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May 13, 2022 - The Delingpod - James Delingpole
01:51:55
Jacques Baud
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Welcome to the Denning Poe with me James Denning Poe.
I know I always am excited about this week's special guest but I really really am, I'm I'm delighted to introduce you to Colonel Jacques Bourg from A former intelligence officer in Switzerland, retired intelligence officer, with an extraordinary rich and varied career in many of the world's conflict zones.
And I'm hoping that Colonel Boer is going to explain to me today what's really happening in Ukraine.
You're an expert on Russia and on Putin, among other things.
But just tell us a bit more about yourself.
I mean, I think most listeners will think of Switzerland as being a kind of a neutral party in geopolitical affairs.
I mean, do you have a dog in this fight at all or are you completely neutral?
Well, we are completely neutral, but you have to remember that neutrality was imposed to Switzerland in the early 19th century, just after the defeat of Napoleon.
And Switzerland has since then the obligation to prevent any misuse of its territory.
That's why Switzerland has an army, and a quite strong one, actually.
So, we are The military service used to be compulsory.
I think it's still.
I'm not living in Switzerland now.
I'm living in Brussels, but the military service is compulsory.
And of course, we add to the normal training, normal military training, training abroad.
I was trained in the UK, for instance, in intelligence, as an example.
But, you know, Switzerland is an army and very proud of its army, in fact, and every Swiss is a military.
I am a general staff officer.
That means that I've been trained in all the specialty of staff, logistics, operation, air operation, you name it.
And usually in Switzerland, that's the German system.
When you choose a general, you take a general staff officer.
It's the same system as they have in Russia, for instance.
The General Staff is the place where you have the people with more senior experience in staff work, in military planning, operation planning.
But after my time in intelligence, in strategic intelligence, where in fact I worked with all European, despite neutrality, I worked with all European and Western, in fact, intelligence services.
After that, I was assigned to the UN for many operations in Africa, and in North Africa especially.
So, with the time, I accumulated quite a lot of operational information about war, warfare, and military planning, in addition to what I had in Switzerland.
Right.
I imagine, as a Swiss, you never appear as a combatant.
Switzerland does not fight in any wars at all, does it?
- As a combatant, you know, Switzerland does not fight in any wars at all, does it?
Even behind the scenes. - No, that's correct.
We are not supposed to participate to combat operations.
We are ready for doing that, but we're not allowed to.
But the advantage of being neutral is that on many occasions, especially in Sudan or a place like this, Where we had to negotiate between parties, between Islamists, for instance, or tribes.
Being Swiss is an advantage because then, of course, people have some kind of trust for you and you can communicate with everybody.
That's what I experienced in Afghanistan as well.
So that gives then a point of view on a conflict which is quite unique as compared to other, let's say, parties to conflicts.
I'm really glad I've got you because I've come to the conclusion Late in life, having previously sort of bought completely into the kind of the propaganda narrative of the Western media and, you know, Western publishing and so on.
I now realize that what we in the West are told about these various wars, be it Afghanistan or Iraq or currently Ukraine, is not necessarily the objective truth.
That we're given very partial information.
In fact, I feel it very strongly about Ukraine.
I don't know whether you've been looking at the media in the UK and the US and elsewhere, but it's very much as if Ukraine is our war, we have to get involved, we have to pour Billions of dollars worth of materiel into supporting the plucky Ukrainians fighting the evil dictator Putin who invaded the country for no reason other than that he wants to recreate the Soviet Union.
He's ambitious, he's mad, he's dangerous.
Maybe you could give us a different, a less biased perspective perhaps?
Well, in fact, what you just said illustrates what Klosevitz used to say, that war is the continuation of politics with other means.
So it makes sense then that when you're a party to a conflict, a political party to a conflict, And of course you tend to present the reality in a different way, and that's exactly what happened in Afghanistan, and in other places, Iraq or so, in the world, and actually right now in Ukraine.
The problem is that, as an intelligence officer, you cannot go with those biases, because then you misunderstand the, let's say, the enemy, if you want.
And that's the worst mistake you can do, is to misunderstand the situation or misunderstand your adversary.
And myself, having been for several years in strategic intelligence, I'm used to try to understand the situation as it is and not as we want to understand it.
So I think it's important to take some distance with the events, try to understand how people think, How do Russians think?
How do Ukrainians think?
And then we can start to reconcile those different views with the realities on the ground.
Yes.
And unfortunately, what we see now in our media and in the political establishments in the West, especially, is that we tend to adjust the facts to the political narrative.
Instead of adjusting the narrative to the facts.
And I think it's extremely dangerous because, first of all, we see that the situation in Ukraine is not exactly as we portray it.
As a result, the main victim of our understanding are the Ukrainians themselves.
And I have the feeling, and I'm not the only one by the way, I have the feeling that because we don't pay any attention to the realities on the ground, we tend to misuse or to exploit the Ukrainians for other purposes than just helping Ukraine.
In fact, we tend to use Ukrainians to fight Putin instead of helping Ukraine.
And I think that's what disturbs me the most in this conflict.
I'm not making any judgment who is good, who is bad, who is the Nazi, the non-Nazi, whatever.
It's not the question.
The question is what kind of objective do we want to achieve?
And we see the problem with the West right now is that with all these sanctions and all that, we tend to shoot on ourselves.
It backfires.
Everything we do tends to backfire.
And I come to the point to question myself, but what are we really wanting to achieve?
Yes.
And I think that should be what the civil society should today be.
That should be the main thinking of the civil society.
What are we going to achieve?
The public opinion in Russia is stronger in favor of Putin.
In fact, Putin has increased his approval rate in the last three months.
So, according to some people, the idea of sanctions and all that was to provoke some kind of rebellion or revolution or regime change, you can name it as you want, in Russia.
But it's definitely not what's happening.
In fact, we see quite the opposite, that the population tends to reinforce itself and to be more closer to the power.
So, I think we have in the West, since about 25 years, we have a deficit in strategic thinking, in fact.
I think we tend to confuse tactics and strategy.
And I think that's the main problem in the West, I think.
Can you explain that a bit more?
Well, we think that because we inflict, let's say, damage at our enemy, that we weaken this enemy.
And that's not true.
That was exactly the same with terrorism, for instance.
With terrorism, we thought that the more we strike people in the Middle East, the more we weaken terrorism.
But in fact, it's the opposite.
You just stimulate a resistance, the willingness to resist, the willingness to come in Europe to perform terrorist attacks and things like this.
And we have something very similar that's happening in Russia today.
The more we apply sanctions, the more we reinforce, in fact, the sense that Putin was right.
Because the narrative that Putin developed in the last 10 years was that the West doesn't like Russians.
Yes.
And today, each additional sanction we apply tends to reinforce and to confirm what Putin said.
In addition to that, when we do, for instance, the French Minister of Economy, Bruno Le Maire, He said, that was very controversial by the way, about one month and a half ago, he said we want to destroy the Russian economy, we want the Russian people to suffer.
And that's, in fact, when you say so, you make the Russian population responsible for the decision of Putin.
That means, in other words, that you consider Russia as a big democracy.
So it's totally paradoxical.
And so it's definitely not the message we want to promote, but in Russia it's understood that way.
