Danny Jones Podcast - #132 - Exiled From Russia: Embedded Journalist Reveals Putin's Most Unsettling Secrets | David Satter

Episode Date: April 11, 2022

David Satter is a leading commentator on Russia and the former Soviet Union. He is the author of five books on Russia and the creator of a documentary film on the fall of the U.S.S.R.  https://twitter.com/DavidSatter help us make more money: https://bit.ly/koncretepatreon danny  https://www.instagram.com/jonesdanny  https://twitter.com/jonesdanny Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Describe how you became the first American journalist to be exiled from Russia? Well, that took place in 2013. And basically, I had gone to Ukraine before, of course, there was no war at that time. I went to Kiev to renew my visa. This is a standard bureaucratic procedure I had all the necessary documents. and the rule is the same for everybody. You have to leave the country, get it renewed, and then come back in. I had an apartment in Moscow.

I was accredited in Moscow. I was planning to live there and stay there. And I was informed by a diplomat in the Russian embassy in Kiev that my presence on the territory of the Russian Federation was undesirable, that this had been the conclusion of the so-called competent organs. That's a euphemism for the FSB, the Federal Security Service, which is the successor to the KGB. And I was banned from entering the country, so I couldn't go back.

I mean, all my things were there. In the end, my son went to Moscow and packed up my things and brought them back out. And that was it. The Moscow Times, which is an English language paper in Moscow, wrote an article about it. They said it wasn't surprising that I was expelled. It was surprising that it took so long. Really? Yeah.

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Restrictions apply. And in fact, I have a long, long record of confrontation with the Russian authorities and then the Soviet authorities before them, because I went to Russia for the first time as a correspondent in 1976, as the, at that point, the very young correspondent of the London Financial Times. and in 1979 there was an attempt to expel me, which failed. It was based on the idea or based on the assumption that neither the British embassy nor the American embassy, since I was an American working for a British publication. And in those years, that was very unusual, would defend me.

but in fact they both did and they threatened to expel Russian journalists from both London and Washington and those Russian journalists were in fact intelligence agents and they didn't want to lose them so they allowed me to stay in Moscow and I was able to remain there

for three more years to work on a book which eventually you know was published and I had intended it to be about the Soviet totalitarian system, but because history kind of began to move very fast, it was ultimately about the fall of the Soviet totalitarian system. And after that, I couldn't go back for a number of years. I was blocked when I tried to travel to the Soviet Union.

but in the last years of the Soviet Union, after the Gorbachev reforms had gone very, very far, I was finally allowed back in. I was the last American journalist to be allowed back in, and it turns out I was the first to be expelled in post-Soviet Russia. But between the time that I was allowed in and the time that I was expelled, there were 23 years that I was going back and forth and writing about Russia. I wrote other books. What made you interested in going over to Russia in the first place?

And was there any suspicion from Russia that you could have been in U.S. intelligence? There's always that suspicion. But they have extremely... thorough ways of keeping track of Western journalists. For one thing, we lived in the Soviet times in buildings that were bugged and where there were video cameras and where there were guards outside the buildings and where everyone who came and went was registered and observed. We didn't have mobile phones in those days, but the phones were all tapped.

the only way to have a private conversation was to go to a booth and put a two Kopec coin into a tin telephone and try to dial a number. In fact, it was quite an effort actually to get the damn telephone even to work, let alone to get through to somebody. But if you called from your home, then everything was, of course, monitored. So they knew pretty well what correspondence were doing, with whom we were meeting. Intelligence agents are really, although there's a lot of mythology about this, their principal job is to recruit sources. And that means, for example, finding people who worked in the Russian or Soviet government who could provide secret information.

Everything I did was open and public, and I didn't make any such efforts to establish such contacts. Oh, and the other thing was that all of the driver's secretaries, maids, and service personnel in the foreigners' buildings all worked for the KGB at that time. So it's hard to conceal very much from them. and in fact I had no interest in doing that. I thought that I wanted to make it clear that I was operating openly and according to the law and that I had a legitimate right as a representative of the Western press and the democratic world in effect to gather truthful information to make it known. What sparked your interest to originally go over there?

And how old were you when you first went over there? When I first went over there, I was a graduate student. I was a graduate student. It was actually in 1969. I'll tell you how old I was. At that time, it was 21. Wow. Yeah.

And I went there because I was a graduate student at Oxford University in England. And I had always been interested in Russia. and then when I went to study at Oxford, suddenly Russia was close. I mean, you could get on a train in London. And, of course, you had to get off the train to get on a ferry and then take the ferry to the hook of Holland and pick up another train. But nonetheless, you could buy a ticket in London

and take a train that would eventually lead you to Moscow. and I didn't want to miss that opportunity. I went there many times, not many times, but a number of times, spend as much time in the Soviet Union as I could and just became fascinated with the place and with the language. The language. Yeah, the Russian language. Because I went to a high school in Chicago on the south side of Chicago. And it was in the neighborhood of the University of Chicago. and it was a crazy coincidence, but there was a woman there who taught Russian.

And the high school students had the option of, we had a choice. It was French, Spanish, German, Latin, or Russian. And I asked my father at that time, I was 13, I asked him, what language do you think I should take? He said, I think you should take Russian. It might be useful someday. I couldn't imagine how it could be useful because I knew even at that age

that very few people were able to go to the Soviet Union, that to live there you had to be part of a special diplomatic community. It never crossed my mind at that time that I might one day be part of that community, but that's what happened. And I also did something which I would actually advise any student to do, which is I didn't quit. Once, many, many of the people who took Russian gave up on it, it's a difficult language. Many of them decided, oh, heck, I'm not going

to struggle with this. I'll study Spanish, you know, in the case of people who had a language requirement that they had to fulfill. But I, after four years of high school Russian, during which I didn't learn very much, I thought that, well, look, I still have a little bit of background, and why not build on it? So I took Russian when I went to the University of Chicago, because to graduate from the University of Chicago in those days, you had to have at least one year of a foreign language. And then when I got to Oxford, I continued. And then, needless to say, I got practice when I traveled there. And I spent one summer taking a special Russian course

that was organized by the British Soviet Friendship Society, and I signed up for it. So the point is little by little, I improved my knowledge of Russian, and so that when I went to Moscow, I had a base. And, of course, I worked hard with a tutor and finally got to the point that every journalist should get to

where I could go out and talk to people in their own language and kind of circulate almost as if I were a Soviet citizen. What was your, during that time, what was your perspective on Russia and Russian people? And did you have any sort of like goals in mind when you went to Moscow? My goal was to learn about the country and to write about it. I had at this, when I was at Oxford, I wrote a thesis on, well, let's put it this way. You know, I grew up in the, you know, as part of the post-war generation.

And particularly as a Jewish kid growing up in Chicago, I was very concerned about the Holocaust and the destruction of European Jews by the Nazis. And from a very early age, I tried to understand why that happened and what did it say about people that such a thing could take place. And you have to understand that I lived in a neighborhood in Chicago, where there were a lot of people who had survived the Holocaust, and they told these terrible stories about what had happened to them. And so that information was there for me growing up.

And so my first thought was maybe I would take an interest in Nazi Germany. But in fact, I began to think, well, first of all, I don't speak German. and second of all, well, Nazism is part of the past. But in the Soviet Union, you have a totalitarian regime, which is in some ways similar, and you can actually go there. You can go there and see how people live and what's going on. And, of course, there's the fact that I had studied Russian in high school,

and I had some background, and I had always been interested to read about Russia. So all of these things prompted me to focus on Russia. While I was at Oxford, I wrote a thesis on the theory of totalitarianism of Hannah Arendt, who was a leading political philosopher, maybe the outstanding theorist of totalitarianism. And I came to the conclusion that Nazism and extreme Stalinism,

as it existed in the Soviet Union, were basically the two variants of the same phenomenon. And so therefore it really did make sense. Everything kind of pushed me in the direction of trying to go to Moscow, plus the fact, of course, that I had been editor of the school paper at University of Chicago, the campus newspaper, and I had some success as a journalist. So all of these things came together,

and it seemed the thing to do was to go to the Soviet Union, write about the Soviet Union, try to understand it better, and maybe try to help other people understand it. But of course there was still a great deal I didn't understand. There was a great deal I didn't know. The fact that I had written that thesis on Hannah Arendt was a huge help because she did something that very few thinkers were able to do was that she kind of explained the mechanism of totalitarianism.

And that meant that when I got to Moscow as a correspondent, I was in a somewhat different position than the other correspondence. First of all, I was the youngest, or practically the youngest. In fact, it was really strange people to see someone that young in Moscow representing the Financial Times of London. But more to the point, I had this, theoretical and intellectual background. So the things that took place in the Soviet Union in Moscow

were not that surprising to me. I could make sense of the idea that an entire society had been created to realize a false idea. This is which was, you know, the concept of Hannah-Aren was that totalitarianism is the combination of ideology, a false idea, and terror. In other words, you take a false idea, and you use terror to compel people to act it out. And then you create an entire universe of false appearances in order to confirm the validity of the ideology. So this is just too crazy for words.

the average American or British correspondent, including people who were a lot older than I was, they got there and they couldn't figure out, they could never put, wrap their heads around what was going on. I got there and I had that advantage. I had the advantage that I had concentrated on getting the necessary theoretical background. So I, I, uh, I, uh, was able to interpret and explain a lot of what was going on in Russia in a way that other correspondents were not able to do simply because they hadn't had, you know, they hadn't taken those steps. What surprised you the most when you got there?

I mean, obviously you had learned a lot about the history and studied plenty about it and written about it, but what you actually like embedded there, like, what, I mean, there's always a, yeah, it's always a difference. It was still a shock, you know, to get there. and see the long lines and the drabness and the dreariness. And also the sign, you had everywhere signs, no to the arms race, no to the Cold War, you know, we're fighting for peace. And yet everywhere you looked at it, you could see signs of a country that was actually preparing for war.

And, you know, troops in the back of trucks, riding all, through the streets of the capital at night, these heavy weapons under tarpaulins that were being transported, police everywhere, buildings guarded, so that no Russian citizen could enter. There were a lot of things. And of course I, and also the street, crazy unanimity. I remember one of our first trips we made was to Uzbekistan and Tashkent, the capital of

Uzbekistan, which in those days was a Soviet republic. And the Soviet propaganda was that the various peoples who comprised the Soviet Union were dedicated to the concept of friendship of peoples. In other words, the reason why they were part of the Soviet Union was not because they had been corralled into this country by force, but because they had this deep friendship for each other, that the Soviet people loved each other and that they... So we had this press conference, and the leaders of the Uzbek Republic were meeting with foreign correspondents. I was one of those correspondents because we made this trip to Uzbekistan. And with us, of course, were Soviet correspondents who were completely programmed.

So at the press conference, one of the Soviet correspondents addresses a question to the leaders of Uzbekistan. and the Uzbek Soviet Republic. He says, to what do you can attribute the success of the Uzbek Soviet Republic? And you had three government officials, and all of them said with one voice, just in chorus, friendship of peoples. And it was, you know, there were scenes like that all the time. I was on a train and I was talking to, there was in a compartment, and there were two people, a Soviet engineer and a woman who was,

I think she was, she may also have been an engineer, I don't know. Anyway, we were three random people sitting in a compartment. But when they heard that I was an American and a correspondent, of course, they became very interested. And they said, you know, in America, everything is. determined by money. And I said, well, you know, I don't know about that. He says, you know, we have elections.

We had a president, and he was impeached or nearly impeached, forced to resign. I was talking about Nixon at that time. And this Soviet guy says, well, that's nothing. I mean, the elections are meaningless, the real powers with the money, with the Rockefellers. That's what he said. Yeah, well, that's what he told me. Interesting. So he said, you know, you in America, you have formal democracy, whereas here in the Soviet Union, what we have is genuine democracy.

