Conflict Zone: Recent Episodes
DW
Conflict Zone is DW’s top political interview program. Join us each week as our hosts put tough questions to top guests from around the world. Get beyond the soundbite – enter the Conflict Zone.
Sudan is the scene of one of the world's worst humanitarian crises, and millions have fled the civil war. The former PM tells DW that the displacement and famine are "much, much greater than Gaza and Ukraine combined."
Israeli former justice minister Yossi Beilin discusses prospects for a future solution in the wake of Israel's killing of the Hamas leader in Gaza.
Jordanian former FM Marwan Muasher tells DW that Tehran has less ability to influence events in Lebanon following Israeli strikes.
What are the Kremlin's goals? Russia has expanded its reach in Africa following a series of coups. Yusuf Tuggar tells DW Nigeria pursues "strategic autonomy."
Estonia's intel chief shares his assessment of Russia's war in Ukraine and Zelenskyy's "victory plan."
Will the West betray Ukraine? Ukrainian MP & leader of Voice party says much will depend on the outcome of the US election. Kira Rudik told DW that Russia and China are preparing for a "bigger war."
Finland's Foreign Minister Elina Valtonen says there is no easy way back to relations with Russia. On Conflict Zone she speaks to Sarah Kelly about migration as a weapon in Russia's hybrid warfare and about Europe's continued support for Ukraine in defending itself against Russia's invasion.
Hardline diaspora affairs minister Amichai Chikli says he doesn't care about criticism of Israeli military goals, including an IDF spokesman's recent statements that "Hamas is an idea" and can't be militarily defeated. He also defended the use of bombing despite the high number of civilian casualties and advocated not accepting Palestinian statehood in the wake of the post-October 7 realities.
Ukrainian journalist and author Illia Ponomarenko refuses to give up hope and insists war shows how ordinary people can do incredible things. He tells DW that "life will prevail."
Poland’s new center-left government has launched a series of reforms since the far-right Law and Justice Party was ousted in 2023. Justice Minister Adam Bodnar tells DW Warsaw will need more time to complete the process.
The French president’s call for snap elections as he faces historic disapproval could put Le Pen’s far right party in power.
EU Commission Vice-President for Values and Transparency, Vera Jourova, and EPP President Manfred Weber talk to DW's Tim Sebastian about their concerns ahead of the European elections 2024.
Washington's former Mideast negotiator told DW he fears possible ICC arrest warrants seem to many Israelis as "creating moral equivalency" between Israeli officials and the Hamas leaders who ordered the October 7 attack.
Norwegian Refugee Council head Jan Egeland tells Tim Sebastian that the devastation in Gaza is already unprecedented and an Israeli military operation against Rafah would be a "bloodbath."
Ukraine can still win the war against Russia if the West steps up its game, the Baltic country's Foreign Minister Krisjanis Karins tells DW.
How Russia’s 'obedient majority' will elect Vladimir Putin to a fifth term and why it matters, from Moscow analyst Andrei Kolesnikov.
Egypt's previous Foreign Minister Nabil Fahmy tells DW that neither Israel nor Hamas will likely accept a long-term peace deal. Fahmy says that if Israel wants lasting security, it must end occupation in the Palestinian territories.
Senior Democrat and former US House Speaker Nancy Pelosi talks about the wars in Gaza, Ukraine and tensions over Taiwan. Speaking to DW's Tim Sebastian, during this year's MSC, she also discussed the upcoming US election.
DW's Sarah Kelly hosted a high-level panel at this year's Munich Security Conference. The war in Gaza and prospects for a long-term peace between Israelis and Palestinians were discussed by the Prime Minister of the Palestinian Authority Mohammed Shtayyeh, Israel's former Foreign Minister Tzipi Livni, Jordan's Foreign Minister Ayman Safadi and others.
Israel's war against Hamas has claimed nearly 30,000 lives, most of them civilians in Gaza. Israel so far failed to achieve its aim of eliminating the militant Islamist group. Former Mossad chief Efraim Halevy tells DW no end is in sight.
A Ukrainian opposition politician tells DW that Kyiv cannot afford "autocratic tendencies" from the president. MP Oleksiy Goncharenko said the country could not win against Russia unless it remained a democracy.
Palestinian politician and activist Mustafa Barghouti tells DW he expects the International Court of Justice to order Israel to stop the war in Gaza.
