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June 29, 2022 - Viva & Barnes

02:04:14

Sidebar with The Dreizen Report - Politics, Geopolitics AND MORE! Viva & Barnes LIVE!

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	Thank you.
	We're wrapping up the G7 Summit in Germany, where we had really important conversations and focused on clear objectives with our closest friends and allies, but also with important partners from around the world.
	We talked about continuing to step up in the fight against climate change, moving forward on defending democracy, standing up for Ukraine in the face of Russia's illegal invasion, and also dealing with the challenges that everyone's feeling around the global economy, whether it's inflation or rising food and fuel prices or other.
	These are things that we're going to continue to step up on as we move forward.
	The G7 committed to stepping up on...
	Stepping up.
	Late, and we have to listen to Trudeau.
	But hold on.
	Climate change, these are things that...
	It's like they hear a talking point.
	They get their think tanks, and they say, what's working?
	Step up works.
	Let's use it three times.
	We're talking about continuing to step up in the fight against climate change.
	These are things that we're going to continue to step up on.
	The G7 committed to stepping up on global investment.
	Step up, people.
	Step up.
	Okay, I'm not in the standard location.
	Lighting's going to be bad.
	Audio might not be so good.
	Yeah, you know what?
	The funny thing is, I was going to do a bathroom because the lighting was actually better, but there was too much echo.
	Okay, I'm not even going to do that much of an intro rant.
	I think I've tortured you all enough with needles in the eardrum.
	Like, it's needles in the eardrum listening to Justin Trudeau in tone, in delivery, and in substance.
	We've got an amazing guest tonight.
	I don't actually know, I do know his name now, it's Jacob Dreisen.
	And I thought it was, it's the Dreisen Report.
	I've been watching and cramming.
	At like 1.75 for the better part of the afternoon, his YouTube content, I know where I've got questions because the internet likes credentials to go with good insights.
	Thus far, and I went back to watch some of Jacob's older videos, insights have proven to be on point.
	So you can't argue with predictive capabilities when one is proven right over a certain course of time based on past statements on the interwebs, which don't go anywhere.
	So tonight, It's going to be politics, geopolitics, the war in the Ukraine, and we're going to get to know our guest a little better.
	Standard disclaimers, people.
	No legal advice, no election fornification advice, and no medical advice.
	We have a new member in the house.
	That's always good to see.
	Hold on.
	Let me see this here.
	Let me bring up the new member.
	Where did the new member go?
	I've lost the member.
	It's a purple bee avatar.
	Can't bring up the member.
	The member's name is Bruno LeBoutilier.
	Welcome to the channel, Bruno.
	Standard disclaimers as relates to Super Chats.
	YouTube takes 30% of Super Chats.
	If you don't like that, we should be simultaneously streaming on Rumble.
	Rumble has Rumble Rants, the equivalent.
	Rumble takes 20%.
	So better for everybody.
	Better to support a platform that you like.
	You just make sure that we're live.
	We're live.
	And better to support a platform that actually supports free speech.
	Without further adieu.
	New member, again, Twirly Wolf.
	Twirly Wolf, welcome to the channel.
	Okay, let's bring him in.
	We've got, I'm going to bring in Barnes first.
	I'm going to bring in Jacob second.
	I'm going to put myself on the bottom so that I only block my face with Super Chats.
	Jacob, welcome to the channel.
	How are you doing?
	Hey, thanks so much, Viva.
	Yeah, I'm psyched to be here.
	Thank you.
	Psyched to be here as a guest of Robert Barnes, who was actually the first guy to ever plug me.
	Before I even had a blog, he plugged my mailing list.
	That was a big deal.
	A lot of his subscribers went over to me.
	He was the first in a long line.
	But the first.
	So I really 0-1.
	You know, it was a big pat on the back, vote of confidence.
	And it really kept me going at that point because I was thinking, well, I'm not making a difference.
	You know, should I be doing this?
	And then all of a sudden, out comes Robert Barnes plugging me and telling his followers, subscribers to, you know, send me their emails to get on my mailing list.
	And that was fantastic.
	So thanks.
	Thanks, Robert.
	Now I'm on YouTube.
	I got a blog.
	You know, I'm like, you know, I got...
	Emails from all kinds of interesting people asking about my wife.
	And, you know, it's just kind of the par for the course, right?
	I'm going through it kind of like a micro-celebrity.
	But it's all, you know, thanks to Robert.
	Yes, well, we all believe in Let's Go, Brandon.
	So, yeah, for those out there, kind of the opening statement introduction, for those of you who may not know him, Jacob Drazen.
	I have been on his email list for quite a while.
	The way I measure people is not conventional credentials.
	Indeed, if you have conventional credentials, I tend to be a little skeptical of you.
	If you have a lot of think tanks and blue check marks around you, you tend to be poor at what is the most relevant and pertinent credential.
	Which is the quality of your analysis, which can often be measured by its short-term and mid-term predictability.
	If you'd been following Jacob on his message board list, you could have made some of the investments that he made that turned out very, very profitable, that has everybody begging for the latest investment advice from Jacob now.
	But also, you would have known what was happening in the war.
	Because you kind of had two schools of thought out there, predominantly in the Western press, which was the institutional narrative, which is that Putin wants to conquer all of Europe, but don't worry, our threat of economic sanctions will keep him at bay.
	Then there were those who were like, that's just not what Putin wants, so we don't see an invasion coming.
	I was in that second category.
	But throughout that time period, there was a third alternative voice, which was Jacob's voice, which was saying, yes, an invasion is coming.
	Not on the terms that the West is saying, nor is the West's defense mechanism going to work.
	The can speak Russian and Ukrainian, has a background and understanding with original sources, and has been...
	Way ahead of the curve, going all the way back to the fertilizer prediction last fall about what some of the fallout would be from our foolish economic and political policies in Ukraine.
	So we're going to be discussing tonight geopolitics, discussing the Ukraine war as a specific example of those geopolitics, and introducing folks to Jacob in general.
	So I'll let Viva open up the witness stand with Jacob tonight.
	Well, and ordinarily I would do the 30,000-foot overview, Jacob, but I'm still going to do it, actually.
	Who are you?
	Where are you from?
	You speak Russian and Ukrainian.
	30,000-foot overview before we get into childhood, growing up, professional education, military training, and how you got into doing what you're doing now.
	Sure.
	Well, I don't actually speak Ukrainian.
	I understand it.
	I've never really had a chance to speak it because I don't really know any Ukrainians personally that want to associate with me.
	So yeah, I was born to Soviet expat parents in Israel.
	Then my dad moved us around and finally settled in America when I was about nine years old and went off into the U.S. Army when I graduated high school.
	I did that for five years and got two master's degrees afterwards, one of them, the first one being in international relations, the second being an MBA from the National University of Singapore, both on full scholarships, so that was pretty cool.
	The international relations degree I found to be completely useless and in no way, although it was a great school.
	Great school, Syracuse University.
	Anyone should consider going there.
	But there's no utility to it because you learn a bunch of theory about Marxist international relations and feminist international relations and so forth.
	And it's not the real world, right?
	And worked in the U.S. government for a few years.
	Got a good handle on the federal budget process.
	And then went into politics for a few years.
	I worked briefly on Capitol Hill long enough to get a good idea of how it works.
	I then moved into sort of the, I guess you could say, the lobbying sphere.
	Worked for the Israel lobby for a couple of years.
	Yeah, yeah, yeah.
	Jacob, just by virtue of that, you're going to have triggered some people.
	Actually, just to interrupt one small question.
	Some people don't really appreciate this.
	A lot of Soviets, or a lot of people from Russia, they moved to Israel, but pretended to be Jewish in order to escape Russia.
	If I may ask, I'm only interested in terms of your history.
	Jewish, or was your family one of the ones who said, we are Jewish to get out of Russia, but weren't?
	Yeah, they got out in the 70s, you know, mid-70s or early to mid-70s before I was born.
	So at that point, you really couldn't fake being Jewish.
	I mean, it was, you know, on your internal passport that you're Jewish.
	It was, you know, the Soviets made it into a nationality or an ethnic group rather than religion.
	So they put it on your internal passport and you couldn't really fake it.
	People really only started faking it after the collapse of the USSR, when there was such a huge crush of hundreds of thousands of people trying to get out to Israel that some of the vetting standards maybe were a little overlooked or whatever.
	There were also a lot of people where the...
	One spouse was Jewish under Jewish halacha, you know, holy law, and then the other spouse wasn't, but of course, you know, they're not going to split up the spouses, but once they get to Israel, they can't be married, they can't be buried in the same cemetery, right?
	So, kind of a little bit of a theocracy there, so, you know, kind of interesting.
	But yeah, no, both my folks were genuinely Jewish, although my...
	Actually, you know what?
	My father was not Jewish under Halakha.
	His mother was Russian.
	My father's mother was Russian.
	But at the time, I think they said, okay, you're half-Jewish, so you're Jewish.
	And he had obviously a Jewish name because his dad was Jewish.
	You know, Israel was a little bit more secular back then.
	I think they, you know, now it's like, you know, if your mom's not Jewish, forget it.
	You have to go through a conversion course or whatever.
	It's really bizarre.
	I mean, it's like, you know, I mean, it's like trying to understand their lunar calendar or something.
	It's, you know, wonderful, wonderful culture, but it's a little convoluted.
	But yeah, yeah.
	So anyway, after that...
	I went abroad, followed my wife for a few years, and didn't find myself gainfully employed, but I lived overseas in the early 2010s, and finally went back to school, got my MBA in Singapore.
	I think I was probably one of the only Americans that ever commuted daily for some time between Malaysia and Singapore.
	One of the high points of what I can say is that no one else has ever done.
	And then I came back stateside.
	We moved back to the D.C. area and got a job working on Obamacare implementation.
	And then I moved back into the federal bureaucracy, kind of just had a safe gig for the last eight, nine years where, you know...
	Just a steady job.
	Basically, I can work 8 to 5 and then do my own pursuits without having to work any overtime, which is great because I started blogging.
	Even before that, I was writing some stuff online and whatnot.
	Russian Channel 1 actually interviewed me about corruption in the U.S. government back in 2016.
	I actually did the interview in Russian, so that was great.
	Kind of like a wannabe renaissance man.
	It helps when you've been around the world.
	You speak a foreign language.
	You can consume news in another language.
	Half of it might be propaganda, but it's the same here.
	You can at least pick out some kernels of truth.
	Basically, since 2014, I would say I have been more deeply following the entire situation in eastern Ukraine and throughout the Ukraine, probably following it more deeply than any other American that doesn't get paid full-time to do it.
	I can really safely say that.
	Or at least if there's someone else, you know, they're not online, they're not known, right?
	I consider myself a self-made expert in this subject and go toe-to-toe with anybody in the U.S. State Department or whatever.
	So that's me in a nutshell.
	Could you give people that same 30,000-point view of the Ukrainian conflict?
	Because the pitch here in the West is out of the blue.
	Russia in February decided.
	Hey, let's invade Ukraine.
	Wouldn't that be fun?
	And that's all that kind of happened.
	And that the rest of us are trying to protect poor Zelensky.
	We have to send Ben Stiller and Bono in to help him out.
	That's serious.
	I was not aware of that.
	Maybe I'm not such an expert.
	I was not aware that Bono went to Ukraine.
