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March 21, 2022 - The Ben Shapiro Show
46:52
Is Ukraine Going To Be A Stalemate? | Ep. 1457
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Defense analysts say that the war in Ukraine may be a stalemate.
Russia claims it used a hypersonic missile.
And China continues to play both sides.
I'm Ben Shapiro.
This is the Ben Shapiro Show.
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We'll get to all the news in just one moment.
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Well, the analysts now say that this war in Ukraine for Russia is looking more and more like it could be a stalemate.
According to the Washington Post, Russia's attempt to conquer Ukraine could be headed toward a stalemate as heavy casualties and equipment losses take a toll on unprepared Russian forces that have failed so far to achieve any of their initial objectives, Western officials and military experts say.
The front lines have barely moved in more than a week.
Russians are being killed or injured at a rate of up to 1,000 a day, according to Western intelligence estimates, and even more according to Ukrainian ones.
Russia has basically been stalled out.
They've been unable to take any significant city inside of Ukraine, including Mariupol, where the siege continues.
They've been unable to surround Kharkiv.
They've been unable to surround Kiev.
They've been unable to cut off weapons shipments into Ukraine.
And this is a stunning defeat for Vladimir Putin.
who is supposed to be the head of this mighty war machine, and it turns out that they cannot even take over and defeat a nation that has one-tenth of their military budget or so.
According to the Washington Post, the ferocity of the Russian assault has only intensified as the advances have slowed, with Russia substituting harsh bombardment of civilian populations for progress on the battlefield.
Regular Ukrainians living in cities surrounding or partially surrounded by Russian troops are paying the price for a war effort that began to go wrong in the very first hours.
But in the absence of substantive progress on the ground, given the scale of the losses being inflicted on its ranks, Russia's military campaign could soon become unsustainable, with troops unable to advance because they lack sufficient manpower, supplies, and munitions, according to analysts and officials.
The next two weeks, they say, could be critical in in determining the outcome of the entire war. Unless Russia can swiftly improve its supply lines, bring reinforcements, and bolster the flagging morale of the troops on the ground, its goals may become impossible to achieve.
Rob Lee, former U.S. Marine, is now Senior Fellow at the Foreign Policy Research Institute.
He says, I don't think Ukraine forces can push Russian forces out of Ukraine, but I also don't think Russian forces can take that much more of Ukraine.
An assessment Saturday by the Institute for the Study of War went further.
They said Ukrainian forces have defeated the initial Russian campaign of this war.
The conflict has now reached a stalemate.
Now, The Russian strategy when it comes to this sort of stuff is, if things don't go well for us, then we just up the amount of carnage that we inflict on the enemy.
And Russia is firing more and more materiel into civilian centers.
Russia is getting harsher and harsher on the civilian centers in Ukraine.
And they're also beginning to use weapons that are largely directed at reminding the West to stay out of the conflict directly.
So over the weekend, Russia said it twice deployed its newest Kinzhal dagger hypersonic missile in Ukraine, claiming on Sunday to have destroyed a fuel depot near Mykolaiv.
And on Saturday, an underground missile and ammunition storage site in the West, the state news agency RIA Novosti has said the attacks represented the first use of the next generation weapon since the start of the war in Ukraine.
Western analysts said that these were the first time hypersonic missiles had ever been used in combat.
Vladimir Putin has described that missile as an ideal weapon.
It's designed to be launched from a MiG.
It can fly up to 10 times the speed of sound and, like a slower cruise missile, can maneuver in mid-flight, making it harder for air defense systems to track and intercept.
Missiles can be used to deliver conventional warheads at higher speed and more accurately than others.
They could also be used to deliver nuclear warheads.
And so the reason that Russia is using these, presumably, they say that it's because these are more efficient at destroying underground storage sites, but Most people actually think this is just because Russia is attempting to dissuade the West from getting more broadly involved in Ukraine, reminding everybody, yeah, we also have hypersonic missile technology that can evade your air defense systems, and that could theoretically put a nuclear weapon down in a Western city.
Meanwhile, Russia is upping the ante in Mariupol, which is located in the southern part of the country.
According to the New York Times, of firing rockets and bombs from land, sea, air, and probably for the first time, from warships in the Sea of Azov, Russian forces broadened their bombardment of the besieged Ukrainian city of Mariupol on Sunday and have forcibly deported thousands of residents, according to city officials and witnesses.
Among the freshly devastated was an art school, where about 400 residents were hiding, according to city officials, who claimed it had been bombed by Russian forces targeting civilians.
The number of casualties was not known.
Apparently, they had actually written on the ground the Ukrainians were children in Russian right outside of this particular art school, and the Russians had bombed it anyway.
Into the fourth week of the Russian assault on the country, the coastal city, a strategic port that would have given Russia control over much of Ukraine's southern coast, has increasingly become a grim symbol of Russian frustration that its superior manpower and weaponry have not forced the quick capitulation of the country.
According to the New York Times, the city has been without food, water, electricity, or gas since February 24th.
