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May 8, 2024 - RFK Jr. The Defender
01:05:23
Real History Of Ukraine War with Col Jacques Baud

Col. Jaqcues Baud and Robert F. Kennedy Jr. discuss the War in Ukraine. Jacques Baud is Colonel Chief of Staff, former Swiss secret service agent and expert in chemical and nuclear weapons. He was, among other things, head of doctrine for United Nations peacekeeping operations in New York.

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Hey, everybody.
I've got a great guest today.
Colonel Jacques Baud holds a master's in Echometrics and postgraduate diplomas in international security and international relations from the Graduate Institute of International Relations in Geneva.
He worked several years in the Swiss Strategic Intelligence Services.
He was trained in U.S. and British intelligence services.
He was an advisor to contingents there.
Welcome to my show!
He installed mine action programs, presumably meaning removal of landmines, in Chad, Sudan, Somalia, and Ethiopia.
He contributed in establishing the concept of intelligence in UN peacekeeping operations, and he headed the first integrated UN Joint Mission Analysis Center in the Sudan in 2005 and 2006.
He was head of policy Doctrine at the UN Department of Peacekeeping Operations.
He headed the research department on the African Union's International Peace Support Training Center in Nairobi before being seconded to NATO by the Swiss government to head NATO. You know, it's interesting about your biography.
It doesn't show that any kind of military...
Were you in the Swiss military at one point?
Yes, absolutely.
I'm in the Swiss military.
I had a more civilized CV as the one you read, but I'm also military.
You know, in Switzerland, we have the concept of citizen-soldier.
So we are both citizens and soldiers.
We have weapons at home.
It's kind of a national guard, if you want.
The Swiss Army is a national guard.
I started with the command of a commando unit, then I was in command of a tank battalion, a Leopard 2 battalion, and I ended as colonel in general staff, first for intelligence, and then at the general staff of the Swiss Army, and that's my current, I say, I retired if you want.
That's my current rank, if you want, Colonel in General Staff.
Colonel in General Staff in the Swiss Army is a rank of colonel who had commanding activities, but in General Staff means that you are able to lead any part of a It's a little bit of
a paradox because the Swiss are famously neutral in wars.
They really try to stay out of wars, correct?
That's correct.
But we have to remember that up to the 18th century, the main revenue or resource of the Swiss GDP was the mercenary service.
So Switzerland has a huge history of making war.
And in the 16th century, actually, Machiavelli, the famous Italian strategist, used to say that Switzerland has no army.
It is an army.
And in fact, that's very much a concept that you had probably during the US Revolution.
Meaning that the citizen is the soldier, in fact.
And we kept that concept.
Of course, we are neutral since the 19th century because, precisely, we came into a situation in which you had Swiss soldiers fighting against other Swiss soldiers.
They were mercenaries at the time.
The only mercenary service which is currently allowed by the Swiss Constitution is the mercenary service for the Vatican, the Holy Siege in Rome, and this is the Vatican Guard.
This is the only mercenary service which is allowed.
But we used to be mercenaries, and that's precisely for that reason that we learned from that lessons and we decided to be neutral.
And even during the Cold War, Switzerland had still had an army.
Switzerland had one of the biggest fleet of armored artillery, for instance, had almost one of the biggest fleet of tanks also during the Cold War.
So Switzerland is neutral.
Tries to stay out of conflicts, but it's ready to defend its territory.
And in fact, it was even one of the obligations set by the so-called great powers at the beginning of the 19th century, when they granted to Switzerland the status of neutral state, but with the obligation To prevent any misuse of its own territory.
And in fact, it's interesting that you asked the question because that's also the status that was suggested for Ukraine, meaning a country that is neutral, But has the ability to defend its territory and prevent any use or misuse of its own territory.
And that's exactly the situation of Switzerland.
That's the reason why, by the way, since the Swiss neutrality was not unilaterally declared, such as, for instance, when at the beginning of World War II, the US was neutral.
But the neutrality of the US at that stage was unilaterally declared, meaning that the US declared themselves neutral.
For Switzerland, the problem is different because all the European nations have recognized the neutrality of Switzerland.
As a result, Switzerland has a country that is acknowledged, recognized by all its neighbors, and therefore its neutrality has in fact more, let's say, weight than other countries.
Austria is in the same situation.
Yeah, Australia is in the same situation, but it got its neutrality later on.
That was after World War II. But it's a similar situation that neutrality was in fact imposed the rest of Europe.
That's the reason why this is a neutrality which is respected by those countries who imposed it to the countries.
But Switzerland has never been, let's say, has never thought, for instance, that it would be exempted for a war in Europe.
Of course, it didn't enter the war in World War I, World War II. But for instance, during the Cold War, Switzerland was convinced that if a war would erupt in Europe, Switzerland would be part of it.
And in fact, as you rightly saw in my biography, During the Cold War, I was strategic intelligence officer, but I was trained in the US. I was not trained in the Soviet Union, you see.