	Yes, indeed.
	We're sending him our best.
	We've got to do Tropic Thunder 3. Can you give people the more...
	Actual historical context of the Ukrainian conflict from sort of a broad perspective.
	Sure.
	Well, okay.
	So it basically, it comes down to hegemonic imperialism and nature abhors a vacuum, right?
	So after 1991, even before 91, the Soviet Empire started to collapse.
	And then in 1991, it completely collapsed.
	And around Russia's periphery, Well, Russia was quite weak, and then around Russia's periphery, there were all these new countries.
	And they were, so to speak, unclaimed, right?
	So it was like, you know, Africa in the late 19th century, where it was sort of, you know, the last frontier that had not been plugged in and harnessed, you know, by external powers, right?
	Because, you know, there was essentially a relative vacuum.
	And so the West slowly moved in, but of course, initially they pursued Eastern Europe, which was no joke because there's a lot of countries there and they were doing quite poor economically and it took quite a long time to integrate them into the European Union and then NATO and so forth.
	But by the mid-2000s...
	By the mid-2000s, that project was concluded.
	So all of these countries, former Warsaw Pact countries in Eastern Europe, had been at that point integrated into the European Union and into NATO, into all of the sort of, you could say, neoliberal structures.
	And then it came turn for the 14 non-Russian republics.
	Of the former USSR.
	And so, of course, first they went into the Baltics.
	They went into Georgia.
	That was another one where all of a sudden, millions of Americans heard of Georgia the first time with the August 2008 war.
	But there was a background to it.
	There was a very large project where Uncle Sam was attempting to turn Georgia his way.
	Essentially, not many Americans know this, but...
	For a few years prior to the 2008 Russia-Georgia war, Uncle Sam was paying a very large proportion of the entire Georgian state budget.
	So it was essentially just like they did with Korea back in the 50s and 60s and South Vietnam and so forth.
	So there was hundreds of millions of dollars going to Georgia every year to pay a very large proportion of the entire Georgian state budget.
	They also received a lot of military assistance.
	And as things tend to go, they jumped the gun.
	They jumped the gun and attacked this Russian-protected enclave of South Ossetia, sort of without really fully consulting with the Bush administration and sort of embarrassed themselves.
	Russia disassembled their military very quickly.
	And Georgia's sort of slid off the bandwagon and has been sort of in a neutral state between Russia and Uncle Sam ever since.
	So Russia was able to prevent the total capture of Georgia.
	Now, next target, of course, is Ukraine.
	Ukraine's a...
	Teacher, if I may ask a question right there.
	Georgia, do they hold resentment to either Russia or the U.S.?
	And if they hold resentment, to whom?
	Because of what happened?
	Yeah, so I haven't personally spoken to any Georgians in a long time, but my impression is that there's several camps or maybe three camps in their society.
	There's a pro-Russian camp.
	There's a pro-West camp that consists of the followers of Saakashvili, who I believe is in jail there now.
	And his followers actually are, if you've heard of the Georgian volunteer mercenaries that are fighting in the Ukraine, among whom was some of the participants of the infamous throat-cutting video where three or four Russian prisoners near Kiev on March 31st had their throats slit and were left to bleed out.
	One of them was shot on camera.
	That was actually several of those guys there were Georgian volunteers.
	They're aligned with Saakashvili's party.
	And then there's sort of, you know, as tends to happen in society, there's probably some neutral space between those.
	But right now, right now within Georgia, there is a sort of government that is working very, very hard to preserve neutrality, although they've been pressured by Uncle Sam to take anti-Russian position, and now they've been promised candidacy in the EU.
	Which, you know, probably they've been promised for the last 15 years.
	But anyway, they've been pressured very hard, but they've maintained their neutrality in part because they learned their lesson.
	They don't want their business ties to Russia to be cut again, as happened in 2008 and for some time thereafter.
	Because in Georgia, they're a fairly poor country.
	They don't have any natural resources.
	And they've sort of lost the free stuff and the cheese coming from Uncle Sam.
	They're no longer getting funded by Uncle Sam.
	So basically, they're trying not to anger Russia because they still have a very large Georgian business community living in Russia that sends remittance payments back and does business between the two companies.
	You know, Robert probably knows this because he likes cigars.
	He probably likes wine.
	Georgian wine is some of the best and really most unique in the world.
	They have some varieties of extremely sweet wine that are very rare, and it's very highly prized in Russia.
	They also export this premium brand of spring water to Russia and a number of other food products.
	And, you know, they can't afford to lose that market and the business relationships that they have.
	It happened before.
	It was very painful for them, but Uncle Sam bailed them out.
	Now, you know, they're not in line for more free money now from Uncle Sam.
	So they're trying to play very carefully.
	The one thing I'll say is, separate from this, there is one of these very large, well-funded, U.S. government-funded bio labs near Tbilisi, the capital of Georgia.
	And you can look it up.
	I've shared it on my blog or in my mailing list.
	Yeah, you know, they do research on local diseases and trying to basically the kind of stuff that, well, let's not bring this back to the USA.
	Let's do the research overseas.
	You know, kind of like with Wuhan.
	I'm not sure that it's quite that dangerous.
	So there's still some connections between Uncle Sam and Georgia, but they're nowhere near what they were, you know, 15 years ago.
	I think it's a good analogy, because when I was describing the Ukrainian conflict early on, I was saying that one way to look at it is that Putin may do what I called South Ossetia Plus.
	In other words, a version of going in and taking back the eastern and southeastern regions that are natively Russian, much as South Ossetia was protected from Georgia incursion and invasion, and then might add a little to it.
	Maybe add a little Odessa, maybe add a little Harkin.
	Depending on how the...
	Walensky responded.
	The other aspect that's a great parallel, not only is this sort of the Uncle Sam trying to knock on Russia's door and instigate trouble in its backyard with EU promises, NATO promises right on its border after it promised it would never do that to Gorbachev back in 1989, 1990, 1991, as was later admitted by James Baker, Secretary of State and others.
	But the other aspect is the same combination of kind of, I call them sociopaths looking for a permission slip, whether you're talking about Islamic terrorists.
	The Ku Klux Klan, Antifa, communist violence.
	Usually they're people that are recruited in prisons for a reason.
	They're people that are just sociopaths, but somebody comes along and gives them a political permission slip to act on their sociopathology.
	So you get that aspect in a lot of these so-called democratic movements.
	The other aspect are the grifter politicians.
	I mean, this Georgian president, as you reference, ends up trying to govern part of Ukraine after 2014.
	Now he's back to the super chat that asked.
	He's back in jail in Georgia because of all the crimes he committed.
	But you have a lot of the same grifters, sociopaths, anti-Russian violence that's just sociopathic violence.
	A lot of those components.
	Can you talk about how we end up seeing the same thing in Ukraine, especially since 2014, but even before that?
	Yeah.
	Well, so I would frankly say that all politicians are the same.
	I think that, you know, their circumstances may differ where in some cases, depending on the time period in the country, they're allowed to get away with larger corruption.
	They're allowed to get away with violence and suppressing their opposition, their enemies.
	But fundamentally, they're all the same.
	And what happened in Ukraine was the United States, as happened, as was the case.
	When the U.S. and U.K. supported the Banderist rebels just after World War II, once again, they banked on the Galician nationalists, the Galician fascists, which was a relatively small proportion of the Ukrainian political scene.
	But what happened in 2014...
	And this was not the first attempt to bring the Ukraine into the American fold.
	The first attempt was, of course, in 2004.
	And it succeeded briefly with this pro-Western President Yushinko, who was elected in the second round after they canceled the first round due to Western-sponsored protests.
	But Yushinko was such a disaster.
	At the same time, there was this big economic crisis.
	If you remember, in 2008-2009, Ukraine did very poorly, and they replaced Yushchenko with this guy, Yanukovych, who was a thug and a crook, but he was from Donetsk.
	He was absolutely fairly elected, and they didn't let him serve out his four years.
	They had a revolution.
	There was a really, really interesting mix of factors and supporters that went into it.
	There were the hardcore Galician nationalists and their inspired sort of fascist movement throughout Ukraine, but it all originated in the far northwest.
	And then they allied with some of the oligarchs, right?
	So first and foremost, Poroshenko.
	Poroshenko, who allowed his TV station, basically, to become a platform for the revolution.
	And what really did in Yanukovych was, Yanukovych and his entire regime and all the security heads, they basically got some calls and some taps on the shoulder from Uncle Sam, who said, look, we know where your assets are.
	We know where your foreign bank accounts are.
	And if you prevent these protesters and revolutionaries from doing what they need to do to seize these government buildings in downtown Kiev, we're going to go for your assets.
	We're going to go for your assets.
	And so at the key moment, there was absolutely some bloodshed.
	There was some police shooting at protesters and vice versa.
	But at the key moment, the will, Of the security forces broke in part because their leaders, you know, had their overseas assets threatened by Uncle Sam at just the right moment.
	And so basically they stood down and then Yanukovych was overthrown and had to flee to Russia.
	So the moral of the story is you're not really a sovereign regime.
	You're not a sovereign country if you have your money stashed abroad.
	Because, you know, that is a pressure point.
	And Uncle Sam can bring that to bear because all those banks are ultimately under Uncle Sam's purview, you know, whether they're British or Swiss or whatever.
	So, you know, that's the story of how Yanukovych was brought down.
	And when the revolutionaries took power, it was a very weird situation because they did not represent, you know, the majority of the Ukrainian public.
	At that point, the majority or very, very large portion anyway of the Ukrainian public was politically inert and totally just really sort of apolitical by that point, right?
	Yanukovych did not even have more than 40% support in his hometown of Donetsk.
	So, you know, what they did was they came in with a revolutionary regime.
	With really wacky ideas about how, you know, that they need to rename the streets and redo the educational system and change people's thinking and change people's identity where, you know, we're going to, we were always Ukrainian, you know, we were never Russian.
	Even the Russians now are going to become Ukrainian inside the Ukraine.
	And it was all, it was all sort of this, they wanted to build sort of a new Ukrainian person, right?
	To replace the sort of neutral Ukraine and the Soviet legacy Ukraine that had existed previously.
	And you can sort of draw some parallels with the way that some of the, may I say, Democrats came in, right?
	In 2021, they came in.
	Now, it was an election.
	It wasn't a revolution.
	But they came in with these, okay, now we're taking over.
	We got a mandate.
	We're going to take over the schools.
	We're going to redo everything.
	We're going to make this transgender stuff on your kids and whatever else.
	And so really, really similar, down to the renaming of streets, renaming of streets, renaming of schools, taking down statues, putting up different statues, all of that stuff that happened in the Ukraine since 2014.
	has been repeated to some extent in America since 2020, actually.
	And so I think I've made the point at one time or another on my mailing list that the United States has pursued a sort of state of Ukrainization where our political system is becoming more like Ukraine.
	So the more that we support Ukraine, the more that we actually become like the Ukraine.
	And, you know, very dangerous situation.
	Now, so this revolutionary regime, basically, you know, they went into the schools and they said, okay, even in Russian-speaking areas where no one cares to speak Ukrainian unless you're going to the DMV to get your license renewed or something, we're going to make all the kids study in Ukrainian.
	And so first they did it, you know, the early grades, and then it sort of crept up to middle school, and it just kept creeping.
