Ukraine’s Incursion Into Russia, Nord Stream Pipeline Revelations, and More with Michael Tracey and Russia Analyst Prof. Glenn Diesen
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Ukraine Incursion Into Russia/Nord Stream Pipeline Revelations (0:00)
Interview with Professor Glenn Diesen (59:17)
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Glenn is away again today doing something or other.
So you are stuck with me again.
Welcome to a new episode of System Update.
Our live nightly show that airs every Monday through Friday at 7 p.m.
Eastern exclusively here on Rumble, the free speech alternative to YouTube.
First, there is a U.S.-backed invasion of Russia underway, so you'd think that would be something rather important to question American officials on.
And yet it seems like, as per usual, there's basically bipartisan continuity on that subject.
So we'll review that and some other developments on the sizzling hot 2024 campaign trail.
And then I will speak to Glenn Dyson, who is a Russia analyst and a professor, and we'll go through some of the details of the ongoing Ukrainian incursion or invasion into the Kursk region and its implications for the trajectory of the war and also the political implications and we'll go through some of the details of the ongoing Ukrainian incursion
So that should be good.
And before we get to today's amazing content, I'd like to remind you that System Update is available in podcast form on Spotify and on all major platforms.
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If you have generosity in your heart, it's something you probably should do.
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For now, welcome to a new episode of System Updates starting right now.
So a little over a week ago, Ukraine launched an incursion into Russia, Now, there could be, I guess, some semantic quibbles with whether you want to call it an incursion, an invasion,
An encroachment, a land seizure, whatever your word choice may be, it does appear to be a rather significant development in the trajectory of the war.
It certainly was not as telegraphed as prior Ukrainian offenses.
You might recall that in 2023, there was endless months of hype
for the supposed Ukrainian counter-offensive, where they were accumulating all this extensive Western armament, and there were tabletop exercises for how the counter-offensive would be run, and Russia had lots of time to prepare, because Ukraine was making no bones about the fact that it was preparing to launch the supposed counter-offensive, and then the counter-offensive, by virtually all accounts, including the Ukrainian's own accounts,
Failed to achieve anything close to its stated aims and was widely regarded as a failure.
So I guess 2024's big surprise on the Ukrainian front was that they launched this incursion or invasion or whatever into Russia.
Now there's been Some triumphalism on the part of American and European commentators, where they're celebrating this development as something really great and something that should inspire optimism.
And they're invoking all the standard parallels to World War II.
I guess the unusual thing here is that, factually speaking, one of those World War II parallels seems apt Which is that this is the first large-scale foreign incursion and seizure of territory into Russia since World War II.
So here was the BBC informing its viewers about this development.
Ukraine says its troops in Russia have progressed further and that they've now captured over a hundred Russian servicemen.
It's the biggest foreign incursion into Russia since the Second World War and today saw the extraordinary sight of a Ukrainian war correspondent reporting from inside Russia.
Ukraine's incursion began just over a week ago and took Moscow by complete surprise.
Despite claims of territorial gains, Ukraine insists it's not interested in taking over Russian territory.
Okay, so, World War II, and if I don't restrain myself, I might get into a whole World War II rabbit hole, which I'm sometimes
But World War II was the biggest cataclysm in human history, so when people kind of joyously refer to World War II as this precedent for what's happening today, I don't really get into a whole stance where I'm going to jump up and start celebrating.
To me, it's cause for a bit of worry, a bit of apprehension about looming catastrophe.
Now, the Ukraine war has already been a catastrophe for both Ukraine and Russia in so far as the amount of casualties, the amount of resources expended, the amount of brutal, grinding trench warfare, and a war of attrition that's been underway.
And also for the world, it's been a disaster in the sense of heightened nuclear brinksmanship now being the norm.
Remember, Joe Biden himself said in October of 2022, that the threat of nuclear change was at its highest since the Cuban Missile Crisis.
So just that increased level of nuclear risk is itself a severe harm that's been inflicted on the world as a result of this war.
But now we've entered a new phase, seemingly, where Ukraine has audaciously launched this incursion or invasion into Russia, has seized relatively sizable amounts of territory, And this could provoke some forthcoming escalation that we don't fully know and we can't fully predict.
And this was always going to be the case in terms of the prospect of escalation the longer the war dragged on because war is an inherently unpredictable and chaotic enterprise with a vast multiplicity of Moving parts and variables, and a constant risk that something could go haywire.
So, if these proclamations of a World War II level development are at all true, and they seem to be factually untrue, just in the sense that, you know, if you go back to 1945, there really isn't something akin to this that's happened in Russia, then Who knows how Russia could respond to that?
Who knows what tactics they might employ as vengeance?
Or who knows what level of involvement that could then precipitate on the part of the US or other NATO powers, which are already, as we know, highly intricately involved in the Ukraine conflict.
So it's kind of worrisome, kind of dire, I would even say, and yet, It's just being presented in the Western media as this wonderful thing that should really lift our spirits as to the direction that the war is taking.
has reportedly installed a new military commander to govern what are now newly occupied Russian territories.
There have been mass evacuations that have been announced by the Russian regional authorities.
Something like 200,000 people who are in these somewhat remote Russian border areas have been evacuated.
You have shelling, you have All kinds of tumult and turmoil, and it's really anyone's guess what might result from this.
So I happen to have been this week in Omaha, Nebraska.
I still am there now.
Omaha, Nebraska, heartland of America.
That's me, MT, your old friend, always getting in touch with the heartland of America.
And the reason I was in Omaha this week was not because they just have great stakes, although I'm not going to lie, that was an added incentive.
Not because of Korn or because of Peyton Manning's famous cry as he's running his plays as a quarterback.
Omaha, Omaha.
No, I'm in Omaha, Nebraska because it happens to be the command center of the U.S.
nuclear arsenal.
And every year, STRATCOM, which is the acronym that the US military uses for its nuclear command force, runs an annual, what they call, Deterrence Symposium, where they invite the public and they invite other branches of the military to come learn all about the art of deterrence.
Now, deterrence is often used just really as a euphemism for projection of American power, because...
The reason why the United States has to be constantly projecting its power coercively abroad, both in terms of soft power and hard power, some military but also political power, economic power, cultural power, etc., is because there are always these scary threats that are on the horizon, and now they're all extremely exercised about this joint threat of China and Russia, And whenever I say threat, I'm saying alleged threat because I don't want to necessarily give credence to this whole logic.
But what they claim is that China and Russia are forging ahead with this extremely apocalyptic threat that the U.S.
now has to spend even more money on its military to combat and also revitalize and enhance its nuclear arsenal and get back to a Cold War mentality where we're just shoveling billions upon billions of dollars endlessly into these boondoggle weapon systems And nuclear revitalization programs and the like.
And so it was fortuitous timing that just in the midst of this annual fantastic symposium, there happened to be a U.S.-backed invasion of Russia underway.
Gee, how about that?
Now, U.S.
officials, including Biden and others, have tried to claim that the U.S.
really didn't have any foreknowledge of this incursion, and there could be a kernel of truth to that, in that, you know, Ukrainians might be doing things that the US doesn't always have total visibility on, but whatever the precise operational details of this incursion, obviously Ukraine only exists as a state because of the sponsorship and subsidization of the United States.
And Ukraine is using US-provided armaments to conduct this offensive, as well as UK and other NATO country armaments to conduct The offensive, they've been given specific authorization, it was reported by the UK in particular, to use its weaponry to launch this invasion of Russia.
And you know, if I told you two years ago, or three years ago, that the US and NATO countries would be actively enabling and facilitating an invasion of Russia, you would have probably looked at me like I had two heads.
I have one head, and I try to remain a bit cold and rational with the one head that I do thankfully have, and therefore that leads me to believe that this is kind of an insane situation.
So I asked a number of military officials and others at this STRATCOM symposium about the latest developments with respect to Ukraine and the invasion of Russia.
And so here is what General Anthony Cotton told me at one of the press availability sessions that they were kind enough to hold at this symposium when I asked him about what insight he had on the Kursk operation.
So let's hear that.
General, so as you know, there's a land incursion happening right now that the Ukrainians have undertaken into territorial Russia.
