Feb. 9, 2024 - Bannon's War Room
52:59
Participants
| 
| Speaker | Time | Text |
|---|---|---|
| This is what you're fighting for. | ||
| I mean, every day you're out there. | ||
| What they're doing is blowing people off. | ||
| If you continue to look the other way and shut up, then the oppressors, the authoritarians, get total control and total power. | ||
| Because this is just like in Arizona. | ||
| This is just like in Georgia. | ||
| It's another element that backs them into a corner and shows their lies and misrepresentations. | ||
| This is why this audience is going to have to get engaged. | ||
| As we've told you, this is the fight. | ||
|
unidentified
|
All this nonsense, all this spin, they can't handle the truth. | |
| War Room Battleground. | ||
| Here's your host, Stephen K. Bannon. | ||
| Welcome, Thursday, 8 February, Year of the Lord 2024. | ||
| Okay, this is going to be very special. | ||
| Tucker is doing this historic, really first interview, I think, by Western journalists of Putin since the Great War in Ukraine started. | ||
| This couldn't be more timely because just a couple hours ago, the Senate kind of flipped themselves. | ||
| They flipped themselves and they Are now going to put Ukraine on a fast track to try to get the $60 billion from, of course, Rand Paul and others have said they're going to fight it. | ||
| Obviously the war room posse, we're all going to the ramparts. | ||
| That's going to start tomorrow. | ||
| We've got time on that and we're going to get you updated on everything that's going on. | ||
| Darren B is going to join me. | ||
| We're going to set this in its historical context with Tucker because he's taken a lot of grief from the mainstream media. | ||
| But this is, quite frankly, a bold and courageous move on his part. | ||
| First, I want to go, because there's a big two problems going on. | ||
| I'm hearing this from people in the specter of kind of angst and anxiety. | ||
| One is the credit cards, right? | ||
| Two is the taxes. | ||
| I want to bring in Joshua Hanna from Tax Network USA for a few minutes because it's very important. | ||
| And Joshua, you were the first guys to alert me to this. | ||
| They've got all these new IRS agents. | ||
| They're sending out all these letters. | ||
| If you get a letter and you just look at the 800 number and you call and make an information request or whatever, correct me if I'm wrong, once you make that call, you've kind of waived your rights. | ||
| You're then in the system. | ||
| You're in the process. | ||
| So it's very important. | ||
| And I know a lot of people out there worried. | ||
| Maybe they didn't file right. | ||
| Maybe they got back taxes. | ||
| They put in the drawer and think it's going to go away. | ||
| It ain't going to go away. | ||
| Okay. | ||
| Particularly since they're hiring tens of thousands of new agents and they're not going after the rich on that. | ||
| Okay. | ||
| Just write that down. | ||
| They're going after you. | ||
| If you get the letters, the first thing you do is do not call and essentially waive your rights. | ||
| You got to call Tax Network USA. | ||
| So walk us through the process, Joshua, because I've heard a lot of people are now freaking out about this. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Yeah, the last thing you want to do, obviously, is sit on hold for three hours and end up in a pressure cooker with the Treasury officer who wants to collect as much money as possible. | |
| Once you've waived your rights, they can really have their way with you and put you in a situation where you're paying a lot more on the front end and also on the back end. | ||
| Interest and penalties compound daily, so you don't want that to happen at all. | ||
| The best way to handle it is to have a private conversation with a tax professional, someone who's licensed and understands the process from tip to tail and how to get you the best deal with the government. | ||
| So just walk me through the process. | ||
| So when you get the letter, what you don't do, don't call the IRS 800 number. | ||
| That gets you into the process and essentially the implication of Ways You're Right. | ||
| You got to call Tax Network USA. | ||
| In fact, you should do that today. | ||
| Don't wait for a letter. | ||
| Now, walk me through the process. | ||
| Totally free. | ||
| The first is a totally free consultation, right? | ||
| Just walk people through the process. | ||
|
unidentified
|
It's fully private. | |
| You're not going to have to worry about any of your financial information getting out there. | ||
| We'll walk you through an in-depth consultation. | ||
| It takes about 15 minutes to understand what programs are best for you and what way to handle it, understanding your status with the IRS and putting together a strategy to reduce, settle and resolve the tax debt. | ||
| There is a form that you would fill out. | ||
| It's a declaration of representation. | ||
| representatives. It allows our attorneys and licensed tax professionals to speak on your behalf, request transcripts, appeal any collection efforts that the government has filed against you, place the account in a collective hold status where we can put together a package for relief and get this balance settled. The IRS is really banking on these new collection efforts. Originally, the Biden regime said they're | ||
| they're gonna collect $5 for every $1 spent. | ||
| Now the IRS is saying that they're going to be able to collect $6 for every $1 spent. | ||
| I think it's going to be a lot more because of the pandemic that they threw on us and all the people who haven't filed for those years and haven't paid. | ||
| So I think it's going to be much larger than that. | ||
| Well, Joshua's talking about the billions of dollars they're putting in, the hundreds of billions of dollars they're putting in new IRS, they're promising $6 back for everyone. | ||