So we were part, I mean, Switzerland is definitely part of the West.
And we had regular contacts.
I mean, as a strategic intelligence officer, I was in charge of the whole Warsaw Pact, by the way.
So it was quite a huge responsibility at that time.
And I was in touch with all other intelligence services in the Western world.
So I had regular contact with intelligence services in Germany, France, Italy, Germany.
UK, Sweden, and you name it.
And of course, the US. And in the US, we had contact with DIA, with CIA, with INR, and all the different intelligence services.
And we exchanged information.
So Switzerland is neutral because it doesn't want to enter or contribute to conflict, but it's ready to wage a war, to defend its territory and to join other countries.
And during the Cold War, it was clear that if any war would erupt, it would be between East and West.
And therefore, Switzerland would certainly be integrated into the Western, let's say, the Western part of the conflict.
So it's neutral, yes, but with, let's say, strong Western flavor.
I want to talk about Ukraine and then maybe a little bit about Gaza.
Let me ask you very briefly one question.
What is the relationship between Switzerland and NATO? Well, Switzerland is part of the so-called Partnership for Peace.
You may remember that at the end of the Cold War, as Eastern European countries asked for entering NATO, there was some reluctance in NATO to absorb all these countries at the same time.
And therefore, it was decided to create kind of a waiting room, if you want, for NATO. And that was called the Partnership for Peace.
And in this Partnership for Peace, you had all the Eastern European countries, including Russia, by the way, Ukraine, Russia, Belarus, And neutral countries like Sweden, Finland, Austria, Switzerland were also part of this partnership.
Slowly, you had those countries accessing to NATO, so they became allies to NATO and no longer partners.
Switzerland is a NATO partner, while if Switzerland would enter NATO, it would become an ally.
And in the NATO, you have basically within NATO, most staff are obviously members of the allied countries, meaning NATO members.
And for my position, I stayed five years in NATO, but that was the result of a special negotiation between Switzerland and NATO in the framework of the Partnership for Peace.
And in NATO, I was responsible for the struggle against the proliferation of small arms.
In that capacity, because I was there between 2012 and 2017, and that's precisely the time when you had the Euromaidan revolution in Ukraine.
And NATO had concerns about where the Ukrainian rebels, meaning the Russian-speaking rebels, got their weapons from.
And since it was my area, in fact, I had to follow the situation in Ukraine.
And in addition to that, as you have seen in my biography, I am also a UN expert for the security sector reform.
And in 2014, as Ukraine had a huge problem within its own military, I was asked to join a NATO team to help the Ukrainians to rebuild their military system and to have something which was supposed to be more functional Because the problem of the Ukrainian army at that time is that you had,
within the Ukrainian army, you had both Ukraine speaking and Russian speaking, meaning ethnic Ukrainians and ethnic Russians.
And that created huge tensions within the armed forces.
And they had, in fact, they had a lot of murders.
They had a lot of defection.
And that explains also how the rebels in 2014, they got their weapons because we expected, in fact, the Russians to deliver weapons to the rebels.
But in fact, it's not what happened.
What happened is that you had mostly Ukrainian units Ethnic Russian units, basically, defecting to the rebels.
And you had completely artillery regiments changing sides, literally.
And that created a lot of tensions within the Ukrainian army.
The Ukrainian army was no longer reliable for the new authorities in Kiev.
And they had to replace In several areas, they replaced the Ukrainian army by those paramilitary forces.
You may have heard about these Azov battalion and other private sector battalion, which were, in fact, extreme right-wing units, by the way, which were extremely brutal, that were not really trained for military work, but mostly for military Kind of brutal repression, we can say that way.
And that created a lot of tension with the UK. So Ukrainians asked NATO to help them to rebuild their armed forces along a more Ukrainian ethnic line.
And that's what NATO did, in fact, or helped to do.
I'm not sure this was really made properly, but at least NATO attempted to respond to this request, and I was involved in that as well.
So I went several times in Ukraine to assess the situation, everything under the heading of NATO. And that was for me quite special because, first of all, it gave me a very much insider view within the Ukrainian revolution and everything that happened just after that.
And of course, as Swiss, it was a kind of a unique position because Switzerland was not supposed to be involved in that kind of activities within Ukraine.
So that explains why, as the Russians started the special military operation in February 2022, that explains why I decided to explain a little bit the background of this conflict and how this conflict could have been prevented, because we could have prevented that, and to explain a little bit more What are the whereabouts in this conflict?
Because my view is that the picture that we have in the media, but also, and more importantly, at political level, I would say a decision-making level, in fact, we have a totally distorted view Both of the conflict of the way Russian is waging this war and the way the Ukrainians are waging this war.
As a result, we have, and that's exactly what we are witnessing right now, we see that we had a perception or a picture of the situation, and this picture was distorted, as I said, and today this picture enters in collision with the reality.
And that's exactly what we are facing today.
And that's exactly what the Ukrainians are facing today.