	You know, it was a slow process, because they knew the public wasn't with them, and they couldn't do it all on day one, right?
	But it was a slow process of forced Ukrainization that was, you know, perpetrated by a regime that was basically...
	Waging a military occupation of half the country because half the country didn't want them.
	You know, there's really no Ukraine in Odessa.
	There's no Ukraine in any part of Donetsk or Lugansk.
	You know, there wasn't any Ukraine in Kharkov, but they've been working very hard to colonize it.
	So what they did, and in many cases, they brought, you know, they put out, they brought in people like Saakashvili or these carpetbaggers or people that had origins in far, far Western Ukraine along the Polish or Hungarian borders, and they set them up as governors.
	And these people were not locally elected, and they were totally, totally dependent on the center in Kiev for their paychecks and for their position, and all the revenue streams that their position unlawfully provides.
	And of course, Kiev itself...
	It was absolutely dependent on Uncle Sam.
	It was dependent on IMF money, because what they did was they completely cut ties with Russia.
	And so, you know, it used to be, even until 2015, even through 2015, Ukraine was still plugged into the Russian military-industrial complex, such that Ukraine was providing most of the helicopter engines for Russian helicopters.
	They were providing most of the engines for Russian ships, for Russian naval ships, right?
	Even through 2015.
	And, you know, then they cut them all off, cut all the ties.
	They're just killing themselves economically.
	They were providing a lot of the engines for Russian rockets that take satellites into space.
	So there were these entire cities, like Nikolaev and Dnepropetrovsk, Sorry, I'm using the English.
	It's hard to say it in English.
	I could say it in, you know, Russian accent.
	But there were these entire industrial cities, such as Nikolaev and Dnepro, that, you know, were totally, totally plugged in to Russia economically, where basically the main employers in that town were, you know, working for the Russian military industrial complex.
	And they cut all the ties.
	And you have in Dnepropetrovsk...
	Which the Ukrainians renamed Dnipro now.
	You have a company that made, among other things, engines as well as booster rockets for the Russian space program.
	They employed 40,000 to 45,000 people.
	Now they're employing like 5,000 people.
	And most of those are just sweeping the floor.
	So basically the largest employer in a city of a million people laid off 40,000...
	Fairly well-paid production employees, right?
	Just to say that, you know, we're not going to do business with Russia anymore.
	Well, how do they compensate?
	First, they compensate with an unlimited blank check from Uncle Sam, you know, by way of the International Monetary Fund, where they're constantly, every year, they get their couple of billion dollars, and then they have to pay a couple of billion back, and it's every year and every year and every year, and they're just on this debt needle, but it keeps them afloat.
	And the second thing is millions of mostly young, economically productive Ukrainians left the country.
	So anyone with, you know, it was kind of like El Salvador or Guatemala, where the best people, those with the most initiative, you know, they get the hell out and they go find a job somewhere else.
	So Russia took in about a million Ukrainians.
	Poland took in about 2 or 3 million.
	Italy took in 700,000.
	It was over 4 million that left the Ukraine in search work.
	And this is, you know, I'm not talking about refugees from this war.
	I'm talking about previous to that.
	So basically, there was a demographic collapse where the, you know, roughly about one-third of the productive, you know, the most productive working-age population.
	One quarter to one third just left the country within a span of seven years.
	But they're sending remittance payments home, right?
	So they're sending home remittance payments.
	So now you have this country that used to be economically plugged into Russia, at least in terms of its heavy industry.
	Now most of the heavy industry is gone.
	They've destroyed it by cutting ties with Russia.
	And now they're economically plugged into foreign aid from, you know, the U.S., Europe, and the IMF, which is basically controlled by the U.S., and on remittance payments.
	So they have completely reoriented their economic posture.
	And, you know, at this point, I mean, their GDP in real terms or in purchasing parity terms is literally half.
	Roughly half of what it was before the Maidan, before the 2014 revolution.
	Because they've essentially destroyed their economy.
	But they don't care.
	They don't care because the clique that's in power now, they are being kept in power with economic and military assistance, essentially blank check, from the West, from the U.S. hegemonic bloc, basically.
	And for the most part...
	The Europeans, you know, the Germans, the French, after 2014, they really lost interest in Ukraine.
	It was mostly Uncle Sam propping up the Ukraine until this war.
	Then they kind of all coalesced, you know, under the U.S. and got with the program.
	But so really, you have a situation now where the U.S. has so much influence and so much control over Ukrainian, even domestic policy, right?
	If they say, okay, you have to do some land reforms, you have to do this, you have to do that, you have to cut social spending or you're not getting your next trench from the IMF, right?
	It's total control and it's indefinite.
	Normally, we have a situation like with the Thai or the Korean economic crises in 1997-98 or with the Turkish collapse in 2001 or Argentina at the same time.
	The IMF comes in.
	You know, they restructure, it lasts a year or two, then the IMF leaves, the country's sovereign again.
	With the U.S., it never ended.
	So, basically, Ukraine is under this sort of permanent foreign control, permanent foreign occupation, and it's got so ridiculous that literally the U.S. embassy in Kiev has for years been determining Ukrainian government human resources policy.
	That is to say...
	Who is the finance minister?
	You know, who is the anti-corruption minister?
	Who is this?
	Who is that?
	Who is the, you know, the director of intelligence?
	Who is the director of the state security service?
	It's all cleared and vetted by the U.S. Embassy.
	Okay, and you've probably, if you've read my stuff, you've heard of this guy, Avaka, where under Poroshenko, under Poroshenko, he was allowed to become this sort of warlord.
	In charge of the Interior Ministry, right?
	He was this sort of J. Edgar Hoover figure who, after 2014, took total control of the Interior Ministry, turned it into his own private army.
	And when Zelensky came around, this guy didn't work out too well with Zelensky.
	Poroshenko tolerated him.
	Zelensky couldn't stand him.
	And they're two different armies, you know, the guy's private army and Zelensky's army.
	They actually almost came to shooting at each other.
	This was a few months before the war started.
	I'm sorry.
	It was about in mid-21.
	And what Uncle Sam did is they called in Avaka of the Interior Ministry, had this J. Edgar Hoover figure.
	They called him in for a chat with the U.S. ambassador.
	And he had a chat with the U.S. ambassador.
	It wasn't publicized.
	The cameras weren't there.
	The press wasn't there.
	Three days after the chat, the guy submits his resignation letter.
	Says he needs to spend more time with his family, whatever.
	And he's just gone.
	You know, just gone.
	After the president, he was the second most powerful man in the Ukraine.
	He had his own private army.
	He gets a tap on the shoulder from Uncle Sam, and he's just gone.
	And within a few months, he left the country.
	Last I checked, he was not even in Ukraine.
	You know, they just told him, you know, it was like in Pulp Fiction where you got to leave L.A., right?
	Butch, you got to leave L.A., you know.
	So now, you know, you could say, okay, that was justified, whatever.
	But the fact is, Uncle Sam has been vetting and approving or vetoing, you know, Ukrainian personnel appointments, government personnel appointments, and in some cases even saying, okay, you want this money?
	Okay, appoint this American carpetbagger, Natalie Uresko, as finance minister, right?
	Or the famous, you know, son of a bitch, you know, if you want your money from President Biden, right?
	But when he was vice president, if you remember that.
	That was par for the course.
	It was like, you know, it was just a regular thing.
	So basically, the Ukrainian, you know, the American control over the Ukraine since 2014 was in many ways the same as, you know, American control of Afghanistan, you know, before the withdrawal, where you had...
	This veneer of a sovereign state, but ultimately it was under foreign suzerainty.
	And so what I've been telling my readers and my viewers is that, unfortunately, the Afghanistan project crashed and burned hard.
	Now they cannot afford to lose the Ukraine.
	It's their last big project.
	It's the last big gravy train right now.
	For the US military industrial complex, the war machine, the foreign policy establishment, because they have not yet been able to pivot hard to Taiwan, right?
	So, right, they cannot afford to lose it.
	For ego reasons, for turf reasons, for financial reasons, they can't afford to lose it.
	They would rather see it destroyed than to give it up.
	And it's sad.
	A lot of people are going to die, you know, for this agenda.
	Jacob, I'm going to get to some of the...
	I'm not calling them troll chats, super chats.
	There's some questions people have and they're legit.
	But first things first.
	I presume, you know, the interest in the U.S., Uncle Sam, controlling Afghanistan had something to do with the drug trade, if I just hypothesize, I guess.
	But if I'm wrong, let me know.
	But what is the interest?
	Like, what does America get out of controlling directly, indirectly by proxy Ukraine?
	Is it so they can test biological weapons in labs that they couldn't have in the States?
	Is it for a NATO proxy war against Russia, all of the above?
	Right now, the Ukraine is the cornerstone of U.S. military hegemony and the maintenance of U.S. political and military hegemony over Europe.
	If the Ukraine goes, that cornerstone is removed.
	So the Ukraine is literally, it's the focal point, it's the rallying point, it's the marshalling yard for all efforts to maintain US political and military hegemony over Europe.
	It's about staying in Europe, control over Europe.
	They got really scared during the Trump years, right?
	And, you know, that Trump was, you know, maybe he wanted to, you know, he didn't take NATO seriously.
	He didn't care about it.
	He was all about economics.
	It was a big threat to them.
	Right now, if the U.S., if Uncle Sam loses the Ukraine and loses it hard and loses it in a way that is as embarrassing and as pathetic as he lost Afghanistan.
	Then the continued existence of U.S. hegemonic control over Europe and European security policy will be called into question.
	So this is really a means of forward defense, not of Europe, but of U.S. domination of Europe, political and military domination of Europe.
	Silly thing is that, you know, typically these fairly smart, responsible European countries like France and Germany got suckered into it, suckered into it, you know, and it's just it's just pathetic to watch.
	But you know what?
	They're going to be the first to pay now.
	You know, they obviously they have no resources of their own.
	And they're, you know, so they're there.
	They are.
	they have been, uh, essentially turned into, uh, puppets or spectators, uh, unwilling spectators, but they went along with this, uh, and rather than, uh, you know, sort of try to, uh, find a third way, a middle way where they would sort of cut their own deal with Russia.
	They went hard for the U.S. hegemony agenda, uh, And now it's, you know, it could get so bad that, you know, we could be looking at The potential neutering or even dissolution of the European Union at some point in the foreseeable future.
	Because, maybe I'm going too far off here, the European Union, they talk about all these values and whatever.
	What keeps the EU together?
	What keeps the EU together is the money flows.
	These countries went from the socialist bloc under Russia, they had an economic collapse, they were bought out by a new...
	Sugar daddy.
	It's about the money, right?
	No one in Bulgaria cares about liberal values.
	It's about the money, okay?
	And the foreign aid from Brussels and Germany and so forth.
	If the money loses its value due to a potential hyperinflationary situation brought on in part by a completely manufactured energy crisis, then the glue of the EU is called in a question.
	Right.
	And so, you know, I'm not saying that it's going to dissolve formally, but, you know, could become something like the Holy Roman Empire, where it's just, you know, all form and no function.
	So we're living in very, very interesting times.
	But again, for those people, and I've had plenty of people ask me, people, you know, I say it 10 times in my mailing list and people still send me emails like, wait, why do we care about Ukraine?
	Because you don't care about the Ukraine.