For the first time, at least in a far-reaching way, could you just elaborate on how you came to be aware of this?
What changes to the posture have been made, if any?
Because in the past, there had been a clear distinction that was at least claimed between defensive actions that Ukraine was taking versus offensive.
Now, it's hard to really, I guess, argue that.
It's a defensive action to make a land incursion into Russia, maybe I'm wrong, but how do you kind of conceptualize what Ukraine is doing there and how does it relate to the U.S.
nuclear posture?
Yeah, so from my perspective as a Spetcom commander, you know, I have not changed any posture in my forces, if that's the question that you're asking.
In regards to what's being seen and how I've been made abreast of what is going on, it's actually in my fellow combat commander, General Chris Cavolli's AOR.
I just get briefed out from my JT in regard to what we're seeing that's happening in that part of the world.
So I don't know that I can actually give a real answer in regard to that.
I'm not being a commander in chief.
And obviously not trying to get you to comment on any political matters, but we are in election season, so I'm slightly obliged, I suppose.
You're obliged to ask.
Perhaps.
But there were questions raised around the cognitive fitness of the President.
Can you just touch on your dealings with him as of late?
What observations you made as to his capacities?
Should the American public be at all concerned about his ability to manage crises that are unfolding now, whether it be in the Middle East or Ukraine?
Just give some general observations as you're dealing with him.
Answer a question in regards to, you know, my relationship and what I've seen with my commander-in-chief.
I don't think it's appropriate for me to bring that up here.
I have no concerns with the current commander-in-chief.
He has abilities to give me lawful orders if required.
Okay, so there's the commander of the U.S.
nuclear arsenal.
Now, obviously, the ultimate commander is the Commander-in-Chief, but he runs—General Cotton runs STRATCOM, which presides over the U.S.
nuclear arsenal, which is still—even though it's not quite as extensive as during the peak of the Cold War—still a hugely extensive enterprise, and obviously entails some fairly dramatic life-or-death stakes.
So I thought it would be prudent to ask him about his recent dealings with the current President and Commander-in-Chief Joe Biden.
Remember him?
Because there have been questions raised, you might recall, around Biden's cognitive fitness.
Was he equipped to carry forth his duties as President, which requires some fairly intense cognitive tasks, you might say?
And then led to this donor putsch and this operative maelstrom that led to Biden bowing out of the 2024 race and engineering this switcheroo with our culturally exciting friend Kamala Harris.
Brat Kamala, she's in there as we're all aware.
But Biden is still president for another five or six months.
At least that's what he claims he's going to remain as president for the next five or six months.
And during that five or six months, plenty could happen that would require some fairly high pressure decision making on his part.
We have a cataclysm that can be brewing as we speak in the Middle East, with Hezbollah and Iran threatening anyway to launch a potentially imminent large-scale attack on Israel.
That's been delayed by several weeks, it seems, but there was just a Another ceasefire alleged series of negotiations in Doha, Qatar that did not result in a cessation of hostilities in Gaza.
And you have top Iranian officials indicating that they viewed the necessity of attacking Israel to be some sort of religious imperative.
There are always kind of whispers or projections about when an attack might happen, if at all, could happen over the weekend, we just don't know.
And so the point being that you would presumably prefer if the current commander in chief had all his wits about him, cognitively, and that's still very much an open question with Biden.
But General Cotton says there's nothing to be concerned with there.
And he has no concerns about Biden's ability to issue a lawful order if required, which is interesting phrasing.
So Cotton says, I have no concerns with the current commander in chief in his abilities to give me a lawful order if required.
Hmm.
Why specify a lawful order?
Could it be that there's a risk of an unlawful order?
I don't want to put words in the general's mouth, but that was an interesting phraseology there.
And then as to the, um, Kursk invasion or incursion, Cotton indicated that he had no special insight in how that all came about.
He deferred to his fellow combatant commander, General Cavoli, whose area of responsibility is the European theater.
He's the head of the European command.
And so basically just kind of passed the buck to him.
And he did, Cotton did also add that he hasn't changed his posture with regard to nuclear forces.
Now, would he tell me even if he had changed his posture?
Probably not.
I don't want to assume anyone's lying necessarily, but you can imagine how you might Or he might fudge those details to some extent.
But anyway, I thought it was a worthwhile question for at least someone to pose.
I mean it's amazing to me.
I mean there are really no national media at this symposium run by the U.S. nuclear arsenal.
There are plenty of questions, plenty of live issues that are certainly more than enough fodder to ask these people about.
But there's really not a whole lot of media.
It was like me and like one guy from the local Omaha newspaper and then the local TV station.
And local reporters don't tend to ask, no offense, but they don't really tend to have the disposition to ask two incisive questions.
I'm not claiming that my questions were the most incisive of all time, but at least I tried to raise some pertinent issues.
So it really is amazing how under attended this thing is by national media, but there you have it.
And so what's going on in the presidential race?
I mean, are Donald Trump and Kamala Harris all being bombarded every day, every hour with demands that they comment on this latest U.S.-sponsored invasion of Russia?
I mean, I almost feel like I have to keep repeating that just to emphasize how nutty it is, but it's happening.
What's the position of Donald Trump and Kamala Harris on this U.S.-backed invasion of Russia?
It's been happening for over a week.
Have either of them weighed in on it?
No, not really, not directly.
Trump will say over and over again the invasion of Russia never would have happened, October 7th never would have happened, and he'll magically solve the war in 24 hours.
So he doesn't get into the specifics on his position on any really of the details.
And then Kamala Harris is hiding from the press almost entirely.
Trump had been hiding largely from at least Adversarial questioning for a long time, but to his credit, he has done a couple of press conferences lately, and he's been marginally more available to press inquiry than he had been for the vast majority of 2024.
But even so, hasn't really given a concrete position on this latest dramatic development.
And Kamala, she's in her bunker somewhere, I guess just waiting on the clock to see if maybe she can become president without answering a single Adversarial question about anything, which is rather remarkable.
So let's go through the best we can ascertain about what our two exalted presidential candidates have to say about this issue.
Here was Trump yesterday at his golf club in Bedminster, New Jersey, and he did go on a little tangent about Russia and Ukraine, and here's what he had to say.
I was very tough on Russia.
Russia, I was probably the toughest.
I ended Nord Stream 2.
I ended Nord Stream 2.
The biggest deal they've ever done.
The biggest pipeline in the world.
The biggest.
All of Europe was going to be supplied by Russia.
And I ended the deal.
It was dead.
And then Biden comes in and approves it.
And they say, oh, I was nice to Russia.
No.
Putin actually said to me one time, you know, if you're supposed to be, like, friendly with me, I would hate like hell for you to be angry at me because you are brutal.
Think of it.
Not only that, the sanctions, but forget the sanctions.
I ended Nord Stream 2.
The pipeline was dead.
Okay, so there's Trump repeating what he tends to say when the issue of Russia comes up, which is that he was brutal on Russia.
There he said that Putin even complained to him that Trump was so brutal on Russia because, among other things, Trump imposed lots of sanctions on Russia and also he killed the Nord Stream 2 pipeline.
That's what he touts anyway.
Which is interesting bipartisan continuity unto itself because, as we know, there was that mysterious explosion that rendered inoperable the Nord Stream 2 pipeline back in September of 2022.
There was also some new reporting that came out from the Wall Street Journal this week that maybe you could raise questions as to the full veracity of, but they at least claim that it was a Ukraine operation and Zelensky initially signed off on it, but then halted the order.
But then the top commander in Ukraine, Zelensky, went forward with the sabotage operation anyway.
So it's still a bit hazy as to what exactly happened there.
Obviously, Seymour Hersh, well over a year ago now, reported that it was an American operation that exploded the Nord Stream pipeline.
So I guess we'll have to wait for, you know, another couple of decades or something to get the full story on that while we all lurch into nuclear oblivion, potentially.
So maybe we'll never get around to knowing the full story.
But Trump is there bragging that he North Stream Pipeline.
Now, why is it the role of the United States President to kill a pipeline from Russia to Europe in the first place?
That seems to be like an unexamined premise of his whole tale there.