So I said, okay, I mean, so in other words, when you have elections with two candidates, that's formal democracy. but when there's only one candidate, that's genuine democracy. And then they smiled and looked at me and said, as if I was this kind of moronic kindergarten pupil who finally, finally understood something. And I began to think I was really living in a giant insane asylum, you know? So there were many things.

you know, they twisted people's minds in all kinds of ways. In fact, they're still doing it in Russia. But I had good preparation for that. I had a good theoretical preparation, and most of all, I had the desire. I had the desire to know, to understand. I was curious. A lot of the other correspondents in Moscow in those days were absolutely miserable. They didn't want to be there.

They knew that for the purposes of their careers, They had to spend a couple of years in dreary, uninteresting Moscow, the place where there were no decent restaurants, no decent stores, nothing to do, and where their wives were slowly going crazy with boredom and irritation, which they vented, of course, on their husbands. But I didn't look at it that way at all. I mean, and most of them didn't speak Russian. They didn't make the effort.

But even with my level of knowledge, when I got there, I realized that to really operate in the society, I would have to master the language. And I met religiously with my Russian teacher, and it was inconvenient. It was easy to cancel those lessons. But I understood that this was the key. I always think that that could be one of the biggest barriers

especially not I mean mainly within the media because there's so it's like playing the game of telephone there's so many layers of people that are digesting information repurposing it for headlines that most people don't read past the headlines and then before all that you have the whole language barrier like how accurate are the people that are interpreting what these Russians are saying how accurate is the translation before you get to talk about. all the media, you know, minting it in the media. I mean, I'll give you a good example. We had this reset policy with President Obama. There was tension in relations between Russia and the U.S. And Obama's view was that this was the fault of his predecessor, George Bush. In fact,

Obama, when he came into office, was blaming everything under the sun on George Bush. And And so he announced a new policy and was called the Policy of Reset. Now, Boris Nemtsov, a Russian Democratic leader who was murdered in February 2015, and I, we met with, we talked to a guy who I won't name who was going to be Obama's chief Russian advisor. And we told him. And at that time, there was already talk about a so-called reset. And we told him that Putin is not a candidate for partnership. He's a candidate for deterrence.

And, of course, he didn't want to hear any of it. And then his career was tied up with, of course, supporting whatever Obama desired. But who is the who you're speaking about? This is, I, since I know him personally, I prefer, it's one of the top advisors, you know, who was behind the reset policy. And the reset policy was the idea that we were going to change, you know, reexamine our positions and try to meet the Russians halfway, you know. Well, you know, basically we were attributing an American psychology to the Russians, assuming that, you know, we'll meet them halfway, they'll respond. and all the problems will be solved, you know. We just have to show a little goodwill.

No understanding of who the Russian leader was, what his background was, what he had done, what he was likely to do in the future. And then to top everything off, when they announced the reset policy, Hillary Clinton presented a red button to Sergei Lavrov, who was the Russian foreign minister, with the word reset in Russian, with a word for reset in Russian that was incorrect.

It was, I mean, in Russian it was per gruska, and reset is per zagrushka. But, you know, it's just the kind of unprofessional. and this was presented by the Secretary of State, because Hillary Clinton was the Secretary of State, to the Russian foreign minister, and to show how sensitive we are to Russian culture. And of course, the word that we chose was that, you know, for our policy was mistranslated,

and the Russian word that was, you know, on the gift, on the red button, was not the correct word. Do you know what the actual word was, like what it actually translated to in Russian? Yeah, Peregruska, it's reload, but not reset. It's just, you know, Peresagrushka is resetting something. the the whereas uh Paragruska is

is you know just plugging something into a wall so that you know you'll get you'll get the charge back any case I mean just typical

but this is it goes to your point because from the very top I mean how can we expect the media to be uh

well-informed. How can we expect the public discussion in the U.S. to be well-informed in a situation in which the government is so unprofessional? And let's face it, understanding Russia is not simple. Yeah, I love it. It takes work. The famous Mark Twain quote, if you don't read the newspaper, you're uninformed. If you do read the newspaper, you're misinformed. Yeah, it shouldn't be that way. It shouldn't be that way. But, in fact, you know, it's just awful stuff. I mean, there was recently a big article in the New York Times, a 7,000-word piece about explaining Vladimir Putin

and his rise to power. Not a single word about the apartment bombings, which are the real reason why he came to power. Why do you think that is? I think that, you know, people reject, and are openly hostile to things they don't understand or that are really outside their familiar kind of frame of reference. And they even take penetration, serious analysis as a challenge,

and in some cases even a personal challenge, and react with hostility to any attempt really, to, you know, to look at a serious question in a serious way. Can you take me through that story of the apartment bombings and how you covered that story? Yeah, okay. Well, that's the most important. I mean, if you want to understand Russia, then you have to understand the apartment bomb, the story of the apartment bombings. And this is when Putin was... Well, Putin was at first the head of the FSB, which is the successor organization to the KGB.

But during the 1990s, when Russia was transformed from a socialist country with all property in the hands of the state, to a kind of capitalist society in which under any circumstances property was in private hands, the consequences for the Russian people were just horrific. This is when all the oligarchs took out. Well, they were created, but the, and they were created because the property of the Soviet Union, the resource companies, the ports, the facilities, they were all carved up among corrupt insiders who became known as oligarchs. They didn't create anything. They were not true businessmen. They were people who benefited from the corruption in order.

order to steal what already existed. But the consequences of this type of privatization were disastrous for the Russian economy, which collapsed. I mean, the national income fell by 50%. Well, that didn't happen, even under Nazi occupation. and the population, for the most part, with the exception of a very small group, was thrown into grinding poverty,

and it created a profound psychological crisis, which led to, among other things, a very high death rate. In the years 1990, in the 1990, in the 1990, 1990s, when Russia was being transformed economically, the death rate in Russia reached the level of, it reached unprecedented levels for an industrial country. In fact, during that period, according to demographers, there were 6 million excess surplus deaths. Now, surplus deaths or surplus mortality is a term that's used by demographers to describe deaths that could not have been anticipated on the basis of previously existing trends. This is what demographers do.

They look, for example, now it's 20-22, they want to say, you know, what is the population going to be in 2030, for example, in a given country? Well, they look at all of the relevant trends, you know, the way the economy is going, the climate, the, you know, investment, the health situation, the improvement in medicine, and so on and so forth, it advances or problems in the area of child mortality. And then they make, on the basis of a reasonable projection, they say, well, the population. they say, well, the population is going to be X, you know, certainly. Well, people did that for Russia, of course, during the 1990s, and especially targeted the year 2000, which was a logical target. And the difference between what they predicted and what in fact occurred

was 6 million extra deaths. suicide rate doubled, accident rate went way up, people died in unprecedented numbers, cardiological, from our cardiovascular disease cancer, the murder rate became arguably the highest in the world. all of these things contributed and there was also just a profound psychological crisis for many people who trained to believe in one system

were thrown into another system for which they were very poorly prepared. In any case, Yeltsin was the precedent. His policies contributed to this situation. Not only contributed to it, they were instrumental. And the result was that his popularity in Russia was practically zero. Public opinion polls showed that he had 2% approval in the country. When Putin was promoted to the role of prime minister from head of the FSB, his popularity rating in the only poll that

was taken before the bombings was 2%. It was generally considered. to be out of the question that Yeltsin or anyone appointed by Yeltsin could possibly succeed Yeltsin as president. And in 2000, there were new elections and the Constitution said he could only serve two terms. It was at that point that the buildings in Moscow and in Russia began to be blown up in the middle of the night, killing, you know, hundreds of people. those bombings were attributed by the Russian authorities to the Chechens, who had, after a war in the early 1990s, created a kind of independent state, which was not widely recognized,

but it had autonomy from Russia. And that was the basis for launching a new war against Chechnya, and Putin was put in charge of it. suddenly Putin, this completely uncharismatic person who no one had ever heard of, in fact, who had never had a career as a public politician, was everywhere vowing bloody revenge against the terrorists who had murdered innocent Russian people in their beds. And the Second Chechen War achieved early successes. They were well prepared for it. They used banned weapons, cluster bombs, thermobaric weapons,

and they bomb markets, as they have a tendency to do. And they bomb civilian areas, just as they're doing now in Ukraine. And the initial success of the government under Putin in pursuing that war raised Putin's popularity, and he overnight became the leading contender for the presidency, and in fact was elected president. And his first official act was to pardon Yeltsin and Yeltsin's corrupt family for all crimes committed while they were in office.

So those bombings were very convenient, and there was a lot of circumstantial evidence that pointed to not Chechens, but the Russian intelligence services, the real authors of those explosions. But what clinched the argument was a fifth bomb that didn't go off, that was placed in the basement of an apartment building

in the city of Riazon, which is southeast of Moscow. What happened was you know the whole country was was petrified with fear no one knew what apartment building would be blown up next and at that moment this bomb was

placed in the basement of the building in Riazon but people were on the lookout and the bombers were noticed and the police were called and the perpetrators, the people who had put the bomb in the, the bomb was diffused, the people who had put the bomb in the basement were caught, and they turned out to be FSB agents, not Chechen terrorists.

They produced FSB identification. Really? Yeah. And the bomb was a live bomb. It was made out of the same material hexagon, which is used to top off artillery shells. It's high explosive. that was used in the previous bombings.

And the FSB hastily announced that this was not an attempt to blow up a building. This was a training exercise. Well, you know, believe that. For one thing, it couldn't have been a training exercise because under the law, if there's a training exercise, all of the officials in the locality where the exercises being conducted have to be informed. None of them knew it was a training exercise. The bombers used a stolen car.

Well, they wouldn't have needed a stolen car if it had been a legitimate exercise. And in fact, the bomb itself tested positive for hexagon, which is a very dangerous explosive, of, and the detonator, which was filmed in time-stamped, was a live military detonator, and you can't carry out an exercise with a live bomb in a civilian apartment building. So that was, you know, and then people who began to investigate, they were all killed, journalists,

deputies in the parliament, the lowest state duma, which is the Russian parliament. and Alexander Litvinenko, a former FSB agent who wrote about this, was poisoned with a radioactive isotope in London. You may remember that case. It was put in his tea and then he just was kind of consumed from within by radiation. So there's really no doubt that that's how Putin came to power. What else did they have to gain?

by creating a new war with Chechnya besides gaining that political approval for him to gain power. Well, that was the main thing. That was primary. It was to be, yeah. And of course, there was a nationalist motive, of course, because the Chechens had humiliated Russia by defeating them in the first Chechen war. And, you know, for given Russia's national pride and so on, I mean, they may have wanted to blot out that disgrace as they understood it. But the point is what really did was it put, it, it elevated Putin.

Now, who were, you mentioned earlier, there was a, I think it was a journalist who you were friends with who was murdered, who was murdered outside the Kremlin, I believe. Well, that's Boris Nemtsov. But he was not a journalist, but he was the leader of the Democratic opposition there. He was the leader of the Democratic opposition in Russia. Yeah. At what point did you become close with him? Well, I knew him over the years. You worked closely with him?

No, but we, you know, we met. And, of course, I was, you know, I was familiar with his work. and he was familiar with mine and we had good, you know, and friendly relationship. And, you know, like as in the case of other Russians who were in the opposition and with whom I had contact. But he was very prominent, I mean, and he would, you know, we would meet at conferences

and in Russia itself. Now, in your documentary Age of Delirium, there's so many fascinating stories that you covered in there. From the train to the buried printing press. And then when you combine all these different stories with the apartment bombings, it's easy to see how you adopted this clear vision of what was going on over there and how these people are living in there a completely different reality. Right. Can you explain what was the story and where were you at in your career in Moscow at the point when you were on the train and you got your briefcase stolen? Oh, well, that was, I had just arrived. I had just arrived. The film describes that that incident.