| Remember, they're not going after the wealthy. | ||
| This thing they said, because the wealthy have tax lawyers, they've got tax accounts, they specialize to protect these guys. | ||
| They're coming after you. | ||
| And they have to close the deficit somehow. | ||
| They ain't going to raise taxes on the wealthy. | ||
| They've got to close the deficit. | ||
| They're not going to cut spending. | ||
| They think the low-hanging fruit is you. | ||
| So last time, where do they go, Joshua, to talk to you guys? | ||
| What's the website? | ||
| What's the 800 number? | ||
|
unidentified
|
The 800 number that they're going to want to call is 800-245-6000 or they can visit TNUSA.com slash Bannon and fill out a form and they'll get a call. | |
| During normal business hours within a few minutes, and they can speak with a licensed tax professional and understand the best strategy to reduce, settle, and resolve their tax balances and unfiled returns. | ||
| Joshua, thank you so much for doing this. | ||
| Audience, don't let the specter of fear and anxiety engulf you. | ||
| There's help. | ||
| The Tax Network USA guys are the best. | ||
| They'll go right to work. | ||
| So make sure you check it out. | ||
| Okay. | ||
| Darren Beattie from Revolver News. | ||
| Man, what a show. | ||
| I had Boris Cash. | ||
| Loomer, Mike Davis, Raheem Kassam, Ben Burkham. | ||
| Now I got Darren Beatty. | ||
| I mean, that may be the best seven. | ||
| I'm on a roll right now. | ||
| To put in perspective, this guy has gotten so much. | ||
| This is what I don't understand. | ||
| We just had the Senate flip the entire rules and leave a vote open for 24 freaking hours. | ||
| So they were losing 58 to 41. | ||
| They strong armed guys for 24 hours, got nine people to flip. | ||
| All because it's all about Ukraine. | ||
| The whole, the whole bogus us going up there with the, uh, with, with all this non board, you know, the, the invasion authorization bill turns out it was just a joke. | ||
| That was all to get money to the Ukraine. | ||
| Number one, what is this fetish as JD Vance calls it? | ||
| This obsession with getting this money into Ukraine. | ||
| and number two let's talk about the patriotism and heroism of Tucker Carlson and what he's doing sir. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Do I have Darren? | |
| I don't have him? | ||
| I'm here. | ||
| Hello? | ||
| Oh Darren, that question was for you, brother. | ||
| I'm sorry, I thought you were teeing it up. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Ask me again very specifically and I'll answer you. | |
| I was teeing you up. | ||
|
unidentified
|
It's hard to know sometimes. | |
| They just flipped this Ukraine situation so that now they can actually get to it. | ||
| The whole thing on the border was just a fig leaf. | ||
| It was just a misdirection play to get to Ukraine. | ||
| The only thing they ever wanted to do was get to the 60 billion in Ukraine. | ||
| Why are they obsessed with that, number one? | ||
| Why is Victoria Nuland? | ||
| They just announced before it came on air, by the way, the news is so intense, that Zelensky did fire the beloved general. | ||
| He fired that today. | ||
| Okay, so there's basically a military coup going on. | ||
| And Tucker Carlson's heroism and patriotism in going to Moscow to hear from Putin and let us be the judges of it. | ||
| Let us weigh and measure as adults what the guy says. | ||
| Darren Beattie. | ||
| Oh, 100%. | ||
| Look, I mean, the situation from the standpoint of the regime, which has done everything in its power to just funnel money into the coffers of the corrupt Ukraine leadership and even more so into the corrupt leadership and military industrial complex United States, which ends up gobbling up the overwhelming majority of of these funds. | ||
| But yes, they're down on the ropes. | ||
| They understand the situation looks bad. | ||
| And like, you know, the proverbial monster from the movies, they're making an attempt to revive their efforts. | ||
| And you saw that in Fairly recently in that tragic display, really pathetic display of Newland speaking on the empty street in Ukraine, the empty street that, you know, she must have felt nostalgia for the days that those streets were filled up as a result of her own engineered color revolution in Euromaidan. | ||
| And she's just aching for a reprisal of this. | ||
| And I think that's Partially driving this new push for yet another multi, multi, multi-billion dollar aid package to Ukraine, which again, just makes things worse for the Ukrainian people, just prolongs the conflict in which, you know, that's foregone conclusion anyway. | ||
| There's no point of it other than to enrich and empower the corrupt leadership in the U.S. | ||
| and the corrupt leadership in the Ukraine with which they're tied at the hip. | ||
| Regime leadership in the Uniparty, the party of Davos and its media propaganda department, has a special place in its heart for the hate on Tucker Carlson. | ||
| I mean, they hate me, they hate you, they hate Lyndell, they obviously hate Trump at some psychotic level, but there's something about Tucker that triggers them or us all. | ||
| I mean, he's been called everything. | ||
| He's going over to see a world leader. | ||
| Well, you know, it's clear why that would be the case. | ||
| You know, he's the only Western journalist who would ever be in a position to do this. | ||
| the guy's a KGB officer, we get the joke he's in the line of Stalin, we understand that, but we're adults. | ||
| What is it about this hate of Tucker Carlson, even for him to try to do this, it's been four days of total meltdown? | ||
| Well, you know, it's clear why that would be the case. | ||
| You know, he's the only Western journalist who would ever be in a position to do this. | ||