But he takes great pride, I guess, in doing that.
It would be nice to know.
It would be nice to have a reporter deign to ask him what is his position on the fact that there's an ongoing U.S.-backed invasion of Russia.
Like, wouldn't you want a presidential candidate to at least offer a comment or two on that?
Apparently not.
That was not asked at the press availability yesterday, so great job to the media there, as usual.
I also want to mention that at this Stratcom Deterrence Symposium, I got a chance to ask the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, General CQ Brown.
We have his image here.
I think we're going to pull up just so you can get a nice big look at him.
Here is the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff.
I asked him about to what extent, and I unfortunately was not able to, it was kind of a different scenario than with the other generals, so I wasn't able to get a good audio clip of him, but I did ask him to what extent there was foreknowledge by the US of this Ukrainian incursion, and he said, Quote, I know they're just trying to defend themselves, meaning the Ukrainians, and as to whether there was operational knowledge or not by the U.S.
of the incursion, he said, I won't get into it.
So that wasn't a denial that there was operational knowledge.
It's just kind of, you know, an atroit avoidance of the question.
So I guess you could draw your own conclusions from that if you would like.
And he also did say, I asked him a similar question that I asked the general, the commander of STRATCOM, Cotton.
Does this sort of change the perspective?
That Russia may have on the nature of U.S.
involvement in Ukraine, because the U.S.
has at least always tried to insist that everything that was doing in Ukraine was defensive in nature, right?
So all the weapon systems it was dumping into Ukraine, all the sanctions, everything else, it was just a matter of defending Ukraine.
from Russian aggression.
But now we have an ongoing invasion of Russian territory underway, and it seems like it might be a bit more complicated to maintain this pretext that it's merely about defense of Ukraine when you're literally having Ukraine now seize and occupy Russian territory.
And Cotton did say, quote, it does change the perspective that Russia would have.
He said that Putin wasn't expecting it.
So, there you have it.
A little bit enigmatic on his part, but that's, I guess, what you would expect from the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff.
But, there's me, your intrepid reporter, at least trying to put some of these questions to the top military officials in the country, whereas most of the rest of the media, I don't know, they're screaming about abortion, they're screaming about other nonsense, and not really getting to the heart of the matter, it would seem.
Now in terms of Trump's disposition, and don't worry people, I will be very bipartisan about this, we're going to get to Kamala shortly, but in terms of Trump's disposition on major escalatory developments in the Ukraine-Russia conflict, I think there was an interview that he did in March of 2022 on Fox Business that didn't get a whole lot of attention at the time, maybe because Trump was not quite as
outspoken maybe, or he wasn't as prominent in the public discourse at that particular juncture as he obviously is now.
He was at a little bit of an ebb in Trump's public notoriety, but he did go on Fox Business, and this was in the earlier stages of the Ukraine war, and here's what he had to say.
I think this is instructive.
There's this discussion about whether we should send jets, MiG jets, to help the Ukrainian Air Force.
Would you send in that kind of help?
Well, maybe even more, to be honest with you.
Like what, Mr President?
I'm the one that would have stayed out.
Let me just explain that Putin is saying things like, don't you dare send anything in.
In the meantime, he's killing thousands and thousands of people.
So he's acting like we're an aggressor if we send in some old 44-year-old plane.
that probably gets shot out of the sky pretty quickly.
And he's acting like we were terrible people if we do that.
But he's killing tens of thousands of people, far more than they're reporting.
You don't knock down those buildings and blow up those buildings, and they say two people were injured slightly.
And thousands of people are being killed.
And when he says, "Don't you dare do that," And we all say, oh, he said, don't do it.
We don't want to start.
The fact is that what he's doing is a human tragedy.
There's not been anything like this in a sense, maybe ever, but certainly since World War II, when you look at it, but there's never been anything like this.
So, what do you do now?
You said you'd maybe do more than just send in the MiG jets, alright?
What more?
Well, what I would do is I would do... We have tremendous military capability.
And what we can do without planes, to be honest with you, without 44-year-old jets, what we can do is enormous.
And we should be doing it.
And we should be helping them to survive.
And they're doing an amazing job.
But, you know, I was the one that sent in the javelins.
I mean, everyone refuses to acknowledge that.
And I took a lot of heat.
And I sent it in very openly and glowingly.
And they said Obama sent blankets and Trump sent javelins.
Well, nobody knew how well those javelins would do and how well they... But those javelins that knocked out all the tanks, those were sent by me.
And we sent them in large numbers, too.
I didn't even realize at the time when I sent them.
I said, man, you know, that's a lot of stuff we're sending, but let's do it.
Let them have a chance.
Who would have thought that there would have been It's so powerful, the way they protected that country, but they need other kinds of help.
But let me press you again on what extra military help you would give to the Ukrainians.
You say you want to do more than just the MiG jets or the Javelins.
What more?
Well, I think the drones are just as effective as anything nowadays.
I mean, they make drones today.
We make, we have drones that are just as effective as just about anything in the air, anything you could do with the air.
And you can do drones, plus they give back tremendous amounts of information, and the information leads missiles right to whatever the hell target they are, and you don't have to shoot them from Ukraine, so therefore you're being neutral.
It's so ridiculous.
Look, Stuart, when he goes in and he kills thousands of people, are we going to just sit by and watch?
This country will be, in a hundred years from now, they'll be talking about What a travesty, what a horrible thing this is.
We can't, we can't let that, just on a human basis, we can't let that happen.
And then he says we're a nuclear, that they're a nuclear power, but we're a greater nuclear power.
I hated to do it, but I rebuilt our nuclear capability like nobody has ever thought even possible.
Two and a half trillion dollars in our military and a big chunk of it went to nuclear and redoing it.
We had 45-year-old and 50-year-old weapons that we didn't even know if they worked.
Now we have brand new stuff.
That's immensely powerful, and hope to God you never have to use it, because that would be the tragedy of all tragedies.
But if we didn't have it, we couldn't talk.
But I listen to him constantly using the N-word.
That's the N-word.
And he's constantly using it, the nuclear word.
And we never talk if we say, oh, he's a nuclear power.
But we're a greater nuclear power.
We have the greatest submarines in the world.
Most powerful machines ever built.
Most powerful.
And they got built under me.
Most powerful machines ever built.
And nobody knows where they are.
And you should say, look, if you mention that word one more time, We're going to send them over and we'll be coasting back and forth up and down your coast.
You can't let this tragedy continue.
You can't let these thousands of people die.
It's going to be hundreds of thousands and maybe millions of people by the time it ends.
OK, so that was a rather lengthy clip, but I do think it was worth listening to in full.
If you notice at the end there, Trump is saying, gee, what the US should do To pressure or intimidate Putin is to send lots of nuclear-loaded submarines.
So the US has a nuclear triad, land, air, and sea nuclear capabilities, including a large number of nuclear-equipped submarines.
And Trump was saying, oh, I guess we should send some of these sea-based Sea-based vessels, or whatever the precise term is for the submarine there, to the proximity of Russia to basically coerce them into ceasing the invasion of Ukraine?
Really?
So to heighten some sort of rather extreme nuclear brinksmanship between the United States and Russia?
He also at that point was saying that the US ought to send more armaments to Ukraine than what Biden was currently sending at that time.
At that time, the Biden administration was kind of having it both ways or having some sort of uncertainty as to whether it would send fighter jets or at that point actually facilitate the transfer of MiG fighter jets from Eastern European countries to Russia. the Biden administration was kind of having it both ways Now, you know, all bets are off and the U.S. is transferring F-16s to Russia, the first of which arrived, we were told, a couple of weeks ago.
But Trump was saying, no, we need to be more aggressive.
He would send maybe more than what was being demanded at that time.
And so maybe that's a bit of an insight into how Trump's mentality for how he would supposedly end the Ukraine war using more belligerent tactics potentially.
Sending more extensive weapons systems?
And then just bludgeoning Putin into submission or something?
I mean, it's hard to really tell because Trump doesn't provide any real specifics or hasn't as of late as to how he would allegedly end the Ukraine war and what he even thinks about this latest offensive.