I was making, in those days, I mean, this was the 1970s. I was 29. And I was experienced by some standards, but very inexperienced. You know, if you kept in mind just the complexity of the task that I had carved out for myself, which was to understand the Soviet Union. In any case, most of the correspondence in Moscow did not travel alone. It was considered dangerous. Mostly their trips were arranged by the Soviet authorities that they had,

and many of them didn't have the language. I was beginning to get the language, but it was still a little bit wobbly. and I decided to visit the Baltic Republic's and to meet there with democratic dissidents and nationalists in the Baltic Republics. And that was unusual for a Western correspondent to travel alone. And they arranged

for me to have as, you know, and of course they controlled, you know, where I would be sitting, who would be in the compartment. And they put two very good-looking girls and another guy in the compartment with me. And, you know, out of sheer experience, I thought, you know, I assumed that... That was random. Well, I suspected... that it wasn't random. But, but it was just so fantastic.

And I must say the women were so attractive, and they were well chosen, I'll tell you that. That, and this is a long time ago, and I just put aside my doubts, maybe because I wanted to, who knows, you know, it was a very tempting situation. But I was unmarried and young guy in a strange country. And the one of the girls went, got into a bunk with the male guy, and who was, and the other got into the upper bunk with me. and weren't you guys like taking shots of coniac or something? Oh yeah, they had given us, no, we had tea. They had tea.

There was some kind of sedative in the tea that also, you know, relaxed whatever resistance I had, which was not particularly great anyway. But the, now as I think back on it, and this, I mean, this happened in 1970, seven. So a good, a good long time ago, a good, you know, now it's 45 years ago, but in any case, and then what, you know, while I was occupied with this woman, my briefcase was stolen and my notes were taken, and the, the, the, the, uh, KGB got a hold of the addresses of the people that I was, supposed to see and they and I was met at the train station uh by the police I gave a statement and then at when I went to my hotel I was encounter I was encountered by while I was

standing in line to register at the hotel someone came up to me and offered to shake hands and then left a piece of paper in my hand and there was on the piece of paper, a telephone number and a message said, call this number from an automatic telephone. And I realized that this was either the dissidents who were trying to get hold of me or the KGB. And I wasn't sure who it was, who now wanted to get hold of me. It was a situation was just something absolutely fantastic for a young American in the Soviet Union with no previous experience of the police state atmosphere there, you know, to have, I was without my suitcase, without including, you know, things I needed and notes I had taken. And so I, I made the

call from a, you know, from a public telephone. And I told myself that if the voice that answered was Estonian. If they spoke with an Estonian accent, I would assume it was the dissidents. But if they spoke in a clear unaccented Russian, I would assume it was the KGB. Well, the voices were Estonian. And we ended up arranging a meeting, and I spent three days with people who convinced me that they were the Estonian dissidents. And it was only when I got back to Moscow that I got a message that the Estonian dissidents had never met with me. And I had spent all this time not with the people I thought I was spending the time with, but with KGB agents who were impersonating dissidents.

Yeah, this is an experience, but it taught me the fundamental lesson, which is in the Soviet Union's siege. is not necessarily believing. And that story, which by the way is included in my book, Never Speak to Strangers, which just recently released is a compilation of my articles over 40 years. You know, I described this incident. And that tells you everything you need to know

about the nature of the Soviet Union. That, you know, that person's stepping out of the shadows, he can be anyone. Wow. And what was the story with the, it was fascinating seeing that printing press that was buried under a flower bed. There was this giant trough of flowers and then like a big water pale. He had to like crank to move to the side under like a giant two foot slab of concrete. And you guys climbed underneath this. concrete slab and he had this massive printing press. How common were things like that?

Well, this was what they had to do in the Baltic Republic's. The example of that underground printing press, which was used, I think, to print a publication called the Chronicle of the Lithuanian Catholic Church, which was a an unofficial publication which contained a lot of information about nationalist activities in Lithuania, that was perhaps more elaborate than other methods that were used. I mean, in Moscow itself, where you had a lot of people who sympathized with the democratic movement,

The Chronicle of Current Events, which was also an unofficial publication, but on the basis of the entire country, not just Lithuania, was produced because there were hundreds of people who would type up copies at home with many copies. What they would do is they would get a single copy and then they would put in their typewriters five, sheets and five sheets of carbon paper and retype and that was going on and that was the samisdot machine samis dot is the russian term for self-publishing samisdat is published samisdat means self-publishing and the samisdot machine in moscow in st petersburg which are big cities uh was involved a you know a lot of people certainly certainly scores probably hundreds who would get copies of this forbidden literature, forbidden unofficial literature, and they would, you know, retype it. So each person could produce five copies, and then those five copies would be

given to five people who would produce an additional five copies, and, you know, it would multiply. So, but the printing press in Lithuania that was featured in the film, you know, there things like that also happened. There were also cases where people simply dug out bunkers, which were hidden from the authorities, and piece by piece, constructed underground presses and produced material which was then circulated. Now, what was the catalyst?

What was the straw that broke the camel's back for you as far as you're reporting and you not being welcomed back into Russia? You mean, why was it that I was expelled in 2013? Yeah, obviously you had been, your reporting was not favored. right by the Russian authorities for your entire stay in Russia, for the entire time you were reporting from Moscow, right? I mean, I assume that your work was not pro-Russian, with not like a pro-Russian view.

Well, it was, I felt that it was neither pro-Russian or anti-Russian, that it was an attempt just to show things as they were. Was there one specific story? Well, I think that my writing about the apartment bombings pushed the limits of their tolerance. But I also was in a kind of situation. You have to understand that the Soviet Union and Russia are very unusual countries in that they are dictatorships and they are repressive, but they try to give the impression that they are democratic.

and in order to create that illusion, which they then are very adept at manipulating to their own advantage, they're ready to tolerate a certain amount of freedom. And I pushed that freedom to the outer limit. They didn't want to expel me earlier because that would have been acknowledging the truth of what I was writing. They wanted to take the view that, and they wanted to convince others that I was just spouting some kind of conspiracy theory

and of course that didn't bother them, you know, was just irresponsible. But the situation changed in 2013 because the whole situation in Russia changed as a result of the Euro-Maidon. Right. The Maidon massacre? No, well, the Maidan, first of all, the protests.

Right. The massacre, the sniper massacre came later. Okay. That was it, yeah, the December massacre was towards the end, right? It was in February of 2014, but the Euro-Maidan was the scene of massive popular demonstrations against Viktor Yanukovych, who was then the president of Ukraine and who was, you know, comparatively pro-Russian. In any case, that rattled the Russian authorities, because that, in comparison, first,

First of all, in 2011, there had been protests in Russia over falsified parliamentary elections. Those protests fizzled out. But the protest movement in the former Soviet Union reappeared, in effect, in Ukraine. And it was ultimately successful. but the mere thought of 300,000 people on the street demanding an end to the government of a kleptocratic ruler, that was enough to unsettle the Russian authorities and to make them reevaluate that area of tolerance that they had previously extended to liberals, foreigners. and it turns out I was in Russia there's an expression,

Perva Lostitschka, means the first swallow, the first sign of something. I wasn't, my expulsion was in effect, the first swallow of the wave of repression that would engulf Russia because although I was, one of the first things they did was to expel me, maybe the first thing.

Then there were other repressive measures. and a lot of other things happened. I mean, in the end, Boris Nemtsov, for example, was murdered. A lot of other people were expelled. There were not journalists, but there was a tightening of repression across the board. But the first sign of this was my expulsion. And I think it was connected with the idea that under conditions in which people have shown their ability to take to the streets, even if they did it in a neighboring country,

Russia could not afford the level of tolerance and liberalism that it had been demonstrating. Don't you think it was crazy how the American politicians such as John McCain would go there and be a part of rallies with the opposition and rallying them and showing support, with them and seems to just be deepening the divide and the chaos there. Are we talking about Ukraine? Oh, yeah, I'm talking about Maidan. The protest, when you were talking about the people on the streets in Maidan during that thing before the massacre,

that these U.S. diplomats were showing up on the streets and rallying with these people. And not, they were deepening the chaos. They were pouring gas on this thing. and they weren't trying to, I mean, could you imagine that happening in the U.S.? Could you imagine a protest like this happening in Washington and diplomats from other countries coming here and handing out water bottles or supporting these protests? Like, you would never see something like that happen. It just seems so crazy. Well, actually, during the Soviet period, there were such things.

but I don't think that the appearance of, I mean, if we talk about Maidan for now for the moment, I don't think that the appearance of John McCain or any other American official was particularly important to what happened in Ukraine. except, you know, that some foreign politicians are showing up and saying we support you. And those politicians are not well-informed. They don't say anything, you know, very intelligent when they get up on the stage. There were, in the Maidan, all kinds of people were showing up. Russian dissidents, various artistic people, people from all over the world coming to express their support for the protest. But their role, I mean, was not decisive.

What determined the course of events were forces within. in Ukrainian society itself. Why are you talking about like the Nazi militias, the far right groups that were inciting the violence? The, well, you have to understand what you had here. You had a leader, Victor Yanukovych, who was massively corrupt and had,

established a very corrupt system. You had a country with lots of problems, which was nonetheless hoping, and many people were hoping, to move toward the West, and which did not want Russian domination. They wanted independence. There were pro-Russian elements in the country,

no question about it, and particularly in East Ukraine. but overall the sentiment was for an independent country. We know this because in 1991, when the Soviet Union broke up, the Ukrainian population voted by over 90% for independence, and that included even the Russian-speaking areas like Crimea and East Ukraine. So although there was pro-Russian sentiment in some places, there were some issues over language, there were some ethnic tensions,

but on the whole, the sentiment in the country was in favor of independence, on the one hand, an affiliation with the West. An affiliation with the West was seen by many Ukrainians in a very unrealistic way. They attached, you know, it was one of those situations where you attribute to someone that you don't know very well, all of your hopes. So the idea of becoming part of the European Union for many people in Ukraine symbolized, well, prosperity, a better life, of freedom from corruption,

an end to kind of criminal coercion, which was very prevalent under Yanukovych. and when Yanukovych and Yanukovych had encouraged this to some extent because he was negotiating with the European Union about the possibility of becoming part of the European Union. And when he announced abruptly that the talks were suspended or that they were canceled and there was no indication that they were going to be restarted, that for many people. was a blow to their hopes of a better future. Because they had pinned a lot on this idea of moving toward the West. They pinned too much, in fact, on it. It was unrealistic because the process of becoming part of the European Union

would have been long and drawn out. And Ukraine, because of many characteristics inherited from the Soviet Union, would have had to make big changes that they were not adapted to make. But nonetheless, this was a blow. And then, of course, the attack on the students who were in the center were at Maidan, at the Christmas tree. Right. Yeah, the Christmas tree thing was crazy, right?

Yeah, well, that sparked the crowd. That gave people the incentive to come out and protest. But they weren't so much protesting the beatings, although that was part of it. I mean, as protesting the fact that the government was behaving in a high-handed way, and people assumed that this was, that Yanukovych was going to be president for life, and this was, and he was extinguishing any hope for a kind of democratic future for the country. And that's what brought hundreds of thousands of people out into the street and into Maidan to protest. it was all peaceful until the night the Christmas tree came out.

And I believe... It was... That was the incident that sparked. Right. I mean, before that, there were demonstrations. They came and went. But you didn't have the kind of massive demonstrations that took place after that attack on the students.

Now, Ukraine has, is it true, Ukraine has always been this rope that's in the middle of a tug of war between the U.S. and Russia, right? The Ukraine's always been kind of in the middle between this constant tug of war. No, no, I don't think so. I mean, the, no, there's, there are differences within Ukraine itself. But in fact, listen, in 1997, Russia and Russia. and Ukraine signed a treaty of friendship. In 2010, there was an agreement, well, first of all, there was an agreement between Russia and Ukraine about dividing the Black Sea fleet.