But its situation deteriorated even more over the weekend, with reports of raging street battles and Russian forces successfully conquering three neighborhoods.
And on Sunday morning, the Azov Battalion, a Ukrainian regiment that has drawn far-right fighters from around the world and is charged with the city's defense, said four Russian naval vessels had shelled the city, largely cut off from the outside world.
The toll on civilians there is difficult to assess.
By the way, we'll get back to the Azov Battalion in just a second, because notice how the New York Times is soft-pedaling what the Azov Battalion is?
The Azov Battalion is a neo-Nazi group.
We'll get to that in just a little while, because this has been used by Putin as a pretext for invasion, saying that the Ukrainians are basically Nazis.
And then everybody on the right side of the aisle in the West, everybody in the West has been saying that, no, well, Zelensky is Jewish and that means there's not a Nazi issue in Ukraine.
Zelensky's resistance to the Russians can be heroic, number one.
The Russian predations in Ukraine can be despicable, number two.
And also, Ukraine can have a Nazi problem.
Which they do.
We'll get to that in just one moment.
Last week, a Mariupol theater sheltering hundreds of people was reduced to rubble.
The word children was written in huge letters on the pavement there, clearly visible from the air.
Even now, the fates of most of those people remain unknown.
So that is the current status of the war in Ukraine.
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Russia's assault has uprooted about 10 million people so far.
American Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin says Russia is targeting population centers in order to inflict damage.
The UN High Commissioner for Refugees, Filippo Grandi said, quote, "'The war in Ukraine is so devastating, 10 million have fled, either displaced inside the country or as refugees abroad, which means almost a quarter of the country's pre-war population Roughly 3.4 million people have already left Ukraine since the Russian offensive began February 24th.
Pretty much all of those are women and children bound for Poland.
The UN says the number of refugees could reach 4 million people.
Lloyd Austin said that Putin has not been able to achieve the goals he wants to achieve as rapidly as he wants to achieve them.
It's had the effect of him moving his forces into a wood chipper.
Russia's Defense Ministry on Sunday gave defenders of Mariupol until Monday morning to surrender.
They said we call on all units of Ukraine's armed forces, the battalions of its territorial defense, and foreign mercenaries to cease their military activities and lay down their weapons.
And he basically threatened to raze the city.
This is Mikhail Zintsev, the head of Defense Ministry's National Defense Control Center, according to Interfax.
He said, otherwise, the military tribunal that awaits you is only a small part of what you deserve.
The streets of Kiev, according to the Wall Street Journal, are mostly deserted at this point.
Some city officials suspect more than half of its inhabitants have left, though the exact numbers are not yet known.
And the Russian Defense Ministry showed no signs of letting up, even as its own military has taken big losses at this point.
On Sunday, the governor of the Crimean city of Sevastopol reported the deputy head of Russia's Black Sea Fleet was killed in the attack on Mariupol.
Which is, I believe, the fifth or sixth Russian general to die in this attack so far, which is just an insane thing.
I mean, the Russian incompetence here is a huge part of the story.
And it demonstrates, once again, dictators can generally not trust their own people.
Because, as it turns out, if you spend all of your time threatening people, everybody just lies to you.
There are all these jokes about the Soviet era where we pretend to plant the potatoes and you pretend to buy the potatoes.
That is the sort of old Soviet joke is that when people are threatening to kill you, you will tell them whatever you want to tell them in order to prevent being killed.
It turns out all of his generals were telling Putin, everything is going to be fine.
Everything is swimmingly.
Everything's going swimmingly.
Everything's great.
So all of this is prelude to what comes next.
And what I mean by that is that now that Russia is stalling out, the question becomes, can Putin afford to not use something like a weapon of mass destruction?
Can Putin afford not to completely level cities?
Because the alternative apparently is just him losing.
And if the alternative is him losing, he's boxed in.
We've been talking about this for a week.
And there's this sort of odd level of triumphalism that has arisen in the West, that when you box in a dictator like Putin, who has demonstrated repeatedly his willingness to level civilian centers ranging from Grozny in Chechnya to Aleppo in Syria, when you're dealing with that sort of dictator, the triumphalism that basically says, don't worry, Putin is going to lose and it'll all be fine.
I'm just wondering where that triumphalism is coming from, particularly because, again, the one thing that Putin knows is that NATO and the United States are not going to get directly involved in this war in Ukraine.
So Chuck Todd spent the weekend asking NATO's chief, Jens Stoltenberg, the Secretary General, how long can you stand by and watch?
And the answer is that they can stand by and watch a rather long time, and they're going to stand by and watch for a rather long time because if they set up a no-fly zone, they're afraid of being in a direct nuclear exchange with Vladimir Putin.
How long can NATO stand by and watch Russia target civilians without finding a way to help more when it comes to the Ukrainian resistance?
Okay, and Stoltenberg basically answered, you know, I don't know what you want from us.
You're asking us to do a thing that is not really possible for us to do.