| And it's frankly telling, you know, during his tenure on Fox, there were certain occasions where he was the only person in Western media who would do this or that thing. | ||
| He was the only person in Western media, for instance, who would call into question the narrative that the Syrian chemical attacks were coming from Assad. | ||
| There were certain moments where he wasn't just deviating from the standard line at Fox. | ||
| He was deviating from the consensus across the board, across the entire sweep of Western media as such. | ||
| And because he was willing and able to do that on such a big stage, he drew the ire, the consternation, the fear, the anger of the regime media. | ||
| And you know, they were hoping that, okay, you know, now that he's taken off of Fox, He might have a large following, but at the end of the day, he's just going to be another guy on the internet. | ||
| There's not that imprimatur of cable news, of Fox News, especially, remember Fox News has always, you know, been Fox News. | ||
| And it's true, like the network is the star. | ||
| The network itself is bigger than any individual talent. | ||
| But when it was Fox News combined with Trump in the White House, when everyone knew that Trump was also watching, the president was also watching, That was just such a powerful synergy that gave the Fox shows, and in particular Tucker, so much clout, so much influence. | ||
| And so they're hoping, okay, Trump's out of office now. | ||
| Now we booted Tucker off of Fox so he doesn't have the imprimatur of cable. | ||
| And, you know, there are a lot of older people who are not informed. | ||
| High-informed people watch War Room. | ||
| They're not watching Fox. | ||
| But the default low-information person is watching Fox. | ||
| It just beams into everyone's household. | ||
| They're habituated to watch cable. | ||
| So it's very powerful for that reason. | ||
| But now Tucker's not on that anymore. | ||
| And they thought, OK, he might have a huge following. | ||
| Even on Twitter, OK, Elon likes him. | ||
| But at the end of the day, he's just another person with a huge following on the internet and a sea of influencers and a sea of voices. | ||
| I think that this Putin interview is the winning chess move, the decisive move that only he was really in a position to do, that definitively takes him out of that category as just another guy on the internet and reestablishes him as just a major mover in politics and media. | ||
| Like it's such a big deal. | ||
| The first Western interview of a major world leader after a major world conflict. | ||
| I mean, the fact that no Western journalist had done this before is really astonishing and frankly quite damning. | ||
| Let's go ahead and play. | ||
| By the way, go to Tucker's site. | ||
| You can join up and come to Tucker.com. | ||
| You can get to all the information. | ||
| He's putting out articles every day. | ||
| They put up videos every day. | ||
| This thing's very special. | ||
| Let's go ahead and see the start of this and then Darren and I will come back with some comments. | ||
| It is primarily about the war in progress, the war in Ukraine, how it started, what's happening, and most presently, how it might end. | ||
| One note before you watch. | ||
| At the beginning of the interview, we asked the most obvious question, which is, why did you do this? | ||
| Did you feel a threat, an imminent physical threat? | ||
| And that's your justification. | ||
| And the answer we got shocked us. | ||
| Putin went on for a very long time, probably half an hour, about the history of Russia going back to the 8th century. | ||
| And honestly, we thought this was a filibustering technique and found it annoying and interrupted him several times. | ||
| And he responded he was annoyed by the interruption. | ||
| But we concluded in the end, for what it's worth, that it was not a filibustering technique. | ||
| There was no time limit on the interview. | ||
| We ended it after more than two hours. | ||
| Instead, what you're about to see seemed to us sincere, whether you agree with it or not. | ||
| Vladimir Putin believes that Russia has a historic claim to parts of Western Ukraine. | ||
| So our opinion would be to view it in that light as a sincere expression of what he thinks. | ||
| And with that, here it is. | ||
| Mr. President, thank you. | ||
| On February 22, 2022, you addressed your country in a nationwide address when the conflict in Ukraine started. | ||
| And you said that you were acting because you had come to the conclusion that the United States, through NATO, might initiate a, quote, surprise attack on our country. | ||
| And to American ears, that sounds paranoid. | ||
| Tell us why you believe the United States might strike Russia out of the blue. | ||
| How did you conclude that? | ||
| It's not that America, the United States, was going to launch a surprise strike on Russia. | ||
| I didn't say that. | ||
| Are we having a talk show or a serious conversation? | ||
| Here's the quote! | ||
| Thank you. | ||
|
unidentified
|
It's a formidable serious talk. | |
| Because your basic education is in history as far as I understand. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Yes. | |
| So, if you don't mind, I will take only 30 seconds or 1 minute to give you a short reference to history for giving you a little historical background. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Please! | |
| Let's look where our relationship with Ukraine started from. | ||
| Where did Ukraine come from? | ||
| The Russian state started gathering itself as a centralized statehood, and it is considered to be the year of the establishment of the Russian state, in 862, when the townspeople of Novgorod invited a Varangian prince Rurik from Scandinavia to reign. | ||
| In 1862, Russia celebrated the 1000th anniversary of its statehood. | ||
| And in Novgorod, there is a memorial dedicated to the 1000th anniversary of the country. | ||
