Thank you to both of you for coming here.
I have some questions for both of you, but after listening to your opening preamble I have more questions than I thought. Let's start with realpolitiks, because I think that both of you are practitioners, and you understand the reality on the ground. Let me start with you, ambassador.
Having travelled to Ukraine, I feel Crimea is effectively lost. Even if you look at Minsk I or Minsk II, there is no mention of Crimea.
I use the historic example of Kashmir, because in Kashmir you have a line of control that now has become the de facto border. If you look at Ukraine, at their line of control in the Donbass that is now temporarily holding, it seems to me that this area of the Donbass that has been taken over by Russia is now effectively being controlled by Russia. Aid has been given there. Structures have been set up because now Ukrainians don't have the ability to go there and set up simple things, whether a health care institution or an educational institution, so Russians are ultimately providing that service. So without firing a single shot, effectively they've taken over Ukraine.
As a counterweight to that, to me you raise a very interesting point that they could have gone into Tbilisi but they didn't. So effectively, if you look at the region, they've heightened the tension there and kept everybody on high alert, which you know is not sustainable. You can't keep up the spending on NATO where it's 2%, and going back to the professor's point, domestic politics plays a great role, but these countries can't sustain that kind of spending. They don't have the economy, and we were there.
Effectively, Russia's game is not necessarily to take over by firing shots. On top of that, there's the presence of the Russian media in those areas, because some of these countries still have a high ethnic Russian population, so if you look at Russia today and the other media—effectively in these countries that's the only media they have—not only do they have a military presence, but they also have a media presence. How are you going to resolve this going forward?