EP267 Global Conflict Update from Ukraine to Syria, with Attorney Andy Semotiuk

The video discusses the current global conflicts, focusing on the situations in Ukraine/Russia and Syria. Some of the main points include:

• The ongoing war between Russia and Ukraine, now in its third year, with little progress being made. There are concerns about the potential for Russia to attack the Zaporizhzhia nuclear power plant.
• The changing dynamics in Ukraine, with President Zelensky proposing a “peace plan” that focuses on Ukraine’s valuable natural resources rather than just territorial disputes. There is debate about whether Ukraine could potentially join NATO as part of a peace deal.
• The complex situation in Syria, with various rebel groups vying for power after the civil war. Russia and Iran had backed the Assad regime, but their influence may be waning as new groups take control. Israel has also been bombing targets in Syria.
• The potential impact of the change in U.S. leadership, with President-elect Trump signaling a more isolationist approach compared to the Biden administration’s stated intention to be more involved.
• The broader geopolitical tensions in the region, with countries like Turkey, Iran, Israel, and others having competing interests and alliances.

The discussion highlights the complexity of these global conflicts, with many different actors and interests at play. The experts express hope for progress towards peace, but also caution about the potential for further instability and violence.

TRANSCRIPT:

Speaker 1  00:01

Global conflict update from Ukraine to Syria with attorney Andy Semotiuk. That is our topic for today. Welcome to the Lawyers and Mediators International show and podcast where we discuss law and conflict resolution topics to educate both professionals and everyday people. Catch regular episodes on YouTube and anywhere you get your podcast. Just remember, nothing in these episodes constitutes legal advice, so be sure to talk to a lawyer as cases are fact dependent. Hi everyone, this is attorney Mac Pierre-Louis, lawyer, mediator, arbitrator and I work throughout Florida and Texas and with me today have a guest who’s back to talk more about global affairs and that is attorney Andy Semotiuk. Andy, how are you doing?

Speaker 2  00:52

Fantastic glad to be with you here today.

Speaker 1  00:55

Yes, Sir thank you so much for coming back again and so we were starting to make this kind of a routine because you have so much knowledge when it comes to global affairs, global relations, immigration, the law. It’s great to have you come and talk to the folks about what’s going on current events wise, especially when it comes to the war in Ukraine and Russia and what’s going on now in the Middle East lots of hot spots around the world, but a little bit about yourself just for folks who may not be familiar with you you are an attorney licensed in the US and in Canada, specifically in California, New York Ontario, British Columbia. And you were a correspondent for the UN with the UN for years and you are currently and you have been for the last decade a contributor for Forbes. And so you’ve been publishing and I know you’ve written some books as well i think that you had a kids book as well.

Speaker 2  01:58

Correct i have a cute joke book for kids.

Speaker 1  02:03

Exactly and so, you know, Jack of all trades, right lots of different things when it comes to literature and literacy and and so it’s good to have you on and let’s talk more about the topic, but I will screen share a couple of things one is your law firm, the Pace law that’s where you do your immigration work. So for folks who have an interest in anything loving immigration, check out the Pace Law Firm (PaceLawFirm.com). The other one is your Forbes page where there’s a link this is a link to all of your different articles that you’ve published. I’m going back in time. And your most recent one, of course, is on the US’s deportation plans under the incoming president-elect Donald Trump. And so folks can check those articles out if they are interested. And so that’s immigration but let’s focus our time now for the next 20 minutes on what’s going on globally. So First things first, can you kind of give us a status on since we’ve last spoken about global affairs and what’s going on specifically when it comes to Ukraine and Russia and now what, when is what’s happening in Syria?

