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#BermasBrigade #TruthOverTreason #BreakingNews #InfoWarrior Show less
Hey everybody, Jason Burmes here, and what we've got right now is a very heated debate and long discussion via the Mario Novel debate space.
And this one on Zelensky, Trump, the Pootster, the EU, and so much more.
This one gets pretty heated.
Buckle up and get ready to make sense of the madness.
Good morning, good afternoon, good evening to all our listeners and viewers.
Thank you so much for joining us in this live stream, which is a continuation of a live stream we had earlier in the weekend about related to Trump and Putin's summit in Alaska.
Obviously, as a lot of you are aware, that has now transitioned to the key meeting in the White House today that first started off with President Trump and President Zelensky, the Ukrainian president, having a bilateral meeting, clearly a lot better than what happened in February.
None of the spat that we saw earlier.
And then a significant push of European allies and partners.
The prime minister of the UK was there, the French president, the Italian president, the EU Commissioner, the NATO Secretary General.
A significant European contingent also went to Washington, D.C.
And after the bilateral meeting, Biggie Trump and Zielinski, we had a larger set format between this.
Key points to highlight, I think, here right now is that one, President Trump continues to reinforce that there needs to be security guarantees for Ukraine for any pace deal.
There was a hot mic moment, which was pretty interesting, in which President Macron of France and President Trump before the Europeans leader delegation sat down.
President Trump and a hot mic did say, I do believe President Putin wants a deal.
So it would be interesting to see.
Part of the Russians' argument in Friday during the bilateral meeting was that Ukraine, if they gave up all the Donesk and Lukansk Oblast, even the areas that are not under the control of the Russian military, that they would get an immediate ceasefire, which obviously from the Ukrainian President Zelensky prior to this meeting has resoundingly rejected, saying that they're not going to give up territory.
And he doesn't even have the authority to do that because under Ukrainian constitution, that is not allowed.
Having said that, one of the key aspects, though, is this security guarantee by the Europeans and Americans to Ukraine.
And it's also important to highlight that the issue we're running into right now is that the Russians, specifically Sergei Lavrov, the Russian foreign minister, has made it clear that they will not accept the presence of NATO troops inside Ukraine.
Now, the security guarantees falls outside of NATO, but the term that people are using are Article 5-like, quote unquote, similar to NATO, but outside of the structure of NATO.
And clearly, the people who would participate in that would likely be European countries in NATO.
And even possibly, President Trump left open the possibility of U.S. troops actually participating in that.
He did not flat out reject it, and he said it's a possibility.
An interesting other piece that we got is that the Financial Times reported that Ukraine has committed to buying $100 billion worth of U.S. military equipment in addition to a $50 billion investment from a U.S. firm into producing Ukrainian drones for the Ukrainian military.
So, we're continuing to see a significant involvement, at least in the military side, or as many of you might like to refer to the military-industrial complex, where U.S. military and weapons are providing support to Ukrainians, but much more from a transactional perspective than under what we saw previously in the Biden administration, which was more the land lease and giving loans and military equipment directly.
Before I go to David, my co-host, I do want to read this right before we went live, a couple of seconds before we went live.
President Trump did release this in True Social, if you guys bear with me.
I had a very good meeting with distinguished guests, President Vladimir Zinsky of Ukraine, President Imam Macron of France, President Xanderstav of Finland, Prime Minister Georgina Meloney of Italy, Prime Minister Kier Starmer of the United Kingdom, Chancellor of the Federal Republic of Germany for an American president of the European Commission, Ursula von der Len, and Secretary General Naido, Mark Root, and the White House, which ended in a further meeting in the Oval Office.
During the meeting, we discussed security guarantees for Ukraine, which guarantees would be provided by various European countries with a coordination with the United States of America.
Everybody is very happy about the possibility of peace, peace all caps, for Russia-Ukraine.
At the conclusion of the meeting, I called President Putin and began the arrangements for a meeting at a location to be determined between President Putin and President Zelinsky.
After that meeting takes place, we will have a tri-lap, which would be the two presidents plus myself being the Russian and Ukrainian president.
Again, this was a very good early step for a war that has been going on for almost four years.
Vice President JD Vance, Secretary of State Mark Arubio, and Special Envoy Steve Woodcock are coordinating with the Russians and Ukrainians.
Thank you for your attention to this matter.
Now, with that large introduction, I will go to my fellow co-host, Dave.
David, please, what is your initial reaction before we go to our guest speakers?
I don't know anymore.
I like everything.
Anything that ends with thank you for your attention to this matter is usually I like.
But look, here's where we're at.
I kind of feel like we're at a place where we don't have much more room after this because we've had the talks.
The talks kind of fell apart.
Now we have the talks again.
Now we have this big dramatic meeting in Alaska.
Then we have this big dramatic meeting in the White House with Zelensky and everybody in Europe that, you know, that's relevant to the picture, apparently.
Something has to come out of this other than weapons deals, right?
And so we'll see the fact that there is no ceasefire yet.
The fact is that if Zelensky doesn't give up the territories that Russia is claiming they want to hold on to, that's a big issue that I don't see ending.
And really, the only way to get these parties to stop fighting is that each of them get enough of what they want to move forward.
I'm not sure we're getting that yet.
I do believe they're having great conversations.
I do believe everyone's acting in good faith, but we are going to end up in the same place we were before.
And that's Putin's like, well, I don't have to stop if Ukraine isn't going to give up what we've already taken.
And Ukraine is saying, well, I'm not going to stop until we get back what they've taken.
And if that's the position, well, then there is no stopping this ever.
So, so what is the how does this end other than somebody conceding something?
The United States needs to choose which country it exerts its power upon in order to convince them to take the bad deal.
So that's sort of my take.
I've seen them exert their power upon Russia.
They're the aggressor.
Arguably, that's where the power should be exerted.
But let's not forget the reality of the situation, and that's Russia's not Ukraine.
And, you know, Russia can fight back for as long as they want to until it becomes impractical.
So I don't know, Stefano, honestly, where this goes from here.
I'm looking forward to hear what the panel has to say about it.
I'm encouraged from the meetings themselves.
I'm encouraged that the meetings are occurring.
People seem to be getting along from people who look at Trump and a land on this point, from people who look at Trump as being some kind of buffoon who doesn't know how to deal in international affairs.
This shows you that Trump is actually very skilled at foreign relations.
This has been a very productive set of meetings with people that don't necessarily like him throughout Europe, but you could tell they respect him.
And if you, as a Democrat or Republican, this is exactly the way I would expect an American president to act.
So, on that note, I have, you know, you have to at least acknowledge the fact that President Trump is winning on the world stage.
And let's see if we can get some results for it.
And with that, I'll land.
Yeah.
So let me go to, if it's okay, to somebody who's also been a co-host of ours in some spaces.
Matt, I know you've joined us in some of other spaces.
I believe actually you've been covering supplement Russia-Ukraine or more specifically Israel-Iran.
So I'm going to go to you specifically, we've been there.
Look, we see February, the previous meeting between Zelensky and Trump, how it ended without a doubt being a disaster.
And now we're seeing here.
It looks like there is significant more commitment from the Americans.
President Trump clearly showing after the meeting on Friday, where everybody thought and were criticizing Trump for backstabbing the Ukrainians.
Now, at least we're seeing these deals being signed.
We're seeing the Americans commit to security guarantees in some way, shape, or form against Ukraine.
So is this something that bodes well for U.S.-European and Ukrainian relations?
And is this the push needed to maybe get Putin to back off and become more amendable to a serious ceasefire, even peace treaty?
Yeah, whether or not it's going to turn into a serious ceasefire peace treaty is a very good question.
And it goes down to what Putin's demands actually are, right?
Because they've kind of shifted over time and they've been pretty crazy at some other times.
But, you know, the fact is that Ukraine, number one, is not going to want to give up a lot of terrain.
If you look at Crimea, for example, Ukraine, all the way back in 2014, when it first got illegally annexed, Ukraine went over there peacefully, waving a white flag, ended up having Russia use that as a launching platform back in 22 to launch this invasion into Ukraine.
Ended up having their illegal incursion over into the LPR and DPR or eastern Ukraine before the actual invasion ended up kicking off as well, where they were launching attacks out of there.
Now they've gone in and they've taken over a lot of that terrain.
Another big issue that you end up having is a lot of that land bridge, the Zaporozhye, all of those locations, they ended up taking that area and voted into official Russian territory.
So as far as they're concerned, it's their own sovereign territory now.
And so the big issue for Zelensky is going to be those security guarantees is what they're talking about.
If, you know, when they came out earlier and they stated, they stated that they couldn't get, they could not be allowed to join NATO.
So this is what Trump said earlier.
They can't join NATO and they're not going to get Crimea back.
And remember, that got put out again, you know, international policy by True Social these days.
And the problem with that is that if they're not allowed to join NATO, what is going to prevent Russia from doing the exact same thing in a year, five, 10, 15 years?
So what Ukraine's main concern is going to be is whether or not, you know, they actually have that backing from the international community.
We can give them weapons all day long.
We can play this game.
Ukraine can sit there on the defensive lines and play whack-a-mole.
You know, the recent Russian breakthrough of the front line over in Poprovsk ended up being about 1,200 killed and wounded.
Russia is losing right around 200 men per square kilometer that they've taken.
They've taken right around 4,900-ish square kilometers in the last 20 months.
And that's a heck of a toll.
And if you take that number, you add that all the way up and say, if Russia wants to take everything east of the Dnipro, east of the Dnipro, right?
Make their way up and over into Kiev, they would have to lose about 4.9 million soldiers in order to do that.
And that's just unreasonable.
And so I think at this point, Putin's kind of come to this realization that breaking through that defensive barrier is going to be pretty dang hard.
He's got a lot more troops to commit.
And you got to figure they've got to refit equipment.
They've got to refit manpower.
They've got to refit all sorts of things in order to make that happen.
At the same time, Putin's got a safe face.
So Zelensky, he needs the security guarantees.
He's going to definitely want a lot of that land back.
At the same time, I mean, eastern Ukraine is a freaking wasteland, right?
People think that Gaza looks bad.
They need to go take a look at Bakhmut, right?
They need to go take a look at some of these other locations.
So I don't really see Ukraine having too big of an issue with some of that terrain, but the security guarantees for me, I think, is that big portion that they're going to have to have in order to come to the table.
So let me go to Malcolm.
I'm going to, because I know you've kind of had your time there in Ukraine specifically.
I guess the issue, though, is, you know, Matt made a point that maybe Putin is coming to the realization that he can't, you know, kind of achieve his objectives militarily.
You know, let me make a counterpoint because we've seen reporting not only from Russian press, but even Western press indicating that the Russian military believe they have a very high confidence that Ukrainian's military defense is going to collapse.
And then for their perspective, the only thing that makes sense is to continue to push militarily because although they might suffer casualties, clearly Putin is not concerned and they can seize more territory that way.
And that's the argument.
You either accept our maximalist demands now or we just increase it down the road.
And so is there a risk, though, from your perspective, that if this war drags on, maybe Ukraine will be in a worse position, or do you think the Ukrainians specifically would support the United States can't hold off?
First off, it's a, I think anyone who says that the Russian forces have the advantage and think that they can actually take terrain.
Matt made a very good assessment of how much it will actually cost them.
Anyone who believes that is either buying at the Kremlin propaganda or just does not know the actual realities of the situation on the ground.
You have two armies, 1,100 kilometers of battle space that are facing off every day.
Ukrainians right now, because they're not carrying out a summer offensive, are in defensive positions.
They are allowing the Russians to carry out what we termed in 2022, a head-against anvil strategy.
That is to create hard points that they know the Russians will attack at, allow the Russians to attack and smash their head against it and lose men by the tens of thousands.
And then Ukraine might give a kilometer or two or a small village.
Russia has, if anyone in the Russian high command is telling Putin that they're going to be able to win like that, that the Ukrainian forces are exhausted, then they are the only surviving officers who have not been to the battlefront or who went to the battlefront for a few hours and didn't get killed because everyone else is being killed.
It's as simple as that.
The problem is, is that with Donald Trump is that he seems to be negotiating based not on anything his intelligence agency is showing him.
It's almost like he's watching Telegram feeds from the pro-Moscow sides where you see an M113 here or you see a tank disabled there by FPV drones.
And to him, that's horrific, right?
John Bolton's Realpolitik Analysis00:02:30
But you have to understand, John Bolton today made a excellent analysis.
And, you know, he was not my favorite diplomat, but now he is a very sober and real politic analyst that you have to pay attention to.
Trump is motivated by one thing and one thing only here, and it is not to end the Ukrainian war, to stop the bloodshed.
He is motivated because he has gotten it into his head that he has ended six wars this year, which is ridiculous, but that he is going to get a Nobel Prize.
And he wants the Nobel Prize.
He has stated flat out to people who are close to him that the Nobel Prize to him is his global recognition that he is the top leader in the world and to humiliate Barack Obama for his gimme Nobel Prize that he received back in 2009 or whatever it was.
So that is his principal motivation.
And he has gotten it into his head that he can talk this war to a conclusion.
However, he has started most of his negotiations by negotiating for Moscow.
I've written four top 10 New York Times bestsellers about Trump's motivations with regards to Russia.
And the most recent one, which I wrote in 2020, was principally about Vladimir Putin and how he learned to manipulate people as a KGB officer in Dresden, Germany.
I went to his office.
I went to his house in Dresden.
The man was a living, breathing human intelligence case officer who loved manipulating people.
And when the Soviet Union fell and he went back to St. Petersburg and he got the Russian mafia under control, he learned to manipulate the entire political process.
And to this day, he lives and died.
He lives and breathes as a dictator because he understands the psyche of his opponents and uses the resources of the state to get around that.
Donald Trump has always been a very easy flip for him.
Starting back in 2012, he got him brazing Putin's invasion of Ukraine in 2014 and attacking the president of the United States at that time, Barack Obama.
And Putin has fostered that every minute that he's been there, including all the hacking of the DNC, the Hillary Clinton emails, all these things, to the point where Putin really doesn't have to do anything anymore.
Donald Trump negotiates for Putin.
Jayvon's Concerns About NATO Guarantees00:12:01
But when he came out the other day and said that Crimea was going to be off the table to float the idea of giving not just the Donetsk and Luhans that's been captured, but all of Donetsk, including the partians that have not been captured by Ukraine.
And I've been there.
I've been down in pre-war, in Avdivka, down on the zero line, and then during the war, all along that front.
This is just laughable to Ukrainians.
They are not going to give up that terrain.
Zelensky will listen politely.
He will go back and listen to the public opinion polls, and he's going to get an 86% rejection of any plan that does not, that rewards Russia with half of Zaporizhia, half of Kherson, all of Donetsk, and half of Luhans, and all of Crimea.
I see Jason shaking his head.
