Charles Bausman has lived more than half his life in Russia, including the past four years in self-imposed J6 exile. He's also no stranger to our worldview, an unabashed Russia advocate, and a true American patriot to boot. We are honored to welcome him back for the first time in three years to discuss everything under the sun in the world's most fascinating country, no matter your preconceived notions. Bumper: My Dear Friend by Dmitry Malikov (a jam I loved in Kiev in 1998) Close: A beautiful song from a Russian kitchen (DJ Bausman) Charles's Twitter, Telegram, and Substack. Feel free to contact him if you're interested in Russia. Support us at givesendgo.com/FullHaus Do us a favor please and subscribe to The Final Storm on Odysee. And check out our pals at White Noise Radio and The Fundamental Principle. And the official Full Haus playlist on Spotify. Go forth and multiply. Censorship-free Telegram commentary: https://t.me/prowhitefam2 Telegram channel with ALL shows available for easy download: https://t.me/fullhausshows Gab.com/Fullhaus Odysee for special occasion livestreams. RSS: https://feeds.libsyn.com/275732/rss All shows since Zencast deplatforming: https://fullhaus.libsyn.com/ And of course, feel free to drop us a line with anything on your mind to fullhausshow@protonmail.com. We love ya fam, and we'll talk to you in a week…or two!
What a difference a few months can make in the fate of nations, or even for just one man and his family.
I'm almost inclined to quote Lenin and his maxim that there are decades where nothing happens and there are weeks where decades happen.
But I'll resist the temptation for now.
Our very special returned guest, after a hiatus of almost three years, has been living a very rational self-exile in Russia for the better part of the past four years, after his journalistic adventures on January 6th were not wholly appreciated by the system.
More importantly for the audience, though, he is most definitely a Russia hand, as we say in the business, a literal man on the street in Moscow, a devout Christian, dedicated family man, and also your exclusive,
unfiltered view this week into the massive, glorious, wild and woolly country that just months ago was public enemy number one in Washington, but today seems on the cusp of a mutually healthy relationship with America for the first time since perhaps before the Bolshevik Revolution.
So, Mr. Producer, let's go.
Welcome, everyone, to Full House, the world's finest show for white fathers, aspiring ones, and the whole biofam.
It is episode 208.
It is a midnight special here in the Mountain Mama and a Moscow morning over there.
And I am your frankly excited host, Coach Finstock, back with another hour at least, and promising not to shout into the microphone this week.
Rolo said I got a little too exuberant with Jacob Hersant last show.
Before we meet the birth panel and our special guest, though, huge thanks to the White Stag Athletic Club for their kind support of Full House and for all they do to keep the flame of English political prisoner Ash Podsiad Sharp burning white hop.
White hot, excuse me.
If they can step up, so can you at giveseengo.com slash fullhouse.
And after all that, let's get on with the show.
First up, if his biography from the 1970s seems a little thin to you, it's probably not because he was secretly studying at the Academy of Foreign Intelligence at the time, preparing to go deep cover as a sleeper agent in the belly of the American industrial behemoth.
Sam.
That was a lot.
I probably shouldn't joke about those things.
Yeah.
Well, it's good to be here and I'm excited for this show.
Very interesting guest we have on here.
Absolutely.
Thanks for staying up late with us, big guy.
All right.
Well, let's just keep rolling on.
Yeah.
Next up, add 40 pounds and a spiked haircut, and he could perhaps approximate Yvonne Drago in Rocky IV.
It's true.
Rolo, welcome back.
I'll try and lose 40 pounds so I can look more like Ivan Dragon.
No, no, you'd have to put on it.
You're in good shape, but you'd have to put on a ton, a ton of muscle weight to even come close.
Serious question for you, buddy.
Do you have strong opinions on Russia-Ukraine, or do you largely follow my lead or our consensus to date in our previous shows?
I have a stronger opinion on you not getting my joke.
Losing weight instead of gaining weight.
Okay.
Well, I'm sorry I asked.
I know you're tired.
Maybe you have a migraine.
I don't see any nose trip on you.
Anyway, thank you for being here with us.
Finally, our very special and patient guest.
He's been called everything under the sun from Nazi to anti-Semite to Kremlin stooge to mysterious puppeteer of the old alt-right.
But what he definitely is, is a lifelong student and admirer of Russia, an American patriot in the best, most classical sense of the word.
And also, I just learned tonight he's the proprietor of the Russian Ark Substack, which has an impressive number of subscribers already.
Charles Bausman, smiling through the microphone.
Welcome back, sir.
Hey, coach.
Thanks for having me.
It's our pleasure and our honor.
And we'll just go right to congratulations on your newfound freedom or perhaps absolution.
It's no surprise that you took a little self-guided tour of the Capitol that infamous day four years ago or so.
How do you feel?
Is it, you know, do you actually feel relieved to have that not hanging over your head anymore?
Oh, absolutely.
Absolutely.
Our family has just been celebrating here for the last few weeks.
Yeah, you know, I mean, I've spent more than half of my life in Russia, actually.
And I feel totally at home here.
And at first, when we were here, it was just like, yeah, this is great.
You know, we're having a great time.
But then as the years pass, it's been over four years since we had to leave.
It starts really grating at you.
Like you just want to go home.
You want to see your house.
You want to see your friends and neighbors.
And this idea that, hey, this could drag on for years and years, we might not be able to go back.
That's really unpleasant, actually.
So, yeah, we're really, really happy.
Amazing.
Now, when you got on that point, great.
Yeah.
I think a cold one is an order when you get back either here or I don't know what the status is of the old farm.
Now, when you were flying out, were you looking over your shoulders and just waiting for the wheels up?
Or did you, were you not that concerned at the time when you left?
No, absolutely.
Absolutely.
Because, I mean, the whole reason I left is because I was just watching people getting arrested left and right.
This is like a week after January 6th.
And I was like, oh, shit.
I've got a huge target on my back.
I got to get the hell out of here.
And so we just literally grabbed it.
We grabbed the grabbed the kids, threw everything in a bag and just like left within like 12 hours.
Just drove, just went up to New York, jumped on a plane, and that was it.
It was really weird.
It was like a new feeling.
Yeah.
And standing in line, you know, wondering, are we going to get pulled aside here before we reach the entry thing?
So it was a weird feeling.
Yeah.
And the funny thing is, it was we left like January 12th, I think it was.
And we left the Christmas lights on on our porch.
And just because we're in a hurry, we forgot to turn them off.
And the local newspaper wrote about that.
And they were like, see, he's an incredible agent.
He left in such a hurry.
Left his Christmas lights on, which is or they were doing a weird judgmental class thing, like, oh, look at how, you know, he still got his Christmas lights up in February.
Who does that?
I got to ask, did you harbor resentment, ill will toward Trump for not doing the pardons back when he could have in January 2021?