And then we see the discrepancies between what we wanted to achieve or what the West wanted to achieve and what it is able to do.
This is exactly the point where we are now.
And I think we are at a crucial point.
And Ukraine is at a crucial point.
And that's exactly the problem.
All right.
Well, you know, you alluded to To a lot of intriguing facts, but you didn't really tell us what the facts are.
So can I ask you to be very specific about how could we have avoided the war?
What is the misperception?
How is the media getting it wrong?
What is really happening on the ground?
And how the heck can we get out of this and leave something of Ukraine intact?
Absolutely.
Well, the picture we have is that we tend to think that Russia attacked Ukraine just for the sake of gaining territory and expanding Russia and recreating Soviet Union or Tsarist Russia.
And in fact, the reason is much simpler than that.
And we have to go back to 2014.
At the end of the Euromaidan or the Maidan revolution, the President Yanukovych was...
Let me interrupt you for a second, Colonel.
There is a kind of dissenting perception that the Maidan revolution was the result Of US match nations, including $5 billion that were pumped in by USAID, which is often a front group for the CIA. Not often, but almost always.
And then there's this very damning conversation between Victoria and Newland Absolutely.
And the U.S. ambassador a month before the overthrow of the government in which you have a U.S. State Department official choosing the cabinet that will be put in place after a revolution that had not yet happened.
And that, you know, a lot of the world sees that and says, okay, this was the U.S. overthrowing an elected government of Ukraine.
Well, yes.
Of course, I started my history in 2014, but we can go back probably to 2013 or 2012 even.
The very basic issue was that at one point, Ukraine contemplated the idea of joining the EU. And the problem of Ukraine is that it had an industrial basis that was created during the Cold War.
And during the Cold War, you had within all the different republics of the USSR, you had kind of a division of labor.
Specifically, for instance, when you had Ukraine producing engines for Russian jets, for instance.
So, meaning that the MiGs or Suhoi fighters had engines that were manufactured in Ukraine.
And after the Cold War, this kind of collaboration continued.
As a result, you had Ukraine producing engines that were only suited for Russian aircraft.
The problem is that when Ukraine started to have the idea to join the EU, the industrial capacity it had were not really suited for the European market, but it was very much tailored for the Ukrainian Russian market, if you want.
And that had severe consequence because the Ukrainians were absolutely not ready to engage the European market.
As a result, when you had the negotiation with the European Union, they proposed kind of a three-parted treaty or organization that would involve Russia, Ukraine, and the European Union.
So that Ukraine could keep its industrial basis and its Russia-oriented production while still having a free trade arrangement with the EU. The problem is that the EU didn't accept that.
They said, no, there is no way you can do that.
You have to choose either Russia or EU. And then the Ukrainian government said, well, okay, if it's that way, we have to think about this agreement and to see how we can reshape the whole thing so that it can accommodate our industrial interest.
And President Yanukovych asked for a pause.
And this pause was then interpreted by Western media As a stop in the negotiation.
And that triggered a first set of demonstration, the first Maidan, if you want.
And this first set of demonstration was, in fact, a very peaceful demonstration from the people of Ukraine, asking its government not to abandon the negotiation with European Union, to continue and to proceed in the discussion, because they thought that it was a full stop.
And let me just, let me, let me...
Actually, one quick question.
I don't mean to interrupt this fascinating story, but the first Maidan demonstrations, let's not call it a revolution at this point, but just peaceful demonstrations, was that predominantly ethnic Ukrainians who were participating, or was it even between ethnic Russians and ethnic Ukrainians?
At that time, the polls show that you had exactly 50% of the Ukrainian population in favor of joining EU and 50% reluctant to join EU. So it was not really a language matter.
It was a mere question of interest and people were Well, in fact, shared between the two possibilities, because joining EU at this point would mean to have a lot of companies closing and laid off and all that.
So meaning that the population was very much shared, but this was a very much Ukrainian, regardless of the language.
It was not ethnically related.
The problem is that I think that at that point, Victoria Nuland and so, they picked this moment to see that there was an opportunity to engage into something more, I would say,
radical and to have then a real regime change because Yanukovych, although he was not really in favor of Russia, but he was, yes, probably more pro-Russia than pro-Western, we could say that way.
And that prompted the idea of having a regime change.
And then things changed.
That's where Victoria Nuland enters the scene.
And we had then militias or paramilitaries from some right-wing parties coming from the western part of Ukraine.
Namely, Lvov, which is historically right-wing.
It has been historically extremely against the Soviets during the Cold War, even during the Second World War, by the way.
And you had some kind of militias that came to Kiev and then started a second Maidan.
That was much more violent and brutal.
And that's when you had shootings and all that with agent provocateurs and this kind of thing.
By the way, that was end of 2013, beginning of 2014.
And at that point, by the way, last year, I think it was in November, a Ukrainian court estimated that Maidan, because you had killings that were said to be ordered by the president, But this court last year decided or judged that, in fact, these killings were agents provocateurs from outside.