| In 882, Rurik's successor, Prince Oleg, who was actually playing the role of regent at Rurik's young son, Because Rurik had died by that time, came to Kiev. | ||
| He ousted two brothers who apparently had once been members of Rurik's squad. | ||
| So Russia began to develop with two centers of power, Kiev and Novgorod. | ||
| The next very significant date in the history of Russia was 988. | ||
| This was the baptism of Russia, when Prince Vladimir, the great-grandson of Rurik, baptized Russia and adopted Orthodoxy, or Eastern Christianity. | ||
| From this time, the centralized Russian state began to strengthen. | ||
| Why? | ||
| Because of the single territory, integrated economic ties, one and the same language and, after the baptism of Russia, the same faith and rule of the prince. | ||
| The centralized Russian state began to take shape. | ||
| Back in the Middle Ages, Prince Yaroslav the Wise introduced the order of succession to a throne. | ||
| But after he passed away, it became complicated for various reasons. | ||
| The throne was passed not directly from father to eldest son, but from the prince, who had passed away to his brother, then to his sons in different lines. | ||
| All this led to defragmentation and the end of Rus as a single state. | ||
| There was nothing special about it. | ||
| The same was happening then in Europe. | ||
| But the fragmented Russian state became an easy prey to the empire created earlier by Genghis Khan. | ||
| His successors, namely Batuhan, came to Rus, plundered and ruined nearly all the cities. | ||
| The southern part, including Kiev, by the way, and some other cities simply lost independence, while northern cities preserved some of their sovereignty. | ||
| They had to pay tribute to the Horde, but they managed to preserve some part of their sovereignty. | ||
| And then a unified Russian state began to take shape with its center in Moscow. | ||
| The southern part of Russian lands, including Kiev, began to gradually gravitate towards another magnet, the center that was emerging in Europe. | ||
| This was the Grand Duchy of Lithuania. | ||
| It was even called the Lithuanian-Russian Duchy, because Russians were a significant part of this population. | ||
| They spoke the old Russian language and were Orthodox. | ||
| But then there was a unification, the union of the Grand Duchy of Lithuania and the Kingdom of Poland. | ||
| A few years later, another union was signed, but this time already in the religious sphere. | ||
| Some of the Orthodox priests became subordinate to the Pope. | ||
| Thus, these lands became part of the Polish-Lithuanian state. | ||
| During decades, the Poles were engaged in Polonization of this part of the population. | ||
| They introduced a language there, tried to entrench the idea that this population was not exactly Russians, that because they lived on the fringe, they were Ukrainians. | ||
| Originally, the word Ukrainian meant that the person was living on the outskirts of the state, along the fringes, or was engaged in a border patrol service. | ||
| It didn't mean any particular ethnic group. | ||
| So the Poles were trying to In every possible way to polonize this part of the Russian lands and actually treated it rather harshly, not to say cruelly. | ||
| All that led to the fact that this part of the Russian lands begun to struggle for their rights. | ||
| They wrote letters to Warsaw demanding that their rights be observed and people be commissioned here, including to Kiev. | ||
| I beg your pardon, can you tell us what period? | ||
| I'm losing track of where in history we are. | ||
| The Polish oppression of Ukraine. | ||
|
unidentified
|
It was in the 13th century. | |
| Now I will tell you what happened later. | ||
| and give the dates so that there is no confusion. | ||
| And in 1654, even a bit earlier, the people who were in control of the authority over that part of the Russian lands, addressed Warsaw, I repeat, demanding that they send them to rulers of Russian origin and Orthodox faith. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Thank you. | |
| When Warsaw did not answer them, and in fact rejected their demands, they turned to Moscow, so that Moscow took them away. | ||
| So that you don't think that I'm inventing things, I'll give you these documents. | ||
| Well, it doesn't sound like you're inventing it. | ||
| I'm not sure why it's relevant to what happened two years ago. | ||
| But still, these are documents from the archives, copies. | ||
| Here are the letters from Bogdan Khmelnitsky, the man who then controlled the power in this part of the Russian lands that is now called Ukraine. | ||
| He wrote to Warsaw demanding that their rights be upheld. | ||
| And after being refused, he began to write letters to Moscow, asking to take them under the strong hand of the Moscow Tsar. | ||
| There are copies of these documents. | ||
| I will leave them for your good memory. | ||
| There is a translation into Russian, you can translate it into English later. | ||
| Russia would not agree to admit them straight away, assuming that the war with Poland would start. | ||
| Nevertheless, in 1654, the Pan-Russian Assembly of top clergy and landowners, headed by the Tsar, Which was the representative body of the power of the old Russian state, decided to include a part of the old Russian lands into Moscow Kingdom. | ||
| As expected, the war with Poland began. | ||
| It lasted 13 years and then, in 1654, a truce was concluded. | ||
| And 32 years later, I think, a peace treaty with Poland, which they called Eternal Peace, was signed. | ||
| And these lands, the whole left bank of Dnieper, including Kiev, went to Russia. | ||
| And the whole right bank of Dnieper remained in Poland. | ||
| Under the rule of Catherine the Great, Russia reclaimed all of its historical lands, including in the South and West. | ||
| This all lasted until the Revolution. | ||
