\n Is UK ‘walking towards confrontation’ with Russia? Catch up on latest Ukraine Q&A\n <\/p>\n
Earlier today, we held our regular Ukraine Q&A with Professor Michael Clarke<\/a>, hosted by presenter Matt Barbet<\/a>.<\/p>\n They discussed a range of topics, including Europe seizing Russian oil tankers part of the so-called shadow fleet, the trilateral talks in the UAE today, Zelenskyy’s speech in Davos and more.<\/p>\n Here’s a summary of two of the best answers, or follow the link below to read back the whole thing…<\/p>\n ‘Can we take on Russia?’<\/p>\n One reader asked about whether Europe seizing Russian oil tankers, as France did yesterday, would lead to an escalation or even war.<\/p>\n In response, Clarke warned Britain should be more concerned with whether it could deal with smaller-scale retaliation.<\/p>\n He said: “We’re walking towards some sort of militarised confrontation with Russia, not necessarily a war, but militarised confrontation, and we’re still, as it were, gearing up for it without any real sense of urgency.”<\/p>\n Clarke added: “We have to be very careful because if we do get tough about these ships, which we said we will, and the Russians do react, which they will… have we got the ships and aircraft available to take on a Russian retaliation if necessary? And the answer at the moment is I’m not sure we have.”<\/p>\n Moscow ‘in no mood for ceasefire’<\/p>\n Another reader wanted to know how today’s trilateral talks in the UAE might play out and whether they’d lead to anything.<\/p>\n Clarke’s simple response: “I doubt it.”<\/p>\n His reasoning for this lay in the nature of the Russian delegation sent to the talks.<\/p>\n While Ukraine and the US had put forward their most senior negotiators, Russia has sent a military delegation that, Clarke pointed out, has “no political authority” – meaning they can’t actually make any serious decisions.<\/p>\n Clarke added: “They’re not in any mood to have a ceasefire, and I don’t think we’ll see anything coming out of this meeting.”<\/p>\n Watch the Q&A in full here…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Is UK ‘walking towards confrontation’ with Russia? Catch up on latest Ukraine Q&A Earlier today, we held our…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":425951,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[4,450,451,3,452,453],"class_list":["post-425950","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-breaking-news","tag-breaking-news","tag-breakingnews","tag-headlines","tag-news","tag-top-stories","tag-topstories"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/425950","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=425950"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/425950\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/425951"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=425950"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=425950"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=425950"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}