True Anon Truth Feed - Episode 206: Ukraine (with Ames) Part 2
Aired: 2022-02-08
Duration: 01:41:28


=== Liz's Vile Joke (03:10) ===

[00:00:00]  Ladies and gentlemen, we cannot do another cold open yet again.
[00:00:04]  A, because I just want to say I made just the most fantastic joke.
[00:00:09]  Liz made the most vile joke in this show's history.
[00:00:13]  That was very clever.
[00:00:14]  It checked nearly every box.
[00:00:18]  Except for racism.
[00:00:19]  It caught you off guard and took you a second, and then you couldn't believe it.
[00:00:24]  That floored me.
[00:00:25]  Yeah.
[00:00:25]  And no one is ever going to hear it.
[00:00:28]  Unless you join our new tier where you only get to hear Liz say what she just said, but you can never tell anybody.
[00:00:39]  Because I can't even tell.
[00:00:40]  I can't even call a friend after this and be like, look at what Liz said on the show.
[00:00:43]  No, because A, they wouldn't get it, but B, it was a vile thing to say, and you should be ashamed of yourself.
[00:01:14]  What's up, y'all?
[00:01:15]  This is Bobby Blood and Soil hitting you up from Ukraine here.
[00:01:21]  I have with me Lilith Fair.
[00:01:25]  What?
[00:01:25]  Oh, my God.
[00:01:26]  Where am I going with that?
[00:01:27]  I don't know.
[00:01:28]  Hello.
[00:01:28]  Is Lilith Fair an actual person?
[00:01:30]  No, no.
[00:01:31]  It was the Lilith Fair.
[00:01:32]  It was just the name of the fair.
[00:01:34]  I thought that was like bra.
[00:01:37]  I thought that was like a Kate.
[00:01:38]  What's the shit?
[00:01:39]  Do you like Kate some?
[00:01:41]  Kate Bush?
[00:01:41]  Kate Bush.
[00:01:43]  I just assumed Lilith Fair was like some ladylike Kate person.
[00:01:46]  Stop saying it like that.
[00:01:47]  It's Lilith Fair.
[00:01:48]  Lilith Fair.
[00:01:50]  Oh, my God.
[00:01:50]  Lilith Fair.
[00:01:52]  Yeah.
[00:01:52]  Hello, everyone.
[00:01:53]  I'm Liz.
[00:01:54]  I almost said I'm Lilith Fair.
[00:01:57]  Yo, what up?
[00:01:58]  I'm Brace.
[00:01:59]  Yo.
[00:02:00]  Hey, what's up?
[00:02:01]  No, I am, yeah, I'm just, I'm Brace.
[00:02:05]  With us here.
[00:02:06]  No, we have our producer, Jon Chomsky, here.
[00:02:09]  I was just going to say that, but you are listening to TrueNAN.
[00:02:12]  And like we said in the previous episode, which actually, spoiler alert, was just a couple of minutes ago that we recorded that very statement.
[00:02:20]  We have been podcasting for three hours because we are giving you what the people want, which is everything you wanted to know about Ukraine and Russia, but we're too bored and stupid to ask.
[00:02:33]  Also, Liz, it's been technically almost four hours.
[00:02:36]  Well, let's get to it.
[00:02:50]  Hello and welcome to the Jamestown Foundation's Understanding the World podcast.
[00:02:58]  We have with us today here Deputy Undersecretary of State for Namibia, Liz Franczak.
[00:03:05]  And of course, we have with us today Lord of the Cossack host, Mark Ames.

=== Back And Forth Pro-Russia (03:17) ===

[00:03:11]  We'll be discussing whether the vile Slav should be annihilated.
[00:03:15]  No, let me try that again.
[00:03:17]  No, That's good.
[00:03:18]  That's a kid.
[00:03:20]  That's a kid.
[00:03:20]  All right.
[00:03:21]  All right.
[00:03:22]  Listen, Mark, you know, we talked about Ukraine in the first episode.
[00:03:28]  My question for this one is, it only this.
[00:03:31]  Can I become a Cossack?
[00:03:35]  I'm not sure about that.
[00:03:36]  It's like a state of mind.
[00:03:38]  Yeah.
[00:03:39]  I mean, but do you have horns in your head?
[00:03:41]  If you were to feel the top of your head there, is that good?
[00:03:43]  Because that's what they're going to do.
[00:03:44]  That's bad.
[00:03:44]  I have one, but I got it was like a burning man thing.
[00:03:47]  I just got it put there.
[00:03:49]  I was doing some work with Marilyn Manson, and I can get it taken out.
[00:03:56]  So we left off with the maiden protest where Ukraine were protesting over women in that country being too pretty.
[00:04:04]  I was like, what?
[00:04:07]  Yeah, I mean, it was kind of odd for us to, we were saying in our little break that it was a little abrupt for us to end right at the kind of like the, I don't know, the like peak of Maidan and this kind of big war is about to break out or, you know, spoiler, does break out.
[00:04:26]  But this kind of sets the stage, I think, probably.
[00:04:29]  There's a lot of context that you need for understanding the current quote unquote crisis, if it is a crisis, in Ukraine, Ukraine and Russia, the situation with Ukraine and Russia.
[00:04:41]  Like 2014 and the Maidan revolution, the Medan coup, like really is like crucial, crucial context for understanding like what the fuck is going on right now.
[00:04:56]  And the people that come to power at the behest of the West, at the behest of the West.
[00:05:03]  Rapping Liz, making her come back.
[00:05:06]  Kind of like after this coup.
[00:05:09]  You know, get set into motion.
[00:05:11]  So, okay.
[00:05:13]  Like brutal war, basically civil war breaks out.
[00:05:16]  I don't know, terrorist, civil war, however we want to call it.
[00:05:19]  I think it's a terror.
[00:05:20]  I think it's technically a police action because they say that there's not a civil war.
[00:05:24]  There's just a terrorist zone in the East.
[00:05:27]  I think they called it Ateo, basically anti-terrorist operation.
[00:05:32]  Yes.
[00:05:32]  Yeah, yeah, yeah.
[00:05:33]  And everyone at the time had convinced themselves that there was nothing organic about it, that Russian agents, and again, I'm sure there's a kernel of truth to this.
[00:05:44]  You know, it filtered in, and there were actually no pro-Russian separatists there whatsoever.
[00:05:48]  And everyone just like forgot all history.
[00:05:51]  That's why I kind of wanted to go in the previous episode back and forth to how, like, the pro-Russian, how the country keeps going back and forth between a pro-Russian guy and a Western guy.
[00:06:01]  And the Western people and the pro-Western side never can really handle if the Russian side wins, you know, however they win.
[00:06:10]  They always like have some revolution eventually.
[00:06:13]  Yeah.
[00:06:14]  Well, there's just a strong segment of the Ukrainian people who are very pro-Russia.
[00:06:19]  I mean, it's just, it just is.
[00:06:22]  Yeah.
[00:06:22]  You know, and there's a bigger part that doesn't give a shit and doesn't want problems.

=== Why McFaul Misinterpreted Unity (08:15) ===

[00:06:28]  I'd say that's a much bigger part that just doesn't want problems.
[00:06:32]  Well, you know, their lives have sucked.
[00:06:34]  And they were actually under Yanukovych, despite how unpopular it was, despite how corrupt he was.
[00:06:41]  Incomes were actually going up and they were getting close to where they were in 1990, 91 for the first time.
[00:06:47]  Then this thing happens and it just the floor fell out again.
[00:06:50]  Yeah.
[00:06:51]  You know, because certain types of people love a war and certain types of people benefited from it.
[00:06:58]  And like, you know, we talked about it before.
[00:07:00]  I mean, who backs whether it's a broadly, you know, popular-ish color revolution or a much less popular one, like the Maidan one, who backs it?
[00:07:12]  I mean, who kind of benefits?
[00:07:14]  Oligarchs, oligarchs who want to be connected to international capital, local, like liberal elites in the NGO world and who are queued into that world.
[00:07:26]  And then ultra-nationalist, fascists, whatever you want to call them, who had been built up.
[00:07:30]  And those three groups have benefited the most.
[00:07:33]  And the masses of people there have really suffered.
[00:07:36]  And the country's been like practically depopulated.
[00:07:38]  It really sucks.
[00:07:40]  And then, yeah, and then there are parts like Crimea, definitely, and, you know, parts of Donbass, Donetsk, that are just straight up would have rather been with Russia and have old historic ties with Russia and have seen how wealthy Russia is.
[00:07:55]  You know, there's that line that you see on social media, you see people like former Ambassador McFaul and all these other, you know, disinforium.
[00:08:04]  Ambassador McPhail.
[00:08:05]  Oh, McFuck.
[00:08:06]  You know, I'm sorry.
[00:08:07]  Do you know the McFuck story?
[00:08:09]  No.
[00:08:10]  Wait, say, what is it?
[00:08:13]  Yes, I have to say it.
[00:08:14]  When he was ambassador, he's like trying to show his hip with the liberal kids.
[00:08:17]  And the liberal kids like to, you know, speak in Mott and Russian or like sling a lot, right?
[00:08:23]  But he didn't know it, but he's like, hey, liberal kids, I'm down with you.
[00:08:26]  And I guess he had heard somewhere that Jekaterinburg can be shortened to Joburg, but Job means fuck.
[00:08:34]  So whoever, like, it's probably some Moscow liberal Moscow snobs call you Jekaterinburg Joburg, which just means fuckberg.
[00:08:42]  Yeah.
[00:08:42]  And he's like on Twitter, no, priviet, um, I'm going, yeduv Joburg.
[00:08:48]  Uh, za shtoti.
[00:08:49]  He's like all cheery and happy.
[00:08:50]  He's like golden retriever guy.
[00:08:52]  And everyone's like, some Russian guy's like, T-Sum Joberg McFuck.
[00:08:57]  Like you yourself are fuckberg McFuck.
[00:09:00]  Like everyone just couldn't believe the ambassador had called like the third largest city in the country, Fuckberg.
[00:09:06]  That's like someone being like, like the Chinese ambassador being like, I'm going to Schittsburg this weekend to check out some smokestacks.
[00:09:14]  It's pretty damn funny.
[00:09:16]  So that's that's McFaul.
[00:09:17]  But, you know, these guys, they publish, I mean, they flood the information space with whatever homily of the day is.
[00:09:24]  And one of them is, and you've probably seen this, Putin's not afraid of NATO expansion.
[00:09:29]  What he's afraid of is a thriving democracy on his list.
[00:09:33]  Yes, that just really gets some koi.
[00:09:36]  This is actually a huge, huge, huge, huge talking point with some of the worst motherfuckers on earth is that they always say that Putin's not afraid of NATO expansion.
[00:09:47]  Now, I don't know if they think that Putin's like, I don't know and that it's always like the liberalizing of countries near him.
[00:09:55]  No, he's definitely afraid of NATO expansion.
[00:09:59]  If you look at a map of Russia and then you look at a map of NATO countries, NATO has expanded to the border of, I mean, it's been on the border of Russia since Turkey joined in the 50s, but NATO expanded to the, to the, not just that little border of Russia, the Caucasus down there, but like to the actual border of Russia, you know, in Europe, you know, with the Baltics.
[00:10:21]  And it's like, it's such obvious.
[00:10:22]  No shea's afraid of that.
[00:10:24]  It's like so obviously bullshit.
[00:10:27]  And this isn't just Putin.
[00:10:28]  This is most Russian liberals, I think, don't want.
[00:10:32]  Right.
[00:10:32]  Like they would like to see Ukraine actually be a thriving democracy, but it's not.
[00:10:37]  It's such a shithole that it's turned off a lot of Russian liberals.
[00:10:40]  But they definitely don't want to see Ukraine join NATO and be enemies, a hostile country.
[00:10:44]  America almost started a nuclear fucking war over some missiles stationed in Cuba.
[00:10:50]  And yet we have added socialism.
[00:10:55]  That was it.
[00:10:55]  We were scared of socialism.
[00:10:56]  We were scared of so we were afraid that, you know, I mean, kind of, yeah, but like, we actually were.
[00:11:01]  It is, it is, it's just so ridiculous that like, yeah, like that talking point of he's not afraid of NATO.
[00:11:07]  He's definitely afraid of NATO.
[00:11:09]  It's, it's not just, it's not, I, I mean, fear, maybe, but also it's, it's like, uh, there's a betrayal element there that I want to talk about because this is like a really important context to understand, which is that the West.
[00:11:22]  Okay, so we have to go back a little bit.
[00:11:24]  Yes.
[00:11:25]  But during the talks about the unification of Germany, right?
[00:11:28]  So this is free.
[00:11:30]  Yeah, it shouldn't have happened.
[00:11:32]  But this is, you know, before the fall of the Soviet Union.
[00:11:35]  So, you know, there's all these, you know, all these kind of, you know, big diplomatic talks about we want to unify Germany.
[00:11:43]  You know, how is this going to happen?
[00:11:45]  And we want Germany and NATO.
[00:11:46]  We want to unify Germany and NATO.
[00:11:48]  And basically the Soviet Union, you know, what, Gorbachev at the time is like, okay, we will agree to that if we have assurances that NATO will not expand to the east, right?
[00:12:03]  That this is like the last stand.
[00:12:05]  And I mean, this is like, you know, this isn't just a wink.
[00:12:08]  It's not just that the West gives them a wink wink.
[00:12:10]  Like this was like assured from Bush to James Baker.
[00:12:14]  Baker.
[00:12:15]  Not one inch.
[00:12:17]  Not one inch.
[00:12:17]  Yeah.
[00:12:18]  Genscher, who is the, at the time, the vice chancellor of Germany, he literally said, this is a quote.
[00:12:22]  This back in 2017, a bunch of documents were declassified that were kind of had all these notes detailing this process and the unification of Germany and the, you know, its ascent into NATO.
[00:12:37]  And this was a quote from Genscher at the time, quote, the Russians must have some assurance that if, for example, the Polish government left the Warsaw Pact one day, they would not join NATO the next.
[00:12:49]  Now, that's quite literally what happened.
[00:12:51]  Well, it was more than one day.
[00:12:53]  I mean, but yeah.
[00:12:54]  Yeah, I mean, that's the insane thing.
[00:12:57]  But the problem is here is that all of the Americans basically began denying this very quickly.
[00:13:04]  Yeah, very quickly.
[00:13:05]  And it never happened.
[00:13:06]  Yeah.
[00:13:07]  And it was just, I mean, yeah, I mean, it's not just that it happened.
[00:13:11]  I mean, it happened like for months and by multiple, multiple people giving the Germans, I mean, excuse me, the Russians and the Soviets like explicit assurance.
[00:13:21]  And it's the only, it was the only reason they agreed to unify Germany.
[00:13:25]  Right.
[00:13:26]  And so the 350,000 troops in Germany.
[00:13:30]  Yes.
[00:13:31]  At the time.
[00:13:32]  You know, and I look, I'm one of the benefits, if you can call that, of being old is that, you know, I remember this stuff.
[00:13:39]  It was, it was so out in the open at the time in sort of news popular culture.
[00:13:45]  We're giving them assurances, NATO's not going to expand east.
[00:13:48]  Like you have to start editing your own memory of what actually happened to believe it.
[00:13:54]  And it's pretty scary.
[00:13:55]  Well, you'll find a lot in the American diplomatic establishment now who say that that did not happen.
[00:14:01]  These are all misinterpretations of like offhanded comments or something like that, which is absolutely ridiculous because this would be at the forefront of these negotiations.
[00:14:11]  I mean, not that Gorbachev, as we said, was a very smart guy.
[00:14:14]  He was still.
[00:14:15]  He was ready to give everything away.
[00:14:17]  He really was.
[00:14:18]  And in fact, I think it was more the West, Baker and Genshin and Colin Bush and some of them assuring Gorbachev than Gorbachev himself, who was almost too shy to demand it.
[00:14:32]  So they were like, they were saying the things they knew Gorbachev needed to hear.
[00:14:36]  And then Gorbachev would then be able to tell this over and over to his generals and so on that it's okay.
[00:14:41]  But yeah, it's a joke.