| Before World War I, Austrian General Staff relied on the ideas of Ukrainianization and started actively promoting the ideas of Ukraine and the Ukrainianization. | ||
| Their motive was obvious. | ||
| Just before World War I, they wanted to weaken the potential enemy and secure themselves favorable conditions in the border area. | ||
| So the idea which had emerged in Poland that people residing in that territory were allegedly not really Russians, but rather belonged to a special ethnic group, Ukrainians, started being propagated by the Austrian General Staff. | ||
| As far back as the 19th century, theorists calling for Ukrainian independence appeared. | ||
| All those, however, claim that Ukraine should have a very good relationship with Russia. | ||
|
unidentified
|
They insisted on that. | |
| After the 1917 revolution, the Bolsheviks sought to restore the statehood and the civil war began, including the hostilities with Poland. | ||
| In 1921, peace with Poland was proclaimed and under that treaty, the right bank of Dnieper River once again was given back to Poland. | ||
| In 1939, after Poland cooperated with Hitler, it did collaborate with Hitler, you know, Hitler offered Poland peace and a treaty of friendship, an alliance demanding in return that Poland give back to Germany the so-called Danzig Corridor, which connected the bulk of Germany with East Prussia and Königsberg. | ||
| After World War I this territory was transferred to Poland and instead of Danzig a city of Gdansk emerged. | ||
| Hitler asked them to give it amicably but they refused. | ||
| Of course. | ||
| Still, they collaborated with Hitler and engaged together in the partitioning of Czechoslovakia. | ||
| May I ask you, you're making the case that Ukraine, certainly parts of Ukraine, Eastern Ukraine is in effect Russia, has been for hundreds of years. | ||
| Why wouldn't you just take it when you became president? | ||
| 24 years ago. | ||
| You have nuclear weapons, they don't. | ||
| If it's actually your land, why did you wait so long? | ||
| I'll tell you. | ||
| I'm coming to that. | ||
| This briefing is coming to an end. | ||
| It might be boring, but it explains many things. | ||
| Good. | ||
| Good. | ||
| I'm so gratified that you appreciate that. | ||
| Thank you. | ||
| So, before WWII Poland collaborated with Hitler and, although it did not yield to Hitler's demands, it still participated in the partitioning of Czechoslovakia together with Hitler, as the Poles had not given the Danzig Corridor to Germany and went too far, pushing Hitler to start WWII by attacking them. | ||
| Why was it Poland against whom the war started on 1st September 1939? | ||
| Poland turned out to be uncompromising and Hitler had nothing to do but start implementing his plans with Poland. | ||
| By the way, the USSR, I have read some archived documents, behaved very honestly. | ||
| It asked Poland's permission to transit its troops through the Polish territory to help Czechoslovakia. | ||
| But the then Polish foreign minister said that if the Soviet planes flew over Poland, they would be downed over the territory of Poland. | ||
| But that doesn't matter. | ||
| What matters is that the war began, and Poland fell prey to the policies it had pursued against Czechoslovakia under the well-known Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact. | ||
| Part of the territory, including Western Ukraine, was to be given to Russia. | ||
| Thus, Russia, which was then named the USSR, regained its historical lands. | ||
| After the victory in the Great Patriotic War, as we call World War II, all those territories were ultimately enshrined as belonging to Russia, to the USSR. | ||
| As for Poland, it received, apparently, in compensation, the lands which had originally been German. | ||
| The eastern parts of Germany, these are now western lands of Poland. | ||
| Of course, Poland regained access to the Baltic Sea and Danzig, which was once again given its Polish name. | ||
| So, this was how this situation developed. | ||
| In 1922, when the USSR was being established, the Bolsheviks started building the USSR and established the Soviet Ukraine, which had never existed before. | ||
| Stalin insisted that those republics be included in the USSR as autonomous entities. | ||
| For some inexplicable reason, Lenin, the founder of the Soviet state, insisted that they be entitled to withdraw from the USSR. | ||
| And, again, for some unknown reasons, he transferred to that newly established Soviet Republic of Ukraine some of the lands together with people living there, even though those lands had never been called Ukraine, and yet they were made part of that Soviet Republic of Ukraine. | ||
| Those lands included the Black Sea region, which was received under Catherine the Great, and which had no historical connection with Ukraine whatsoever. | ||
| Even if we go as far back as 1654, when these lands returned to Russian Empire, that territory was the size of 3-4 regions of modern Ukraine, with no Black Sea region. | ||
| That was completely out of the question. | ||
|
unidentified
|
In 1654? | |
| Exactly. | ||
| I'm just... you obviously have encyclopedic knowledge of this region, but why didn't you make this case for the first 22 years as president that Ukraine wasn't a real country? | ||
| The Soviet Union was given a great deal of territory that had never belonged to it, including the Black Sea region. | ||
| At some point, when Russia received them as an outcome of the Russo-Turkish wars, they were called New Russia or Novorossiya. | ||
| But that does not matter. | ||
| What matters is that Lenin, the founder of the Soviet state, established Ukraine that way. | ||
| For decades the Ukrainian Soviet Republic developed as part of the USSR. | ||
| And for unknown reasons, again, the Bolsheviks were engaged in Ukrainianization. | ||