It's easy for members of the media to be like, how can we let this happen?
But the answer is, once deterrence failed, there were not a lot of choices that were available.
Stoltenberg said NATO allies are stepping up their support to Ukraine, partly by delivering military support, human battalion support, and billions upon billions of financial support to Ukraine.
And then of course, we also impose those unprecedented sanctions.
He also said NATO allies have trained and supported Ukrainian armed forces for years.
But is NATO willing to go to direct war with Russia?
Not particularly.
And so what this has led to is this strange insistence by a lot of people that Putin is on the verge of falling.
Now, maybe he is and maybe he isn't, but I have yet to see the evidence that his generals are on the verge of overthrowing Vladimir Putin.
And where is the actual evidence of this?
So members of the West seem to have this sort of bizarre notion that there's going to be a revolution inside Russia that overthrows Putin.
When does this happen?
Like really, what is the history of this sort of thing happening in the modern era where a dictator with Modern weaponry and the ability to corral all of his oligarchs by basically holding up all of their money.
Where is the history of a revolution that has been successful against, let's say in the last 20 years, against a hardcore dictatorial leader?
It hasn't happened in North Korea.
It hasn't happened in China.
It has not happened in Iran.
It's not happening here.
My prediction is, no, Putin is not going to end up at the end of a rope thanks to the people who are surrounding him.
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But according to the UK Mirror, there is this, again, sort of wishful thinking that is set in?
According to the UK Mirror, Vladimir Putin invaded Ukraine because he is terrified of a pro-democracy revolution in Moscow, Boris Johnson has said.
The Prime Minister said Putin was in a total panic about the prospect of a popular uprising in his own country if freedom was allowed to flourish in Kiev.
The Tory leader claimed the war was a turning point for the world, forcing countries to stand up to Russia rather than making accommodations with tyranny.
Failure to support Ukraine now would result in a new age of intimidation across Eastern Europe from the Baltic to the Black Sea.
Johnson said Putin's actions were not the result of concern about NATO or the prospect of Western missiles being based there.
He dismissed Putin's crazy essay about the historical unity of the people of the two countries as a semi-mystical goth.
He said, I think he was frightened of Ukraine for an entirely different reason.
He said he was frightened of Ukraine because in Ukraine they have a free press and in Ukraine they have free elections.
Well, as we will get to in just a moment, that is sort of true and it is sort of not true.
I mean, it is a fact that Ukraine is a developing democracy.
It is certainly better than Russia.
It is also the fact that they have some pretty significant internal corruption problems inside Ukraine and they have for a very long time.
Again, none of this justifies Putin's actions in Ukraine.
What is to say is that I really doubt that this was motivated particularly by the fact that Ukraine had something approaching free elections.
I don't think that's what drove this.
I think what drove this is that Putin realizes that he's in the last days because he's 70 years old and may not be in great health.
And he realizes that his legacy, like all Russian great leaders' legacy, is reliant on expanding his borders, whether you are Stalin or whether you are Peter the Great or whether you are Catherine the Great.
It is the expansion of Russian borders that has made you a historic figure in Russian circles.
Putin is certainly not going to go down in history as the man who revitalized the Russian economy, which is moribund and has been moribund for the last 20 years.
But there's something dangerous about this idea that if you just keep pressing Putin and you push him and you push him and you push him, there's not going to be any sort of real backlash from a person who's, again, shown himself willing to kill hundreds of thousands of civilians in places ranging from Syria to Chechnya.
There's a piece in the Wall Street Journal, however, that is sort of along the same lines as the Boris Johnson notion.
There's a man named Bing West who's writing for the Wall Street Journal.
He says, Biden's objective must be broader.
Putin has challenged America as a defender of democracy and of Western values.
NATO is providing aid to Ukraine within timorous structures.
After Putin muttered threats, Biden forbade the transfer of MiG-29s to be flown by Ukrainian pilots over Ukrainian territory.
The administration is clearly hedging.
Satellite images show Russian warships gathered off Odessa.
These are legitimate targets, but anti-ship missiles are absent from the weapons the administration has approved for Ukraine.
Allison, I'm a fan of sending all of these weapons to Ukraine.
I think it's a good idea to send all these weapons to Ukraine.
But what Bing West makes the case for is basically going for outright victory here.
He must declare that the sanctions crippling Russia will remain in full force with no exit ramps as long as Putin remains in power.
OK, well, if there's no exit ramp, why exactly would Putin settle and then leave?
Wouldn't he just ramp this up some more?
And you're starting to see the same thing with regard to Zelensky.
So Zelensky is now operating under the assumption that he's going to have to give up nothing here in order to get Putin to leave.
And I just don't know where this is coming from.
And Zelensky came out over the weekend, he said, if the Russian peace talks fail, World War III is likely at this point.
And as I'll explain in a second, you know, it's going to be on Zelensky to make hard concessions that people are not going to like in order to end this thing.
I think that we have to use any format, any chance in order to have the possibility of negotiating, the possibility of talking to Putin.
