But what do you think is going on there in terms of this now open infighting between Ukrainian intelligence?

Well, to be honest, there are many theories about this and many hypotheses, but I don't really know which one is the right one.

What I can say is that it's not completely new that you have this, let's say, this divergence between the two.

Remember that in March 2022, Just as we had, or they had, the first round of negotiation between Russia and Ukraine in Gomel, in Belarus, one of the negotiators, Ukrainian negotiator, Kyriev, was killed by the SBU.

And this guy, Kyriev, was in fact a man of the GUR, so the military intelligence service.

And he was the man of the intelligence service at the negotiation table.

which is not completely surprising because very often you have in negotiation, you have people from the intelligence because they have a better background knowledge or things like that.

I spoke this week at the European Parliament to a very small group uh of parliamentarians who are not on board with the proxy war in ukraine are looking for a way out but that's not the majority opinion among their colleagues um what explains do you think europe's attitude right now uh to this war why they so far remain very committed to keeping this war going despite you know put beyond all the damage to ukraine and ukrainians all the damage to you know their own societies you've just had germany's ifda a very you know extremist far-right party have electoral success and part of the reason is because they're calling for diplomacy because people are tired of this war and the high costs of it but yet you know that doesn't seem to be shifting so far the policy among the european leadership

Mm-hmm

...

they don't even have thoughts, by the way.

They have just, uh, uh, predefined messages, and that's it.

The Russian bad, Ukraine good, Iran bad, and, and so on and so forth.

And obviously that's good, as you rightly, uh, said.

For anyone on the street and things like that, that's fine to see the Russians are bad guys and Ukraine ...

Mm-hmm.

And

this was the challenge or the dilemma, if you prefer.

And that was the idea probably to have a document and then to enforce it and probably to force Israel to apply this document.

So I think the first thing which is very important is that this document does exist.

And I think that's very important.

Now, this document is...

I mean, quite heavily based on what Iran asked for, meaning that Iran will most likely implement that because that's exactly what they asked for.

Right.

What do you make of these claims of Russia? And why is Russia now talking about doing something so big in the city of Kiev?

Well, I think it's very important to understand that the strike on Kiev was a reaction, a response to something.

This something was, as you just pointed out, an attack on the Starobilsk school or dormitory of a school, a secondary school or so, that killed 20 or a little bit more of our children.

So the problem is that in Europe, nobody talks about the Starobilsk attack.

So the impression and the feeling that people have is that the Russians have started a new operation on Kiev out of the blue without any reason.

Whereas the Russians have clearly said that it was a response to that event.

Now, we have to understand the whole thing.

What does the European side actually intend to accomplish with all this?

How do you see it?

Well, there are different things.

It's a complex situation for him, in fact, because he's cornered right now.

He expected a very quick success.

And in fact, it was a quick failure.

And now he doesn't know how to get out of this mess.

And he tries to do different things.

How do you see the, that contrasting dynamic on supposed to be on what's our joint side?

These are the two islands you're talking about right here, right?

Well, these are the, the very so tiny...

Uh, this is the, the, the, the Lesser and the Greater Tunb and which are, in fact, the, the key, uh, uh, islands to control the, the, the, the, the channel where the tankers can go.

In fact, there is on both sides of those islands, you have like a, like a highway, if you want.

Uh, on one side you have the tankers go out, and the other side they go in, uh, the, uh, Persian Gulf.

So these island are very important.

The, uh, island of Qeshm is also important, but it's much bigger, and in order to, again, control over those places, uh, you see that this arch that you have on the north of the Hormuz Strait is huge.

Uh, what do you make of that?

They're following the target bank, and they're taking it one by one, and they have more modern, more sophisticated missiles we haven't seen yet.

yet.But I've, I know that they have even newer ones in their stockpile, and their stockpiles are full.

I mean, have no illusions, you know.

Oh, the Iranians have run out because they are firing fewer missiles.

This is nonsense.

I mean, the Iranians are, are doing this very carefully.