| It was not merely because the Soviet leadership was composed to a great extent of those originating from Ukraine. | ||
| Rather, it was explained by the general policy of indigenization pursued by the Soviet Union. | ||
| Same things were done in other Soviet republics. | ||
| This involved promoting national languages and national cultures, which is not bad in principle. | ||
| That is how the Soviet Ukraine was created. | ||
| After the World War II, Ukraine received, in addition to the lands that had belonged to Poland before the war, part of the lands that had previously belonged to Hungary and Romania. | ||
| So, Romania and Hungary had some of their lands taken away and given to the Soviet Ukraine. | ||
| And they still remain part of Ukraine. | ||
| So, in this sense, We have every reason to affirm that Ukraine is an artificial state that was shaped at Stalin's will. | ||
| Do you believe Hungary has a right to take its land back from Ukraine? | ||
| and that other nations have a right to go back to their 1654 borders? | ||
| I'm not sure whether they should go back to the 1654 borders. | ||
| But given Stalin's time, so-called Stalin's regime, which as many claim saw numerous violations of human rights and violations of the rights of other states, one may say that they could claim back those lands of theirs while having no right to do that. | ||
| It is at least understandable. | ||
| Have you told Viktor Orban that he can have part of Ukraine? | ||
| Never. | ||
| I have never told him. | ||
| Not a single time. | ||
| We have not even had any conversation on that, but I actually know for sure that Hungarians who live there Wanted to get back to their historical land. | ||
| Moreover, I would like to share a very interesting story with you. | ||
| I digress, it's a personal one. | ||
| Somewhere in the early 80s, I went on a road trip in a car from then Leningrad, across the Soviet Union, through Kiev. | ||
| Made a stop in Kiev and then went to Western Ukraine. | ||
| I went to the town of Beregovoye. | ||
| In all the names of towns and villages, they were in Russian and, in a language I did not understand, in Hungarian. | ||
| In Russian and in Hungarian. | ||
| Not in Ukrainian, in Russian and in Hungarian. | ||
| I was driving through some kind of village and there were men sitting next to the houses and they were wearing black three-piece suits and black cylinder hats. | ||
| I asked, are they some kind of entertainers? | ||
| I was told, no, they were not entertainers, they are Hungarians. | ||
| I said, what are they doing here? | ||
| What do you mean? | ||
| This is their land, they live here. | ||
| This was during the Soviet time, in the 1980s. | ||
| They preserved the Hungarian language, Hungarian names and all their national costumes. | ||
| They are Hungarians and they feel themselves to be Hungarians. | ||
| And of course, when now there is an infringement, Well, that is, and there's a lot of it though. | ||
| I think many nations are upset about Transylvania as well, as you obviously know. | ||
| But many nations feel frustrated by the redrawn borders of the wars of the 20th century and wars going back a thousand years, the ones that you mentioned. | ||
| The fact is that you didn't make this case in public until two years ago, February, and in the case that you made, which I read today, you explain at great length that you felt a physical threat from the West in NATO, including potentially a nuclear threat, and that's what got you to move. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Is that a fair characterization of what you said? | |
| I understand that my long speeches probably fall outside of the genre of the interview. | ||
| That is why I asked you at the beginning, are we going to have a serious talk or a show? | ||
| You said a serious talk. | ||
|
unidentified
|
So, bear with me, please. | |
| We're coming to the point where the Soviet Ukraine was established. | ||
| Then, in 1991, the Soviet Union collapsed, and everything that Russia had generously bestowed on Ukraine was dragged away by the latter. | ||
| I'm coming to a very important point of today's agenda. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Thank you. | |
| After all, the collapse of the Soviet Union was effectively initiated by the Russian leadership. | ||
| I do not understand what the Russian leadership was guided by at the time, but I suspect there were several reasons to think everything would be fine. | ||
| First, I think that then Russian leadership believed that the fundamentals of the relationship between Russia and Ukraine were, in fact, a common language. | ||
| More than 90% of the population there spoke Russian. | ||
| Family ties. | ||
| Every third person there had some kind of family or friendship ties. | ||
| Common culture, common history, finally, common faith, coexistence with a single state for centuries and deeply interconnected economies. | ||
| All of these were so fundamental. | ||
| All these elements together make our good relationships inevitable. | ||
|
unidentified
|
The second point is a very important one. | |
| I want you as an American citizen and your viewers to hear about this as well. | ||
| The former Russian leadership assumed that the Soviet Union had ceased to exist, and therefore, there were no longer any ideological dividing lines. | ||
| Russia even agreed voluntarily and proactively to the collapse of the Soviet Union. | ||
| And believe that this would be understood by the so-called civilized West as an invitation for cooperation and association. | ||
| That is what Russia was expecting, both from the United States and the so-called collective West as a whole. | ||
| There were smart people, including in Germany, Egon Barr, a major politician of the Social Democratic Party, who insisted in his personal conversations with the Soviet leadership on the brink of the collapse of the Soviet Union, that a new security system should be established in Europe. | ||
