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ANNA JONES: The Russian President, Vladimir Putin, got a frosty reception at the G20 summit in Australia this weekend.  Canadian Prime Minister, Stephen Harper told him to get out of Ukraine and Barack Obama said Russian aggression posed a threat to the world.  So what is President Putin’s plan?  Well to discuss just that I’m joined by Sir Andrew Wood, he was Britain’s Ambassador to Russia from 1995 to 2000, by Dr Robin Niblett, he is the Director of the international affairs think tank, Chatham House and by writer and broadcaster and Russian expert, Mary Dejevsky, good to see all of you.  We’ll turn our attention to Russia in just a moment but another big international story of course around this morning, this video purporting to show the killing of another US hostage by Islamic State militants has emerged.  Andrew Wood, depressing to hear things like this, we don’t have confirmation that this is indeed authentic but very worrying if it is.  

ANDREW WOOD: It is terrible news.  We call these people militants but they are murderers, that’s the English for it.  This is a good man who fallen into evil hands and that is the beginning and the end of the story.  The political pretence they put up is absolutely nothing to the point, they are killers.

AJ: And do you think, Mary Dejevsky, that this changes anything as far as the west’s reaction to what is going on in Iraq and Syria is concerned?  

MARY DEJEVSKY: Well I don’t think it changes it, it probably reinforces it but I think maybe there is an interesting aspect to the timing here because it looked in some ways that maybe the tide was starting to turn against ISIS and what we are looking at is that ISIS has shown itself extremely canny with its propaganda and maybe this is what we’re looking at here too.  

AJ: Okay, let’s move on to Russia.  Robin Niblett, we have had President Putin leaving the G20 early we’re told, with criticism ringing in his ears you could say.  Tell us what’s actually going on in Russia, for example do we know the extent of Russia’s latest move into Ukraine, what facts do we have?

ROBIN NIBLETT: I suppose the facts we have is that the OSCE observers, a group of observers from the Organisation of Security and Co-operation in Europe have indicated along with NATOs supreme allied commander there, General Breedlove, is that they have seen significant amounts of heavy weaponry in moving across the border from Russia into Ukraine so the suspicion is there is an effort at the very least to help the rebels in eastern regions there in Ukraine to consolidate their position, to consolidate their position and make sure that they the little statelet that has emerged there following recent elections, that that can remain secure, that would be one view.  Of course there is a potential view that where these rebels are is not enough and that as we go into the winter, the Crimea which was annexed earlier in the year, will be vulnerable to being cut off from energy and other water supplies and there may be a desire for those separatists to push out a bit and to use their heavy weaponry as the capability to be able to expand their area, possibly along the south and towards Mariupol and basically to extend the space so we don’t know which of those two things it is yet.  If it’s the latter that’s very serious, if it’s the former probably manageable.  

AJ: Andrew Wood, what do you think President Putin’s ultimate ambitions are here, what do you think he is up to?  

ANDREW WOOD: I think he himself doesn’t fully know.  This is a situation that has a momentum of its own and is a developing situation.  In theory he would like to be able to maintain leverage over Ukraine, Kiev in particular but in practice it’s quite hard to do with just a small asset and Robin is quite right to draw the distinction but the key issue within the enclave that is currently controlled by these people is the airport in Donetsk so I think it is quite possible that the intention is to use these extra reinforcements in an attempt to the airport in the first place.  If they go further and attack the port of Mariupol on the Azov Sea, which they might and which makes logical sense from one point of view, it’s very difficult to know where they are going to stop and to what extent Putin is simply going to add to his problems.  

AJ: So Mary Dejevsky, it is very difficult to know what his ultimate ambition is but what’s motivating him here do you think?  

MARY DEJEVSKY:  Well I think I agree with Andrew, there is a huge amount of indecision in Moscow that it is very hard to just what Putin is actually, what the end game is and the fact that there has been no more decisive move into Eastern Ukraine, what we’ve seen are the little bits on the edges, suggests to me that there is a sort of policy of trying to do the minimum while consolidating the gains that have already been made.  I also think that the last thing that Russia in its current economic and political state needs is extra territory which is hugely dependent and hugely costly to maintain which is what that bit of Eastern Ukraine represents.

AJ: So Robin, Niblett, what can the West do about it?  We’ve had David Cameron warning of increased sanctions if movement is seen to be going on in Ukraine, further into Ukraine, what impact can that have?

ROBIN NIBLETT: The problem is that the West’s options to make President Putin do something different are very limited, very limited.  Ultimately for President Putin, Ukraine is almost existential for his survival, for his vision for a secure and strong Russia in the long term.  For us Ukraine is a little bit of on the edge for Europe, it’s not a member of the European Union, it’s not a member of NATO, it’s a country to which we make commitments of association and of partnership but we don’t have the same stake in the game so therefore whilst sanctions and tightening of sanctions is one option, and David Cameron has talked about this, there will be a meeting of EU Foreign Ministers on Monday to discuss tightening further the sanctions, often the sanctions take a long time to have an effect so although the Russian economy has been hit and is getting worse, if President Putin wants to do more, he’ll do more and the sanctions won’t stop him from doing more.  

AJ: And in the meantime, Sir Andrew Wood, what does this do to relations between the West and Russia?  Some of the language that’s been used at the G20 that I mentioned in our introduction, Barack Obama saying that Russian aggression posed a threat to the world, the Canadian Prime Minister telling him to get out of Ukraine, are we facing a new Cold War do you think?

ANDREW WOOD: I don’t like the words Cold War in this context, this is a quarrel stimulated by the way Russia has developed and because Putin is embarking on an adventure with no clear end game and no clear purpose, what he has done is to tear up the treaties that the government had before and I think the West has been quite right to implement the sanctions on a pretty considerable scale.  Whether it will go further now or not, it’s a long game.  In the short term Putin has considerable support in his own country, in the short term he can terrorise Ukraine as a whole, in the longer term as Mary pointed out, this is going to cost a huge amount of money.  In the long term the fact that he has lied to his own population is going to turn against him, you cannot have your soldiers being killed and then deny that they were there.  It’s a terrible position to be in I think.  

AJ: Mary Dejevsky, what are your thoughts on what the international community should do and why does it matter to them, how important is this relationship?

MARY DEJEVSKY: Well I think the extent to which some of the G20 leaders, the Western G20 leaders were putting on a show in Australia shouldn’t be underestimated because for instance we’re not used to hearing tough talk from Canada but Canada has an interest here because they have a big diaspora anti-Russian Ukrainian community so it is in the interests of Canada’s Prime Minister to put out that particular message for the domestic audience.  Similarly, President Obama, similarly David Cameron and the European leaders.  We haven’t heard what went on in Australia from the non-Western point of view, this was a G20 meeting, it wasn’t the G7, it wasn’t the G8, it wasn’t the European Union, it was the G20.  What were the Chinese saying, what were the Indians saying, what was happening aside from this very ostentatious anti-Russian stance taken by the West?  I think we need to know that.  

AJ: Okay and we’ll leave on that interesting question.  Mary Dejevsky, Sir Andrew Wood and Dr Robin Niblett, very interesting to hear from all of you this morning, thank you.