=== Russian Military Might (15:42) ===

[00:14:44]  Yeah.
[00:14:44]  So it's like a, you know, it's not just that like, because we can, I mean, we can talk about military stuff later, but like, I don't think it's just like fear of NATO being on the border.
[00:14:53]  Although, yeah, you don't want those military, I mean, imagine if Russia was doing military exercises in Canada.
[00:14:57]  It would be fucking, it would be, I mean, it would be chaos in America.
[00:15:02]  It would.
[00:15:03]  And so that's been going on for decades, right?
[00:15:05]  For Russia, or, you know, a decade or so.
[00:15:08]  And, but it's like a deep betrayal.
[00:15:10]  And I think that this might be just, you know, before we get into kind of post-Maidan Ukrainian history leading up to what's going on today, like a good pause to talk a little bit about Putin, because not to get like, I don't know, I think it sounds like really like dorky, like an international relations person being like the mind of the Eastern, you know, I don't mean other things.
[00:15:34]  Yeah, when you look into his eyes, do you see his soul?
[00:15:38]  He's gay, right?
[00:15:39]  Yes.
[00:15:40]  I mean, yeah.
[00:15:42]  But I do think that the Western betrayal of Russia like plays so much into his orientation towards America and the West and the European and the continent, you know, to get all, you know, fancy international relations.
[00:15:58]  We'll call it the continent.
[00:16:00]  But so you have this, and you know, and Mark, when you were on the show last time, we spent so much time talking about the destruction of Russia by the West in the late 90s.
[00:16:11]  And this is when, I mean, that was Putin's time, right?
[00:16:14]  And so you have this like very like, you know, intense military, like diplomatic, international diplomatic betrayal.
[00:16:25]  And you have to, people have to understand that like Russia, the Soviet Union is a fucking power player, right?
[00:16:32]  Absolutely.
[00:16:32]  Like, it's, you know, the West treats Russia after the fall of the Soviet Union as its little plaything, as a fucking, like, like a joke, as a toy.
[00:16:45]  Yep.
[00:16:46]  And, you know, after the market crashes in the late 90s and the whole country is fucking gutted and the ruble is decimated and Russia really has to rebuild itself and it has in very interesting ways.
[00:16:59]  What Putin has done, some really, you know, pretty wild stuff.
[00:17:05]  You know, it was like so much of it is about deep, deep Russian slash Soviet pride in country and history.
[00:17:14]  And the Russians are very proud.
[00:17:16]  I mean, you hear it when you hear Russian diplomats talking about how angry it makes them the way Americans talk about World War II.
[00:17:23]  I mean, you hear it over and over again on any kind of hol like any kind of World War II memorial, like where Russians speak, they always hit the talking point that the Americans teach that the Russians were not involved in the liberation of Europe.
[00:17:38]  And like, it is like a deep betrayal, right?
[00:17:41]  This is a very, very old, old country with a very, very rich history.
[00:17:47]  I mean, fucking millions of people died in World War II.
[00:17:50]  It's such a horrible slap in the face with the West, how the West acts to this country.
[00:17:54]  And so their reneging on the play, the pledge about NATO not expanding, coupled with the way that they just fucking destroyed Russia after the fall, after the Union fell, is like, I mean, it explains so much about the psychology behind their orientation towards the West.
[00:18:17]  Yeah.
[00:18:18]  And Putin would have that wound and memory pretty raw because as we said, you know, he came up in the 90s, his whole rise to power.
[00:18:26]  And it wasn't like a straight line.
[00:18:29]  Rise to power was witnessing it, being part of it, and understanding the weak, you know, what weakness really means.
[00:18:38]  Yeah.
[00:18:38]  And the U.S. took full advantage of its absolute dominant place in the relationship in every way possible.
[00:18:50]  You know, NATO enlargement was, if you go back through the record, even sort of through the kind of establishment record of should we or should we not expand NATO, it was, it was debated a lot.
[00:19:01]  There were even in the U.S. In the U.S., I mean, yeah, of course, there were generals against it.
[00:19:05]  Who were like, don't do this.
[00:19:07]  I mean, Kennan was against it.
[00:19:08]  Kissinger, I believe, was against it.
[00:19:10]  The thing is, even for just basic reasons of like logistics and overstretching, because NATO is America in large part and like overstretching America's commitments.
[00:19:22]  I mean, it's a very real thing.
[00:19:23]  Like even just taking from the American point of view, it's not a great idea.
[00:19:28]  I mean, like the New York Times and the kind of the liberal part of the establishment, they sort of couldn't believe that we'd be that much of dicks.
[00:19:37]  Really, like you can even see some editorials.
[00:19:40]  And there was a time when the New York Times, because they just, it seemed so much like there was end of history and America was going to fully dominate for at least 100 years.
[00:19:49]  And Russia was such a basket case.
[00:19:51]  And that must mean it's forever going to be a basket case.
[00:19:55]  And they did even some, you know, some investigative articles on it.
[00:19:57]  I mean, the guy who was in charge of pushing for NATO expansion, like the sort of the lobbying effort for it, was a Republican operative named Bruce Jackson, who was also like a Lockheed executive.
[00:20:12]  You may remember Bruce Jackson led, it was like the Committee to Liberate Iraq in the early 2000s.
[00:20:17]  I mean, he was like the guy that set it up and the chairman of it.
[00:20:20]  He's the guy that, you know, set up the committee to expand NATO, whatever the hell it was called.
[00:20:25]  I mean, he was the major player.
[00:20:27]  And it wasn't, it was, you know, it's not like there were street protests in America over it.
[00:20:33]  I just think people kind of thought, well, that would be a dickish move, but whatever.
[00:20:36]  What are the consequences?
[00:20:37]  You know, what's Russia going to do?
[00:20:39]  That was kind of the attitude.
[00:20:40]  And it happened and it humiliated Russia a lot.
[00:20:43]  Even Yeltsin, who was, you know, our asset was pissed.
[00:20:47]  Humiliated man to begin with.
[00:20:49]  Yes, very much the insulted and humiliated or whatever the Dostoevsky book is.
[00:20:53]  But the event that I think really galvanized that and changed things forever from the Russian side, for Americans, seen much differently, was that NATO was expanded and almost at the same time, you know, and then it was formalized.
[00:21:12]  And almost at the same time, they started this defensive, which is a defensive organization.
[00:21:18]  Yes.
[00:21:19]  Bombed an independent sovereign country, Serbia, and carved out a new nation out of it.
[00:21:26]  Right.
[00:21:27]  And, you know, we can say all kinds of bad things about Milosevic and it's true and, you know, what the Kosovans are going through, whatever.
[00:21:34]  But this was an ally of Russia's.
[00:21:37]  The U.S. has any number of human rights abusing dictator bad people, you know, as allies that we sell weapons to.
[00:21:45]  So that's not the principle here.
[00:21:46]  The principle was NATO needs a mission and its mission, you know, and then they gave it a mission and it went and it attacked and destroyed one of Russia's last friends without Russian input.
[00:21:59]  They tried stopping it and they couldn't.
[00:22:01]  We were just like, you're not a player here.
[00:22:03]  We give you IMF loans and we let you steal all your money and park it in our bank.
[00:22:08]  Shut up.
[00:22:08]  They couldn't do anything.
[00:22:10]  And I think, you know, one thing Putin learned from that, I mean, there's an argument made by some people, especially some people in kind of the spook community that that war led to an actual kind of intelligence community coup in Russia.
[00:22:26]  I mean, Yeltsin got rid of it.
[00:22:28]  I don't think that's necessarily true, but it's essentially like a coup.
[00:22:33]  After that, there was just no argument anymore within Russia.
[00:22:36]  It was, I mean, even like totally pro-Western people were just so shocked that the worst things that the nationalists and the extreme left and right were saying in Russia about NATO and about the West turned out to be truer than they could have imagined.
[00:22:50]  Like it was like bombing, you know, it would be like us being weak and then Russia bombed.
[00:22:56]  What's the closest country to the U.S.?
[00:22:58]  Israel?
[00:22:59]  Or Canada?
[00:23:00]  I don't know.
[00:23:00]  You know, one of those two.
[00:23:02]  And that moment, like Putin and not just Putin, but everybody in that kind of elite understood either we're complete, either we're just like totally fucked as a country and that's that, you know, or if you want to advance any of your, ultimately, you can't even advance even your own personal interests much without just, you just can't do anything.
[00:23:26]  And they realized that they needed to become powerful.
[00:23:30]  They couldn't do anything.
[00:23:31]  They had to shut up.
[00:23:32]  So like when the U.S. in 2001, We asked for, you know, over like base rights in Central Asia and asked Putin, is that cool?
[00:23:43]  And he's like, yeah.
[00:23:43]  And then we said about six months later, you know, we're going to stay here.
[00:23:46]  And then like six months after that, we decided we were going to put green berets right on Georgia on the border with Russia.
[00:23:52]  And it's just like, and Putin didn't say much about it because they were weak.
[00:23:56]  Yeah.
[00:23:57]  And they knew they had to actually get stronger if you ever want to do anything.
[00:24:01]  And they have.
[00:24:02]  I mean, that's like that's hard to deal with.
[00:24:05]  Talking about American propaganda, I think, you know, people listening who maybe haven't, you know, read about a lot of this stuff or don't know a lot of this history, even recent history, like would be shocked to hear, maybe.
[00:24:17]  But like Russia is a very, you mentioned wealthy.
[00:24:20]  They're very wealthy, very, I mean, they have an insane, high in-demand exports.
[00:24:30]  They manufacture almost everything for themselves, for their people.
[00:24:33]  They have massive currency reserves, massive gold reserves.
[00:24:38]  So right now, for example, like, you know, the market is like not doing so well in Russia, but that's okay.
[00:24:43]  They can, they can, they can do a lot.
[00:24:45]  The central bank can do a lot because they, they have these massive currency reserves.
[00:24:50]  They don't, they can devalue their currency if they need to.
[00:24:52]  They can make a lot of moves that other countries can't.
[00:24:55]  They have their military, which we can talk about, is quite strong.
[00:25:00]  The, you know, it's very different from the 2001 that you're saying, Putin saying we're not strong, we can't say no to the U.S. moving in and building these bases or having these presidences.
[00:25:12]  Like the Russian military has made incredible advancements in technology and different, they have a very different kind of, at least my understanding, a very different kind of strategic outlook and different kind of approach to war than the U.S. and kind of like a different set of generals and which we don't have to get into in ideology.
[00:25:34]  He just wants to invade everybody and assume everything will go well.
[00:25:38]  Well, there was also, there was a major Russian reorganization of their military in 2000.
[00:25:42]  I mean, I don't, the Russian military was pretty, I mean, as we can see, Ukraine shape in the 90s.
[00:25:47]  Yeah, like Ukraine's military has still like not really reformed enough, but like they were basically along old Soviet lines, which was not like, it was not conducive to modern warfare.
[00:25:58]  And they did a lot of reorganizations after Georgia in 08.
[00:26:03]  Yeah.
[00:26:03]  Right.
[00:26:04]  But I always like to say that the American military is basically like muscle bound, where it's like a big, strong, like the Predator drone is such a like perfect symbol of like the American military, which is like, it's expensive.
[00:26:19]  It's flashy.
[00:26:20]  It looks great on YouTube.
[00:26:23]  And, but it's like lumbering and can get shot down really easily.
[00:26:27]  You know what I mean?
[00:26:28]  And like for like a year, it looks like the greatest new technology, but it like can be pretty easily like thwarted and weaponized back against the US very easily and has been, you know, kind of since its debut.
[00:26:43]  And the Russian military and their approach is like, I would say, at least from what I've read, way more dynamic, a lot more nimble.
[00:26:50]  It has a very different approach, at least in terms of how it would look at.
[00:26:56]  A possible, like you know, war with the Us, which hopefully never, ever happens.
[00:27:02]  I mean one thing to say about the Russian military too.
[00:27:05]  Look they, they were in the doldrums in the 90s, massively corrupt, lost in the first Chechen war.
[00:27:12]  The Chechens genuine, you know you don't want to get all orientalists and so on, but I think most Chechens would agree they, they're genuinely amazing fighters and they had help uh, Turkish intelligence, i'm sure Qatar Saudis, and you know, their buddies in Langley, i'm sure, gave them a little like I know some stories but for another episode um, and they lost the first one badly yeah, and but they also learned a lot.
[00:27:41]  Because if you don't die after a war like that completely, you know you've learned a lot.
[00:27:45]  You've trained against the fiercest fighters, pound for pound in the world.
[00:27:50]  And the second one, the second War, you know, leaving aside all the issues of human rights and who deserves sovereignty and so on, I mean I have a huge amount of respect for, for Chechens um, after everything i've seen but like nevertheless, there's no doubt the Russians were way smarter in the second war and they they, they won ugly um, but they, you know, they learned a lot.
[00:28:15]  It was clear, and I think that's one of the things, that kind of one of the first things that kind of scared the West about the Putin led Putin didn't drink.
[00:28:23]  You know, that was the first problem.
[00:28:24]  And the second problem is like wait, he did this war rather smartly.
[00:28:28]  Like yeah, under Yeltsin they sent all of their armored personnel carriers right into downtown Grozny and yeah, all of a sudden just just slaughtered all of them with Rbs and their, their armored personnel carriers are not um, let's just say they're not, they're not.
[00:28:45]  They don't have the same designer as their tanks.
[00:28:47]  They're not quite as good.
[00:28:48]  The Bmp is a pretty rough vehicle.
[00:28:50]  Yeah yeah, i've actually driven In one through Georgia during that war, when I reported, it was bumpy.
[00:28:56]  It was probably a better one, but yeah, you used the turret of one, but it wasn't on one.
[00:29:00]  It was on a different kind, it was been put on a different vehicle.
[00:29:04]  But yeah, I mean, the Russians, like the thing is, like, they are not afraid to fight.
[00:29:10]  They're not afraid to win dirty.
[00:29:11]  They'll do it.
[00:29:12]  You know what I mean?
[00:29:13]  Like, they, they will, um, I mean, America will too, but there's this sort of America will absolutely like they'll fight as dirty as you can get.
[00:29:22]  Um, but the Russians, I think, do it uh more effectively.
[00:29:25]  Yeah, because they have, they don't have a, you know, America is like the profligate billionaire's junkie son, you know?
[00:29:34]  I mean, it just keeps who just keeps blowing everything, but the money, the family still has tons of money to blow.
[00:29:40]  So that is his son that he had with, you know, a hook or something was also going to get a bunch of money and blow that.
[00:29:46]  And so we can still, exactly.
[00:29:50]  You know, eventually, I mean, the decline is, it's like this cliche thing and it's very real too.
[00:29:57]  You know, eventually it's going to mean less and less and less power.
[00:30:00]  But Russia got the current crop of leaders like came up at a time when Russian power was at its absolute nadir.
[00:30:08]  So they have to be careful, really careful, and not stupid and profligate about how they spend their, expend their like hard power, especially.
[00:30:17]  Like the, you know, with Syria, they waited and waited and waited until it was an absolutely opportune moment.
[00:30:22]  And so they, they did the best they could do with their circumstances.

