Zelensky doubts value of week-long energy ceasefire (Full Transcript)

[00:00:00] Speaker 1: President of Ukraine Volodymyr Zelensky says that the next round of peace talks originally scheduled to take place this weekend may be postponed, saying tension between America and Iran could cause a delay. President Zelensky also welcomed an announcement by President Trump that Russia's agreed to halt strikes on Ukraine's energy grid for a week, with temperatures set to plummet again at the weekend. But he said he won't make territorial concessions in exchange for a promise of a Russian ceasefire. Russia's repeated massive attacks on Ukraine's energy network has forced millions of people to endure cuts to electricity, heat and water. It's also prompted warnings of a humanitarian catastrophe, given the bitter winter temperatures. Peter Zalmayev is director of the Eurasia Democracy Initiative. He shared his thoughts on the possibility of de-escalation.

[00:00:55] Speaker 2: Zelensky did say that, you know, this would be a sign of progress. Ukraine needs this sort of energy ceasefire, and in fact I think the Russian side also would like to have a relief from Ukrainian strikes on its oil refining facilities, etc. And so far, you know, the evidence is kind of thin on the ground, this overnight. There have been strikes on various cities in Ukraine, including limited strikes in Kyiv. And you remember the Russian side explained the way, or tried to explain the way, the recent strikes in Odessa and a moving passenger train resulting in the deaths of five, apparently already after Trump had had that discussion with Putin. And the Russians said, oopsie-daisy, these things happen. I guess not all of the, you know, folks in the chain of command have been informed, and so these things happen. So be that as it may, we do need this sort of ceasefire, but I'm just not sure what the, you know, result, what the usefulness will, it will, you know, it will have for us for just a week-long sort of ceasefire. We need this, you know, for the rest of the winter. And that, on that score, I have very serious doubts that Vladimir Putin wants that, because he knows that he's not achieving his military goals in the battlefield. So this is part and parcel of the strikes against civilian infrastructure, it's part and parcel of his strategy to try to bring Ukraine to its knees. Temperatures now are moderate, it's, you know, five below centigrade, but the problem is that, you know, Ukraine has, since the early 90s, had a relatively centralized, you know, heating system in Kiev, and that Allah has allowed Russia to achieve spectacular, you know, objectives, you know, essentially casting whole swaths of Kiev into, you know, darkness and cold. And even if this, once again, ceasefire were to hold for a week, I'm just not sure this would allow the Kievan authorities, for example, to restore much of a power to hundreds of thousands of its residents. I mean, you know, some estimates, according to some estimates, it will take not weeks, but months, and maybe even years, and tens of billions of dollars to restore normalcy to Kiev, at least bring it to pre-war levels.