I think he might disagree with you.
I'm going to throw it over to Jason.
He can disagree.
I would say the only thing that I do agree with at the tail end there is the fact that I don't know that Zelensky is going to concede Nilan.
I think that is going to be the sticking point that maybe thwarts any chance of peace.
Jason, could I just share some quick news?
Sorry, I'm sorry, just for jumping in, just for everybody able to do that.
Just quickly, this is from Axios.
The U.S. is pushing for the Putin-Zelensky bilateral meeting to occur by the end of August.
So less than two weeks.
That is the goal to keep the momentum going from Trump Putin, Zelensky, Trump.
And now hopefully you're going to get directly Putin-Zelinsky and then probably Saliya Tri Lab.
Sorry, Jason, I just want to jump in with that news.
No, no, absolutely.
So let me start by saying, you know, I'm not Mr. MAGA here.
In fact, I'm extremely critical of Trump all the time.
And I do think actually one of his strong suits is his ability to not only speak in the public arena, but get people together.
And I am hoping for peace.
In fact, one of the most distressing things I saw was not only when Zelensky met Kellogg in that envoy, when Kellogg opened with, I know you're a very busy man, instead of Zelensky saying something like, well, this is the most important thing or peace is the most important thing, he gave some bullshit, flippant remark.
And then all I heard were security guarantees.
Okay.
And that was the continual thing.
Now, compared to the Putin meeting, they're two totally different things, right?
Trump goes out very public, meets Putin, but then goes behind closed doors and then lets him lead the dance after with a packed press room.
No questions whatsoever.
And then he does an interview with Hannity after the fact.
Now, do I think that he wants the Nobel Prize?
Probably.
Do I think that that is his driving motivation?
That's another place that I would disagree.
I'm not a big fan of the Nobel Peace Prize myself.
They gave it to Barack star Obama for being elected, and then he was the drone star.
So I don't know how much weight that actually holds.
I will say this: there was definitely a different demeanor amongst many of the European leaders, at least on camera.
That's a positive thing.
However, behind closed doors, I'm sure they're saying the same things that the gentleman below was saying: that we cannot concede any land to Russia.
And I think that is the major sticking point.
And the last thing I'll leave on is I wasn't in love with the way that MERS framed things about this ceasefire.
I've heard ceasefires a ton, especially with this Gaza-Israel situation.
You know how many times that's worked out?
Zero hasn't.
And to Trump's point, that he has, you know, I'm not saying he stopped six wars.
I mean, you notice still, we're not mentioning Yemen, which is still full force and we're doing all those things.
But I kept hearing about security negotiations, nothing about peace, nothing about concessions.
However, again, when MERS kept saying ceasefire, that really makes me feel uncomfortable.
I don't know what we're going to see in the next couple hours after this.
Probably a bunch of social media posts, maybe an interview with Trump.
I think the European leaders will give their interviews to the press there, and then we'll just have to take it from there.
I think a meeting with Zelensky and Putin, whether Trump is there or not, is actually now on the table.
But we will see what happens with this conflict in the next two weeks militarily.
I think that that also really, really matters in seeing whether or not we're going to get concessions from a Ukraine landmass and then guarantees with the United States and its military.
Because again, Trump seemed hung up on the fact that, well, now they're paying for 5% of the war.
Newsflash, if we don't give them the weapons, they can't defend themselves.
Even Zelensky was talking about the importance today of the U.S. military and how it was so much more superior than what they could get from Europe.
And I'll throw it to you guys.
Yeah, just quickly, Damon, if I may, it is interesting, Jason, one point you did say there.
Zelensky was supposed to have an interview with Brett Barr.
That has been canceled, I'm told.
It could be because there's further discussion specifically after this Putin call, which has been confirmed, obviously, by President Trump that he did have this conversation.
So, you know, I think there's definitely sort of a lot of the narrative, I think it is.
We're definitely in a different narrative, I believe, from where we were Friday to where we are now.
Now, the question is: how do the Russians, as before this summit, have made very clear they are not Going to accept NATO or European troops in Ukraine as part of the security guarantee.
I just don't see how Ukraine can renounce territory without it in any way, shape, or form.
But let me go to Jason.
Jason, I guess from, well, sorry, Jayvon, I'm sorry.
Jayman, I misread your name.
It's very, very, very, very small on the bottom.
I apologize.
So, Jayvon, let me go to you just quickly.
I mean, this is though, I think this meeting, at least from a foreign policy perspective, it does seem like Trump is trying to thread the needle similar to what we saw like Secretary of State Ruby saying the Sunday show talk shows and Steve Witkoff, which is we don't want to go too hard on Russia because we don't want the talks to derail, but we are willing to commit more than, let's say, even the Biden administration, which was the security guarantee.
So it does look like they're walking this tight rope.
And so far, maybe, do you think they're working or do you think it's backfiring or is not going to lead anywhere?
Yeah, first off, thanks for having me on the show.
Javon is the name, but no worries there.
It's different pronunciations, but no worries there.
Look, I think President Trump has set this up like a masterclass, dude.
What he's trying to do, right?
The reason why we went to NATO and got the 5% guarantees is because that is going to be the biggest deterrent to Russian expansionism moving forward.
The security guarantees that the president is talking about, in my opinion, are going to be primarily economic from the American perspective.
But from the European perspective, we need our allies in Europe to start spending more on their defense.
I don't think it's fair for them to go around demanding that we pay more when some of them are paying 0.8% of their GDP on defense.
And so what this administration, I believe, is trying to do is go, hey, look, nobody's going to get everything they want out of this.
Okay.
Ukraine, you're not going to join NATO.
You're not going to be able to get Crimea back.
I mean, for them, in order to get Crimea back, that would have to be pre-2014.
So you're asking them to actually have more land than when this invasion started.
I mean, it doesn't make any sense.
And so where I think the president is starting is a position that's based in reality.
Okay, so Putin's not going to get the entirety of Ukraine.
Ukraine will lose out, I think, on its eastern regions.
And what you will have is greater European presence.
I wouldn't be surprised if, say, the Germans maybe talk about putting some boots on the ground, possibly the French, some other type of assets.
But I think for American troops to be on the ground for any type of admittance to NATO, I think that's a disaster in the making.
I don't think that guarantees anything, but more conflict moving forward.
Oh, and by the way, there's still a growing power in the Indo-Pacific that the more time we spend on these conflicts, whether it's Ukraine, whether what's going on in the Middle East, we're allowing the Chinese to continue growing.
So I think what the president is trying to do is, and this idea that he hasn't solved six conflicts, I mean, I've got a list right here: Israel and Iran, the Congo and Rwanda, Thailand and Cambodia, Armenia, Azerbaijan, India and Pakistan, Egypt and Ethiopia.
We need to stop arguing that President Trump is not a man of peace.
His primary motivation isn't the Nobel Peace Prize.
It's peace around the world.
Okay.
This man doesn't like war.
And I think he's been consistent on that since 2015.
He does not like war.
And so these arguments that he's doing it based off of his own ego is ridiculous.
He could essentially say, I'm getting the hell out of here.
Ukraine, good luck.
And he's not.
He's trying to stop the killing.
He's trying to stop the bloodshed.
And I think that we're closer than we ever have been to actually ending this conflict.
And I'm excited to see where we go from here.
So I know Vlad you.
Can I ask a question for Javon real quick?
Go ahead.
I don't know who was.
That was Clinton.
That was Clint.
Yeah, Clint.
So just one quick point, though.
I think the concern, though, is, if I may, and then Clint, I'll let you jump in with your question because I know there's a lot of Vlad, Matt, you guys just wanted to speak.
What I would say, though, is one of the issues that you're running into, right?
For example, the DRC-Rwanda deal, that's at the verge of collapsing because the M23 rebels continue to move on the offensive, right?
And they launched a new offensive right now.
And I think that is kind of like one thing is they sign a piece of paper, but then does it actually translate to something durable, which is sometimes harder to achieve.
But Clint, I'll go to you.
And then I know Vlad and then Matt and Ethan.
We have so many.
So please bear with us all, please.
Okay, go ahead, Clint.
Yeah, I've been listening for a while, so I'll just ask two questions to Malcolm and Javon.
I think, I mean, first off, this idea that Russia is not winning this war, I think you used to work for CNN, if I'm not mistaken, Malcolm, but or at least you were on there a lot.
There was a poll put out by Gallup that was covered by CNN today.
It says that 2022, the start of the war, the Ukrainians, 73% of them wanted to fight until Ukraine wins.
As of today, it's 24%.
If they are in fact winning this war handily, it's odd that they went from three quarters wanting to fight until the very end and maintain all land to three quarters now not wanting that.
That's quite the flip.
And then also, Javon, I think that as much as I want you to be right, as much as I want Donald Trump to be the president of peace, and in many regards, he is.
He tries to negotiate for peace, and I credit him every time he does.
And every time he's successful, hooray.
But you can't say you're the president of peace when you just bombed Iran a month ago.
I mean, that's, come on.
That's not peace to drop bombs on nuclear facilities of sovereign nations that haven't attacked us.
That is not a peaceful action by the president of the United States.
I'm sorry.
I don't want to derail this conversation about Ukraine and Russia, but all I'd say is that peace without the threat of violence is really not.
You really don't have any peace at all at that point, right?
But that's not the threat of violence.
That's the US.
Here's the thing, too, is we got to correct the record for something you just said.
Hold on, let me jump in here.
We got to correct the record for something you just said, because what you said was categorically false, saying that Iran has number one, never attacked the United States of America.
I didn't say never.
Okay.
So one, they were responsible for killing countless U.S. service members between Iraq and Afghanistan.
And remind me why Iran was involved in any of the people who were in Iran and Afghanistan, not inside of Iran.
Were they inside of Iran?
Were they inside of Iran?
No.
No, they were not.
Were our troops in America though?
So thank you very much.
They killed U.S. troops inside of Iraq and inside of Afghanistan.
Ukraine's Strategic Defense00:15:47
So we'll go there first.
Second, they also have been chanting death to America endlessly for the last couple of decades.
And they were.
They developed uranium way beyond 80%.
They went as high as 87%, according to IAEA.
They found traces up to 87 plus percent, over 900 pounds worth.
So there's no peaceful reason for them to have that whatsoever.
Can I ask you something, Matt?
Hold on, hold on.
If you're going to claim, hold on, if you're going to claim we have to wait for people to attack us, that means to tell me that you're willing to let anybody kill any member of your family, right, before you're willing to do anything about it.
You mean to tell me if a man was standing there with a gun to you, I don't know if you have a kid or a wife to their head and said that they were going to pull the trigger if you didn't do something about it.
You mean you're going to just sit there and allow that to happen?
I have a question for you.
Just outside.
I would love to debate.
I just, I want to give one second to all the speakers who haven't, just give me one second.
Just give me one second.
Let me, let me, there was a question that Clint asked that I want to go to Vlad for.
And the point that Clint was making is that Gallup poll, right?
That in 2022, a large section of Ukrainian populace had fight until the very end.
And now that is kind of flipped.
So I would like you to address that specifically.
What I would say, though, is since the start of the invasion in February of 2022, the height of how much territorial control the Russians actually controlled from the beginning of the invasion to where we are now is significantly less.
We've seen, you know, liberations of Sumi, Kharkiv, Kherson, right?
So there's us back and forth.
But, you know, Vlad, is there a conversation that many in the Ukrainian population, though, at this current rate is tired of fighting?
And does that give the initiative to the Russians to say, we're going to keep on fighting because maybe we can take more?
Thanks for having me on.
Let me try to answer that.
I actually, I just want to say, you guys are all bright, and every single one of you has said things that I both agree with and disagree with.
And by the way, thank you to Mr. Nance for everything he's been doing.
Just to start with that, I'm, by the way, diaspora.
I was born in Uzbekistan to Ukrainians and Jews who fled in 41 to Central Asia and I grew up in Brooklyn.
So I'm an American citizen of Ukrainian Russian descent who grew up in America, but spent my career in Eastern Europe.
And I'm diaspora and I'm hardcore on the Ukrainian side.
So just everyone knows I'm the only guy with a Slavic name on here where I'm coming from.
Look, since the start of the war, obviously the Ukrainians have been taking a lot of casualties.
A lot of people have died.
The population, there's been a lot of internal displaced people.
There's been a lot of people who fled.
There are a lot of people who are very tired.
There are a lot of people who have lost relatives.
No one does not know anyone who has not died.
Everyone has friends or relatives or relations or cousins who have died.
My first wife was Ukrainian.
She had 10 girlfriends who lost or 12 girlfriends who had lost husbands fighting.
That's a lot.
That's just my Ukrainian wife had 12 girlfriends who lost husbands in the army.
That's a lot, right?
That's not, that doesn't happen in a normal situation, right?
So the answer to Mr. Russell is that there's a spread of responses to different questions.
I think we still have a majority of people who would not, a super majority of like 80% would not give up territory in exchange without security guarantees.
We still have like 75% of the population wants to keep fighting.
We still have a bare majority who wants to fight at any cost.
It depends which question you're asking.
So does the population want to negotiate if there are no preconditions to negotiating and there's a ceasefire?
Yeah, people will start talking.
A lot of people are very tired.
Will the population give up Crimea and Donbass and Lugansk and Donyetsk and Zaparizha in exchange for nothing?
No, absolutely not.
So it just depends on how you ask the question.
And if you ask 12 different questions, you'll get 12 different sociological responses.
I hope that's useful.
But I mean, if you can look at that poll, you have to conclude at least that the war fervor, the fervor to fight has decreased dramatically.
100%.
If you guys are winning so-handedly, as Malcolm Nance alleges on the regular, at least he always makes it sound as if Russia is making no headway whatsoever and they're hemorrhaging lives in stark contrast to the Ukrainians who are not.
Why is it that this polling has shifted so dramatically?
Tremendous respect to Mr. Nance.
Everything he's done.
He's a remarkable man, a great American.
I'd love to meet him.
Very happy theory he's done.
He's a great guy.
What I'll say is this.
Every year that Ukraine is not defeated by a nuclear-armed opponent with 100 million people more and five times the industrial plant and 10 times the economy, et cetera, et cetera, is a year in which they're winning and we are winning.
They said this would be a three-day war, two-week war.
It's day 1,300, day thousand 400 or whatever it is.
They are taking territory slowly at tremendous, inhuman World War II level cost.
They are terrorizing the population, but the population is not at the point where they're willing to concede anything in exchange for nothing.
Obviously, people want this to stop.
Can I just ask this question?
Because I keep hearing who's winning.
Does anybody have a doubt here that if the war stays conventional in the way that it is, that Russia can easily fight this stalemate for five, maybe 10 more years plus?
Does anybody believe that can happen?
No.
No, no.
So then who has the cards?
That's all I'm saying.
We're all talking about mission.