So meaning that everything we do Mathematically, or logically, will backfire on us on two things.
First of all, okay, I'm not going into details of the economic sanctions, but if you just go in terms of public opinion in Russia, we have just reinforced the public opinion in favor of Putin.
So it's exactly the opposite of what we wanted to achieve.
Yes.
When you were talking about confusing tactics with strategy or vice versa, I was thinking of the Vietnam War, and I was thinking of the US military's obsession with body counts, as if somehow, you know, the more people you kill, suddenly...
This is exactly the same thing.
Absolutely.
It's exactly the same thing.
And in fact, that was a debate in Afghanistan.
As you know, I spent the last five years of my active life, so to say, in NATO.
And the question of body count was a debate within NATO, because you tend to confuse tactics and strategy, because the body count doesn't mean that you weaken your enemy, it just means that you reinforce his willingness to fight.
So, And the French faced the same problem in the Sahel region, in Mali and Niger, and they had to give up with the body counts again.
Yes.
So we know, because it gets repeated ad nauseum in the media, what the West's claim is happening in Ukraine, that Putin is a crazed dictator and he just wants to expand his territory and he's just a dangerous man and it's our moral duty to confront this wicked, the new Hitler.
Tell me about what the Russian case is.
Do the Russians have a case?
Can you understand why Putin invaded Ukraine?
Yes, absolutely.
I think whether or not his decision was wise, it's a topic that's beyond my discussion.
But the problem is that when we judge Putin's decision, we tend to discard a lot of facts that explain his decision.
And the first one is that in March last year, in March 2021, President Zelensky issued a law to reconquer by military means Crimea and the south of Ukraine, meaning that they were preparing an offensive to attack Crimea and the Donbas.
And since March last year, we have witnessed a reinforcement of Ukrainian troops in the southern part of the country.
Nota bene, that's exactly the problem that the Ukrainians have today.
They are completely encircled in the southern part of the country.
In the northern part, the Russians could have a very fast advance towards Kiev because there were no troops.
The troops were all in the south, and that's exactly what's happening today.
So that's the background, that the Ukrainians wanted to reconquer Crimea and the Donbas.
And in February, In February 11th, you may remember that Joe Biden said he knew that Russia would attack on the 16th of February.
Now, how could he knew that?
How could he know that?
In fact, he knew that because he knew that the Ukrainians had planned to start their offensive on the 16th of February.
And if you look at what the observers of the OSCE have reported from the 16th of February onwards, you see a dramatic increase of shelling from Ukrainian side into the Donbass that forced the Donbass authorities to evacuate the Donbass population because they were under heavy artillery fire.
And you had on the 16th, 17th of February, and on the 16th nothing happened.
The Russians didn't attack, by the way.
So, Biden, because they expected that as soon as this artillery fire started, Russia would attack.
But in fact, Russia didn't attack at this stage.
What happened is that the Ukrainians increased their firing and their shelling on the 16th, 17th and 18th.
On the 18th, it was about 40 times the normal rate of shelling that you observe in this region.
And what happened is that in Russia, the parliament asked Putin to recognize the independence of the two so-called republics, the self-proclaimed republic of Lugansk and Donetsk.
Why that?
Because by recognizing the independence of those republics, Putin could implement, provided those two republics would ask for assistance, I mean, I have to go back, sorry, by recognizing the two republics.
Russia could sign a friendship and assistance treaty with those two republics.
And those two republics could ask for military assistance in case of external attack.
And that's what happened.
On the 23rd, the two republics asked Russia for military assistance because they were under attack.
And Russia could intervene in Ukraine by invoking the Article 51 of the UN Charter.
That provides for collective defense and assistance to a country which is attacked.
So that's a legal trick that Putin used.
We can have different assessment of that, but that was a political trick to have some kind of legality and legitimacy to attack Ukraine.
And during all this time, the shelling of the Donbass continued.
So what Putin just said yesterday at the victory parade, he made a speech and explained exactly that.
And in fact, that's exactly what happened.
So basically, Whether or not we consider that as propaganda, from a factual point of view, what Putin said is correct.
Whether there were other options to react or to help the two republics, that's a matter of judgment.
He decided that his best decision was to attack, that he did.
But the fact is that Ukraine started, in fact, this, not the war in that sense, but the offensive.
The reason why the Russians speak about special operation is that because for them, the war started in 2014.
And the Minsk agreements that were signed in September 2014 and the second one in February 2015 Those two agreements were in fact the way to stop the conflict.
But since Ukraine didn't implement what was written in this agreement, then the war continued.
So we are in a war since 2014.
That's why what the Russians do, from a Russian perspective, this is just an operation in a wider conflict.
Right, there's a lot to unpack there.
Let's just talk about 2014 for a moment.
I mean, I've heard it said, and you can confirm this or otherwise, that what happened in 2014 was essentially a kind of deep state coup led by George, financed by George Soros with the involvement of the CIA and other sort of deep state forces that
That a legitimate president was deposed and replaced by a sort of a Western puppet and this is the beginning of the injustice which ultimately led to what's happening now.
Is that correct in any way?
Yes, that's correct.
We have probably to go into more details.
In fact, there are three phases, if you want, in what happened in 2014.
The first phase is because of the controversial agreement between Ukraine and the European Union.
I don't want to go into too much detail, but to summarize, Ukraine wanted to have an agreement, a free trade agreement with the European Union, and for that they had to abandon some economic ties with Russia.
Russia was not against the treaty between Ukraine and the European Union, but they said, well, we have to find a way to work in a tripartite way, so with three parties, and to discuss a way to accommodate the three parties.
And that was refused by the President of the European Commission, Mr. Barroso.
He refused that and he said, no, that's no question of compromise.
And that led to some discontent in the population.
And the first, you had these events in Maidan.
The first one was, let's say, a popular one.
The population was disappointed and went in the streets to express the disappointment.
And that was still peaceful.
But then you had some individuals, especially the United States, who So, an opportunity here to use that situation to topple the government.
And that's when you had those right-wing extremists that came into the game.
So, that's a second Euromaidan, so to say.
And then it became violent, because those guys were quite violent.
They were extremists, they were fanatics, and all that.
And then came this, you certainly heard about this famous phone call between Victoria Nuland, who was responsible for Eastern European Affairs in the State Department, and the The U.S.
ambassador in Kiev, where they just selected who would form the new government of Ukraine.
So that means that the new government of Ukraine was in fact picked by the U.S.
to summarize that.
Now that's what one part so that means that the Yanukovych was toppled and the new government was obviously not elected so not democratically elected.
The problem came just after that because the first decision that was made by the newly non-elected parliament was to abolish the law on the official languages.
You know, Ukraine is a multi-lingual, multi-ethnic type of country, where you have obviously Russian-speaking, you have Ukrainian-speaking, you have also Hungarian-speaking and Romanian-speaking minorities.
And with the law of 2012, these languages had all an official status, meaning that the population could have schools, interaction with the administration in their own language.
But as the nationalists came to power in 2014, on the 23rd of February 2014, they just abolished this law and made Ukrainian the only official language.
And that's where the problem started really, because then you had in all the southern parts of of Ukraine.