	The U.S. foreign policy establishment and the military-industrial complex, what I would collectively refer to as the Empire with a capital E, for them, the Ukraine is critical.
	They cannot afford another Afghanistan in the Ukraine.
	If they have another Afghanistan in the Ukraine, the whole empire potentially comes down, okay?
	And it's about that.
	It's not about...
	You know, what's best for the American people or the European people or whatever.
	And again, the saddest thing is that these quote-unquote respectable European countries got suckered into this game.
	It's just amazing.
	It's pathetic to watch.
	But you know what?
	I guess it was sort of, they were at a vulnerable time because you got this, you know, you got this sort of clown Macron, Macron, right, in France.
	You had a new government coming in into Germany that was completely untested.
	Unproven.
	Their foreign policy credentials were in great doubt.
	They had this green agenda that was kind of half-baked.
	And all of a sudden, this rush invades Ukraine.
	And of course, not having their own sort of grounding in any kind of foreign policy vision for themselves because they were so new and untested, they deferred to Uncle Sam.
	And it's just pathetic to watch.
	What's extraordinary, and this goes to one of the super chat questions, has been to watch this Ukrainian cultural experiment that's at various levels but really accelerated after 2014.
	They've even written scholarly articles on how they managed to redefine Ukrainianism for Ukrainians in the sense that Ukraine literally just means borderland historically.
	It's always funny if people say, I'm a borderland.
	That's why we call it the Ukraine.
	Literally, in translation...
	Literally in translation, you translate it from Russian, it's на Украине, which means, you know, on the borderland.
	Exactly.
	And what's amazing is this sort of, part of this mythology of the far western Ukraine for Ukrainians, Stepan Bandera-style ultranationalism.
	Most people didn't even know who he was during much of his lifetime in Ukraine.
	It represented this, as you noted, the Galician side, which had a unique history, had either been part of Polish Lithuania or what they called the Ruthenian Empire.
	When the Ukrainian nationals first came to the United States, They call themselves Ruthenian, not even Ukrainian, until about 10-15 years in.
	Ethnogenesis is a very interesting thing, you know, and it doesn't necessarily make a lot of sense.
	I will say that, just to follow up, you know, the Ukrainians, if you now say na Ukraina, right, on the Ukraine, on the borderland, they will get very offended, very offended, because what they say is va.
	Ukraine, which means in Ukraine, because they're trying to be just like a regular country.
	So they have literally rewritten the way that they say the prefix for their country, right?
	And all of this happened, for the most part, it was since 1991.
	You know, very, very, very, very few people in Soviet times would have said, they would have looked at you like you were crazy.
	Right?
	But after 1991, the trendy thing is in Ukraine rather than on the Ukraine.
	Because look, we're not a territory.
	We're a country now.
	And they get very offended.
	Very offended.
	I mean, they started doing new documentaries, new children's school books.
	I mean, you know, Stepan Bandera Museum started showing up all over the place.
	I mean, really accelerated.
	I mean, it started, as you note, in 1991.
	George Soros'obsessive interest in Ukraine even started before that.
	It's been his number one pet project for his NGOs above all others has been Ukraine.
	To go back to the point you were mentioning about this being a globalist empire obsession with Ukraine, a defining moment for them, not just because of Putin being on the opposite side, but because it was their pet project, a pet project that has economically, socially failed, but culturally, politically kind of succeeded.
	Exactly.
	You have people who think...
	We'll get super chats.
	People who believe these crazy myths, like myths that started with the Nazis, which is that the Holomodor was just targeting Ukrainians because they wanted to kill Ukrainians because the Russians all secretly hate Ukrainians.
	Or that they even now go all the way back in rewriting history.
	And you've had some good historical depictions of what Eastern and Southern Ukraine has historically been.
	But in this mythology, it was all Western Ukraine once.
	And then the Russians came in and Russified it under the Tsar.
	And kicked out all the native Ukrainians.
	Can you talk about that?
	It was very, very complex.
	It was like, I mean, if you think of, you know, the planet Tatooine in Star Wars, where there's like, you know, there's humans, there are these aliens, there are these bugs, you know, whatever.
	There are these little Jawa guys that you can't even see their faces, but they have red eyes.
	And it was just a mishmash of everybody because it was a borderland.
	It was literally the border.
	Between Russian, Polish, and Turkish civilization for centuries.
	And it was not its own political entity.
	And what was very, very interesting is that the cities, of course, were all founded by, well, either Zaporozhian Cossacks or by Russia.
	All of the cities in eastern and southern Ukraine.
	We're all founded either by Russian-aligned Cossacks, at one point Russian-aligned, or by the Russian crown in these areas that had been previously completely denuded of population by Crimean-Tatar slave raiders.
	So the east and the south of what's now the Ukraine was, they called it literally the clean field, Chista Apolia, because it had been denuded.
	For centuries by Tatar slave raiding, and every time some population would creep in there to fill the vacuum, you know, they'd get raided again.
	And so this is part of the reason why modern Turks, the modern Turkish people, look kind of white, kind of like Italians or whatever, and not Asiatic.
	Because they have massively, massively, you know, intermarried and mixed with these, you know, Russian slave girls.
	Very sad story, but it's, you know, it's history.
	There's a very, very high degree of Russian genomes in Turkey.
	But anyway, so the cities that were all founded by the Russian crown, for example, let's talk about Odessa.
	I think Odessa might have been founded by actually the Turks, but it was nothing under them.
	It really grew under Catherine the Great.
	And in Odessa, and even as far north as Kiev, almost everybody...
	Who was anybody spoke Russian.
	The language of these cities was Russian.
	These were cosmopolitan cities with multiple ethnic groups.
	There were a lot of Jews that spoke Yiddish.
	You know, there were in Odessa, there were a lot of Greeks, a lot of Bulgarians.
	But the lingua franca and the language of business and the language of the urban educated elites was Russian.
	And there were really, you know, very, very little Ukrainians spoken in these cities.
	And the Ukrainian speakers, you know, it was the countryside.
	And what they did was, you know, it wasn't called the Ukrainian language back then.
	It was these, you know, sort of non-standardized dialects of East Slavic that, you know, there was no conception that, you know, this is sort of one nation or anything like that.
	It was a continuum of non-standardized dialects of East Slavic.
	That's what was spoken in the countryside.
	And then everyone who lived in the city spoke Russian.
	And that was the case really even up through the collapse of, you know, the USSR.
	I mean, you know, to some extent, to some extent.
	And what happened was now this sort of rural and perhaps less successful segment and sort of segment of society.
	You know, got some foreign support and is trying to force itself on the rest of society, frankly, the majority, and to some extent succeeded in changing the political ideology and the world outlook of the majority, such that, look, in 1991...
	If you go by the census figures, the last census figure, I think the last Soviet census was in 1989.
	You know, I think there were almost as many Russian, ethnic Russians, according to their internal passports, almost as many ethnic Russians, you know, in the Ukraine as Ukrainians.
	And frankly, a lot of those ethnic Russians had Ukrainian last names, right?
	But now, fast forward 30, 31 years.
	You know, the number of ethnic Russians as registered with Interior Ministry as per their internal passport, you know, has fallen to just three or four million.
	So it's like maybe, you know, one-fifth of what it was 30 years ago.
	Does that mean that they've all moved away?
	And frankly, now a lot of the so-called ethnic Ukrainians as per their Interior Ministry registration, right?
	A lot of the ethnic Ukrainians today have...
	Russian last names.
	So what happened?
	Over 30 years, you know, it became sexier to call yourself Ukrainian when you were previously Russian.
	Just as under the Soviet period, it had been sexier to call yourself Russian when you were actually Ukrainian.
	Now, what's the difference?
	I mean, this is like Coke and Pepsi.
	You know, these languages are, if you speak slowly, they are mutually intelligible.
	You know, they have a somewhat different pronunciation.
	And system of the last letters of the verb conjugations.
	But otherwise, if you speak slowly, for the most part, these languages are mutually intelligible.
	But what happened was, to some extent, Ukrainians, to a limited extent, were partially russified under the USSR.
	Not to say that there weren't an enormous number of Russians and Russian speakers already living in the Ukraine that were.
	But to a large extent, a lot of Ukrainians are russified.
	And then, you know, during the post-Soviet period, the pendulum swung back the other way where all these Russians said, well, you know what?
	Now it's sexier to be Ukrainian.
	I'm going to say, OK, I'm going to, you know, on my kid's birth certificate, I'm going to say he's Ukrainian.
	It's just nuts.
	You know, I mean, this sounds like the Serbs and the Croats in Yugoslavia.
	I mean, it's just it's insane.
	And it's hard for us Americans to understand.
	Right.
	But it's very tribal.
	Go ahead.
	Question.
	When you say, you know, the idea that Ukraine is a borderland in respect of identity.
	My question is, what makes Russia and Russian identity versus Ukraine and Ukrainian identity, if not for the fact that Ukrainian identity is defined by the fact that it has been a battleground between Nazis and communists.
	It has been invaded from the East, invaded from the West, and that defines identity.
	How do you define something of a national identity?
	This is a great question.
	This is the million dollar, billion dollar question.
	All right.
	Basically, the Ukrainian national identity right now is defined by, is defined as follows.
	We're not Russian.
	We're not Russian.
	We never were Russian.
	The Russians tried to convince us that we are Russian.
	Now we're un-Russia-fying ourselves, right?
	And you might say, well, that sounds ridiculous.
	You know, that's illegitimate, whatever.
	But, you know, I call myself, I call my website a no-propaganda-zone.
	So, to be perfectly fair, let's look at Germany.
	What is the German national identity?
	What's the, you know, what's the French national identity?
	Ah, the French national identity is, we are French!
	We have the Republic.
	We are French.
	We are not like anyone else, right?
	So, you know, I mean, Ukraine's the same way, right?
	What's funny, though, what's really funny is that a lot of the forced Ukrainization, de-russification and forced Ukrainization in the schools and in institutions and so forth was actually pushed By people who are ancestrally Russian.
	It's nuts.
	But it's all about having a good government job and following the agenda for power's sake and for your own career.
	And when you offer people a career and cash flows and so forth that involve forcing some agenda onto their underlings.
	Most people will pursue that, even if it contradicts where they came from.
	And you know what?
	Honestly, I'm seeing this with my wife, man, even in the family.
	It's like, does she believe all the transgender this and that?
	No.
	But as a corporate officer, she just kind of plugged into it.
	And she doesn't question it, because that's her paycheck.
	You know, and that's just the cultural milieu and the CNN.com that she, you know, goes to for news and whatever.
	And so, you know, it's all about the consciousness.
	You know, it doesn't have to make sense.
	But, you know, you had a lot of people of Russian ancestry, of Jewish ancestry, of Russian Jewish ancestry.
	People with families that evacuated during the war.
	They came back after the war.
	And then the kid was born, the grandkid or whatever was born in 1980 or whatever.
	And these people are pushing forced Ukrainization on a population that doesn't need it, doesn't want it.
	But they're doing it because it's about power.
	And that's the agenda.
	Easily, easily, all of these people, all of these cynics, right, even people like Poroshenko, in another universe, in another universe, they are working for Russia.
	It's just all about who's, you know, who's writing the checks and who's, you know, who's originating the agenda, who's writing the script.
	And it just so turned out that, you know, the more lucrative script writer...