Speaker 2  03:22

Sure. Well, a key factor is the fact that Donald Trump won the election and is about to take office as president of the United States, which signals a change in international relations pertaining to the United States and its influence both in Eastern Europe but also in the Middle East. Taking the Eastern European part first, there’s this continuing war, Russia invading Ukraine. It’s been, it’s now in its third year. There’s a not a stalemate, but there’s little, it seems like little progress being made on the ground. You know, a few meters here and there or whatever kilometers, but no great breakthroughs. There have been some spectacular events in that war, such As, for example, Russia shooting a new missile that travels at three times the speed of sound at Dnipro. And I just happened to talk to some people from Ukraine who came in and talked to me about this huge strike from from Moscow and how it’s impossible to shoot these missiles down because they’re so fast and they’re huge in terms of size. But it’s not, you know, that’s one missile they shot one missile so far along those lines. The key problem in Ukraine generally in terms of dangers is the Zaporizhzhia nuclear power plant, which is the largest plant in Europe and right now under Russian domination and this. And the fear is that if things don’t go properly, Russia could explode that nuclear power plant and it would be a dirty bomb, essentially a dirty nuclear bomb that could pollute the environment throughout Europe and in Russia and so on. That’s a a big danger on the nuclear front. More so than that, Russia will shoot nuclear missiles, even tactical or strategic missiles on Ukraine or NATO or or whatever there’s some talk about let me.

Speaker 1  05:59

Let me ask you about that dirty bomb idea it’s my, it’s my first time hearing about that but do you think that’s even remotely likely because it doesn’t seem, it seems kind of suicidal in my opinion. Doesn’t seem.

Speaker 2  06:12

It’s true. It would be, I would say, something of last resort that Putin could potentially, you know, go out with the, the scenario is changing in Ukraine here’s an interesting element to the the change in Ukraine. Until now, the American emphasis has been on, you know, that this is a a threat to International Security because it’s the first time since World War 2 that a nation in Europe has invaded another nation. And it’s, you know, a threat to the international rules based order that to allow Russia to invade and and take advantage of gains that it’s it has made will set a precedent in terms of how China might deal with Taiwan and North Korea. You know, how things how other dictators, for example, might behave because of the precedent being made in Ukraine that has been and the Budapest Memorandum under which or accords under which the US,UK, France, China all assured Ukraine that if it surrenders its nuclear arsenal of Ukraine’s sovereignty will be respected, including Russia by the way that took the nuclear arms that they would respect the. That’s been the traditional line. An interesting thing that happened is that the the President of Ukraine, Volodymyr Zelensky, seeing that Trump has come to power and on his own, has come up with what he calls a peace plan, which changes the focus from what I just described to another focus. And the focus here is now that Ukraine is a, a, a jewel in terms of the resources that it has and that could be made available to the West. Indeed, it’s calculated that within the Ukrainian boundaries, there is something like twenty seven trillion dollars worth of very valuable resources, oil, minerals of unique minerals that are needed for space travel and other, you know, like cars and things of that nature. Just Crimea on its own the the oil and gas reserves that are around on the coast of Crimea are I think about two trillion dollars so the dynamic has become be smart America, Trump, you’re a businessman. Take advantage of these resources that are at your disposal or could be at your disposal to develop them with your partners in Europe. And don’t surrender them to China and Russia and allow them to take advantage of these, this huge cachet of resources. And so it’s along that line that the discussions are going now. And there is some discussion about a potential peace meeting where they would discuss, you know, what could be done, but the element of peace. And this was kind of summarized, this whole area is evasive for Trump because, yes, Trump can apply great pressure on Zelensky in Ukraine to, you know, back off, cut you off from money and weapons and so on. But his leverage when it comes to Putin is nowhere near as great. And you got to wonder, well, how is he going to bring Putin to the table? Putin, there’s a debate going on on what Putin wants in Ukraine. One element of the debate is he wants Kiev, Kiev because it’s the mother of, in his view, Russia. You know, historically it’s brought Christianity to that part of the world, etcetera. Or another view is, well, he doesn’t care so much about Kiev. What he cares about is the the passageway from what is now seized Ukrainian lands through to Odessa on the South and control over Crimea, as well as the what eastern provinces of of Ukraine. But either way, there’s a territorial element to what does this guy want and what can be obtained in a peace deal where he gets territory in exchange for, again, agreeing that the rest of the territory is going to be protected by securities. And the discussion has been with the rest of Ukraine be able to join NATO or at least be invited to an agreement along the lines of joining NATO with security being provided by NATO countries or NATO soldiers anyway, that’s an update of what’s going on on that front.