That means Crimea, but also all the different oblasts Odessa, Dnepropetrovsk, Kharkov, Lugansk, Donetsk.
You had literally riots and rebellions.
And all these different parts of Ukraine started to arm themselves and started really to fight somehow.
And in Crimea, the problem had its own dynamics, because what we always fail to to recall about Crimea, is that Crimea was made independent before Ukraine in 1991.
Before the disbandment of the Soviet Union, that means in January 1991, the population of Crimea asked to have a referendum of autonomy and the population of Crimea asked to have a referendum of autonomy and to be separated from Ukraine and to be subordinated or linked to And,
And this referendum came to the point that Crimea became an autonomous socialist republic within the Soviet Union, directly depending on Moscow and no longer on Kiev.
Two months later, after the fall of the wall in Berlin, there was a discussion about maintaining the Soviet Union.
was because after the fall of the wall in Berlin, there was discussion about maintaining the Soviet Union.
And in March 1991, the government in Moscow decided to make an all republic's referendum to know if they maintain the Soviet Union or not.
And this referendum came to the conclusion that Soviet Union should be maintained.
So that, in some way, confirmed the previous referendum of Crimea.
So Crimea was one of those socialist republics within the Soviet Union.
And it's only in December, early December 1991, that Ukraine became independent.
In fact, a request by referendum independence.
And just a few weeks later, the Soviet Union was disbanded.
So at the end of 1991, you had Crimea as an independent socialist republic.
You had Ukraine as an independent socialist republic.
And then the problem is that Ukraine didn't accept the decision of having Crimea independent.
And in 1995, there was a kind of legal struggle between the authorities in Crimea and the authorities in Kiev during several years.
And in 1995, the government of Kiev toppled the government in Crimea and annexed Crimea.
And that's the point, you know.
So in 2014, when the problem of the language came to the surface, Crimea said, well, stop.
Now we make a new referendum and we go back to the situation that we had previously.
And we asked to be directly related to Moscow and no longer to Kiev.
So, and that's the part of history that has been totally ignored because otherwise you cannot explain the referendum of 2014, you know?
I see that, yes.
So, remind me when it was that Putin sent his forces in to reclaim Crimea.
Was that in response to the Maidan coup?
No, he never sent troops.
Because, that's an interesting point.
Ukraine considered, between 1991 and 2014, Ukraine considered Crimea as part of its territory.
So, they had an agreement with Russia to have, because you have Sebastopol, which is the main naval base, I mean Russian naval base in the Black Sea,
And together with this naval base, the Russians were allowed to have up to 25,000 troops, mainly marine infantry, so marines and things like this.
But not only that, also for logistics and that.
So in 2014, There were no new troops sent to Crimea.
You had already, in fact, the status in Crimea at that time, you had about 20,000 Russian troops stationed in Crimea.
And by the agreement between Ukraine and Russia allowed those troops to organize their own security in case of incidents.
So that means that what happened as you started to have troubles from at the end of February 2014, then those troops started to go outside of their garrisons and start to organize security around their places.
And they were also allowed to go to the airport in order to keep a kind of lifeline between Crimea and Russia.
So they were allowed to also make the security of the airport.
And that's what we had.
And at one point when the government, because one thing we have to say also, is that the Ukrainian Armed Forces and the Ukrainian Army at that point was territorially organized, meaning that those Ukrainian soldiers based in Crimea were mostly Crimeans.
So, when the trouble started, those Ukrainian soldiers, they didn't shoot at their Crimean fellows.
They just changed sides.
Right.
They removed their insignias, not to be confused with the regular army, they just removed the insignias and they became those little green men.
Right.
That's exactly what happens.
And all my sources are Ukrainian or Russian opposition, so I'm not taking any information from Putin or Russia.
And the Ukrainian deputy of the Rada, said on the Ukrainian media that at that time you had 22,000 Ukrainian soldiers stationed in Crimea.
Out of these 22,000, 20,000 changed sides and became those little green men.
So I find that in itself fascinating because I think so few people know about this.
I think they probably imagine that When Putin annexed Crimea, it was a kind of Hitler-style land grab, you know, something similar to the Sudetenland or something like that.
But actually this was merely Being true to the democratic wishes of the people of Crimea.
This is correct.
This is why I always said, from the way you understand a crisis, the way you solve it, If you don't understand the crisis, you can't solve it.
And that's exactly the problem we have.
We tend to discard a lot of facts in our understanding of this crisis, because obviously there are political agendas behind that.
But by doing so, we tend, of course, to provide an image that prevents any political solution.
That's exactly the stalemate in which we are right now.
So I just want to recap on an earlier point you made which I think again a lot of people are going to find astonishing and they're going to I think probably if they have heard it they will have dismissed it as Putin propaganda but you're suggesting that in February this year
uh the Zelensky government was the the Ukrainian military was preparing for an invasion of well I mean I suppose the Donbass is its own territory but but was was was trying to what that presumably crush the Russian-speaking population and to retake Crimea.
Was that the plan?
That's correct.
And is that where their forces were in the south?
That's exactly what was ongoing in February.
But, you know, I'm not inventing that.
There is an interesting – you can find it on YouTube, by the way – there is an interesting interview of Oleksii Arestovic.
Oleksii Arestovic is the main advisor to President Zelensky.
And he gave an interview to a Russian, not a Russian, sorry, a Ukrainian media in March 2019.
That means just before Zelensky was elected as president.
And in that interview, he explains that the price for Ukraine to enter NATO would be to start a war with Russia.
And he explains, he gives, if you see, and this is, the interview is obviously in Ukrainian, but you have a variance.
The interview, I think, is 13 minutes.
They have a shorter version at one and a half minutes, where you have the essential part.
But in that part, you have the subtlety, and it's translated to you, no mistake about this, He said the critical point to have this war with Russia would be the end of 2021-2022.
And that was said in 2019, meaning that apparently the US or whoever promised to Ukraine that they would gain membership If they would start a war with Russia.
And, as he said, the price would be the victory over Russia.
So that means a defeated Russia would be the price for Ukraine to enter NATO.
And because, obviously, in that point, you know, NATO is not very keen to have new members that have ongoing conflicts.
Yes, because obviously this could lead to a major confrontation.
But if the conflict leads to the total defeat of Russia, then the problem is solved.
And that would be, I think, that's the calculation that some Brains in the West had, and that's how they convinced Ukraine to engage in that operation.
And that's why Biden knew in early February that this offensive will start on February 16.
Yes.
Now, NATO, in the Western media, is presented as a defensive organisation which has guaranteed peace
in the West since the Second World War, and that it has protected the West from the encroachment of the territorial ambitions of Russia, and it's stopped the Russian tanks rolling across Luneburg, Heath or whatever.
That was always the version we presented.
Do you think there's anything in it that actually NATO is not purely a defensive organization?
And I think as the Pope said recently, bizarrely, I was quite surprised hearing the Pope taking this stance because I thought he was all for the World Economic Forum and stuff.
But is there anything to be said for the argument that NATO actually provoked this war with Russia and wanted it indeed?
Well, to answer the first question, whether NATO is a defensive organization, I think NATO is a defensive organization.
The problem is that how you define defensive, you know?
