrainians as we can. That goal was there since 2014. We have been forced to answer in courts because there was no alternative. After the country was robbed blind by russians and the russian government before 2013, after their armed forces work completely destroyed by the Russian Ministry of defense, our secret services were also severely damaged by the Russian National who led the secret service. When they attacked us the first time in 2014, it came at a time when we it was difficult for us to fight back the way we should have. And the way we have done in 2022. Right now, and we spent eight years very important, i think people forget it. We spent eight years working on a diplomatic solution to restore our territorial integrity, even though the minsk courts were not fair to us. It was impossible and sometimes impossible in order to get back our country and get back illegally imprisoned people by means of diplomacy. Russia used all the time to attack us. It is very clear to us now that there is no alternative to us, fighting for every inch of our territory and every ukrainian, to save them. Doing this for 436 days, we have seen a couple of counteroffensive, a couple of successful ones. We reintegrated kyiv over. We liberated one of the few, large cities they were able to occupy during this time. Of course, right now, everyone is focusing on counteroffensive. Again, we trust our military command. Everyone from the supreme commanders, zelenskyy, to our chief commander and others, they know when and where we could do the most and in the most effective way. The way our military is planning their operations is in a responsible way. If you look at how we were liberating hassan, military people will tell you that they were doing it in a very careful way to save as many ukrainians, the civilians, because it is our people that have been held hostages there. We all pray for all of our counteroffensives to be successful. I can only say that we still need more weapons. This is the Main Objective now. Regardless of when it starts, regardless of how many counteroffensives we will have, we need to build an endurance plan for the future. After we liberate all ukraine, and we believe we will, and i think it is not only dangerous to ukraine, it is not only in the interest to ukraine, it is in the interest of all of us, we have to show it is not ok in the 21st century to violate the border of a soviet country through brutal force. After we do that, russia will not move anywhere. It was d it will still be within our threat. Not only the democratic world, there are Food Security threats, Energy Security threats. Right now, we are one of the largest and definitely most capable armies in europe. We are defending and liberating ourselves, but also defending other European Countries. We will continue to do so going forward. Hopefully in the future, as a member of nato. We agree with this and under a under john hardy and analysts, a new report called advanced u. S. Interest by giving ukraine the weapons it needs now and it specifies what we think based on our analysis you need in order to prevail in this. I just commended to everybody listening. You mentioned diplomacy, there are a number of analysts on the left and right and in the u. S. And in europe. What they keep saying is, we have to push both sides to negotiate. I understand how you can push ukrainians to negotiate. What i do not understand is, how you push putin to negotiate . Do you threaten him with sanctions . Do you give him weapons . Have you seen any indication, through macron, that putin thinks, i want to compromise, i want to find a way to end this . Is there any indication he is open to diplomatic solution . Amb markarova first of all, i think you can only negotiate if two sides are ready to negotiate. Russia never wanted to negotiate. They wanted to occupy, attack, destroy and kill us. Right now, we definitely are not in a position to negotiate with invaded criminals until they leave their our country. You can only negotiate around the table what you can achieve at the battlefield. They will only negotiate with us if we are definitely winning everything and liberating all of our territories. Until then, i do not think we should expect even russia to negotiate. When russia talks about negotiations, what they need is operational force. We clearly see it, from the video from yesterday and others. They want a pause in order to get their resources together to attack us even better. Why would we give them an operational and their military objective . If you ask any people who study war, there is always three element of that. The intent, the window of opportunity and the capabilities in order to be able to complete it. Russias intent did not change. It was there since putin became the president , to restore this empire and occupy and destroy us. It is still there during all these years, they still want to occupy us, kill us you see everything they are doing. All the war crimes is a genocide of ukrainian people. The window of opportunity, they thought they had it in 2020 two. That is why they attacked us. They still think they can do it, they can outlast us. They can outlast the west. They are trying to drive the wage between us through wedge between us by whatever means possible. They are thinking because they can endure more, they have more weapons or their people are less active and will not be able to go and demonstrate, they can do that. Again, i do not think we can change that. I think all the influence we all can have on is there capacity and capability to fight. That is why more weapons to us