	Since 1989 and 1991, it has to be an Uncle Sam.
	Now, how did you, like, the political and rebellion and ultimately violent rebellion in parts of Ukraine that was viciously and violently suppressed by the paramilitaries and ultra-nationalists and hooligans that they decided to arm and put uniforms on afterwards that led to a...
	Basically, a civil war in Far Eastern Ukraine for the last eight years.
	But through that time period, Crimea, which wasn't even part of Ukraine itself until 1954 under the USSR, wanted to actually do the referendum.
	They wanted to be separate from Ukraine in 1991.
	It was just ignored.
	They go separate because there's a Russian military base.
	Russia protects it.
	It's later relabeled Russian annexation, which is kind of interesting given our different policies in the Balkans.
	Putin doesn't go in when there were plenty of people on the more ultra-nationalist and hard-right or whatever label people want to put on side in Russia that thought he should have gone into eastern Ukraine in 2014-2015 when the Maidan coup takes place.
	He waits.
	But you were able to predict exactly when he would go in, that he would go in if there's been different predictions over the different years.
	But then he does go in.
	What do you think led him?
	Why were you able to accurately predict that now Russia's had enough of what Putin called the anti-Russia project of Ukraine?
	Right.
	Great question.
	So it's well known in Russia that Putin wants to retire.
	He has been looking for a successor for many years and setting up.
	Now it's probably looking like it's going to be Shoigu, the defense minister, who is unfortunately not quite the leader that Putin is.
	But any monarchical succession is a very dangerous thing.
	Because all the contradictions and all the knives that were hidden, they may suddenly come out and come to the surface, right?
	Very, very dangerous time.
	He wants to retire.
	He's already 69 or pushing 70. He does not want to be like Pinochet or Franco where he rules into his 80s and just basically dies on his throne, right?
	He doesn't want to do it.
	But to retire, there must be...
	Internal stability within Russia, which he has achieved, but there also must be external stability in Russia's near abroad.
	And the fear was that when there is a succession, when the succession happens, that the new leadership will be weaker or seen as weaker.
	And then the Ukraine...
	Which had been pumped up with billions of dollars in foreign arms and training for many years.
	At that point, the Ukraine would make its move to try to take back Donetsk and Lugansk first and foremost.
	Crimea was always sort of secondary.
	And when the Ukraine made its move, there was concern that the Russian political system might be co-opted and sort of neutered in just the same fashion.
	As Yanukovych's security people in Kiev were co-opted and neutered in 2014, where they got a call or they got a text message or whatever saying, we know where your bank accounts are and don't do anything crazy, you know, just give us what we want.
	And so, and, you know, then, of course, Donetsk and Lugansk go back to Ukraine.
	Crimea ultimately goes back to Ukraine.
	And potentially, Putin goes to the hog like Milosevic, you know, for whatever war crimes or occupation or whatever that they can think up of, you know, that they can think up.
	So this was the fear that the successor government, either the leaders themselves would be weak or they would not have as strong support among the security and financial elites and that Uncle Sam would be able to sort of co-op them very quickly.
	The way that they did with, you know, many other countries, frankly.
	And, go ahead.
	Yeah, so, like, how does Putin, he wants to retire?
	Now, I'm visualizing, some people out there see him as a dictator, a tyrant, whatever.
	Even if you just assume he's a benevolent, dread pirate Roberts.
	So he's got to find his disciple to replace him.
	How does the election system work in Russia?
	Why not just trigger another election and not run and find someone to endorse?
	Well, elections in Russia are irrelevant.
	It's not that the election isn't the issue.
	The issue is what comes after.
	So he steps down and the new government in Russia is weaker because everything now is focused on one man.
	There is one decider.
	Russia is called the Federation, the Russian Federation, but there is no federal system in Russia like in the US or even Canada or Nigeria.
	It's an autocracy with ultimately all decisions and all arbitration between competing interests within the society are decided by one man.
	And when you take that person out, you better make sure...
	That there is no immediate trigger for instability.
	And unfortunately, that trigger, there was a festering boil in the Ukraine where they were being primed for just this eventuality, where Putin ultimately steps down.
	Financial interests, the liberal interests, the foreign interests make their move and basically betray Donetsk and Lugansk and potentially even Putin himself where they cart him off into foreign prisons.
	So when you're the king, it's like holding the horns and riding the bull and you can never get off.
	Right?
	You can never get off.
	And Putin wanted to get off.
	It was well known in Russia.
	He wanted to get off.
	Really, I think whatever their last election was, I think it was 2020.
	It was well known.
	He didn't really want to run.
	His heart wasn't in it.
	Right?
	But he did because the succession wasn't ready.
	Right?
	So I think he has a six-year term.
	So now the succession has to be in 2026 unless he steps down early like Yeltsin did.
	And they have to have total stability.
	Inside the country and around the periphery.
	They cannot have any festering boils like, you know, ready to explode, you know, like the Ukraine.
	That was just, you know, that was a wild card.
	And ultimately, ultimately, that's why, you know, when Russia started bringing, you know, 200,000 troops onto the Ukrainian border, I was like, guys, this is for real.
	You know, he's really going to do it.
	And because I understood, you know, the political situation inside Russia.
	One of the questions from our locals chat at vivabarneslaw.locals.com.
	And everybody who wants to follow Jacob's work can follow him right here at The Drazen Report.
	Thank you.
	Yeah, please keep plugging me.
	Thank you.
	Absolutely.
	Thedrazenreport.com.
	Best place to go is his blog.
	I follow him every day.
	I've been on his list for many years.
	The first question from our locals chat is, what would...
	Well, I mean, it sounds like a castle in the sky.
	You know, the big man on the block doesn't just voluntarily withdraw from anything.
	You know, you've got to either force him out or kill him or give him an offer he can't refuse, right?
	So, you know, your mafia capo who controls, you know, the numbers racket or some casino or whatever on ABC Street in Cleveland, Ohio back in the 50s, he's not just going to say, you know what?
	I've seen the light.
	I'm just going to leave, and I'm just going to retire, and I don't want my kid to continue in this business, so I'm going to send my kid off to school in London or something.
	That's not how it works.
	So just think of your own town and the people that make the decisions in your own town.
	Do they voluntarily just say, you know what?
	I don't want all this power.
	I don't want all this influence.
	I can handle the ego hit.
	Let me just withdraw.
	It doesn't happen.
	You know, and, you know, it doesn't happen in the forest.
	You know, this tree doesn't, you know, I'm going to, I'm taking too much sunlight.
	I'm just going to pull out and give all the other bushes, you know, a little chance to grow.
	I mean, just, you know, you don't see it.
	So what you don't see in nature and what you don't see in your own life, in your own town, you're not going to see in global politics.
	So it's kind of a hypothetical situation.
	But I think hypothetically, if NATO dissolved, frankly, I think, yeah, you know, Russia.
	You would see Russia becoming the sort of predatory, hegemonic power that the U.S. is now, right?
	Because there's nothing holy about Mother Russia.
	I mean, it's just a country.
	So, you know.
	Why do you think there is the degree of Russo...
	This is another question from the locals chat.
	The degree of Russo-phobia.
	That has sort of consumed the intelligence community, aspects of our think tank crowd.
	I mean, you've got people, I mean, you know, the degree to which they've tried to actually cancel the entire Russian culture has been something to witness.
	You know, now we're going to go back and get rid of the music and we're going to get rid of the writers and get rid of the artists and no more ballet.
	You know, that's it.
	We're done with them.
	Where do you think that originates from?
	Is it sort of a derivative effect, kind of like?
	Racism was derivative of the need of the plantation owners to have a certain kind of labor.
	Is rucophobia derivative of the fact the empire just needs this for their agenda, or is it rooted in something deeper and uglier?
	You know, there's about 10 different answers to this question, and they're all valid.
	I'm going to focus on the sort of recent, you know, cancel culture sort of angle here.
	In my estimation, the U.S. political scene has been declining since the Cold War.
	You remember in the 90s, they had all these The Face of Evil Time magazine covers with Saddam and Milosevic and now Putin.
	You know, they had this boogeyman, you know, for like 45, you know, years, and then he goes away, and they don't really know what to do, you know, and so the whole, you know, the polarization of society, you know, the politicization of, politicization or politicization, I'm not sure.
	Of everything, right?
	Everything has become political now.
	You know, in my estimation, you know, the politics of the U.S. has substantially degraded in part because we never really figured out what to do with ourselves after the Cold War.
	There was this great opportunity to have a peace dividend, you know, and instead what they did was they outsourced to China.
	You know, they hollowed out half the country.
	They de-industrialized.
	You know, they pushed down wages.
	And they, you know, it was total economic failure.
	You know, inequality is like, you know, I mean, it's like the roaring 20s.
	I mean, we're back to that level of inequality.
	And, you know, instead of fixing anything...
	You know, it's easier just to hate these foreign enemies.
	And America always needs a boogeyman.
	I mean, you know, it's like, you know, there's always some mini-USSR.
	And what better mini-USSR now than Russia, right?
	I mean, and this checks all the boxes, you know.
	They're evil.
	They got a KGB guy in charge of them.
	They're really strong, so we can't do anything about them directly.
	We have to kind of fight them by proxy.
	You know, and you can fairly easily cancel them culturally here and they can't really do anything because the Russian lobby here is basically, there's no Russian lobby.
	You know, I mean, if you're an individual Russian, you can say, hey, you know, I don't want people to be racist against me, but you're on Facebook and you'll get shut down.
	I mean, there's like, you know, there's no Russian, there's no one to stand up for them here.
	And so, you know, what better target than Russia, you know, and especially with the military industrial complex.
	Needing a new gravy train.
	And they're in this intermediate phase where they've sort of, for now, defeated the completely manufactured, not deliberately so, but completely manufactured scourge of Islamic terrorism.
	And they haven't quite yet shifted to fighting China and trying to contain China.
	So, you know, given that they haven't really figured out what they want to do.
	You know, the rush is just an easy default.
	It's an easy default.
	We hated them before.
	We can hate them again.
	Now, the other thing you predicted accurately was what would likely happen on the economic war.
	I mean, the West was convinced that they were going to sink Russia in a week or two.
	You know, the various open-source intelligence folks in the blue checkmark crowd vindicated themselves about as well as the public health experts did during the lockdown.
	Not so good.
	So there was a lot of shock there, but also militarily.
	When we've had probably more fake news...
	Now, I get that, like, historically, if I'd been alive during the Egyptian-Israeli conflict and Egypt was saying, we're winning, we're winning, we're winning, and then all of a sudden, they see the army come back home, like, hold on a second, this didn't exactly...
	They work as they said.
	Maybe it would be different.
	But there's been an extraordinary amount of fake news from the West, extraordinary amount of open lies by our so-called military experts, our so-called think tank experts, both on economic and military policy.
	You've been correct calling it all the way through.
	How do you see it?
	This is also one of our locals' questions.
	How do you see it moving forward?
	We're seeing a live deep state divide where one side of the deep state is saying maybe it's time to get out and figure out an exit ramp.
	Another side is saying, no, no, no, we're just about to win and conquer and crush.
	It depends on which newspaper you're reading or which publication you're reading.
	There's still some people out there convinced that Ukraine is going to win.
	Ukraine is just right around the corner.