And this goes back to the discussions that you had in the late 80s in the West by defining the offensive-defensive or defensive-offensive.
Meaning that you can be defensive by taking the initiative.
And that's in fact, that's exactly the point on both sides, by the way, because the Soviets had a similar understanding of To what extent are we defensive?
And if you see that there are some preparedness on the other side, then you would start to defend yourself by launching an offensive.
And this is a little bit what the position of NATO.
The problem is that with the end of the Cold War, NATO never realized that there are probably other ways to understand International security, you know, beyond defense, offense and all that, there must be another way of understanding international security.
For the Russians, OSCE is the model of what they expected of international security, meaning that instead of security by confrontation, as we had during the Cold War, they expected to have security by cooperation.
And that's why I had the opportunity to meet the Russian military, maybe a high level, very high level Soviet military, just after the end of the Cold War, right after the fall of the war.
And we could see that these guys had clearly an ambition to join the Western community.
And they even suggested that they might enter NATO.
And that's why they entered what was this proposal of having the Partnership for Peace.
You know, the PFP.
And Russia was one of the first countries to join the PFP, because for them that was the first step in entering NATO.
That was their ambition.
They wanted to expand their relation with Europe.
Europe was the model.
model.
They suffered for 70-75 years of communist rule, and they have also seen how much the communist rule has destroyed the economy.
And they didn't want to have that again.
So they saw the Western model as the way to go.
And that's the reason why they were very keen to to go along with Europe and with NATO.
The problem is that NATO didn't understand that that way.
The Cold War mentality survived the Cold War, in fact.
And even when I was in the NATO between 2012-2017, I noticed that NATO had not, in fact, has exactly the same idea, the same mentality as during the Cold War.
I have worked extensively with NATO during my previous life or in intelligence.
I had many contacts with NATO, with also NATO countries, but I could notice that NATO hasn't changed really.
The software is still the same.
And so I think that's the main problem.
NATO justifies its existence by a confrontation with someone.
In the early 2000s, terrorism gave this opportunity.
And that was because Afghanistan was not really the natural area of operation of NATO.
But that was a way to justify the organization and a way to avoid rethinking the whole concept of NATO.
And in my view, this is a huge mistake that was done 30 years ago.
NATO should have the thought itself.
And to rethink security, to rethink the whole concept of how we should... And you see that today, for instance, NATO is not even able to help Ukraine because it's still based... NATO was created as a nuclear power, in fact.
Because the idea of NATO was to bring all European countries under the nuclear umbrella of the United States.
And this is still the same concept.
Meaning that when you start a conflict with NATO, you don't know if you end up with a nuclear conflict.
And that's exactly the reason why NATO is unable to help Ukraine.
Because from the Russian perspective, you never know if this could end up in a nuclear exchange.
So there must be some thoughts about having another kind of security that doesn't imply directly the use of nuclear weapons.
And to have a conventional NATO, if you want.
But that means that then you have another way of understanding security.
What affected, in my view, the NATO thinking was the...
The membership of those Eastern European countries, like Poland, the Baltic States and all that.
Because these countries, and we can understand somehow their position, because they have suffered the Soviet rule.
I mean, I'm talking about the Baltic States.
Poland was not occupied by Russia, but by the Soviet Union.
But the Baltic states, for instance, they suffered the Soviet rule and of course they can have some thought and some fears regarding Russia.
I understand that.
But at the same time, you cannot base the security of a whole continent on the thoughts of three small countries, you know.
And that's exactly what Putin said when he mentioned the problem of indivisibility of security in his speech of the victory yesterday.
Meaning that you cannot have built your own security at the expense of the security of others.
And that's a little bit what NATO forgot when they included the Baltic States and those countries that are next to the Russian border.
They forgot about this problem of indivisibility of security.
Because by doing so, and that became obvious in the early 2000s, when the US went out of the ABM Treaty, the Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty, in 2002.
I then started to have negotiations with Poland, Czech Republic and Romania for stationing anti-ballistic missiles.
And that rang a bell then in Russia, because that meant that suddenly you had very close to the Russian border, you started to have missiles stationed.
Of course you can argue that those missiles were defensive missiles, but it's not exactly true, because as you might know, The launchers that are in those positions, I mean in Poland and in Romania, those launchers, the Mark 41 launchers, are capable of launching both nuclear missiles and anti-ballistic missiles.
And the problem is that from a Russian perspective, if in a case of crisis, you notice some activities around these missile sites, how do you know that the missile is anti-ballistic or the missile is nuclear?
Meaning that the first reaction from a Russian perspective is to launch a preemptive strike on those positions.
Yes.
And that's exactly what Putin said when Macron visited him on early February in Moscow.
During the press conference, Putin explained that with the current posture of NATO, those European countries could be dragged into a nuclear war, even if they don't want to.
Yes.
And I think the concern of the Russians is extremely legitimate.
And in fact, many strategists or experts in the United States, in fact, confirm this point of view and agree that the Russian concern is perfectly legitimate.
The problem is that NATO was never able to have the intellectual independence, so to say, to have this kind of thinking towards the United States.
And that, I think, is the problem.
The problem of NATO is that it's too American.
Right.
And in fact, instead of serving the interests of Europe, it serves the interests of the United States.
And the interests of the United States may not exactly coincide with those of the Europeans.
That's the reason why Europeans have an intent to have their own, let's say, European force, so to say.
Right, but you say you talk about the interest of the United States, but isn't it even more complicated than that?
Isn't it a faction within the United States?
You mentioned Victoria and Newland, but I would imagine that the average American, I mean you made the distinction between the Russian people and Putin and the Putin regime.
In the same way, how is it of any
benefit to the American people that that this that all this materiel I mean you know I don't know how much whether whether Biden will be successful in voting for how many billion um dollars worth of of aid to is it 30 billion I think he was promising or trying to pass through Congress but anyway how is it three billion that that there seems to be a faction within
The United States, a very powerful faction which includes Victoria Nuland, which wants to fight a proxy war with Putin to weaken the Russian economy and to depose Putin.
Well, this is not America, is it?
This is the deep state.
Well, you're right.
In fact, if we have a closer look at how things happen within the US system, you will see that this anti-Russia type of mentality is maintained by a very small elite, a small intellectual elite.
Interestingly enough, this elite is bipartisan.
You find them with Democrats and with Republicans, but it's a very small elite within those two main big parties.
And it's also interesting to see, for instance, that in the current crisis of Ukraine, We have since last October or so, people were talking about the reinforcement of Russian forces at the Ukrainian border.
Everybody was warning about a possible invasion and things like this.
It's interesting to see that you almost never had intelligence people in those warnings.
They were all politicians.
And what we have seen, in fact, is that Antony Blinken, the State Secretary, was in fact installed a kind of small group, a tiger team, as the Washington Post have mentioned.
It's a tiger team that, in fact, developed the strategy against Russia.
But this apparently didn't involve the intelligence and the military, or not directly.
And that's exactly what we had in 2002, 2003, before the Gulf War, where Donald Rumsfeld had to bypass the advice of the intelligence community because CIA and the DIA were not so convinced about these weapons of mass destruction in Iraq.
And in order to bypass those intelligence agencies, Rumsfeld created its own kind of intelligence structure within the Ministry of Defense.