Is this the Molotov? No, no, no, no, no. That's something different. Okay. There's one of the, one of the Soviet Navy was divided into fleets. there was the Pacific Fleet, the Northern Fleet, the Black Sea Fleet. Well, you know, with the breakup of the Soviet Union, the Black Sea Fleet which docked at Sevastopol, which is in Crimea,

had to be divided between Ukraine. Crimea was Ukrainian territory and Russia. And an agreement was reached on that, you know, how the ships and the, and the facilities were to be divided. And Russia agreed to lease the port of Sevastopol on Ukrainian territory and to base troops there with Ukraine's agreement. And that agreement was renewed in 2010. And in 2017, it was again renewed up until 2042.

And in 2017, the agreement, The agreement was, if I recall correctly, that in return for the use of the port facilities, Russia would give Ukraine a discount on gas, which applied to Ukraine. Of course, all these agreements became dead letters when Russia just decided to seize Crimea. Right. Because they'd seized... Which was after Maidan, right? That was almost like two months after the massacre.

Well, it was after, yeah, it was after Mideon. Right. It was after Mideon. So the president, what was the name of the president, Poroshenkova? During the Mideon riots. But he was not president at that time. Who was the president? At the time of the Mideon, victory Yanukovych was still the president.

And he was more of the Russian-backed president. Let's go back real quick. The Orange Revolution. Yeah, well, that was 2004. That was 2004. What was the reason for the orange revolution again? The election falsification of the election results. Yanukovych and Viktor Yushenko.

Yushenko. Okay. And Yushenko was the guy who was backed by the U.S. and Yanukovych was the guy who was backed by Russia. Well, it's hard to say. I mean, I think that... I think he had a, didn't, I'm forgetting his name again, the other guy, the guy who I just said was backed by the U.S. Victor Ushanko.

Ushanko. His wife worked in. I know his wife. I mean, his wife is from Chicago just as I am. Wow. I mean, she's for the Ukrainian community in Chicago. I knew her actually before she married him. And didn't she work in politics in the U.S.?

A little bit. She worked, she worked in, she had a job in the State Department, but I, I, I, I, I, didn't she had a job in the state department. But that was not, I wouldn't attach you on too much importance to that. The real conflict in 2004 was over the integrity of the election result. Because who was the guy's name that won? Well, Yushenko won. First of all, he won because protests forced a new election. Right.

He didn't officially win, though. The reason for the protest. No, in the first round, or the originally Yanukovych won. Right. But there were signs of massive voter fraud. That led to the protests that were known as the Orange Revolution. The candidate who lost was Victor Yushenko. the crisis was diffused finally with agreement to have a new election under tight control,

which took place and reversed the result of the first election. Instead of Yanukovych winning, it was Yushenko who won. The position of the U.S. at that time was that we were in favor of honest elections. Right. So much. Isn't it also convenient for the U.S.? And if you look at the history of the CIA, that there was a massive revolution there on a claims of election fraud, that the Russian backed president actually won, and now there's fraud, and now we're going to have this orange revolution, and the U.S.-backed president is going to be put in? I wouldn't, I wouldn't overestimate, this is what we always do in the U.S. we overestimate our own importance in the situation. The thing is that Yushenko was backed by the Western Ukrainians

and Yanukovych by the eastern Ukrainians. And in effect, Yanukovych accepted the result. And he then, with the help of U.S. advisors, by the way, including Paul Manafort, prepared to run again, and this time he did win. He was elected. So because largely out of disappointment with Ushanko on the part of Ukrainians and his certain unfulfilled promises, which maybe, you know, given the nature of Ukrainian politics, maybe he would have had it.

He was well-intentioned, but maybe he had a... He also got poisoned, right, Eushenko? Well, that came, yeah, that as well. But after the first round, when they prepared for the second round, you know, the, you know, the, he was poisoned. He was poisoned and his face was disfigured. And, but he won. But he won the election.

And Yanukovych accepted that result. And he was advised, including by the U.S., by U.S. people like Paul Manafort, just to prepare for the next election, which he did. And he won that one. Right. Now, how is that first election, how did they redo that? Did they redo the votes? No, they just announced a new election. They would just do it all over again, yeah.

Okay. Yeah, and to see, I mean, it would have been, you know, had there not been all this vote fraud, the new election might have come up with a result very much like the first one, but the difference, but the second election was held under tighter control. And it showed that the winner was. was Yushanka, which is what people were saying all along that he had won the first time, too. Right. And that result suggests to me that that was right, that it was machinations and vote fraud

that made it possible for Yianukovych to win the first time. Now, when he came back in 2008, he won. Right. And there was no voter fraud? Well, if there was both sides, I mean, there are. there may have been to some extent, who knows, but both sides accepted the result. Now, during the Maidan revolution, who was more to benefit from that, the U.S. or Russia? The U.S. doesn't really benefit.

Did they benefit in any way from that? Because if you look at all the... The U.S. benefits in an abstract way. If a country is able to have democratic elections, and if those elections bring to power people who are favorable to the U.S., no, that is, you know, we of course prefer to see people who are friendly to the U.S. in power in those places. But it's not such a big deal.

I mean, we deal with all kinds of people. We dealt with Yanukovych, and during the period that he was president. And not only that, but when he ran again for president in 2008, he had American advisors. So I wouldn't, you know, this is the big mistake that we Americans always make. We always think that America determines everything. We determine a lot. We don't determine everything. A lot, it depends on, you know, factors within the country that's concerned,

whether that country is Ukraine or some other country. It seems like we have so much, we've always, since forever, we've had so much interest in the Ukraine. I mean, and especially if, you know, you watch that documentary Ukraine on fire, when you see that recorded phone call between Victoria Newland, and Gregory Piot. Mm-hmm. And they're basically discussing who should be the next leader of the Ukraine.

It seems like they're discussing a coup. You know. It's kind of dark. I, what was your take on that? What did you think of? I did look at it. I looked at the,

at the documentary. You know, it, and my impression in general of, Oliver Stone is that he has very superficial knowledge and he doesn't understand what the events mean. He doesn't have the critical thing that you need if you're going to write about a foreign country, which is context. You have to understand the psychology, the political situation. You can get an outrageous quote from some stupid,

American official who doesn't know anything anyway. That doesn't mean that they can really control events. They may wish they could. There's a lot to say about the Maidan revolt. And I also saw the Stone's description of Ukrainian history. A lot of that film begins with a long discussion of Ukrainian history, which he clearly doesn't understand. And, you know, he's piecing things together.

He has certain preoccupations about the U.S., and, of course, he then applies that to foreign countries that he doesn't know very well or he doesn't understand. You know, it was such a mess. We could look at it and we could try to correct some that I could show you. But the Maidan revolt was the expression of the kind of the middle class, the democratically oriented people in Ukraine to move the country toward a better future. it was taken advantage of by some unsavory people

and there were unsavory elements that participated particularly in the end in the last stages but the idea that it was a high priority for the U.S. I mean we worked with Yanukovych I mean the U.S. was not desperate and has never been desperate to make Ukraine a member of NATO which would have protected Ukraine.

So, you know, the films about Maidan and about the events are fine, they should be done by people who are really qualified to do them. And I would not put Oliver Stone in that category. Who was Stepan? Can you explain who Stepan Bandera was? And why was he protected by the CIA along with... You mean after the war? After the war, yeah. Well, Stepan Bandera was the head of the Ukrainian nationalists.

He was a theoretician of the... Not so much a fighter, but as a theoretician. And he was worshipped in Ukraine. There were statues of him, right? There were a lot of people, you know, this happens throughout Eastern Europe, not just in Ukraine. so in the Baltic republics and elsewhere, various nationalist figures who,

who during the war, either allied with the Nazis or, you know, sympathized with them. You see this in, in Hungary, in the Baltics and elsewhere. They, is it true that the Ukrainian nationalist, they switch sides? multiple times during the war, during World War II? Well, they were, they understood, I mean, the, the Bandera nationalists

actually fought against the Nazi. I mean, their goal was not, they did not support Nazi ideology. They supported an independent Ukraine. And if the Nazis could help them achieve that, so they thought they could work with them. But the Nazis never trusted them. They understood that their goal. was an independent Ukraine. And when it became clear that the Nazis had no interest in the independent Ukraine,

the Bandera forces began to, you know, fought both sides. And, you know, both sides were pretty bad in reality. But the Bandera, you know, the Ukrainian nationals were also very bad. And they carried out horrific massacres. Whether, you know, to what extent, you know, the, under wartime conditions, and this is always, this goes back to the creation of an independent Ukrainian Republic after the collapse of the Russian Empire. To what extent the nationalist leaders were directly implicated in the massacres,

to what extent this is all complex history that has to be examined dispassionately. I personally think that the Maidan movement, as it was, made a big mistake, or rather, let's put it another way, that the Ukrainian national, the extreme Ukrainian right wing, including those, including supporters of Bandera, you know, discredited up to a point the Maidan, the Maidan Revolt, which was basically middle class and democratic and pro-Western. And these guys showed up everywhere with their flags and emblems and calling attention to themselves.

When it comes to a regular election in Ukraine, they have very little support. But in terms of calling it, you know, staging provocations, in terms of calling attention to themselves, and in terms of their readiness to use violence, they were, you know, they were prominent. And of course, the Russians focused on them, ignoring the broader issue, which is that Ukraine was interested in becoming part of the West. Right. There's a lot, I mean, there was CIA documents that were released

that proved that the CIA was working with those militias, those neo-Nazi militias to serve as counterintelligence for the U.S. You mean, during the Soviet times? Yes, exactly. Exactly. Yeah, we, during the, you know, once the Cold War began, you know, these people had, you know, networks of contacts inside the Soviet Union. Soviet Union was ruled by Stalin. It was a terroristic and closed country.

The Ukrainian nationalists were fighting a guerrilla war. and against Stalin, against the Soviet Union. They had contacts that were valuable to the CIA. We used the contacts of ex-Nazis, and they used ex-Nazis and their information about the Soviet Union. The thing is, when you're at the, a lot of people, It's just the problem when people who don't know the world of intelligence begin making documentaries and offering their opinion.

On one level, they're correct, but fundamentally they're wrong because they don't understand the overall picture in which these things happen. And what, you know, the U.S. was trying to basically support democracy and to make sure that Stalin didn't do something like what Putin just did because the power of the Soviet Union was incomparably greater than the power of today's Russia. I mean, that was the foremost military power. Right. And so, you know, that meant that we,

You know, William Casey, who was President Reagan's head of the CIA, made an interesting remark that I think really kind of sums it up. And he said that, you know, the fact is, I cannot guarantee or protect the safety of the American people if I'm only allowed, I can't, I can't, I can't. can't, I can't, I cannot protect the security of Americans if I'm only allowed to work with nice people. Right.

Intelligent, you know, in the world of intelligence, I mean, for those who don't understand, this is one of the reasons why I was never suspected by the Russians of being an intelligence agent, although they put out that, you know, they, they were happy to put that out. Because, you know, intelligence agents are trying to find people to betray their government and provide, you know, critical information. I mean, it's an ugly process. But unfortunately, it can save lives. It can, it can prevent war. It can, you know, prevent surprises.