Maybe if you have Donald Trump supporting you, yeah, with Donald Trump stuff.
Yeah, Donald Trump allows Russia, lifts the sanctions off of Russia, allows Russia to start becoming a world power, brings them into the G8 and allows them to sell oil and everything.
Yeah, Russia could sustain this war for another 30 years.
Yeah, but oh, so it's okay if Donald Trump allows I'm not saying what's okay or not.
I'm talking about reality.
The fact that I'm not that 30% of their GDP comes from the sale of oil and he's been systematically going after that.
How are they going after where?
I don't even know who's talking anymore.
Yeah, let's give me a second.
Let me let me because let me get to this military.
And I know we have a couple military folks here.
Ethan, I'll get to you.
Just be patient with me.
Just one second.
I apologize.
I'm trying to.
So, Jason, I think you asked a question.
What I would counter is, because I, you know, I'm also a veteran.
I've also served.
And I, but I was an armor officer before I went to military intelligence.
I studied Russian armor.
I will be the first one to tell you something.
The Russians are not fighting how we thought they were going to fight, and they're fighting very much World War I tactics that we thought were a long go lost.
And let me be frank: the U.S. Air Force would have a field day with the Russian military, right?
But regardless, we're talking about the Ukrainians.
So let me go to Matt, just quickly, and then Malcolm for you guys back for from a military perspective.
Is there a concern?
Because we all know that the problem that the Ukrainians are having is a mobilization problem.
It's a numbers problems of personnel.
The reason why they had this small breakthrough, you could talk to the Ukrainians, is they were not manned properly.
They are fighting a trench warfare-like battle.
And the successes from the beginning of the war of high mobility and decentralized command, we've seen Soviet doctrine center way back into the Ukrainian military.
So to Jason's point, though, Ukraine has a lot of deficiencies, specifically in manpower, that they're not addressing.
And that leads problems in the front line, as we recently see.
So, Matt, what would your counter to that?
What would your answer be that?
And then we'll go to Malcolm and then I'll go to Ethan.
Yeah, my counter to that would be exactly what I talked about before: with over, you know, somewhere in the vicinity of 200, depending on which intelligence estimate you want to take, that Russia needs to expand in personnel in order to take one square kilometer of terrain.
They just simply can't sustain that.
I'd also take it a step further and I would say that when you're in a defensive position, obviously you have a much, much greater advantage.
And if you go, and I don't care if you read ISW or anything, just go look at the front line over the last year and you can see how many times Russia has been on the offensive and not gone anywhere.
And every single day they're on the offensive and that line doesn't move, bodies are falling into the ground and they're not coming back up.
And the reason that occurs is because it takes vastly, vastly greater numbers in order to overrun that defensive position.
And when you start incorporating fields of fire, when you start incorporating indirect fire, when you start incorporating machine guns, now we've got these advanced drones that are coming into the picture.
You throw in artillery, you throw in all of these other things, not to mention armor, and you take all of that and you actually have that overlaid across your front line.
It's pretty dang impenetrable.
And like I just said, up over in the Pegros direction, up over by, was it Papa Provila, where they just poked through the other day?
They just lost 1,200 dudes.
They've got them all cut off in the north.
And I just received word that they're already cut off in the south.
That whole loop's closed.
And so that's why it's so difficult for Russia and why they need to come to the table.
And that's why they're losing so many men.
You know, picture assaulting a trench line, vastly underequipped.
Some of these guys that are coming off the line, and I've seen the interview videos of them of the Russian POWs that are just now coming off the line that, number one, haven't had food or water for days, are greatly under-equipped.
They have pieced together uniforms, things of that nature.
So that's that side of the Russian.
When you take it to the Ukrainian side and say, what can they do?
Well, Trump actually did end up just approving so that now we can have NATO purchase weapons from the United States and give it over to Ukraine.
And so it doesn't necessarily have to be the United States 100% doing this when you look at it from that defensive position.
While that's going on, Ukraine sits in the back, just stacks up bodies along the front line and waits to build up their force and keeps taking it away inch by inch.
Can I just say this really quick about just selling the weapons?
Most of those weapon systems have to be used by either somebody within the U.S. military, Intel, or DOD arena.
So the idea that we're just selling them and not assisting, it's a semantics game for me.
If we really wanted to stop this, again, we would just stop selling those weapons as well.
Of course, we won't because we are in that NATO alliance.
And of course, the Europeans are putting that pressure on him.
I mean, when we look at who really has the cards, we're the ones with the weapons systems.
We're the ones, and you just said it, Stefano.
If we had our U.S. military and our Air Force actually involved in this, it's a totally different ballgame.
But then you run the risk of it not being traditional warfare.
And of course, Russia going with the nuclear card, which I think would be absolutely disastrous, of course.
It would be disastrous for them.
And I want to say this because Malcolm and I, we don't see eye to eye on a lot of different things, right?
I voted for Trump, number one, and I voted for Trump because I understood that he understood the Middle East policy a heck of a lot better than his opponent did at the time, right?
I also understood that Trump didn't understand Ukraine.
And even in Trump's own words today, he said he thought this was going to be the easiest war for him to solve.
And it turned out to be the opposite.
That tells you how much he actually doesn't understand about what's going on in Ukraine, right?
And I've stated that so many times on my podcast.
It's not even funny.
No, I could tell you.
I was the very first one that told him about Ukraine in 2000.
Thank you.
Thank you.
And so, and so when we look at this, right, when we look at this, and just as you said, if we stop giving them weapons, we're going to end the war.
No, you're not.
You're not.
I promise you that.
Even if Russia took over every square inch of Ukrainian territory, I want you to look at like the guys on the panel that know exactly what I'm talking about.
Those Ukrainians are going to stand up and fight.
If you remember how the United States looked after 9-11 with American flags flying everywhere and everybody was proud to be American, that's how it is every single day on the street in Ukraine.
Brother, they got their curbs painted in their national colors.
I mean, it's insane how much national pride they have.
So if you think Ukraine is going to bend the will to Russia, you're out of your mind because they know exactly how they've been treated in the past before.
And they have no reason, none, to accept anything from Russia.
You can look at the Budapest memorandum where Russia swore that they were going to respect their borders, they were going to respect their elections and everything else.
And they violated everything they said they were going to do.
So where do they get their weapons then?
Because I'm not saying that they're not ride or die willing to fight if their leadership can do that.
But if they literally don't have the military infrastructure, the weapon systems to do that, how do they do it?
Are they going to get it from a European nation?
I want to get posted in the conversation because we've been trying to get them in since the show started.
Because I do need to get posted, Malcolm.
I'll go back to you.
But what my answer to your is another historical example.
I would recommend.
Look at the first Chechen War.
Those guys had no support.
And they grind the Soviet Union, well, the Russian Federation to a grinding halt and force them.
And so that's kind of the argument that could be made, right?
That just because the weapons stop does not mean the war stops.
Don't forget also, Ukraine is not your father's Oldsmobile.
It's not the same Ukraine it was four years ago.
I mean, with the drones that they've been building and the warfare, the words change, and Matt and Malcolm Tessa, it's a little different ballgame than it was when we go back to 2022.
Yeah, but that drone system is the drone and communication system is starlink for the most part.
So we can't cut that off either.
Our defense department can't do that.
That's actually not true.
It's fiber optics now at about 500 bucks a pop.
99% of the drones are fiber optic.
They've even stopped radio drills.
Let me give you guys a little backstory here because I went to Ukraine one month before the war.
And Clint, I was with MSNBC, not with CNN, even though I analyzed for them too.
And when I quit MSNBC to join the International Legion, I did it for a reason.
One, they needed a lot of help.
And my first three months, I worked with Ukrainian Defense Intelligence Agency, the Ministry of Defense Intelligence, to establish the paramilitary legion forces that we had there.
Very early on, the mobilization was a real issue.
Getting up there, there's something a lot of guys don't seem to understand about the Ukrainians.
They are not recruiting 18 to 24-year-olds right now.
They are trying to save that entire generation from having to go to war.
Now, early on, the war was a defensive war, which quickly switched after 90 days into a counterattack war.
They defeated two entire Russian armies to the north, to the northeast, and to the east, right?
Wiped them out to the point where the Russians, they were all combat ineffective, had to be withdrawn, come back.
And he tried this limited take the east portion of the war.
By September of 2022, where I was deeply involved in the International Legion, it turned into a NATO-style mobility warfare blitz war with using armor and mechanized infantry forces.
And we wiped out the Russians in Kharkiv province and pushed them almost back to half of Luhansk and Donetsk.
And that's where the Russians suddenly realized we have to go defensive and it switched to trench warfare.
The Russians created the Dragon Teeth line all the way down the exact same line of confrontation that they're in almost right now.
Ukrainian Mobility Dominance00:04:09
When I met the Minister Reznikov in 2023, the first thing he told me was: 2023 will not be the counterattack mobility war that you fought last year.
We are going for something more strategic.
2023, they had a failed counteroffensive, but the biggest part of the counteroffensive was they were going into an artillery reduction war.
They wanted to bring Russian overmatch of artillery down from 15 to 1 to about 8 to 1.
And let me tell you, I've been bombarded in one instance non-stop for three days when we were on the in Kupiansk on the counteroffensive in 2022.
Non-stop.
Russians had artillery systems that could zap you day, night, whether they knew where you were, they would walk them back and forth across the front.
They don't have that anymore.
Ukrainians have degraded that, and artillery is almost at one to one in some places.
The Russians just don't have the throw weight that they used to have.
Tanks, the entire Russian tank corps is gone.
Tanks are now being used as mobile artillery platforms, but they are not being, and when they were being used as these assault troops, as we saw between February of this year and now, they were being slaughtered at the battalion and regiment level.
I mean, all of them killed by FPV drones.
The FPV drone is now the mortar anti-tank weapon of today.
I was on a javelin team.
I was went to Javelin Gunner School, went to N-Law Gunner's School when I was with Defense Intelligence, and I was desperate to become a Javelin ace.
We humped them everywhere.
We just couldn't get into killing range once the FPV drones operated.
The drones can go 40 to 50 kilometers on now a fiber optic, which means they are jam-proof.
And they go in and they kill.
The Russians also have fiber optic drones.
So it's sort of made, you know, the Ukrainians have more fluidity of troop movements.
They can get into their defensive positions.
The Russians can't move at all.
The Ukrainians are dominating this drone.
I want to, if I can, if I can, I want to get post into the conversation because he's my, let me close on that.
And Clint, I know you asked me a question, but my system went bonk wonky.
I had to drop out.
The point is, Russia is not winning this war.
I funded my battalion.
I've been funding my battalion for three years now.
I buy everything from berets to new drones.
But the United States is not the principal weapon supplier in Ukraine.
Two years ago, the Czech army, the Czech government, the Ukrainian army switched from M4s to the CZ-807 for everybody.
It is a lethal 600-yard, 600-meter killer on iron sites, better than the weapons we had.
Artillery, still important for them, but they're getting it from all over the world now.
Even South Korea is producing it for them.
The systems they needed the most are the Himars missiles and the Patriot and NSAM missile systems.
Patriot is the one they really need because they stop hypersonic attacks in Ukraine.
Other than that, they are being fundamentally supplied by the Europeans now.
So whatever we're giving them, it's smaller.
I mean, the Poles gave them 10 times the number of tanks than the United States gave them.
You know, upgraded, upgunned T80s to this LP T84 model that they have.
They've captured over 500 Russian tanks, but they are not, they are just resting, rearming, refueling, training for a breakthrough.
And a breakthrough will happen because it's the Russian line that is weak.
They are tired and they can't move.
And at some point, one of two things is going to happen: rebellion, or the line is going to be so weak the Ukrainians find a fissure to it and they're going to crack it.
Positive Diplomatic Vibe Shift00:04:09
No, wait, post has the next post has the next comment.
Post about their economy.
All right, let's let's let Post talk.
Go ahead, Post.
No worries.
I mean, I'm patiently waiting because it's a great conversation.
So I appreciate everyone showing up here.
I appreciate you letting me on.
I kind of wanted to recenter this discussion.
You know, there's been lots of talks for months now on the state of the battlefield, either side logistics.
So let's focus on what happened here today, what happened this weekend with these newfound peace negotiations, because that's what's really critically going on here that I think the people in the audience are wanting to hear about.
And as a radically non-interventionist, true America first libertarian, I'm thrilled that the talks are even happening.
Now, I am skeptical for good reason about Trump's ability to broker any sort of peace or even a ceasefire, but the fact that we have leaders pursuing man-to-man diplomacy is a huge step forward, whether you're pro-Russian, pro-Ukrainian, or just pro-American, non-interventionist, right?
Blessed are the peacemakers, right?
And so these endeavors in and of themselves should be considered a positive step forward, regardless of how fruitful they end up being.
The problem is they're theatrics.
If they were on the see, this is the whole thing.
They are positive theatrics.
No, they're not positive theatrics.
They're not positive theatrics when the deals are made.
So it follows that cursed are the warmongers.
I would much rather be plused pursuing peace, perhaps naive than cursed by continuing to try and say, What kind of peace are you talking about if right now, as Zelensky's in there and Trump's talking about peace?
Right now, there's bombs falling and she is on Ukraine.
Yes, and I would like that to stop.
And they don't stop by sending more and more aid to Ukraine without any sort of negotiations.
Levi, I may just continue.
I'd love to go to you afterwards.
The problem is, we had multiple years of the Biden administration refusing to even talk to Russian officials for the most part.
This is a positive diplomatic vibe shift.
Even Maloney said it today.
Something has changed, fundamentally changed in the way that the U.S. and now Europe on board are approaching this conflict.
You know, there is a momentum shift away from continuing the war to ending it.
And as a non-interventionist, I love that.
But to a point that I think you'll probably agree with is that just because a ceasefire or even a full peace deal is brokered doesn't mean that Ukrainians stop fighting.
This part of the world has a long, long history of partisan warfare, of fighting guerrilla-style tactics after the fact, because of course patriotic Ukrainians are going to want to defend their country, regardless of whether Trump, Zelensky, or anyone else reaches any sort of actual peace agreement.
And as others have noted, Ukraine has been so flooded with weapons in recent years, whether you think that's good or not, that the fighting will continue at the front lines, behind the front lines, whatever ends up being Russian territory, whatever ends up in Ukrainian hands.
It is naive to think that the fighting is going to stop just because we have a legal agreement.
But that doesn't mean that we should stop pursuing it.
Because as I said, blessed are the peacemakers.
I praise Trump, although I remain skeptical of his ability to achieve anything.
And on the I'll wrap on the Nobel Peace Prize conversation that we kind of touched on.
Teddy Roosevelt won a Nobel Peace Prize for brokering a deal in the Russo-Japanese war on American soil in the month of August.
It took about a month.
And I see this playing out very similarly.