And it was a very tiny structure that in fact advised and made all the work, the kind of influence work.
And we had exactly the same mechanism, but within the State Department In the last couple of months.
And that was revealed by the Washington Post, by the way.
Meaning that, in fact, and we see today that the intelligence in all countries, I mean, all countries, not all, but we see that in France, we see that in Germany, we see that in the United States also, that the intelligence world tries to calm down a little bit the situation.
And try to calm down the politicians because they see that the conflict threatens to take a dynamic, a very, very unfortunate dynamic.
So meaning that the whole crisis was more or less manufactured by a very, very small amount of individuals.
Very influential, involving a lot of media, but did not involve directly the intelligence community.
And to me, I always considered that the intelligence community in a country It's part of the rule of law, in fact, because the intelligence should bring to the decision maker facts and objective information to make decisions.
And so in that sense, the intelligence agencies are here to avoid arbitrary or God-inspired decisions and things like this.
But in situations like the one we have witnessed in the last couple of months, we see that this intelligence community was almost completely bypassed by this small elite group.
So, I don't know if we can call that directly the Deep State also.
Maybe, well, Deep State should be defined in some way.
There are probably different definitions of that.
But what appears clear to me is that this crisis was certainly manufactured by some individual.
It's interesting to see, for instance, that both Antony Blinken and Victoria Nuland are descendants of Ukrainian refugees, for instance.
Both of them.
So they've got bad blood history?
They have an emotional tie with Ukraine, so they obviously do not have, let's say, distance with the problem.
They are involved, emotionally involved, and that's exactly what we see.
The decisions regarding Ukraine and Russia are extremely emotional.
You see, you have the same thing in Canada.
The Foreign Minister of Canada is also related to Ukraine.
In fact, her grandfather was, that's Christia Freeland, and her grandfather was Ukrainian, or at least was, even I think he was part of, he worked with the Germans during the Second World War, but he has ties with Ukraine, meaning that we have A kind of consolation of individuals who are emotionally related to Ukraine.
And I think that doesn't help to make the management of this crisis more rational.
We are in some kind of irrationality.
And I think it's extremely dangerous, to my view.
You mentioned the first Gulf War, which was the Donald Rumsfeld faction which pushed the West towards war.
They were known as the neocons, weren't they?
Is it the same people, the same faction, which is responsible for this particular aggression?
I am not sure.
There are probably some of them.
But as I said, anti-Russia mentality is very much bipartisan.
Yes.
And you see some Democrats almost more warmongers than Republicans toward Russia.
It may be different for other parts of the world, but regarding Russia, it's very much bipartisan.
Now, of course, when we talk about neocon here again, that needs probably some kind of definition, because sometimes I have the feeling that even some Democrats have behavior like neocons in some way.
So, We are into something which is certainly a small elite group, definitely, which is bipartisan, which is manipulating the government.
And when I mean the government, I mean Joe Biden in that instance.
And even the other allies of the United States.
I mean, the UK is certainly a major one that is under this US influence.
And here, of course, it's easy because Russia has traditionally, in the last 75 years or 80 years, Russia was the main threat to the Western world, so to say, with a small pause during World War II.
But basically, as soon as World War II stopped, you may remember that the US were very keen, even some generals suggested that To prolong the war to Moscow.
Exactly.
Yes, that's correct.
Actually, can I ask you, just briefly, in your opinion, because you spend most of your professional career observing Russia, do you think it was largely an illusory threat?
I mean, particularly after Stalin died, do you think Russia really did want war with the West?
Or was it just a kind of convenient for the West to have an enemy?
Well, it's a very good question, because I tend to think that after Stalin died, the majority of the Soviets wanted to be closer to the West.
There were probably some small groups of, let's say, fanatics who maintained This kind of animosity towards the West.
But I think it was generally a tendency to have a rapprochement.
Khrushchev obviously with the détente started that, then Andropov prolonged this system.
But of course, the problem is that the leadership in the Soviet Union changed and you had people like Brezhnev, who was a hardliner.
He was not exactly a Stalinist, but it was very much a hardliner.
Andropov came later as a kind of relief Somehow.
And he had some ideas of developing better relations or having, let's say, a softer communist system.
And Gorbachev was definitely on the same line as Andropov.
And at that time that was said that way.
And the idea of perestroika and glasnost, especially after the Chernobyl incident, To restructure the whole system and to change the mentalities also, to soften the bureaucracy of the communist system.
That was a tendency.
But I think the idea was very much to go closer to the To the West.
And I'm not sure that the idea that Stalin had that USSR should be the spearhead of socialism in the world and should be the one promoting communism across the world and all that.
This has more or less gone with Khrushchev, although there were some attempts to favor communist systems in different countries, part of the world, especially in Africa, for instance, in Asia, there were support for insurgencies.
Left-wing insurgencies and all that.
So this existed and there was still a type of confrontation.
But the idea that the confrontation should go so far as a big confrontation, a big war with Europe, I think that was gone with Khrushchev.
Yes, yes.
So, in other words, my youth was needlessly frightened because we were constantly told, you know, to get ready to hide under your desks at school, you know, when the nuclear blast happened, stuff like this, yeah.
I get it.
So, we, the, the, Putin has said that he's got two objectives in Ukraine.
One is to protect the Russian-speaking population, if I'm right, and the other is to denazify, is his phrase, Ukraine.
Now, tell me a bit about the Nazis, because I read a very interesting interview you gave where you described how, correct me if I'm wrong, Okay, so in 2014, in the Donbass, the young men in the Ukrainian military quickly found they did not want to participate in this war and really fighting a civil war.
And so, in order to make up the manpower caused by desertions and things like that, That the Ukrainian military started to rely on far-right recruits, I suppose mercenaries they would be, from all over Europe and perhaps beyond.
And I think that the figure you quoted was astonishing.
Am I right in thinking that there are 102,000 of these sort of paramilitary far-right people in the Ukrainian military?
Yes, this figure comes from Reuters, so it's not my invention, it comes from Reuters.
They made, I think it was in 2020, I don't remember the date, but they made kind of a summary of the situation in Ukraine and they mentioned this figure with armored forces counting like a hundred thousand men And paramilitaries counting 102,000.
How did it come to this figure?
I don't know, but I'm just reporting this figure of Reuters, which seems to me quite realistic, because when we talk about these paramilitaries, people tend to summary them into the Azov Regiment, And it's a regiment.
In fact, first of all, Azov is a movement.
It's not just a regiment.
Azov, you have a kind of a police related to the Azov movement.
You have a popular militia related to that.
You have a political party related to that, and you have the Azov Special Brigade, the one which was in Mariupol, in fact.
But besides this, you have about 10 to 15 Armored groups that most of them have a history going back to the 30s, as the Ukrainian nationalists started to struggle against the Soviets, even before Second World War.
And with Second World War, these groups were helped, in fact, or used by the Third Reich.
And so it's not coincidence that the Azov Regiment, for instance, has as a logo, you may find this so-called Wolf's Angle, which is kind of an N with a vertical E or I.
And this is no coincidence, because this was the emblem of the 2nd SS Division Das Reich.