And intelligence agents aren't, or especially covert intelligence agents, aren't trying to be, they're not publishing stories trying to get attention on themselves. are trying to stay under the radar. Well, I hope so. But the thing is that the reality is that during the Cold War, faced with a country like the Soviet Union which had millions of people in slave labor camps that was carrying out mass executions. And, you know, we have.

had to, we dealt with very unsavory people, no question about it. But we did so in order to protect, you know, the democratic liberties of the Americans and also to resist a totalitarian power which was very dangerous. Now, you could say, well, look, you know, why don't you restrict, you know, you're allowed to work to work with the peace movement, the Greens, with feminists, gay rights groups, but, you know, anybody else you better stay away from. But, I mean, those groups aren't going to, they don't have the intelligence that we need. Right. No, I understand what you're saying.

I mean, it's, I mean, it's, yeah, you can accuse people and you're, and you're kind of right. But, you know, in, in normal society, you wouldn't want to have, have an ally like the former head of the German Avere, who was German. But on the other hand, he had priceless intelligence. And these are not simple decisions. And I think that people in the world of intelligence, they even agonize over some of them. Because, but... So do you think the U.S. and the CIA had no involvement in

provocating any of the violence in the Maidan events in 2014, the massacre and the shootings, the snipers, killing cops and killing, killing protesters? The, I don't, I mean, I don't have, you know, exhaustive knowledge of everything that happened, but the... You think it's an over-exaggeration? I mean, I would not, I don't think the U.S. would be involved in that, but the right-wing...

Extremist groups definitely could be. And were. Could be and were, probably. Why would they kill cops and protesters? Create chaos. And... For what, though? Well, this is a tactic of the KGB, you know.

It's called... But... It's called Piccadilly. After the street in London, you know, busy street, Piccadilly, you start shooting everybody. You're allies and your... And you... and your opponents in order to create total confusion and then the best organized group wins.

But why would Russia want to, well, why would Russia want to stir this thing up even more? I'm not sure that Russia was necessarily involved in those events, but the, Russia had nothing, had everything to live, they wanted the current president of the Ukraine. They didn't want him to be kicked out, right? Yeah.

And he sought refuge in Russia. In Russia, as did other... And then his motorcade, as soon as he took off in the helicopter, his motorcade got shot at, or shot up. And I think that some of those, the drivers of his motorcade got shot. Entirely possible. But the thing is that the Maidan, the sniper massacre, it looks like that was planned by right-wing extremists

as a way of getting getting. But the overall, I mean, but the hundreds of thousands of people who were in the square, they knew nothing about that. But weren't the right-wing extremists pro-West? You know, they're not really. They are anti-Russian, right? They want to be... And they're mostly anti-Russian and Ukrainian nationalists.

And a lot of the things they do and say are unacceptable in the West. And by the way, they're unacceptable in Ukraine as well. They get, you know, the right-wing, right-wing groups get, you know, in free elections, they get, what, 2%. I don't know. They probably get less than they do in some Western European countries. What is the story of, I mean, okay, so the narrative that most of, you know, most people in the U.S. have digested as far as, part as, or as far as Crimea goes,

is that Russia basically invaded in force, forced, force's hand and took over Crimea with force. What is, what actually happened in Crimea? Well, that they took, took it over by force, but the, but, um,

the, the, the, the, the, the, the, you know, the, they, you see, that they were already there were already Russian bases there by agreement. So it was not a... Russian soldiers were always there, right? Yeah, and there was an agreement on that with Ukraine. And so it was not a difficult thing for them to, you know, especially in 2014, Ukraine was

not prepared for a military confrontation with Russia. There were only about 6,000 battle ready troops in the entire... Ukrainian army, they really had no possibility to contest the takeover of Crimea. It would have just been suicide. I mean, they could have contested it. And they decided not to, given the conditions of chaos. Yeah, which is hence why nobody died. No one died because the Ukrainians didn't resist. And it was carried out, it was carried out with lightning speed, and it was well planned. So basically what happened was the Russians came in, they took over the, they basically held the part, the building, whatever the building was, where

the votes were held and the vote came out as 90% voted. Well, you know, here's the thing, under the conditions of the Maidan revolt, you know, the people in Crimea were Yanukovych voters by and large. Okay. And they're ethnic Russians. So, so the, you know, the turmoil in Qaeda. could, you know, definitely affected, you know, the mood in Crimea. But and also, you know, once the Russians had occupied the place and announced that there

was going to be a referendum, well, how can you have a referendum when somebody has annexed territory and announced a vote under conditions that they control? But even if, in fact, there was majority sentiment in Crimea, for example, becoming part of Russia. That's not the way we change borders. Right, obviously. We don't because there could be majority sentiment in Texas for becoming part of Mexico, and we wouldn't go along with that either.

Right. The point of world peace, and this has been a fundamental principle since the Second World War, is respect to respect to the respect for international borders. They can be changed, but just not by force. The border, for example, Slovakia, separated and became an independent state. It was part of the country called Czechoslovakia, and that was done peacefully by agreement.

And, you know, the terms were worked out, you know, how it would be. There was a referendum in Scotland about secession, from the United Kingdom. So these things can be, I mean, but that type of thing is not excluded. I mean, you know, borders that are changed peacefully are consistent with the post-World War to consensus. Well, Crimea, couldn't you say that Crimea was somewhat peaceful, right?

I mean, no one got killed. The vote was 90% to go back into Russia. 90% of them voted to come a part of Russia. And wasn't before that, I'm just being the devil's advocate, but before that, I don't know how long it was, but didn't Russia basically just give Crimea to Ukraine? It was Nikita Khrushchev who made Crimea part of, and it was back in the 50s, part of the Ukrainian Soviet Republic. and when the Soviet Union broke up, the Ukrainian Republic included Crimea, which, by the way, voted for independence for Ukraine in 91.

Okay. As did eastern Ukraine. And this is the, you know, when any colonial empire, same as Africa or Yugoslavia, any place, when it breaks up, people, they, you know, there are lots of, anomalies, even injustices, you know, people, you know, who belong to one ethnic group

find themselves living on the territory of a state that is dominated by a different ethnic group. But to read, you know, but those borders are left intact because, you know, otherwise you're going just what we have, just constant war. And, you know, as the Russians say, there's a proverb, a bad peace. is better than a good war. It's so wild. Just that part of the world, the people in that part of the world. Someone like myself and most people in the U.S. that are my age could never fucking imagine

the blood-soaked history that's just ingrained, that must be ingrained and hardwired into the DNA of the people over there. Well, and that's a good thing that you say that. and that's important for people of your generation and people in the United States in general to keep in mind. There's a reason for, you know, we don't have that kind of bloody history. We don't have, you know, in our families, you know, people who were taken out and shot or who came back after 20 years in a Siberian labor camp. And the reason is because of the democratic liberties that we have here,

and those are things that we have to try. The reason why we have so much turmoil in the U.S. now is because people are so fixated on themselves. They don't understand what has been achieved in the United States, the model of peacefulness and democratic process, with all its faults, that protects us from the kind of things that happen in other countries. It's almost like things are too good here.

Well, that's part of it. Life is just too easy. just looking for problems. We are looking. We look for problems and we look for, because Americans, and it's an irony, they're looking for meaning.

And they're looking in the wrong places. They want to give meaning to their lives. So they become extremists concerning diversity, climate change, gender equality, transgender rights, or whatever it happens to be. Not that those things are necessarily bad, but they're trivial, and they don't, they don't, yeah. They don't touch on the real issues, which are, you know, the need for the United States and for the other democratic countries, the world countries like Great Britain, France,

and other places, to kind of preserve a space in the world in which people can lead civilized lives and not live in fear. Yeah, it's so troubling to see some of the history of this part of the world and watch some of the documentaries I've been watching the last couple weeks

and then you see actors go on Twitter and try to call some governor of a state in the U.S., a Nazi. Oh, well, of course, This is all. They're trying to redefine Nazis in the U.S. Because we need, we need that enemy. Well, we need to call people something here. And we don't know what the real term refers to.

It's unfortunate. I mean, and it's your generation that's being affected very much now by this. And why I'm involved in a couple of things. to try to raise the level of education so that that we do have some awareness. You know, I, for example, I grew up with the Cold War. I grew up with the legacy of the Second World War, the aftermath of Nazism when I was in my 20s. People in their 20s and 30s now, not to mention teenagers.

I mean, they don't have that experience. and what they never experienced, they have trouble imagining. That's for sure. Yeah. In fact, that's partially what I try to do with my writing, with the film, and other things, is to provide those materials for those who are ready to benefit from it. You know, this all kind of goes back to, you know, one of the issues that I noticed with the U.S. and our involvement

internationally, geopolitically, is that we spend so much money on these things. Like how much money, how many billions of dollars have we poured into the Ukraine? But how much money

do we spend on educating our own people here? Well, you know, it's not a question of money even. It's not as if spending more money would make us better educated. It might make us worse educated.

It's really a question of intellectual self-discipline and commitment, you know, genuine objectivity and honesty and presenting information. Those things, I mean, our universities, for example, you know, it's unbelievable how much costs to send a student to a four-year college in the U.S. But has the level of education improved? I don't think so. Yeah, but even in our younger ages, like in middle school, high school, even preschool, those levels. I mean, the teachers came and afford to buy supplies for those classrooms for their kids. And, you know, how are you going to, how are you going, you need to focus on that more.

Don't you? Don't you think we should be focusing, whether you say money is the answer or not. Like, if you actually put some. Well, we should be focusing on. improving the quality of our education and making sure that we have kind of objective standards and that we that we that we are tough and rigorous and we produce we develop the talent of our people yeah and it's it i mean it all kind of ties back to right now obviously you're aware and many people my age are aware that if you really

want to learn something, you can do it. You can go on the internet and we have free internet. You can go on there, you can find anything you want. By and large, most things aren't censored. Which is what I talked to you about the other day when we spoke. I said the reason a lot of people are watching this

Oliver Stone Ukraine documentary is because YouTube censored it. YouTube took it off their platform. Now all of a sudden it's in the spotlight. Why did YouTube do this? Right? And it's opening up a lot of people's eyes, and a lot of people are being exposed to films like this that are being censored. And, you know, it makes me wonder, where are we going?

Why does the U.S. government want to censor this? Well, we've got a lot of, I mean, I don't know if it's the government that's doing it. Well, the government, the government works with these companies like YouTube, Google. I mean, we had this, you know, it's a big issue in the U.S. was. the censoring of the information about the Hunter Biden laptop. Right. This was, you know, this was an explosive charge, which is well documented on the eve of the election. And the tech companies, all of them, blocked the distribution.

including from the New York Post's own website. Wow, I mean, now that's, but that wasn't done by the government. That was done by the tech companies on behalf of one political party or political or one candidate or one ideology. Not ideology, but one hate for one political orientation. I would say. I mean, the idea that the tech companies, you know, and then there was this crazy, crazy thing where the whole group of former intelligence officials

said that information about the laptop was Russian disinformation, when there was no evidence at all of that, the same people who when they were confronted with Russian disinformation in the steel dossier didn't recognize it. You know, obviously this creates a real problem, but I think we have to be clear here. These are private companies that are doing this, and there's a case for taking that power out of their hands. but that doesn't mean that it's the government that's doing it. I'm unaware, for example, that the Oliver Stone document,

that the action of YouTube against the Oliver Stone documentary had anything to do with the government. YouTube and Google, they're capable of acting on their own. And these are oftentimes the people who are the least qualified to make these judgments. You know, the social media has changed the landscape tremendously. I mean, that act of censorship, some people say it changed the outcome of the election. Who knows?

Would a vigorous press and an absence of censorship in the social media have created a situation in which, Biden was seen as too corrupted, at least by association, to be elected president. Well, we'll never know the answer to that question. The difference in votes was only, it was 47,000 votes had changed, had changed preferences or voters that had voted instead for Trump. He would have won. So. Do you think that Russia does medal in our elections? Yeah, up to a point, but it doesn't amount to a whole lot.