And that's exactly the point where the West enters the game here.
And you accept that court finding that these were agents provocateurs from outside?
Well, that's a Ukrainian court, and this Ukrainian court, in fact, has no real interest to say that, you know, because so far the official narrative in Ukraine was these, what I called agents provocateurs, were in fact an agent paid by the government, by the Yanukovych government.
And today, this version, this story or this narrative Is, in fact, challenged by the decision of the court, meaning that I think we can really rely on the decision of that court.
And so by agents provocateurs, are they talking about people who were paid by Western intelligence agencies, perhaps?
Yes, most probably.
I remember at the time we had during the Maiden revolution or the events and riots and all that, we had people involved in those riots speaking perfect American and having the same clauses as, you know, this so-called Blackwater and things like that.
There were apparently, and there were videos of that, by the way, and there were strong rumors of an involvement of those Western, let's say, mercenaries, or you couldn't call who you want, that were involved in that.
So there was clearly a covert involvement of some Western powers, probably UK, probably US. But in any case, what happened and what If you referred to this conversation between Victoria Nuland and the U.S. Ambassador Piat,
this was this idea that in fact the U.S. was in reality monitoring a real regime change and they picked the people that would later lead in fact Ukraine.
So it was definitely something that was arranged by Western hands.
In fact, that was acknowledged after that.
And I think today, I think everybody acknowledged that it was a coup.
It was a coup.
And this coup on the 21st of February 2014 There was an agreement that was signed between the protesters and Yanukovych in order to arrange for new elections and all that.
Although Yanukovych had been elected through very regular elections, these elections had been monitored by the OSCE and there was nothing wrong in those elections.
But anyway, in February 2014, Yanukovych agreed To have new elections and, in fact, to have a new process.
And he would then, after this election process, if he's not re-elected, he would leave.
But the problem is that two days later, he was, in fact, toppled and he had to leave.
And then you had, on the 23rd of February, you had a new group of individuals that came to the power that were obviously not elected.
The agreement that was signed two days before was in fact guaranteed by Germany and France.
But neither Germany nor France, in fact, respected their signature, in fact.
So they didn't do anything and there was this regime change.
The problem is that on that very day of 23rd of February 2014, the first law That was adopted by the new non-elected government, by the way, was to make Russian language a normal language.
Since 2012, I think, Ukrainian language and Russian language were both official languages in Ukraine.
In fact, in school or in administration, you could speak either language or even citizens could speak Go to the administration and address the administration in both languages.
But from the 23rd of February, that was stopped.
The only official language was declared as Ukrainian, and Russian was just a local language, meaning that in school, in administrations, in all the relationship between the citizen and the state, Russian was no longer considered as an official language.
Russian was not forbidden.
I think it's important to say that.
It was not forbidden, but it was no longer an official language.
And that's the implication, especially for education, in school and all that.
From that point, you had huge protests starting in the whole southern part of Ukraine, but really in the whole country.
From Odessa to Kharkov, the whole southern part of the country, which is mostly Russian-speaking, started to burst in flames.
The problem at that point, that's the point where, what I mentioned before, the Ukrainians started to engage these protests with the Ukrainian army.
But the Ukrainian army, as I said, was both ethnic Russian and Ukrainian.
So, I mean, the ethnic Russians just defected.
And as an example, in Crimea, we know these figures because at the time it was given by a deputy of the RADA, so a lawmaker of the RADA. He said that in Crimea you had 22,000 Ukrainian soldiers Based in Crimea.
But as the language protests started, out of these 22,000, 20,000, so 90%, left to the Russians.
So that shows the magnitude of the problem for the Ukrainians.
I mean, a huge part of the army was just defecting to the rebels.
And that, in fact, started the process in Crimea.
Well, Crimea, probably also something that needs to be known about Crimea, is that Crimea, before the independence of Ukraine, Ukraine became independent in December 1991.
But in January 1991, Ukraine asked for a referendum to be detached You mean Crimea?
Crimea was detached from Ukraine, sorry.
And that was the first autonomy referendum in the Soviet Union at that time.
The Soviet Union was disbanded just after the independence of Ukraine, meaning that when Ukraine became independent, Crimea was no longer under the rule of Kiev, but under the rule of Moscow.
Actually, Crimea was the Autonomous Socialist Republic of Crimea.
And that's a status it had in 1945, actually.
They voted that, but the Ukrainian government still felt like Crimea was part of Ukraine, right?
Well, that's the issue that came after the independence of Ukraine.
After the independence of Ukraine, Crimea didn't recognize the independence of Crimea.
And as a result, what happened in...
Ukraine did not, Kiev did not recognize the independence of Crimea.
Correct.
Kiev didn't recognize the independence and even the sovereignty, because there was a declaration of sovereignty that was made in Crimea.
But did Moscow recognize the independence of Crimea?
Absolutely.
Yes, absolutely.
Because that was a referendum that was made under the Soviet Union.
Moscow recognized that.