So yeah, that was a lengthy clip, but it's really under Appreciate it in terms of what insight it might give into Trump's mentality on this stuff, which I think is chronically misportrayed both among Trump supporters and Trump opponents.
You know, obviously the Trump supporters, some of them anyway, a faction of them, have this idea that Trump is somehow going to broker a You know, wonderful outbreak of tranquility and peace in Eastern Europe because he understands Putin's legitimate security interests or something like this and therefore he's going to solve the war, despite giving no details at all about what that would actually entail.
And Trump's opponents obviously are still locked into this totally antiquated mindset where Trump is this devious partner of Putin and is colluding all the way to some kind of outcome in Ukraine where he's going to, you know, just eagerly enable Russia to conquer all the territory in Ukraine that it wants and basically relinquish just eagerly enable Russia to conquer all the territory in
U.S. claims to a massive asset that it has in its geopolitical arsenal, which is Ukraine and all its, you know, natural resources and its geostrategic location and this sort of thing.
I think both of those outlooks on Trump are – largely mistaken, and so it is worth referring to other comments that Trump has made on how he views the role of the U.S.
in that conflict, and if Trump is willing to escalate even to the point of fomenting some really extreme nuclear brinksmanship, then who's to say what will actually come to pass in the months ahead if he were to win the election.
Okay, so now, of course, to cover all my bases and prove that I'm a bipartisan I'm a eternally bipartisan player here.
I want to pull up a photo that I personally took of Kamala Harris.
This was in February of 2023 at the Munich Security Conference, which I attended.
I was so blessed to have been able to Gaze upon Kamala Harris from relatively close proximity.
There she is, being escorted across the street to some meeting or other.
And I tried to shout out a question, but of course that was not taken very well by the whole security detail, nor the other attendees.
Because Kamala Harris, I guess, is just entitled to almost never answer a question of any real substance about anything.
And this even dated, to some extent, back into her Pre-nomination days.
And I mentioned this Munich Security Conference because, you know, we have very little insight, almost none, into how Kamala Harris would independently operate on the world stage with regard to foreign policy.
She hardly has ever, she hardly has talked about it since she got coronated.
I don't think she's answered a single question on it.
Obviously, you can infer that she basically just would maintain the status quo vis-a-vis the Biden-Harris administration, but she's going to be the nominee.
She's the one going to be the agenda center and the policymaker were she to become president.
And there's been zero.
Uh, information that's been provided to the public as to how she would differ at all from Biden or would she maintain the status quo?
Again, you can make a reasonable inference as to her basically maintaining the Biden administration's status quo, but you know, it'd be nice to have a little bit of an articulation of what her independent worldview is and what her policy preferences are, but that's not been forthcoming as we are now all painfully aware.
But I raised this Munich Security Conference in February 2023 because one of her big credentials on the world stage, that her boosters like to mention, is that she goes and gives these very forceful performances at the Munich Security Conference, which is this big confab
Hold the Munich journey Germany every year for European and American and NATO aligned security operatives and other countries around the world send delegations as well and so Kamala Harris's, you know, her strong presence at these events was supposed to be one of the feathers in her cap for why she could be trusted to manage U.S.
foreign policy and why she's more than entitled to become Commander-in-Chief.
And so here's something that she said at that February 2023 Munich conference where she was designated by the Biden administration to basically be the chief spokesperson there on behalf of the U.S.
As many of us remember, last year on this stage, I warned of the imminent invasion of Ukraine by Russia.
Today, a year later, we know.
Kyiv is still standing.
Russia is weakened.
The transatlantic alliance is stronger than ever.
The United States has formally determined that Russia has committed crimes against humanity.
And I say, to all those who have perpetrated these crimes, and to their superiors, Wow.
So moving.
complicit in these crimes, you will be held to account.
Wow, so moving, so awe-inspiring.
Now what's significant about that?
Well, Kamala Harris was designated to go to the Munich Security Conference on behalf of the American administration and formally accuse the Russian leadership of being guilty of war crimes.
Now, what implications might that have?
Well, it could potentially complicate any future negotiated settlement that the U.S.
might be party to, because the U.S.
has already put itself on the record as having indicted the Russian leadership as being guilty of crimes for which they ought to be prosecuted.
So, if there's ever a negotiating table, right, that the U.S.
is sitting at, that Kamala Harris is, you know, theoretically sitting at, now maybe this would never happen, but hypothetically, Then she would have already been put on the record as having accused, formally, the Russian political leadership with whom she would be negotiating of being guilty of crimes.
Of war crimes for which the penalty could be death or could be in life imprisonment or something dramatic.
However, that might be enforced, which is always a little bit up in the air when it comes to so-called international law.
And even aside from international law, the U.S.
has actually instituted a number of legislative changes since the Ukraine invasion where it actually takes upon itself to potentially enforce some of these supposed war crimes, violations against Russian officials, depending on the specific circumstance.
So that's basically poisoning the well of diplomacy, which had already been poisoned long before February of 2023, but even further jeopardizes or hinders some sort of diplomatic settlement to conclude the Ukrainian war.
And that could be now further off than ever in the aftermath of this ongoing invasion of Kursk, and also potentially some other border area settlements of Russia.
With the mass evacuations and so forth, which, you know, some promoters or some boosters of this latest Ukrainian action are claiming is actually great.
It's actually going to hasten the end of the war because it gives Ukraine additional negotiating leverage over Russia.
So these people, I mean, the pro-Ukraine side of this thing has always claimed that the way to end the war is to continuously escalate the war.
and then just hope for the best.
Well, how has that worked out over the past two and a half years?
All I really see are thousands and thousands of dead 25-year-olds who are of Slavic extraction piling up in the killing fields of the Donbass and now perhaps in Kursk.
So Kamala Harris has nothing to say about that, so far as we can tell that is unique to her, But if we delve a little bit back into her record, she has been the point person, at least at times, for the Biden administration to further erode any prospect of any kind of diplomatic resolution to the war.
And as we went over with Trump, it's probably not a whole lot different on his part there, although A lot of this is up for speculation and prognostication.
Now, as I've mentioned a little bit, we are also potentially on the verge of yet another outbreak of cataclysm in the Middle East.
This has been delayed somewhat after the assassination of Ismail Haniyeh, who is the political leader of Hamas in Tehran at the end of July.
There had been Warnings that Iran, and potentially in conjunction with Hezbollah, was going to launch some large-scale retaliatory strike against Israel.
It has yet to happen yet.
Hezbollah had given some indications that maybe they were going to Taylor their response so as to not be seen as interrupting these nominal ceasefire negotiations that have been underway in Doha and the latest phase of which just concluded today.
I think it's plausible to.
Characterize those alleged ceasefire negotiations as basically kind of a ruse on the part of Israel to just prolong the warfare in Gaza for as long as they'd like, because they can say, oh, look, we're at least participating in these ceasefire negotiations.
We want to have settlement to the war.
And so don't blame us if we continue bombarding and pulverizing Gaza, because at least we're showing our good faith willingness to participate in these nominal negotiations, but they've gone nowhere for months and months and months.
So are they just a facade?
I think that's probably a reasonable inference to make.
And Hamas was claiming that they might not even participate, but they did participate in some fashion, we're told, but nothing really of substance emerged from it other than the standard cliched but nothing really of substance emerged from it other than the Kind of just vagaries coming out of the US administration and other participants about how, oh, it was constructive and it was positive.
But we could now be on the precipice of yet another escalation in the Middle East that has long been threatened now for at least a couple of weeks.
So, what have the presidential candidates been saying about this?
Well, Kamala, nothing, really.
She's hiding from any press scrutiny, including on the most serious issues facing the U.S.
internationally.
We have multiple catastrophes that could be either unfolding as we speak, or right on the verge of unfolding, and she said nothing.
And yet the Democrats are all Excited about crowding her nominee despite her total and complete evasion of any real scrutiny on these life-and-death matters.
And then Trump...
Trump had an interesting event yesterday, also at his Bedminster Golf Club in New Jersey.
And after his press conference, he had a star-studded event on fighting anti-Semitism.
And he was joined by none other than Miriam Adelson, who is one of his chief megadonors.