=== Russia's Cautionary Power Play (14:30) ===

[00:30:26]  And yeah, I think I got to admit, I have a hard time still wrapping my head around the fact that the Russia of today is nothing at all like the Russia of the 90s.
[00:30:36]  Yeah.
[00:30:37]  Like, I know it.
[00:30:37]  I get it.
[00:30:38]  I've seen, I mean, Russia looks so much different and looks so much better.
[00:30:42]  And that's because that's because one thing Putin did for all the corruption, whatever, the difference is they make he has made rich people pay taxes.
[00:30:52]  And that's kind of the difference between a state that works and one that doesn't.
[00:30:55]  If rich people don't pay taxes, everything falls apart.
[00:30:58]  If they do pay taxes, you can build shit.
[00:31:01]  And so, yeah, no, I agree.
[00:31:04]  It's a different military.
[00:31:05]  And I think that people in Washington, in think tank land, in foreign policy land, they just can't accept it.
[00:31:15]  They can't accept it at all.
[00:31:17]  You know, it's like what Obama said when he was all angry about the whole, when he kind of launched Russia Gate just before he left office.
[00:31:25]  Yeah.
[00:31:25]  And he said, what do the Russians make?
[00:31:27]  You know, Russia's a pathetic country.
[00:31:28]  They just make Kalashnikovs and vodka.
[00:31:31]  And that's one of the two of the most popular things in the world.
[00:31:34]  Moron, Kalashnikovs, and Vod.
[00:31:37]  You know, people do, no one's drinking a fucking fat tire beer at 6 a.m.
[00:31:43]  They're drinking vodka.
[00:31:45]  A child isn't shooting.
[00:31:46]  His child isn't shooting like a Knight's Armament AR.
[00:31:49]  They're shooting an AK.
[00:31:51]  Popular.
[00:31:52]  But as a Russian hearing that, imagine how insulted you would be for like, for Putin to hear that from Obama.
[00:31:59]  I mean again, this is why Trump was his match, because he doesn't drink as well, so neither of them.
[00:32:03]  It's like oh, it's a great yeah, just kidding, just kidding, yeah.
[00:32:08]  But it's like the the yeah, the yeah.
[00:32:12]  They're trying to outgate each other.
[00:32:14]  Oh no, I don't do coke either.
[00:32:16]  I well, I never done ecstasy um, but you know, it's like an insult, like that, after all of the that they've been builting, building over the, you know, for the past, like two decades, and trying to rebuild their country after we destroyed their country and their economy, it's just like it's unacceptable.
[00:32:34]  And so when you read kind of now, I mean we need to get back to, we need to kind of flip back now to Ukraine um, before we kind of catch up to present day.
[00:32:43]  But I will say, when you read statements from guys like Lavrov or you read Putin's statements, like you see the?
[00:32:51]  Um, the absolute disdain for the wet.
[00:32:56]  But it's not just disdain, it's like they do not respect America.
[00:33:00]  Yes, they respect America for as much as they have to at the un to get by, but they do.
[00:33:07]  There is nothing about American culture, there's nothing about American diplomats, there's nothing about American education or, like the American like way of life, like the American bullshit doesn't.
[00:33:20]  Yeah, like there's nothing about any kind which they view America as like a young, like adolescent, like just child, like nation, and they don't respect it, I think.
[00:33:32]  And I think they also view America as um in denial wrong yeah absolutely, I mean just in denial, and at some points it's sort of like, how do we deal with this?
[00:33:41]  Yeah, you know, because it's also, I mean, America is dangerous.
[00:33:44]  America is very powerful, has all this weapons, military weapons some don't fly, but you know, whatever.
[00:33:51]  Another trillion yeah, let's really listen.
[00:33:53]  Major financial weapons yes exactly, exactly.
[00:33:56]  So we have all these weapons and it is a declining power and it is, you know, it is dangerous, especially when you have a uh, a ruling elite that just cannot and will not come to grips with that.
[00:34:10]  So they're going to make some stupid choices and stupid decisions and policies, like What they've done in Ukraine, for example, which I mean, I mean, I'm not going to give it back.
[00:34:20]  Look at that.
[00:34:20]  This is a listen, you know, as a podcaster, in all seriousness.
[00:34:25]  I just want to say, anyway.
[00:34:27]  Yeah.
[00:34:28]  So that's to say, all right.
[00:34:30]  So Russia has bases in Ukraine.
[00:34:33]  By the time the Maidan revolution happens, so you guys might know there's this little fucking sea called the Black Sea right up there above Turkey.
[00:34:43]  I don't know who made this sea totally pointless sea because unless you're selling your little tramp freighter from Istanbul to Odessa, no reason for it.
[00:34:52]  They could just pave it over and put a whole new country.
[00:34:55]  Russia has bases on that sea.
[00:34:57]  That gives them access to the Mediterranean.
[00:35:01]  But, you know, the Black Sea is a pretty big area in its own right.
[00:35:05]  And they're leasing this naval base.
[00:35:07]  They've been leasing this naval base.
[00:35:08]  They just re-signed a contract.
[00:35:10]  So Maidan happens.
[00:35:12]  And there is a lot of questions about what is going to happen with these bases on the Black Sea.
[00:35:19]  Honestly, if you ask me, I haven't seen anybody look into this too much.
[00:35:25]  But if you ask me, I think the nationalists and even the West understood.
[00:35:31]  I don't think they understood.
[00:35:32]  Okay.
[00:35:32]  They thought that when this revolution happened, there was a lot of gloating, open gloating by the neocon crowd.
[00:35:40]  I think by the head of the NED, if I remember right, by like the Stratford crowd.
[00:35:46]  They're like, that's it.
[00:35:47]  Russia's done.
[00:35:48]  Yeah.
[00:35:49]  And then Putin took Crimea.
[00:35:52]  And, you know, so a lot of people actually didn't think about that.
[00:35:55]  I think they thought that was going to be an ongoing point of contention that was going to be in Russia.
[00:36:00]  Like some diplomatic, like, you know, pawn to be thrown back and like, yeah, subversion and this and that.
[00:36:06]  It was just going to go on and on and on.
[00:36:07]  They just took it because it was, and again, they're not stupid.
[00:36:10]  They didn't try and take like all this talk that's been going on here in the last two months of a World War II style invasion and installing a puppet like the Nazis would do is ridiculous.
[00:36:24]  That anyone would believe that.
[00:36:26]  It's unbelievable.
[00:36:28]  They're not fucking stupid like we are and they can't afford to be.
[00:36:32]  That would be, it would be one of the most insane things.
[00:36:35]  If it happens, I will, no, I'm not going to, no, because that means I'll make it happen.
[00:36:41]  It just won't.
[00:36:41]  It won't happen.
[00:36:42]  It just won't happen.
[00:36:43]  It won't happen.
[00:36:43]  It's not even in the it would be too, it would make Afghanistan look like, I don't know, what, what doesn't look like everything kind of looks like Afghanistan.
[00:36:52]  I'm trying to think of a military Iraq.
[00:36:56]  Like they probably would sweep in at first.
[00:36:59]  All the bitch Nazis would go running, you know, to Galicia.
[00:37:03]  And then they'd start coming back.
[00:37:05]  And you'd have, you know, all these, we have endless stories about these Ukrainian oath keepers and their sniper rifles.
[00:37:11]  Exactly.
[00:37:11]  I mean, it would be just a civil war that Russia would have to, it would just be another Afghanistan, Iraq.
[00:37:17]  It would be insane for them to do absurd things on their border.
[00:37:21]  Yeah, no, no, no.
[00:37:22]  Why would they pin?
[00:37:23]  I mean, actually, it's something we would probably want, which is why you see the West just slawing.
[00:37:28]  That's what I think they want them to do though.
[00:37:30]  Totally.
[00:37:30]  Clearly.
[00:37:31]  So before we get into today, back in 2014, he takes Crimea.
[00:37:56]  Poroshenko's elected in Ukraine, right?
[00:37:59]  There's all these, we should talk about the hunt of the players in Ukraine a little bit.
[00:38:04]  There's like, you know, a massive kind of, let's say, glow up for the oligarch community in this moment.
[00:38:13]  Excuse me.
[00:38:14]  You mean the founders of the nation, the liberal Democrats that are their answer to George Washington?
[00:38:21]  No, yeah.
[00:38:21]  Yeah, yeah.
[00:38:22]  And just some of the like roughest dudes are having the best time of their life.
[00:38:27]  And really, like, you know, selling off.
[00:38:29]  Like I said, this is when the mass sell-off begins, or not begins, but really, you know, crescendos in Ukraine.
[00:38:36]  Yeah, they try to.
[00:38:36]  Yeah, farmland, you know, trying again.
[00:38:39]  Well, they can't still trying to get those laws passed with heavy U.S. and EU backing.
[00:38:44]  We're still having a hard time with it.
[00:38:45]  Even Zelensky, when he first took over, tried.
[00:38:48]  The first thing he tried to do was privatize land in the West.
[00:38:51]  And the Ukrainians are like, yeah, yeah, yeah, we want to be free market.
[00:38:55]  We want to be there, but like, but, you know, blood and soil.
[00:38:58]  Like, well, you're going to sell my blood next.
[00:39:01]  Yeah.
[00:39:01]  Jew Zelensky Jew, you know?
[00:39:03]  So they're kind of like, they're a little freaked out about it.
[00:39:06]  But they're trying to, and they're like pilot programs and all this stuff.
[00:39:10]  And the West definitely wants it.
[00:39:12]  But I would say this about also to keep in mind about what happened in like March, April, whatever of 2014, right after the Maidan coup and the new people took over.
[00:39:23]  So yeah, they put oligarchs as governors that were just installed as governors, like Ihor Ihor Kalamoisky, probably the most famous one.
[00:39:31]  He actually eventually put Zelensky in power.
[00:39:34]  He's a dual citizen, I believe.
[00:39:36]  Brace, can you name the country that he's a dual citizen of?
[00:39:40]  You remember the tribe?
[00:39:41]  Come on.
[00:39:42]  I know it.
[00:39:42]  I know.
[00:39:43]  What other country are people fucking dual citizens of, dude?
[00:39:46]  I know.
[00:39:46]  I mean, there's only one country that anyone ever, no one's like, oh, yeah, he's a dual citizen of, you know, Canada and fucking Botswana.
[00:39:56]  No, duh, duh.
[00:39:58]  Yeah.
[00:39:59]  But that doesn't mean anything.
[00:40:01]  No, it doesn't, except for the fact that he also financed a lot of the Nazi militia groups.
[00:40:08]  Well, here, Israel themselves.
[00:40:11]  I'm sorry.
[00:40:11]  Some of these Nazi militants have fucking Tavor rifles.
[00:40:16]  The Israeli army rifle.
[00:40:18]  Like, it's not like the Israel does not give a fuck.
[00:40:21]  I think, what was it?
[00:40:22]  I think it was the right sector, dude, who literally met with Israel's foreign, like, ambassador to Ukraine to be like, oh, no, dude, we don't, what do you don't hate Jews?
[00:40:30]  Yeah, we're pro-Jewish.
[00:40:31]  That's all they say.
[00:40:32]  Oh, no, we're pro-Jewish.
[00:40:33]  It's only gypsies we hate.
[00:40:34]  And the thing is, it's true.
[00:40:35]  Like, they can drop these things.
[00:40:37]  I mean, I still wouldn't want to be a Jew in Ukraine, but like, I don't think that hating Jews is the number one thing.
[00:40:42]  I think it's an important part of their cultural heritage.
[00:40:45]  I don't think it's like for a lot of these groups, like the most important thing.
[00:40:49]  No, like they hate Russians.
[00:40:51]  They hate gypsies.
[00:40:52]  They might hate the idea of the international Jew, even as they take Monica.
[00:40:56]  Like a globalist.
[00:40:57]  Yeah, the globalists, like this vague sort of like other out there.
[00:41:02]  But, but even they, it's not, yeah, exactly.
[00:41:06]  I don't think it's like that's a big mistake that people make in thinking that they're exactly like the Nazis or whatever in the 40s.
[00:41:13]  No, it's different.
[00:41:14]  Right.
[00:41:14]  It's not unless you're a gypsy.
[00:41:16]  The single wedge issue.
[00:41:18]  But they all know.
[00:41:19]  And it's so open, you know, in other forums when it's like they're not just talking to, I don't know, Western journalists or the Israeli ambassador.
[00:41:27]  It's like, you know, those kikes, blah, blah, blah.
[00:41:30]  The kikes do you know, telling you jokes, like anti-Semitic jokes.
[00:41:33]  Yeah.
[00:41:33]  Oh, no.
[00:41:34]  I mean, they have Hitler on the t-shirt a lot of the time, you know, but they're like, again, it was mostly the gypsy thing we like.
[00:41:40]  So, anyway, so these guys are put in charge of especially the provinces that are closer to the Donbass or, you know, over the Donbass area.
[00:41:50]  And then there is like unrest in the pro-Russian regions, especially in also in Kharkov, but especially in Luhansk and Donetsk.
[00:42:00]  And so then the coup government sends in the Ukrainian army.
[00:42:06]  And you could see, like, you go back to the record and you'd see these Russian-speaking, whatever you call it.
[00:42:12]  I mean, they're Ukrainians, but they're Russian-speaking, right?
[00:42:14]  Because it's a multi-ethnic country lying on the ground to keep the Ukrainian troops from coming into their village, to keep the APCs from going into their village.
[00:42:25]  And they wouldn't run them over.
[00:42:27]  And this is an extremely demoralized army.
[00:42:30]  It's still very demoralized.
[00:42:32]  Yes.
[00:42:32]  These are recruits.
[00:42:34]  And these were not people fired up by murderous hatred of anybody who speaks Russian or has Russian blood, which is destroying the white race.
[00:42:45]  These were just regular recruits.
[00:42:47]  So they were eventually pulled out.
[00:42:49]  And the separatists were able to start setting up kind of separate structures a bit there with Russian help.
[00:42:55]  There's no doubt.
[00:42:57]  And then who did they send in?
[00:42:59]  And this is why they did it.
[00:43:00]  They sent in the fucking volunteer battalions, as they're called.
[00:43:04]  Exactly.
[00:43:04]  And that's the regional battalions.
[00:43:07]  Yeah.
[00:43:07]  Yeah.
[00:43:08]  NKA Nazis.
[00:43:09]  Yes.
[00:43:09]  Nazis.
[00:43:10]  Because Nazis will kill, they would have run them over without even thinking twice about it.
[00:43:16]  And that's the thing.
[00:43:17]  In fact, if you watch, I was watching a documentary about the battle of the second battle of Donetsk Airport.
[00:43:23]  And you see these Ukrainian army commanders being like, yeah, we're really lucky that we had these ideological groups.
[00:43:31]  And you know, they name them.
[00:43:32]  Let's talk about rights, Azov, and right sector because those people were actually like fired up to fight.
[00:43:39]  I mean, to really think about this for a second, I mean, for a lot of these people, I mean, this is, I mean, for your average Ukrainian, the army there, they're asking you to drive an APC into a town in your country, kill the civilians in your country, people who you view very likely as like your fellow countrymen.
[00:43:59]  You know, it is going to, there's going to be a hesitation before you pull that trigger for a lot of these guys who are football hooligans, criminals, and you know, sort of supreme overall, insane, bloodthirsty neo-Nazis.
[00:44:13]  Well, they've been exactly, yeah, totally, yeah.
[00:44:20]  And that's why you start to see them because they're useful, and we're seeing them again all over again.
[00:44:25]  You know, yeah, it's like again, like Syria.
[00:44:28]  You know, I think ideally the West would have liked a bunch of pro-neoliberal, Soros reading fighters to be fighting as a free Syrian army, but who actually fought?
[00:44:39]  It was the craziest, most ideological Salafi Islamists, not like right, not like the neoliberal, educated middle-class types.
[00:44:49]  Yeah, that's who kills.
[00:44:51]  That's who does the dirty shit.
[00:44:54]  So, so that's that's how things got went really ugly.