No problem.
The problem is that in 1992, after Crimea made its declaration of independence and declaration of sovereignty, Ukraine refused that.
And in fact, in 1994, there was a kind of a political tug of war between the two.
The Soviet Union had been disbanded, as you know, and Russia actually was not in a position to take side in that conflict, in fact, and probably didn't want or had not the capacity to intervene in that.
They had other problems to solve.
As a result, the issue of Crimea and Ukraine was left between those two countries.
And in 1994 and 1995, Ukraine abolished forcefully the constitution of Crimea and, with special forces, removed the president of Crimea and annexed Crimea.
And that's the part of the history that nobody wants to remind.
Let me ask you this.
I don't want to distract you from this story.
But Donbass and Lugansk were also primarily ethnic Russian.
Correct.
What were they doing at this time?
Was there an independence movement in Donbass and Lugansk as well?
Or were they supporting Crimea?
Or were they content to be part of Ukraine?
No.
In fact, the two republics, I mean, as I said, in 2014, you had the whole south of Ukraine that went into protest.
Finally, with repression, the Ukrainians regained control over most of the south, except the two republics of Donetsk and Lugansk, on the east of the country.
And what happened is that those two countries, I mean, you had then really kind of war activities between those two republics and the government of Kyiv.
And this conflict led to the Minsk Agreement, in fact, in 2014.
But it's important here to say that those two republics initially and up to February 2022, in fact, those republic didn't ask for independence.
They asked for autonomy within the framework of Ukraine.
And in fact, if you read the Minsk agreement that was agreed between Kiev and the two republics, in the Minsk agreement, you had more or less the architecture of a federal state, very much similar to what you have in the United States or even in Switzerland, where every state has its own autonomy in terms of language, education and things like that.
Probably the best analogy is Montreal or, you know, Quebec.
In Canada, Quebec is one of the 13 provinces of Canada, but it has autonomy.
It allowed to have its own language, operate its own schools, have its own government, and it's a special autonomous, quasi-autonomous relationship with Canada.
Absolutely.
This is an excellent example.
And that was the idea.
So there were several times there were some suggestions that they coming from politicians and from various parts that maybe they could join Russia, but Putin refused.
And in fact, he refused to annex this republic up to the 16th of February 2022.
And he changed his mind then in mid-February.
And why did he change his mind?
I think it's also important to understand what happened just before the special military operation.
So between 2014 to 2021, you had a struggle between these two parties, if you want, the autonomists on one side and Kiev on the other side.
And the Ukrainians were reluctant to implement the Minsk agreement, which, according to me, could have solved the problem.
And Russia struggled to have this Minsk agreement implemented.
On the other hand, Ukraine and the two guarantors, which were Germany and France, were reluctant to have a disagreement because they thought it would give an advantage to Russian speaking.
There was some consideration I never really understood.
But the fact of the matter is that this MIG agreement was not agreed upon.
Not implemented.
It was agreed upon, but not implemented.
Let me clarify that.
It was agreed upon by France, Germany, the UK, and It was not ratified by the Ukrainian parliament.
Is that what happened?
No, I think it was ratified.
I think it was.
The agreement was, in fact, accepted as such.
The problem is nobody wanted to implement it.
I mean, the Western side didn't want to implement it, and they were just dragging their feet to do that.
Again, there were a lot of pressure to have this agreement signed.
So it was signed and ratified on both sides.
That was not the problem.
But the political willingness to implement it was simply not there.
And again, this is for me something which is very hard to explain.
But probably it has to do with domestic politics in Ukraine.
The fact is that what happened with Maidan is you had a very much right-wing type of government that came.
And in Ukraine, right-wing means Ultranationalist and ultranationalist mean strongly against any other kind of, I would say, ethnic group having a power in the country.
And in fact, there was an idea by those, and that was written, by the way, by those who were in power, that Ukrainian should be the language all over the country, period.
There should be no exception.
So I think there was kind of an ideological dimension into the refusal to implement the agreement.
And that was very strong.
And by the way, we talk about the Ukrainian minority, but all these language issues affected also the Hungarian minority in Ukraine.
And if today, for instance, you have Viktor Orban, who is reluctant to to implement sanctions from the EU or how it tends to have a separate way in dealing with Ukraine and the Russians is because precisely the Hungarian minority has been strongly affected by this language law.
The Hungarian government complained several times to the European Union and the European Commission about the status of the Hungarian minority in Ukraine.
So this minority issue is an issue not just between Russians and Ukrainians.
It is also an issue between Romania and Ukraine and between Hungary and Ukraine.
The problem is that those minorities are very small and therefore nobody talks about them.
But for the Romanians and the Hungarians, this is a very serious issue.
And that's why, in fact, as this government came in power in 2014, which was extremely ultra-nationalist, there was no compromise possible.
And that's the reason probably why this agreement, the Minsk agreement, was never implemented.
Now, jump to 2021, because I think that's where...
By the way, let me inject my own history here.