She's the wife of the late Sheldon Adelson, who was one of the top funders of the Republican Party and Trump until his Tragic death in 2021, but Miriam is carrying on the torch of Sheldon's passionate involvement in U.S.
politics for the purpose of orienting U.S.
foreign policy in stalwart defense of Israel, come what may.
And she was there with Trump, and they were both singing each other's praises.
So here is some footage of that event yesterday.
Which is why President Trump deserves the full support of the entire Jewish people.
And of anyone who cares about Israel's security and prosperity.
This must be our pledge to him.
This must be our promise to him.
that the White House will be his again, come January.
Israel, And the Jewish people need it.
America needs it.
The entire world needs it.
As Herzl said, if you will it, it is no dream.
And we commit to that dream, all of us, right here, right now.
President Trump, the floor is all yours.
Thank you.
Thank you.
Thank you very much.
This is very nice.
This is very nice, I have to say.
First of all, thank you.
Sheldon and Miriam were best friends together, and I was in their group, and we just had always a great relationship.
Known for a long time, Sheldon was one of the greatest businessmen in the world, and she's turning out to be one of the greatest businesswomen of the world.
You're doing a great job.
But I really, I have to say, Miriam, I watched Sheldon sitting so proud in the White House when we gave Miriam the Presidential Medal of Freedom.
That's the highest award you can get as a civilian.
In the wake of the October 7th attacks, we've also seen the scourge of anti-Semitism rearing its head right here at home.
And you've seen that loud and clear.
Jews have been beaten and bear-maced.
You know what bear-maced is?
On their way to a synagogue in Los Angeles.
Nobody's seen anything like this.
What's going on now is exactly what was going on before the Holocaust.
Exactly.
Jewish American businesses have been vandalized and we've heard chants of death to Israel and death to America and we've seen the prominent liberals repeat Genocidal slogans.
From the river to the sea.
That's not a good slogan.
People thought, oh, what does that mean?
That is not a good slogan.
That's a really bad slogan.
Okay, so isn't that beautiful?
That's Miriam Adelson, who has pledged to fund Trump's 2024 campaign to the tune of a minimum of $100 million.
Could always be more.
She could always be far more generous with her checkbook than he even had initially announced.
Because, according to Miriam Adelson, on behalf of her late beloved husband, the entire Jewish community needs to unite around Trump.
And everybody who cares about the security and prosperity of Israel has to likewise unite around Trump, because Trump was the greatest president ever for Israel.
And so Trump continues on his campaign as the most hardcore pro-Israel major party nominee ever, and continues claiming that the Democratic nominee, Kamala Harris, is somehow
And that he would be much more unswerving in his unequivocal and unconditional defense of Israel, including in its pulverization of Gaza and potentially for some forthcoming outbreak of cataclysm with Iran and Hezbollah in Lebanon.
And also, by the way, Trump throws in that the treatment of Jews in the United States today, in 2024, is exactly the same as the treatment of Jews prior to the Holocaust.
So therefore that shows how much more harshly the federal government, under Trump's tutelage, has to crack down on anti-Semitism.
Whether that means restricting speech, whether that means regulating academia, whether that means any number of other things, Trump has made abundantly clear that one of his big priorities in the White House for a second term, just like it was in his first term, is to beat back this rising tide of supposed anti-Semitism, which really boils down, as Trump clarified, to
chanting certain slogans that are pro-Palestinian and whatnot.
So that's one of Trump's big priorities.
And he is making people like Miriam Adelson, who are funding his campaigns, well with anticipation for that amazing eventuality.
And now, so what are the clues for what Kamala would do?
This, I thought, was a very instructive clue.
Here's the New York Times article that was published earlier this week.
It was on this faction of uncommitted delegates who were elected over the course of the primary cycle this year, the Democratic primaries, which at least were supposed to, if we go by multiple decades of precedent in American politics, Democratic primaries were supposed to be what was Going to elect the nominee, right, who's going to determine the nominee for the Democratic Party.
You would hold primary elections or caucuses, and then the delegates elected as a result of those primaries and caucuses would then go to the convention and nominate a candidate in accordance with the outcomes of the state primaries and caucuses in their respective states.
But that's all been thrown into the garbage can this time around, and Kamala has been anointed through some Arcane process involving donor grievances and polling data that forced Biden out of the race and installed Kamala in his stead.
But still, the Democratic bigwigs can't alter the fact that over the course of those primary elections, in a number of states like Minnesota, Michigan, Washington State, New Jersey, and a couple of others, there were uncommitted delegates who were elected there were uncommitted delegates who were elected in those primary elections, meaning there were delegates who ran to represent the so-called uncommitted vote.
So people, I'll reveal this myself.
I went and voted in the Democratic primary in New Jersey, and I voted for uncommitted just because I thought it would mix things up a little bit.
And, of course, I was not going to vote for Biden.
And so I voted for uncommitted because that would assign a delegate or a handful of delegates to go to the Democratic convention representing no candidate, right?
And those uncommitted delegates were there campaigning on behalf of the pro-Palestinian cause or being critical of US foreign policy with regard to Israel, and they were going to come and make their point at the Democratic Convention.
But this New York Times article Says that there's a persuasion campaign underway to try to temper whatever dissension those uncommitted delegates might bring to the convention next week in Chicago.
And there has been some preliminary inroads made, The New York Times reports, in kind of subduing some of the discontent on the part of those uncommitted delegates.
And here's the really kicker.
of this article as to what the supposed differences are between Harris and Biden.
So the New York Times says, Harris has distinguished herself from Biden in tone, if not policy.
Now doesn't that say it all?
Harris has gone around, Kamala's gone around saying she wants an immediate ceasefire and that she quote, won't be silent.
On the suffering of Palestinians.
Well, guess what?
Newsflash, Biden himself has said the same crap for months now.
But because Kamala brings a more exciting tone to her delivering the exact same message, she's conveying the impression, at least among some of these more gullible delegates and activists, that she represents some kind of marked shift from Joe Biden.
Not to be cynical, but I do think that some of this has to do with the fact that she is a POC woman, which is, you know, mind-blowing for everyone.
Oh my god, her identity traits make her like a superhero.
And Joe Biden was an old, decrepit white man, so therefore that just leads people to conclude somehow that she's bringing something new to the table.
I mean, if you're still buying into that whole way of looking at the world, I think you really need to seek some sort of remedial help.
But...
The New York Times concedes that there's no substantive difference, at least as far as anybody can tell, between Kamala Harris and Joe Biden on Israel or the Palestinians.
It's just that Kamala has this breath of fresh air tone that she's unleashing on the pliable masses and they hope, meaning the Democrats, apparently hope that that will be enough to Now, doesn't that just tell you everything you need to know?
Tone over substance.
They're kind of just flat out admitting it.
That's what's prioritized in the Democratic Party.
So nonetheless, I will be at the Democratic Convention, or at least on its outskirts, in Chicago next week.
I'm still trying to get in there fully, but there's going to be plenty to cover.
So tune in next week for coverage from Chicago, and I will try to be tracking down some of those uncommitted delegates to gauge what their attitudes are.
on Kamala and how they could justify treating her as though she represents anything materially different from Joe Biden, despite her different sex and skin color.
So that should be interesting.
So let's get to the first interview.
Glenn Deason, hello.
Thanks for joining us.
There are some interesting developments underway in the war in Ukraine.
Never a dull moment there.
I just want to begin with a broader question for you.
When Russia initially invaded Ukraine, one of the claimed justifications was that Russia had to secure its legitimate security interests from encroachment by NATO or the U.S., which were using Ukraine as a marshalling point which were using Ukraine as a marshalling point to threaten Russia.
And yet over the past year plus, we've seen quite extensive shelling by Ukraine of the Russian border regions in Belgorod.
Now we have obviously an incursion or invasion, however you want to call it, of Kursk that seems to be fairly audacious.
We're going to be talking about Russian security forces, FSB, seem to be catastrophically ill-equipped to handle That lightning incursion, and the reports are, and it's hard to know with any certainty given the fog of war, obviously, but the reports are that Ukraine continues to advance, have taken quite a few prisoners of war.