=== Minsk Ceasefire Breakdown (06:48) ===

[00:44:57]  And my memory of the first part of the war, which ended like that summer, was that, I mean, although Ukraine didn't win, of course, because the pro-Russian Zephyrists did carve out apart, but they, the Ukrainians won some, like they won at Slavyansk, which is a big battle there.
[00:45:16]  Yeah.
[00:45:16]  And they were, they were kind of defeating the pro-Russian rebels for a while.
[00:45:23]  And so then they had like a ceasefire that was backed by Russia, France, Germany, and Ukraine.
[00:45:31]  It was like those four.
[00:45:33]  That's Minsk one.
[00:45:34]  Yeah.
[00:45:34]  And it didn't hold up well.
[00:45:36]  That was like put into effect in the fall.
[00:45:38]  It fell apart widely quickly.
[00:45:40]  Like literally, the ink wasn't dry and people were shooting still.
[00:45:44]  And like the pro-West side, the pro-Ukraine side says, I think a lot of it had to do with Donetsk people still trying to retake the Donetsk airport.
[00:45:53]  That was like its own major battle.
[00:45:55]  And as you said, huge Nazis.
[00:45:57]  And it's like a video game, that one.
[00:45:59]  I mean, it's so funny.
[00:46:00]  It's insane videos from that.
[00:46:02]  Yeah.
[00:46:03]  I know.
[00:46:04]  And that broke out into open warfare.
[00:46:07]  I think the Ukrainians, and Potashenko was president by this point, Parashenko, who was an oligarch, a billionaire, nicknamed Willy Wonka, because a lot of his money was in chocolate and confectionery.
[00:46:18]  He's a chocolate guy, yeah.
[00:46:19]  Yeah.
[00:46:20]  Right.
[00:46:21]  So that second war broke out.
[00:46:23]  And that time, the pro-Russian forces just destroyed the Nazis and whatever the Ukrainians had.
[00:46:31]  And I think that embarrasses them.
[00:46:33]  Yes.
[00:46:33]  Like just in Debaltsevé, including a lot of American mercenaries, these kind of like American, you know, diaspora.
[00:46:40]  The Ukrainian diaspora is like generally a lot more right-wing than everything in Ukraine, except like the craziest people in Lviv.
[00:46:48]  And now they call it Lviv.
[00:46:50]  I call it Lvov because that was his Jewish name or Lemberg, I think.
[00:46:54]  Lemberg.
[00:46:55]  I'm a Lemberg man.
[00:46:56]  I'm a Lemberg man.
[00:46:58]  And just destroyed them and killed a lot.
[00:47:01]  And the state was failing really badly.
[00:47:04]  They were trying to institute, as you said, just radical 90s-style neoliberal reforms.
[00:47:10]  So it was like everything just got hollowed out, gutted.
[00:47:13]  Corruption came back very quickly.
[00:47:16]  And they had to sign a humiliating peace deal.
[00:47:19]  And that's Minsk II.
[00:47:21]  And part of the Minsk II is, I mean, the main part really, I would say, isn't just, you know, ceasefire.
[00:47:28]  You know, the main part, the main bone of contention is that Ukraine would federalize and devolve a lot of local powers to the Luhansk and Donetsk regions so that they would be highly autonomous regions, but they would stay within Ukraine.
[00:47:50]  And Ukraine then would also be able to take over the borders and take control of the borders.
[00:47:56]  And, you know, Ukraine or let's say the West claims or the U.S. Reuters, whatever, claims that the big sticking point is that Russia won't admit it's been backing the separatists.
[00:48:06]  And that's just kind of like, that's just obvious BS.
[00:48:09]  Yeah.
[00:48:09]  Any president who tries to actually implement Minsk II, any Ukrainian president, is going to get shot.
[00:48:19]  That's the thing is, is any actual steps towards devolution in the East there?
[00:48:27]  I mean, you're signing your own fucking deal.
[00:48:29]  It means admitting you lost.
[00:48:30]  Yeah.
[00:48:31]  Exactly.
[00:48:31]  But it's also, I mean, that's sort of the funny sticking point because I believe if that did happen, which I don't think it will be.
[00:48:39]  I think there's, I mean, my best guess is there's going to be a sort of like a Transdnistria type situation for the foreseeable Russian conflict, right?
[00:48:50]  Exactly.
[00:48:50]  But if it does happen, I mean, that is, that will empower, I think, the ultra-nationalists, not only like empower them to, you know, maybe start killing more people, but also, I'm sure, will give them a lot more political power because that is, that is essentially, That's pretty simple.
[00:49:07]  They will.
[00:49:08]  I don't know how successful.
[00:49:09]  It's hard to say.
[00:49:11]  It would turn into civil war there.
[00:49:13]  It would be like, what would happen if Israel started giving up just the occupied territories?
[00:49:18]  Exactly.
[00:49:19]  Civil war.
[00:49:20]  Fire.
[00:49:20]  Yeah.
[00:49:21]  Yeah.
[00:49:21]  There's like recently Danilov, who's the, he's the foreign minister, I think, in Ukraine.
[00:49:27]  He gave this.
[00:49:28]  No, no, no.
[00:49:28]  Danilov is the head of the Security Council.
[00:49:30]  Sorry, head of security.
[00:49:31]  Excuse me.
[00:49:32]  He gave this really bizarre interview in the AP, I think just a couple of days ago or in late January.
[00:49:40]  But he said this quote: the fulfillment of the Minsk agreement means the country's destruction.
[00:49:44]  It's impossible to implement those documents, which is just a really insane admission.
[00:49:49]  Because also, to be clear, like the Minsk agreement was there was like a UN resolution.
[00:49:56]  Like everyone, even the US voted saying that Minsk had to be like ratified.
[00:50:01]  I mean, it's not under the UN, but there was a UN resolution that everyone voted.
[00:50:05]  It was a unanimous resolution that every, you know, every part of Minsk had to be implemented.
[00:50:12]  The OSCE was part of it, which were part of the OSCE.
[00:50:15]  Yeah, no, I, I mean, I was looking back and thinking about Obama again.
[00:50:19]  And I think Obama, because it was under Obama that, you know, Newland got to play and have her color revolution.
[00:50:26]  And then all of a sudden, things went to shit fast.
[00:50:30]  Yeah.
[00:50:30]  I mean, the defense secretary at the time, the hell is his name, Chuck.
[00:50:35]  Oh, God.
[00:50:37]  Anyway, they were just about to implement in February of 2014, like the largest cutback in the Pentagon budget and arms.
[00:50:46]  That's right.
[00:50:46]  And since World War II, the largest one.
[00:50:49]  And that went out the door.
[00:50:50]  And, you know, Obama saw, I bet you Obama was told by the Nulans, you know, Russia can't do it.
[00:50:57]  And these people are for freedom and no one really told them the consequences.
[00:51:00]  Like, suddenly Russia took Crimea.
[00:51:03]  And yeah, you know, you denounce it and so on, but you're not going to go to war for it.
[00:51:07]  And remember, Obama at this point, after Libya, was like, don't do stupid shit, was his one guiding thing.
[00:51:13]  So he was always passive-aggressive.
[00:51:15]  Like, he'll do bad things in Syria, but not all the way.
[00:51:18]  He'll do bad things in Ukraine, but not all the way.
[00:51:20]  Yeah.
[00:51:21]  And he hated it a little bit.
[00:51:23]  Yeah.
[00:51:23]  I mean, that's, it looks like Minsk too, because, you know, the U.S. is always the most powerful force, at least on this side, was like just admitting we ain't going to do anything.
[00:51:33]  And so you need to come to an agreement.
[00:51:35]  And the other thing about Minsk too is not just that it's an admission of defeat, which will piss off every veteran and that country is armed to the teeth and with veterans.
[00:51:44]  It's rough with veterans.

