Julian Dorey Podcast - 😱 [VIDEO] - Putin Nemesis EXPLAINS Stalin & What's Really Happening In Ukraine | David Satter • #133

Episode Date: January 8, 2023

(***TIMESTAMPS in description below) ~ David Satter is a journalist, author, historian, and foreign policy expert –– who is widely regarded as one of the world’s preeminent experts on Vladimir Putin / Russia. In December 2013, after years of exclusive reporting on Putin’s crimes against humanity, David became the first Western Journalist ever banned from Russia (by their government) in the post-Cold War era. Buy “Darkness at Dawn” by David Satter: https://amzn.to/3GsROmf ****TIMESTAMPS**** 0:00 - Putin & the 1999 Apartment Bombings; German Ugryumov 9:58 - Maidan 2013 - 2014 in Ukraine; Donbas region 18:33 - Current Status in Ukraine War; Client States 25:45 - Deterring Putin & Russia 36:12 - Putin’s health; Regime change in Russia? 41:07 - Chamberlain Precedent 44:44 - Russian Citizens’ Opinion on War; Economic Ties to Russia 54:09 - Zelensky’s political career 58:03 - Ukraine’s Military Command Structure; Ukrainian Intelligence Service 1:02:30 - Chechnya now allied with Putin; Russian Energy still in Ukraine 1:10:07 - Nord Stream Pipeline Bombing 1:14:32 - The Red Terror of The 1930’s; Joseph Stalin & the KGB 1:24:31 - Stalin’s Russia 1:34:58 - Gorbachev, Perestroika, & Putin 1:38:04 - Russian Oligarchs status in the war 1:45:14 - Is David afraid of getting merked 1:51:09 - Paul Klebnikov Murder; Alexander Litvinenko Murder; Sergei Skripal Attempt 2:02:26 - The Mysterious 2022 death of Dan Rapoport 2:07:33 - American societal division & its impact on the war 2:20:47 - The Viktor Bout - Brittney Griner Trade 2:28:04 - The man who helped Putin gain power; Western intel in Russia 2:31:24 - Ground Commander makes interesting comments about Ukraine 2:39:30 - The new books David is writing Intro Credits: Escape From Stalin’s Death Camp (2017) Bridge of Spies (2015) A Day In The Life of a Dictator (2015) Katyn (2007) Salt (2010) Death to Spies (2019) ~ Get $150 Off The Eight Sleep Pod Pro Mattress / Mattress Cover (USING CODE: “TRENDIFIER”): https://eight-sleep.ioym.net/trendifier Julian's Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/julianddorey ~ Music via Artlist.io Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Before the KGB, there was the NKVD in the 30s that was responsible for murdering hundreds of thousands of people. Like the pogroms and stuff? No, no, no. Pogroms were ethnic, anti-Jewish for the most part. Right, right. No, this was the great terror during the 1930s that Stalin launched against real and imagined opponents in order to bring the country completely to its knees. Mr. David Satter, welcome back, sir. Hi, Julian. It has been a long, long nine-plus months since you've been in here, but you were here right when right after the invasion

happened maybe a couple weeks and i think it's fair to say there are a lot more people in america now who are aware of ukraine and the importance it plays and basically like the middle of the map over there and and thanks to our episode which did get a lot of clips to go viral, which was pretty cool, people are now somewhat aware of your story as well. Well, I'm glad to hear that. And there's certainly a lot to talk about. And the crisis isn't over, in fact. In some ways, it may be just beginning. Yeah, that's a scary thought for a lot of people. But for those who didn't have a chance to hear you in episode 92, can you just give a quick background on your career and your history working over in Russia and Ukraine?

Well, I was the Moscow correspondent of the London Financial Times. But I served in that capacity during the Soviet period. And I, in fact, reported from Russia at the height of the Soviet Union's power. The Soviet Union at that time was really probably the most powerful of tanks in the middle of Europe that were poised at any minute to overwhelm Western Europe. But after I left the Soviet Union, and that was a long time ago, that was 1982, I began to write a book about the Soviet Union, which turned into a book about the fall of the Soviet Union. And in one way or another, I've been writing about Russia ever since. I've written books about the fall of the Soviet Union, about the rise in Russia after the fall of the Soviet Union of the criminal state there.

I've written about the apartment bombings that brought Putin to power And I've written about the Russian people and the psychology of the place And of course the events that led up to the present Ukraine war Very quickly, can you just give a little bit of context on the 1999 apartment bombings? Because again, for the people who didn't hear last time this was really the story that made you you because you were the only western reporter to blow the whistle on what putin did so can you just explain that background a little bit well this is this is the point this is the most important event uh Russian post-Soviet history because the country was totally corrupt.

And Putin was appointed by Yeltsin, who was totally corrupt. And Yeltsin lived in fear that he and his family would be criminally prosecuted. And Putin was put in place as prime minister in order to guarantee that that didn't happen and they blew up apartment buildings in the middle of the night and killed hundreds of people in fact they they're they're lucky they that a a bomb placed in a building in Riazon a city southeast of Moscow didn't go off because it would have been not 300 people, but more like 1,100 who would have been killed. And they did this as a false flag to start a war?