But if these attempts fail, that would mean Okay, well if that's the case, then wouldn't you think at a certain point that you need to start making some sorts of concessions here?
But Zelensky is rejecting some concessions because apparently he thinks that he can hold this thing out indefinitely and that Putin is not going to go whole hog, right?
He's playing chicken with Putin a little bit.
And listen, you understand it on an emotional level?
You're a person leading a wartime effort to preserve your country's territorial integrity against a vicious dictator on your border.
At the same time, the West has pledged it's not going to get in direct conflict with that dictator.
And Putin, as I've said before, the incentive structure is stacked for Putin to actually use weapons of mass destruction in Ukraine.
And yet here is Zelensky saying that he is not going to make compromises with regard to territorial integrity.
According to the New York Times, Zelensky said on Sunday he would reject any peace agreement requiring Ukraine recognize the independence of two Russian-backed separatist regions.
He suggested there could be a model of understanding to be reached on the territories.
He said there are compromises for which we cannot be ready as an independent state.
He said you cannot just demand from Ukraine to recognize some territories as independent republics.
These compromises are simply wrong.
He then laid out his vision for an agreement to end the war, prevent future conflicts with Russia, and approach these territories, which are temporarily occupied, referring to those separatist regions.
He said if Ukraine was unable to join NATO, he would seek a more limited coalition of countries, including some NATO members, that could help deter future attacks from Russia.
He said, I think without negotiations, we cannot end this war.
I think all the people who think this dialogue is shallow and that it's not going to resolve anything, they don't understand this is valuable.
But do you see Vladimir Putin ending this war without some sort of territorial concessions with regard to Luhansk and Donetsk, which he de facto controls right now?
It's very hard to see.
If Zelensky's not offering him enough of an off-ramp, I don't blame Zelensky on a moral level.
It's all Putin's fault.
But on a negotiating level, if you want this thing to end, everybody's going to have to be unhappy with the deal that emerges.
Because look, in the end, the reality is that if Putin decides to really go ho-ho and starts using chemical, biological, nuclear weapons in Ukraine, ain't nobody going to do nothing.
John Stoltenberg said exactly that over the weekend.
He was asked about it.
And he basically said, if Putin unleashes chemical weapons in Ukraine, there's not all that much we can do.
You don't have an answer yet on what the use of chemical weapons would do to NATO's stance about Ukraine.
So this is something we take extremely serious, but at the same time, again, we are not, we are very much aware that we need to act in a way that prevents this conflict from going, from being a very bloody, ugly, horrific conflict in Ukraine to something that turns out to be a full fledged war between NATO and Russia in Europe, and also in potentially involving, of course,
the United States directly.
That will be extremely dangerous, and that's exactly what we need to prevent.
Okay, so there he is basically saying if you were to use chemical weapons, we're still not going to go to war directly with Russia here.
So what that means is Zelensky better find an off-ramp here and he better take it.
And the same thing with Putin, he better find an off-ramp and he better take it.
So, you know, this notion that he can just continue this indefinitely, I don't see why he believes that that is the case.
I don't see why that is the case.
And yet, it seems to be that there is this bizarre hope that's being held out that Putin is just going to fall down on the job, that he's going to have a heart attack or something and die, and that'll be the end of this thing.
I don't think that's the way that any of this ends.
Meanwhile, Zelensky is going on a publicity tour, right?
He's been going around to various countries.
He spoke to the US Congress by Zoom.
He spoke to the Canadians by Zoom.
He spoke to the UK by Zoom.
And over the weekend, he spoke to the Israeli Knesset by Zoom as well.
And there he tried to put pressure on Israel in ways that he has never tried to pressure any other country, which is kind of astonishing, actually.
I mean, I understand that Zelensky is Jewish.
That's fine.
That's nice.
But Ukraine's history with Israel is not particularly good.
Ukraine's history with Jews is not particularly good.
Ukraine has spent the last several decades voting alongside Russia and alongside Israel's enemies in the United Nations, for example.
Ukraine's history with the Jewish population of Ukraine is really horrible and really ugly.
So Zelensky is apparently very angry at Israel that Israel is not joining in economic sanctions on Russia in the same way that, say, the United States or the UK is.
Now, there are geopolitical reasons for that that Zelensky really should understand, considering that Ukraine has had to triangulate between Russia and the West for a very long time, specifically because Russia is on their border.
Well, here's the thing.
Russia is also on Israel's border, and everybody knows this.
So Zelensky, he tried to pull out all the stops with the Israeli Knesset and it didn't go well for him because he made a bunch of references that are just not correct.
He made a bunch of requests that are not geopolitically sustainable.
And again, I've been saying for a little while here, I think that he's making requests that are not, like, he's been requesting from the West a no-fly zone.
That doesn't require the West to actually provide a no-fly zone.
It would be a bad policy for the West to do so.