=== Buildup To Tensions (15:42) ===

[00:51:46]  Yes.
[00:51:46]  Like, you know, every fascist revolution.
[00:51:49]  Also, it would mean that Ukraine could never, really could never now like structurally enter NATO because structurally, like power would be so devolved to these regions that were, you know, too, too closely aligned with Russia, even though the country would be whole.
[00:52:08]  Like, it just, it would, it would kill it.
[00:52:10]  They couldn't go into NATO and they shouldn't and they won't.
[00:52:13]  And no one will admit it.
[00:52:14]  But in any event, like we can't say these things.
[00:52:16]  They have to keep the dream alive.
[00:52:18]  Keep the dream alive.
[00:52:19]  Yeah.
[00:52:21]  Well, I mean, so this is, this is, I mean, this is, this sort of brings us.
[00:52:24]  I mean, we've been at the present day for a second, but like, you know, we've got Zelensky here as president.
[00:52:29]  He was sort of elected as, I mean, he's a Russian speaker.
[00:52:32]  He's a Jew.
[00:52:34]  Come on, he's a clown.
[00:52:35]  Yeah, the man.
[00:52:36]  Not to mention that.
[00:52:37]  He's a clown.
[00:52:38]  Yes, he is.
[00:52:39]  He is a clown.
[00:52:40]  He is a.
[00:52:41]  As a former clown, I want to say I'm very happy to see representation on the world stage for former clowns.
[00:52:49]  Well, you know, he was, he was, he actually, I mean, it's a pretty ingenious way of getting elected because he was, he played the president on a kind of comedy television show called Servant of the People.
[00:52:58]  It's on Netflix.
[00:52:59]  The first episode is really good, actually.
[00:53:01]  I don't know if you've seen it.
[00:53:02]  It's really good.
[00:53:03]  Then his, then his political party that he starts is also called Servant of the People.
[00:53:09]  And so all of the advertising and the television show itself, which is a huge popular show by far.
[00:53:16]  Exactly.
[00:53:17]  It's about a guy who's a nobody who kind of like, it's like a very Gogolian kind of story, right?
[00:53:22]  Who just sort of winds up accidentally becoming president of this incredibly corrupt, oligarch-run, dysfunctional country.
[00:53:29]  Exactly.
[00:53:30]  And so, I mean, you couldn't think of a more, I mean, and, you know, if you watch the sort of election videos of him or like on the campaign show, he seems, you know, very earnest and kind of like not really thinking about it.
[00:53:41]  He kind of does.
[00:53:42]  Yeah.
[00:53:42]  Yeah.
[00:53:42]  I think he does too.
[00:53:43]  He's likable.
[00:53:44]  It's hard to tell.
[00:53:44]  Yeah.
[00:53:44]  He's he's eminently likable.
[00:53:46]  He's also much like Putin.
[00:53:47]  He's 5'7.
[00:53:49]  Yeah, I was gonna say slight man.
[00:53:50]  Although I think I honestly, I mean, there's no way that Putin's not, if you're saying 5'7, both of these guys on the internet, talking platforms.
[00:53:58]  5'3.
[00:53:58]  Oh, yeah.
[00:53:59]  Putin wears major lips.
[00:54:01]  Yeah.
[00:54:01]  Yeah.
[00:54:02]  Putin is the size of the famous circus performer Mishu, if you will, which would be about two foot two.
[00:54:10]  But, but yeah, you know, you can't help but, and he's like, you know, we're going to get peace.
[00:54:15]  Like, because that, I mean, that's a, that's a pretty popular notion for a lot of people over there.
[00:54:21]  And then what happens is absolutely none of that.
[00:54:25]  I mean, he, his popularity, which starts out super high, is now, I mean, he makes Joe Biden look like, trying to think of someone who's popular.
[00:54:34]  Franklin Rose, Pamela Anderson.
[00:54:36]  Oh, no, I was just saying popular in general, like someone everyone kind of like likes.
[00:54:41]  But yeah, I guess Franklin.
[00:54:43]  Yeah, Lady Die.
[00:54:44]  Yeah.
[00:54:46]  And it's because not only, I mean, he is, he has managed to piss off kind of inadvertently in some cases, every single constituency which might possibly back him.
[00:54:55]  Yeah.
[00:54:56]  And it is, I mean, from, yeah, he is.
[00:54:58]  It's a shit show.
[00:54:59]  I mean, look, again, we have to go back, you know, this back and forth in these Ukrainian elections, like election, somebody is elected to be pro-Russian, goes the other way, then turns pro-Russian, revolution, turns pro-Russian, revolution.
[00:55:13]  What happened there, Potashchenko, like they even got rid of the hardest core pro-Russian voting regions?
[00:55:20]  I think a lot of nationalists wanted Crimea out, wanted Donetsk out.
[00:55:24]  I mean, I've read their articles.
[00:55:26]  That makes sense.
[00:55:27]  Absolutely.
[00:55:28]  Because they're like, that makes sense.
[00:55:29]  Our problem is they really believe the problem is Russianness.
[00:55:33]  And if we could extirpate, if we could lustration, you know, the whole list.
[00:55:38]  If we could cleanse, these are the words they use.
[00:55:40]  This culture of Russianness, we won't have corruption.
[00:55:44]  We won't have bad presidents.
[00:55:45]  All of our problems are because this Asiatic gene that has infected pure Ukrainians, you know, it's really gross, but that's it.
[00:55:55]  So Potashenko, you know, runs the country with huge Western backing, billions.
[00:56:01]  It's like a Yeltsin thing again.
[00:56:02]  And everything goes to complete shit so that by his, by the 2019 election, even without the pro, the hardest core pro-Russian regions, Zelensky, who campaigns on peace with Russia and let's accommodate the Russians and speaking Russian and so on, which like if you really hated a country, like you didn't want to hear people speaking German or Japanese in World War II in this country, right?
[00:56:28]  I mean, like, if you hated them, you wouldn't even want to hear the language.
[00:56:31]  This guy ran on that language in a historically anti-Semitic country.
[00:56:35]  He's a Jew.
[00:56:36]  And I mean, this is like the most unbelievable rejection of the Maidan revolution you could possibly imagine that Parashenko lost 75% to 25%.
[00:56:47]  Yeah, just humiliation.
[00:56:50]  Humiliation.
[00:56:51]  Nothing like it in Ukrainian history.
[00:56:53]  Like only fixed elections, you know, you have to have a dictator fixing elections.
[00:56:57]  They get that.
[00:56:58]  And what happens?
[00:57:01]  I mean, he's a novice.
[00:57:02]  He had Ihor Kolomoysky backing him.
[00:57:05]  I think the West was always very ambivalent.
[00:57:08]  They didn't know what to do about Zelensky because we talk about democracy and elections and, you know, and this is how we scare Putin by having a real functioning democracy.
[00:57:18]  But he, for his first year, 2019, 2020, held a lot of negotiations with Russia.
[00:57:27]  He was very careful about it.
[00:57:29]  He's an amateur.
[00:57:30]  Yeah.
[00:57:32]  And, you know, civil society groups, including U.S.-backed and a Midiyar-backed groups, when he won after he won, they put out, I could find it somewhere, they put out this big statement that said, basically, if you try to do the Minsk agreement, if you go too far away from us who democratically totally lost and have been rejected, but we have power anyway, there will be another might on Rivers.
[00:57:56]  They were totally open about it, including Western governments.
[00:57:59]  It was fucking crazy.
[00:58:01]  Yeah, and there was also threats like internally.
[00:58:04]  I mean, like, Poroshenko backers and Bandera guys are constantly, I would say, a looming threat for Zelensky for like, you know, then it's just a different type of color revolution that he could encounter.
[00:58:18]  And I, I mean, I feel Brace and I were talking about this like before that we kind of like feel for him a little bit.
[00:58:25]  Totally.
[00:58:25]  Oh, I fully feel for him.
[00:58:27]  Yeah.
[00:58:27]  And like, I think, you know, it's like Trump tried to bully him with the Biden stuff, which is very funny.
[00:58:33]  So mean.
[00:58:33]  So mean.
[00:58:34]  I think that he, I think Zelensky, like kind of like, you know, he's a novice.
[00:58:40]  He's like a bit, you know, he's very green.
[00:58:43]  I think he thought Biden would be a bit different.
[00:58:46]  And it's just been like a total disaster.
[00:58:48]  Brad fucked again.
[00:58:49]  They're talking shit on him in the press.
[00:58:51]  They're like, this guy's weak.
[00:58:52]  He's a pussy.
[00:58:53]  He's sucks.
[00:58:54]  Yeah.
[00:58:54]  They literally called him annoying and infuriating.
[00:58:57]  It's like so.
[00:58:58]  That's the most anti-Semitic trope.
[00:58:59]  Well, I was going to say, we are like that, though.
[00:59:04]  We are annoying.
[00:59:05]  But that's only between us.
[00:59:07]  Yeah.
[00:59:08]  You know, it felt for him.
[00:59:09]  But then also he does a bunch of really stupid fucking shit.
[00:59:12]  Like last year, when this whole, you know, when this whole thing with, you know, this, you know, leading up to the tensions now started, like he was fucking bloviating and saying all this insane shit about how Ukraine was going to fucking take back Crimea.
[00:59:29]  It's like, sorry, what?
[00:59:30]  Like, I remember when he came, it was like in April.
[00:59:33]  I think it was like February or April of last year.
[00:59:35]  Yeah.
[00:59:35]  Yeah.
[00:59:36]  He starts saying all this crazy stuff.
[00:59:37]  And I remember watching it and being like, what the fuck is this guy doing?
[00:59:40]  Like, is he out of his mind?
[00:59:42]  Total change, like total change.
[00:59:44]  Totally.
[00:59:45]  He went to bed.
[00:59:46]  Somebody zapped his brain and he woke up like Putush.
[00:59:49]  I mean, and he was like threatening.
[00:59:50]  He's like, Ukraine, we are building troops.
[00:59:53]  We are taking this back.
[00:59:54]  Like, you better watch out, Russia.
[00:59:56]  We're coming for you.
[00:59:57]  And the West has us back.
[00:59:58]  And we're joining NATO.
[00:59:59]  Did you know?
[01:00:00]  Did you know?
[01:00:00]  We're joining NATO.
[01:00:01]  All right.
[01:00:02]  So that I want to pause on that for a second because you can really trace a lot of the like Russian troop buildup to a very specific thing, which is Zelensky basically like making steps.
[01:00:13]  Yes.
[01:00:14]  Ukraine has been making steps to join NATO for a long time.
[01:00:16]  It's not going to happen.
[01:00:17]  But, you know, he like commissioned this thing, like a NATO, a new like sort of, I can't remember what it was exactly.
[01:00:23]  But he basically put out a National Security Council kind of like whole, like a policy document.
[01:00:30]  Yeah.
[01:00:31]  Right at the same time, in tandem with the Atlantic Council, putting out and getting all their heavyweights, former ambassador.
[01:00:37]  I mean, these were guys directly connected to Blinken's group saying we need to heat everything up and fast track Ukraine accession into NATO and kill Nord Stream 2.
[01:00:53]  This is talked about.
[01:00:54]  That's all the other thing.
[01:00:56]  The gas pipeline and just heat everything up because America's back and we can do this and it's going to happen.
[01:01:04]  Like everyone's going to just bow to us because we're back, baby.
[01:01:07]  And then what does he do in February also?
[01:01:10]  He arrests.
[01:01:12]  So what happened in December was polls were coming out or even maybe a little before showing that he, since he was failing and things were going bad, the pro-Russian opposition party in parliament, our platform for life.
[01:01:26]  Yeah, yeah, headed by a guy who everybody knows actually is close to Putin, Viktor Medvedchuk.
[01:01:32]  He's also an oligarch, is polled number one in the country.
[01:01:39]  It's pretty bad.
[01:01:40]  So Biden wins the election.
[01:01:43]  We do need fascism.
[01:01:44]  Yeah, no, I know.
[01:01:45]  So Biden wins the election and Zelensky sends his former prime minister.
[01:01:51]  It's Huncharouk.
[01:01:52]  That's right.
[01:01:53]  Sends Huncharuk to America to start whipping up, you know, trying to coordinate like a new policy.
[01:02:00]  Huncharouk, like I should text you this article.
[01:02:03]  Like Huncharouk was famous because a year before, while prime minister, he attended an actual neo-Nazi skinhead like hardcore concert, went up on stage to raise money for like Azov and C14.
[01:02:16]  Incredible.
[01:02:17]  And he's the guy that went around and he published something in like the national interest and said, you know, we got to take a harder line.
[01:02:23]  And the Biden administration's like, this guy was just at that skinhead concert.
[01:02:28]  Die, let's do it, man.
[01:02:29]  Whatever he says.
[01:02:30]  That's what he's talking about.
[01:02:32]  Oh, yo, he fucking, yo, he likes, he likes Combat 18.
[01:02:36]  The fucking he cried when Screwdriver Singer died.
[01:02:39]  I mean, well, all right, they are a good band.
[01:02:42]  I know they're a better band.
[01:02:44]  They're great.
[01:02:44]  They're like the only actual good Nazi band.
[01:02:48]  But yeah, I mean, so they, so in February, yeah, he arrests Viktor Medvedchuk for being a traitor, starts shutting down opposition media, arresting bloggers.
[01:03:00]  Everybody is suddenly treasonous.
[01:03:02]  And what does the U.S. know?
[01:03:04]  The U.S. comes out Biden and says we support all these moves.
[01:03:07]  Russian disinformation is evil and so on, right?
[01:03:10]  So Russia.
[01:03:10]  He needs to take a stand.
[01:03:12]  Yeah, exactly.
[01:03:14]  Atlantic Council, like there's just a lot of talk out of the centers of power that Russia would know to look at and to see what are we going to expect and just realize like it's the same shit again, but even worse now.
[01:03:29]  And like, fuck this.
[01:03:32]  And so in March and April, as NATO starts doing more exercises in the Black Sea and doing, everybody's being more provocative.
[01:03:42]  Russia starts its buildup.
[01:03:43]  Its buildup starts in earnest.
[01:03:45]  And I mean, the buildup that is only being talked about now is from April.
[01:03:49]  It's like March and April.
[01:03:51]  It's the same buildup.
[01:03:52]  It's the same.
[01:03:52]  It hasn't, you know, substantive.
[01:03:55]  And it was in response to basically, yeah, things like that.
[01:04:00]  Zelensky's saying, okay, we're retaking Donbass and NATO starting insane exercises in the Black Sea and on the border.
[01:04:09]  I mean, that's like what it was in response to.
[01:04:11]  I think with the exercise, I mean, NATO's been doing exercises on Russia's doorstep for quite a while.
[01:04:17]  I mean, there was sort of the, but like, I think the real thing that like the most important part of what you just said, though, is like, yeah, the president of Ukraine said he's going to invade an area that is now part of Russia.
[01:04:31]  Like, no shit, there's going to be a troop buildup.
[01:04:35]  Crimea is not like the Donbass.
[01:04:37]  Crimea is like...
[01:04:39]  Oh, they couldn't do Donbass.
[01:04:40]  Donbass, they'd have...
[01:04:41]  They'd still get their asses kicked if Russia got it.
[01:04:43]  Yeah, yeah.
[01:04:44]  But like Crimea is.
[01:04:46]  No, but it's like, but it's also just literally part of Russia.
[01:04:51]  It's not like a part of Ukraine that broke away.
[01:04:53]  It's like, no, it is part of the Russian country.
[01:04:57]  And frankly, Russia's done a pretty good job there.
[01:05:00]  They put in a shit ton of money.
[01:05:02]  They built a new fucking bridge.
[01:05:04]  Like life in Crimea now is better than it was before Russia took Crimea.
[01:05:09]  They're smart about it.
[01:05:10]  They fucking just funneled a ton of fucking people.
[01:05:11]  Why they voted for it?
[01:05:12]  They always knew it would be.
[01:05:13]  They've been trying to get into Russia for years.
[01:05:16]  And so like, it's like, well, yeah, okay.
[01:05:19]  Say you are Vladimir Putin.
[01:05:20]  You know what?
[01:05:21]  No.
[01:05:21]  Say you're just like some moron who's the president.
[01:05:24]  You don't have to be Putin.
[01:05:25]  You have to have this backstory here.
[01:05:26]  You control Crimea.
[01:05:28]  Other country that used to control Crimea is like, we're going to invade Crimea.
[01:05:34]  Yeah.
[01:05:34]  You would put some troops there maybe to dissuade them from doing that.
[01:05:39]  And their response is like, I mean, to be fair, I mean, to be fair to Zelensky a little bit, it's like, he basically is like, oh, never mind.
[01:05:49]  No, sorry.
[01:05:50]  It's like the Russians.
[01:05:50]  Didn't know you had those guys.
[01:05:52]  You know, even that buildup was like, you know, it's, it's not that significant.
[01:05:57]  I mean, even now they've said it's not like this, which we'll get to the worst, the use of imminent here in a second.
[01:06:03]  Imminently, we'll talk about imminent.
[01:06:04]  Well, that's no such word.
[01:06:07]  The buildup of the troops is not enough to actually invade.
[01:06:11]  Like it's not, I mean, and even the Ukrainians admit that.
[01:06:14]  They say, oh, it would take like three to five days if they actually wanted to invade.
[01:06:16]  There's not enough here for that to actually happen.
[01:06:19]  Well, they need to leave annoying.
[01:06:21]  They're just being annoying.
[01:06:22]  Yeah, totally.
[01:06:24]  It was enough to basically calm Zelensky down and get him off whatever ledge whoever propped him up on.
[01:06:32]  And that's what made then what was so funny when the Western press came out and it was October of last year, 2020, that the Washington Post, I think it was the first outlet, it reported that there was now an imminent Russian threat on the on the border of Ukraine and Russia and that, you know, there was a quote, a renewed buildup of Russian troops near Ukrainian border has raised concern among some officials who are tracking what they consider to be irregular movements,
[01:07:01]  blah, blah, blah, this whole thing.
[01:07:03]  And that, it was all very confusing because it is referring to just what's always been there since April.
[01:07:10]  There was no renewed thing.
[01:07:12]  But this is when the Biden White House really deploys the use of imminent into the, you know, diplomatic discourse.
[01:07:21]  Right.
[01:07:21]  And it just gets repeated ad nauseum.
[01:07:23]  There's an imminent threat, an imminent threat.
[01:07:24]  Biden sees an imminent threat.
[01:07:26]  The CIA has an imminent threat.