Speaker 1  11:35

Well, thank you so much. Couple questions just to get your thoughts do you think that the possibility exists for Ukraine proper, you know, less some of its land to be included into NATO? I heard of Tom Cotton, US Senator, I think from Missouri, you know, recently being interviewed where he was asked a question, should NATO be opened up to include Ukraine and he said that was that’s a bad idea it’s going to bring us automatic into into a new war, into a hot war. But is that the case? Is it is it possible that the whole bring Ukraine to NATO thing could be included as part of a peace deal? Kind of imagine Zelensky and Putin go to Camp David with Trump and outcomes this idea where Ukraine now has a protection. You have to fear anymore that it might be invaded in the future because it’s not part of NATO, but at the same time it’s lost territory is that conceivably something that might take place?

Speaker 2  12:39

Hard to say. That’s a very NATO partners and people like Cotton and others are very, you know, skittish about an idea like that and Ukraine from their point of view. The thing is we had a security guarantee, you know, a multi party, multi government security guarantee. And where did that lead us in terms of where we are now? Nuclear proliferation is an element in this discussion also a while ago, I don’t know, a few years ago, Kissinger, Schultz and a few other foreign former, you know, secretaries from the United States, you know, foreign secretary types from the United States, published, I think it was a lost New York Times article calling for the world to go in the direction of nuclear disarmament and that the future belongs to that category well, Ukraine disarmament disarmed and is probably the the centerpiece for the for the argument why you should not disarm given your exposure. But to direct an answer specifically to your question, there are parties who believe Ukraine should be given that the closer the country is to Ukraine, the more favorable it is to allowing Ukraine to join NATO. What is, you know, the parts of Ukraine that are not under Russia to start with and negotiations about the rest of Ukraine, So for example, Poland, the Baltic States and so on, Romania are very close to or willing to consider allowing Ukraine to join. The further away you go from the border over there, the less enthusiastic people are about it. It’s debatable. And there’s several elements of this equation that are debatable for example, Ukraine, the war in Ukraine, from the Ukrainian point of view, is not about land you know, Russia has all the land it wants it’s got it’s the biggest country in the world in terms of land. It’s about people. And the problem is, you know, slaughters behind enemy line. There are 5 million Ukrainians that are behind enemy lines, so to speak, in eastern Ukraine under Russian occupation, 5 million. Anybody who’s a patriot or a danger to Russia is in danger, to say the least. You know, So the problem is if they seal the border and that’s what they get, they’ll slaughter all those people or mostly anybody who exhibits any hostility towards Russia and so, and there’s these all these children there’s a hundred thousand Ukrainian children that are all somewhere in Russia taken away from their parents and told their parents don’t want them anymore. I’m trying to they’re trying to turn them into anyway.

Speaker 1  15:56

That’s.

Speaker 2  15:57

The puzzle that they have to sort out, you know, in one way or another, it may mean that the war will continue. Here’s another angle i’ll just throw this one last thing at you. Economically, it appears that Russia is about 6 months away from bankruptcy. I use the term bankruptcy loosely, 6 months away from finish that’s it economically the the inflation, the economy maybe has about six months left. So if Ukraine and the West can hang on for six months, it may be that economy that the Russia will implode and some other options may come up.

Speaker 1  16:42

Yeah, well, that’s kind of what happened to the Soviet Union, right i mean, it fell apart under its own weight. It couldn’t keep bankrolling, you know, such military adventures so. Ok, All right, Well, let’s connect the dots now to the Middle East because Russia is also connected to Syria so bring us up to speed what’s going on in Syria. And if you could give us also a little bit of a history lesson, that might be helpful.