It's going to take time.
It's going to take multiple negotiations with multiple sets of parties over the course of weeks.
But at the end of it, we will be in a better position to end the war than any time in recent years.
And if you're not thankful for that, then I have to question whether you really want to stop the killing or you're pursuing other geopolitical or personal or even theological interests.
So let me go and open it up.
Yeah, let me go to Trent because you haven't had a chance to speak.
I think that's a perfect opportunity for you to address from your perspective.
So what's your answers to the posts?
What do you think?
Do you agree with him or disagree with him?
Look, I come at this from a defense procurement background.
I worked for the Department of Defense for surgery three years, three months.
When I look at this war, I'm looking at the top line, the money level, the trends, the procurement, industrial, potential industrial disinvestments.
I'm going to walk you back the way I'm seeing this.
Russian Railway Strain00:02:59
When Russia started this war, it had about $600 billion in foreign exchange, $300 billion, which it controlled in its own financial institutions, and $300 billion, which was overseas so it could do financial transactions around the world.
When the war started in March of 2022, it lost control of 300 billion.
You're hearing stuff right now about Trump and the Europeans probably using that money to try and do lend-lease.
I'm going to leave that as an aside for others.
The issues for Russia going forward is a lot of its economy was extraordinarily parasitic on Western industrial potential.
And I'm going to speak here to its trends.
They were using rail bearings for its engines, locomotives, and railway cars or wagons.
And these were used on a just-time, just-in-time basis.
And they lasted basically 2 million kilometers of use before the whole cassette was removed.
So there is no oiling, no anything.
You just stuck it in, used it till it was done, and then it left.
So that meant for the Russians, they lasted about 63 months on the Moscow, the Vladivostop line.
They last longer in other places.
He hasn't gotten any replacements since April, March of 2022, and we're in 2025.
All right.
So there's a significant fraction of Russian rail transport capability.
which is going offline because the bearings are wearing out.
You're seeing this in terms of railway crashes when they derail.
In fact, we've seen a couple of cases where railway transportation repair train have derailed on the way to fixing derailments.
There are other issues with industrial disinvestment.
The Russian industrial economy was built on the Soviet model.
That meant they had, they took people and they trained interns locally in the factories.
The system fell apart in the 1990s.
So their best industrial workers, the youngest that were trained in the system, are in their late 50s.
So you have a whole lot of industrial potential that is literally drunken itself to death in the times of the late 1990s and 2025.
These people are in every industry that supplies weapons, transportation, oil, what have you.
All right.
They're gone.
The Russian railway system is being overused, transporting military goods.
And when you follow accounts like Prune 603 going into the loadings, you're seeing Russian transportation loadings down by a fifth compared to 2022.
This is another indication of industrial potential winding down.
Russian Rail Strain00:14:51
We talked earlier in this space about Russian artillery being destroyed.
Well, here's the thing.
The Russians did not have the specialty metals to make artillery tubes at the rates necessary to replace those that they were burning out.
All right.
There's a reason, not just Ukrainians are destroying tubes, but the Russians are shooting them out.
In fact, they're now using North Korean and Iranian tubes in lieu of their own, simply because they don't have the ability to produce enough tubes.
Trent, sorry, I got to jump in.
I do want to share some additional news.
So part of this, this is being reported by AP.
During Trump's call with President Putin, Russian President Vladimir Putin told U.S. President Donald Trump on Monday that he's willing to meet with Ukrainian President Jovan Zelinsky, a person familiar with the call said.
So and then Fox News, as I alluded to earlier, but then we got a kind of additional reporting from Fox News indicating that the meeting is going to happen within two weeks.
First, it was the end of August.
Now, you know, with two weeks.
So let me just use this as an opportunity.
Donnie, two weeks.
Donnie, two weeks.
Let me go to Clint for this.
I mean, I know, you know, you were all there.
And I'd like to also eventually talk, guys.
Everybody, I haven't had a chance to talk about this.
You guys are talking about.
We got going back and forth, charades happening here.
You're trying to analyze shit.
Most of you people don't even know what you're talking about with all the respect because this was all unfortunately a charade, theatrics, because nothing happened.
Because right before this was supposed to take place, right before this announcement happened, what was happening?
There were supposed to be sanctions put onto secondary tariffs that now are not happening.
All of a sudden, there's no ceasefire.
We're going to talk about making a plan.
And the next, meanwhile, for the next two weeks, let's continue bombardment.
Let's continue the assault.
Let's continue killing innocent kids and people like that.
Because all we're talking about, yes, we're moving towards peace.
What changed?
What changed except for the media and charade, and except for what changed from two weeks ago?
What changed?
What progress has been made?
Nothing promises, promises, promises.
That's all.
Donald Trump telling you that in two weeks, there's going to be a phone call made between him and Zelensky.
What you people don't understand is what's his name?
Putin will never sit down with Zelensky because that would acknowledge that Zelensky is actually a leader.
Because anybody that knows anything about Putin, Russia, and their ideology is part of their words that to change the administration.
The only way that they will have peace is if there's an elections.
And that's why, if you took a look at the questions that were going on today at the Oval, when they were asking Zelensky why he doesn't want to, if he's going to have an election, and even Trump commented, oh, three and a half years, I could also do common war.
It's all about changing the administration because Putin will not sit down with Zelensky.
This is another prolonged because right now, Putin is preparing more assaults, more attacks, and trying to take more land.
And once he takes what he wants, what he thinks, then maybe he'll come back to the table and say, okay, well, now we'll come back to that.
So that's what's really happening, not some kind of sham of peace deals.
Right.
But Lev, what does he even want?
I mean, can you even define that at this point?
Oh, who?
Which one?
Trump or Putin?
Oh, Putin.
Oh, Putin wants like he always wants.
He wants all of Ukraine.
He wants to keep going.
That's what he really says for now.
But for now, he'll be happy with stopping it right now.
Because the one thing I'm going to acknowledge is Putin wants to stop this war right now, but not he wants to stop it at his pace.
He wants a break.
He needs Trump to bring him back into the financial world.
He needs to get his economy back in order so he could take the rest of Ukraine and move forward.
So, Levin, can I just ask you?
I just got to ask him.
You think there's no possibility, let's say in a perfect world, and I don't think that this is going to happen, where the Ukrainians do concede land, the European Union is down with that.
We don't have them join NATO, and you have some kind of United States troop presence for security.
You don't think that Putin would agree to that?
You don't even think that there is any chance of a meeting whatsoever.
Putin will never, and I will stake my life, allow American troops over there.
Are you kidding me?
That's not even something that you don't think that there's another badge, but we're not going to let him.
Just think about it.
And Vladislav, I'm sorry, but just think about why this war even started.
The way, if you listen to Donald Trump and Vladimir Putin, the war started not because of troops, but because of the intention of NATO, that Ukraine was going to become part of NATO.
And because of that, this is why this war now.
This is exactly why the war is unlikely to end on this negotiation because Zelensky's demand is that there be some sort of security guarantee.
What is the security guarantee he's been asking for for the past three years?
It's Article 5.
He wants to be added to NATO.
If you get a security guarantee from NATO, that's basically a de facto Article 5, which the Russians should not accept.
And honestly, I mean, you know, even though I want peace as much as Jason does, I do the last thing I want to see in the world is to see American troops on the ground as peacekeepers or anything else.
Let me ask you a question.
Can I ask you a question?
Russia has borders with other countries besides Ukraine, correct?
Yeah, Finland was there.
Okay, hold on.
Finland is a NATO country right now.
And there's nobody going to war with that.
Why can't Ukraine be why is everybody so against Ukraine becoming NATO?
Why is Finland okay?
Other countries around the border, they're okay to be NATO.
Russia's not attacking them.
But as soon as we bring up, just God forbid the word Ukraine, why?
Lev, when was the last time in a conflict like that?
Russia was involved in what do you see?
What did you say?
Said, when was the last time Finland was involved in a military conflict with a bordering nation like that?
It hasn't.
That's why we're talking Ukraine.
And Finland wasn't part of the former Soviet Union either.
Whoa, what you're trying to imply that Ukraine started this or had no, you're just saying, why are we talking about Ukraine and not another nation bordering us?
Because Finland got attacked.
Ukraine was pretty clear.
If Ukraine was a member of NATO, Russia wouldn't be able to invade it and take over more terrain.
Finland didn't.
And so Putin's not going to agree.
This goes right back.
Putin is not going to agree to these types of security guarantees, which is why I asked Lev what he thinks Putin's objective is, because it's just going to answer his best.
That's also why I don't believe he wants to take all of Ukraine, is because he still wants to have a buffer zone between his nation and NATO territory.
So it doesn't make any sense logically to take all these people.
Finland is a NATO country on its border.
No buffer zone.
Why would he try to ignore that?
What's the let me give the lev?
Let me give the historical answer to Finland because I think it's missing the context that is important.
Two contexts.
One, the last time Finland and the Soviet Union fought was during the period of World War II, the Winter Wars, because of territorial disputes.
And then, two, the very famous term, Finlandization occurred, which was Finland had to be neutral and their foreign policy was basically deferred to the Soviet Union, which Finland now, after the invasion of Ukraine, said this is a mistake.
Now, post-Cold War, Finland obviously went closer and closer to the West with joining the European Union.
And then after the invasion, they said we need Article 5 because the European Union does not have these tenets of treaties that these commitments, and our security is based on that.
And that's the irony of the situation: that the invasion of Ukraine basically made the Baltic Sea a NATO lake.
St. Petersburg could be choked up.
Yeah, but what's it up?
But if that was the case, Putin could have invaded Finland before they got became a NATO country.
But you've got to remember, Finland was added to NATO in 2023.
They were already at war with Ukraine at that time.
So having a multi-front war, proxy wars against NATO probably was a little bit beyond the pale.
What country has NATO preemptively invaded?
Let's ask a realistic question.
What country has NATO preemptively invaded, gone after, and taken terrain from?
Give me one country that NATO's done that.
I'm with you, but taken territory from?
Okay, you could say that, but they have invaded you.
Zero.
They haven't taken territory from a single country, not one.
And so Putin's concept that NATO, that Ukraine shouldn't be allowed to join NATO, number one, is ludicrous.
Ukraine is its own sovereign nation, period.
And if they would like to join NATO, it is well within their rights in order to do so.
Matt, as long as they need everything, Matt, that's not a fair characterization because if China put, I don't know, let's say China had missiles in Mexico pointed at the U.S., the United States would clearly, but see, you're changing the words.
Ukraine doesn't have missiles pointed at NATO.
It makes it not cool.
There's no missiles pointing at Russia.
Listen, first of all, they can launch those missiles from wherever the hell they want.
I don't know if you checked your calendar lately, but it's 2025.
I understand that.
Second, any country has a country to do with that.
I understand all of that.
The United States would still feel very uncomfortable if another power that was hostile to us had missiles or military equipment on our doorstep.
That is not a crazy thing.
Russia was literally on our doorstep.
I opened up a no-tam.
My question opened up.
No, you asked the question.
I'm answering it.
Russia opened up a no-tams off the coast of California last year, launching rockets and shit off into nowhere.
She also had a new club off the coast of Quash.
And you're acting like we give a shit.
By the way, because they've been in the proxy war with America for the past three years.
Let me answer that.
Let me answer it to you, Jeff, because I think, Jeffon, the problem, the historical, like China does have spying equipment.
They do have a significant presence in NATO.
Of course, and we have an issue with that.
That's what we know.
And I think the issue of NATO, I think it's very important to highlight when we're talking about Russia and Ukraine, and left can back me up on this.
This idea that it's because of NATO is directly geared toward Western audience.
If you read President Putin in 2021, released a historical document signed by him saying the existence of Ukraine as a sovereign country is Western imperialism.
He has made that abundantly clear.
The Soviet Union, the reason why the Soviet Union ceased to exist, because Russia, let's make this clear, Russia declared its independence from the Soviet Union.
Why?
Because Ukraine declared its independence from the Soviet Union in 1991, which George H.W. Bush Sr. went to Kyiv to Ukraine in the very famous Kiev chicken speech because George H.W. Bush in August of 91 told the Ukrainian parliament do not declare independence because of the risk of nationalism.
And the Ukrainians, hold on, let me finish this point.
Crimea has Crimea in the vote.
54% of Crimeans in 1991 voted in favor for independence.
Overall, over 90% of Ukrainians voted for independence.
And Russian has always believed that Ukraine is little Russia and is their historical territory.
Look at Vladimir Putin's own speeches in Russian media to Russian people.
He laid out a map.
Two days ago, you don't have to go two years ago, two days ago.
Listen, listen to arguments.
There's some aspects that that's true.
But you talk about two days ago.
You can't make the argument that that is strictly an argument that's being crafted for a Western audience when it was William Burns, CIA head, who was the ambassador to Russia, who said in yet memo that this was exactly the reddest of red lines and that this could not happen.
So this was, and that was said to Connollies Rice.
This was decades ago.
So this is this was well known.
It was well known.
Okay, but that's a ambassador to Russia's opinion.
Yes.
There's lots of ambassadors to Russia.
That doesn't make him king.
Oh, God.
Or Holy Mile.
He's telling you a man.
He's clearly telling you that the Congress is his opinion.
He's telling you his opinion.
And that doesn't mean that he's right.
He went on to be the head of the CIA.
So his opinion is at the highest level of U.S. intel.
So you can't just dismiss that.
So did Tom Payo.
Hold on.
No, Now I got a point.
Clint, you just went off on how the U.S. invaded Iraq and Afghanistan.
And now you want to claim that ahead of the country.
It doesn't mean that he's necessarily right.
But it means that the argument needs to be considered.
It means that the argument needs to be considered.
This is not purely Russian propaganda, is the point.
The point is that this is coming from American intel.
It's exactly.
Exactly.
Let me ask you this question.
Let me ask you this.
Okay.
Let me ask you this, Clint.
So you're saying William Burns is a propagandist for the Russians.
That's your argument.
Let me ask you a question directly to you, Clint.
Let me ask you directly this question.
Sure.
When have named me a time that every single NATO country, when did Ukraine officially ever apply to join Namber?
Number one, officially apply to join NATO, and two, that went through a vote to every single, because you know the process to join NATO.
A country requests to join.
They can't have border disputes.
There's a lot of criteria that they don't meet, so they haven't applied.
Ukraine, when did Russia seize Crimea in 2014?
2014.
Why did they seize Crimea?
It wasn't because Ukraine was about to join NATO.
No, it was not.
It was because their previous dictator got thrown out by the people that you guys like to call the bus.
And this is the point to Zelensky's saying.
In 2014, we didn't fight for Crimea and then they invaded the Donbass.
We launched their counteroffenses.
The Donbass region was almost completely seized by the Ukrainians until Russian regular military forces directly intervened to push the Ukrainians out.