Why fire lots of missiles to try and draw out and deplete the intercept base wh-when you don't have to? One missile a day, if it's a hypersonic or, or one with multiple warheads, some of them have eighty submunition warheads, um, landings with a twenty kilo warhead in each.

Well, one of the other things that we don't, that we didn't understand, which is really impacting where this is gonna go here, and I think that we still don't, based on comments from President Trump last night and what they think, uh, Hegseth said yesterday, what they think is gonna bring them to their knees is an understanding of the Iranian people.

Is this one of those cases that you're describing right now, a case of one man's terrorist is another man's freedom fighter? So it depends on which side of the equation you look on in terms of what they have or haven't done.

It's exactly that.

We define what is terrorist or not.

By the way, it's interesting to see that the, uh, the, uh, the Iranians have, have defined EU air forces and navy members, I mean, tho- those, I mean, the whole of the European navies and air force, as terrorists.

They have defined them as terrorists.

So if you are a French pilot traveling somewhere in Iran, you could be arrested and condemned as a terrorist.Meaning that, and I- I'm, I'm not saying this is very, uh, very wise to do such thing, but we do exactly that.

What defines a terrorist? You know, we decide in the West that Hezbollah, for instance, is a terrorist organization or Hamas, but in fact it's just us.

I- it's hard for me to get my head around that.

So with that background, before we get into the Iranian war, how are you, where are you, and can you move about?

[laughs] Well, first of all, thank you very much for the invitation, and thank you for, uh, your interest in my case.

Well, I'm still in Brussels.

Um, that's where I live.

I'm still, uh, uh, not allowed to travel.

That means I'm not tra- allowed to travel back to my country.

I'm still prisoner [laughs] so to say, in Belgium.

How, uh, long do you think, uh, this will go on before the Americans realize that, uh, they can't conquer, uh, Iran or before the opposite to that happens? How do you see this playing out?

What do you think?

Well, absolutely.

And in fact, that's exactly what...

Hexet told the Europeans in February last year when he was talking to Europeans of NATO he was saying now we need to have a division of labor and the Europeans should take over the defense of Europe because it's a reality and the issue of burden sharing is something I'm hearing about since the 70s And when I entered the intelligence, we were already talking about burden sharing, because at that time, of course, it was the issue that, in fact, the US was taking much of the burden of the defense of Europe already at that time, even if European armies were much more consistent as they are today.

The problem is that with the so-called peace dividends, The Europeans understood that they could set their priorities differently.

They understood that the war in Europe was unlikely, and therefore they reduced their defense spending to the minimum.

And the result is that today you have armies with almost nothing in that.

But before we let you go, I want to know if you can kind of give us an update on what's the situation with these ridiculous sanctions that have been put on you and has any progress been made to get those lifted?

How is it that a person, that any person could be sanctioned for speech, let alone a person who has dedicated his entire professional life to the military of Switzerland?

Well, well, first of all, thank you very much for inviting me.

Good morning, uh, (laughs) to United States and happy to be on your show.

As well, tha- that's an interesting question because, uh, in fact, I've never done anything that breached any law in Europe and anywhere, by the way, because I'm accused of doing some Russian propaganda or even being on pro-Russian, uh, uh, channels or programs.

Now, there is no law against propaganda.

Nobody knows exactly what this word, uh, uh, mean.

I mean, we know what it means, but we don't know what it covers legally.

How do you think the special military operation will end? I mean, isn't it rather obvious that the Ukrainian military will collapse?

So where is this going? And have they talked to the Russians?

Well, I think the first thing to notice here is that we have the Western world or Western countries keeping talking to each other while ignoring completely another important actor of the war, which is Russia.

I mean, I have done many works on mediation in smaller conflict in Africa.

I mean, you always have to consider both parties if you want to mediate in something.

If you want to achieve something, if you want to have some kind of an agreement, you have to consider both parties.

Regardless of who this party is, whether you like it or not, they are part of the conflict.

They, at the end of the day, they have to accept what you are saying or what you propose.

Can you expand on that a little bit?