A top Russian analyst told DW that 2023 has been a "surprisingly good year" for Russian President Vladimir Putin and his war on Ukraine. The level of Western support for Ukraine will determine the course of 2024, Alexander Gabuev told Conflict Zone's Tim Sebastian.
Can Israel accomplish its goal of eliminating Hamas without further humanitarian catastrophe in Gaza? One US analyst tells DW it requires "magical thinking."
Ukraine's ambassador to Germany, Oleksii Makeiev, discusses the stalemate on the battlefield and the future of Western support.
More than 800,000 people have fled to UN emergency shelters in central and southern Gaza, Juliette Touma of the UNRWA told Conflict Zone, adding that number exceeded her agency's "worst case scenarios." Touma says the coming winter will exacerbate already desperate circumstances in Gaza. Her agency, which cares for Palestinian refugees, has had more than 100 staff members killed in the conflict.
Ex-Shin Bet head Ami Ayalon asks the international community to "tell us our mistakes" and how to avoid human suffering in Gaza while removing Hamas.
The Swedish Foreign Minister tells DW only a two-state solution will bring peace to Israelis and Palestinians. Tobias Billstrom said the immediate priority was the release of hostages kidnapped by Hamas and bringing aid to the people of Gaza.
"In both cases ... people think that they can just brutally, by force, rewrite the rules," said Lithuanian PM Simonyte, adding she is confident Western support to Kyiv will continue despite the Israeli operation in Gaza.
"Netanyahu is history, he's done," Ehud Olmert told DW. He called the current Israeli leaders "violent, messianic thugs" and said that long term, Palestinians must be able to "exercise their right to self-determination."
Russia's former deputy foreign minister Andrei Fedorov says Russia would need to change strategy and launch massive missile strikes across Ukraine to win the war.
A former NATO Deputy Commander tells DW the only way to stop Putin’s nuclear saber-rattling is to build credible defense.
A senior Ukrainian defense official tells DW that Kyiv's goals remain the same despite the slow progress of its counteroffensive. Yuriy Sak says territorial concessions have not worked with Russia.
Pakistan's former prime minister has said a "total crackdown" against his party is underway. Imran Khan welcomed fresh elections, but wondered whether his party would be allowed to contest them.
After leaving Ukraine and marching towards Moscow, Russian Wagner Group mercenaries were branded traitors – but just days later, its leader, Yevgeny Prigozhin, met with Vladimir Putin in the Kremlin. Are there more surprises coming from this so-called rebellion?
Following the failed Wagner mutiny, one analyst with sources within Russian security services says Yevgeny Prigozhin is not the biggest threat. "The reaction of the army is what matters now," Andrei Soldatov, an investigative journalist and expert on Russian security services, tells DW.
As the US tries to halt the slide in relations with China, Beijing’s determination to "reunify" Taiwan with the mainland is still the sticking point. Taiwan's foreign minister, Joseph Wu, talks to DW's Tim Sebastian from Taipei.
Ukraine’s long-anticipated counteroffensive is underway. Can Kyiv deliver enough success to keep Western aid flowing? Deputy PM Olha Stefanishyna tells DW that victory means Ukraine's sovereignty is restored, as well as the international order.
Sudanese-British billionaire Mo Ibrahim, who has spent much of the last two decades addressing the importance of good governance in Africa, says Sudan has no government. Ibrahim called for an arms export ban.
Speaking to DW's Conflict Zone after Moscow's "subdued" Victory Day parade, Nina Khrushcheva says, "the question of prestige is no longer that relevant for Putin."
"We need to convince our citizens across the EU what's at stake is the future of the European Union," says EU Council chief Charles Michel. But is Brussels doing all it can to ensure a Ukrainian victory?
US lawyer Alan Dershowitz says the proposed Israeli judicial reforms are none of Europe's business. The longtime Harvard law professor says that even if the reforms put forward by Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu were enacted, Israel would remain a "vibrant, vital democracy." Dershowitz does oppose what he calls a "weakening" of the court.
A former top Kremlin advisor tells DW Putin has always acted like a mafia boss. Sergei Guriev, Professor of Economics and Provost at Sciences Po in Paris, was a top economic advisor and banking official who fled Moscow in 2013. He now says the Russian president will use every additional dollar to "kill Ukrainians" but added that sanctions are keeping cash from the Kremlin.