Or is that water under the bridge?
You sort of understand it was all crazy back then that really big arrests hadn't happened yet.
Yeah, well, listen, I'm a big believer in not trying to figure out what's going on in somebody's head and what kind of calculations they're making and why.
So yeah, I would have been happy if he'd done it, but no, I didn't really think, you know, I don't know.
I don't know what goes on with that guy.
I don't even try to understand.
Yeah, it's a good policy.
It is all over the place.
He's been a wrecking ball coming full steam this second term.
I remember very vividly having a conversation with you at the farm, and he's going to lose and he deserves to lose.
And you had your MAGA cap on and we're doing anti-COVID stuff.
And I said, you're crazy, Charles.
And well, he lost.
He probably deserved to lose.
And so far, the second go-around Israel and the Middle East aside looks pretty good, especially for U.S.-Russia relations.
Before we hit those brass tacks, though, Charles, please plug your substack.
I just discovered it tonight.
Read a fascinating article about the incredible rebuilding in Mariupol, which did not look like Kremlin propaganda.
You had the photos to back it up that they really are going in there, spending a ton of money.
But anything you want to talk about, the substack Russian arc, please.
Yeah, sure.
So what I've been writing about, so Putin signed this decree when was it last summer, making it possible to move here basically and get the equivalent of a green card.
And I find that super interesting and historically important.
So I started writing about it actively.
I'd had this substack kind of lying around, wasn't sure what to do with it.
So that's what I've been writing about.
I've been traveling around the country, talking to people, looking at situations, thinking a lot, just actually thinking and speaking with smart people about, okay, so is this really going to happen?
Are tons of Westerners going to move here?
And what's that going to look like?
And how's that going to work?
So that's what I write about there.
So yeah, anybody curious about the idea of moving to Russia?
Check it out.
This is not one of those things where you say, I'm asking for a friend.
I'm literally asking for a friend.
When I put out the solicitations for questions, he said, should we or should I take Putin, Russia's offer seriously?
So I don't want to take this lightly and just, yeah, go for it.
It's all wonderful over there.
The concept of leaving the United States or elsewhere and moving to Russia seems so daunting and so crazy that, you know, you said the numbers aren't big so far.
But do you have any success stories yet where you can confidently tell guys who are seriously thinking about it?
I don't want to promote it, but just the facts check what you know so far.
Yeah.
So you know what?
Obviously, daunting is absolutely the right idea in that it seems daunting.
But, you know, that's because people think like, oh, it's like a one-time decision and it's, you know, it's going to be like, I can't sort of be halfway between.
It's not like that at all.
Okay.
So first thing a person should do if they're curious about it is just come and check it out.
And that's what be normal, right?
If you're going to go someplace you've never been before, where you'd go and look around first.
And so it's very much a process by where somebody sort of gradually puts a toe in the water and then they become, you know, they either become more or less comfortable with the idea.
And then even if you've moved here, it shouldn't mean that you don't go ever go back to the U.S., right?
I mean, this was a very artificial situation over the last three years since the war started.
But usually when people are expats, like they live in South America or Europe or wherever, you know, they hop on a plane two or three times a year, go back, visit grandma, catch up with friends and have sort of a, you know, lives partially in both countries.
And that's been my story for almost my entire life.
So I'm very familiar with this idea.
So it's not like this thing where you like enter into Putin's Russia and then you never come out or something or like you just change your life.
And in terms of opportunities here and life here and living here, I just can't recommend it enough.
I think it is one of the most fascinating and educational kinds of countries to be in.
So I would say, look, if anybody's curious and you can scrape up the money, come for like an extended trip.
You know, you have to, it takes a few days to get over jet lag.
So if you come for a week, you're kind of not really getting the necessary experience.
I would say two weeks is a minimum, you know, three better, four, even better.
So like that.
I know a prominent WN who visited within the past year or two who has quite an extensive list of or a record of naughty commentary.
He was a little bit worried about going, but he just had to see it for himself.
And he sent me videos and commentary and he loved it.
I know one American married to a Russian who goes over to see her family every year.
And he says every year it's better.
But I also know one of those stinker expats who say, oh, it's glittering in the city, but it's a dump and corrupt and drunken out in the countryside.
Maybe there's a little bit of truth to all three of those tales, but I think your advice is sound.
Hey, if you're interested, just even if you're not interested in taking up the refugee offer, go visit it to see for yourself whether it is swarming with violent Asiatic hordes or is perhaps a little bit of a blossoming white wonderland, as I hope.
And of course, nothing.
It's a little bit of both.
I'd say it's a lot of the latter and a little bit of the former.
But you know what, I would say like the big thing people miss about Russia is just how well it's doing economically and that it's and what incredible opportunity there is there is here going forward because so much has been unrealized.
I mean, it's still like, you know, it's this giant empty country full of like natural resources.
I mean, almost anything you want to do from like farming to IT to, you know, fast food.
I mean, there's huge opportunities.
And I'm absolutely sure now that these sanctions are going to come down, both with Europe and with the U.S. within the year, a U.S. sooner than Europe.
And when that happens, this place is going to just, it's just going to pop.
So there's going to be a lot, there's going to be a lot of opportunities for jobs and all kinds of stuff.
For our financial guys, unfortunately, yes, he still can't invest in Russia.
They blocked all of those ETFs and stocks from American exchanges.
Charles, how much has it changed in the past three years?
We talk about sanctions or just man on the street observations.
You were glowing about it or maybe surprised by the resiliency three years ago when the sanctions were kicking in, the war had just started.
However you want to go with that changes over the past three years, despite the sanctions.
So as surprising as it might seem, Russia has actually become more prosperous during the whole course of these sanctions.
I mean, the sanctions have slowed it down a little bit, growing less fast than it might have, but it's really not substantial.
And they've very successfully circumnavigated all these sanctions just by like ramping up economic relations with the global south, as they describe it.
And then also there's just like this incredible dynamism of the Russian economy.
And interestingly, pumping a lot more money into the defense sector actually stimulated the economy.
So you don't notice any significant change in standard of living in Moscow, except a gradual, steady improvement.
I mean, the streets are flooded with these really amazing Chinese cars now.
You know, these, I'm just like, what?
And, you know, stores are full, restaurants are full, theaters.
I mean, it's just like you don't really notice the economic effect of the war.
Difficult to believe, but there's been a lot of evidence, you know, in the hard economic data, as well as similar stories that you just told.
Opinions of Russians toward America.
I don't think anybody, whatever their opinion on the war, could blame Russians for being hostile toward America over the past three years since Trump was re-elected.
Has there been any noticeable shift or perhaps a little bit of optimism or lessening of hostility?
You know, it's interesting.
Russians really, really like Westerners, like on a personal level.
So, no, I haven't encountered any hostility at all, and I haven't heard of anybody else encountering it.