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So, Zelensky speaks to the Israeli Knesset, And he tries to pressure the Israeli Knesset into closing down all trade with Russia, into joining the economic sanctions, into giving him the Iron Dome technology as though they have a bunch of Iron Dome units sitting around that they're not using, which of course is not true.
The fact is that Iron Dome is also proprietary Israeli technology.
And so handing that over to Ukraine, which, again, does not have the world's most wonderful relationship with Israel heretofore, is a bit strange.
In any case, according to the New York Times, Zelensky appealed to the sentiments of Jewish Israelis but also criticized Israeli policies on Sunday in a virtual address to lawmakers that touched on the most painful periods of Jewish history and what he called the parallel experiences of the Ukrainian people.
As according to the New York Times, the address was set up to be emotionally charged.
President Vladimir Putin of Russia has branded the Ukrainian government pro-Nazi and controlled by little Nazis even though Zelensky is Jewish.
Zelensky, for his part, thanked the Israeli leader, Prime Minister Naftali Bennett, for his mediation efforts with Russia.
But also castigated the Israeli government for not taking a strong enough moral stand on Ukraine's side, a position he reiterated on Sunday.
Again, I've noticed that Zelensky has had a little bit of trouble speaking to, say, the government of China about this particular issue, or the government of India about this particular issue.
One of the nice things about speaking to westernized countries, whether it's Israel or the United States or Canada or the UK, is that they allow you to do this sort of thing.
Zelensky said, It is possible to mediate between countries, but not between good and evil.
Zelensky then appeared to make comparisons between the current suffering of the Ukrainians and that of Jews during the Holocaust.
He asked why Israel had refused to provide Ukraine with weapons like Iron Dome, Israel's vaunted anti-rocket missile defense system, and asked Israel to take in more refugees.
Israel has refused Ukrainian efforts to provide defensive equipment, but has sent aid, including six large generators, and is in the process of setting up a field hospital in Mositzkiya in western Ukraine.
More than 11,000 Ukrainian citizens have already arrived in Israel since the start of the war, the majority of them non-Jews.
After initially limiting entry to 5,000 refugees, Israel's Interior Minister Ayelet Shaked, under public and political pressure, expanded the guidelines to offer temporary refuge to Ukrainian citizens who have relatives living in Israel, on condition that they receive approval before boarding a plane to Israel.
Israel's Knesset is currently in recess.
There is no special gathering convened for Zelensky's speech.
However, some of the stuff that Zelensky was saying here is just not accurate.
So Zelensky, for his part, he tried to compare this to the Holocaust.
And then he claimed that the Ukrainians tried to save the Jews during the Holocaust.
Okay, that's just not true.
That's a lie.
That is just, that's unbelievably untrue.
Okay, the reality is the Ukraine was one of the worst places for Jews during the Holocaust, specifically because there were at least 100,000 people who were in law enforcement in Ukraine who were cooperating with the Nazi regime.
There's a reason Babi Yar happened in Ukraine.
Haaretz, which is a far-left newspaper in Israel, fact-checked the address.
He suggested that this is like the final solution in Ukraine.
It is not like the final solution in Ukraine.
They're not setting up gas chambers and forcibly shipping Ukrainian citizens to the gas chambers.
This is a war.
It's an ugly war.
It's just like every other ugly war Russia has produced.
It is a war that does not give a crap about civilians.
It is an act of evil.
War is not the same thing as the Holocaust, the systematic murder of six million Jews and millions of other people as well.
That is not the same thing at all.
Zelensky said in a speech to the Israelis, quote, The Ukrainians made their choice 80 years ago.
They rescued Jews.
That is just bulls**t. I'm sorry, that is not true.
According to Haaretz, according to testimonies, Ukrainians helped the Germans find, round up, and transport Jews to the death camps.
In many cases, Ukrainians didn't just indirectly assist in the murder of Jews, they killed them directly themselves.
And then Zelensky suggested, You saw Russian missiles hit Kiev, Babi Yar.
This is their memorial.
You know what kind of land it is.
More than 100,000 Holocaust victims are buried there.
Haaretz says, it's believed the likely target for the strikes was not Babi Yar, but the television tower that had built nearby.
Also, again, the Ukrainian government was pretty specifically fine with the Nazi government going in and murdering pretty much every Jew in Ukraine.
The Jerusalem Post was ripping on Zelensky as well, because again, it is one thing to, the way that he approached Israel here is very different than the way that he approached, for example, the UK and America.
And I think, for domestic consumption, let's just say that Ukraine is not famous for its love of the Jews.
So that's not a giant shock.
And when he came to the United States, he didn't mention America's brutal history of slavery and repression, and then be like, it's just like that.
And he didn't mention, when he went to the UK, he didn't talk about British colonialism or something.
Instead, he sort of mentioned the best of these countries.
Then he went to Israel and he tried to compare what's happening to his country to the Holocaust and pretend that Ukrainians were a mass force against Nazi extermination of Jews.
That is not true.
According to the Jerusalem Post, Lahav Harkov, the comparison did not have the effect Zelensky apparently had hoped for.