Speaker 2  17:10

Well, this guy, Assad, Bashar al-Assad who’s been running Syria for since 2000 and who went through a civil war and seemed to have won the civil war and ruled Syria ruthlessly as a tyrant, essentially with Russian backing and Iranian backing through the civil war, including like attacks on hospitals, schools and so on, where resistance appeared. And there’s a whole group of or a number of sort of resisting organizations. The one that’s leading the pack is this thing called Hyatt Tahrir al Sham and HTS for short. And the guy who’s leading them is Abu Muhammad al Jolani, who initially appeared to be sort of an Al Qaeda aspirant, a sort of Syrian planted Al Qaeda guy. And who is no, is not known for his democratic views or respect for human rights or anything of that nature but his his organization seems to be the leading organization that have displanted Assad to the point where Assad fled and and went to Moscow and I guess it’s claiming asylum in Moscow. So we got this new group that has now come to the fore and it’s appears to be leading Syria. There are a number of other groups there’s the Syrian National Army, which is Turkish backed. And that group, it wants to sort of Turkey doesn’t want the Kurds, who are a dominant group in the north of Syria, to gain too much autonomy and so on, because there are a lot of Kurds in Turkey. And there’s the danger that the Kurdistan, a new Kurdistan, which is currently split between, I think about 5 countries, but a large part of it is in Turkey and a large part of it is in Syria. They don’t want the the new Kurdistan to arise to split Turkey and cause trouble for Turkey so Turkey is backing this rebel group called Syrian National Army, SNA. And then there’s a Syrian Democratic Group, which is the Kurdish side of the equation and then there’s another Syrian National Coalition. Which is various other opposition groups, but that whole cocktail of those organizations has taken over leadership in Syria and they’re trying to settle and somehow make a go of it of that country given all those various. And we have, at least in the beginning, assurances that the leadership is trying to respect the rights of all the parties and trying to reach some sort of accommodation between the parties with respect to outside countries. You mentioned Russia, of course, and there’s Iran that has their own interest in in Syria, Turkey and the United States. Now, Iran and Russia backed Assad and in the civil war they backed them. And there was, you know, chemical warfare and everything, but they, they quashed the rebels for seven years, I guess, until now. And now, because the opposition has gained force, it appears that Russian and Iran have lost their influence in that area. Although there has been a discussion online or, you know, in the media to the effect that Russia has not really lost what it wants in Syria, which is the warm water port and airport. But that it has essentially agreed with Turkey to allow Turkey to exert its influence over Syria in exchange for a peaceful continuation of its presence in Russia’s presence in Syria in those two, the warm water board in the airport, which is basically the strategic thing they want. And this this view is based on Russia’s interest in continuous attack on Ukraine and does not have the resources and time to continue a fight in Syria. So they’re going to back off and allow Turkey to sort of exert its influence over Syria and the United States, on its part, supports the Kurds in Syria and, of course, Israel. And OK, you got a good map there That sort of yeah.

Speaker 1  22:40

We have to have a map to have this conversation i’m just realizing that because I’ve actually been looking at the map pretty closely the last number of days to get my geographical sense on where everything is because I was shocked that Turkey borders Syria by so much and borders Iran and borders Iraq it was a little interesting to me. But I’m bringing this up and sure, if you’re listening to this episode, check out the YouTube video. But go ahead, continue, please.

Speaker 2  23:07

Yeah so, so, you know, most recently Israel has been bombing those places in Syria where there are arms and military places trying to get rid of any bombs and, and military hardware that could be a threat to Israel. And they have occupied the Golan Heights part of Syria, because that’s it. That’s a strategically important place from the point of view of protecting Israel from attacks from Syria. And also the Israelis have bombed Hezbollah in in Lebanon and essentially cleaned Hezbollah out of Lebanon in the in terms of militarily defeating Hezbollah. And Hezbollah’s tied into Iran and has also had an influence in Syria so so Syria is a cocktail of various groups who are vying with each other for power there. But it can be said that the influence of Russia in Syria and Iran in Syria has eclipsed and may have eclipsed because of either the the rebels taking charge of Syria and or in the case of Russia agreeing with Turkey you, you take the lead in Syria just leave our our little possessions intact so we have our access to the Mediterranean, etcetera.

Speaker 1  25:02

Yeah.

Speaker 2  25:02

Well, that’s a brief outline of what’s going on in Syria.

Speaker 1  25:06

Well, thank you so some thoughts. You know, I was a Poli-sci major in college, so this has always been fascinating to me. And I got my certificate in international relations because I’ve always been fascinated, you know, buy these, you know, hotspots on the world. So whenever I think about Syria now, I think about the Balkans and I think about how, man, this is like a power to kick waiting to explode because you have so many different actors, different interests i don’t think some people even know what their interests are, honestly. Just because you don’t know who’s supposed.

Speaker 2  25:38

Who?