	Just right around, kind of like Afghanistan.
	Right around the corner.
	What do you think the prospect of...
	Go ahead.
	Go ahead and get that.
	I think my babysitter set off the alarm or something.
	I'm sorry.
	Okay.
	We're good.
	We're good now.
	Yeah, so what do you think going forward is the probable course of events near short-term and middle-term in Ukraine?
	Yeah, absolutely.
	Great question.
	Sorry about that.
	My house is a fortress, so I got like 50 different alarm systems.
	All right.
	Excellent, excellent super chat from Ben Perotti, by the way.
	He really gets it.
	Moving on to your question.
	This is unfortunately a battle to the death.
	The empire, which, again, I use that as a sort of umbrella term for the amalgam of establishment foreign policy interests and the military industrial complex, right, under the umbrella term, the unparalleled.
	The Empire, and I said this, you probably recall, I said this like back in January before the war started.
	I said, I think they even, or sometime in early February, they even issued a letter.
	The Department of Commerce sent a letter.
	To American electronics manufacturers, which means, of course, we manufacture in China, but, you know, the companies, they still call themselves manufacturers.
	The Department of Commerce sent out a letter saying that prepare, if Russia goes into Ukraine, prepare for shortages of neon and other critical materials.
	Okay?
	So, they knew potentially what was coming.
	Okay?
	And they...
	Probably had an inkling of what might happen with the gas price.
	They were also very busy completely destroying the global fertilizer market.
	They sanctioned Belarus, took 20% of global potash production, potassium fertilizer production off the market just immediately.
	And I was looking at this, I'm like, man.
	What are they trying to do to supermarket prices?
	You can't just take 20% of potassium fertilizer off the market globally just like that.
	But they did it.
	They did it.
	And you know why they did it?
	Because remember I said when the empire has to choose between furthering its own interests and its own agenda and Helping you out, there's no contest, right?
	If it's A or B, they're not going to side with you and your economic interests.
	And being able to feed your kids at a reasonable price and drive to work, forget it.
	You don't even count for anything.
	They are going to defend their own interests, their own career interests.
	Their own ideological and ego interests and their own cash flows.
	It is an organism that will not surrender its prerogatives.
	It's no different than any other organism in that regard.
	The fact that now the Brandon people, they can't explain what to do with inflation and the gas.
	They've tried to open up the strategic petroleum reserves and it didn't work.
	The empire doesn't care about that.
	That's Brandon's problem.
	The empire exists and thrives outside of anybody who's in the White House or who's writing their talking points, right?
	It doesn't matter.
	So that's Brandon's problem to figure out.
	What do we do with inflation?
	What do we do with gas prices?
	The empire doesn't care about that.
	The empire will pursue its prerogatives.
	This is life and death, okay?
	If they have another Afghanistan in the Ukraine, They're potentially done and they know it.
	So they will push this thing as far as it'll go.
	And remember I said the $40 billion for Ukraine, not all of it's for Ukraine.
	By the end of this year, it's going to be $70 or $80 billion.
	And next year, who knows?
	It might be double that.
	I don't know.
	You know, because there is no limit because they need to win this thing.
	So, that's what makes it so dangerous, is they can't lose.
	Likewise, Russia can't lose.
	Not that it's going to, but if Russia loses, they're done.
	They're going to get cut up like China in the late 19th century in zones of influence or whatever.
	It's just going to be the end of the Russian state as we know it.
	So, you've got two unstoppable forces that are colliding.
	And in my estimation, the only potential outcome where the West loses in terms of it has to back down is just a total collapse of the system.
	That's the only way that I'm seeing as really the most likely outcome at this point.
	Jacob, sometimes the only difference between victory and defeat is framing.
	So how does the U.S. How do either side back off, withdraw, and frame it as a victory?
	And which side do you think is more likely to have to implement this angle?
	That's the problem.
	I don't see anyone backing down.
	They can't afford to.
	Now, what did they get wrong?
	I'd love to...
	I can't conceive of it, yeah.
	Well, what did NATO, like, I mean, really the U.S. and NATO saw this as not only sort of a proxy war, but let's see what a NATO-trained set of troops, that's a lot of troops, trained over eight years, using fortifications, using a particular methodology and strategy, using a bunch of the high-value weaponry of the West.
	They seem to really believe, despite what some of them were saying publicly and whatnot about Russia winning in three days and all that garbage, that was meant to set up a false premise so they could claim victory over something that was never a Russian objective.
	What did they get wrong militarily?
	Because it seems like a good number of them, I think, like Afghanistan.
	What did they get wrong in both Afghanistan and Ukraine?
	To a lot of us, Afghanistan, like Ukraine, was always a grift, and it would always collapse right away.
	It was just garbage.
	But it seemed to be a true shock to some of the deep state's strongest advocates in the Defense Department and elsewhere.
	And we're seeing the same thing in Ukraine.
	They seemed to really believe down deep that they could...
	Now, I think they always thought they would win the economic war, be over in three weeks, Russia would collapse politically, etc.
	But putting that aside...
	What do they get wrong about the military conflict where the Ukrainian army seems to be collapsing quicker and quicker and quicker as this progresses and proceeds?
	Yeah.
	Viva, can I sort of very gently cuss on this show or not?
	Go ahead.
	Cuss away.
	Oh, okay.
	Okay, thanks.
	All right.
	So the short answer to that question is they believe their own bullshit.
	You know, they believe their own propaganda, and that's always very dangerous.
	You never want to believe your own propaganda.
	Propaganda is for the cud-chewing cattle.
	You know, the zombies that watch, you know, TV, right?
	Propaganda, you should never believe your own propaganda.
	They believed it.
	And I think that there is an over-reliance in the West on...
	There's sort of an ideology that our weapons and our training, if provided to a foreign client in sufficient volumes, is infallible.
	Because we're us, and we're so great.
	And if we train the Afghan army...
	Just for, you know, 20 years and we give them tens of billions of dollars worth of hardware, that ultimately, you know, they're going to do something with it.
	And what they don't understand is everything is decided by the human aspect, right?
	And the human aspect with regards to Ukraine is there is a limited...
	There is a limited proportion of the population of Ukraine that is prepared to fight and potentially die for the Ukraine.
	All this stuff about Zelensky saying there's 700,000 men that are under arms for the Ukraine today and the Royal United Service Institute in the UK and others picked up on it.
	The Royal United Service Institute, they actually have a writer that he actually broke it down.
	He completely arbitrarily said, well, he's going to write, it's out of the 700,000, 250,000 are regular army and 450,000 are militia.
	But that was completely arbitrary.
	It's literally this one writer analyst in London just broke down Zelensky's 700,000 into those two categories.
	I'm reading this, I'm like...
	Just making it up.
	Just making it up.
	There's not 700,000 people under arms for the Ukraine today.
	It's probably, you know, maybe like a third of that.
	Okay?
	And so they're trying to a foreign audience.
	And Zelensky knows it's not 700,000.
	But he's a showman and he's got to sell this picture of a people's war.
	Because everyone loves a people's war.
	Right?
	It's where, you know, we got to, they're dying, we got to support them, you know.
	No, if, you know, if people here knew how many Ukrainian men are dodging the draft or they fled to Europe or, you know, I mean, it's, they're going around and handing out draft notices at pool parties, discos, and they basically have press gangs rounding people up like it was 1730s New York, you know.
	I mean, it's just, it's just ridiculous.
	And so, Ultimately, there is a very limited amount of manpower that is available to the Ukraine.
	And even if you look at right now their regular army, how many of those actually, as kitted out as they might be with all their pretty gear, how many actually are prepared?
	To stand and fight to the death for the motherland instead of, you know, retreating at the first opportunity.
	Okay?
	Not many, bro.
	Not many.
	And that's why I keep saying that what happened in Mariupol was seminal.
	Because they saw, whoa, if we get surrounded...
	That's it.
	Russia's going to grind us down, grind us down, and we're going to have to die or surrender and be in captivity for six months or whatever until the end of the war.
	And they honestly thought, you know, nationalist Ukrainians and the people who were surrounded inside Mariupol honestly thought that either Zelensky would organize a military operation to break through and free them from encirclement.
	Or that the Pope would come in or President Macron of France would come in and negotiate their release, right?
	Let them get out of there in some peace convoy or something like that.
	And it was all a fantasy.
	And once the garrison in Mariupol completely surrendered, the Ukrainian forces understood that if they get surrounded, that's it.
	The only options are either death.
	Or spending six or 12 months in a Russian POW camp.
	And no one wants that, you know?
	So a lot of young people don't have perspective, man.
	I mean, you know, spending a year in jail is maybe not that bad if they give you three squares a day.
	They'd rather take their chances and just get the hell out, you know, even under the threat of artillery and air bombardment, just get the hell out, which is what they've done from Sivra Donetsk.
	And which is what they've done for Nisichonsk.
	They do not want to be surrounded.
	They are getting the hell out.
	Of course, while they're fleeing, they're an easy target.
	There's only a few roads out of there.
	They're being bombed.
	They're being shelled.
	They're being shot at.
	And they have to leave a lot of gear, a lot of this pretty gear behind.
	And then the Russians get their piles and piles of these in-laws and javelins and show it off on their media, which, of course, these pictures are not carried here.
	Because if they were, people might...
	Wait, wait a minute.
	We gave them all this stuff.
	Now the Russians are using it.
	Why are we arming Russia?
	This is like a legitimate concern.
	In the West, we're talking about like maybe the javelins are going to be seized by militia groups or like criminals.
	But otherwise, they're going to get taken over by Russia who defeats and then takes.
	And we're effectively indirectly but directly arming Russia.
	I mean, is that a fair assessment?
	Absolutely.
	With the qualifier that the javelins are so ineffective that the Russians don't even want them.
	Apparently some of the end-laws and the Carl Gustavs are okay, but the javelins, as many as they've taken as trophies, they're not using them because they're defective.
	What do you make of the nuclear power issue?
	Because it was both a super chat question, but I was curious why Russia seemed particularly concerned.
	Early on, because they went and targeted right away both Chernobyl and the nuclear power plants in other parts of the country.
	What do you think Russia was worried about?
	Well, with respect to both Chernobyl and the Zaporozhye nuclear power station, those were actually happened to be...
	Chernobyl was on the axis of advance towards Kiev, and Zaporozhye was basically...
	You know, on the axis of advance towards, you know, Zaporozhys.
	So, well, maybe.
	Yeah, yeah, basically.
	I mean, so it was it was it was they happened.
	The Russians happened to have their forces in that area and they couldn't leave these infrastructure targets under control of Ukrainian guards.
	So they had to go in there, but it wasn't like they.
	You know, went way out of their way to take these power stations.
	It was just, they happened to be, you know, in the neighborhood of where they were advancing.
	So...
	How much concern, like Russia's voiced it, do you have any continuous concern about false flag events?
	In other words, some biological weapon release, something like that, that still might occur, or just that, you know, just part of the conflict may occur.
	Yeah.
	I think, you know, why do you need false flags when you have fake news?
	You know, I'm not sure who needs these false flags.
	You just, for a false flag, you got to have these guys that climb in at night and, you know, wearing all black and they, you know, get their wire cutters and they climb under the fence and they, you know, put some explosives under the nuclear reactor and then they have to get out of it.
	It's a lot of work.
	You know, and then you have to plan it.