Rather than stir Israel's leaders and legislators to action in solidarity, the heavy Holocaust comparisons, from saying Moscow is planning a final solution for the Ukrainian question, to saying that Israel should save Ukrainians, like Ukrainian righteous among the nation save Jews, drew more focus from its audience, which criticized the inappropriateness than Zelensky's appeal for weapons.
Communications Minister Yoavs Hendel tweeted, I appreciate the President of Ukraine and support the Ukrainian people in heart and deed.
It's impossible to rewrite the terrible history of the Holocaust.
Former Cabinet Minister Yuval Steinitz, now Likud member of Knesset, went so far as to say, If Zelensky's speech was given in normal non-war times, we would have said it bordered on Holocaust denial.
Every comparison between a regular war, as difficult as it may be, and the extermination of millions of Jews in gas chambers in the framework of the Final Solution is a total distortion of history.
The same is true for the claim that Ukrainians helped Jews in the Holocaust.
The historic truth is that the Ukrainian people cannot be proud of its behavior regarding the Holocaust and the Jews.
None of that changes the fact that despite the outrageous use of the Holocaust, we must continue humanitarian aid to the citizens of Ukraine.
Again, this doesn't have anything to do with the fact that Ukraine is in the right against Russia.
But that sort of rhetoric is really, really poorly calibrated.
As Alharkov writes over at the Jerusalem Post, when it comes to actually sending weapons or defensive systems like Iron Dome, there's consensus in the cabinet, Israel should not get involved in that way.
The reason for this is because actually of the United States.
That is because right now, Israel, I mean, and again, Zelensky should understand this, considering his country borders Russia and Russia is an aggressive power that has invaded him.
Right now, Israel is bordered by Syria.
Syria is controlled by Russia.
Russia allows Israel to hit Iranian targets inside Syria.
The minute that Israel overtly sides with Ukraine, that permission goes away, and suddenly Israel has Iran directly on its doorstep.
Because Hezbollah in Syria is run by Iran.
Ukrainian officials have repeatedly made demands of Israel that are not possible, like banning Russian channels that aren't even broadcast in Israel, or to place sanctions on Russian officials in a way Israeli law does not even allow.
Zelensky's criticism of Naftali Bennett's mediation contrasted with his recent expression of appreciation for the offer, saying that Bennett is taking a middle ground between good and evil.
So again, the Israeli people, broadly speaking, support Zelensky and the war against Russia.
But geopolitics is a complicated business, and Zelensky knows that.
And the way that Zelensky approached this is really, really poorly done.
Also worth noting here that Ukraine, I mean, it is unfortunate to say this, and it does not mean that Vladimir Putin claiming that he's going in to de-Nazify is legit, because it's not.
But Ukraine right now has a very serious anti-Semitism problem that has not stopped.
According to Alan Ripp, writing for NBC News, even though Putin is engaging in propaganda, it's true that Ukraine has a genuine Nazi problem, both past and present.
Putin's destructive actions, among them the devastation of Jewish communities, makes clear he's lying when he says his goal is to ensure anyone's welfare, but important as it is to defend the yellow and blue flag against Kremlin's brutal invasion.
It would be a dangerous oversight to deny Ukraine's anti-Semitic history in collaboration with Hitler's Nazis, as well as the latter-day embrace of neo-Nazi factions in some quarters.
Nowadays, Ukraine counts between 56,000 and 140,000 Jews.
who enjoy freedoms and protections never imagined by their grandparents.
That includes an updated law passed to criminalize anti-Semitic acts, but the law is intended to address a pronounced uptick in public displays of bigotry, including swastika-laden vandalism of synagogues and Jewish memorials, eerie marches in Kiev and other cities that celebrated the Waffen-SS.
Also, Ukraine has in recent years erected a glut of statues honoring Ukrainian nationalists whose legacies are tainted by their indisputable record as Nazi proxies.
Also, far-right groups have gained political currency in the past decade, none more chilling than Svoboda, formerly the Social National Party of Ukraine, whose leader claimed the country was controlled by a Muscovite Jewish mafia.
And, as we mentioned, we mentioned the Azov battalion, which is currently defending Mariupol from the Russians.
That is a neo-Nazi battalion.
Neonazis are part of some of Ukraine's growing ranks of volunteer battalions, according to NBC News.
They're battle-hardened after waging some of the toughest street fighting against Moscow-backed separatists in eastern Ukraine following Putin's Crimean invasion in 2014.
One is the Azov Battalion, founded by an avowed white supremacist who claimed Ukraine's national purpose was to rid the country of Jews and other inferior races.
In 2018, U.S.
Congress stipulated its aid to Ukraine could not be used to provide arms training or other assistance to the Azov battalion.
Even so, Azov is now an official member of the Ukraine National Guard.
So, for all the people in the United States who are complaining about white supremacism and suggest that America's military is rife with white supremacism, the Ukraine actually has an actual unit that is integrated into its National Guard that is openly white supremacist and neo-Nazi.