Obviously there are some under-trained conscripts who are charged with, Russian conscripts that is, who are charged with guarding these Russian border areas.
I've seen figures of, you know, 200,000 or something Russian citizens have been evacuated or their evacuation orders that have been issued for these border regions.
So when we talk about Russian security interests, why is it that these Russian border regions, which are more rural, not really in the circles of influence within Russian society, largely.
They're not in affluent enclaves around Moscow.
They're rural, sort of, maybe somewhat more deprived areas.
But their lives seem to have been upended.
Mass evacuations, lots of infrastructural damage, shelling, etc.
So why don't the security interests of these segments of the Russian population seem to factor into this larger calculus about what gains the Russian invasion of Ukraine would allegedly bring to Russia?
Okay.
Well, I think that they were taken very much by surprise.
I've seen some media reports from Russia suggesting it could have been a trap set by Russia, but this is nonsense.
They were clearly taken by surprise.
This was a well-planned attack by mechanized units, infantry, the combined air defenses with electronic warfare.
So it was done well.
And the NATO surveillance I would say likely discovered weak defenses in Russia, which NATO and Ukraine decided to jump upon in order to gain initiative.
So this also enabled them to now use a lot of maneuver warfare with these small groups storming ahead.
So why the Russians didn't expect it?
I guess To a large extent, it wouldn't make that much strategic sense, because as you mentioned, these areas were not really that strategic or important.
So it's unclear what the purpose is to hold this territory, because once they enter, a lot of these areas are quite open spaces.
So it's quite easy for the Russians to knock out the various mechanized vehicles which enter this Kursk region.
And again, this is part of the problem.
I think in the West we tend to obsess about territory, which territory has been taken.
But this is a war of attrition.
If this means that they will lose more troops and they can't really defend the territory or hold it, then this could be a loss.
Anyway, so this could be why the Russians didn't see this one coming, given that it doesn't seem to make much sense.
Even a lot of Western and Ukrainian analysts, by the way, kind of agree on this point that it's very unclear what a strategic objective would be in invading Kursk.
Whether or not they saw it coming, it did seem like the operation was launched clearly without the same kind of protracted telegraphing that preceded the so-called counter-offensive in the summer of last year, which was trumpeted and hyped for months and months and months and then obviously did not achieve anywhere close to its stated objectives.
This seems to have been carried out with much more circumspection in terms of the planning, which we don't know all the full details on.
Regardless of whether or not it was expected.
And isn't it fair to say that the so-called security interests of these Russian border populations, villages that have been shelled and invaded now and mass evacuated, those security interests have been severely degraded and harmed?
I mean, so what does that say about the larger strategic calculus of Russia in launching the invasion in the first place?
Well, for Russia, they saw this as being a war of an existential threat, because as we learned from the New York Times on the first day when the West toppled the government in Ukraine back in 2014, the new government which the US helped to pick, On the first day, they formed a partnership with the CIA in which they developed this secret basis along the Russian border.
They didn't see a clear status quo which was being offered to them.
They only saw increased American and NATO presence along the borders, which would at some point be used for military aggression against Russia.
For the Russians, they saw this as being effectively a preemptive strike after all peace negotiations and efforts on diplomacy had failed.
So, but this, I guess over the past few weeks, given that the Ukrainian army is beginning to fall apart, the Russians have been moving through most of the defensive lines.
They could have become a whole lot lazy, but maybe some hubris as they were starting to count the days for Ukrainian collapse.
And also this could be part of, well, this seems to be at least part of the objective in NATO, if you look in our media.
The main point is that this humiliates Putin, he can't defend his own people, he obsessed with Ukraine, he didn't protect his own borders and with the hope that this would make the Russians turn on Putin and discredit him.
Again a lot of this wishful thinking often linked to regime change but But if there was hubris, lack of intelligence, probably a lot of mistakes were done on the Russian part, which they are looking into addressing now.
But I think a lot of the assumptions about what it means to hold With the advantages of this military incursion into Kursk that they will actually have some benefits.
I really doubt it.
Right, so leaving aside whatever the wishful thinking is in this whole genre of commentary, which is really tedious, which tries to divine what's going on inside of Putin's brain.
I mean, you pull up any Western media for the past two and a half years and it's always this like psychobabble about, you know, what Putin is thinking or what his motives are.
I mean, my approach to that has always been, I mean, I can only know what he says and I mean, I can't put him on a psychologist's chair.
That's sort of a futile genre of commentary in my estimation.
In terms of the impact on broader Russian society, I mean, you have to think it would have some impact that Russia has proven that it was incapable of defending a border region, that there is, there has been a seizure that's taken place of, you know, a not insubstantial expanse of Russian territory.
Now, it probably is U.S.-backed at least to some extent, whatever the precise operational knowledge was.
Obviously, Ukraine would not exist as a state right now if not for U.S.
backing, so you can kind of just conclude by inference that whatever Ukraine does has some element of U.S.
coordination.
But whatever the case may be, Ukraine does seem to have seized a fairly wide range of Russian territory.
So apart from whatever the wishful thinking might be, and I agree with you that there does seem to be at least an implicit aspiration of regime change and a lot of what the strategic calculus of the U.S.
Ukraine is in terms of what end state they want to achieve vis-a-vis Russia.
But leaving aside whatever that calculation might be, what is the impact on Russia, as far as you can tell, of having ceded or lost a sizable, expansive Russian territory to Ukrainian forces?
Well, I think the Kremlin was definitely humiliated.
My only concern is why would this be an objective?
And I think that the whole idea that this will put Russian pressure on Putin to effectively go and make a peace deal with the Americans and with the Ukrainians.
I don't think that this is very likely.
If anything, I think this has enraged Russian population.
And from their perspective, to a large extent, it was seen to confirm effectively what Putin warned since 2014, that this was building up to an invasion of Russia.
And I think this is why one also has to look at where the pressure against Putin comes from, because for many Russians, they keep asking why Putin allowed every Russian red line to be breached without ever hitting back properly, the they keep asking why Putin allowed every Russian red line to be breached without Because this can be compared to what Iran did against Israel when their embassy was struck.
There's a need to restore the turret and people are asking Very openly.
What is our deterrent anymore?
What's the point of these nuclear weapons if the West does not fear them?
Should we lower the threshold?
Should there at least be some tit-for-tat that we have to retaliate when NATO crosses the border?
I mean, because so far they've been saying, you know, we shouldn't have Western missiles to strike inside Russian territory.
Well, now there's actual invasion of Russian territory.
So my point is, Well, what do we think that the Russians will, how will they react from this as they now see these battalions plowing through these Russian villages?
And do they think that Putin will be humiliated and run to the negotiation table or drastically turn up the temperature?
I think based on most history books of Russia, I think it's quite Reasonable to expect that this will lead to a massive escalation coming down the road once they have contained this expansion into Russian territory, set up defensive lines and begin to push back.
I think they will see a need effectively to restore their deterrence.
So you appear on Russian media.
Presumably you monitor Russian media more closely than a lot of people in the so-called West.
What's the tenor of the Russian media coverage of this development been?
Has it gotten outsized coverage?
There has been, as you sort of alluded to, this running critique of Putin within elements of Russian society, including the Mill bloggers and among more hawkish elements of the Russian political class, which Are frustrated with his perceived lack of assertiveness in responding to some of these provocations or encroachments against Russia?
In other words, they feel that he's not prosecuted the war aggressively enough.
Has that been a line of criticism?
And if there were to be an escalation, What would that look like, meaning if this didn't compel Putin or, you know, other top echelons of the Russian government to be more inclined toward negotiations?
And I agree that it seems preposterous that escalating is actually going to coerce Putin into submission.
It seems like it's actually incentivizing the opposite outcome, but that's really just speculation, but that seems pretty in keeping with what you'd anticipate.
But what would that escalation look like If it were to come to pass as some sort of retaliatory measure for a fairly audacious invasion of Russian territory.
So the Russian media response as far as you can ascertain and then what the prospective escalation might look like.
Well, in the media you've seen some mixtures.
Some, of course, seem to be struck by panic, especially on social media.
There's concern about if Russia's deep rear could be compromised, in which this would cause some severe disruption towards the logistics.