I mean, they are just mostly because they're looking for things to do. We do the same thing in other countries. Oh, well, we've been very, we were very active in the 19, well, American citizens in their private capacity played a huge role in the Russian 1996 election, presidential election. What do you mean citizens? Well, consultants, private consultants, but with government connections. And also, we, I mean, that's a whole separate story. But the American, you know, the agency for international development, we gave aid, you know, we handed out aid to political factions that we wanted to succeed in Russia.

Is this the Hillary Clinton thing, the Hillary Clinton? No, this is something different. I mean, this is... Civil societies, yeah. No, this was... This was, you know, we were very pro-Yeltsin, and we were very concerned that the communists would win in 1996. And we did everything we could to foster democracy,

as we saw it in Russia, but it was... And, you know, we instructed people how to organize votes, how to canv. how to create political ads. But all of our good advice went only to one side. The communists and the leftists who were more anti-U.S., more anti-Western, they were offered the opportunity to get this information. They didn't react, and there was no attempt made to return their calls.

We reacted with relief. Our people reacted with relief. that they didn't want our advice, so we were free to kind of give useful advice to the other side. But the point here is that in the case of the Russian collusion in the Trump-Clinton election, which is what a lot of the discussion is about, it was not so much that they were interfering, although they probably did interfere to some extent. It appears that they did. They did some hacking.

wasn't myself a victim of their hacking. Really? It was written about, yeah. They got into my email. But, but, that we can come to that in a minute. But the real, the real damage that the Russians did was

by providing the disinformation that went into the steel dossier, and that was only possible because basically Americans in this case the Clinton campaign

were asking and hungry for that disinformation and they and wanted and were indifferent to its provenance that's why that happened

not so much that the Russians took the initiative but they reacted to people who wanted to screw their opponents and weren't particularly concerned about the effect it would have on the country as a whole. Well, originally the story was that it was Russia meddling with the election.

Then it changed, and then the focus went to Ukraine. And then all the investigations were going to, okay, Ukraine is meddling with this election. This was the 2016 Trump-Hillary election. And it was Poroshenko, who seemed to be very pro-Clinton and anti-Trump. during that election. I think this is partially because the Democrats were putting out the idea that the Russians were pro-Trump. So the Ukrainians reacted by being pro-Clinton.

I think there was a lot of confusion on the part of the Ukrainians as to what was really going on. As the, they may have fallen victims of Russia's propaganda and the Democratic Party's propaganda because they may have overestimated the extent to which Trump would be, you know, a tool in the hands of the Russians. I mean, it was Trump that authorized the javelin missiles, not Obama. Right. Right. You know, when it comes to Trump, the hysteria becomes such that any kind of objective discussion, and he stokes it. He contributes to it. But, you know, we have a situation in this country in which the level of hysteria is such that looking at Trump and what he did do and did not do, and evaluate.

evaluating it objectively is just not possible for people. Right. One of the main ideas that Oliver Stone pushes in the Ukraine documentary, I think it was the second one. He had, there was two. There was Ukraine on fire, which was the first one that goes up to, which basically covers Maidan. And then there was the second one,

which goes all the way up to current events with the election of the current guy. You mean Zelensky. Yeah, he talks about Zelensky. That's where the second documentary ends. But he covers the 2016 U.S. election. He goes pretty deep on it. Basically going back to the idea of how Ukraine had a big part to do with this 2016 election

and all the people involved. Specifically, he talks about Hillary Clinton's civil society's 2.0 program that she created a Secretary of State under Obama. And the program was to train and fund NGOs overseas. Yeah. One of the NGOs that she worked with directly was called the International Renaissance Foundation, which was funded by George Soros. So it was not funded by the U.S. government?

No, this specific International Renaissance Foundation, Foundation was funded by George Soros and the U.S. government provided the training. So we worked with them. We worked with them, right, to provide the training, not specifically the funding for that one. But this was part of the private email network she set up, was part of the Civil Society's 2.0 program, which is crazy. Something like this exists. And then when you go to, you know, we talked already, Poroshenko was very pro-clin, anti-Trump. The investigations into Ukraine meddling broke out.

Paul Manafort was proven to be working directly with the Ukrainian party, the party of regions. Well, that's Manaforts. That's Yanukovych's party. Yanukovych's party, right. Yeah. And Sergio Leshenko was the journalist? Yeah, Sergei Lyshenko. Sergei Lashenko.

Sergei Lashenko. He was the journalist who basically revealed the receipts from the Paul Manafort receipts on this black ledger. Yeah. What was your view of all of this when it was going down? Well, the controversy about the black ledger, I'm familiar with that. And I don't think that any of this stuff had much impact. on the U.S. election. The, you know, knowing the region a little bit as I do,

my guess is that the Ukrainians were influenced, and this is conjecture on my part, so, you know, take it for just an educated guess. Okay. We're influenced by the charges against Trump. that insofar as Trump was being accused of being a Russian agent, they took it upon themselves to do what they could to help Hillary, who was his political opponent. And in particular, people who had been part of that NGO world in Ukraine

you know, may or may not have taken the initiative to provide dubious information to undercut, for example, Paul Manafort. I mean, Manafort was an advisor to Yanukovych. Now he ends up advising Trump. So that fit in with the kind of narrative that was created that Trump was somehow under the control of the Russians. The reality being, however, it was that Manafort was a political advisor to all kinds of people,

not just to Yanukovych, and that Trump presumably hired him not because of his connections to Russia, but because of his skill in winning elections, which he had demonstrated. demonstrated. So I don't, I think that this is just the kind of, you know, as the layers of intrigue and deception began to build upon each other, everybody got it and wanted to get into the act. That's, now, the black ledger, as I understand, is false, but once again, I have not, I've not

investigated that in any depth there are certain things I have investigated in depth that's not one of them in the documentary when they talk about the black ledger it had names of hundreds of people signatures on there with receipts

who were paid in total hundreds of millions of dollars uh-huh one of the names on that black ledger was Manafort yeah And then initially, so the guy, Leshenko, the journalist,

Sergei Leshchenko, the journalist slash activist against all corruption, he was eventually convicted for meddling in the election. And working with Alexandra Chalupa, who spearheaded this anti-Trump campaign. And many people came out, said that she was like trying to find dirt on Trump to try to. Well, a lot of people were. And by the way, people would have been glad to get dirt on Hillary,

it surprises me a little bit of how ineffectual they were because that information exists. But, you know, the key thing to bear in mind here is that when Russia or Russian intelligence sees an operational, opportunity to disrupt American society, they will take it. But that the opportunity is provided by Americans. This is our political divide, the political hatreds in this country. Give foreigners a golden opportunity to weaken the country.

As long as we don't respect ethical norms, in our own behavior, as long as we don't care about the truth, we'll find plenty of foreigners who are happy to use that against us and exploit our weaknesses. What do you think of the idea that America is this moral high ground of the earth, of the world, and, you know, Russia is this evil empire. You know, obviously, no one would argue the fact that Putin and the history of it has been

is been evil throughout its existence. Evil things have been done by all of these leaders and dictators. But what is, I guess what gives credence to the idea that America is so much better and America's morals should be imposed throughout the world? Well, I think you hit it yourself when you pointed out that, We have nothing in our history like the kind of horrors that have characterized the history of countries like Russia and Ukraine. You know, in Ukraine, millions of people were deliberately starved to death. But we don't have that here in the U.S.

And, you know, in the Soviet Union, there was a great terror people were. in the course of about a little over a year, 700,000 people were shot on falsified charges. We haven't had that experience here. You know, the Nazis set up death camps and gas chambers. I mean, we've never built gas chambers here for a limit. people who are completely innocent. So, you know, the case can be made that America being a stable democracy and also the

most powerful country in the world economically is not only a good candidate for world leadership but even is obliged to assume that role for the sake of everybody else. Because we, you know, other countries, I mean, other countries talk about American domination. What they're talking about is the ability of democratic ideals to undermine the power of various dictatorial leaders. We talked about this on the phone a couple days ago, but I, I present, I mean, there's the idea that, or some people are saying, maybe the U.S. shouldn't have anything to do with this Russia-Ukraine conflict.

Like, should we stay out of it? What is our business funneling billions of dollars into Ukraine to give them weapons and training to fight Russia? Like, why? Why not let Russia do what they do? Let them take over Ukraine. We could do that. We could just say, you know, go ahead and brutalize. Ukraine and take it over.

But then the whole world becomes less stable. Because if we are in a situation in which any country is free to just grab any part of any country that they like or dominate any country or invade any country or attack any country, you've got lots of candidates. war could break out everywhere. And it gives a free hand to leaders like Putin to use terror and in their own interests. I mean, they're already carrying out assassinations all over Western Europe, ignoring the sovereignty of European countries. They've, they, they, they're suspicions, they've carried out assassinations in the U.S.

They, the only reason they don't do more of that is because they, they are to some extent constrained. A peaceful world and a world that respects the rule of law is an advantage actually to everyone. I wonder if the U.S. didn't put, all those arms into the Ukraine if there would be much of all this fighting and all this death. If they weren't sort of preempted to fight back against Russia, like what would happen if we had nothing to do with it? Would it be the same outcome? Would there be all this fighting?

Are we not, is America not, isn't it in it, is it not in our best interest to funnel all this money into, the Ukraine and prop up our military military industrial complex and prop up our media and and portray uh zolensky as this hero this war hero well uh and put him put him on the oscars not that we did that but the words talk about getting him in the oscar he may he may yet get an Oscar, but the support for a country, if let's say if we don't support Ukraine, we're going to have a very difficult time supporting those countries that are in NATO. and because although NATO by and large, taken as a whole, has a strategic advantage over Russia, Russia does have the strategic advantage vis-a-vis the Baltic republics.

And they could overrun those republics very quickly. The Baltic publics could overrun NATO. No, no, no. Russia could overrun the Baltic republics. Okay. Ukraine has a population of 40-some-odd million. Estonia is one million. Latvia is just a little bit more.

So it would be no problem. They could occupy them very quickly as long if they lose their fear. And having successfully taken over Ukraine without any resistance from the U.S. and any move to support the Ukrainian resistance. Under those circumstances, Russia could easily intimidate the Baltics. It could intimidate the countries of NATO. And they have territorial claims in those countries, too, by the way.

and if they were to succeed, then the NATO alliance would fall apart, and every country would make their own deal with Russia. And we would be faced with a situation in Europe in which a country like Russia, which is run by people who are capable of seizing power by indiscriminately murdering their own people, would be the dominant power in Europe. And that would threaten American security. Because in the absence of allies, of reliable allies,

or in a world in which those who are our former allies were making deals with an aggressive power like Russia, we would have very limited ability to withstand them. And we would have very limited ability to react to their provocation. What if they were to decide to carry out terrorist acts on the territory of the United States under those conditions? Our strategic goal is to expand the sphere of security peace and rule to the security, peace, and rule by law to the greatest extent possible. And if we can't prevent countries like Russia from behaving in barbarous, in a barbarous fashion, at least, you know, we can limit the damage and contain them to some extent.

Do you think that, first of all, what do you think Putin, the psychology of Putin is after all of these years? years of the U.S. constantly trying to destabilize creating NATO, basically essentially surrounding Russia. Like, I mean, we have, what, 14 NATO, 14 countries are a part of NATO up to the border of Russia? Well, who are those countries? I mean, those are countries that were previously dominated by Russia. The Baltic republics were part of the Soviet Union.

the eastern European countries were satellite countries whose armies were part of the Warsaw Pact. So those countries know what it means to be dominated by Russia. That's why they wanted to be part of NATO. Not because they wanted to attack Russia, but because they wanted to make sure they wouldn't be dominated again in the future, as they were in the past. That's the whole meaning.