Speaker 1  25:39

Ultimately, at the end of the day, you got Israel is, you know, bombing, you know, factories left and right, you know, plants, equipment left and right, basically arguing that they don’t want anybody get any crazy ideas, right, lest they be attacked. You have Turkey with the whole Kurdistan thing. You have Iran who just lost basically a land bridge to Lebanon and, and I don’t know what Iraq’s you know, role is on in all of this because Iraq is supposed to be an ally of the US and it has the longest border with Syria. So, and, but, but Turkey’s supposed to be the US’s ally as well, but now they’re making deals with Russia. I, I just don’t know what to make of it. I honestly don’t it’s just.

Speaker 2  26:30

Well, it’s, you’re right, it’s it’s hard to sort of figure out which way is up in this battle but you mentioned the Balkans and that it’s a powder cake. Well, that was exactly what it was when we’re coming into World War One, I guess, you know, and back then Turkey was, you know, the Ottoman Empire and it was one of the huge empires like Austro, Hungary, German, you know, the Ottoman Empire, British Empire, etcetera. So there there, there’s a bit of that going on in this area. It’s just might meant that just might mention that Georgia is another country that is up in arms because its leaders have backed away from the Western European orientation. And it’s on this, you know, it’s on the border with Russia and indeed, Russia’s occupying certain parts of Georgia. And and there’s like millions of Georgians up in arms over this, this bad election that appears to have been rigged and that they’re trying to, you know, get back on track, so to speak. So in terms of, let’s say, from a global perspective, where we headed, one of the keys is what’s happening with Trump in Washington i think that’s a central question for all this stuff because generally speaking, you could say that Trump’s orientation with, you know, make America Great Again and America First has been very isolationist. And so the the the theme of withdrawing from world events appears to be a popular theme in his camp and with him he.

Speaker 1  28:29

He just published it actually recently trump just said America needs to stay out and let this thing just sorted itself out. And I think that was on a Friday or maybe on a Saturday, because I know I was at the gym and then on Sunday morning, Sunday mid morning, Biden came out and basically announced the USS position, which is, hey, this is, this is what happened. And it’s struck me because I, I thought, OK, you have the president elected saying this is not our problem this is not our fight. No more money we’re not, we don’t care what happens over there and we got Biden coming out and saying, Hey, we got to care about this. So I think that was the reason Biden came out and said it right.

Speaker 2  29:11

There’s this strain of isolationism has been with us in America for well before World War One and, and throughout the wars. And it seems like a, an intelligent thing to say, you know, like it’s their fight it’s not our fight until it becomes our fight. Like Hitler was their fight, not our fight and then all of a sudden Hitler’s our fight. Japan was their fight, you know.

Speaker 1  29:38

Yeah, All people need to do is go listen or read Woodrow Wilson’s speech, 1917. I was listening to it some time ago, and he laid out the reasons why the US had to go in because of the vessels and the ships that were being attacked, you know, by the German Empire at the time. And so he’s like, look, we didn’t want to get into this, but we kind of have no choice at this point. So you never know how this is going to come back and connect back, you know, to the mainland US.

Speaker 2  30:07

You know, we can applaud the fact that there’s change in Syria. Look, Syria had, you know, this civil war and so on drove out 6 8 million Syrians, 1000000 of which showed up in in Europe and like I got the numbers here somewhere. There was also about 6000000 more who were displaced from their homes in Syria, a total of like 12 million people, you know, affected by the war. Turkey got 3 5 million refugees from that, Lebanon almost 1000000 Jordan 650,000 Iraq two hundred and fifty Egypt a hundred and forty thousand. But Europe got a million and it’s an argument to be made that this disruption of so many people and, you know, dislocation, including this refugee tidal wave was in in Putin’s interest because it destabilized Europe and, you know, caused Europe to start fighting over, you know, do we want refugees or we don’t and and so on. And it’s interesting, the numbers are almost identical with Ukraine. Ukraine has 12 million people displaced and about 6 millionaire now outside of Ukraine in Europe. And of that, 200,000 came to Canada and about a hundred and fifty thousand i believe, or so came to the United States. And there are projections if the war goes bad in Ukraine, that up to it’s possible there are up to 20 million more refugees will show up in Western Europe and of course, the pressure will be for them to come to the US and Canada, which will really turn things upside down now. I mean, it’s, it’s we as human beings tend to, I don’t know, we’re either optimistic or pessimistic and you could say, wow, that’s very pessimistic, which it is. You know, hopefully we, we won’t see something that that terrible. And I, you know, there is hope that there will be some progress in Syria, there may be progress in Ukraine, that the butchery that’s been taking place in Israel when twelve hundred people were slaughtered and the, you know, the people were kidnapped or whatever and taken to Gaza. And the subsequent death of some, I think it’s approaching 50,000 thousand people in Gaza from the invasion by the Israeli army. I don’t know. You know, there’s something has to be done to to, I don’t know, somehow clamp down on that.