Others see more optimistically, because again, these troops and equipment didn't come out of nowhere.
They were sent away from the rest of the Ukrainian front line, which is why the Russians are also now punching deeper holes through the rest of the front line from Toretsk, but then especially towards Pokrovsk.
So some see this as an opportunity, some are more panic-stricken, but overall there's Yeah, the commonality, I think, is that all are now more or less seeking, not to be crude, but more or less vengeance that this is time, that this is one bridge too far.
And I think that the Americans also realize this because whenever they're interviewed, the Pentagon spokesperson, for example, he makes the point that, well, the Ukrainians didn't tell us anything, they We called them to find out what happened, what they're after.
So it's obviously nonsense, but I think this is because they don't know yet either how the Russians will react.
And again, also a reaction is, I guess, humiliation.
While this has been a moral boost for the Ukrainians, it's been the opposite for the Russians.
But it's also been a wake-up call that they're not going to simply be able to win this war.
There will be continued escalation with every victory they have.
There will be an escalation on NATO's side.
So I think it brings some reality back into the war.
How the Russians will respond?
To me it's unclear because when the West began to authorize or green light its missiles being used to strike inside Russian territory, The Russians began to take different initiatives.
They made these arms deals with the North Koreans.
They sailed the warships to Cuba.
They argued that they would now start to send weapons to all of the West's adversaries, so they can be used to target the West, like the West is using Ukraine.
But none of these messages seem to have gone through, so at this point they will need to find a different escalation.
And this has always been the dilemma for Russia.
On the one hand, There's a need to push back against NATO so it doesn't embolden NATO.
And it does embolden NATO if you read our media as well.
We keep writing in all our newspapers that the Russians won't do anything.
Time and time again, we can cross red lines, they won't do anything.
So this is one concern.
But on the other hand, if they start striking NATO directly, This could trigger a direct war which would be very difficult to manage the escalation control.
So this could quickly escalate into a nuclear exchange.
So this has been the dilemma and Putin's response so far has been to be more restrained.
But every time he's restrained, it's again very openly as the leaders in the West argue, It's very openly portrayed as a weakness, something that we don't have to take advantage of.
We call it a nuclear bluff and essentially we can go into a further escalation.
But with every escalation that dilemma intensifies and the need for Russia to restore its deterrence increases.
So I think that invading Russia in this way is really, I think, one step too far.
And also the way it's done.
There is, on the Ukrainian side, a sentient battalion, like one of the Nachtingale, for example, which is named after one of Hitler's battalions, And I've seen on the Russian media these Ukrainian soldiers with SS on their helmets taunting civilians before assassinating them.
And this is playing on the TV screens all day long.
So what will be the reactions of Russia?
I think not to capitulate or rather I think that There will be immense pressure now on the Kremlin to take a much, much harder line, not just against Ukraine, but the collective West as well.
What that would mean, I guess it remains to be seen.
It's still trying to manage that dilemma.
One thing I've been struck by is that if you survey some of the coverage in the West, in the US, UK, etc., there's this note of triumphalism about how Russia has now suffered the most far-reaching invasion since World War II.
And that's supposed to be inspiring optimism?
About the trajectory of this conflict, whereas my instinct is, okay, if that is true, and I think it probably is, you can correct me if I'm wrong, Then that should really be extremely foreboding and ominous just in terms of the potential for this now to escalate.
I mean, if we really are making direct tactical comparisons between the current status of this war to World War II, then maybe people ought to brush up on their history of World War II just in terms of the epic Cataclysm that it was for humanity?
And especially in terms of the psychic impact, it's hard to gauge or quantify, but given the strength of World War II lore in Russian society and how it's used to, you know, justify this current war effort, I've heard Putin even try to kind of situate the Ukraine conflict into the broader spectrum of Russian history that kind of connects it Or puts it in a continuum with World War II.
And if that is true, and then this latest development can further bolster that kind of thematic tie between World War II and the current conflict, then that really should make us all a bit apprehensive or concerned, shouldn't it?
About what this could potentially result in, rather than something to celebrate, which is kind of the tone that you see in much of Western media.
Yeah, the celebration is very strange because besides the civilians which they killed, a lot of the Russian troops they killed as well, they weren't part of the special military operation.
They were, as you said, they were conscripts serving in the army on Russian territory.
So celebrating this kind of shows how the war mentality has really It would become much uglier, I guess, over the past two and a half years.
But also this Kursk, the historical similarities.
I saw a retired, I think it was a German general or at least a top officer, making this comparison as well, that this is, you know, where they suffered in World War II and almost framed it as a do-over.
It was quite absurd.
And you also have German military leaders arguing that because the Ukrainians have had such success in Kursk, they need to send extra weaponry to support this.
So very openly participating now, actively becoming part of this war and not in the defense but then in the offense into this into Russian territory.
No one can argue Russia did the same to Ukraine and all this is all fine and well but this is NATO's indirect involvement in the invasion of Russia and one has to look at the perspectives of the Russians as well because this now puts us in the category of Napoleon and Hitler.
We don't have to agree with these comparisons but perceptions do matter in international politics and this is how more and more Russians are actually seeing this.
That this has always been an existential fight and this has only been proven over the past two weeks.
And there doesn't seem to be much appreciation of what we have done.
I mean, Washington and Brussels, what What this all means.
If you look at the incoming, the new foreign policy chief of the European Union, she argues that, you know, we can't have diplomacy with Russians because, you know, they're bad people and also a possible victory could be defined as breaking Russia up to many parts.
It's just very, very radical We're talking and I think what's most unsettling about this is once this World War Two comparisons are made, it's not done with shame.
It's such a self-righteousness and virtue behind it that we're fighting this good fight.
But a large part is because key facts about this war from day one in 2014 has kind of been scrapped from the narrative.
So if we look at what we've actually done over the past decade, it's It's quite reckless and dangerous.
You're not really allowed to make this argument in Europe because if you criticize our side that means you're taking the Russian side and so it's all narrative driven so it's very difficult to have any sensible discussion but I'm also very much taken back by this now comparisons to World War II.
If it was just the Russians making it would be one thing but when these comparisons come from the West as well it's very concerning.
Well, even going back to the early stages of the invasion of Ukraine, you had lots of indications on the part of American elected officials of this legacy of World War Two.
We need to...
ramp up our quote-unquote arsenal of democracy, which was the famous Franklin Roosevelt slogan for funding the military-industrial complex to wage World War II.
The U.S.
Congress passed a lend-lease legislation, which was actually never utilized as far as I know, which is sort of strange.
But they did maybe as a symbolic showing of solidarity.
They passed a lend-lease legislation, which would have enabled the U.S. to basically just send armaments to Ukraine without ever potentially being repaid.
Now, the Congress decided instead to enact these incremental supplemental funding bills that were not structured as a loan.
But now, like even Donald Trump is saying, oh, gee whiz, it's going to be so great because now we can structure all of our further provisions to Ukraine as a loan.
So the World War II iconography and rhetoric has kind of been a feature of the U.S.
depiction of the war for quite some time, but obviously it takes on a different tenor when we're talking about an ongoing invasion.
One thing I wanted to ask you about that kind of adds to this sense of potentially impending doom is the situation in the Middle East, in particular the relationship between Russia and Iran.
We've heard lots of reports about increasing operational ties between Russia and Iran, with Russia supplying some of these Shahed, I think they're called, drones.
to Iran for, sorry, to Russia for use in Ukraine and also Russia pledging certain resources to Iran in turn.
And there was a report maybe last week or a few days ago of Putin issuing a cautionary note to Iran to limit the scope of its potential retaliation against Israel.
And obviously the relationship between Israel and Russia is also quite complicated.
So what is the role of Russia in kind of managing this potential upcoming escalation that we're told, we've been told for now a couple of weeks, could be imminent at any moment, between Hezbollah and Iran in retaliating against Israel for the assassination of Ismail Haniyeh, the leader of Hamas in Tehran.
And also the assassination of the Hezbollah commander in Beirut.
Because it could be another, you know, potential theater in a more wide-ranging conflict that could have, you know, ominous echoes of World War II or a more globally oriented conflict.