	You have the generals have to plan it.
	Why do that?
	Just make it up.
	Just make something up.
	In that sense, are we blessed by the fact that Zelensky and his whole crew come from TV world?
	Yeah, yeah.
	They're all from the TV comedy production career field.
	The whole attack, there was this mythological attack early on in the war.
	Mythological Russian attack on the...
	Zaporosha nuclear power station, where Zelensky said they're attacking it and they might blow up one of the reactors and it's going to be 10 times worse than Chernobyl.
	And everyone carried it, right?
	Like, the entire MSM ran with it.
	But the thing is, there's live camera views, you know, from these power stations where, like...
	You can just go on this website and see.
	Apparently, I guess there's some requirement from the International Atomic Energy Agency or something that you could just go on a website and look at these camera views.
	And they have to be at a sufficiently high vantage point.
	You can see basically the whole complex.
	And it was like, you know, there's Russian soldiers that are kind of just chilling out in the courtyard.
	And they've got some other Russian soldiers that are like shooting an anti-aircraft gun.
	At some Ukrainian drones that are flying overhead or something, it's not really clear, but there's no attack.
	I mean, the Russians are there.
	How can they attack?
	They already own it, you know, and it was all kind of a big fake.
	It was all, you know, but, you know, no one wants to check their facts, right?
	I mean, you can literally go on this live camera feed of the nuclear power station and check yourself, but no one wanted to do that.
	But in an environment where they can say, oh my God.
	Russia just tried to blow up the nuclear power station.
	The whole world believes it.
	Why do you need false flags?
	You know what?
	Sorry, go ahead.
	It was straight out of 1984.
	One of the lesser known...
	It's not as glamorous, but the government makes up the news.
	You have no idea who's dying where.
	They say it.
	You read it, and you have no reason to believe it or no means to contradict it.
	But, Robert, you know what?
	You go ahead before I get into some of the tougher super chats that I've been flagging.
	Starring.
	Robert, you go first.
	Can you explain to people, it has been extraordinary watching...
	It's the fake news throughout this.
	But part of this is making Zelensky the new great hero.
	He's the new Churchill.
	He's the new FDR.
	He's the new Patton.
	He's the new...
	I mean, he's even doing...
	He's dressing like Che Guevara and Fidel Castro.
	Have you seen how he walks?
	He kind of struts like Rambo.
	And it's gotten worse.
	He's a little comedian who used to wear high heels.
	But can you give people who don't know that context the history of who Zelensky...
	Honestly, I don't know any more than you do.
	You know, he's a comedian.
	He's also helped, while he was, the early part of his political career in terms of when he actually ran for the presidency after the total failure of the Poroshenko government, he was financially supported by Igor Kolomoisky.
	Who is one of the main oligarchs in the Ukraine.
	Kolomoisky has actually long been on the outs with Uncle Sam.
	This is really funny.
	Uncle Sam, up to and including the U.S. Embassy, the ambassador, their Twitter account, was saying, look, don't vote for Zelensky.
	We know, you know, this is back in the 2019 election, they were like, we know that...
	The people of Ukraine are going to make the responsible choice.
	You've got to stand up to Russia and make the responsible choice.
	And so it's like, you know, don't vote for Zelensky, vote for our guy.
	And Zelensky carried, you know, like he won with 72% of the vote.
	It was just insane.
	It was like no one's ever seen this kind of landslide before.
	And, you know, this is, of course, with a margin of error, plus or minus 10%, perhaps, because a lot of it's just...
	You know, there's no accounting for a lot of these votes in the Ukraine.
	But the fact is he did win.
	And he won on a promise to end the war.
	He didn't say how he was going to do it.
	Kind of sounds like an American politician.
	They don't say how they're going to do it.
	They just say, I'm going to end the war.
	And people voted for that.
	And people voted also for a change because the Ukraine had been so impoverished.
	You know, sort of under American financial administration, people got tired of it.
	But it was so funny.
	I mean, at the time, the U.S. government was very firmly rooting for Poroshenko.
	They were openly against Zelensky.
	And then, of course, once Zelensky comes to power, he was a complete blank slate, didn't know anything, and he kind of got rolled like Trump, frankly.
	He got rolled.
	You know, he had literally, he had...
	Maybe a month or two months window to just chop off heads and say, you know what?
	We're ending the war.
	I don't care who I have to fire.
	I will send my presidential detail to kill you if you sabotage my orders.
	Right?
	Could have done that.
	Couldn't do it.
	Why couldn't you do it?
	Because the paymaster is not going to support you if you violate the paymaster's agenda.
	There's only one reason.
	For the Ukraine to exist since 2014, which is to fight Russia and be a thorn in Russia's side and sort of a staging ground for regime change within Russia and to bring Russia down as a power.
	There was no way in hell that there was going to be any change, any shift in Ukrainian government policy towards Russia or the IMF payments or anything else.
	It doesn't matter.
	These elections don't matter.
	It could have been anyone other than Zelensky.
	It doesn't matter.
	They could have elected...
	Did we lose him?
	Who froze?
	It's not us, Robert.
	Ah, so it must have been Jacob.
	Jacob, if you're watching us, you have frozen at this point.
	No, hold on, like this.
	Jacob, we'll wait.
	But, Robert, you know, now this will give me some time to bring up some of the other chats.
	Oh, boy.
	Or, sorry, you can't screen, sir.
	Ah, there we go.
	Yeah, there you go.
	You're back.
	We're going to get to the harder questions in a bit, but you were frozen for a bit.
	All right.
	So as long as the Ukraine remains a special project of the United States with the sole purpose, basically, of sticking it to Russia, it does not matter who is in charge.
	If the name starts in a Z...
	It starts in some other letter.
	It doesn't matter.
	You get elected even if it's a relatively free election.
	You come in.
	It doesn't matter what your gender is.
	You're going to get rolled because ultimately the cash flows are coming from abroad.
	They're coming from the IMF.
	They're coming from Uncle Sam.
	They're coming from Washington.
	Every day on my commute, I used to walk past the IMF building to get to the bus.
	It's all coming from Washington.
	You have no sovereignty as Ukrainian leadership.
	You're just fulfilling, you know, I mean, obviously, you're pursuing your own career interests, your own financial interests, but in doing so, you cannot step away from the agenda that is set in Washington, which is fight Russia.
	And the only way to break free from that is to say, you know what?
	We're going to make our own deal with Russia.
	You know, forget Uncle Sam.
	The problem is you can't do that because Uncle Sam pays better.
	Jacob, so Coach Red Pill at one point said that Zelensky might have had other issues that drew him to Hunter Biden type lifestyle that made them friends, which I can't get into.
	I don't know, but I think we all know what he's talking about.
	But one question, you brought it back to Washington, and this was from early on in the chat.
	So specific.
	Were you an Obamacare administrator or working on the policy of Obamacare?
	I was...
	Can I use the F word?
	Yeah, go for it, please.
	I was not an administrator.
	I was a peon working on the clusterfuck that became the Obamacare rollout.
	And it was such a total clusterfuck.
	Like I said, I was nobody, but I had a very good view into it.
	It was administered by a bunch of kids working in CMS, the Center for Medicare and Medicaid Services, within the Department of Health and Human Services.
	And even in early 2012, this was like, I think about a year and a half before the rollout and the disastrous failure of the website.
	You know, they had already had about a couple of years to really...
	You know, develop the flow charts and the eligibility requirements and this and that.
	And they had done nothing because what CMS did is they hired literally a team of college graduates to run it.
	It was it was like nothing I've ever seen, man.
	I mean, it was just a bunch of 23, 25 year old kids.
	And I could I told people that it was not going to roll out very well.
	And I was right.
	So I'm sorry.
	What's the question?
	Oh.
	Well, in another vein, there was a question on locals.
	How much has providing this very honest, objective analysis, has it impacted your relationships in the swamp, in Washington, D.C.?
	Well, I don't have many relationships with the swamp.
	I'm just a tiny bit playing a large bureaucracy now.
	I do my job and get paid, and then I share my own views online on my own time.
	So I think that I literally...
	I never bring it up at work, you know, what I'm doing outside of work.
	And I frankly, you know, the way it works now in this day and age, typically people look you up to see what you're doing.
	So I'm sure a lot of people can see.
	But, you know, I don't talk about it.
	I just I just stay safe.
	You know, I have my I have fortunately federal employees have quite a bit of First Amendment rights, you know, when they're on their own time.
	And it's also guaranteed in my union contract.
	So, you know.
	Well, I'll tell you one thing.
	I did notice you have a very thin social media footprint.
	I was looking for scandal.
	I was looking for dirt.
	I found nothing.
	I just found enlightening content on YouTube.
	But I'm going to bring up Mike Bruno because he asked it many times.
	How many children are dead from Ukraine?
	Because people are going to watch this.
	They're going to listen to you and say, you're a Putin apologist.
	All you do is make excuses for Putin's aggression and condemn.
	The United States and Zelensky fighting Putin aggression.
	I guess on the one hand, what's been the civilian toll?
	And to the extent you recognize, because I think we all do, there's been a civilian toll.
	To what do you attribute the civilian toll?
	Yeah, okay.
	Two-part question.
	Very good.
	So the civilian toll is we don't know.
	We just don't know.
	There's no reliable, credible, centralized data collection of civilian deaths or frankly even military deaths on the Ukrainian side.
	There's also an issue with the fact that some places have been so destroyed, such as Mariupol, for example, that a lot of people were just buried during the siege by their neighbors, relatives, whatever, and they're still right now being exhumed for...
	For reburial and autopsies and reburial and so forth.
	So, you know, there's no, I mean, this isn't like, this isn't like the daily coronavirus case total or death total in the United States.
	You know, this is a very chaotic situation.
	It's not a very well run country.
	And so we just don't know.
	We don't know.
	It's obviously in the thousands.
	We don't know the death toll on the Russian side or on the Ukrainian side as far as military losses either.
	Frankly, on the Ukrainian side, the territorial defense militia, a lot of these people just died and no one ever thinks about them again except their relatives.
	They're not promised any widows.
	Benefits or anything like that.
	So, I mean, it's, you know, there's no incentive even to collect numbers.
	Everyone wants numbers.
	I'll tell you what, as far as what accounts for it, what accounts for it is it's a goddamn war.
	All right?
	And, you know, when you're a commander and you want to take out a certain artillery position that might be a little too close to a civilian neighborhood or inside a civilian neighborhood.
	So that your infantry can advance, you know, you're going to fucking take it out, you know, with nukes, knives, sharp sticks, or whatever you have to do, you know?
	And if, you know, if some shells hit a bunch of kids playing in a playground 300 meters away, tough shit, you know?
	I mean, that's war.
	You know, the best thing is don't get into a war, don't start a war, you know, don't give anyone an excuse to start a war against you.
	I mean, frankly, that's, you know...
	You think, you know, when Uncle Sam goes into Iraq or something, you think Uncle Sam is counting civilian casualties?
	No, you know.
	I mean, you know, if you noticed, there's never been any count on the American side as far as dead civilians in any American war or bombing campaign or whatever, because it doesn't look good, and it's like, who cares?
	I thought the smart bombs magically avoided all the civilians.
	Yeah, yeah.
	Now, to what do you attribute your independence of thought and perspective?