And I think Russians are used to the idea of having like a good people getting kicked around by a really shitty government.
So their anger and hostility towards the West is like focused on our rotten political class, not on regular people who they're curious about and they like and they're, you know, welcoming and so on and so forth.
And I've been, you know, I was in Donetsk and Donbass and like talking to people around there and they were very warm and welcoming.
So that's, yeah.
Nobody's thrown tomatoes at you or called you an American stooge or a dog for, I mean, well, well, no, not at all.
Never.
But, you know, when you think about Donbass, I mean, if any group of people had a reason to be resentful, it was them, because I didn't realize this until I went down there and was really talking to people, but they have paid an enormous price in just lost of lives and relatives, all right?
Because it's not just the people, the civilians who got killed in the sort of random rocket attacks, which are war crimes and like disgusting, right?
But it's the men.
The men have been on the front lines since 2014, and they've been in the front of the action with Russia's involvement in the last three years.
And they've just lost a lot of guys, a lot of guys.
And so, you know, I was in Donbass, in Donetsk, and we walked, or we took us to lunch in a working, a regular working class cafeteria where there's like working Joe's and it was yeah, and the food was delicious and it was just a cool atmosphere.
And I asked the Russian guy I was with who was like our host there, I was like, hey, I'd love to like just whip out my phone.
And do you think people would mind if I just like did a little like man on the street kind of like thing video, three minutes or something?
And he's like, you know what?
I don't think you should because this is like if they like, if you say, well, I'm this American like journalist here, they might like not be that friendly because a lot of them have like lost family members and stuff.
So that was the only time I encountered it.
And I didn't really, just because our host was like, nah, probably not a good idea.
Fair enough.
Couldn't blame him.
The article about the, you know, tell us about your observations of the rebuilding.
It looks legitimate.
It seems to contradict this perhaps antiquated view, you know, the Russians are going to be like the Bolsheviks rolling into Eastern Europe and just raping everyone and decimating and extracting all the resources.
It's a different story with Ukraine and how they view those people, many of whom are ethnically Russian, of course.
But yeah, what's going on in Donbass that you saw and that looked impressive, at least?
Oh, yeah.
Well, what was so impressive there in Mariupol was that they, So I don't know how this managed to happen, but there was like a, I forget how many week-long battle to free Mariupol.
I think it was like three weeks or so.
And it's the home base of Azov, the famous Azov, so fond of the alt-right, right?
And they really didn't have a lot of fighters actually fighting, right?
They were maybe like a few thousand, a few thousand, but they, but they were really well embedded in that city and getting them out of there was a total mess.
Well, anyway, in the process of doing that, 2,000 buildings were damaged.
Not like the way you see coming out of the Middle East, where it's just like, you know, rubble everywhere.
It's more like bombed out when a rocket windows bullet holes in the middle.
Yeah, like the balcony is missing.
Yeah, the facades are shot up and stuff like that.
But still, but and some buildings were leveled and everything.
So anyway, no, excuse me, 3,000 structures were damaged.
Right.
And so starting, they started rebuilding it like as soon as they felt that it was safe enough, far away enough from the front lines, which was about two years ago.
Anyway, they've rebuilt 2,000 of those 3,000 structures.
And they obviously look better than they did before, because before they were mostly like kind of crappy Soviet sort of panel like pillboxes.
Yeah, prefab kind of like apartment buildings.
And now they look kind of like something you might find in like West Germany or something.
Nothing glamorous, but you know, nice and fresh and clean and whatever.
Sure.
Looking much better.
You know, and they're doing like, for example, they had this very impressive and beloved classical theater in the center of town.
It was like the centerpiece of like the downtown, very proud of it.
And that was leveled.
All right.
And they're totally rebuilding it.
And it's, you know, when I was there, it was like in mid-construction.
And, but so they've gone in in a big way.
And I think it's very much a statement on their part: look, we want to show the rest of Ukraine and the world what we're going to do once we're in charge of other parts of Ukraine because, you know, and that's, it's like typical for Russia.
There's like, there's this economic dynamism here.
Oh, and the other thing about them is that they're super good at doing infrastructure.
They can do, you know, they can build like a place like they can do like building construction and road construction and parks and track things that require tractors, cement, stone, steel, cheap workers from the stands.
Those are the on this massive scale, they can mobilize, you know, the Russian army construction company, you know, with like thousands of tractors and bulldozers and cranes and just, you know, truckload after truckload of every kind of imaginary thing.
And then all this sort of like the fixings you put in the apartments, like, you know, the door handles and the faucets and whatever that is and the piping, that all comes from China, you know, for super, super cheap.
So they can do this stuff like way cheaper than you could in the West.
And it just happens so quickly.
So that also explains why they're able to do it.
Fair enough.
I can see some portion of the audience going, oh, come on.
Obviously, Bausman is pro-Russia.
We know that coaches incline to be more favorable toward Russia.
I spent time there and have always been fascinated by it.
So let's, I don't want this to be a total love fest.
You mentioned importing Central Asians to do labor.
A lot of guys have the conception, right or wrong, that Russia is anti-white and that this is a Eurasian beast that is out to slowly grow and conquer, that they don't give a damn about white Ukrainians or Christianity.
That's all a front for this sort of revanchism resurgence of Russia as a power.
And they will go to any lengths necessary, including importing Burmese, or, you know, Myanmar's, whatever the heck they call them.
A senior Russian government official just said the other day that there's a serious need for migrant labor from all over Asia.
How do you square that with your positive views of Russia?
Yeah, well, this is actually a problem here in Russia.
And they've brought in so many migrants that there are already social tensions and the same kind of things you see in Europe, not the terrorism, but just kind of like, you know, street fights and girls getting harassed on, you know, on public transportation and stuff like that.
The difference is that Russians are basically pretty racist, right?
And there's no official propaganda saying, hey, you know, it's good to intermarry and we should give these people access to everything in our society.
They're very much seen here as what Germans would call a gastarbeiter.
Okay, you're here to make some money.
You're not part of the society.
We don't accept you as equals.
But there is definitely a huge demand for these people because Russia also, just like the rest of the white world, is suffering from a serious demographic crisis and they're just not producing enough kids.
And the Russian economy is booming.
And it's also the kind of work that requires people, things like construction.
And there's this huge, it's so funny.
There's this huge scooter delivery economy in Russia in Moscow and also many other cities.
And so the internet distribution here doesn't happen through UPS.
It happens through you order something online and a few hours later, some Uzbek in a scooter shows up at your front door with your package.
And there's this huge demand for these people.
And it's like, it's dangerous and demanding work and they get paid well by Russian standards for it.
And you just see these Asians scooting around everywhere with packages in the city.
And that's just a classic example.
Like, here's this thing that's happened.
The economy has changed.
There's a need for all these people.