So what's the role of Russia as far as you can see it in the Middle East conflagration that could be potentially imminent?
Well, part of it you can link to what Nesnau referred to as the great geostrategic shift of Russia from Greater Europe to Greater Eurasia.
Greater Europe simply means that for the past 300 years since Peter the Great, whenever Russia wanted to modernize, it's always looking towards Europe.
To Europeanize Russia more and even since the days of Gorbachev, they wanted to create a common European home or a greater Europe.
This was effectively cancelled with NATO expansion and the West toppling the government in Ukraine in 2014 put the final end to it effectively because this showed that the Ukraine could not be a bridge which would gradually integrate Russia instead into the West, instead it would be a front line.
So this was why it was very dramatic and this is when Russia began to diversify its economy over the past 10 years in which it would then integrate more towards Eurasia.
So China, India and all the others, Iran as well for that sake and then not just diversify and decouple a bit from the West but creating new economic infrastructure with China obviously taking the lead.
Now this is quite relevant if you want to look at the partnership with Iran because If you want to only go back 15 years ago, the Russians would have used the partnership or friendship with Iran as a political currency.
They would put sanctions, they would trade away this relationship if they might get an entry ticket or something.
Yes, something the West would angle in front of them.
But this was a way of trading to get closer to the West.
But since 2014, Russia has now pursued what they call Greater Eurasia.
And this is very different.
Now, of course, Iran is elevated to one of the strategic partners, because when Russia looks east, it can only integrate with the Chinese, because the Chinese economy is much, much stronger.
So now, India, Iran, all these countries have much more importance.
And you saw that after the Russian and Iranian cooperation in Syria, which was very limited, the Russians and Iranians looked towards how they can expand this to a real strategic partnership along the lines of Russia and China.
And I think this is something that has really developed now over the past two and a half years, because Iran has sent its Shaheed drones and assisted Russia in many ways, in its most dire time when Russia sees itself as fighting an existential war.
Meanwhile, the Israelis, which Russia's always had very good relations with, always tried to manage You know, show respect for their mutual security concerns and interests.
Israel turned out to supply weapons and training to the Ukrainians, which then destroyed that partnership.
So you saw a huge shift.
The partnership with Israel declined while Iran is now elevated to her strategic partner.
Huge, huge shift, which will also impact the wider region.
Now, how Russia responded to this The attacks on Iran and the conflict in Gaza is that they've taken very strongly sympathetic, aligned themselves very closely with the Palestinians and also given Iran a lot of support.
Their main concern is that once the Israelis struck Iran and continued these provocations, That, yeah, this is a way of essentially provoking an Iranian response to drag the Americans into this war, because the Israelis, you know, they're in very deep trouble at the moment.
They're stuck in Gaza, they're in a conflict which they don't want with Hezbollah, which is very difficult to manage, and now they want to go at Iran as well, so they really need to pull in the Americans.
So this is effectively the dilemma for the Iranians as well.
Do they restore their deterrent and strike hard, or do they avoid taking this risk which pulls the Americans into a wider war?
So for this reason, the Russians have been urging restraint for the Iranians.
But as you can expect, the Iranians maybe don't want to take that lesson from the Russians, because look what happened to the Russians.
They showed restraint every quarter with NATO, and NATO only responded by then being more and more emboldened to escalate further and further.
So this is the concern for Iran.
If they take the Russian advice and don't strike back, then why wouldn't Israel bomb Tehran again tomorrow and kill some other top officials?
So this is the main concern.
But that being said, the partnership between Russia and Iran obviously continues to grow economically and in the military sphere.
Also now institutionally with the SCO and BRICS.
And finally, obviously we're in the middle of a presidential election cycle in the U.S.
and that's the frame through which much of what goes on in Russia is viewed in the U.S.
for better or worse.
Obviously there's this long-standing caricature of Trump as somehow collusively in hock with Russia.
I think anybody who's rational probably should realize that that was A nonsense at this point, but it kind of continues to linger.
And then as far as Kamala Harris is concerned, we don't know what her independent policy views are on virtually anything.
Obviously, you can infer that she has this association with the Biden administration in which she has been vice president.
But in terms of her own personally articulated views, despite her being coordinated into the Democratic nominee, Through sort of backhanded maneuvers, she's yet to really articulate a policy platform to any appreciable extent.
So how does that impact, I guess, your general assessment of the current state of affairs?
You know, Trump, he was just once again bragging yesterday how tough he is on Russia, how Putin actually complained to him that Trump was excessively, quote, brutal.
on Russia by imposing sanctions and by killing the Nord Stream pipeline.
Obviously there's been some news lately about the ultimate thing of that Nord Stream pipeline, but Trump takes credit for economically, ending the Nord Stream pipeline even before Biden took power.
And you have people like Mike Pompeo who are still in the orbit of Trump, who are basically talking about a quote unquote, peace deal in Ukraine that would involve escalation in Ukraine.
And obviously the status quo with the Democrats is support Ukraine for as long as it takes, as much money as it takes, whatever escalations come to pass without any real discernible policy objective in sight, other than this kind of, you know, inference that one can make about Apparently aspiring for some version of regime change.
So it seems like a pretty disastrous muddle for both parties at this point, which, you know, maybe explains why Russia doesn't seem to have quite as strong of a preference this time around.
Obviously, it's hard to tell with any precision.
But what's your sense now of the Russian perspective on the 2024 U.S.
presidential race?
Well, as you said, I don't think they see it as mattering that much.
Obviously, Kamala Harris will be a continuation of Biden.
She doesn't say much about foreign policy, which means that the people behind Biden would likely continue the policies behind Kamala Harris as well.
I wouldn't expect any big changes, so it's continue doubling down on this continued escalations in this proxy war with the Russians.
With Trump, it's a bit different.
Again, he's spoken many times about the need to end this war, how horrific it is, how they're not achieving their objectives.
And again, he really wants a return on investment in terms of empire.
And also the selection of Vance as his VP, I think that's also quite indicative of the direction he wants to go on Ukraine.
That being said, He said a lot of this already back in 2016, and he was getting along with Russia would be a good thing, but what did he really do?
He continued a lot of the economic coercion, he contributed to the military escalation with the Javelins, which Obama said he didn't want because it could lead to war, so he didn't really I'm not sure what good policies, how he improved relations with Russia.
And I think this is a problem.
I don't think it really matters that much if he's Democrat or Republican.
Keep in mind that This is a big boulder which has been rolling now since 2008.
In 2008 it was Republican Bush who pushed for NATO to offer future membership to Ukraine, despite the Europeans warning strongly against it, that this would trigger where we are now.
After that you had Obama, he also didn't want to escalate, but again he contributed to escalation.
Then you have Trump, he also with the javelin and a continued escalation.
Then you have Biden where things really heated up very quickly.
So it could be a good idea to get Biden out because both him and his family has, well, they had too much influence or at stake in this Ukraine war for the past decade now.
So it could be positive to have him out.
But overall, I think the Russians learned the most that it doesn't really matter, I guess, who sits on the throne, that there's limits to how much the policies can change.
Again, that being said, I think if you look at their statements, obviously a Trump advance ticket would be much more favorable to Russia.
Um, But as you suggested, Trump, who markets himself as this great dealmaker, he will come to the Russians and present a deal.
This is not a deal which the Russians will likely be able to accept because in any good deal you need trust and why would they trust anything that the US and NATO puts forth because we already sabotaged and undermined every agreement we had with them, every peace agreement to Ukraine over the past 10 years.
So what are the Russians going to do?
They're going to demand on holding strategic territory to prevent it from falling into the hands of NATO in the future.
And irrespective of Trump being genuine in his effort to walk away from Ukraine and allow it to be neutral, I think you don't know who the next administration will be.
The next government will come in, they will again rip up all the agreements as they've done before, and they might have to fight this war all over again.
So I think in the absence of trust, That the Russians will have very hard demands.
And I don't think that it will be easy for Trump to accept.
So he will do what he usually does, which is max pressure.
And again, that will contribute to further escalation.
So I wouldn't necessarily look towards the American election for a solution to this conflict.