I mean the... But aren't those countries, essentially influenced completely by the U.S.? No, they're not completely influenced by the U.S., but as members of NATO, they're part of an offensive alliance. And in fact, we have many instances in which there are disagreements within that alliance, particularly on the matter of defense, especially between the U.S. and Germany.

but the U.S., for example, is opposed to many NATO countries getting their gas from Russia for exactly this reason that it weakens our ability to contain Russia. Right. But those countries who suffered under Russian domination, and that includes NATO countries and non-NATO countries like Ukraine and Georgia and Moldova, they were concerned to become members of NATO, not because they intend to attack Russia, but simply so that they would have protection

against being dominated in the future, the way they were dominated in the past. Now, it's very interesting that Russia has directed its aggressivity against non-NATO members, Georgia and Ukraine. Georgia was invaded in 2008, Ukraine. was invaded in 2014. The NATO countries were not invaded, but they could have been had they not been part of NATO.

I mean, Estonia is not a match for Russia. Estonia has only a million people, and there are parts of Estonia right on the border with Russia that are completely Russian-speaking and inhabited by ethnic Russians. Now, those people don't necessarily want to, be part of Russia, but Russia could always claim that it's acting to defend them, whether they want to be defended or not. Right, whatever is convenient. Yeah. So that this whole

explanation that we were trying to destabilize Russia's or that there was some kind of ill intent toward Russia, there was only the intent to make sure that countries that had been part of the Warsaw Pact and had been part of the Soviet Union, could no longer be the subject of various intrigues and attempts at destabilization. They would have that stability, and they would have, of course, the reinforcement of NATO for the democratic institutions. That brings me back to, you bring up Georgia. That brings me to one of the main points I wanted to ask you about was Odessa, which was something happened to know Dessa after Maidan after Crimea, right?

Yeah. It was armed groups from Maidan showed up and they burned a building killing 15 Russians. It was the trade union headquarters, much more than 15 people. They weren't Russians. They were. They were pro-Russian, right? They were the pro-you know, there was kind of. But that was a very complex, complex.

event and the... What is the significance of Odessa, by the way, of that region? Well, it's biggest Ukrainian port. Right. Surrounded by water. Well, not surrounded by water, but it's on the water. Okay. And the burning of the trade union building, I mean, that was, that was, that, it's one of the things that hasn't been fully investigated to my satisfaction. But it appears that it was the pro-Russian elements that

that started the confrontation, and then both sides got out of hand. But I wouldn't, that was used by Russian propaganda to recruit people for the war in eastern Ukraine. But the Russian press coverage cannot be taken at face value because they were, in fact, they may have even been a deliberate Russian provocation. I think on the one of the Ukrainian, the Ukrainian nationalist, one of those neo-Nazi militias, they celebrated this on their website that none of their groups, no one died on their side. It was all. Well, they're capable of anything.

I mean, there were Ukrainian, pro-Ukrainians who did die. And shots were fired when, you know, there were two groups. The police, the big mystery about the Odessa, events when the fire in the trade union building was why the police didn't intervene why not I mean what what was going on it I have not seen a satisfactory answer to right but I think that you know the you we have to look at you know there's in these with these countries there can be a lot of provocations in both directions you know on all sides. But we need to look at the big picture here. The big picture is this, that Ukraine is an

independent country, that it had free elections, that power changed hands. Poroshenko lost the election. He gave up power. A new president became the nation's leader as a result of a democratic election. You don't see that in Russia. Right. And also that it's up to the Ukrainian people to decide, you know, who they belong, you know, what their nation is, not for the Russians to decide that. So if Russia says that Ukraine is part of Russia, that's wonderful that they have that opinion, but that's a decision that they can't make. Right. And at the same time, an unprovoked invasion against, a country which for all its faults is nonetheless democratic and moving in the direction of

Western ideals by a country that is ruled really by people who still have the psychology of the communists and the Soviet Union and who have no respect for human life, the lives of Russian soldiers or of Ukrainians. Talking about the people invading currently? Yeah. I mean, there's just no question. I mean, you know, as far as where right exists in this. Well, a lot of these people that are invading currently, they're just kids, right?

They don't even know what they're doing or why they're there. That's absolutely true. And they're being slaughtered in the thousands. And many don't want to be there. And they're in violation of all rules because under the, you know, you cannot, under the law in Russia, you cannot send draftees into a war zone. And they're sending them there with little or nether. no training.

Right after they were drafted. Right after your... Get that microphone right under your... Or you scoot that way. Yeah, I'm sorry. Yeah. I want to go back real quick. So in Odessa,

the guy who became the president of Odessa was from Georgia. Right? Well, he wasn't the president of Odessa. He was the governor. The governor. Right. Yeah, that was the former.

It was Sakashvili, who was the, a former leader of Georgia, yeah. Right. And he worked closely with the United States. There's many photos of him with George Bush. He also worked for a New York law firm who represented an NGO. And then there's also been he, this guy even who's now the governor of Odessa.

He's posted on his Facebook page that he gets paid $200,000 a year by the U.S. government, which is more than the governor of Maine. So again, things like this just raise all these questions. Like, why is the U.S. government paying the governor of Odessa $200,000 a year? Well, I think in the case of, I mean, I don't know the situation, so I can't answer. But I think that when things like that surface, when questions surface, you know, on what basis, you know, if the government is doing it, there's a record of it. And that in itself is an important thing.

We have public accountability in this country. And I think rather than just repeating things whose significance we don't understand, I would treat it as a question and just say, well, what's the explanation? And seek the answer. If there's something wrong with it, in our system, it can be. Corrected. Well, it just kind of like, it just makes me question the, it makes me question Putin's motives, right?

If you see, like, you have to forgive my ignorance of the history. I can only watch so many documentaries and read so many articles. But when I see things like this, like, like Odessa essentially becoming a united, a state in the U.S. run by a guy. No, that didn't happen. And he's not governor anymore. He's not governor anymore. Okay.

No. And I mean, this is, you know, we exist in the era of bad information. When I was young, it was a long time ago, there were only. a handful of people who were entitled to an opinion. And these were the columnists, the leading national columnists who wrote for the big newspapers, Walter Lippman, James Reston, Joe Alsop. They had an opinion and they could express it. Everybody else could vote.

Or they could, you know, express their opinions to their friends and families within the four walls of their homes or the homes of other people. Then later the area of, you know, the possibilities expanded. There began to be op-ed pages where, you know, more people could express an opinion that would get read and discussed. And then, but with the Internet now, everybody has an opinion if they want to. And we have something we just didn't have before. somebody says something stupid and that's a major news event. And then somebody says something that's even more stupid in answer to the first stupid remark.

And you've got a continuing story. In a previous era, none of that would be considered newsworthy. You know, the dumb remarks that people make. So we are now, we have a great. great expansion of the amount of opinion and information that's circulating. But it hasn't led to our being kind of more enlightened. On the contrary, it's just led to greater and greater confusion and mutual abuse. Now, these, you know, these...

I would say more people have become more enlightened. You wouldn't think more people have... I mean, it obviously... Well, we can look at it. I mean, I don't think so. I think that, I mean, just the level of hatred in the society tells you the opposite. Right. We've got, you know, you know, families, people fighting with each other, family members fighting with each other,

children, you know, refusing to speak to their parents and parents refusing, but I think mostly it's the children, but make it go. both ways, you know, people identifying themselves more and more in terms of their very superficial political views on issues that they don't really understand. And so I think that this is in part the Internet. I think it's part the, and I see it, of course, with Russia and Ukraine because these are areas that I'm familiar with. And I see the flood. of uninformed opinion and meaningless factoids that are circulated as a basis for suspicions that nobody tries to analyze or investigate.

We're in a bad way. I mean, what's real gold in the present situation is genuinely researched and informed opinion, but that is an infinitesimal part of the public dialogue right now. And so it's no wonder that we, you know, I mean, how we, you know, get our act together to do anything vis-a-vis foreign countries is a miracle. You know, we did not prevent the attack on Ukraine, the invasion of Ukraine. But this was a preventable war. Had the U.S. been a country and a society that was more in control of itself,

less divided against itself, we wouldn't have done a lot of things. We wouldn't have left Afghanistan and betrayed an entire people. We would have been able to prevent the attack on Ukraine. I mean, so far, you know, the consequences for our own country have been limited. But that doesn't mean that other people haven't suffered, and we don't know what the future holds. Why did Putin attack Ukraine? Why did he make that decision?

Well, of course, there was the example of Afghanistan, but it was also all the crazy stuff that's going on inside American society. and the assessment of foreigners that the U.S. will not resist, that the Western societies will not resist, what is actually an unmistakable act of aggression. Now, as it happens, there has been some resistance. But a more coherent society, a more, a more focused society,

a government which had placed some value on expertise, could have prevented this, you know, the killing that's going on right now. I mean, we saw what's happened. We've seen the mass killings just announced in Boucher outside of Kiev. And we see the bodies all, you know, on the streets and the mass graves. I mean, it's all been photographed. So, you know, all the...

this talk, it's great. I mean, people love to talk. Well, there's two main narratives, right? I mean, that's the major difference between the U.S. and a country like Russia. You say, like, in Russia, everything's curated. You live in, you live in this

different fantasy world, and you have to have these covert underground ways to get real news. Well, that was the Soviet Union. The Soviet Union, right? Not so much anymore, right? Well, now it's more voluntary. Now it's more,

they have very, they eliminate alternative sources of information, but not completely, but they play on nationalism. They play on people's weaknesses. And the difference in the U.S. is that we generally have, you know, the various forces play on, on people's weaknesses, but there's more than one force. There's two, two main forces, right? Or at least two. The right wing, the Fox News and the CNN? Well, yeah, I mean, the, the, the, the, in both cases, uh, the, the, the, the, the level of, of thought and analysis is not high oftentimes. Right.

But at least there's more than, you know, it isn't, there isn't just a one, uh, uh, uh, view that, that completely dominates, uh, the information space. in Russia, it's the view of the government. And Fox News and CNN are not part of the government. They are there. Well, did you, did you know? Maybe not. The fact that CNN hires, I believe, I forget the percentage.

Maybe you can find this. But there's a large percentage of, or I'm stating this wrong. the most retired Pentagon officials, there's a huge percentage of them that get hired by CNN. Well, and former intelligence. And former intelligence, right. Which they shouldn't do. Well, the intelligence, I mean, first of all, there's a difference here.

I mean, the former Pentagon officials who are commenting on strictly military matters, I mean, I think that's okay. but intelligence officials who are offering their partisan opinions and basing it, you know, and cloaking themselves with the prestige of the intelligence agencies, that's outrageous. It's just a, you know, the best thing about what's happening to media in my point of view is that now, by and large, people are looking at these big major conglomerate monopoly media organization. like Fox and CNN and people aren't taking them as seriously as they used to.

We kind of look at them as like the WWF now. Well, I think that cable television has been discredited and in part because of its own dishonesty. But the okay, it's good they're discredited, but it's bad that they behave in a way which discredits them. The thing is it doesn't stop people from watching them. Well, it becomes entertainment. And of course, the thing is we're feeding, you know, We're feeding very much into a bad cycle where people are driven by their emotions. We lost the cold.

When the Cold War ended, America turned away from the outside world and turned inward. And then we began to concentrate on a lot of issues that, although not very significant are actually very divisive. Identity issues, for example, which translate oftentimes into who gets which jobs. Education, which is a question of how children are going to be raised and by whom the schools are by the parents. All things that have a very high potential for mutual,

for mutual irritation. And that those are those issues and not the, you know, the broader issues of defending, you know, kind of basic democratic values in the world and preventing aggression, you know, establishing world peace. Those issues have become, you know, really dominate the public space.