And the 2nd SS Division Das Reich was the one who liberated Kharkov in the Eastern Ukraine in 1943.
And this division is very much celebrated in Ukraine still today because it won against the Soviets in Kharkov.
You have a tradition of that, and we have also to remind people that at the end of the Second World War, those people who used to fight against the Soviets remained after the departure of the German forces.
You may know that the SS, established in all newly occupied countries by the Soviets, they organized the so-called Werwolf, organization.
The Wehrwacht organization was a kind of the first stay-behind force of its kind, in fact, and it was manned by SS people, very much people highly politically motivated, and they started to establish kind of resistance networks in Belarus and in the Baltic states.
And these guys were literally Nazi, but of course they were supported by the Nazis until 1945.
And after 1945, the Western intelligence supported these movements because they were fighting against the Soviets.
So you had the British, the French, British and U.S.
intelligence supporting these groups until the early 60s.
Notabene, that's because of Kim Philby, the famous spy or mole within the MI6 in UK, that these Resistance groups or subversion groups were eventually destroyed by the Soviets because Philby could pass information to the Soviets, to the KGB, and so they could fight effectively.
So until the early 60s, you had this resistance movement, helped, armed, trained, and supported financially by the Western intelligence services.
So there is, in fact, we misuse these old Nazi fighters or ultranationalists.
I don't like the word Nazi because Nazi refers, I mean, according to me, refers to a very specific doctrine, political doctrine.
But it was certainly ultranationalists, very anti-Semitic, very brutal.
So they have all the features of the Nazi, in fact.
Well, I mean, those do seem to be the when people think of Nazis, I think that's what they're really thinking of.
They're not thinking about specifically Hitler's National Socialists.
They're thinking of these groups with very, very nasty, aggressive and anti-Semitism.
We can quibble over what exactly does and doesn't constitute a Nazi.
But so just to recap, Around 100,000 people in the Ukrainian military at the moment are affiliated to what you might loosely call the far right, and they are admirers of, and sort of model themselves on to a degree, the SS Das Reich.
You know, a sort of unit known for its atrocities in places like Oradour-sur-Mer.
Sorry, Sur-Glane.
If you mention Nazis to a kind of Western media propagandist, they will say, well, they're a minority.
They really aren't representative of the Ukrainian military.
It sounds like they're quite a significant force.
Well, we have to... The people who said they are not significant, they based their assertion on the small percentage they have in the Parliament.
As a matter of fact, you can say that this extreme right-wing party, like the Pravi Sektor, or the right sector, which is the very, very extreme right party, is a minority in the parliament, definitely.
But the problem is that within the establishment, the military establishment, these forces are extremely strong and much stronger than we think.
For instance, Dmitry Yarosh, who is or used to be the deputy of the armored force commander, He threatened, in the media, he threatened Zelensky in May 2019.
That means just one month after the election of Zelensky.
He said in the media, because you may remember that Zelensky, everybody said, well, he's a Jew and all that.
And OK, I'm not saying Zelensky is Most probably.
I don't think he's Nazi.
I don't think so.
But the thing is that his program as a president, as a candidate for a presidency, his program was to have some kind of peace with Russia.
And have a negotiation with Russia about Donbass and Crimea.
But interestingly, Dmitry Yarosh, as I said, one month after his election, said, well, if Zelensky applies the program, we'll kill him.
And he said that in a media.
And that's Ukrainian media.
It's not me.
It's not Putin.
It's not Russia media.
It's Ukrainian media.
And meaning that my feeling is that the freedom of movement or freedom of decision of Zelensky is extremely limited.
That's my personal understanding.
And what disturbs me a little bit is that the The Western community tends, in fact, to acknowledge the fact that Zelensky is under pressure internally, and we tend to misuse that.
I think there is some kind of hypocrisy from the West in addressing Zelensky.
We tend to use or misuse the pressure he is just in the middle of.
And I think that's the main thing.
Because, of course, again, if you just look at the parliamentary or the political parties, no, the extreme right wing are not so strong.
But in the military, it's half of the military.
We have to understand that it's half of the military.
And it's a little bit more than this, in fact, because if you look at all the military in the Ukrainian armed forces system, you have what we call the armed forces that comprise, on the one hand, the Ukrainian army, Which is just the military, the usual military.
And you have the so-called National Guard or something like that, which is normally depends on the Minister of Interior.
But as you had also in the Soviet Union, it's part of what they call Armored Forces.
So Armored Forces is a little broader than just the Army.
And In the current operation, what we have in Ukraine, and how the armed forces were used in Ukraine, you can see the army, the so-called maneuver army, with tanks, artillery, and all that stuff, all that, these are the ones moving in the open areas, between cities, if you want.
And those paramilitaries are Because they have only light equipment, so soft-skinned vehicles, light-armored vehicles, machine guns, so they don't have heavy equipment.
So these units are very useful in cities.
And to maintain law and order and to defend those cities with kind of infantry work.
And they are specialized, in fact, in urban warfare, so to say.
So meaning that These paramilitaries, in fact, are managing, so to say, most of the population, because they still have most of the population in cities.
So they have an extraordinary power.
And that's exactly what we have seen in Mariupol, on Iharkov, in Odessa, that will be the next one, but also in other cities where these paramilitaries have a very strong stronghold.
And they have a huge amount of power against the population.
And in fact, in the last eight years, since 2014, there were numerous reports from international organizations, but also from different intelligence services from different countries, about atrocities committed by those forces in the Southern part.
We have also to understand that if you look at the geography of Ukraine, you will see that the western part of Ukraine is Ukrainian-speaking, so you can say Ukrainian nationalists, so to say.
And those paramilitaries are deployed in the eastern and southern part of the country, which is essentially with Russian-speaking people.
And by the way, we speak about Russian-speaking people, but in those areas where you have Hungarian-speaking and Romanian-speaking, you also have those paramilitaries.
And Hungary and Romania have complained several times to the European Union, to the Council of Europe and to other organizations because of the abuses of these paramilitaries against their minorities.
And today, if you look right today, if you see the reluctance of the Hungarian government and the Romanian government in providing weapons to Ukraine through their own borders, they don't want.
They refused to send them, and there's a reason for that, because there have been serious cases of abuses of these paramilitaries against minorities.
And in the south and east of the country, where you have this huge Russian-speaking minority, you had, since 2014, a number of abuses that was absolutely tremendous.
And, of course, today we tend to whitewash a little bit these guys, because we try to provide legitimacy to the Ukrainian resistance.
But the bulk of this resistance is made by those paramilitaries that are ultra-nationalists and, of course, those who are the most motivated against the Russians.
And If someone would highlight all those atrocities and all that, of course the whole narrative, the Western narrative, would just collapse.
But there were several complaints.
Including Israel has complained several times.
Towards the Ukrainian government, because there was abuse from this neo-Nazi or whoever we call them, against the Jewish minority.
And also because there is something in Ukrainian history that we tend also to downplay a little bit, which is the so-called Holodomor.
Holodomor was the famine that was organized in the
1920s and 1930s, in order to have currency to fund the modernization of the armed forces, Stalin confiscated all the agricultural products in Ukraine to sell it abroad and to gain currency.