=== Isolating Russia's Agenda (14:41) ===

[01:07:28]  There was these images that the CIA was passing around.
[01:07:34]  They did a little bit of a tour of Europe when they were trying to drum up support for, I don't know what, invasion of Russia.
[01:07:42]  I don't know.
[01:07:42]  It's unclear exactly, but they were trying to drum up support.
[01:07:46]  And they had these satellite images of troop, what they called irregular troop buildups of the imminent threat.
[01:07:53]  And maybe you've seen, they were in like the New York Times, you know, they all published them or whatever.
[01:07:58]  And they were just, I mean, the CIA is so fucking lazy.
[01:08:02]  They were literally just satellite images of fixed, like they're basically like, yeah, it's a bunch of troops.
[01:08:08]  It's showing a bunch of things.
[01:08:09]  And what they had cropped out just east of it were barracks and like fixed facilities, like shit that had been there for like a fucking decade.
[01:08:18]  Like none of it was new.
[01:08:20]  And they had cropped it out.
[01:08:22]  And the fucking CIA director is like running around Germany being like, see, see, no one's biting.
[01:08:28]  It's amazing how many times they've been caught lying.
[01:08:30]  I mean, you know, we can go back and back and back.
[01:08:33]  Like the last 20 years, they're not, they really are not so good.
[01:08:37]  We're so bad at lying now that the W campaign to get convinced people to back the Iraq war looks like just a total genius, like propaganda, you know, because it took a while.
[01:08:50]  And today they're just, they're fucking sloppy, but what they can do is completely, I mean, we think the internet empowers us and in some ways, maybe it kind of does because we at least can get our voices heard.
[01:09:01]  But they have the resources to flood information space with like multi-dimensional bullshit.
[01:09:07]  And what you talked about there with the satellite, like one thing I'm thinking of, there's all these Twitter accounts.
[01:09:12]  And I bet you know this also from Syria.
[01:09:14]  They're like these kind of open source Twitter accounts and they'll show like, you know, these units are moving from here to here.
[01:09:20]  This unit was filmed by somebody moving.
[01:09:22]  This can only mean one thing.
[01:09:24]  And you focus people with OSINT, total OSINT.
[01:09:27]  Yeah.
[01:09:27]  I mean, it's like Bellingcat is kind of at the top of that pyramid.
[01:09:31]  And, but there are a lot of groups, especially, you know, basically wherever NATO is interested in, they happen to be like looking at that area.
[01:09:39]  And they amplify the shit out of this.
[01:09:41]  And then regular people who are interested in it.
[01:09:44]  And you can't really factor it.
[01:09:46]  It looks like when you see Twitter account after a Twitter account with a lot of followers that does produce actually useful information at times, saying this, you know, here's this and here's this and here's this.
[01:09:56]  And it can only mean one thing.
[01:09:57]  It starts to fuck with your head.
[01:09:59]  And you start thinking, maybe this time I'm wrong.
[01:10:01]  Yeah.
[01:10:02]  You know, and it's like, I think they really have the information.
[01:10:06]  I'm sorry, the internet age propaganda down.
[01:10:09]  Oh, yeah.
[01:10:09]  Yeah.
[01:10:10]  I mean, and the thing is, they're so smart about it, but they have the blood power.
[01:10:13]  The thing is, it's like, okay, yeah, but also there's troops on the Russian border.
[01:10:19]  Well, that makes sense.
[01:10:21]  It's their border.
[01:10:22]  Like, it's in their country.
[01:10:24]  You know, that's always the weirdest thing.
[01:10:26]  But people don't think that way.
[01:10:27]  I know, I know.
[01:10:29]  Yeah, obviously.
[01:10:29]  I mean, it was, it was like, you know, there is, in fact, I would say it's like compared to NATO exercises in Estonia, in Estonia, which, by the way, my whole thing with NATO is unless you're touching the North Atlantic, you shouldn't be able to be in NATO.
[01:10:47]  It's like my thing with the Bay Area.
[01:10:49]  If you're closer to another, no, how about this?
[01:10:52]  If you're touching another body of water that's not the North Atlantic, you shouldn't be able to be in NATO.
[01:10:59]  And yes, I know that cuts NATO severely down in size.
[01:11:02]  As it should.
[01:11:03]  If you're touching like the Mediterranean, I'm sorry.
[01:11:06]  What part of the Mediterranean is the Atlantic?
[01:11:08]  Is this the Mediterranean Treaty Organization?
[01:11:10]  Exactly.
[01:11:11]  No, which, by the way, that would be a force to be reckoned with.
[01:11:15]  But yeah, it's it.
[01:11:18]  But like there's actual, you know, NATO conducting military exercises directly on Russia's border is so much more of a provocation than Russia sending troops internally within its own borders of its own sovereign country.
[01:11:32]  Yes, there might be troops on their border, probably because you are stationing troops also on their border.
[01:11:40]  You know, it's really that fucking simple.
[01:11:42]  Like it's not that.
[01:11:43]  It's all because Putin can't handle a Jeffersonian democracy.
[01:11:47]  I know.
[01:11:47]  I know.
[01:11:47]  He just doesn't.
[01:11:48]  He hates a parliament.
[01:11:50]  I want to say too, like, I, to be clear, I don't even think NATO, I mean, NATO, AK, the US, whatever, they don't want a war with Russia.
[01:11:57]  I don't think they want a war with Russia.
[01:11:59]  And like I said, DOD, regardless of what this, I don't think the State Department actually knows this, but the Pentagon, at least, and again, they've admitted that they could not win a war, a land war with Russia, unless it went nuclear.
[01:12:11]  And then, again, like I said, no one wins.
[01:12:14]  Unless you do it first.
[01:12:15]  But, well, even then, you know, you never know.
[01:12:19]  Some people like living in the Russian people.
[01:12:21]  Talk about what they do want, because there is a reason why they are doing this, and I think that it's pretty clear.
[01:12:26]  The idea is that they want to provoke Russia into uh, invading Ukraine uh, to get pretext to pass an insane package of sanctions in order to isolate Russia.
[01:12:41]  And why get Nordstream canceled and get Nordstream canceled yeah, which is part of it now or canceled, says I.
[01:12:49]  It's so there's so much to talk about.
[01:12:51]  I'm going to see how quickly I can do this without getting too far into the weeds, but I will say, why are they afraid of Russia?
[01:13:00]  Why do they want to isolate Russia with sanctions right then?
[01:13:04]  Now the you we've talked about how sanctions pack packages work on the show before in the context of Russia and in the context of Iran, and that it's not just being like well, we're not going to give you money, you know it's like trying to basically set up blockades so that capital and and and just cash cannot move in in other countries to completely freeze them out of the global market, like that's the idea.
[01:13:28]  And again, Putin seeing what happened to the country in the 90s and seeing what it was going to have to like the kind of long march it would take to get Russia basically off the dollar.
[01:13:42]  I mean, that's the goal right um, so it doesn't have to be dependent on the West in any kind of capacity.
[01:13:48]  The the?
[01:13:49]  U.s.
[01:13:49]  Passing these sanctions pack, shit packages has kind of like adversely propelled Russia toward that goal much quicker than the?
[01:13:59]  U.s probably wanted.
[01:14:00]  Well, that's the thing.
[01:14:01]  So it pushed, it pushes Russia uh further into like Autarky meaning that it you know being completely on it, you know completely and totally like self-reliant, like self-reliant yeah, but also more and more uh, closer to China.
[01:14:18]  And that is the complete opposite of the goal of what the Us wants.
[01:14:22]  What the Us wants is to isolate Russia away from China um, and so it can kind of attack both um, you know, on their own.
[01:14:31]  I think there's still kind of again these like kind of you know the, the slow march of these bureaucracies into their gravestones, like they're all kind of have these same approaches of the kind of old school Soviet, isolate and contain um, you know, encircle and contain strategy for these countries.
[01:14:53]  That just it is.
[01:14:54]  You know, they've come up with um countermeasures.
[01:14:57]  It's just that that in particular is so ridiculous, because I mean a, a real real, real stroke of luck for the U.s?
[01:15:06]  Uh during the Cold War was the falling out between China and the Soviet Union, I mean the.
[01:15:11]  The world would look very, very differently if some things had different, things had happened back then, if some cooler heads had prevailed um, and if Khrushchev hadn't lied like he did um, but uh, by the way, what's up, he's Ukrainian, by the way.
[01:15:29]  Yeah yeah, god damn it.
[01:15:30]  Yeah, there you go yeah, wild and a bit of a fibber, but uh, but um, so you know it, it's sort of it's, it's insane to me that they would, they would basically push them together like this, I mean just in terms of you know, from from their, from their perspective.
[01:15:47]  But it also gives uh, I guess it gives you an enemy to fight too.
[01:15:51]  You know, you know it's a Russia and Russia and China sort of putting them together as a block.
[01:15:56]  You know, I mean, and I, and I don't even think they're, I think they're just I, I think you're right.
[01:16:01]  I mean they're so dumb like yeah, there are people I remember, even in the middle of Russagate, in the middle of like crazy story after crazy story about Russia controlling the world and doing this, the NEW YORK Times at one point.
[01:16:14]  It's like somebody like woke up one morning like, holy shit um, I just had a thought um, Russia should be our ally and and I think this is kind of the Trump nationalist idea too, and some realists uh, Russia should be our ally because, because China's actually super strong and is stronger than Russia, and so we need to be allies with them.
[01:16:35]  And they published an actual editorial and it was.
[01:16:37]  It was one of the most schizophrenic editorials.
[01:16:39]  It's like Russia's really bad.
[01:16:41]  It's in the NEW YORK Times um, in like 2018 or 19.
[01:16:45]  yeah and it was like russia's really bad and evil but china is a much more serious threat um russia needs to realize that its interests this is what they always say its interests are really with the west and so they need to stop they need to stop pissing us off also russia's super weak and needs to get over the thought that it's super powerful and it can't really do anything so if it hooks up with china it's just going to be china's little Bitch, and China's autocratic and is not going to respect Russia.
[01:17:13]  So, really, Russia, you're weak and you need to be with us.
[01:17:16]  So, come on over.
[01:17:18]  And then the next day, it's like Vladimir Putin again, you know, spreading that authoritarianism around the world.
[01:17:24]  Like, I think they're actually just completely fucking schizophrenic.
[01:17:27]  Yeah.
[01:17:27]  And they're not, there's when's the last time anybody, any faction or people suffered consequences for fucking up foreign policy over and over and over?
[01:17:39]  I mean, look at the State Department.
[01:17:41]  Nobody.
[01:17:41]  You're talking about post-Mao China, right?
[01:17:44]  Most people never did either.
[01:17:45]  Yeah.
[01:17:46]  But I mean, that's the thing is like, guys, I thought we were supposed to be pivoting to Asia.
[01:17:51]  This is the pivot to Eurasia.
[01:17:53]  I'm not trying to get involved in any of that.
[01:17:57]  I'm trying to die in the South China Sea over an island made entirely of concrete that has like one prop plane on it.
[01:18:05]  That to me is an important matter of national security.
[01:18:08]  And Russia and China's partnership is real and it's like a real deal.
[01:18:12]  Like we just today, just this morning, we had the, you know, I don't know.
[01:18:21]  I didn't watch it.
[01:18:22]  So perhaps there was a gong involved, but I don't know.
[01:18:25]  Oh, whoa, whoa.
[01:18:26]  I was going to say proverbial gong to welcome in the Winter Olympics in Beijing.
[01:18:31]  And who was there right before huge press conference, Putin and Xi, with a big statement.
[01:18:39]  Also, first foreign leader that Xi has met with in two years, which wow, a little bluebill on TV there.
[01:18:46]  Well, yeah, yeah.
[01:18:47]  Well, and the Olympics are crazy.
[01:18:48]  Well, China has a zero COVID policy very famously.
[01:18:52]  But, you know, their partnership has been going on for a long time, although I think, again, the West has been, first of all, they won't report on it because I think they're afraid of it, but also they're not really sure how for real it is.
[01:19:07]  I think there's a really like because access to China is so limited and I don't think they have a lot of people in Russia, the West is really, I think, in the dark.
[01:19:18]  It's in denial, exactly.
[01:19:19]  And in denial.
[01:19:20]  Yeah.
[01:19:21]  And I mean, look, it's been a couple years now that Russia and China have been buying and selling oil to each other, not in the petrodollar, which is a big fucking deal.
[01:19:32]  They have, you know, like I said, increased like massive trade with one another.
[01:19:38]  They have made pretty strong statements towards an official military alliance, although it seems still like, it seems like that's, it's going there, but it hasn't been officially announced.
[01:19:48]  It seems like all arrows are pointed that way.
[01:19:51]  And, you know, I think this morning the two of them really reaffirmed.
[01:19:57]  I mean, look, you know, they said in the statement, they were like, Russia has made these demands to get the West to back off on the Ukrainian border.
[01:20:05]  They want no more expansion of NATO.
[01:20:08]  They want a removal of all NATO forces from Eastern Europe.
[01:20:11]  They want no NATO exercises near borders.
[01:20:13]  They want no U.S. nukes in Europe.
[01:20:15]  They want a retraction of the 2008 invitation to Ukraine and Georgia.
[01:20:21]  They want legally binding agreements that no strike systems will be deployed near Russia.
[01:20:27]  They want to have regular military talks.
[01:20:29]  And China was like, we support them in all of their, you know, in all of the.
[01:20:35]  requests that they've made to every NATO member.
[01:20:38]  And we, you know, affirm their right to whatever, whatever, whatever.
[01:20:42]  I mean, it's like a very strong statement again on the eve of the fucking Olympics, one of the biggest fucking deals on the world stage.
[01:20:50]  So it seems pretty clear that regardless of what the West thinks or is in denial about, like, this shit is real.
[01:20:57]  It's happening.
[01:20:58]  It's not going anywhere.
[01:21:00]  And it's the year of the fucking tiger, baby.
[01:21:03]  It's been, I totally agree.
[01:21:06]  And it's, it's a process that's been going on.
[01:21:09]  In a lot of ways, it's just, it's, it's a lot deeper than people realize because this is a relationship between two big powers that share some common experiences in like the world and the humiliation and humiliation from the West and so on and that are not natural allies.
[01:21:30]  I mean, that's why even both were communist.
[01:21:34]  I mean, Russians don't, I would say the Russian elite always generally wants to be part of the West.
[01:21:41]  Yeah.
[01:21:41]  But they understand it ain't going to happen unless they are completely subordinate.
[01:21:46]  Like America has this idea that is as deeply held orthodox faith as I imagine they believed in Christianity, you know, seven, eight hundred years ago, which like it's the world, which is that there cannot be a power, a country powerful enough to buck American hegemony because American hegemony is benevolent.