You know, all taxi drivers practically are from these Central Asian republics.
So the people, there's the, you know, the Russian top elites are basically kind of like boomers, right?
Equivalent American boomers.
And they still have these Soviet ideas of like, you know, brotherhood of all peoples.
They were fellow citizens a generation ago.
Yeah.
Yeah.
So, and they have an enormous, like just like the American like conservative Elite, you know, have a huge financial incentive to bring in more immigrants because their companies make more money basically that way.
So that you got that going on here.
But you've also got pushback from like the younger generation and regular Russians who don't like the social effects.
So it's, it's, it's very much in a way, it's very much like it's like in the West, but it's better because they just, there isn't, you don't have this irritating sort of class of people who says, no, we should welcome them and intermarry with them and give them like all kinds of social benefits and everything like that.
That doesn't exist.
Yeah.
I mean, at a certain point, I need to stop talking about my observations of Russia because it was 20 years ago the last time I visited.
But yes, of course, I remembered seeing, you know, swarthy faces in Moscow, but they didn't look like they ruled the roost.
They almost looked like they were scared that Malitsi was going to come up and club them in the back of the knees if they got out of line.
Honest observation from my time.
2000 last year.
Yeah, it's still like that.
It's still like that.
Yeah.
Yep.
Let's talk about the war.
So much has changed over the past two months.
We've got a second round of U.S.-Russia negotiations to take place in Saudi Arabia.
Zelensky essentially got thrown out of his out on his ass.
The United States has stopped sharing at least offensive intelligence with the Ukrainians.
The Europeans are talking a big game.
Macron is saber-rattling.
Lavrov just had to put him in his place and call him Microne.
We've got so much churn.
And I think the most important thing is that it seems clear to me, and I don't think it's this big facade or feint.
It seems like Trump is intent on ending the war and mending relations with Russia one way or another.
You know, we can do it the hard way or the easy way.
Do you agree with that?
From what you said earlier, you sound pretty optimistic.
And anything in the Russian press or government statements that we may have missed that sort of belie their approach and their new mood toward America and ending the war?
Yeah, so no, I agree with you.
I think this is for real coming out of Trump, Vance, and whoever else is part of this group in the White House.
And the Russians are, you know, Russians are famously fatalistic people, pessimists, always assuming it's going to turn out really bad.
So there's been a lot of skepticism here, like, you know, no, this is like a trick.
This is a thing.
This is going to be a rug pull or something.
But, but no, they haven't been able to come up with any substantial, anything substantial to sort of, you know, evidence that.
So they're suspicious, but willing to talk.
And yeah, I definitely want to try and fix this and work with the Trump team on this.
What you said about Europe is so interesting because, so I speak fluent German, and one of my guilty pleasures is following the German media, German Twitter and German mainstream media.
And it's, you know, it's just so hilarious.
It's there, they're Europe is in like meltdown, like somebody who's in like complete like denial still.
It's a financial crisis.
Yeah, reality is like, you know, crushing in on them and they're, and they can't really face it and they don't know what to do.
And so they say all these crazy, stupid things, but they don't really have a plan.
It's like, I don't know, like, it's like the German media is basically, if you took like the entire German, like mainstream media is like, if you took like basically NPR and put them in charge of it, you know, just a bunch of liberal chicks like squawking.
So I think Europe's going to come around because they don't have any choice.
They're going to get wrecked economically if America fixes relations with Russia and starts to have normal economic relations and the Europeans are on the sidelines.
I don't think they're going to go for it.
The German companies aren't going to stand for that because they're like, look, you're already destroying our economy.
Now you're going to make it even worse.
Come on.
Yeah.
And I guess the German bond rates surged today.
Everybody's saying, hold your horses.
You want us to spend what on defense?
And there was a wonderful tweet from ostensibly a German that said, let me just get this straight.
You want Germany to massively rearm itself and march through Poland to take on the Russian army.
It's like, yeah, that's what you're suggesting.
You know, I can only get so excited, but it's not the same Germany, of course.
Just incredible.
My feeling, it's hard to see the United States withdrawing from NATO.
That was the talk and the tech, like, hey, maybe he's going to announce that at the State of the Union.
But I think just on a more ground level, Trump is saying, look, you guys have been free riders and freeloaders on the back of our security umbrella for 50 years, 60 years, whatever it is.
And we're sick of paying for Zelensky's butcher bill.
And we need to want to have better relations with Russia, I guess, so that we can focus more on China.
And you can, if you want to keep fighting the war, go ahead.
But the other thing is that, you know, Russia holds all the cards.
Now, I'm sure that Putin, like, there's been significant pain, you know, the casualties, the economic toll, but the war has gone better in the past year for Russia than it did in the prior two.
I think that's clear.
Although there's still a lot of Ukrainian territory out there, including some troops in Russia proper.
I guess I would just say that it seems like Putin holds all the cards.
He could keep fighting if he wanted to.
He doesn't have to negotiate.
And if he does choose to negotiate, he can drive a real hard bargain.
You know, there's going to be no NATO troops.
We're going to get more territory.
We want Odessa and the whole Black Sea coast.
Yeah, just my observations.
I don't know if you agree with that or if that seems off base.
Yes.
No, I very much agree with you.
He does.
They do have all the cards at this point.
And the main thing they want, obviously they would love more territory, right?
But what the main thing they want is they want a security buffer.
It's so funny to see this Zelensky prancing around.
They're going to absolutely insist, and they've been saying this, you see this so much when you listen to the Russian media and see what's going on with them.
But they're going to absolutely insist that whatever government is in Ukraine after this, even it's like a rump Ukraine, however it shakes out, that it not be anti-Russian, that it not be a staging ground for any kind of military activity against Russia.
So it's got to be like Austria used to be in the Cold War, just kind of this neutral country that's like not taking sides and just getting along with everybody.
And that's their bottom line, you know, and how big that country is and where the actual borders are, I don't think are the main issue for Russia, because I think they feel like, listen, if it's a neutral friendly country full of Slavs on our border, it's almost as good as being like part of Russia.
You know, we're going to have like economic relations with them and free travel and everything.
And we'll just kind of like be very close the way they are with Belarus, for example.
Sure.
Belarus, of course, the great example of a country that's in Russia's orbit and yet is still either it or Iceland are the whitest countries on earth.
The other day, Sergei Lavarov gave an interview.
Maybe it was with RT, the Ministry of Foreign Affairs reported it, but one of his lines was that the vast majority of the bad things that have happened in the world over the past 500 years have come from Europe, Western Europe, colonialism, World War I, World War II, etc.
And a lot of our guys seized on that and said, see, they are a third worldist, anti-white.
You know, they've totally embraced the third world struggle, and this is not a white country.
Although, technically, you could possibly say, well, he kind of has a point that a lot of nasty stuff has come out of Europe, even if it's our cradled continent, our continent, like it or not.