In 2019, an actor and comedian with no political experience, Vladimir Zelenskyy, He runs for president of Ukraine.
He wins with 70% of the vote because he's running on a peace platform.
He's running, promising to implement the Minsk Accords and finally to implement them.
And yet when he gets in there, he wins by a landslide because the people of Ukraine want peace.
He wins by a landslide and then he gets in there and he pivots.
And we don't know why he pivots, but the speculation is two things.
One, he's threatened by the ultranationalists within the government who are very able of killing somebody, a president.
And two, he comes under pressure by the U.S. State Department.
So two very important forces that are critical to his survival.
Absolutely right.
And in fact, so Zelenskyy was elected in April 2019.
And one month later, in the Ukrainian press, Dmitry Yarosh, Who was the leader of the most famous ultra-nationalist party and today is still the leader of the Ukrainian Voluntary Army, which is a separate army from the Ukrainian army.
It's not under the Ministry of Defense, it's a separate army that fights alongside with the Ukrainian army in Ukraine, but this is an extreme right-wing army.
And this guy in the media, in the media, said that if Zelensky would apply his program, he would be killed.
And they just say it plainly in the media, completely open.
So meaning that there was certainly pressure from the U.S., But there was also pressure from inside.
And in fact, I think Zelensky was sitting between two chairs, basically, and he had no other choice, in fact, than going ahead with the situation that was before him.
And the situation was imposed to him, and he could never implement his program.
And that's the reason why, in fact, he was pushed towards war.
And in March, on the 24th of March 2021, he issued a decree for the reconquest of Crimea and the southern part of the country, meaning that he was ready, and he said also that he was ready to take back these territories even by war.
And from that point on, you had a buildup of the Ukrainian army along the Donbas area.
And this buildup of forces prompted the Russians to build up their own forces at the Ukrainian border.
And that's what you had from early April 2021.
So you had this buildup of force on both sides based on that decree of Zelensky.
So that means the Russians knew that at one point, Ukraine would launch a big offensive against the Donbass.
And the signs or the indications for that big operation It came on the 16th of February, 2022.
And you had this buildup during the whole 2021.
And in February, you had the first, quite a massive shelling of the Donbass by the Ukrainian forces.
And you may remember that the 16th of February was the date to which Joe Biden said that he knew that the Russians would attack.
He said he knew that the Russians would attack on the 16th of February.
And why did he know that?
Because he knew that the Russians would not allow the Ukrainians to have a massive operation against the Donbass.
And he knew that, as it happened, by the way, in Georgia in 2008, that the Russians would intervene to protect their own population.
Ethnic Russians.
Fellow Russian compatriots, to some extent, in the Donbas.
And that's exactly what happened.
You had exactly the same scenario, by the way, in 2008.
And I think even a commission of the European Union stated that, in fact, the Russian intervention in Georgia was provoked by By the Georgian government when they started shelling South Ossetian population.
And that's exactly the same scenario you had early 2022.
And in February, what happened is that you had this increase in shelling.
At that point, Putin decided that he would recognize the independence of the two Republic of Donbass, the Republic of Lugansk and Donetsk.
And based on that recognition of independence, he would make a treaty with those two republics.
And on the base of that treaty, the two republics asked for assistance to the Russians so that Russia could intervene to help them and to assist them during the Ukrainian offensive.
That's more or less the scenario that happened between the 16th of February and the 24th of February 2022.
So it was a provoked...
I think we can definitely say that the Russian intervention was provoked.
By this decree of Zelensky and the preparation for a big operation against Donbass, and they knew that the Russians would react to that.
The Russians invoked the responsibility to protect, which is a principle of the United Nations.
And that's exactly what happened.
Exactly the same scenario as in Georgia.
And then, you know, the end of the story, in fact, that you had this big operation and this with the main focus on Donbass and a secondary operation towards Kiev.
Not to take Kiev, but just to pin down the Ukrainian army reserves around Kiev so that they could not reinforce the main direction of operation of the Russians in the Donbas.
And that's more or less the situation that we had in March 2022.
And later, based on the...
I mean, Zelensky noticed that he had probably gone too far.
And he noticed very quickly that because...
As you know, the special military operation started on the 24th of February, but just one day after, on the 25th of February, Zelensky called the Swiss Ministry of Foreign Affairs And ask him to organize a conference for peace, to negotiate with the Russians.
Meaning that I think the magnitude of the Russian operation after just one day prompted Zelensky to react on that and to find a solution, a political solution.
And at this point, the European Union came into the game and said to Zelensky, I mean, you had a first round of negotiation, by the way, that started at the Belarusian border in Gomel, and the delegation from both countries started to have discussions.
But the European Union came and said to Zelensky, no, there is no discussion.
Here is 450 million euro for weapons, but there is no discussion.
You have to fight against the Russians.
And so this first round of negotiation collapsed and the war resumed to some extent.
It was not stopped, but I mean, there was no incentive to stop the operation.