Then we had years of years of Minsk 1.0, Minsk 2.0.
So now the Ukrainians are saying, why am I going to go to a 3.0?
Because the Russian demands in 2022 to end the war was that Ukrainian military had to be, what, 80,000 people?
After you're invaded, now you're going to have a demand to put down to 80,000 people?
It's like, I think this is the question that's infuriating to people who support Ukraine.
It's like, so Ukraine just doesn't have a right to defend it.
You know, for the MAGACAD that bought borders and sovereignty, all that is fine, but not for Ukraine.
Hold on, they have every right to defend themselves.
They don't have a right to defend themselves with my money, with my munitions that are bought by my country.
Zero Percent Chance00:16:00
That's what I'm saying.
If they want to defend themselves, and also if the rest of EU and NATO wants to step up because they're concerned about Russia rolling through Ukraine and then going through Poland and going through the rest of Europe, fine.
That's your fight.
It's not my fucking fight.
That's all I've been saying.
And to be called a Russian propagandist because I don't want to be involved in a proxy war with the largest nuclear power on earth is madness.
But what do you mean?
You're calling it a Russian propagandist because of the things you've been saying, not because of where your stance is at.
If you want to have a stance that you don't want U.S. troops on the ground or you don't want your money going over there, that's fine.
That's my stance.
It's a lazy argument to start calling people Russian propagandists because they're concerned about America being dragged into a deadly conflict.
I just stated, I'm not calling it a Russian propaganda because I'm calling it a Russian propagandist because he only likes the United States when it fits his narrative.
How do you see this?
You know what the breaking news is right now?
One more year.
One more breaking news.
Your president, the guy you voted for.
Lev, right?
What's the solution?
You guys keep wanting to prolong the war and you gotta decide trying to end it.
Listen, that doesn't make sense.
You gotta be quiet and listen.
The interesting part is the guy you think the voted for and your talk is the only one right now talking about putting American troops on the ground.
He's the one that just said that.
Oh, you know.
Oh, hi.
Oh, yeah, you know.
So he has so he has been.
Can I ask this question, guys?
We just said that.
Without everybody yelling, I would consider it.
I just, you know, I'm not promising to yell no matter what you ask me, Jason.
Thank you very much, Clint.
So I keep hearing about troops on the ground.
Shouldn't we concede throughout this entire conflict, although we haven't sent actual troop units and said commands, that there have been U.S. forces on the ground again since 2016?
Well, not well, we could talk about all that CIA and the special forces stuff.
Since the revolution that overthrew the Ukrainian government, I'm pretty sure this is not.
No, I know, but we were actually training up the Ukrainian military from 2016 through 22.
Again, that's probably Russian propaganda, even though you have to say that I just stated I was one of the ones that was there doing it first.
Oh, well, there you go.
So again, that's my point.
Hold on, that's my point.
We keep saying.
Well, hold on.
We keep saying that Putin isn't going to allow, or I don't keep saying it because I really don't know, but these security guarantees with U.S. troops.
U.S. troops are there in some capacity.
And if they're not, U.S. Merck troops are there and they're taking commands from the United States.
The United States is as involved in this as possible right now.
Okay.
So if this does mean the concession of land and actual peace, I don't see that as the big obstacle for Putin taking this deal.
Although apparently the people on the bottom disagree.
I mean, Lev, would you agree with me that in some capacity there are U.S. troops already there?
Because we keep talking about troops on the ground.
We're talking about different troops on the ground.
Matt could explain that to you better than I can.
There's troops on the ground that we're doing reconnaissance.
We have CIA, we have FBI, we have certain people training, maybe, but we're talking about troops fighting, troops, armed troops protecting certain parts, certain areas, certain buffer zone, certain zone where if there's something hits, that means that it's an attack on our troops.
Right now, if one of our troops dies or happens, we will probably even know about it.
We barely know about it because we're not supposed to be there.
Am I right, Matt?
Can I take this up to 30,000 feet real quick?
Guys.
Here's some music.
Let me just share some music.
Go ahead.
So, because the question is, what next?
So, New York Times is reporting that both Zelensky and European leaders are still at the White House and are expected to stay for dinner.
So, we're not done yet.
This isn't like, and this is the irony if you compare this to Friday.
And let me, Clint, I'm not accusing you of being a Russian propagandist.
It's my frustration is when people talk about it, nobody acknowledges like they want land because they don't believe Ukraine exists.
And they've said it.
But I'm not trying to say, and I understand your point, Clint, you and I have been in many, many debates.
But if I can kind of compare what happened on Friday to today, Friday was supposed to be six, seven hours.
There was going to be a lunch.
There was going to be sequent meetings.
Three hours stopped.
Everybody flew home.
And now today, what we're seeing is large base agreements.
The Europeans and Ukrainians are not like February.
They're staying.
They're going to have dinner.
I think this is probably why Zelensky canceled his bread bar interview because probably they have this dinner and they're still having conversations.
They're not apt and not appropriate.
Maybe it's for another time.
Because I agree with you.
I would love to hear Zelensky, Macron, Mares, Weimer, the French prime minister, et cetera, all have these conversations with American pressure or the international press, a good idea.
But it does look like this meeting is going exceptionally well, which is somewhat different than what happened.
No, just to say that.
Real quick, let me just hold it real quick because I haven't given a macro take on the talk today.
That's exactly what I want to do.
And I'll throw it over to you for that.
I just want to take it to 30,000 feet because we're getting into a lot of nuance and it's a very intellectual discussion.
A lot of smart people are saying a lot of smart things.
The thing is, for people that are just trying to learn, like, okay, what happens?
And Jason alluded to this earlier when he says, okay, so what, like, how long do they fight for?
Because in reality, here's where we're at, right?
And I don't disagree with anything anybody's saying.
I think everybody's making excellent points, and I'm not picking sides.
But here's the reality.
And I'm glad Stefano brought this up because Europe is meeting right now at the White House, essentially.
They're having dinner now.
It's like one of these things where, hey, why don't you stay for dinner?
Soon we'll have dessert.
And I'm sure they're having McDonald's.
But either way, they're sitting there having dinner.
And here's what the decision has to be coming out of this.
And you guys can, and I'll throw it back to you guys for the discussion.
Here's what the discussion becomes.
What position do we want to take based on who we're going to support?
Because at the end of the day, Russia and Ukraine can fight each other forever.
And I'm not saying Ukraine can or cannot be in this fight.
I'm not saying Russia can or cannot be in this fight.
But the end of the day, they can fight each other forever.
The question the United States has to ask, and the question that Europe has to ask, and you guys can tell me if I'm right or wrong, the question everybody has to ask is, where do we want to fight Russia?
Where does Europe want to fight Russia?
How do we want this to end for our own benefit?
Because at the end of the day, one thing you can probably agree on, that Trump is interested in putting American interests first, regardless.
So what we know is that we've been fighting Iran, Iran, essentially, we've been fighting Russia in Iran.
We've been fighting Russia in Afghanistan.
We've been fighting Russia in Venezuela.
We've been fighting Russia anywhere Russia wants to make our lives difficult.
If there can be an outcome to this that means the United States isn't fighting Russia through some other country, isn't that a good outcome for the United States?
And isn't that part of the consideration here with respect to what Ukraine is not, it's not really what Ukraine is willing to give up.
It's what the United States is willing to let Ukraine keep if they're what they're willing to support Russia on.
And I think that's really the calculation, right?
Hold on, hold on.
He was asking.
Wait, hold on.
Sorry.
Ludicrous.
David, you just said what America is going to allow Ukraine to keep.
Correct.
Who made America God of glory?
Where is the world coming?
Where is the world?
Let me answer your question, Lev.
Let me answer your question, Lev.
You asked me a question.
I'm going to answer it.
Lev, let me answer your question, Lev.
Where is the world meeting right now?
At the White House, that is the answer to your question.
The United States is boss.
Oh, no, no, no.
Standing in front of parade does not mean that.
You are pushing Russian propaganda because right now.
How is it Russian propaganda?
That's just an American mission.
I'll tell you, David, how?
Because you're trying to make believe you think they're all sitting there talking about because you have to be in some of the rooms to understand.
They're not even talking about there's nothing to talk about.
There's a hardcore stance.
Then why don't they solve this problem without the United States, Lev?
Why don't they just solve the problem on the right hand?
They can't.
They can't.
Exactly.
That's why Europe is there.
What are you talking about?
All right, David, let me answer the question because you said specifically to me.
Thank you.
Yes.
I mean, the answer, if Trump is sincere about the America First mantra, which he alleges to be, I voted for him for the first time ever because this was the biggest issue for me is that I wanted to end the proxy war against the two largest nuclear powers on earth.
And I knew that the Biden administration, who had totally frozen out the Russians, had no chance of peace happening over the next four years, especially under Harris, the next eight, God forbid, we probably would have ended up in a hot war.
So I'm hopeful, to put it mildly, that Donald Trump is sincere about America First.
And if he is sincere, if he wasn't sincere about that, I'll be the first to admit it.
I covered it extensively.
He's just as sincere about the Russian.
Okay, well, that's too late.
Lev, can I just ask you a question?
If you're right, I will be the first condemning the shit out of Donald Trump.
If he is lying about this, I will go after him every single day, the same way I have been about the Epstein file.
So let me just be very clear about that.
Let me add something for you so you can go there because I think this goes to your point.
And this is just some news.
So this is from the New York Times are saying during an interview, right?
I just pulled this up.
During an interview on Fox News, the NATO Secretary General Mark Rutt indicated that there was still a lack of clarity over the Trump administration's vague commitment to provide security guarantees for the Ukrainians.
Quote, what it will exactly mean, U.S. involvement, that will be discussed in the coming days, Root said.
He later added that it was a quote breakthrough that the U.S. will get involved in security guarantees, but the level of involvement had to be discussed.
Clint, continue.
Yeah, so that is my biggest concern right now is that Trump floated for the first time that I've heard today during the conversations with Zelensky in front of the media that American U.S. troops as peacekeepers could be on the table.
If that's the case, we are one false flag away from a real war between the two largest nuclear powers on the planet.
I have no interest in that.
As much as I want to see Ukrainians and Russians stop dying, I do not want to have any chance of American troops being killed by Russians directly.
That would be a catastrophe.
That's a catastrophe that we just can't possibly risk.
So if that's the threshold for peace negotiations, if that's the only thing that either Zelensky or the Ukrainians or the rest of the EU will accept, well, then I say no, walk away from the table.
I do not want U.S. troops on the ground there.
Anything other than that, if lifting all sanctions, doing whatever else you have to do to try and get Russia and Ukraine to accept this, I'm all for it.
I just don't want Ukraine added to NATO because I think that's a catalyst for world war.
And I don't want U.S. troops on the ground because I think that's a catalyst for world war.
Anything other than that that can end this war, fantastic.
Can I just ask level questions?
You said you voted for Trump.
So, so Trump ran on peace through strength.
What did you think Trump meant when he said strength?
Well, he also ran on peace on day one.
That didn't happen.
And we also, because let me finish.
I'll lay my airplane rather quick so you can answer it.
Not only did we bomb Iran, not only did we bomb Yemen, but just the other day, we sent two nuclear subs over near Russia.
Why do you think we did that?
Like, what did strength mean to you when you voted for Trump?
What did you think that meant?
Well, having a large defensive base in America would have been expected from Donald Trump.
Having aggressive actions like bombing Iranian nuclear facilities, that is not what he campaigned on.
I think we can both admit that.
So if you want to try and twist his words as peace through strength versus America first, strength, peace through strength.
And I'm not going to admit that.
Peace through strength.
Strength meaning do this or pay the price.
Because what we're doing is no, no, that's that's not just peace through strength.
That's that's peace through coercion.
No, it's not peace through coercion.
It's peace through strength.
Yes, it is.
You don't do this or else.
This is why I brought up somebody points a gun at your family's head.
You're not going to do anything until they pull the trigger and canoe their forehead.
That's not true.
That's an imminent threat.
That's different.
Okay, exactly.
So do you reference the CIA earlier, right?
Do you have access to all the intelligence agency does?
Do you have access to all the intelligence the DIA does?
No.
So when we send two nuclear subs over off the coast of Russia, especially with a man that you voted for, do you think there was a very good reason for that?
No, not necessarily.
What about?
Oh, oh, okay.
So now, again, so now we want to use the CIA when it fits our agenda, right?
Peace through strength has a meaning.
Well, there's a lot of people.
There's a difference.
There's a difference when the CIA, when there's a leaked cable from WikiLeaks that demonstrates that the former head of the CIA that was the ambassador of Russia is telling Connollyza Rice, the Secretary of State at the time, it's the reddest of red lines.
Have you ever worked in intelligence?
No.
Okay.
Do you know how intelligence works?
Do you know what it is?
That's a pretty broad question, Matt.
Do you know what a single cable is and what it means?
Pretty much nothing.
Most of the time, you end up sourcing multiple points of intelligence and it goes together.
And then you have inteling us to put these things.
Well, he got that so wrong, he got promoted to be the head of the CIA.
Single cable, bringing up a single cable that you discovered on WikiLinks means diddly shit, to be perfectly honest.
Matt, can I just say this about the claim?
Can I just address a couple things?
Let me address that.
Let me explain that.
Let me explain this to Matt's perspective.
Hold on, because I think this is kind of the important aspect.
When we're talking about intelligence, Matt is a true American military veteran.
He sniped me and he left.
So I won't do that to you when I'm a veteran.
But what I would say is I know he did say it to go.
What he's the argument is when we're talking, first of all, there's diplomatic cables.
In other words, those are snapshot shots and times and generally either with it defines different perspectives and how it's done.
And trust me, there's a lot.
There's a lot of diplomatic cables out there.
You could probably find diplomatic cables.
Look, I'm not.
Hold on, hold on.
Hold on.
Let me say real quick.
I am not saying that because this was William Burns' opinion, it means that it's written in stone.
I'm just saying that he was the ambassador to Russia and he went on to be the head of the CIA.
So this was the highest levels of American intel who believed that at the time.
And by the way, by the way, Russia then invaded.
So it looks as if he might have been right.
But what the problem was there was in 20, I think this is what Matt is getting to in 2022, in 2022, there was in no universe at all, at all, zero percent, there was a zero percent chance that Ukraine was going to join DATO.
A zero hold on, hold on.
That's not true, though, because you had Kamala Harris saying it.
You had Kamala Harris saying it one month before the invasion.
Kamala Harris said that Ukraine worked the president.
She was almost the president of the United States.
She was the sitting vice president, but still, could she get it done?
She's the sitting vice president.
How is that not totally irrelevant?
No, no.
This is what he does.
But this is what he does.
Can the sitting vice president get them into NATO, Clint?
No, not one person.
No, one person can't do it.
Of course not.
What are you talking?
It was her.
I'm talking about it's a provocation.