And the appearance of Trump as a phenomenon is in part explained by the fact that a large part of the population in the United States rightly or wrongly feels aggrieved by the way in which these issues are being depicted in the mainstream media and in the culture. Now, and the result is that America is more and more is divided in a way that it, and, you know, it's, you know, who has the biggest mouth oftentimes. Right. And the country is weakened. And we lack the ability to do what we need to do.

you know, both to take care of our internal problems, such as they are, but also to help to ensure a decent world and a peaceful, peaceful world, and a world without the kind of aggression that we're seeing in Ukraine, and a world in which we don't have thousands and thousands of young guys in the course of a week, of a month. I mean, the combined death toll in Ukraine, Ukrainians and Russians, it must be now over 20,000. And during the entire Afghan war, 10 years that the Soviet Union fought in Afghanistan,

the death toll was 15,000 now. This is only one month. It's a real slaughter. What do you think the best course of action is for the U.S. as far as involvement in the Ukraine? Like how far do we go? It seems like if we keep doing what we're doing now, this just drags on and on and on and on. And some people call for like a no-fly zone, which would be an active war if we shot down a, if we actually shot down a Russian jet.

Well, it's a question. Active war is hard. I mean, on the subject of a no-fly zone, If that Russian jet is intruding over a Ukrainian airspace, Ukrainian airspace belongs to Ukraine, not to Russia, and they were shot down. I mean, they could interpret it as an act of war. On the other hand... I mean, by U.S.

But, yeah, I mean, by the U.S. Now, if the U.S. were to destroy anti-aircraft barriers on Russian territory, that would be an act of war, but only... you know, but not necessarily, you know, if those, if those anti-aircraft batteries had been used to shoot down American aircraft patrolling Ukrainian airspace at the request of legitimate Ukrainian government, then your retaliation against those, those, those anti-aircraft installations. I'm not sure on the question of how it would be defined,

but it could be considered legitimate retaliation. But the thing, what I'm, I think that for the moment, what's really critical is not the military side of it, but the total embargo of oil and gas exports. no money should go into Russia and none should come out that and the United States doesn't want to risk the lives of American soldiers

and I understand this are of American pilots we already gave them tons of drones right oh we're giving and we and now the question is are we going to move from a defensive weapons to offensive weapons Well, we can do that too. But more important, and this is what people are talking about. But in my view, what is much more critical right now is a total embargo on the purchase of Russian oil and gas. Worldwide?

Worldwide. That means that Germany. Now, of course, we're lucky it's spring. I mean, that sounds easy. It isn't easy. It means a complete reorientation of the economy. You know, because we would have to compensate the Germans and the Europeans for the gas and the oil that they're not getting.

I mean, there were a lot of things and it would have an effect on environmental legislation and a lot of other things because we would have to increase our energy production. But, I mean, I mean, that's the way. I mean, a no-fly zone would have been great before the invasion. Right. Now it does risk a confrontation, which is unpredictable. And we, of course, I mean, I think Biden is correct that in his reluctance to risk American lives.

I mean, no one, we don't want that. Right. But we have to be ready for the sacrifices and for the. the the changes that are going to come if we really this is something that I think no one talks about but I think one of the things I think there's a recorded interview meeting that Trump had with Germany yeah the leaders of Germany pressing them on why they're not cutting off their oil why they're not

figuring out how to become independent of Russian oil yeah yeah I mean that's and Trump made a very good point I mean and it was miss so much about Trump is controversial and in a hate-inspiring, that the good that he did, and he did do some good things, and in fact, in the Middle East and elsewhere, he did some remarkable things, is either ignored or misrepresented, but with the point he was making toward NATO,

is that Germany is neglecting its contribution to NATO while at the same time financing a potential, adversary. That's an excellent point. It was very important that someone make it, and he did. Now, what is the importance of, a lot of people don't understand this, including me, what is the significance of sanctioning all these oligarchs? Oligarchs, is that how you say it, oligarchs?

Well, oligarchs. And these people who have these yachts all over the world and not letting them use their yachts. Like, well, how do these people, why are they so important to Putin? They're less important to Putin than we realize. But by paralyzing their ability to borrow money, we strike a blow at the Russian economy, which is what we've got to do. I mean, they have business empires that require credit, among other things.

And the confiscation of the yachts and the estates and so on is actually not all that significant in terms of the war. I'm much more significant as the freezing of the assets of the Russian Central Bank. That's that's significant. but here, and I wrote this in the Wall Street Journal, the yachts and the estates have a lot of symbolic importance inside Russia as an example of how the country was robbed and how it was robbed under the present Putin leadership.

And of course, these people were involved in all kinds of illegal activities, often in cooperation with the Putin regime. And those assets should be, you know, once that's demonstrated, and that's probably a long process, those assets should be confiscated. What is your, with all your history, spending all that time over there, which is super rare. There's got to be very, very few people who have, like, the experience you have. the first person experience living over there and experiencing these people and these countries. What? Is there anything that you fear?

Is there one thing that you fear most in situations like we're in right now? And you see what's going on. You see the decisions that are being made. You see the main talking points that are going on in the media. Is there something that they're missing that you see? Well, you know, as I've said repeatedly, and I've said in the Wall Street Journal and elsewhere, that the key to reaching out to the Russian people and to showing them that their government has, is just as much their enemy as it is the enemy of the Ukrainian people is to talk about how Putin came to power

with an act of terror against his own people. and that is, you know, and our, we are very obtuse when it comes to the whole history. You know, these are, the people who in our government call themselves Russia experts are only bureaucrats. Right. Who, in fact, have no real firsthand knowledge or very little. And, but are good at calling attention to themselves. I mean, the whole history of the criminal activities in Russia, from the people, very beginning actually under

Geltson is something that we need to call to the attention of the Russian people but we have to understand it ourselves and the other but what do I fear in this situation is that they'll carry out they are capable of carrying out especially if Putin feels

threatened carrying out atrocities against the civilian population in Ukraine that will literally force us to do something like if they dropped some sort of a tactical nuke on Ukraine? Or if they used even thermobaric weapons against civilian populations or carried out some

kind of horrific massacre. They have already used one of the hypersonic missiles, I think. Yeah, they have. They attacked a facility in western Ukraine. but that depends. I mean, the yield of the warhead is not necessarily, I mean, the speed is there, and it can't be stopped. Right. That's the benefit of the hypersonic.

Yeah, but it doesn't necessarily mean that it's a high yield of warhead. But, and then, you know, we could be faced with a situation, which they create for us in which either we stand by and allow that to happen or we really do take steps to protect the innocent civilian population, either with a no-fly zone or with a humanitarian airlift. Let's say that they surround a major Ukrainian citizen city, and people are starving to death. and we're faced with this situation

to we mount an airlift to get them food and medicine and and if we do so would Russians fire there this situation is full of possibilities for confrontation

we're avoiding them so far but we while managing somehow to aid the Ukrainians. But the problem is that aid to the Ukrainians and rescuing the Ukrainians at some point may involve greater and greater risk. I'm not sure that we're going to be able

to get out of this thing without, totally without risk. That's the problem. Even though we don't want to take any risks. I mean, it's a risk to allow them to carry out crimes against humanity while we're standing by and not doing anything to stop it. Because after all, Ukraine is a friendly country to us.

Right. And that would emboldened them to try the same thing with countries like Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania. Much better to try to stop it now than to have to stop it under much worse conditions, you know, someplace else. So are you saying that best, case scenario would be regime change in Russia? That's absolutely the best case scenario, but it's something they, and it could happen, but it won't happen because of what we do, it'll happen. That's up to the Russian people.

And by the way, it's not unrealistic because after 18 months of war in Chechnya, the Russian people were ready to withdraw troops from Chechnya at any price, at any, just even if it meant complete surrender. And Yeltsin at that time said that he could not win re-election if the war was not brought to an end. And he did bring it to an end and they did withdraw. Isn't Biden already talking about regime change, though? Well, he made a, he made a comment that we've got to get rid of this guy

referring to. And the White House tried to, like, save him. to walk it back. And then he came out again saying, no, absolutely. He's a butcher. He called him a butcher. Yeah. Well, you know, none of that makes much difference to tell you the honest truth. He can say anything he wants.

I mean, the, the, uh. But what is that? Doesn't that give, doesn't that give Russia a stronger hand? Like, look, look. He wants regime change. No, I, yeah. Don't you think that feeds into their propaganda? Isn't that what they want?

Oh, well, they'll use that in their propaganda. Oh, yeah, for sure. In their propaganda inside the country. But it's not critical to. of their propaganda. They've been, you know, they are, they've been, they've been saying that anyway. They've been saying that even without Biden's remarks. Of course, but this kind of proves it right. Yeah, I mean, the thing is that, you know, the, the real situation is the, the, the, the destabilization is not any, is not the result of any words that Biden says, but rather the fact that

they've attacked a country with, you know, 120,000 or 150,000 troops and are bombing indiscriminately and killing civilians. And this country which was at peace with them and was not threatening them. What happens

if we do get regime change in Russia and now we're in, now we have some sort of a president in Russia that is an ally to us and that... I don't think any any any any any any any any country, any change from what I know about the internal political situation in Russia,

nobody who replaces Putin, if someone replaces him, will be a puppet of the United States. No? No, no. It would have to be someone, the opposition would have to come from the military and the security services on the grounds that Putin was destroying the country. and the war had to stop in order to save Russia. And under those circumstances, those people, you know, they would not necessarily be friendly to the West or to the U.S. and they would cause trouble, but they would try to reestablish some kind,

you know, get the economy back on its feet and end the war and end the existing crisis. But whether those forces are strong enough to do that, we don't know because we know they exist. We know they exist. Because before the invasion, General Leonidivashov, who is a very high-ranking, retired general was very high-ranking, and is now the head of an association of retired military and intelligence officers in Russia, said publicly that a war with Ukraine would be an absolute disaster and it was just being undertaken to prop up this senescent regime and uh and you know the the members of the board of this organization

supported him now if these guys were willing to say that publicly then you can be sure that that opinion is held in the military by a lot of people who just aren't don't feel that they can express themselves. So, I mean, the sentiment exists, the people exist. They are, you know, from what we understand that there's surveillance going on inside the leadership, everyone is being spied upon. But, you know, they could, you know, if Russia suffers catastrophic defeats, they could, they could intervene and find enough support to remove Putin inside the country.

without the U.S. having anything to do with it. If I'm thinking from the U.S.'s point of view, if we do want, if the goal is true that we do want regime change in Russia, that's a huge risk no matter who gets in. Because anyone in control of all those nuclear weapons is a massive risk, not only to the U.S. but to the world. So wouldn't the U.S.'s first priority would be to declaw, so to speak, Russia, and get rid of those or take possession of all of the nuclear weapons?

We don't have the ability to do that, and it isn't even necessary. I mean, what's necessary right now is to end the war, to get the Russians to withdraw and to get a peace settlement that they will respect and that will, you know, assure the integrity of Ukraine. That would, under those conditions, I mean, if something like that can be worked, out and it's, you know, tall order. Then the next step, of course, is to, you know, slowly reestablish economic relations and try to kind of get the, you know, which, which, of course, that would, that would benefit everybody.

I think that after this experience, though, the, the dependency of the West on Russian energy is going to be a lot less. because we've seen the risks. And I think there'll be a much greater drive toward diversification of energy sources on the part of countries like Germany, which is the pivotal, very pivotal country. Well, David, we just did over three hours.

Wow. That's all I can say. I want to thank you for coming here and providing your insight and your knowledge and on behalf of all the listeners and viewers. If you could give people an idea where they can find some of your work, your books, your articles, anything that you're doing. Well, Amazon, I mean, just type in my name. You'll see all the books are on Amazon.com.

Okay. And the Internet is full of my articles, and so is YouTube, and it's not hard. Awesome. Well, I'll make sure I include links below in the notes. That would be great. I'd love for people to familiarize themselves with what I've written. As do I. It's very insightful.

I appreciate it very much. Okay, Danny. Thank you. Take care.