Any thoughts on that, the grand Russian cultural, racial, civilizational stance?
Okay, so you'll never hear anybody out of the Russian top elites, government, and someone ever criticizing the Jews.
But you always have to at some point find somebody to blame, right?
Because how do you explain all this shit, right?
So their favorite one is it's those damn Anglo-Saxons.
Sure.
Yes.
Those Anglos, you know, they're so awful.
And so this is just another variation of that.
He, I don't know, he needed to say something sort of what he thought was like, you know, witty sort of repartee, like to Ursula von der Leyen.
And so he like says, you Europeans are, of course, you know, he doesn't, Russians don't think that.
And Russian elites don't think that.
I mean, like, Putin is like a great Germanophile.
And I think if they were on in an honest conversation, they would say, yeah, we understand who's behind all this shit and what the real problem is.
We just don't like to talk about it publicly.
Fair enough.
Obviously, Jewish power ran rampant in Russia from 91 until the early years of Putin.
And he sort of cracked the whip and said, look, you can make money, but power, state power is our business and you're getting out of that.
Once the war kicked off, there were some prominent stories about remnant Jewish oligarchs fleeing to Israel or other places.
Have you noticed any lessening of Jewish influence, wealth, oligarchs there?
The Chabad Lubavitch thing always comes up.
Any noticeable changes over the past few years when it comes to Jewish, we'll just say power and influence in Russia.
No, not really.
And, you know, it's interesting.
So so many Jews left Russia during the end of the Soviet times, and then a lot of them left Russia in the following 30 years, you know, before, I guess, the SVO started.
And so this is an interesting thing.
So I didn't realize there were so few Jews here, but the media here reported that when the SVO started, because a lot of Jews just like took off when the SVO started.
They were like, uh-oh, this is like not good.
We could get like in trouble here.
So even if it was just the bottom lines that were menaced, sanctions and bye-bye yacht, that sort of stuff.
Yeah.
So the media started writing about this phenomenon of a lot of Jews leaving and pointed out that supposedly the number of Jews in Russia at the start of the SVO was 400,000, which in a country of 140 million, I was like, really?
Is that that few?
What's that?
Less than 10%.
But anyway, and then the media claimed that because of the SBO and all these Jews getting out of here, it dropped to 200,000.
Well, anyway, my point is that, you know, you don't encounter a lot of Jewish life and like moving around Russia.
You just don't, you run into them very rarely.
They don't have like, you know, lots of restaurants or companies or all this stuff going on.
Did any of them get any trouble or any persecution or anything?
Do we know that anyone actually suffered any type of repercussions that they seem to be afraid about?
No.
Nope.
I think this was just that they sympathize heavily with Ukraine, basically, as a group.
They're very liberal and they tend to like, you know, rack these liberal things.
And they, and, and also, I think they really thought, oh, Russia's going to get crushed.
Like, we don't, we shouldn't be here for economic reasons, right?
But that's, I'm not, I'm not, I'm talking about like Jews, you know, in general.
Like you never find meet Jews, like, I don't know, very rarely do you meet Jews in like everyday life.
But that being said, they do still have significant oligarchic power here.
You know, they still are like big players and the big companies and stuff like that.
And in Putin's circle, they have some influence.
But I would agree with Coach that they're very much, you know, they're not in the driver's seat.
So, you know, and they understand that.
And, you know, you got to love Russian, Russian culture is incredibly based about the Jews.
So this one, this, and there's all these like folk sayings about them.
And this one famous Russian saint.
Now, this is a saint.
Okay.
So, I mean, the somebody.
So he had this, he said about the Jews.
He said, you know, one Jew is okay.
But if there are a lot of them, you know, expect disaster.
And so his point was, I think that, you know, if there's a if the Jews are not in control and there's very few of them, then they conform to society and everything seemed fine.
And, you know, you can kind of like get along and say, hey, this isn't so bad.
It's when they start to take control that things go completely like, you know, bad, bad, bad, bad.
So perhaps that's that was a 19th century Russian saint, by the way.
And he's one of the most popular saints in the Russian church.
What's the status of what's the status of anti-Semitism laws, regulations there?
Can you get in trouble for criticizing Jewish power or saying, you know, these Jews should go back to Israel?
If you know, knock on wood.
Denying the Holocaust.
Yeah.
So yeah, that's, that is part of Russian legislation and it's applied basically to people who do it publicly.
So you can go to a bar and say pretty much anything you want and nobody's going to give you a hard time.
Right.
But if you start a telegram channel and you start talking about this stuff and it and your audience gets big enough, you're going to get a knock on the door from the authorities and they're going to say, hey, you know, maybe you shouldn't be doing this or, you know, we'd have to shut down your channel or something.
So it's like this kind of soft repression.
And I was going to say something about it.
But there are, for example, there are some Russian Telegram channels that talk about this stuff in a very based way.
But they're anonymous and they're small enough so that the authorities aren't, you know, whatever, for whatever reason, don't shut them down.
But they're very good and they're very well informed.
And there's a very, the thing about, you know, interesting about Russians is they're so damn smart and academic and well informed about history and stuff.
And this, I mean, if you, in terms of like living here, it's so interesting.
If you can overcome the language barrier, the conversations you have with well-educated and erudite Russians, it's just this amazing amount of information that really isn't known in the West.
And so there's this whole like intellectual sort of movement also.
It's small, it's not big, but they've got their, you know, their podcasts and their like publications and stuff where they talk about this thing and Jewish influence and everything.
And it's very interesting.
And it's very tightly controlled with conservative Christianity, Christian trends here.
There's a monarchist, you know, this very substantial and big monarchist movement here.
Speaking of Christianity, a Russia skeptic pal the other day posited that Russia is not really a Christian country.
Sure, maybe they're rebuilding some cathedrals and building new ones, but church attendance is really low, that it's more of a facade to get people reinvested in patriotism.
And I know that you are a devout Christian and believer there and active there.
Christianity and Russia, what's the trend?
Yeah.
So, yeah, this is something I know a huge amount about, really, because the other thing I really write about a lot and study is Christianity here in Russia.
And it's a very strong personal interest of mine.
So it's true.
Like really, you know, I don't know how you describe like a really serious Christian in America.
Be like your conservative traditional values, you know, Protestant and South.
Mass every Sunday.
Yeah.
Yeah.
In church every Sunday, takes it seriously, prays every day, reads the Bible, all that kind of stuff, right?
So in the U.S., what is it?
Maybe, would you say 20% of the people are like that?
Is that too much?
Ballpark, yeah.
A quarter tops.
Yeah.
Yeah.
Okay.
So in Russia, the percentage of people like that are about 5%.
Right.
Now, but there's a reason partly for why this is because, you know, the Orthodox way of doing Christianity is so demanding that it represents a real hurdle.