Kamala Harris didn't say that on her own volition.
You know, she was taking talking points from the Intel agencies.
She didn't just say that out of the blue.
Hold on.
Hold on.
Because during the negotiations in 2022, prior to the war, there was a lot of negotiations prior to the war.
We remember Macron having even immediately afterwards, the main sticking point that Russia was demanding of the United States, because everybody agreed, what the argument was, we're not going to allow Russia to have a veto on NATO decisions, even though it was de facto understood that Ukraine would never join NATO.
Lev's Mineral Deal Concern00:15:41
Germany never agreed to it with Anglo-Americol.
Macron was never going to agree to it.
That was a known fact.
The problems in the negotiations in 2022 was Vladimir Putin demanded in violation of the 19.
And by the way, let me remind people something.
In 19, the only established treaty that talks specifically about NATO expansions is the 1997 NATO and Russia Act.
I believe it's actually called the NATO and Russia Friendship Act.
And in there, that Russia signed to and agreed to specifically, and they laid it out there in an international treaty validated by both parliaments and court was that the decision to join any military alliance rests within the country and they cannot be imposed by one country or another.
1997, Russia signed that, basically, meaning if Ukraine wanted to join NATO in 1997, Russia agreed to it.
Now, they clearly didn't care just like the better person memorandum.
But in 2022, the problem wasn't Ukraine joining NATO.
No, what Russia demanded was that all military infrastructure installed eastwards from 1991 had to be removed.
In other words, you were going to have a two-tier NATO system, one for the Baltics, like the Baltic three countries and Poland, and another one for Germany.
And NATO said, absolutely not.
You will not dictate where our military force posture is.
That is internal to us.
Vladimir Putin said, you're going to pull out everywhere west from Poland westwards.
You're going to pull all military equipment out of there.
And NATO obviously absolutely not.
We're not going to agree with that.
It had nothing to do with Ukraine joining NATO and nothing.
Look at the negotiations in 2022 and 2021.
Lev, how do you see this war ending, Lev?
Because for the supporters of Ukraine, I keep hearing one more fight, just more money, just more weapons.
Yeah, they're going to keep fighting.
You don't have to give money.
Javon, Javon, let me say something interesting to you.
I'm going to tell you, just quietly.
As long as it takes to Russia to come.
Let me explain something to Javon.
The beauty of it.
That's insane.
That's insane.
No, no, let me finish.
One second.
Stop.
Stop.
Javon.
You asked a question.
Quiet.
You asked a question.
Let me answer it before you go on your tie raid.
You ask how long?
I'm going to explain something to you.
It's none of your business because you have nothing to do with it.
America's out of it.
He's being robbed of funding.
What do you mean?
What fun?
America's not giving Ukraine any funding.
They've stopped.
That's a lie.
What aid is America.
We've given them hundreds of billions of dollars.
No, wait, Lev, Lev, hold on, Lev, Lev, Lev.
Just at a baseline.
Hold on, Plev.
I'm not, I'm not trying to yell and talk over.
Wait, wait, wait, no, no.
But Lev, you just said, hold on, Lev.
Lev.
Wait, you spoke.
It's not a lie.
Is it a lie that we've sent them hundreds of billions of dollars?
You and I can hug and kiss about it if that happens.
All right.
There's no way that we're not going to get out of it because Donald Trump wants the minerals.
What happened to the minerals, boys?
What happened to that?
That's a bullshit, imperialist attitude, and Trump is absolutely wrong to have that position.
I remember how Javon was screaming and yelling, oh, nobody's going to attack America once they sign the mineral deal.
Well, they signed the mineral deal.
And what are they doing?
They're still attacking with the Americans' partners in the mineral deal.
Javon has no idea what he's talking about.
Most of the people are talking about.
You were talking about indefinitely.
And then they will fight it as long as it takes for their sovereignty.
That is insane.
That's what's in your opinion.
Nobody's asking you to fight.
Lev.
It's not your war to give your opinion on Lev.
Lev.
You continue on.
Lev.
What's the thing about it?
What's the complaint about it?
Why should they lay out?
Why should they lay out?
Why should they lay down?
Why should Ukraine tell them that they shouldn't lay down?
They should fight until their heart's content.
But I don't want to be involved in it.
That's all I've said from the beginning of the war.
Lev, I don't know how you can sit there and say we're not involved.
And you just said we had special forces and Mercs there.
Stop.
Stop with the propaganda.
What propaganda?
You just conceded that.
You said we're not involved, but we do have limited troops there, just not the types of units.
So then we are involved, bro.
If there's one military or intelligence guy from the United States on behalf of the United States, there, Lev, we're part of it, bro.
You're part of it.
The EU and all of NATO and the head of Ukraine.
Everybody just landed literally today.
And you're arguing that America is not relevant in this fight.
Well, then the rest of the world has a fucking really screwed up mentality about this because they're all wasting their time traveling here.
We're not involved.
What is America's deal?
Tell me, what is America's doing?
Give me a list.
Can one of you give me a list of how America is helping Ukraine?
Hundreds of billions of dollars over the past three years.
Hundreds of billions.
Now you're like Donald Trump.
That's the truth.
But they signed a mineral deal for that.
Didn't they sign a mineral deal?
They signed a mineral deal as a P. You want to talk about PR.
That's PR.
That mineral deal isn't going to be worth anything.
But whose PR is that?
Donald Trump?
That's Trump's.
Yeah.
You and I agree.
You're not going to corner me, dude.
I'm not some like sycophant for Trump.
I'm just going to be honest.
But I'm not.
Lev, I think the minerals deal is so that we get something out of this because at this point, we've got nothing but dead Ukrainians, dead Russians, and we're closer to World War III than we are.
Have you ever been to Ukraine, Javon?
No, you don't have to go to Ukraine.
Have you ever been?
Even though Ukraine is on the map, even though no one is in the middle.
Oh, I know where it's at.
You talk about Ukraine.
Do you even have an idea where it's on the map?
We have dead Ukrainians because you are supporting a dictator, Javon.
Javon, until you have been to Ukraine, you are not allowed to talk about this.
Lev, can I ask you a question without being talked over?
Lev, Lev, may I ask a sentence question?
If you guys don't stop, we're going to end this.
Yes.
Can I just ask a question to him?
So, Lev.
No, Jason, wait.
If not, we're ending this.
Enough.
Jesus.
Right.
All right.
So I understand the passions.
I understand it.
I agree with Lev.
Hey, it's Ukrainians fight.
If they want to fight, they want to fight.
I also, look, I was trained, Clint, to your point, like I'm going to be honest with you, in 2013, when I was, we were smack dab in the global war on terrorism, smack dab in the global war on terrorism.
And then 2014 happened in Crimea.
I can tell you right now, everyone in the U.S. military looked at Russia saying, holy shit, Mitt Romney was right.
Russia's our main geopolitical threat.
That's a problem.
We are, you could shake your head.
I am telling you right now that in 2014 and now, it's, you know, it's China.
There's a huge push for China.
I'm telling you right now, the U.S. military, you got, hold on.
The U.S. government.
And if you read the Office of Directors, National Intelligence for 2025, the threat assessment, Russia is listed as a threat.
That was published by Tulsi Gabbard.
The U.S. government, in this current aspect, acknowledges the geopolitical threat to Russia.
The whole Greenland seizing Greenland was for two countries, Russia and China.
Hold on, hold on.
You always ask me questions.
Let me ask you one because I think this is a really important question.
You're saying that, holy shit, Russia's the number one geopolitical threat because they took.
They're number one, but they are.
Okay, okay, but regardless, top three, whatever.
Because they took back a tiny land mass, a peninsula, essentially, that was, they had a lease on prior, I might add.
But when you consider the fact that adding into NATO, after that friendship treaty or whatever you called it with NATO in 1997, they then went on to add the Czech Republic, Hungary, Poland, Bulgaria, Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania, Romania, Slovakia, Slovenia, Albania, Croatia, Montenegro, North Macedonia, Finland, and Sweden.
And yet you don't think that Russia has a reason to go, wait, maybe America is the number one threat to us.
Maybe we shouldn't be so friendly with them.
Let me counter with that.
Guess which countries haven't been invaded?
Yeah, because it's mutually assured destruction.
But that doesn't mean that you can just abuse the largest nuclear power on earth and get right up to their doorstep on every single front and circle them entirely, take away their warm water port, and expect them to never attack.
So again, it goes back to this idea of right there.
That's Russia's propaganda.
I'm sorry.
Hold on, let me answer that.
Let me answer that.
Let me answer that.
Let me be absolutely.
I don't give a fucking rat's ass what Russia thinks.
Like, I'm just going to make that abundantly clear.
Like, you should.
You should care.
We bombed Iran.
Nothing happened with Russia.
But Shar al-Assad was overthrown in 2024.
And 2024, Russia didn't come in saving the day, even though they had a port there.
I was surprised by that one.
And so what I would say is what Russian, if you look at the post-1991 Soviet collapse, it wasn't like Russia was this innocent player that comes to ask the Georgians how they felt after the fall of the Soviet Union.
I'm not defending the USSR.
Come on.
No, no, no.
I'm not saying you are, but hear me out.
What I look at is the Baltic countries, who are very small, are looking at Article 5 saying, we made the right decision.
The argument I'm making, this isn't about necessarily NATO per se, because Putin is not Ukraine, but he wants to pull way more military out of the European continent under the NATO umbrella.
But if they had tried to throw Mexico and Canada in the Warsaw Pact, we would have been in the hot world war back then.
So it's like, this is just, it's just, you aren't, when you say, like, it's, it's very, it's like, it's bravado to say, I don't give a shit what the Russians think about anything.
Look, I don't really give a shit what anybody on the rest of the planet thinks about anything.
But that's not the point.
I care about myself and my family, and I don't want to have a fucking war between the largest nuclear powers.
So I care what they think as a consequence of that.
And then so this is my counter is I'm all about diplomacy.
I'm all about negotiations.
I'm all about trying to figure things out.
I'm all for it.
I'm not against it in any way, shape, or form.
But what I will acknowledge square in the face and look at it and not be in dispute.
And for some reason, I think this has to do with Russia game that has completely transformed how we view.
You can be an isolationist.
That's completely fine.
I'm all okay.
That's where you and I have a fundamental disagreement in foreign policy.
This acts in isolationism.
I am not an isolationist.
That is the fundamental aspect of the disagreement and foreign policy.
Well, an isolationist includes not trading with the rest of the world.
I mean, non-interventionists.
I just want to say, you're right.
Non-interventionist.
Correct.
Sorry.
Thank you for that correction.
I understand.
That's fine.
You can have it.
I don't agree with that.
I think as European Union, we have a very long historical relationship and alliance with Europe as needed for after post-World War II.
My argument is: I view it in Russia.
I've seen no reasons why to trust the Russians.
We should not trust the Russians.
And the Russians are a geopolitical threat.
And we should do everything in our power to not only strengthen American national security, but our security around the world.
And that is especially, especially because of Europe.
It's just like saying the Chinese come to us to say, you need to pull out of South Korea.
You can't deploy fad missiles to South Korea.
Nobody throws.
We tell the Chinese, go fuck yourself.
We're going to deploy whatever the fuck we want in South Korea because that's our relationship with the South Koreans.
Since when does China get to dictate to us our bilateral relationships with other countries?
Just like Cuba, we don't have to trade with Cuba.
We can put an embargo in Cuba.
But if Cuba wants to install Chinese spy satellites and all that antennas and have a spy station there, and the Russians want to dock Russian naval vessels in Venezuela and Cuba, and Wagner is in Venezuela, we're not, that doesn't mean we're going to bomb them.
We almost did.
Well, we didn't, but we didn't.
And just showing the Cuban missile crisis.
Come on.
That was like as close as 1960, all that.
I'm telling you nowadays, U.S. national security is, I look at it from a perspective of outside of our shores.
And Europe is there, our largest trading partners, if you like it or not, they're our largest trading partners in the European Union.
And our relationship with Europe has always been paramount to the United States and the Pacific.
Just like I'm not going to allow the Chinese to tell us to Japan, I'm not going to allow Russia to say you need to pull out of the Baltics.
Sorry.
Okay, that's fine.
It's fine to feel that way, but you have to realize that you're now dealing with serious economies with serious military might.
And if you want to just continue to dominate the rest of the world and trample them and their interests in their backyard, I'm not talking about like what China thinks about how we're treating the Hawaiians or something.
I'm talking about in their adjacent landmasses to their nation.
If you think that they can't have any say, well, then why do we have any right to have any say over Mexico or Canada or our entire region with the Monroe Doctrine?
Nobody's talking to them.
International order, right?
Because you're literally saying, like, land masses and all that.
As somebody in free trade is trade as you wish, have a relationship as you wish.
There's a reason why the U.S. Navy is the largest Navy in the world to ensure you don't control the international waters.
Nobody controls it.
If the Russians want to go.
The U.S. Navy comes pretty close to controlling it.
Right.
But we don't tell the Russian submarines that are off the Atlantic coast, you can't be here.
As long as you don't have to do that.
That's not true.
We absolutely do.
There's Russian submarines all the time, everywhere around us.
That's how they operate.
And we oftentimes get new and Chinese balloons.
Yeah, like, so my argument is, I don't believe Chinese balloons.
Come on, Lev.
Jesus Christ.
John McCain, John McCain was right.
Oh, don't you dare.
Hold on.
All Russia is, all Russia is, is a gas station with nukes because they're military.
Anybody who's been in any position in the military, especially myself, that I was one of the first commissioned officers post-Coin, trained back into large-scale combat operations.
We trained Russian doctrine.
What has shocked me is the Russians don't even find out the Russians are.
And the U.S. military has been absolutely dumbfounded with how poorly the Russians are fighting as a military.
This is also Russia's fighting style, is to basically fight not very effectively, but just churn bodies.
That's what they did during World War II.
That's not how their post-Soviet, that's not their post-World War II doctrine.
That's not how they do it.
It may not be their doctrine, but they are still fighting and they seem to have the will to continue to fight in a way that the Ukrainians don't, which by the way, nobody acknowledged that poll and the dramatic flip.
They all just said, well, you could ask it this way, and maybe it's that.
This went from 75 to 25.
That's about as dramatic a shift as you could possibly find.
Can I ask you a quick question, Steph?
How would you ask a question matters?
Hang on.
Of course, but it's the same question.
They asked the same question three years apart.
It went from 75 to 25.
You can't just write that off as a nothing burger.
That's something.
Real quick.
To be honest, hold on, guys.
Give me one second.
Give me one second.
I'll throw right to you.
I promise.
I just want to ask Steph a question, and I promise you, Javon, I'll throw it to you.
Why Communications Matter00:16:03
You said Russia is our geopolitical threat.
And I've said this, I've been saying this for weeks.