As a result, you had a huge famine in those times, and some estimate that up to 7 million Ukrainians died as a result of this organized famine.
Now, the problem is that, according to the Ukrainian nationalists, this famine was The confiscation of the agricultural product was organized by the NKVD, which was the Ministry of Interior.
Now, the Ministry of Interior was organized territorially, so you had a Ukrainian NKVD, and the Ukrainian NKVD was led by Jews.
And so the nationalists gave the responsibility of this famine to the Jews.
And that helped also during World War II.
These nationalists to act or to operate together with the Germans, especially in eliminating Jews in some villages and all that, and to do some massacres.
And interestingly enough, recently those right-wing extremists asked Israel to pay compensation for the atrocities committed by the communists during this time.
So it's not simply anecdotal.
It affected also the relations between Ukraine and Israel.
And several media, Israeli media, complained about this very strange request for compensation about 80, 70 years after complained about this very strange request for compensation about 80, 70 years
So, and then you see that even if we don't call them neo-Nazi or things like that, you can see that this ultra-nationalism, anti-Semitism and violence are connected in some anti-Semitism and violence are connected in some kind of...
I don't know how to call that.
A local culture.
Atavistic.
Yeah, I can see that it's, yeah, it's deep-rooted.
Exactly.
It's a combination.
So it's not just they are against Jews because they are against Jews.
There is a history behind this.
And whether or not it's true, because some historians tend to argue that the Holodomor never existed, but okay.
I don't know.
I'm not an historian.
I mean, I never studied that into the detail.
The thing is that from a Ukrainian perception, it existed.
Yeah.
And right or wrong, that's how they see the problem.
And that explains also the way they act towards, A, the Soviets, because, in fact, the Russians have accumulated all that.
The Jews, and I remember it was in one of the papers, probably it was the Independent in the UK, the Independent once made some kind of, or the Guardian, I don't remember, anyway, made a report on those right-wing extremists and they quoted one saying Putin is a Jew.
You know, so we have then the hate against the Soviets combined with the hate against the Jews and combined with the hate against the Russians.
And that's everything.
All that is combined in one kind of combination, a strange combination.
But all of these hates are deep-rooted in the local culture.
And that was somehow favored by the new authorities in 2014 because these were the ones you could rely on to maintain order and to fight against the Russians or the Russian speakers.
So, this is very strange and what disturbs me a little bit is that, as of today, because we want to have some kind of legitimacy in supporting Ukraine, of course we whitewash this part of history and therefore we cannot understand exactly what's going on when people reconquer
Mariupol, it's not just reconquering any city.
Mariupol was the birth crate of Azov, the Azov movement.
So it's extremely important for the militia, the Donbas militia, because the It's not really the Russians who liberated, so to say, Mariupol.
It was the Donbass militia.
We tend to forget that in the current conflict, you have Russian forces coming from Russia, And you have the Donbass militias, the militias of the Lugansk Republic and the Donetsk Republic.
And the militia of the Donetsk Republic is the one that helped to liberate Mariupol together with those Chechen units.
Yes, yes.
I got the impression, so Mariupol, particularly the Azov style complex, seems to be a kind of got a Demerung scenario for the Azov.
It's their last redoubt.
And I got the impression that the Russians sent in the Chechens, who are probably what their toughest, most ruthless Ruthless fighters because they knew that it was going to be a hard, hard fight.
What do you know about that?
One of the things that interests me about Azovstal, apparently there's a sort of a whole network of bunkers and levels of sort of reinforced concrete, whatever, living underground.
There seem to be quite a few Western intelligence people, and there was a Canadian colonel, I think, who tried to escape and was captured.
What do you think is going on there?
Because there's talk about how there are bioweapons labs that they're trying to conceal.
Tell me about that.
Well, I'm not sure we know exactly what is underneath Azovstal.
Azovstal is a huge industrial complex that was established, I think, in the 1920s.
That's a place where a part of the famous T-34 tank was built in the early war.
I mean, the T-34 was built in many different plants, but it was partly also assembled in Azovstal.
It's a huge complex and of course it was built or it was designed to be operational even during the war.
It has very deep cellars and anti-shelters, anti-aerial shelters.
Underneath.
And it's a huge labyrinth of shelters and all that.
And apparently you have the remnants of the Azov movement based here.
I mean, as you said, in Last Redempt.
Now, we don't know exactly who is in there.
The Russians said that they intercepted communications involving eight different European languages.
But that's all about we know in fact.
It doesn't tell much because Azov is based on volunteers from all over the world and it may well be that you have just these volunteers here fighting.
As you may remember that Berlin in 1945, the last defenders of Berlin were French SS.
So you know that the Division Charlemagne was among those last fighters in Berlin in May 1945.
So we have a similar thing happening in Mariupol somehow.
So these might be just fighters.
They are afraid to surrender because obviously they might have probably some blood on their hands and they are not sure exactly what their fate would be if they surrender.
I'm not in a position to to say anything about that but that's probably the reason why they are so reluctant to surrender.
Some suggested at one point that there were some NATO officers.
There was also recently, there was this mention of a Canadian general, in fact, a retired general.
To be absolutely honest with you, I don't know exactly what's there.
Is that just propaganda?
Is that just rumors?
I have no idea.
But it would make sense to have, underneath Azovstal, that you have at least the last quarter of hardliners in there.
That's absolutely possible.
Can you give me an overview about how the campaign has progressed?
Because, again, all I read in the Western media is the Russians are useless, that they've been surprised by the scale of the resistance, that they've been needlessly destroying lots of civilian buildings, that their equipment is not up to scratch, that their tactics are no good.
I mean, I don't know.
Is that true?
No, I don't think so.
I think, of course, we tend to have a biased view.
What we see in the media basically comes directly from KEF.
There is no real assessment done by our media or even most experts on the situation.
Well, first, we have to understand how this offensive started.
It started very much like you may have the Operational Doctrine of the Russians, with a main effort in the Donbass and a secondary effort in the direction of Kiev.
The reason why they went to Kiev was not to take Kiev, and in fact we know because the Pentagon made some estimates about the strength involved in both main effort and secondary effort line, and we know that around Kiev there were about 22 battalions, more or less, while in the Donbas there were 65 or so battalions.
So 22 battalions, that's less than 22,000 people, to take Kiev, that's not enough.
And that was probably not the intent of the Russians to take over Kiev.
They just wanted to encircle Kiev in order to pin down the armoured forces, the Ukrainian armoured forces in the western part of the country, so that they don't reinforce the bulk of the Ukrainian forces in the Donbas.
So by keeping a threat on Kiev, these forces were kept in the west of the country.
So it's very clever.
And in the Donbass region, the idea, and that's very much like what we have observed in the last months of the campaign of the Soviets during World War II, The offensive went very quickly in the depth of the Ukrainian forces, very fast, without really fighting.
They just bypassed all the strongholds, they bypassed the cities, they bypassed everything, just to reach the depth.
Blitzkrieg, a bit like?
The Blitzkrieg is a little bit different, but we tend to use this word.
The Blitzkrieg is the first concept of combined arms operation.
It's slightly different.
In the rapidity of the advance?
Bypassing strongholds?
Some say it's the water flowing principle.
So water flows where it can.