Like, you know, you can get into Christianity in America much easier.
All you got to do is show up your church on Sundays and you sort of get carried along by this current of like enthusiastic Christians, right?
In Russia, it's much more difficult.
You've got to observe all these rules.
You have to observe these fasts.
You have to go to, you can't go to conf you can't take communion unless you go to confession.
Confession is really serious.
You've got to prepare for it.
It's like this whole thing, right?
And so like becoming a serious Christian in Russia, it requires a lot more effort and there are a lot more barriers to it, which in a way, in some ways, is a very good thing because, you know, the people who actually end up in it are really like living, walking the walk.
And it's also, you know, if you figure that they started from almost zero Christians 30 years ago, how far they've come is substantial, although it has plateaued.
You know, there was this like dramatic rise and now it's not growing nearly as fast as it used to be.
Yeah.
And so there's many, and there's still a bunch of like people who are really nostalgic about the communist approach to spiritual life, you know, atheism, communist party, communism, and all that stuff.
So it's a fascinating, it's a fascinating thing.
But what's super interesting about it is like the encouragement to be more Christian is coming from the government, right?
So you've got these massive government-backed efforts to try and get people to be more Christian.
And it's not, it's not fake.
It's not some like, you know, artificial thing where they're like, oh, this is just going to like provide national unity or patriotism or something.
It's a genuine conviction of a lot of the elites that this is important and good.
And so there's some very profound and deeply believing elites.
Who can look into Putin's heart and understand how much of his is posturing or for real?
But they spend real money on it and they push real stuff.
And it's so interesting to live in a country where you, you know, where this is coming from the top down and you just see the benefit of it.
And you're like, wow, this is so wonderful because the West is just the opposite.
They're always trying to tamp down and like, you know, stop the Christians.
Or make it, yeah, make it gay and anti-racist for sure.
And you were spot on, by the way.
The estimates are between 20 and 30% regular churchgoers, you know, every week, 20% regularly, 30%, at least the data I could find there.
Quickly.
But I wouldn't describe regular churchgoing as being serious about Christianity because I mean, go through the motions.
I grew up in it.
I went to church every Sunday when I was growing up.
And I can tell you something.
Our Episcopalian parish there was just like a, you know, about as lukewarm Christianity as you could imagine.
When my mom would drag me to Catholic Mass every Sunday, my thoughts were anything but holy.
I hated being there.
They just, they didn't do a very good job converting me.
Demographic demographics.
Russia has obviously lost a lot of men in Ukraine.
The last census data I looked at actually showed that Russia got marginally whiter or more ethnic Russian from the previous 10 years.
Some of that was by absorbing Crimea and parts of eastern Ukraine.
But that, you know, it certainly was not getting less white or less ethnic Russian despite significant migration.
Any pulse on government efforts to boost the birth rate?
Whether there's any racial chauvinist aspect to that?
And are you optimistic that Russians are going to get it together and start having big families again?
Well, it's definitely the trend in which it's moving, but it's moving very slowly.
So you see these like steady upticks in numbers of kids and babies and stuff and more and more larger families.
But it's nothing really dramatic.
And certainly the government statistics don't indicate that this is having a great success in addressing the demographic problem.
So they've still got a ways to go.
You know what's interesting?
So wars are famously radicalizing for the guys in the trenches, partially because you sit around and you talk about shit and you don't really care anymore, like, you know, what anybody, you know, what you're supposed to say or what you're supposed to believe.
So they're breeding grounds for dissidents and radicalism.
So there's a lot of talk that this generation that has been in the war, when they get back into civilian life, they're going to be a definite positive force for society in terms of being much more based, much more conservative and much more intolerant of just the liberal bullshit that comes along with bourgeois, you know, easy living.
So that's going to be an interesting thing.
And it's already started and Putin has talked about this.
It's so interesting.
So this is like an example of like what I would think of as like really smart statesmanship.
So he's said publicly many times.
He's like, he says, look, these young men in the trenches have gone through something that is, it's mentality changing.
It makes you a better person.
It makes you more connected with reality.
And I want these people to be the vanguard of Russian society.
So when these guys get back, you know, we're going to be pushing them into the best universities.
We're going to be pushing them into government, into the better jobs, and try and raise up a generation of elites there that had this experience and understood what patriotism and sacrifice is.
And hopefully they don't come back like Vietnam veterans, hating the government.
Yeah, no, I don't think so.
I think the, yeah, it's a very sort of patriotic feeling here.
So that's interesting.
Yeah.
Sure.
We had a couple questions from the audience.
And we covered some of this already, but I'll give him a little credit.
Okay asked, how do Russians keep their elites in line these days?
Or is it just Putin?
And once he's gone, it's going to go to shit again.
So maybe reading between the lines, any clarity on a succession plan?
Do they hate, laugh at the EU enough?
So what comes after Putin?
And they might not be hostile toward America, but do they see the EU elites as clowns?
I don't know if it gets that far with them.
Yeah.
Yeah.
Listen, there's, as far as I can make out, there is no anointed successor to Putin.
And I was just, you know, I don't watch the Russian media that much because it's a little bit sort of repetitive and tedious.
But I was watching it the other night, and Putin was looking substantially older than I remember him looking a year ago.
Like maybe the years are finally catching up with him or something.
And I, yeah, so this is a question of a point of concern or worry.
I mean, you know, I think he's really great.
I really do.
I'm a huge Putin fan.
I think he's been an amazing leader.
But yeah, Russian politics is very personality driven.
So whoever does succeed him, you know, it's going to be incredibly important.
So yeah, that's a wild card.
Fair enough.
And then opinions turn the EU.
And they do recognize the EU is a joke.
Very good.
Let me see here.
We had another good one up above.
Okay, we talked about Russian people view Trump and his talks to end the war, mass migration.
And yeah, I think at this point, somebody asked about like, do people not realize that the CIA and the West were involved in Maidan and overthrowing the government?
That's the source.
Yeah.
Anybody who still swallows, you know, Putin knew Hitler invaded Ukraine for no reason, just because I don't know if there's any hope left for them.
Personal personal question for you, Charles.
Do your kids, were your kids sad and missing America or were they fine with their self-imposed rational exile in Russia?
No, you know, okay, so I've got four daughters and the youngest ones are now seven and nine.
And so we left four years ago.
And they ask every week, like, dad, we want to go back to America.
I'm pleasantly surprised.
Yeah.
Yeah.
You know, because I mean, because, you know, children are like that.
It's their childhood memories, their toys, the old house, just, you know, yeah.
And they, so yeah, everybody wants to go back.
Yeah.
All right.
Well, yeah, all in good time.
I look forward to it.
Russian.
I never came close to mastering it.
It was so frustrating.
Any tips for our guys who want to start out studying Russian?
Duolingo, taking a course at the local community college, if they even have it?