My entire life, Russia has been painted as our geopolitical threat.
And, you know, Top Gun, Rocky.
Russians are always the bad guys.
They're our enemy.
We share rockets.
We share a space station.
At what point, what will it take to not have Russia be our largest geopolitical threat?
I mean, that's my question because it seems like everybody has an interest in keeping Russia as the villain.
But at what, what is it going to take to get along with you?
Let me ask you this two ways.
Let me ask you this question.
Ask, who do the Russians view as their number one threat?
Probably who he was right now.
That is a very long story as geopolitical.
It's always been the Americans, has always been the United States number one, and they act accordingly to that.
But number two, David, it's not, oh, every, let me put it this way: since Ronald Reagan, there has been every single American administration but one, but one, has had the stated purpose of improving relations with the Russians.
The only administration that did not have that as a stated goal was Joe Biden.
He was the only one who did not ever run on that, and he viewed Russia as a threat.
They are Bill Clinton, George H.W. Bush, again, goes back to the Soviet Union.
George H.W. Bush didn't even want the Soviet Union to collapse when he was president.
He didn't want the Soviet Union to collapse.
Bill Clinton, because that was the biggest driving for funding for the CIA.
George W. Bush, I looked into his soul.
Barack Obama with the reset button that was misfound.
Donald Trump in 2016.
The only administration that has not had that stated purpose specifically has been Joe Biden.
And every single time an administration has tried to have better relations with Russia, Russia acts in something that is against our natural interest.
And that's why something happens.
There is in no universe.
If Donald Trump's right now, Donald Trump can get peace right now if he wanted to.
As you said, not only pull out of all the forces in Ukraine, but he can pull out substantially the NATO military infrastructure in Europe.
That would be nothing short of a surrender to Russian demands and not serve our national interests.
But you're going after campaign slogans from presidents who simultaneously were doing things like Operation Timber Sycamore, where they're arming basically the terrorist rebels inside of Syria, which was one of Russia's top allies.
Supported the Taliban.
Okay.
And so do we.
And so do we.
So do we.
And so do we.
And so do we.
What it has to do with is that you're basically saying, well, we wanted to be friends with them, but we weren't trying to be friends with them.
That's what the actual military industrial complex was doing the entire time, was trying to provoke.
I'm sorry.
Can I ask a question?
I'm just trying to say what side.
Promised Javon he could go there.
I I promise you just quickly, is he the aggressor or Russia's the aggressor?
You make a really good point for Russia sorry, just just real quick.
Who's the aggressor listen?
I promised Javon, I promise okay, i'll shut, i'll shut up, go ahead.
Promised him.
So lev, and I guess sit right at this point, wouldn't you guys believe?
Don't you believe that the biggest deterrent to Russia would be if the Germans armed, perhaps if the French started arming?
I mean most.
These are the wealthiest countries in the nation, in the world, excuse me, in western Europe, and most of them spend pennies on the dollar when it comes to their own defense spending.
So don't you think that president Trump going to the hog and having these conversations, trying to get the Europeans and getting commitments from them, that cleans our hands of it, so we can focus on the greatest and, I would argue, the most existential threat to us, which is the People's Republic Of China?
Right, one thing I would agree with you and grinned, yes, and I also agree with that.
You're definitely right.
Yeah so, so that was the purpose of it.
But I also think we have to be clear about what happened at the beginning, after the fall of the Soviet Union.
That was a historic opportunity for the United States to bring Russia into the fold, and during that time there were actually disagreements as towards the expansion of NATO.
We talk about it now as if it was inevitable.
It was not.
George Keenan himself said, this is a mistake.
There's no purpose.
The Soviet Union no longer exists.
Why do we have NATO?
And i'm not saying that today, NATO is wrong.
I'm not saying it's bad.
It is, it is wrong and it is bad.
It's our fault, it's America's fault.
Yes, it's going to exist.
We need, there needs to be a justification by our, by our government, to to tell us why it ought to exist.
And right now it exists for no other reason other than to stop, stop Putin and stop Russia.
Russia, bad.
NATO must expand.
NATO must keep expanding.
And, by the way, by the way, the the number one thing you ought to be doing, especially for the panelists here that that think that China is the actual number one threat that we face is, you ought to be peeling this.
By the way, this was Brzezinski and other other uh, you know heads of geopolitical thought for 50 years.
This was all they ever talked about.
We need to break up Russia from Germany so that they don't have the industrial capacity tied with the natural resources, and we also have to keep China and Russia separated.
Well, you have an opportunity to do that, because you already blew up the pipeline to Germany, but you could actually, you could actually, you could actually peel away Russia from China.
Instead, what they're doing and this has been said by Jeffrey Sacks and others for the past three years, and he's absolutely right is that you're driving Russia.
Who explicitly, you want to always talk about Putin in his own words.
Putin has said explicitly, repeatedly, he does not.
He wants to be viewed.
He's like, we are European.
We don't want to be in bed with these, these stupid Chinese people.
We don't like them.
We want to be with the Euros without and, and no one, no one will ever accept them, no one will ever let them actually trade.
Any person that believes what Putin says, I can't believe, just because, just like you do, you believe what Putin said when he was in Alaska yesterday, when he turned around and said that he would have never invaded Ukraine, if Trump was president.
Actually, I want to talk about that.
Can I talk to that point?
Can I talk to that point, please?
Can I please talk to that point?
Because obviously, Trump has been running his mouth about that prior to the election, stating that there would have been no Ukraine-Russian war.
This is the first time.
Hold on.
It's the first time that Putin came out and reiterated that.
Now, Lev, we've been pretty friendly with one another.
I do think a lot of this has to do with theatrics.
I'm not banking if you listen to me in the very beginning that this is going to lead to essentially anything.
I think there are huge roadblocks here.
But to Stefano's point, and really yours, and you're the one I want to ask this question to, Stefano came out and said something that I think is absolutely real, that the Biden administration did not try to normalize relationships with Russia, while at least the outward appearance of all those other administrations, we did see that.
And Stefano, just to kind of talk about that whole Russia being the enemy, you know, David was talking about Rocky.
There was that time period in the mid-90s through like 2009, 10, where a lot of that was by the wayside and the new thing was terrorism.
You go to True Lies with Arnold Schwarzenegger and it was the Libyans and all these other things.
And while, you know, we were trying to promote democracy in Russia and rock the vote with Boris Yelson, that subsided a lot.
Okay.
My question to you, Lev, is even if you are right about all of this, everything that you've said, and that this is theatrics, isn't it better that we are having some communications with our leadership, with our executive and Russia, whereas the last administration was literally an installed dementia patient?
I don't think he could have had a real opinion on it because he wasn't mentally capable even before they put him in here.
And you had Isley Blinken, the Secretary of State, over there holding concerts in Ukraine.
Well, he bragged about not picking up the press.
And let me say this about Blinken.
Just because Clint brought up Blinken a lot.
You started with a good question and let's have a good conversation, but then you guys are now going into insulting Biden, which I don't care.
I'm not here to defend Biden, but I just want to get a dementia patient.
But that's not the question, Clint.
See, that's why you wanted to disrupt.
All right, please.
Let's go back to what the question was.
And what was your question?
So without disrupting.
So again, isn't it better that we are having communications with this executive?
Okay, so let me rather than the last administration that there were none.
Very, very good question.
And my answer to this, in the real world, yes, it would be good to have communication, I agree, is better than having non-communication.
But if you're having real communication, what we're having right now is theatrics.
Theatrics that are being played for two people and for the purposes of their benefit, not for the benefit of peace.
Because what you saw happen yesterday in Alaska, there was not a real peace summit where you had all these people fly for all these hours to sit there for an hour and a half to come out and with the same resolution.
The only thing you got out of yesterday that was really valuable for Donald Trump was that statement that Putin said that I would have never invaded Ukraine if you were still president.
There was no conversation, real actual conversation about a peace plan.
That's why there was no question and answers afterwards.
According to Trump and Putin, there was in fact a conversation.
I need to jump in with some breaking news, not related to this.
If people check on Twitter or Axe, there does appear to be a cargo ship that has exploded in Chesapeake Bay, Maryland.
For those who remember that area, that was where the, I think that was where the bridge collected in Baltimore, but there was a cargo.
You got to stop women from being ship captains.
Go ahead.
Be nice.
Be nice.
Seriously.
Okay.
Jesus Christ.
But Lev, after you finish, I really need to go to post.
So make your point quick.
I mean, I'll make it quick.
Sincere conversations are always good.
And absolutely, if they were having conversations about how to be able to get peace, Trump would be talking about right away saying ceasefire, stop the bloodshed.
The point that Trump came in there and changed from a ceasefire, which he said, and if you listen, even on his plane right there, while he was talking to the press, he was saying that there was going to be severe consequences if there's no peace deal ceasefire put together.
And the fact that he turned around in an hour and a half and said, you know what, for the next two weeks, three, whatever we're going through right now, there is nothing to do.
There's no sanctions.
There's no peace deal.
There's conversation now.
What we're waiting for is to set up a trilateral meeting between Putin, Trump, and Zelensky.
And the next thing, and that's what I'm saying to you, that's not sincere, Jason, because we will be back here in two weeks.
And I promise you, just like we've been doing this for over a year.
And if you could go, you could, everything is recorded, everything I've said when we have these debates.
And I haven't been wrong yet when it comes to these things.
Let me just say this.
No, no.
Listen, I think we're in a lot of agreement.
I want transparency.
Jump in.
Go ahead.
Post, jump in.
I'll go to up.
And of course, let me just say this quick as he jumps back in.
I want listen, Lev.
You can talk even without.
Can you?
There you are.
No, you're muted.
You're still muted, brother.
You're still muted.
Oh, man, you just crashed.
Oh, man, come on.
All right.
So, listen, let me answer this for Lev really quick.
I would love it if all of this was transparent for the world to see.
We're in agreement there.
If what had happened earlier today, when Trump sat all the European leaders and Zelensky down and the press was there and they were actually having negotiations for these five to ten hours, I want to see that.
I wish that's the way the world worked.
It should be how the way the world works.
But you can go back as far, I mean, beyond Brzezinski, but Brzezinski, you know, when kind of cornered about these type of groups, and he'll tell you in any geopolitical system, there are always over-the-table and under-the-table negotiations.
And with as complex as this is, and this is an excuse because I hate it.
You and I both know there are going to be, if there are any deals, and you are of the belief there will be no deals, but if there are, there will be under-the-table deals they do not discuss in the press as well.
No, no, the opposite.
And I agree with you.
And I'll say to you, when you talk about you keep mentioning Brzezinski, I was like a Brzezinski because I don't know if you know, but I was in these paper.
You're laughing, but I'm the one that Donald Donald Trump sent.
I'm the first person that spoke to Zelensky when he became the one that said the first quid pro quo to him.
I'm the one that put pressure on him to announce an investigation.
I'm the one that dealt with your mock in Spain when they had the perfect phone call.
I'm the one that put together that perfect phone call.
So, what I'm saying to you is, I have been in these meetings and I know exactly how they work.
And that is why you have a Stephen Witkoff there.
Because, Jason, prior to in the first administration, I was that Steve Witkoff.
So, I could tell you exactly how the shadow that's why I wrote the book called Shadow Diplomacy, because Trump does believe in the deep state.
He, even till this day, the fact that even though he controls all the aspects of the government, he still doesn't trust everybody in there, thinks that the deep state is.
And that's why he has people like Steven Witch.
Do you trust everybody in there, Lev?
Did you trust everybody in there?
I don't trust anybody.
There you go.
After what I've seen, put it to you this way.
I don't trust any of them.
And I agree with you on that, Lev.
But let me just say, to back up Jason's point, I think that this was a PR move.
And the reason I know that is because it was Ruta and some other head of NATO, I forget what their name was, but they were parroting exactly campaign promises that Trump had said.
And then they were just firing it back at him to basically blow him, you know, give him a PR boost.
So that's, that's, I have no doubt, there's no doubt in my mind that during the conversation with Putin, he said to him, hey, it'd be really nice if you told the media that this war would have never happened if I had been the president, because that's the type of guy that Trump is.
But that doesn't change the fact that it's better to be having these meetings.
It's better to be picking up the phone to give us a chance at peace, to give us a chance to see the dying stop.
And yes, there's going to be corruption.
And yes, there's going to be mineral trading and all sorts of bullshit that happens underneath.
But right now, all of that's happening along with hundreds of thousands of people dying that don't need to.
So I'm just hoping that we can see it.
That is pretty much exactly the point that I was trying to make.
Sorry, I don't know what happened to my system.
I unmuted and it changed every setting I had.
But Clint, you're hitting the nail on the head.
And that's that even insincere conversation and dialogue, even so-called theatrics, is a positive step forward to peace and towards stopping the killing, right?
I don't know that Donald Trump's going to be able to broker anything of the sort, but if you don't try, then you're never going to succeed on it.
And something that I think this conversation highlighted is we've been at it for an hour, 57 minutes, essentially two hours.
And as was noted, they had a three-hour conversation this weekend, Trump and Putin's delegations.
And although we didn't see many hard tangibles, it's hard to imagine that those three hours of talks weren't incredibly productive, even if the productive part of it was understanding exactly how far apart you are and how much room you have to come together on any sort of deal.
Same with these conversations here today.
The fact that much of this conversation today was a lot of yelling and talking over each other and hitting on talking points and not getting at the core of the issue is what I'm glad didn't happen in these conversations this weekend and today, right?
Ukraine's Nuclear Option00:09:29
The politicians involved are taking it seriously, which is something that we haven't seen in previous years.
There has been a total diplomatic vibe shift here on actually trying to resolve this conflict instead of perpetuating it through the same old ways, right?
So even if it's theatrics, the beautiful thing about political theater that's both positive and dangerous is that politicians tend to forget when they're being actors on a stage and theatrics blends very well into real life.
The line is not black and white.
It's very gray.
And so once again, I would just have to reiterate to all the people who are skeptical and pessimistic, they have every right to be.
And Ukraine has every right to keep fighting, but America has every right to try and broker peace.
It's what any American president, Republican or Democrat, should do is try and be the peacemaker and not the warmonger.
And so that's where I loved watching, even though I disagree with Trent on a lot of things.
I love that he was being analytical and honest and precise in the chat.
And I can only hope that the leaders who were involved in the Trump-Putin talks and the talks between Trump and the European leaders were equally frank.
I want to end the drive this home by saying that Zelensky agrees with me.
In his statement today, he thanked Trump and the European leaders for talking about, quote, sensitive issues.
We need leaders to talk face-to-face, man-to-man, about the things that get people like us yelling at each other in a space like this.
But instead of yelling at each other in a space, they're actually in offices of power trying to broker something real.
And I can only be appreciative of that, regardless of how genuine it may or may not be.