=== Driven Together By Common Experience (02:43) ===

[01:22:10]  Ultimately, whatever our little problems and little freckles, it is benevolent.
[01:22:14]  And any other country is only going to introduce essentially chaos in that world.
[01:22:19]  And we can't lose that power.
[01:22:21]  I mean, I think this is so deeply held orthodox faith.
[01:22:25]  So that, well, we don't understand that that forces Russia and China to, through common interest and common experience, to come together.
[01:22:32]  And what they've been doing over the last 15 years is doing like slow steps towards each other.
[01:22:40]  And it's all been about like confidence building or, you know, trust building.
[01:22:46]  And they've been coming through for each other over and over and over.
[01:22:50]  Cause it's not a, it's not culturally a natural deep fit, but it's in a lot of ways, it's much more than that.
[01:23:00]  They're driven together by common experience.
[01:23:02]  They're two rising powers and the U.S. just as a like motor function reflex will try to subvert and undo any challenger anywhere.
[01:23:14]  That's just how it is through whatever weaponry it has, whether it's the financial system, the NGOs, you know, whatever the hell it can do, propaganda, and it's good at some of those things still propaganda.
[01:23:27]  It's just forcing them together.
[01:23:30]  Yeah.
[01:23:30]  You're the tiger, baby.
[01:23:31]  You mentioned the dragon rises.
[01:23:36]  You mentioned the shared humiliation.
[01:23:38]  I think, too, that it's also the shared, I mean, the shared, I would say, mutual respect for how they've rebuilt their countries.
[01:23:46]  Right.
[01:23:47]  Like, regardless of how, you know, I don't know, without evaluating like China as like a pure communist or however, you know, well, I think that's fair to evaluate that.
[01:23:59]  Well, no, I just mean not in this episode.
[01:24:02]  Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.
[01:24:03]  But I do think that there's clearly a common respect there for, you know, the growth that's happened under Putin and under Xi.
[01:24:12]  I mean, the middle class in China is so fucking massive at this point.
[01:24:17]  The home ownership rates are like 95%.
[01:24:20]  It's like, you know, they've got their own issues right now with the housing market, but it's really fascinating to see how they're responding, which is basically the opposite of how the U.S. responded when it faced a similar crisis.
[01:24:33]  And so I think that there is an epidemic.
[01:24:35]  Yeah, very much so.
[01:24:37]  And so I think there's a very, you know, very much a shared respect there.
[01:24:42]  And you see it when you watch, you know, I encourage people, again, if you don't know how to like, you know, it's difficult to evaluate who to read and where to get sources and all of that.