And then in March Mid-March, Zelensky realized that the situation started to turn dramatically, unfavorably for Ukraine, and he started a second round of negotiation under the auspices of Turkey in Istanbul.
And he made a proposal.
Turkey and Israel.
Yes, Israel was in support.
Exactly.
I think Erdogan was more or less on the driver's seat and Israel came in support.
In fact, Israel had been...
Prime Minister Naftali Bennett.
Exactly.
Ukraine asked Israel to assist.
He also asked China to be part, but China was not very warm to come to the discussion at this stage.
So you had Israel and Turkey.
And interestingly enough, Zelensky made a proposal to the Russians and there were several points.
I mean, something like ten points to this proposal.
But the main ones were essentially that Russia would leave Ukraine.
I mean, they would just withdraw their troops from Ukraine.
The status of Crimea and the two republics of Lugansk and Donetsk had to be discussed further, so there was no solution for these two, but there was a question of having a further discussion on that.
And in exchange of that, Ukraine, Zelensky, proposed to have a neutral A neutrality that should be guaranteed by 10 countries, among which Russia.
And that would be basically some NATO countries and the surrounding countries.
NATO would stay out of Ukraine.
Yes, exactly.
That was the idea.
And the security guarantees would provide for security in case Ukraine would be invaded or whatever.
So there were some guarantees for Ukraine, but basically it was a neutralized Ukraine.
The problem of NATO in Ukraine is probably less NATO as such than the opportunity that the US Could use to deploy nuclear weapons on Ukrainian territory.
That's the key point, in fact.
I like to take the example of Turkey in 1952.
Turkey joined the NATO in 1952, and at that point, Turkey was the only country that had the direct contact with Soviet Union.
They had the common border.
So they were directly, NATO then was touching Soviet Union, literally.
And the Soviets were not pleased, but they didn't react to that, in fact.
The problem came ten years later.
As the U.S. started to deploy the Jupiter...
Thermos.
Exactly.
That started or prompted the response of the Russians to deploy missiles in Cuba.
And then you had the crisis in Cuba.
The missiles in Cuba were in fact a response to the deployment of nuclear missiles at the Soviet border in Turkey.
And at the end of the day, I mean, you know better, certainly much better than me, what happened with the Cuban crisis.
But at the end of this crisis, Soviet Union agreed to withdraw its missile from Cuba and the US agreed to withdraw its missile from Turkey.
So the issue of NATO touching Russia or Soviet Union is certainly a concern for Russia, but it's not the main concern.
The main concern is that U.S. could deploy nuclear weapons.
And why would U.S. deploy nuclear weapons?
Since 2002, since the George W. Bush administration, the U.S. started to withdraw from all the arms control agreements that were signed during the Cold War.
And that, in fact, was the starting point of the problem, because Would the U.S. be still part of this agreement?
Basically, there would be not much problem in having NATO touching Russia.
And in fact, I remember in the early 90s, I was part of a delegation to talk to the Russian high command About the issue of NATO, because Switzerland was also considering joining NATO, and we were concerned about how this joining NATO would be perceived by Russia.
So we went to discuss that with some politicians in Moscow and the Russian high command.
And I noticed that at that stage, the Russians were not so adverse to NATO. They even considered and they told us they were considering asking joining NATO. The problem is that NATO, as you know, is basically a nuclear organization.
That means that the purpose of NATO is to bring European countries under the US nuclear umbrella.
Meaning that in such an organization, you cannot have two nuclear umbrellas.
That's the concern.
And that's the reason why, in fact, although the Russians expressed the intention of joining NATO, the US always refused that because precisely of the purpose that would require a change in the substance of NATO. NATO is very much this base,
as Jens Stoltenberg, by the way, says, it's a nuclear organization, but based on the nuclear capabilities of only one country, basically the US. So that's why it cannot really accommodate.
And also the reason why, by the way, France left the military organization of NATO in 1966, because at that time, France was building up its own nuclear force.
NATO was not, in fact, tailored for having two nuclear powers.
So that's why Charles de Gaulle decided to withdraw from NATO, even if they kept ties on the political side of NATO. They didn't leave completely NATO. But there was an issue with the use of nuclear weapons.
And that's obvious because U.S. having the responsibility of engaging nuclear weapons cannot...
And if U.S. has no control over another country within NATO that has nuclear weapons, it could be engaged in a nuclear war without wanting it.
And that's exactly the problem.
Let me ask...
Let me ask you one last question on this subject, because I know that we've gone way over.
Why do the Balkan states and the Scandinavian states, why do they want to join NATO? Why is there such an appetite for them joining NATO? Because it seems like it's so controversial with the Soviets.
What do they get out of it?
Well, it's a very good question.
Well, we have also to consider that those countries, I mean, I have been several times in Finland and Sweden, we had a good relationship with those countries, and we had military contacts also at intelligence service level, obviously.
But we could notice that these countries have always been very in favor of NATO. So although they were neutral, they had a very strong, let's say, kind of love for NATO already a long time ago.