None of that justifies what Russia is doing right now.
It is to say that when Zelensky suggests that this country has been, that deserves some sort of special treatment from Israel and Israel should overlook its own national interests in pursuit of helping out Ukraine.
Again, real world politics is a hard business.
And when you have to balance the needs of your people for safety and security against the attempts to provide help to places that are under siege, This is why it always comes back to the fact that America is a superpower.
It's a global superpower.
If you want America as a global superpower to guarantee the free trafficking.
of human rights loving and democracy loving nations.
America needs to guarantee that security when it makes it more dangerous.
For our allies?
Places like Israel?
How do you expect Israel to support Ukraine when Israel has to look north and see Russia on its border?
How do you expect, by the way, in the future, Ukraine to join Western alliances when it has to look to the east and see Russia on its border?
That's not the way any of this works.
By the way, Zelensky just banned, I should mention, 11 political parties with ties to Russia.
Not the Azov party, not the neo-Nazi parties, but he did ban 11 parties that have ties to Russia, including places like For Life, the Sharii Party, Nashi, the Opposition Bloc, Left Opposition, Union of Left Forces, State Progressive Socialist Party of Ukraine, etc, etc.
So things are rather complicated, and they get more complicated when it comes to China.
Again, I've noticed that Zelensky's been rather muted in his talk about China, mainly because he knows he's not going to get China to do anything.
So the situation in Ukraine, it's pretty bad all around.
And China, of course, is helping out the Russians in a pretty major way here.
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Meanwhile, the situation with regard to China is growing more and more fraught.
So China is the big winner from this war.
China has been buying up Russian assets on the cheap.
China has been asked by Russia to help supply more military materiel.
So far, they say they are not doing that.
It is unclear whether that is the case or not.
And Biden and the Chinese held a phone call.
Xi and Biden held a phone call on Friday, and they are giving two very different messages.
After that phone call.
So Biden is like, yeah, we have a bit of an understanding here and China is going to try and do something about all of this.
And maybe we can have negotiations in the future.
And meanwhile, the Chinese are like, yeah, that sounds great.
And then to their own people like, yeah, we're not doing any of that stuff.
So according to the New York Times, Kin Gang, the Chinese ambassador to the United States, said on Sunday China would not send weapons and ammo to support Russia's war in Ukraine and that Beijing would do everything to de-escalate the crisis.
Kin's comments, which were aimed at an American audience, presented a softer tone than the one officials in Beijing have used when discussing the war, particularly in domestic settings.
The remarks came as higher-ranking Chinese officials continued to accuse the United States and Europe of instigating the conflict and continued to amplify Russian disinformation that served as a rationale for the invasion.
They also followed President Biden's warning on Friday to President Xi Jinping that China would face consequences if Beijing gave material aid to Russia in support of its war.
China's rhetorical strategy, speaking of peace and de-escalation to an international audience while continuing to support Russia domestically, demonstrates the careful moves Beijing has made in staking out its position on Ukraine.
So the United States has been very critical of China, but they're not actually doing anything, is the thing.
And they're not really prepared to do anything.
So the Chinese ambassador went on CBS' Face the Nation.
He said, China's trusted relations with Russia, that's not a liability.
And then when he was pushed by CBS News' Margaret Brennan about the relationship with Russia, he's like, stop being naive.
Cut the crap.
We all understand geopolitics.
Why can't you condemn this as an invasion?
Don't be naive.
Condemnation.
It sounds naive to say that's not an invasion.
It doesn't solve the problem.
I would be surprised if Russia will back down by condemnation.
OK, and again, this is his way of saying we're not going to condemn.
We are not going to.
We're not going to push Russia.
And meanwhile, the Biden administration really has no answer to this.
The Biden administration continues to kind of futz about.
The fact of the matter is that they put out a transcript to the Biden administration and the Biden administration, it wasn't really a transcript, it was more a summary of the phone call.
It took them hours and hours and hours to come up with what they said actually happened during the meeting.
China came out like right away and like, yeah, we said some words and it doesn't really mean anything.
But when it comes to the Biden administration, they really tried to craft this thing.
They tried to suggest that there was some sort of agreement and we've agreed to work in the future.
No, you haven't.
No one believes that.
It took you forever to come up with some sort of statement as to what you achieved because the truth is that they didn't really achieve much of anything with regard to China because they don't actually have a strategy with regard to China.
I mean, this is a country that still denies openly that it's even abusing human rights of the Uyghurs.
And here's the Chinese ambassador on Face the Nation doing just that.
A UN human rights panel said there are credible reports that a million Uyghurs are in a massive internment camp shrouded in secrecy.
And the High Commissioner for Refugees and Human Rights will go to China soon.
Will you give them unlimited access?
I totally reject that.
So he totally rejects it, okay?
And again, there are no consequences for stuff like this.
By the way, here's the readout of Biden's call with Xi Jinping, okay?
It took them four hours to release this from the White House.