Speaker 1  33:18

Yeah, Well, yeah, the, the, the killing needs to end and I think a lot of it trades back to Iran, right. And, and so because Iran and Russia are allied, this this Syrian loss to them is a big deal. And it is indeed.

Speaker 2  33:36

And I just throw in there, you know, there’s this little, what would you call it, kind of a little nest of, of people or of, of countries, Russia, Iran, North Korea, North Korea sent like over 10,000 troops to fight in Ukraine, which is crazy. You know, like what, why would they do that but I guess there’s economic aid coming from Russia. It sent in an unbelievable amount of arms North Korea to to help Russia in the war with with Ukraine yeah we got North Korea, you got Iran, you got Russia and the other Cuba and Venezuela and so on lining up and China and. And the question is only five years ago it appeared that the world was headed towards democracy and most nations were going in the direction of democracy. But in the last five years or so, the world is made an about face and they seem to be marching in the opposite direction with the rise, rise in right wing political groups in France, in Romania and so on. You know, Hungary’s leader and there just seems to be an about face in terms of where where the world is headed. But there’s also this can go. This is endless, Mac this is endless. But anyway, you know, India and China aren’t best of buddies either, while India and Pakistan are not the best of buddies. So there’s tension on those two fronts. It’s significant if India and China developed any serious tension because it could kind of upset the balance in terms of it’s a counterweight of China against its cooperation with Russia. If she from President Xi of, of China called Putin and said, OK, that’s it, cut that war, get the heck out of there. That would be the end of the war, I think. One phone call from XI. But that’s not the way things.

Speaker 1  36:06

Everyone’s holding their cards close to their chest because no one knows nobody knows the future so therefore, I think going back to Trump, he was a wild card in a lot of this nobody knew who was going to win the election and now that he’s won, there’s to a degree a little more certainty on where because he he was more, I guess I think he was more clear, you know, than the opposition in the US about where his mind was. And so we’ll see what happens in the next couple weeks I mean, it’s crazy to say that but by January 1st, by January 20th you know, when he’s inaugurated, we’ll see what happens to, you know, what’s going on in both of these hotspots around the world. But yeah, I I do agree that China’s been kind of quiet, though i don’t know if that’s a good thing.

Speaker 2  36:58

They’ve got interest in South China Sea, trying to expand.

Speaker 1  37:03

Well, then again, maybe they’ve been doing a lot of things i just haven’t been keeping up because there’s so much to keep track of. But OK, it’s 37 after we’ve been talking and, you know, I tried to keep these episodes at 20 minutes, but we just got carried away with so much information it’s a lot of fun I mean, I love, you know, talking to you about these things and, and, and, and people who are listening, you know, and watching should understand that. Well, certainly me, I’m not an expert on international relations, just have a natural interest in it. You have so much more knowledge than than I do but I think even you would say that you’re not a, you know, specialist in these things. And so, yeah and so when we talk, we talk, you know, with curiosity and we talk with hope that things will go for the better and then and then just discuss what our observations are. But we certainly, you know, don’t claim to know the absolutes on what should it shouldn’t happen and that we can just wait and see. And we’ve got to talk more about it when it changes. All right. So Andy Semotiuk, thank you so much for the conversation today and we’ll do it again. And Merry Christmas and all that and Happy New Year’s it’s December 11, 2024. And so I’m just waiting on who’s going to be Time Magazine’s person of the year. That’s I always, I always wait for that every year on this time. And then in terms of because geopolitics, hopefully we’ll get some peace in the new year. You know, that’s my hope.

Speaker 2  38:38

Thanks very much for having me on again I loved it and it’s a good conversation.

Speaker 1  38:44

All right, we’ll talk soon and then if you want to check out PaceLawFirm.com. OK, Andy, thank you so much.

Speaker 2  38:50

Thank you.