=== Subverting Zelensky's Rule (12:19) ===

[01:24:53]  But like one of the first places to start is like read the diplomatic statements.
[01:24:57]  Like read what these guys are saying, because especially in the case of Russia and China, it's not the case with the U.S., which we should say the State Department is out of their fucking minds and just like a bunch of children.
[01:25:10]  But you read these diplomats from China and from Russia and these are serious guys.
[01:25:17]  You know, they're professionals and the way that they talk about these things, you can kind of read between the lines.
[01:25:23]  And yeah, I mean, practical too.
[01:25:26]  Yeah.
[01:25:26]  Yeah.
[01:25:27]  I think the thing that the U.S. is afraid of is very much happening.
[01:25:31]  Totally.
[01:25:32]  And they're making it happen, right?
[01:25:33]  Like they're making their nightmares come true.
[01:25:36]  Like it's, it's so fucking ridiculous.
[01:25:39]  Like even just the Ukraine, you know, crisis, I mean, they're, they're saying Russia's trying to destabilize Ukraine and all this, this propaganda campaign, this psychological war operation aimed, I don't know, really at us, I think.
[01:25:53]  Yeah, all it's done is totally subvert Ukraine.
[01:25:56]  I mean, you know, who knows?
[01:25:58]  I'm sure there are parts of the U.S. government that would like Zelensky overthrow in a coup.
[01:26:02]  And there is a threat that he could be overthrown in a coup.
[01:26:05]  There was a move to impeach him this summer.
[01:26:07]  And then Parashenko, the previous, you know, Willy Wonka oligarch president, came back and he was arrested by Zelensky just a month ago as a Russian traitor.
[01:26:17]  Things are fucking crazy there right now.
[01:26:19]  Yeah, yeah.
[01:26:20]  The economy is tanking.
[01:26:22]  I mean, the thing is, too, like Zelensky, and we got to wrap up kind of soon, but with Zelensky, I mean.
[01:26:28]  You know, you can sort of see there was that there was that sort of barrage of statements from people, him and people in his government about how there is no actual imminent invasion.
[01:26:38]  Over and over.
[01:26:39]  Yeah, over and over, like saying like, oh, this isn't actually like the situation has not changed.
[01:26:44]  Meanwhile, the U.S., Australia, Canada, other countries, I can't remember who else were, but one or two other countries, yeah, England were taking their diplomatic personnel out.
[01:26:56]  They were taking their embassy families out.
[01:26:59]  I mean, we're talking about, I mean, this is very far from any potential, even imaginary front lines.
[01:27:05]  Like it is so beyond, even if there was, like, again, I don't think it's, it does, I don't, it's not going to happen, but even if there was somehow an invasion, there's people would not be threatened.
[01:27:16]  And they're taking them out.
[01:27:17]  And they wouldn't be evacuated like that.
[01:27:19]  Like, exactly.
[01:27:20]  You know what I mean?
[01:27:20]  It's so causing it.
[01:27:21]  It's not even a good show.
[01:27:23]  Exactly.
[01:27:24]  It's all for domestic.
[01:27:25]  That's it.
[01:27:25]  It's just for us.
[01:27:26]  It's for us.
[01:27:27]  It's for us.
[01:27:28]  But for Ukrainians, it's causing panic in the country.
[01:27:32]  It's fucking up the market.
[01:27:33]  It's fucking up Zelensky.
[01:27:34]  It's subverting Zelensky's rule.
[01:27:36]  Exactly.
[01:27:36]  It's subverting Zelensky's rule.
[01:27:38]  And you know what?
[01:27:39]  The thing is, is like my view is what Putin, I mean, probably the best he knows he can get now is a weak Ukraine that's like in, you know, in too chaotic a state to ever actually like join NATO or anything.
[01:27:53]  That is that, which essentially serves as like a dysfunctional buffer, right?
[01:27:58]  But what the U.S. is doing is they are helping create that situation.
[01:28:03]  And so it is sacrificing Ukrainians.
[01:28:06]  Exactly.
[01:28:07]  And Ukraine, a country of millions and millions and millions of people being used as this like basically like political pawn by, well, kind of by everybody, but like, you know, it really just being offered up as just like, you know, we are, we are, we are essentially like grinding our sword against the whetstone of Ukraine.
[01:28:25]  And it is fucking that country up very badly.
[01:28:28]  I mean, in a sense, the U.S. is kind of like, I noticed one thing in Russia when I got there.
[01:28:34]  In the U.S., a lot of bar fights don't really happen, but they're dudes screaming until their necks turn red, ripping off their shirts.
[01:28:41]  Come on, I'll fuck you.
[01:28:42]  And mostly yelling, but it doesn't happen.
[01:28:44]  And in Russia, like that would just be weird.
[01:28:46]  You just punch if you're going to fight, you know?
[01:28:49]  And I remember once an American guy, about a year or two after I got there, I mean, I saw that happen.
[01:28:54]  It was like the American way versus the Russian way.
[01:28:56]  Some guy at one of the few bars there in the mid 90s was like, come on, dude.
[01:29:01]  The Russian guy was just staring at her and just went pop and just popped the dude.
[01:29:04]  Like, you know, and I think this time the America was like woofing loudly, NATO, we don't care about Russia.
[01:29:10]  And they woofed and woofed.
[01:29:11]  And so Russia's like, okay, we're going to move a whole bunch of troops up and probably send out disinformation or whatever about an invasion.
[01:29:19]  And we're also going to find out some of your methods and sources by doing that.
[01:29:22]  And basically said, okay, if you're going to do that, and then sent a letter and said, if you do that, it means war.
[01:29:29]  For us, we know this is an existential issue.
[01:29:33]  And I think this has broad support.
[01:29:34]  Like Russians don't want a war in Ukraine, but if Russia were to join, I'm sorry, if Ukraine were to join NATO, I think broadband opposition and everybody.
[01:29:47]  And so it's not just like Putin the evil who does it.
[01:29:50]  And so by heating up the situation, then the U.S. is like, all right, you want to heat stuff up?
[01:29:54]  We'll heat up.
[01:29:55]  You know, we know how to really heat up the psychological warfare space.
[01:29:59]  Russia's really going to do it.
[01:30:00]  Russia's really doing it.
[01:30:01]  And Russia just kind of sat back and watched.
[01:30:03]  And everybody, and everybody could then kind of see what's actually going to happen and what's going to happen.
[01:30:12]  And Biden had to come out in the press comments because they convinced themselves.
[01:30:16]  I think Biden believes there will be an invasion.
[01:30:19]  He knows what day.
[01:30:21]  Well, he doesn't know much.
[01:30:22]  I know, but I'm just saying, like, on my side, I'm sure he does.
[01:30:26]  Yeah.
[01:30:26]  Yeah.
[01:30:27]  My child has friends there.
[01:30:31]  It's true, though.
[01:30:32]  And then, you know, I mean, that the U.S. basically got its ass handed to it on the world stage.
[01:30:38]  And what's that?
[01:30:39]  She looked like a pussy.
[01:30:40]  Jemsaki or whatever, the horrible woman.
[01:30:43]  Yeah.
[01:30:44]  She basically had to come out and admit defeat.
[01:30:47]  She was like, oh, we shouldn't use imminent.
[01:30:51]  That was giving the wrong impression.
[01:30:53]  Turns out there is a word for that in your life.
[01:30:55]  So we're not going to use imminent anymore, which that is just basically admitting defeat.
[01:31:00]  It's like, okay, the show's over.
[01:31:02]  But Russia, to their credit, isn't, they're like, okay, we're not letting this go.
[01:31:06]  We have sent letters to every NATO nation and we want, and like, I love the letter move.
[01:31:12]  They're like, we need a signal.
[01:31:14]  You got to learn from the Gorbachev years.
[01:31:16]  Absolutely.
[01:31:17]  You're like, I want it in writing.
[01:31:19]  Good thing.
[01:31:19]  Hey, True and On life lesson.
[01:31:21]  Get it in writing.
[01:31:24]  And they're saying, look, we want your commitment that, you know, that none of that your, you know, the terms in which you joined NATO will not be breached.
[01:31:34]  Yeah.
[01:31:35]  And basically, you got to write us back and let us know.
[01:31:37]  And they're, and they're just sticking to it.
[01:31:39]  So I mean, I think the U.S. got very embarrassed.
[01:31:42]  It doesn't seem like that sanctions package is going to pass.
[01:31:46]  Germany is like, we're not doing that.
[01:31:49]  France will do whatever Germany says.
[01:31:51]  Yeah.
[01:31:52]  And the whole thing just really blew up in the State Department's face.
[01:31:56]  Yeah.
[01:31:57]  Because these guys are fucking morons.
[01:31:59]  I still think, though, something crazy could I really think the U.S. is a wild card.
[01:32:03]  Something crazy could happen.
[01:32:04]  The humiliation could make all of them convince each other we have to do some big sanctions package.
[01:32:10]  Something fucking stupid and crazy.
[01:32:13]  Some kind of false flag.
[01:32:14]  I don't even know about a false flag.
[01:32:16]  There was that possibility before, but I really think more like just a preemptive sanctioning or something where they feel like they're getting something and making the situation worse, even for America, even if you like love this country or whatever.
[01:32:31]  Yeah, it would still ultimately backfire again, as it always has.
[01:32:37]  And because they're just like on the world's biggest losing streak since like, I don't know, the Austro-Hungarian Empire or something.
[01:32:43]  Like they just, they're losers.
[01:32:45]  The people who are like running foreign policy are just serial fucking losers.
[01:32:50]  They like gambling.
[01:32:52]  Ask yourself, like, when did when was the last war?
[01:32:55]  America won.
[01:32:56]  Yeah.
[01:32:57]  Mind war.
[01:32:59]  That's slow in the money.
[01:33:01]  Well, ladies and gentlemen, we have to wrap up somewhere.
[01:33:04]  And so I think we should, we didn't, there's a lot of stuff we could not.
[01:33:08]  And I don't think we have time to get to like Nord Stream 2.
[01:33:12]  The fact that Ukraine's military is just any sort of like infographic where you see troop comparisons to Russia, there's no, there's a fraction of that amount actually ready in Ukraine.
[01:33:27]  You know, the javelin missiles, which America very like, you know, very publicly gave them, which are just sitting in a warehouse in the west of the country because Ukraine doesn't know how to use them and America won't let them use them because they used a couple on some fortifications in 2018, which you're not supposed to do.
[01:33:46]  And yeah, there's a lot there.
[01:33:49]  But what I want to say, and I want to leave us, I want to kind of lead us out on is really quickly, what are each of your personal peace plans for Ukraine?
[01:33:59]  How could you fix this crisis?
[01:34:02]  Liz?
[01:34:04]  Well, my official position is that Ukraine should not exist.
[01:34:11]  So that's what I, I just, Ukraine should not exist.
[01:34:14]  What?
[01:34:14]  Should it be part of Russia?
[01:34:16]  It can be part of, it can be carved up, but then absorbed.
[01:34:19]  Absorbed.
[01:34:20]  Absorbed.
[01:34:21]  No new nation, no anything, just absorb it.
[01:34:24]  I want to say to be clear, this is not against the Ukrainian people who, I mean, it's against some of the Ukrainian people, but I also believe that about Canada and Australia.
[01:34:35]  So I just want to make that clear.
[01:34:37]  Well, my thing with Australia is trade it to China.
[01:34:41]  Taiwan, I don't have to, I don't, I don't want to think about Taiwan anymore.
[01:34:44]  You can make that its own country or whatever, just like a zone, a free trade zone, not even a country, just like a district.
[01:34:51]  But Australia can go to China.
[01:34:54]  I think that's a great game.
[01:34:55]  That can, that's they would love that.
[01:34:56]  They deserve that.
[01:34:57]  Yours.
[01:34:59]  Um I, I just can't imagine a peace plan without the actual use of nukes, and i'm trying to trying to figure out, you know how that, how that works out.
[01:35:09]  Just, we're all gonna die someday.
[01:35:11]  May as well go out and evangelize, so you think it.
[01:35:13]  The peace plan is, Israel gets more nukes.
[01:35:15]  Yes yeah yes well, you know.
[01:35:17]  Interesting that you bring, bring up peace and nukes, because i'll tell you something that could have fixed this crisis before it even started, which is a Give, Ukraine should not have given up its nukes.
[01:35:29]  Yes.
[01:35:29]  And now B, that we have never, because that's, of course, another true and on thing.
[01:35:34]  Never give up nuclear weapons.
[01:35:35]  Never give up the nukes.
[01:35:36]  Never give up nuclear weapons.
[01:35:37]  Always, and in fact, build more.
[01:35:39]  Get it in writing.
[01:35:40]  Never give up the nukes.
[01:35:41]  Never give up the nukes.
[01:35:43]  But my thing is now, okay, Ukraine has no nukes.
[01:35:46]  Why doesn't everybody just give them one?
[01:35:49]  Like, I'm talking Pakistan gives them one.
[01:35:51]  U.S. gives them one.
[01:35:53]  Everyone just gives them like a martial man, but yeah, just nukes, nukes.
[01:35:58]  And just, in fact, why not this?
[01:36:00]  All right.
[01:36:01]  Okay.
[01:36:01]  Chernobyl aside.
[01:36:03]  Why don't we just make Ukraine the country that builds nukes for everyone else?
[01:36:07]  That way, no one else can invade them because that's where we get our nukes.
[01:36:11]  We can't like invade that.
[01:36:13]  Plus, they could nuke us.
[01:36:15]  And so I think Ukraine should just get nukes.
[01:36:18]  Either that or there should be a new language instituted.
[01:36:23]  Now, I'm thinking Hebrew or Yiddish, but I think that everyone in Ukraine, Russian-Ukrainian speakers alike, should now have to speak Yiddish.
[01:36:33]  And that will unify the country because everyone will become a thousand times more annoyed with each other.
[01:36:39]  You know, there's a Russian, it was a Russian saying about how tricky Ukrainians are.
[01:36:47]  And so the kind of the pejorative sort of like kite for Jew, the pejorative for Ukrainian is it's kind of Google, actually, but chochol.
[01:36:56]  And the and the saying is, and what it means is like when a chochol, when a Ukrainian comes in, even Jews can't do anything.
[01:37:08]  Even Jews can't make business.
[01:37:09]  That really covers all the Russian bases for us.

=== Belden Plan Update (02:58) ===

[01:37:12]  Well, ladies and gentlemen, we're getting back on the chopper.
[01:37:15]  Not never.
[01:37:16]  We're getting back in our armored personnel care.
[01:37:19]  We're getting back in the striker and we're heading to Romania.
[01:37:23]  We have with us, of course, Mark Ames from Radio War Nerd, my favorite podcast, of course, besides.
[01:37:32]  And yeah, thank you so much for joining us.
[01:37:35]  Thank you so much for having me on.
[01:37:36]  I love you guys.
[01:37:38]  And happy to talk.
[01:37:55]  I forgot.
[01:37:56]  I had something to say before we sign off.
[01:37:58]  Brace, I have a plan for you.
[01:38:01]  Oh.
[01:38:02]  So remember the Belden plan?
[01:38:04]  Yeah.
[01:38:05]  But the question is not what is the Belden Plan.
[01:38:07]  The question is how to implement the Belden Plan.
[01:38:10]  Now, what we need is a Truanon type television series that sweeps the nation, where you play a likable, but often gets into mishaps in comedic ways.
[01:38:27]  That did be happening to me, yeah.
[01:38:30]  Who finds themselves catapulted to power after kind of, I don't know, I don't know what happens.
[01:38:39]  Military.
[01:38:40]  No, okay.
[01:38:40]  Okay.
[01:38:41]  I can, I can tell if you because I'm a colonel in the United States military and I and my fellow group of colonels who subscribe to my like officers program or whatever catapult me to power.
[01:38:54]  Yes, but also you're very funny and you're like, how did I get here?
[01:38:58]  But then you've got a heart of gold and everyone.
[01:39:01]  So the Truanon TV show sweeps the nation.
[01:39:05]  Sweeps sweeps.
[01:39:06]  Very popular.
[01:39:08]  And everyone's like, damn, this guy is so funny and cool.
[01:39:11]  Wouldn't it be great if he actually just was leader?
[01:39:14]  Yeah.
[01:39:14]  While this happens, I provide such good entertainment with this television show, which is on Peacock, by the way.
[01:39:21]  And that the U.S. actually gives me a commission, like a kind of like a goofy commission as a colonel, like to be like a USO kind of thing.
[01:39:29]  Yeah, for morale.
[01:39:30]  For morale.
[01:39:31]  For morale.
[01:39:32]  But I get to talking with some of these cats.
[01:39:33]  I'm like, you know, things could be really different around here.
[01:39:36]  Yeah, you got some ideas.
[01:39:37]  You know, the world needs ditch diggers.
[01:39:39]  And frankly, this country doesn't have enough of them.
[01:39:42]  And after that, people are like, you know what?
[01:39:44]  Like my guys, my other colonels are like, we should just, we could just rip the, rip the fucking bandaid off this bitch.
[01:39:51]  Let's get this guy in the White House.
[01:39:52]  Yeah, we got to foist him.
[01:39:53]  Let's foist him up.
[01:39:54]  Because here's the thing.
[01:39:56]  I have, I've been, I've been, I've been in charge of a lot of things in my life, but I've never got to be in charge of, never got to be in charge of a junta.
[01:40:05]  Like no one ever, everyone's just like, no, you can't be in charge of the junta.
[01:40:08]  Like a junta or whatever.

=== Wettest Nation Dream (01:18) ===

[01:40:10]  Have you ever seen it?
[01:40:11]  Yeah, well, whatever.
[01:40:13]  I think it's junta, junta, whatever.
[01:40:16]  Well, for me, it'd be a junta because I'm an American.
[01:40:19]  And they've never let me be in charge of one.
[01:40:22]  And so if I could do that, Iron Fist.
[01:40:25]  Everyone's digging ditches.
[01:40:27]  That's it.
[01:40:29]  We're going to crisscross this country with irrigation canals to nowhere like you've never seen before.
[01:40:35]  We're going to have the Atlantic in a, you know, and the Pacific meeting in the center of the country in a brackish mixture that that show, it's like the golden spike in the railroad that shows the new direction this country is going into.
[01:40:49]  Confused and useless into the new millennium.
[01:40:52]  The big puddle.
[01:40:54]  The big puddle.
[01:40:55]  We're going to make this the wettest nation in history.
[01:40:59]  Everyone here is going to be soaked and moist.
[01:41:02]  I'm Liz.
[01:41:03]  My name is, oh, I like the sound of this.
[01:41:07]  Colonel Belden.
[01:41:09]  We are joined by the future satrap of the new Southwest, Young Chomsky, who is programming this episode like he will program your children's minds.
[01:41:23]  And the show is called Truan.
[01:41:27]  We'll see you next time.