Sweden had even an agreement with the US, a defense agreement, in fact, a bilateral agreement with the US, not with NATO, but with the US, in case it would be attacked by the Soviets and things like that.
But in fact, it's interesting that you ask the question because today there was no much need for these countries to join NATO. In fact, I think it's even strategically disadvantaged for these countries because Russia,
I'm convinced, is a country that would respect neutrality, especially on the northern flank, because if you have a war in Europe, it would probably happen in Central Europe, not on the northern flank of NATO or the northern flank of Europe.
Meaning that having neutral states in this area It in fact suits well the Russians because they feel that they don't have to take care of that part of Europe.
But having then two countries in NATO, that means that in case of war, they have to take care of that.
And probably they might even be tempted to take care of that with nuclear weapons, probably, because nobody would.
And I think that even I don't remember who in the United States used to say that the U.S. will not sacrifice Washington for Stockholm or Helsinki, meaning that if the Russians would have a problem,
a nuclear problem with Sweden and And Finland, probably the NATO would react, but probably the US would not engage in the nuclear war for these two countries because what would be at stake is much, much bigger.
So there is no real, let's say, solid rationale for these countries to enter NATO. But what is interesting is that in March 2019, you had a report that was published by the RAND Corporation, 300 pages, a document that was produced.
It's a strategy, basically, named Extending Russia and Competing from Advantage's Ground or something like that.
And in this document, the RAND analysts outlined a very complex strategy to weaken Russia.
And among the, let's say, topics or issues that should be addressed to weaken Russia, there is explicitly the idea of drawing Sweden and Finland into NATO. I said that was my last question, but let me ask you another one.
In an all-out nuclear war with Russia, what happens to the United States and what happens to Russia?
I've heard that Russia has more nuclear weapons than we do, and that its defensive capabilities are better than the United States.
I remember when my uncle, you know, was talking during the Cuban Missile Crisis and during the Checkpoint Charlie Crisis in 62, and he was surrounded by people who wanted a nuclear war with Russia, who considered it inevitable but also desirable as soon as possible.
They said we would win that war because we would kill 130 million Russians and they would only kill 30 million of us.
You know, and my uncle did not think that was a good outcome, whatever.
He didn't want to be killing Russians, and he certainly didn't want Americans to be killed.
So, what would happen today?
Well, it's a good question, because multiple scenarios, and I've seen, by the way, there was a lot of thoughts devoted to that, especially in the 80s, 90s, in the US, basically.
And there was a lot of fascinating studies and scenarios developed.
In fact, the purpose of these scenarios was to develop a strategy, especially for the anti-ballistic missiles, and to have a strategy as to how to use nuclear weapons and how to not use nuclear weapons.
Because...
The problem with nuclear weapons is that you can obviously make a lot of distractions, but making distractions may not solve the problem because, for instance, just as an example, if you strike the Kremlin on one side and the White House on the other side, who will decide then?
Meaning that if you have a nuclear exchange, you really need to know exactly what is the purpose of the destruction you will cause.
And personally, I don't think that Russia on the side and the US on the other side will engage quite easily in such a conflict.
I think if there is a nuclear war, it will not be an all-out nuclear war.
It will affect mostly Europe, but not the two main actors who have the largest nuclear arsenal.
Because, as I said, you cannot really decapitate the leadership of a country that has the arsenal, because that would lead to the big holocaust.
Instead, having a limited nuclear war in Europe basically would cost more to Russia than to the US, but it would cost mostly to the Europeans.
And in fact, This kind of thinking was exactly what prompted the anti-nuclear movement and pacifist movements in the 80s in Germany, because the Germans realized that if there is...
At that time, we were talking about nuclear tactical weapons.
Today, nobody really talks about this because we have alternatives to tactical nuclear weapons.
But in the 80s, the technical and operational nuclear weapons were quite common and they were deployed even on the European theater.
But the thing is that with such weapons, you wager war only in Europe.
So only the Europeans would suffer a nuclear war.
And the two main actors, those who have the largest arsenal and who have the largest capacity, would probably avoid killing each other because that would really lead to the massive Holocaust.
So I think the all-out nuclear war is, in my opinion, very unlikely.
But a nuclear war in Europe is probably more likely.
And that's the reason why I think we should revive the INF Treaty, so the Intermediate Nuclear Forces Treaty that was disbanded by...
I may be wrong, but I think it was Donald Trump who...
Well, there were two.
I think the Clinton administration walked away, or maybe it was Obama who walked away.
Yeah, that's possible.
And then Trump walked away from the second.
And there are the two intermediate...
Well, Colonel Pot, thank you very much for joining us.
It's been very informative, and I'm very, very grateful for you sharing that history with us and your strategic thoughts.
Thank you, and I hope to have you back, particularly to talk about Gaza.
Absolutely.
That's my pleasure.
Anytime.
I'm very proud and honored to be in your show.
Thank you.
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