| Help should be given to unify Germany, but a new system should be also established to include the United States, Canada, Russia and other Central European countries. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Yes. | |
| But NATO needs not to expand. | ||
| That's what he said. | ||
| If NATO expands, everything would be just the same as during the Cold War, only closer to Russia's borders. | ||
| That's all. | ||
| He was a wise old man, but no one listened to him. | ||
| In fact, he got angry once. | ||
| If, he said, you don't listen to me, I'm never setting my foot in Moscow once again. | ||
| Everything happened just as he had said. | ||
| Well, of course, it did come true. | ||
| And you've mentioned this many times, I think it's a fair point. | ||
| And many in America thought that relations between Russia and the United States would be fine with the collapse of the Soviet Union the end of the Cold War that the opposite happened But you've never explained why you think that happened except to say that the West fears a strong Russia But we have a strong China. The West does not seem very afraid of What about Russia do you think? | ||
| Convinced policymakers they had to take it down The West is afraid of strong China more than it fears a strong Russia. | ||
| Because Russia has 150 million people, and China has 1.5 billion population, and its economy is growing by leaps and bounds. | ||
| Over 5% a year, it used to be even more. | ||
| But that's enough for China. | ||
| As Bismarck once put it, potentials are the most important. | ||
| China's potential is enormous. | ||
| It is the biggest economy in the world today in terms of purchasing power parity and the size of the economy. | ||
| It has already overtaken the United States quite a long time ago, and it is growing at a rapid clip. | ||
| Let's not talk about who is afraid of whom. | ||
| Let's not reason in such terms. | ||
| And let's get into the fact that after 1991, when Russia expected that it would be welcomed into the brotherly family of civilized nations, nothing like this happened. | ||
| You tricked us. | ||
| I don't mean you, personally, when I say you. | ||
| Of course, I'm talking about the United States. | ||
| The promise was that NATO would not expand eastward. | ||
| But it happened five times. | ||
| There were five waves of expansion. | ||
| We tolerated all that. | ||
| We were trying to persuade them. | ||
| We were saying, please don't. | ||
| We are as bourgeois now as you are. | ||
| We are a market economy and there is no communist party power. | ||
| Let's negotiate. | ||
| Moreover, I have also said this publicly before. | ||
| There was a moment when A certain rift started growing between us. | ||
| Before that Yeltsin came to the United States. | ||
| Remember? | ||
| He spoke in Congress and said the good words. | ||
| God bless America. | ||
| Everything he said were signals. | ||
| Let us in. | ||
| Remember the developments in Yugoslavia before the Yeltsin was lavished with praise? | ||
| As soon as the developments in Yugoslavia started, he raised his voice in support of Serbs, and we couldn't but raise our voices for Serbs in their defense. | ||
| I understand that there were complex processes underway there. | ||
| I do. | ||
| But Russia could not help raising its voice in support of Serbs, because Serbs are also a special and close to us nation. | ||
| With Orthodox culture and so on. | ||
| It's a nation that has suffered so much for generations. | ||
| Well, regardless, what is important is that Yeltsin expressed his support. | ||
| What did the United States do? | ||
| In violation of international law and the UN Charter, it started bombing Belgrade. | ||
| It was the United States that let the genie out of the bottle. | ||
| Moreover, when Russia protested and expressed its resentment, what was said, the UN Charter and international law have become obsolete. | ||
| Now everyone invokes international law. | ||
| But at that time they started saying that everything was outdated. | ||
| Everything had to be changed. | ||
| Indeed, some things need to be changed, as the balance of power has changed. | ||
| It's true. | ||
| But not in this manner. | ||
| Yeltsin was immediately dragged through the mud, accused of alcoholism, of understanding nothing, of knowing nothing. | ||
| He understood everything, I assure you. | ||
| Well, I became president in 2000. | ||
| I thought, okay, the Yugoslav issue is over, but we should try to restore relations. | ||
| Let's reopen the door that Russia had tried to go through. | ||
| And moreover, I said it publicly, I can't reiterate. | ||
| At a meeting here in the Kremlin with the outgoing President Bill Clinton, right here, in the next room, I said to him, I asked him, Bill, do you think if Russia asked to join NATO, do you think it would happen? | ||
| Suddenly, he said, you know, it's interesting, I think so. | ||
| But in the evening, when we met for dinner, he said, you know, I've talked to my team, no, no, it's not possible now. | ||
| You can ask him, I think he will watch our interview, he'll confirm it. | ||
| I wouldn't have said anything like that if it hadn't happened. | ||
| Okay, well, it's impossible now. | ||
| Were you sincere? | ||
| Would you have joined NATO? | ||
| Look, I asked the question, is it possible or not? | ||
| And the answer I got was no. | ||
| If I wasn't sincere in my desire to find out what the leadership position was… But if he had said yes, would you have joined NATO? | ||
| If he had said yes, the process of rapprochement would have commenced, and eventually it might have happened, if we had seen some sincere wish on the other side of our partners. | ||
| But it didn't happen. | ||
| Well, no means no. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Okay. | |
| Fine. | ||
| Why do you think that is? | ||
| Just to get to motive. | ||