It doesn't stop where not needed.
And that's exactly what the Russians have done.
So going very fast, try to encircle the bulk of the Ukrainian force that were ready to attack the Donbass.
That's why today you have the main part of the army, the Ukrainian army, in this area between Slavansk, Kramatorsk and so on.
That's what they have done.
That's what they have done until mid-March, roughly.
And then they started to grind the Ukrainian forces.
They started to attack the villages and things like this.
And of course, the first phase was extremely fast.
That was the idea.
And in the second phase, they started to have a kind of infantry type of fighting.
So it's very slow.
It's not very spectacular.
You don't see that really on maps because it's house by house and street by street.
It's very slow.
But it doesn't mean that they haven't reached their objectives.
In fact, I think they have reached all the objectives that they wanted to reach.
The first phase was, and that's what Putin himself announced on the 24th of February, which was demilitarization and denazification.
But those two, if you read carefully what he said, this was not the denazification or demilitarization of Ukraine.
It was demilitarization and denazification of the threat against Donbass and against the population, the Russian-speaking population, so to say.
And these objectives, so the demilitarization process is still ongoing.
They are destroying, small by small, the armed forces and the denazification process is considered as finished.
In fact, at the end of March, The Russians have removed denazification as an objective because they have taken Mariupol.
Nowadays it remains only this place in Azovstal, but they will just wait until these guys are starving or surrender.
But basically there is no threat anymore.
And for that reason, the objective of denazification is considered as reached.
But it's also interesting to see that the Russians have This Clausewitzian concept of war, that war and politics are connected.
So the early objectives, as I said, were demilitarization and denazification.
On the 25th of February, Zelensky suggested to enter negotiation.
And it was a talk about negotiation at the Belarus border and things like this.
And they started to have some talks.
But the European Union then, to discourage Zelensky, came with a first package of almost half a million euros of weapons in order to say to Zelensky, don't negotiate, we'll help you to fight.
And so the Russians, when they saw that negotiations were going nowhere, they changed the objective.
So they had their operational objectives, but they added the political one that was recognition of the independence of Donbass and the recognition of Crimea.
And these were the new objectives, if you want, and end of March, on the 21st of March, Zelensky made a proposal to the Russians, and it was about then the negotiations had moved from Belarus to Istanbul, and Zelensky made a proposal, an offer, to the Russians to discuss on those topics.
But two days later, as it happened in February, the European Union came with a new offer, with a new package of half a million, half a billion weapons, to say Zelensky, no, no, no, no, you don't negotiate, we give you weapons and you fight.
And under pressure of UK and the US, Zelensky retracted his offer to the Russians.
And then the Russians, they saw that this negotiation process was going nowhere, so they added a new layer to the objectives.
And they said, okay, then we'll go to occupy All the areas, the coastal area between Mariupol and Odessa up to Transnistria.
So, in fact, the Russians have a kind of iterative process with the objectives.
They started with something, expected a negotiation.
You don't go to the negotiation.
OK, we raise the objective.
And if you take the negotiation, we stop here.
Otherwise, we go further.
And the thing is, this mechanism is not new.
The Russians, that's very much the Russian approach to war.
The problem is that the European Union, especially with the US, of course, they made every effort to make This collapse and avoid any kind of negotiation in fact.
They just force Ukrainians to fight by giving new weapons and now you have this new package that was decided by Joe Biden of 33 billion dollars.
What is disturbing with that is that all the weapons that are sent to Ukraine do not really make the difference.
I was going to ask you that, yeah.
No, they don't make the difference because in fact most of the logistics has been destroyed because as soon as the US and others have promised some tanks and howitzers and things like this, Of course, the problem was to transport this equipment from the border to the front lines, and the Russians started to destroy the infrastructure.
It's interesting because before that, the Russians didn't try to destroy the infrastructure.
So, meaning that as the Europeans came with new offers and weapons and all that, then they pushed the Russians to destroy more and more infrastructures, command posts and airfields and all that.
So, in fact, these weapons do not make the difference, but in addition they tend to attract Russian fire, so to say.
So, in fact, we are just deteriorating the situation of Ukraine.
And my understanding of what the international community should be, it's not to take the position of a judge that decides who is the good and the bad guy and all that, but try to
Bring the two parties to the negotiation table and have them discuss the problems because now we have totally discarded any diplomatic solution.
We tend to exacerbate in fact kind of a polarization of the conflict and this leads very much nowhere and
I think it's very unfortunate because I mentioned previously this interview of Alexei Arestovich in March 2019.
And in there, he said, and that's extremely cynical somehow, but he said that the price for Ukraine to enter NATO will be almost the destruction of Ukraine.
So there is a sense of self-sacrifice with the purpose of joining NATO, and I think the Western community tends to go along with this very, very cynical approach.
And I am a little bit puzzled by this position and it explains or maybe it's the lack of rationality explains that or this explains the lack of rationality.
I don't know in which direction we have to see that, but certainly we are beyond the rational approach to the conflict in the West.
Yes.
Definitely.
Yes.
Well, I could talk to you for many, many hours, but I think I've probably taken up enough of your time.
But just to sum up, I don't want to put words into your mouth, but I imagine that most of us would like this conflict in Ukraine to end sooner rather than later, because ordinary Ukrainians are suffering.
There's a danger, I fear, that Ukrainians conscripts, not to mention Russian soldiers as well, are going to die needlessly in what looks like a sort of almost like a private war between factions in the Western governments and who are determined to destroy Putin and take down Russian power base with it.
Is that a fair summary?
Yes, absolutely.
And I think it's very unfortunate because we are in something that is totally emotional in the way we approach the problem.
There is absolutely no rationality.
And of course, the way we portray the success or the failure of the Russian Offensive means that they are losing the war, so why should we negotiate?
This is the rationale.
And we tend to add new sanctions and new weapons and new all that.
And at the end, there is something we should ask ourselves, because the rest of the world also look at the Western world and ask themselves the question.
I have many contacts with Africa and Asia, and they said, well, you know, why is this conflict worse than the previous ones?
You know, why are we applying so many sanctions at the one who started the offensive?
But we never did that for the UK, for instance, or with the US, for Iraq, for Libya, for Syria, and you name it.
So there is a profound sense of
irrationality but also somehow every new sanction we apply tends to portray us as more racists than we are because as it comes to to Iraqis or Afghanis we don't care so there is no need for applying sanctions to the attackers but when it comes to Ukrainians with blonde hair and blue eyes then of course we We need to apply sanctions.
And that's how they perceive us.
And I think that's something that we tend to underestimate.
But I think it will have, for the future, huge consequences in the way the West will relate or discuss with the rest of the world.
Well, Colonel Jacques Bourg, thank you for a fascinating podcast.
I really enjoyed talking to you and for your insights.
Thank you very much.
Where can people find you?
Where can they read you?
Oh, by email, in fact.
I tend to be outside of the social networks.
I prefer to work in serenity.
Yes, under the radar, like a true intelligence officer.
Exactly.
Well, thank you very much.
And thank you for listening.
Please support me on Patreon, on Locals and on Substack.
Thank you very much.
And thank you again, Colonel.
That was fantastic.
And thank you for inviting me.
Thank you very much.
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