So let me push this to Trent, though, because I think what I think the, because I agree with everything you're saying, I'm not, you know, and I think that's fine.
But I think, Trent, let me go to you.
I think what I think is being missed here is that this has been an ongoing issue since 2014.
In the sense that it's almost as if every time it's like that we, and that's where this kind of Ukrainian counterpoint, one of the key positions, no, now we need significant security guarantees.
And the term floating around there is like this Article 5-like commitment, because from the Ukrainian perspective, it's, oh, so now we have to give, we gave up Crimea.
They invaded us again.
We have to give up the Donetsk and Lukanskoblas.
They invaded us again.
So now we have to give up Zaporizhia and Kherson, even though we've been fighting.
And so now I think the counterpoint is: at what point do you actually put teeth, like severe sanctions, military support, even guarantees, to ensure that next year, two years, five years from now, the Russians don't go to Kyiv again like they did in 2022?
The bottom line is either we have Ukraine inside NATO or a nuclear-armed Ukraine outside of it, because that is the ultimate sanction against further attacks by Russia.
Ukraine has a large nuclear power system.
It's based on Soviet technology, which can make plutonium for weapons.
And frankly, Ukraine can sell enough drones to places like Pakistan to get a nuke.
The idea that we can freeze this in place and not see at some time a nuclear-armed Ukraine outside of NATO is completely delusional.
We either end this war with a security guarantee that Ukraine can trust, that everyone agrees with, or Ukraine at some point in the future, is going to have to be nuclear arm itself.
Now, I don't like that thought, but that's where the logic of this goes.
And frankly, nuclear technology is getting increasingly easier to obtain.
And there are lots of technical things going on in the background that I won't go into now.
But the idea of fourth-generation nuclear weapons that do not use uranium or plutonium fissionables is roughly 1940-ish in terms of the science.
And I really, really don't want us to go there.
But it's in the background for all of this.
So I'm going to keep coming back to you either have a conventionally armed Ukraine inside NATO or with a guarantee that amounts to an Article 5, or it will arm itself with nuclear weapons.
Because frankly, there's no choice for it in the future, otherwise.
Can I be hurt?
One second, one second, because sorry, I didn't know I was on.
Sorry, but that's cool, just for time.
So I think Trent brings something very interesting, though.
So let me just, before I go to you, Pioder, let me just follow up with this with you, with your point, Trent.
The argument you are making is that if there is a situation where it's basically Ukraine feels that they're alone and they don't have the security guarantees, they're going to have to take, I guess, the closest example, if I may, is like this North Korea route, right?
This very drastic route to get the security guarantees that they're not getting from the West.
Is that kind of the argument you're making?
That is absolutely the case.
Ukraine has an extremely well-trained population.
When you look at its layout of how the money is in its society, it's very, very equally laid out.
This is why when the Russians came in, they stole computers and washing machines from Ukrainian farms because they didn't have them.
Their money was all concentrated in Moscow like a colony, and everyone else had outdoor toilets, more than half.
That meant Ukraine has a really well-educated population that can support, you know, the whole drone thing is primarily because they've got a very middle class economy in terms of its people that have computers, that have drones, that have all the things necessary to make a drone industry large.
And that same level of education in that population and the nuclear infrastructure that it had left over from being part of the Soviet Union means they have the skills to make a nuclear armed state with nuclear delivery systems, for which I'm going to point you to the flamingo drone that has a 1100 kilogram warhead.
All right, that is.
You know, that's something that South Africa made in the late 90s, or no, the late 80s, for 300 million, with 300 people in complete secrecy that could be carried on a buccaneer jet fighter.
Ukraine has enough people to completely match what South Africa did in the late 80s and with the flamingo and various other weapons it's making, it has delivery systems.
For them to think that they can't go there is to be utterly delusional.
That is where this is going.
I, I i'm not, I would never argue that they can't go there.
I would just argue that maybe they shouldn't give me.
Give me 10 seconds, because I gotta, I gotta head up because i'm it's 3 a.m here.
I'm not waiting.
Okay, good to know, Clint.
Um, hello everybody.
Um, goodness me wow okay, Ukraine's never going to go nuclear for one simple reason, which is the Europeans will never allow that.
Um, the Ukrainians had nuclear weapons, but the misnomer is that they had the capacity to launch them in the 1990s.
They never did.
The Russians always held the launch codes for that.
The Ukrainians have the ability to maybe develop such information, but they will never be supported.
The Europeans would never, the EU would never support the Ukrainians developing nuclear weapons.
There's massive debate over whether or not the Germans could potentially share the uh, what's the word?
Umbrella of capabilities of the British and French.
Such disproportionate power in terms of nuclear capabilities is being debated upon amongst West Hall or sorry Whitehall, and Paris over Germany.
Do you really think they're going to give it to the Ukrainians?
No, they're not.
How can they, as much as they support the Ukrainians in terms of their self-defense nuclear capability, if you give that power to the Ukrainians, that changes the entire dynamics.
That's why we're seeing such debate in South Korea Japan, even the Australians.
Right there is the Orcas deal, which has always been touted as a huge progression in terms of nuclear proliferation across the southeast Asian Pacific.
But the Americans have only shared that with the Australians.
Because the British and the Australians have that inherent relationship.
They're never going to give that information to others that they just don't know about.
And the Ukrainians are too cognitively culturally different to give that information.
So to claim that either the option is that the Ukrainians do x or the option being nuclear development is absolutely farcical.
They are way, way behind any form of development.
How long has it taken the Iranians to develop that information?
That's just one thing I wanted to say.
The second thing I wanted to say is simply that this in this deal today, all this, this Like, sort of, uh, theatrics is but that.
Piotr's Insight: Loggerheads Ahead00:07:37
Let's keep in mind that this is Trump.
If you watch what happened around the table, each individual leader goes and says, Thank you very much, Trump.
We're very happy that you've done this.
It was almost as uncomfortable as it was funny, in that each leader who has many years of life experience has had to literally appease his ego to ensure that he doesn't get pissed off and then he goes to Putin to sort of try and get a quicker deal, right?
This is what we're dealing with here, and so we're at this point where anything that comes out of Washington is considered a bonus, but it's not that simple because any genuine diplomatic procedure does not pay any attention to the theatrics or drama of media, let alone social media.
It's very boring, it's very dull, and that's why I'm probably not as big as some of the other people on this stage.
But that's how it actually works because Trump can say all he wants, Zelensky can make all the jokes he wants in the office in the Oval Office.
But actually, when you get down to BrosTacks, that's not how it works.
If anything, from tonight, I've taken away two things, and then I'll allow you others to respond, which is one that we could potentially have a deal of some form, which would be amazing, but I wouldn't expect it to be that much.
It's probably a trilateral slash, as Macron pushed a quadrilaterally meeting.
Second, though, all this reaffirms to me as a person who cares about Europe is that Europe still needs to make sure that we go off on our own because we cannot guarantee the dependability of the United States under Donald Trump, right?
Whether you're a globalist or you're a nationalist or you're make it upist, right?
The point I'm making is that Europe has to be plan for the best, expect the worst kind of thing, right?
So that's sort of where we are.
I'm not expecting this meeting to give too much, maybe a meeting between the three of them, but who's to say that any of that gives anything at all?
The problem with society is that we start off with the expectation that peace talks begin.
That's great, but that doesn't yield anything.
Just because you start talks doesn't mean that you've got a product, it's just a good sort of talking point.
Talks have begun.
Great.
Fuck all has begun.
The relationship between Ukraine and Russia is so intrinsically linked that most people who don't come for that part of the world will never understand that these two will never be fully solved just because Trump has called a deal.
That's not how it works.
It's a misnomer based on short-termism and economic interests, not based on ideological overlap and similarities.
Let me do this.
Let me do this because we've been going at this two hours and 10 minutes.
Phenomenal conversation.
I know a lot of our speakers have left.
So let me do this.
Trent, let me go to you.
We know that in two weeks we have the summit, at least the Putin-Zelensky summit somewhere later on, maybe Trump.
So just I asked on Friday, as a final question, I want to ask all the panelists here: what do you suspect we are going to be, let's say, a month from now?
Do you think we're going to actually have serious peace negotiations going on, or do you think we'll revert back to nothing or something in between?
And I'll ask the same to everybody.
So, Trent, I'll go to you.
If Trump has anything to say about they're going to be continuing talks, you're as to their seriousness, who the hell knows?
I mean, what I look back to is what happened between Gorbachev and Reagan at Reykjavik.
I mean, absolutely.
They went there, there was all this big foo-far-rah, and nothing came of it.
But there were more talks later.
I expect we're going to see the same script here.
You know, talking isn't a bad thing, but don't expect it to lead anywhere when you've got people who are such loggerheads as to what's going on.
Essentially, Putin has got to get his Novorossia maximalist objectives in order to declare a victory in this war, or peace is a threat to his continued power.
And Ukraine is in a fight for its existence.
So, given those loggerheads, I don't expect anything to come of it other than headlines and lots of reporters talking to each other.
Over to y'all.
Let me go.
Let me go to Jason and Pyotr.
I'll give you the last word.
So, Jason, I'll go to you, and then Pyotr, I'll give you the last word.
Yeah, I would hope that something could come out of this, but I think that even with the fact that they're still meeting, they're having dinner and they're probably going to meet after this, that it's going pretty much the way I thought.
I don't think that Putin is going to give up anything that he didn't discuss with Trump yesterday.
I think that, yes, Crimea is his if this ends, and I think that the type of quote-unquote security guarantees are kind of up in the air, but they would be a military relationship largely discussed between Putin and Trump.
I don't know that that's going to happen.
I think at best, what we are going to get with this, like Piotr said, is the chance of a three-way meeting between them.
But I would imagine, unless fairy tales, unicorns, and leprechauns go over the rainbow into a gold pot, that out of that three-way meeting, all three are going to come out of there, take questions from the press, and say they've come to an agreement.
I wish that I was more optimistic, but as you know, Stefano, I'm kind of a realist, and I really feel unfortunately.
You know, you're asking a month from now where we're going to be.
I think that that also largely depends on the military actions that take place, not only between Ukraine and Russia, but possibly something happening in a westernized nation in Europe.
I talk about false flags a lot, but any type of small false flag could derail all of this.
And, you know, the original talking points of he's a dictator, et cetera, et cetera, could get us back to square one, unfortunately.
Pyotr.
Hi, thanks.
It's it's it's currently, let me see, it's 3:20 here.
I've been out, I'm in Greece, I'm on holiday, it's August.
And I think that gives you a good representation of how a lot of Europeans feel about this, which is that life moves on and we and they somehow manage, right?
Um, but I would say, well, many things.
I've been monitoring the situation all night, obviously, as you probably know, Stefano.
Like, you know, I'm always aware of what's going on, even if I'm a little bit more flippant about it.
Um, what happened today is a big deal for a few reasons.
There are many people who have suddenly become aware that there is a part of the world that exists in Eastern Europe.
It happened in 2022.
Suddenly, Ukraine became the bedrock of democracy, something we all cared about this country.
And that's not necessarily actually how it works in the sense of Ukraine has an intrinsically linked relationship to Russia.
And it's a very uncomfortable thing to admit.
I'm half-Russian, and that's problematic because a lot of people don't like the fact that I'm pro-Ukraine or pro-Ukrainian defense, but I come from the country that's doing the issues, right?
So it's a weird dichotomy that I have to personally deal with.
Performative Politics00:03:24
But in terms of what we've seen today in Washington, I can tell you very functionally from my experience of living in DC for five years that what we see in terms of the cameras is not what actually happens in reality for one simple reason, which is it's performative.
Trump will not be satisfied with what Zelensky or the European state unless it gives him some kind of deliverable.
At this point, Trump's reputational risk rests on some kind of something.
It's not even a ceasefire.
It's not a peace deal.
It's something, a deliverable is what we call it in international relations in the UN, a deliverable, a product of some degree that he can deliver to his domestic audience, right?
What does Trump value?
He values egotistical satisfaction.
He values domestic reputation.
He values strongman tendencies.
So why does he like Putin, Erdogan, Bolsonaro?
Because they have a centralization of power.
And what does he want to do in the United States?
Or what does he do?
He puts power in the Supreme Court.
He centralizes power in the civil service in Washington by undermining the differences of opinion in institutions like the Court of Justice, the Department of Justice, the different institutions in LDC.
So the point I'm making is that Trump has all these other aspirations in mind when it comes to foreign policy.
And ultimately, the Ukraine-Russia thing, which is probably what he mainly thinks about it, is a budding issue for him to deal with as soon as possible, because his biggest challenge is China.
So all of this comes back to what Beijing thinks.
It's all about what he can do to solidify his legacy.
And ultimately, I read a lot of US news, be it The Hill, be it New York Post, be it New York Times.
Everything comes back to whether or not he can get that third term, whether or not what JD Vance is experiencing in the UK, which is kind of embarrassing if you've read the domestic news in the UK, it's about that.
So the reason I'm mentioning all this is because what's happening in Washington right now about Ukraine is very, very important for the national security of the United States.
It's very important for the transatlantic relationship between the UK, between the EU and the US.
But it's also very important because of the macroeconomic picture that Trump's team is also considering.
And so everything he's doing here is very performative.
It's very symbolic.
But ultimately, does Trump's legacy stand on it?
Not necessarily.
So I expect there to be some kind of attempt.
The bottom line, I'll land with this, which is I expect there to be an attempt for a trilateral meeting between him, Zelensky, and Putin.
But I don't expect that to happen just because I think that the animosity between the Ukrainians and the Russians is so strong that even Trump, despite what he's attempted to do in the six months, will never actually materialize.
Why We Thank Our Guests00:01:44
So this will be a very good piece of performative theater, but ultimately, I don't think it will change anything.
Thank you very much for having me.
Good night, guys.
Well, I appreciate everybody joining.
And look, we've been going at this for two hours and 20 minutes almost.
We had a long range of guests.
And I want to thank David, my co-host who couldn't join us the whole time for participating in this.
But as I said on Friday, we had a live stream about this.
We had a live stream today.
We will definitely have a live stream once Putin, if Putin and Zelensky meet, and if there's a trilateral summit as well down the road.
Very passionate, very heated, very good.
And sometimes, you know, I understand what Co's saying, you want to get at the heart of the issue and sometimes we scream over each other, but the screaming shows the passion and we're not just robots.
A lot of us are very passionate about these topics, and that's a good thing.
But as everybody saw, we had various differing opinions, and that was a space where we discussed it.
And I think that's the most important aspect of this.
So I want to thank all the speakers and David, my co-host, for being part of this.
We will definitely have a future one.
So make sure you follow all the speakers here and Mario's account to see when the next one is.
And with that, I wanted to wish everybody a good night and see you next time.
Folks, that's going to wrap that one up.
A long one, an extremely long one.
I get it.
But a heated one.
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