Moldovan Foreign Minister Nicolae "Nicu" Popescu says his country is "managing to manage" in a "very difficult region" following Russia's war of agression in Ukraine. Popescu told DW's Tim Sebastian that Kyiv "liberating all of its territories is the best way to keep Moldova's path to the EU open." He also said his country had been the target of Kremlin hybrid attacks for more than 30 years.
Ivanna Klympush-Tsintsadze called for a tribunal to bring Russians who commit war crimes in Ukraine to justice. The Ukrainian MP told DW the recent arrest warrant for war crimes issued by the International Criminal Court against Russian President Vladimir Putin would further isolate Moscow. She called the cases of Ukrainian children taken by Russian authorities in occupied territories "genocide."
The fates of Ukraine and Belarus are "intertwined," says Sviatlana Tsikhanouskaya, the leader of Belarus's opposition now living in exile. But why is Kyiv reluctant to offer its support to her movement?
A retired senior Chinese military officer told DW that the balloon incident was an "inadvertent" accident, but Senior Colonel Zhou Bo also expressed concern that "extreme competition" could lead to conflict with the US. Zhou also told host Tim Sebastian that if China took sides in Russia’s war in Ukraine, it would lead to World War Three.
Amid some of the worst violence in years between Israelis and Palestinians, the US secretary of state has said the only way to end the conflict is a two-state solution — but is that still possible? DW asks the head of the Palestinian mission to the UK, Husam Zomlot.
"Consensus is not a liability," the US envoy to NATO says, referring to the recent debate over delivering Western tanks to Ukraine. Julianne Smith says each NATO member comes with its own perspective but that the alliance is united in its purpose. She also told DW it was up to Kyiv to determine when it was ready to negotiate with Russia.
Vladimir Putin’s nuclear threats should be taken seriously, Russian foreign & defense policy expert tells DW. Dmitri Trenin who served in Russian military intelligence says the Kremlin sees the war in Ukraine as an “existential” fight.
Former Trump Russia advisor Fiona Hill tells DW that Vladimir Putin "still has his sights set on the capitulation of Ukraine."
Putin is trying to create a "puppet regime" in Minsk, the spokesman for Belarus' democratic opposition tells DW.
DW's Conflict Zone asks why Budapest has been at odds with EU members over Ukraine and made decisions that could please the Kremlin.
Eliot Higgins, founder of the open-source research nonprofit Bellingcat, explains how the group pieces together information to document Russian war crimes in Ukraine. This is the "best hope" of bringing accountability, Higgins told DW.
Belgrade is destabilizing the Balkans through illegal structures and its failure to acknowledge crimes of the past, Kosovo Prime Minister Albin Kurti told Conflict Zone's Tim Sebastian. Kurti said Serbia's relationship with Moscow includes military and economic ties.
Confronting the regime "is a duty of any reasonable person," says one Russian opposition activist and associate of Putin's best-known — and now jailed — critic, Alexei Navalny. But can they justify the risks they are asking people to take?
Iran has been gripped by demonstrations and violent crackdowns sparked by the death of 22-year-old Iranian-Kurdish woman Jina Mahsa Amini. But is Iran’s government listening? DW's Conflict Zone spoke to Mohammad Marandi, professor at Tehran University.
"The risk of letting President Putin win is much higher than to continue to support Ukraine," said NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg. He spoke with Conflict Zone host Sarah Kelly in a special live interview from the Berlin Foreign Policy Forum.
Moscow's former chief rabbi tells DW that those who can, should leave Russia. Pinchas Goldschmidt, who spent the last 30 years building Jewish life in the shadow of the Kremlin, says the rise in antisemitism is alarming.
Will Vladimir Putin pose more of a threat to the West if he wins - or if he loses? DW's Conflict Zone asked Andrei Kolesnikov, a senior fellow at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, in Moscow.
A senior advisor to Ukraine's President Volodymyr Zelenskyy has rejected the Kremlin's call for negotiations, saying talks will only take place on the battlefield right now. Ihor Zhovkva told DW that while Vladimir Putin's nuclear threats needed to be taken seriously, but his call for negotiations wasn't credible.
Veteran Russian diplomat Boris Bondarev, who resigned in protest of the war and spoke to DW from an undisclosed location, says Vladimir Putin has created a situation from which he has no good exit.