What would you suggest?
Okay, this is so funny you asked this, Coach.
So it's a huge barrier.
And in connection with this, writing about this whole moving to Russia thing, I've been talking to people about it a lot.
I've been thinking about it a lot.
I have some rather radical ideas about how to learn languages.
So I just studied four languages in my life, foreign languages.
And basically, I came to the conclusion that most of the ways languages are taught are really bad.
They're not effective.
And it's one of these areas of human endeavor which has not experienced rationalization.
It's still like completely impractical and stupid and usually fails.
And there are just so many hacks to learn a language quickly.
And if you do it right, you can learn a European language pretty fluently.
Well, you know, not fluently, but like super competent level in two years.
Spending about an hour a day.
And what's interesting about it, that hour doesn't have to be like set aside time from like your high productivity work time.
It can be like in between time, commuting time, you know, standing in line time, doing the dishes time, that kind of thing.
So, and so anyways, you know, basically I keep explaining these ideas to friends of mine and they finally are like, listen, you've got to write this down.
This is like amazing.
So I started writing this out literally a couple of months ago.
And I'm trying to figure out what to do with it.
So, you know what?
If there's enough guys out there that are interested, send me a message or let me know somehow.
I'm on Twitter and Substack.
Direct messages are open on Twitter.
And, you know, we'll put together a group and try and share this stuff with people because it's, man, languages are super fun and they can be learned very quickly.
Like if you approach it right, but no, Duolingo won't work and all the other ones won't work.
Rose at a stone.
Yeah.
At a certain point during my four months there, I just said, you know what?
I don't think I'm going to master this sucker.
So I'm just going to have one and hang out with the fellow American students and just, you know, learn whatever I need to get by and not try to master the genitive endings on every damn thing.
Exactly.
And professional language teachers are toxic and certain like path to failure.
Like just run.
It's like an American, you know, an American doctor, basically, you know, whatever advice they give you, just like do the opposite.
It's not going to work.
There was this Chinese American kid on the program with us and he was actually pretty good.
He could get around semi-fluent.
And I said, how the hell do you remember all the grammatical cases for those words?
He goes, oh, I don't.
I just sort of slur toward the end of the words.
That's three to make it through.
Serious question at the risk of giving the authorities any ideas.
Charles, have you ever gotten one of those knocks at the door about your writing or perhaps previous articles?
From Russia?
From Russian authorities?
Yeah.
Absolutely not.
No, no.
Okay.
I was afraid to ask.
No, no, no.
But like, you know, I have like a wide, I can, I interact with a relatively high level of people here.
And so in private conversation, if like things veer towards sort of like taboo subjects, they get very uncomfortable.
Like, you know, you can't really like talk about that.
Soft power.
Yeah.
So, yeah.
Shut it down.
Yeah.
Russia still has a lot of red pilling to go through, especially among the elites, because it's just like not discussed.
So people are much more ignorant about stuff.
And you think the younger generations get it more than the boomer elites?
Yeah, but I wouldn't say like substantially in terms of percentages.
There's nothing like in the West because so Russians are not, they're really, they don't speak foreign languages.
They're very insular country, kind of the way France might be, but even in France, they speak more English than they do in Russia.
But like maybe China, maybe a lot of people don't speak English.
I don't know.
But for whatever reasons, Russians are not.
Is the one country that has the most English-speaking people on the planet?
Really?
But that's because there's a lot of Chinese, not because percentage terms, a lot of Chinese speak English.
I don't know.
But yeah, so they're not engaging on Western social media and they've totally missed the whole Twitter boom.
And so just the level of knowledge about this stuff, like, you know, this, this whole world that's opened up to like Americans in the last 10 years or so of like, you know, from the Twin Towers to the JFK to the Holocaust.
USS Liberty.
Yeah.
It's like, they don't know.
It's all in the open.
It's a wonder.
I don't know if you've probably been able to track it, Charles, but at least in the United States, like everybody knows that aid to Israel is like the most hypocritical, grotesque thing.
You know, it's like, all right, now do Israel.
Now do Israel.
Isn't Joe Rogan talking about it now?
Yeah.
They did, you know, there's varying levels of satisfaction with that.
But yeah, absolutely are guys with hundreds of thousands of followers on Twitter.
I mean, the level of awareness that we collectively have achieved over the past five to 10 years, if you went back to us in 2015 and said, Tucker Carlson, well, whining about racism will speak positively about white nationalism as a concept.
We would have been dancing in the streets.
Yeah, this, you know, the APAC tracker on Twitter, every single time a Zionist-owned politician opens their mouth about Hamas or Gaza or whatever there it is, boom, this politician has received $500,000 from APAC and it gets more likes than whatever the show puts out.
It's, you know, it's too premature to declare victory.
And obviously Trump is still a mega Zionist, despite the other good things.
You know, some of those anti-Israel college protesters have begun to lose their student visas.
We just learned tonight, maybe one or two, you know, the opening tranche.
And I said, well, I'm not going to cry over, you know, anti-white, brown, or Muslim campus agitators getting deported, even if it's for the wrong reasons, you know, to protect Jewish feelings in America.
Things are happening.
There's no question in my mind.
I was very Trump skeptical going into this.
I thought it was going to be more the same of the first term.
We are getting Zionism as promised, but everything from immigration to going after the money, the audience has heard me bang this drum since the inauguration, but I've just been very pleasantly surprised, cautiously optimistic, warts and all.
And that goes doubly, triply, quadruply for the narrative successes that we've had in America in particular.
Yeah, I see it happening.
I would totally agree with that.
It's going much better than we could have possibly hoped.
Amen.
I say the most important question upon which the fates of nations rest.
And this comes from mighty Joe Ross, our pal from Twitter and long ago.
And he says, you must ask Charles, has he ever had Dodo Pizza?
And if so, what American brand does it compare to?
It's all resting on this one, Charles.
I have never had Dodo Pizza.
Yeah.
That's a Russia pizza, Russian pizza brand, right?
Yeah.
You're like, I don't mind.
It's like a famous startup.
They did the first drone delivery of pizza.
Yeah.
Joe's going to be huge.
Yeah.
Sorry.
Yeah.
He's a big pizza fan.
I'll make it a point.
I'll make it a point to grab a slice next time, Mighty.
Very past one or something.
Try a dodo pizza and we'll let Joe.
We'll let Joe Ross know how it compares to, I guess, Papa John's, etc.
All right.
Hey, we are at an hour.
Charles, you've got a beautiful Friday.
How is it?
Is it gloomy and still snowy there?
What's it like on the street?
Literally.
No.
So this has been a winter for the conspiracy theorists.
So it's been so freaking warm here.
And half the winter, there was no snow cover.
And so all you folks out there who are thinking about pole shifts and things like that, it might be happening because it's been like insanely warm here this winter.