President Joseph R. Biden spoke today with President Xi Jinping of the People's Republic of China.
The conversation focused on Russia's unprovoked invasion of Ukraine.
President Biden outlined the views of the United States and our allies and partners on this crisis.
President Biden detailed our efforts to prevent and then respond to the invasion, including by imposing costs on Russia.
He described the implications and consequences if China provides material support to Russia as it conducts brutal attacks against Ukrainian cities and civilians.
The President underscored his support for a diplomatic resolution to the crisis.
The two leaders also agreed on the importance of maintaining open lines of communication to manage the competition between our two countries.
The President reiterated U.S.
policy on Taiwan has not changed and emphasized the United States continues to oppose any unilateral changes to the status quo.
The two leaders tasked their teams to follow up on today's conversation in the critical period ahead.
Does that sound substantive to you?
Anything in there?
So when you see what exactly the Biden administration is bragging about, open lines of communication, we talked.
Well, congrats, but you didn't change anything that is actually happening.
And again, that is the big question is what do you guys do to reestablish deterrence after all of this?
Yes, you can brag that you hit Russia with crippling economic sanctions, and that's very nice.
But bottom line is, unless you have the material in order to prevent invasion, What exactly are you going to do here?
And let's be real about this.
The strategic ambiguity with regard to Taiwan, for example, is significantly greater than the strategic ambiguity with regard to Ukraine.
Ukraine kept asking to join the West, and the West was like, well, maybe you can, maybe you can't, but at least we acknowledge you're an independent country.
Meanwhile, the West refuses to even say that Taiwan is an independent country from China.
And China just claims, well, we have territorial integrity over Taiwan in the same way that we did over Hong Kong, and you guys did nothing with regard to Hong Kong.
What are you going to do?
Sanction us the same way you did the Russians?
Fine, do it.
Like really, we don't believe you because you're too tied into our economy.
Meanwhile, Vladimir Zelensky continues going sort of country to country in an attempt to garner support.
He directly addressed the Germans in a video posted on Monday asking for further restrictions against Russia and supporting Ukraine's bid for EU membership.
Now again, he's kind of asking for things he's not going to get, according to the Washington Post.
He's now asked for EU membership.
Not going to happen.
He's asked for NATO to establish a no-fly zone.
Not going to happen.
He's asked Israel for Iron Dome.
Not going to happen.
When deterrence fails, it's very difficult to reestablish deterrence based on you going kind of country to country and begging for help.
These countries are going to provide whatever support they can so long as it doesn't violate their national interests too greatly.
According to Zelensky, he said more measures are needed to cut off Russia's sources of funding for its invasion of Ukraine, including closing European trading ports to Russia and no longer buying Russian oil and gas.
He said, please do not sponsor this country, Russia's war machine, not a single euro for the occupiers.
The Ukrainian leader then drew parallels between Ukraine and Germany.
Again, this is his shtick.
He sort of goes country to country.
Again, I'm not blaming him for any of this.
If America were under attack, I'd want us to do the same thing.
However, this sort of Pretending this is not political strategery is very silly.
He went to, so he's speaking to the Germans, and he says that Kiev is the new Berlin, comparing our and your openness, and now he says that Kiev is closed.
He argued that Ukrainians are part of Europe, arguing Germans can put pressure on politicians to support Ukraine's application to join the EU.
On Monday, Germany's foreign minister, Annalena Baerbock, renewed her call for a solidarity airlift to relieve the pressure on countries that bore Ukraine by resettling some of the country's 3.5 million people who have fled the country across Western nations.
So, as this disaster continues to unfold, the question is going to be, once again, we just keep coming back to what is the off-ramp?
What is the off-ramp?
And the off-ramp is going to have to be something that nobody likes.
So that means probably Zelensky is going to have to offer some sort of territorial concessions to Putin so that he stops this.
And the West is going to have to relieve some sort of sanctions on Putin in order to incentivize him to stop this.
Wishful thinking is the enemy of good policy.
And the wishful thinking that Putin's regime is just going to collapse, or that Putin is just going to withdraw from Ukraine, or that if Zelensky begs hard enough, magically, he'll be overwhelmed with largesse from nations who have at best mixed interests when it comes to war abroad.
That is not a strategy for this war coming to an end.
It's a strategy for its continuation and eventually for Vladimir Putin going ho-hog.
All right, we'll be back here later today with an additional hour of content.
In the meantime, go check out the Michael Moll's show.
Today he discusses Dr. Anthony Fauci's announcement he might retire.
You can hear more details about that story over on Michael's show that's available right now.
I'm Ben Shapiro.
This is The Ben Shapiro Show.
Editing is by Adam Sajovic, audio is mixed by Mike Koromina, hair and makeup is by Fabiola Cristina, production assistant Jessica Kranz.
The Ben Shapiro Show is a Daily Wire production, copyright Daily Wire 2022.
A hulking dude wins the NCAA Women's Swimming Championship.
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And the deep state gets off rigging the election scot-free.
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