	I mean, you follow original sources, you stay outside of the mainstream narrative, the organized narrative, the institutional narrative, call it what you will.
	What do you think in your background or your experience, your life experience, led you to be independent of thought in the first place?
	Wow, man.
	I got to sit on a couch and psychoanalyze myself there, man.
	Well, you know, I think being an immigrant and having kind of one foot in another culture helps because, you know, you do see the propaganda and assumptions and everything.
	And so that helps a lot.
	That helps a lot.
	Also the fact that being an immigrant, I was never brought up in like as a Democrat or Republican or whatever, right?
	So although I might...
	I think being an immigrant and having been brought up, although I came here at a relatively young age, I think having been brought up sort of...
	My parents from a different culture, I think that helped a lot.
	And, you know, also, I think, frankly, my military service, I think, you know, you kind of see a lot of the...
	That helped me to see a lot of the propaganda.
	I mean, you know, you take a road trip with some of your soldier friends and, you know, maybe you stop somewhere for gas or for food and...
	Some civilians are thanking you for your service because they can see by your haircut or whatever that, you know, your military and thinking like, what?
	What service?
	Like, what have I done?
	You know, and I kind of, you know, kind of gave me a lot of a lot of guys, especially the career guys.
	I mean, they really take it seriously.
	Like, oh, yeah, you know, really doing something good for the world, you know, because how else do you justify your paycheck?
	You know, as someone who was just in for a five-year stint, I think, you know, it helped me to see through a lot of the patriotic propaganda, so to speak.
	And, you know, USA is still a great country.
	It's a great place to live.
	I don't know if for much longer, but, you know, a lot of the rah-rah, I mean, I saw through it, you know, in my army days.
	So that's another part of it.
	What do you think's happening in the military hierarchy?
	Because, I mean, we've seen, like, they're suddenly shocked that they're losing in the recruiting battleground, as there's not a lot of people eager to go dive to fight Russia and America any more than Ukraine.
	There's not a huge desire to go in and get forced shots.
	There is no desire to read on anti-racism and critical race theory and woke strategies.
	And we have people designated as military officials that...
	Where biologically born men now identify as women is supposed to be all like totally normal.
	Are you surprised?
	I mean, can you describe what has happened at the top of the military hierarchy in the United States?
	I don't know about the top.
	I don't know anything about the top.
	Not an expert.
	I don't have any direct experience, but I can tell you about the bottom.
	I'll tell you about the bottom.
	So what this what this does is it goes in cycles.
	Basically, since the dawn of the all-volunteer force, there's a quality cycle within recruitment where it gets better and it gets worse.
	During the late 1990s and then after 9-1-1, it got much better where they were getting people with two-year and four-year college degrees enlisting.
	Especially after 9-1-1, there was a big wave of patriotism.
	They got professional football players enlisting and all that.
	And then they destroyed it.
	They destroyed it with their rock war, where they had to lower their standards radically because they had a huge recruitment crisis and retention crisis.
	They had to radically lower their standards.
	They raised the enlistment maximum age to 42, which is just ridiculous.
	They, you know, they started taking people with drug records and criminal records.
	They lowered the standardized test standards, the ASVAB.
	That's the military kind of version of the SAT.
	And they got an army that was, frankly, you know, really from the very bottom, the bottom of the bottom, frankly.
	And, you know, maybe in the Air Force a little better, you know, but they got an army that, you know, in the years like 2005, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10. They were basically recruiting from the gutter.
	Obviously, I'm generalizing, but the proportion of desperados and dead-enders who entered U.S. Army service between 2005 and 2010 was much higher, many times higher than it had been in prior years.
	But then they started repairing it.
	People that came in...
	Starting from about 2011, you know, the Iraq war was over.
	They, you know, they didn't fear about getting their butts blown off.
	So you started getting a better cross-section of American society, you know, not just the dead ends.
	And, you know, for some years it got better.
	And now clearly it's again getting a lot worse where they have another recruitment crisis and retention crisis brought on by these forced vaccinations.
	Brought on by this political incoherence where they hate you for being a Trump voter.
	They hate you for being white and a guy, whatever.
	But that's where the military comes from, right?
	So it's like there's a lot of people questioning, obviously, do I really want to go in and serve these people or maybe wait for the next administration, right?
	So the numbers are off.
	Their numbers are off.
	And what do they have to do when their numbers are off?
	They have to, again, lower the standards like they were doing during the Iraq War.
	Now, of course, there's another strategy, which is raising the bonuses.
	So you get a $50,000 enlistment bonus.
	You get a $60,000 enlistment bonus or whatever, at least for shortage specialty fields.
	But that by itself can never plug the hole.
	So, of course, you have to lower the standards.
	So it's oscillating, it oscillates, and right now we're sort of heading into a trough.
	I don't know how you say that.
	Trough, yeah.
	Trough, okay, all right, thank you.
	And maybe we'll pick up back again at some point, I don't know.
	But what's clear in terms of the public perception of military use, this is separate from who wants to join or not.
	The public perception of military use, the Iraq and Afghanistan misadventures.
	Oh, that's another reason why people don't want to join.
	It's because of the Afghanistan clusterfucker.
	But the Iraq and Afghanistan were such misadventures that the public just can't stomach another ground war.
	You know?
	So right now, we have an army.
	We have the U.S. Army and its reserve components that...
	Basically are waiting to shake their rock syndrome.
	That's why they exist.
	And also to, you know, go do some joint training with Lithuanian, whatever.
	But fundamentally, they can't be used.
	They can't be used in a war.
	The public, you know, is still sort of conditioned from or traumatized from their rock clusterfuck to think, you know what, we don't want another ground war.
	It's just, you know, we don't do well.
	We don't want to see a lot of people dead, whatever.
	And so that has been hugely, hugely damaging to the empire interest, right?
	Because can you imagine if Iraq never happened?
	We might be in a ground war with Russia right now in the Ukraine, right?
	But it's funny, some of the same, you know, the aggressive hawks and neocons and all that, they really, really wanted the Iraq invasion.
	Now they really, really, really want a war with Russia, but they can't have it.
	Because of the way that their Iraq invasion turned out.
	So it's really karma.
	I think it's kind of funny.
	But yeah, so fortunately, fortunately, I think just because of the public perception of the undesirability of large ground force commitments, that that's why we haven't gone into the Ukraine with a ground war.
	And I think that's...
	Thank Iraq.
	You know, thank the Iraqi jihadis and resistance guys.
	I mean, you know, some of them may be not very appealing, but they kept us out of World War III.
	No doubt.
	As our exit question, remind everybody that they can find Jacob on a daily basis at thedrazenreport.com.
	Robert, before you do the exit question, because I couldn't decide whether or not to do this at the beginning or at the end.
	I'm going to not include identifying information in this message.
	Robert, it came from our community, and I'll read it.
	Without any identifying information, it's, Hi, Robert and Viva.
	My dad is probably your biggest fan.
	We talk every Sunday night after your show.
	He never misses a Bourbon with Barnes or your other great shows during the week, and hardly a conversation about the world and current events goes by where your names aren't mentioned.
	We just found out that he has a large unknown mass in his brain and that he'll have surgery very soon.
	If you could give him a shout-out.
	On Sunday.
	Oh, this was for Sunday.
	It doesn't matter.
	We're doing it tonight.
	And keep him in your prayers.
	I know it would mean the world to him.
	Robert, do I pronounce?
	Do I say the name?
	Yeah.
	His name is George.
	Let me see it.
	George Connaughton.
	Pronounced Connaughton.
	Phonetically.
	Thank you.
	In St. Augustine, Florida.
	Thank you so much.
	And I look forward to watching you both with him tonight.
	I might do it again Sunday, but I thought this was...
	Good luck, Mr. Connaughton.
	Again, everybody, you can find Jacob at thedrazenreport.com.
	The best information on Ukraine.
	Information you can use to actually make some smart investment advice if you use it well.
	Though no investment advice is always ever being given.
	Unless the SEC is eavesdropping on this conversation.
	I don't do investments.
	I gamble.
	Yeah, exactly.
	Same here.
	I'm a gambler.
	But if you follow those gamblers, you might make a little money.
	So just no better sign than somebody who puts their money where their mouth is.
	And you can make money by putting your money where his mouth is.
	Well, I don't promise anything.
	Exactly.
	No guarantees.
	I can just tell you he has a track record of winning, like some of the rest of us do.
	But in that capacity, people had asked, could you give folks a white pill?
	So because there's a lot of black pill information out there, what would be your white pill hope?
	What's the best case scenario that how this all unfolds five, ten years from now?
	Maybe it is the collapse of an empire that has not behaved well in America's interest or a lot of ordinary people's interest around the world.
	What is the white pill that people can take out of this potentially?
	Well, I think at best it's a pill that has two halves of different colors, right?
	So it might have a black half and a white half, and that's the best case.
	The white pill would be that for the benefit of the American people, the American public, American citizenry, the empire is defeated, and we focus on our own internal problems.
	And I think it's going to be a very rough road to that if we get there.
	But that's my best case.
	Well, that's a pretty good white pill.
	So remember, everybody, check out the DrazenReport.com.
	You can subscribe by email to get notifications.
	Click through on a daily basis.
	I do on a daily basis.
	The best place to stay up to date on issues related to Ukraine and other aspects of geopolitics and geopolitics.
	Jacob, you have no Twitter handle yet, right?
	I do, actually.
	My technical...
	Help her set it up.
	I'm on Getter, too.
	What is it, if I may put it into the chat?
	Yeah, on the Twitter is, I think it's at DrazenReport.com, but you know what?
	You can actually, it's on my blog.
	It's just like all over, at least at the end of every single blog post.
	It's also on my YouTube channel.
	On my YouTube channel, DrazenReport YouTube channel.
	All under each video, I have...
	You know, all that Twitter and Getter stuff.
	I have all of 400 subscribers on Getter.
	You know, Twitter is doing quite a bit better.
	The YouTube is a little more eclectic than the blog.
	It's for people who have a better tolerance for humor and just random, you know, my thoughts today.
	I recently put up a picture from Rocky Horror as my thumbnail, and my audience dropped 70% over one video because a lot of people didn't get the humor.
	But, you know, that's all good.
	If you want serious war stuff, just stick to my blog.
	If you want a brand shy, you can do the YouTube channel, too.
	Thanks, guys, for having me on.
	Thanks, Viva.
	Thanks, Robert.
	I really appreciate it.
	Fantastic.
	Stick around.
	We'll say our proper goodbyes.
	Apparently I've been misspelling your name in all of the links, but I'll put them up properly in the pinned comment afterwards.
	Correct.
	Drazen as in D-R-E-I-Z-I-N.
	It's not Drazen as in German.
	It's not 13 in German.
	It's Drazen.
	Okay.
	It's Yiddish.
	Yiddish.
	All the E-I's are...
	Well, they don't spell in Latin.
	But, yeah, all of the German EIs are A because it's an earlier variation of German, you know, that survived from the Middle Ages.
	So it's actually a Yiddish name.
	So, yeah.
	Okay, I apologize, people.
	But I'll put the proper links up in the pinned comment.
	I'm triggered, man.
	I'm triggered.
	Jacob, Robert, stick around.
	We'll say our proper goodbyes to everyone in the chat.
	Thank you very much.
	See you Sunday.
	Peace out, peeps.

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