| I know you're clearly bitter about it. | ||
| I understand. | ||
| But why do you think the West rebuffed you then? | ||
| Why the hostility? | ||
| Why did the end of the Cold War not You said I was bitter about the answer. | ||
| No, it's not bitterness. | ||
| It's just a statement of fact. | ||
| We're not bride and groom, bitterness, resentment. | ||
| It's not about those kind of matters in such circumstances. | ||
| We just realized we weren't welcome there, that's all. | ||
| Okay, fine. | ||
| But let's build relations in another manner, let's look for common ground elsewhere. | ||
| Why we received such a negative response, you should ask your leaders. | ||
| I can only guess why. | ||
| Too big a country with its own opinion and so on. | ||
| And the United States, I've seen how issues are being resolved in NATO. | ||
| I will give you another example now concerning Ukraine. | ||
| The US leadership exerts pressure and all NATO members obediently vote, even if they do not like something. | ||
| Now I'll tell you what happened in this regard with Ukraine in 2008, although it's being discussed. | ||
| I'm not going to open a secret to you, say anything new. | ||
| Nevertheless, after that we tried to build relations in different ways. | ||
| For example, the events in the Middle East, in Iraq. | ||
| We were building relations with the United States in a very soft, prudent, cautious manner. | ||
| I repeatedly raised the issue that the United States should not support separatism or terrorism in the North Caucasus. | ||
| But they continued to do it anyway. | ||
| And political support, information support, financial support, even military support came from the United States and its satellites for terrorist groups in the Caucasus. | ||
| I once raised this issue with my colleague, also the President of the United States. | ||
| He says, it's impossible, do you have proof? | ||
| I said yes. | ||
| I was prepared for this conversation and I gave him that proof. | ||
| He looked at it, and you know what he said? | ||
| I apologize, but that's what happened. | ||
| I'll quote. | ||
| He says, well, I'm gonna kick their ass. | ||
| We waited and waited for some response. | ||
| There was no reply. | ||
| I said to the FSB director, right to the CIA, what is the result of the conversation with President? | ||
| He wrote once, twice, and then we got a reply. | ||
| We have the answer in the archive. | ||
| The CIA replied, we have been working with the opposition in Russia, we believe that this is the right thing to do, and we will keep on doing it. | ||
| Just ridiculous. | ||
| Well, okay. | ||
| We realized that it was out of the question. | ||
| Forces in opposition to you. | ||
| So you're saying the CIA is trying to overthrow your government? | ||
| Of course they meant in that particular case the separatists, the terrorists who fought with us in the Caucasus. | ||
| That's who they call the opposition. | ||
|
unidentified
|
This is the second point. | |
| The third moment is a very important one. | ||
| It's the moment when the U.S. | ||
| missile defense system was created. | ||
| The beginning. | ||
| We persuaded for a long time not to do it in the United States. | ||
| Moreover, after I was invited by Bush Jr.' 's father, Bush Sr., to visit his place on the ocean, I had a very serious conversation with President Bush and his team. | ||
| I proposed that the United States, Russia and Europe jointly create a missile defense system that, we believe, if created unilaterally, threatens our security, despite the fact that the United States officially said that it was being created against missile threats from Iran. | ||
| That was the justification for the deployment of the missile defense system. | ||
| I suggested working together, Russia, the United States and Europe. | ||
| They said it was very interesting. | ||
| They asked me, are you serious? | ||
| I said, absolutely. | ||
| May I ask what year was this? | ||
| I don't remember. | ||
| It is easy to find out on the Internet when I was in the USA at the invitation of a Bush senior. | ||
| It is even easier to learn from someone I'm going to tell you about. | ||
| I was told it was very interesting. | ||
| I said, just imagine if we could tackle such a global strategic security challenge together. | ||
| The world will change. | ||
| We'll probably have disputes, probably economic and even political ones, but we could drastically change the situation in the world. | ||
| He says yes, and asks, are you serious? | ||
| I said, of course. | ||
| We need to think about it, Anzol. | ||
| I said, go ahead, please. | ||
| Then Secretary of Defense Gates, former Director of CIA and Secretary of State Rice came in here, in this cabinet, right here, at this table. | ||
| They sat on this table. | ||
| Me, the foreign minister, the Russian defense minister on that side, they said to me, yes, we have thought about it, we agree. | ||
| I said, thank God, great, but with some exceptions. | ||
| So twice you've described US presidents making decisions and then being undercut by their agency heads. | ||
| So it sounds like you're describing a system that's not run by the people who are elected in your telling. | ||
|
unidentified
|
That's right, that's right. | |
| In the end, they just told us to get lost. | ||
| I'm not going to tell you the details, because I think it's incorrect. | ||
| After all, it was a confidential conversation. | ||
| But our proposal was declined. | ||
| That's a fact. | ||
| It was right then when I said, look, but then we will be forced to take countermeasures. | ||
| We will create such strike systems that will certainly overcome missile defense systems. | ||
| The answer was, we are not doing this against you and you do what you want, assuming that it is not against us, not against the United States. |
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