So it's about, must be about 50 degrees today, sunny.
Oh, man.
Nice day.
Wonderful.
Well, congratulations again, Charles, on getting absolved for your sins.
Over the moon for you and your family.
Hope those girls will be able to come back and still see the good side of America that they remember.
Sam Rolo, anything else for Charles before we get the heck out of here?
It is 110 here in West Virginia.
Yeah, it has been such a startling change in the general tone in this country.
With we all know what I'm saying, this Zelensky and the Ukraine over the last couple of years, him coming here and just being given all kinds of aid and support, especially in the media, carrying water for him all the time.
It's just, it's really startling to me how Trump takes office and their whole party over there is just dissolving.
And I remember when it was the election was coming up and there was that undercurrent of, oh, if Trump, if Trump takes office, that's it for Ukraine.
And I remember even seeing some funny footage, like some Ukrainian soldiers shooting Trump in effigy, you know, like a target shooting and all that.
And it's just, you know, all that killing and warfare and all the, especially all the videos were treated to, right?
With, you know, people taking with their own camera and things on the battlefield, awful things.
It's just hard to believe where we are right now.
And is, you know, I'm trying to come to grips with it myself.
You know, is it because the Americans see the writing on the wall, the war is lost, they're cutting their losses, they're pulling the support?
Or Trump, yeah, that, or is, you know, Trump, he's, you know, he has some type of closeness with Russia, with Putin, right?
Through the years we've seen.
Yeah, he was trying to build a hotel there.
I mean, if there's, you know, Russia Gate sabotaged his first term, the Zelensky call got him impeached.
He's got, of all the things, Trump has arguably been slightly now in the first term, you know, they sanctioned Nord Stream again, and he kind of played ball with the establishment, but he's been fairly consistently, if not pro-Russian, then at least open to the idea of good relations with them for the majority of this.
Yeah.
And it only makes sense, right?
I mean, not rational.
Yeah, you know, we don't want to sound or I don't want to sound like just some kind of big Russian person, but it just makes sense with why be on such a terrible side of against this country in this meaningless war.
You know, if it is coming to an end, I'm personally happy to see that.
It's a real tragedy.
Yep.
Absolutely.
Yeah.
It's been a terrible thing, but especially for the Ukrainians.
You know, there's all this like debate about what the casualty figures are.
And obviously, it's a closely guarded secret on both sides.
So, you know, that's the thing about wars is you often never actually find out how many people actually died.
And there's no way to find out.
But I suspect that the rates are much higher on the Ukrainian side because I think their leaders just didn't care about them and were happy to sacrifice them.
And they're having these, you know, manpower shortages now, which is you can kind of extrapolate from that.
But the Russians are, and the Russians, I think, are very, very, they're, they spare their guys.
They don't, they don't take the meat grinder approach.
They're like, you know, we're not going to just needlessly like kill off our guys.
So I bet you it's like four to one.
Well, that's true.
That would be my guess.
Because Russian leadership is Russian and Ukrainian leadership is Jewish.
Yeah.
Right.
It's not even a joke.
Jews don't care.
Like, literally, that is Zelensky was sending out the cattle.
Totally agree with that.
That's absolutely true.
Yeah.
Yeah.
And guys can't wrap their head around the fact that Russia today is not the same as the Soviet Union from 1941 or 1945.
Still that's because they're retarded.
Some of them.
But I mean, yeah, there is just that really deep-seated hatred.
And I don't know.
They don't seem stupid, just like deeply ideological on the issue.
When even if they are, yeah, I mean, just from a rational foreign policy perspective.
No, I mean, they are stupid.
Yeah.
I believe this for a long time.
No, you don't have to love Russia, but it makes sense to have good relations with them for Europe, for the United States, for Russia, to not have China rule the world.
I think it's a fantasy the ship has sailed.
I mean, Russia can never really trust America again as of today because we've gone back on so many things.
I mean, in four years, what happens?
You know, you make a big, beautiful agreement with Trump and Democrats come back in 2028.
And then it's right back to the old hobby horse, Russia bad.
Yeah, they've got to have some arrangement that guarantees their long-term security.
Only, only rational.
All right, gentlemen.
Wonderful talk.
Charles, thank you so much for joining us again.
Really happy for you and your family.
And hopefully, we're not too optimistic here.
Hopefully, we won't have egg on our face.
But our past conversations, I guarantee, would hold up pretty well two previous times you've been on the show.
But please go ahead.
Yeah.
Hey, listen, I just want to say thank you guys for staying up so late to do this.
It's been a genuine pleasure.
Super, a great conversation.
So happy to do this anytime.
Right back at you.
Charles's sub stack is ARC or Russian Arc.
We'll put links to his Twitter and the sub stack there in the show notes so you can subscribe.
It's free.
You can support him if you want.
And well, I'm not exactly going to be advertising a welcome home party for you, Charles, but a cold one will be in order.
I suspect we should get getting back in like the next couple of months.
Okay.
Good deal.
Keep me posted and keep up the great work.
And again, I don't want to encourage guys to leave the United States and move to Russia.
But if it's of interest, like he said, just go visit.
And, you know, I don't know what the visa situation is like.
It certainly wasn't easy over the past four years.
Go ahead.
Yeah.
On that specific point.
No, it's super easy to get a visa.
And it's been super easy over the last four years and for the 10 years before that.
So getting a Russian visa is no problem at all.
And it is like, you know, as long as you don't like pop up on there, like, you know, working for the CIA or something like that.
Sure.
Do you have to go in person to a consulate or embassy?
Because we just, you know, three regulars.
No, you don't.
No, you don't.
You can mail in your passport.
But you have to work through a visa agency.
So basically, you look up a visa agency that works with Russia for $100, they'll take care of the whole thing for you.
And then you just got to pay consulate fees and stuff like that.
See it for yourself.
Yeah.
And the ticket prices are going to go down if they drop these sanctions and the direct flights resume or flights through Europe.
It's going to be much more affordable than it is now, which is you have to fly through Istanbul.
As LeVar Burton used to say on Reading Rainbow, but don't take our word for it.
See it for yourself.
Anyway.
All right.
God bless, Charles.
You have the closing music.
If you don't have anything in the hopper, you can send it to us after the show.
But you had that beautiful sort of Russian classical three years ago.
Anything that you'd like to highlight?
I'll try and think of something and send it over.
Yeah, I've got a playlist.
It'll be easy to talk about.
Sure, you do.
All right.
We love you, fam, and we'll talk to you next week.
Perhaps we will go on to Ireland after, Charles, we've now done Norway, Australia, and Russia.
And we got an Irish guest in the hopper, too.
So it's been a great few weeks tour of the world.
And thank you for contributing to it.
Fantastic.
Okay.
Thanks, guys.
I appreciate it.
See you, everybody.
Yeah.
See ya.
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