Absolutely. They blamed the bombings on the Chechens, who had a breakaway republic at the time, and had defeated Russia in the first Chechen war. And they launched a new invasion of Chechnya that boosted Putin's popularity. And someone who was unknown, who had no political background, no charisma, who was identified with Yeltsin, who had a popularity rating of 2%, suddenly became a national hero. Because he managed to convince, with the help

of control over the information media, convince the people that, in fact, he was the defender of innocent Russian people who had been murdered in their beds by Chechen terrorists. And so, in effect, the regime that has existed in Russia since 2000, when Putin was elected president, is an illegitimate regime. It's a regime that was put in power as a result of an act of terror against the Russian people. There was an interesting quote from a man named German Ugrimov. Ugrimov was a high-ranking official of the FSB. That's the successor organization to the KGB. And he was widely attributed with the role of organizer of those bombings.

And he was quoted as saying, we had to bomb those buildings in order to put Putin into power. Who did he say that to? This is something that was circulated in the leadership of the Russian government and was reported by people who had heard it. But let me tell you what the full quote is. Please. He said that we had to bomb those buildings in order to put Putin into power. How much blood is going to have to be shed to remove him?

And within two months, Ugrimov was dead. This is back in 2001 then? No, this was 2000, under mysterious circumstances. Wow. Now, the bona fides of the quote are not something that we can absolutely confirm, but it is something that was circulating, and it's very, very plausible. But even without the quote, which in fact I believe to be genuine, what my experience as a writer is making up quotes that are that good is not simple.

By and large, something that's really resonant was probably said by the person to whom it's attributed, because most people don't have the imagination to just make something like that up. In fact, the exact quote was a little different. He said, we had to bomb the buildings in order to put Putin in the Kremlin. How much blood is going to have to be shed to remove him from there? That's the exact quote. And that's been repeated many times in the Russian internet. So it's not- Even in their internet and everything.

Well, yeah, because they don't control everything that appears in the Russian language in the internet. And... Well, our videos are banned in Russia. Well, that's a tribute to you. And that means that some people like you, like me, they make a special effort to ban, but a lot of stuff circulates. They don't try and they're not able to control every single word. In any case, that appeared a fair amount of time ago and in the context of articles about how many people have been killed who were in one way or another connected with Putin, connected with the FSB, connected with the apartment bombings.

But the point is that even without that saying, even without that quote from Grumov, the evidence that they bombed those buildings themselves and used it to start a war that would put Putin into power into power is overwhelming and incontrovertible there's you know and I've written about this yeah you wrote books on it you wrote articles at the time when I was coming out basically trying to red light everyone to see what was happening here and nobody listened which yeah I don't know how you're like I said this last time I don't know how you have such like a happy-go-lucky i'm not sure how i don't know how happy-go-lucky i am maybe when i'm with you and your example kind of has an influence on me well that's good because you go you seem to you're very passionate about speaking on what is now a central topic in the

world that took a long time to get there but you know you also have a lot of skin in the game because this man and his regime have killed friends of yours they they have they've affected some of your direct family they've affected your ability to even live there as you did because absolutely for context again for people who didn't hear last time, you were officially banned from Russia in December 2013, right? December 2013, yeah. This was actually December 24th. It was Christmas Eve. And since, you know, Ukraine is an Orthodox country, the 25th is not celebrated as Christmas.

The Orthodox Christmas is a little later. And as a result, the embassy was open on the 25th. But on the 24th, the diplomat in charge in the Russian consulate said that we just don't have an authorization here. And I said, but look, I've got the necessary documents on me. And he said, I can't explain it. I said, have you ever had a situation in which someone who had been given the necessary documents did not get an authorization from Moscow? He says, this is the first time it's ever happened. And then I called, he advised me to call the foreign ministry, and I did call the Russian foreign ministry, and they said that I should contact a diplomat by the name of Mr. Gruby.

I remember his last name. Alex. Alex Gruby, yeah. And in any case, I called him the next day and he says, I've got something to read to you. And that was a bad sign. And he said that the competent authorities, which is the term they use for the intelligence services. Is that the FSB? Yeah, the FSB, the Federal Security Agency, has decided that your presence on the territory of the Russian Federation is undesirable and you're banned from entering the country. I was the first American journalist to be expelled from Russia, to be banned from Russia, since the Cold War. And I believe that in fact, it was the Maidan revolt that was the reason for my

expulsion because they had tolerated me for a long time. And the reason they did so was because they didn't want to give the impression that they were concerned by me. They wanted to give the idea that well, this is a conspiracy theory, we're not going to dignify it with an answer. But after Maidan, they decided that was a luxury they couldn't afford anymore, and they wanted me out. Because that was when, I'm going to forget the names, but that was when the Ukrainian people were trying to push out the president who was basically a Putin puppet, and then they did. Yeah, I mean, up to a point, it's Viktor Yanukovych. He was the president who's basically a Putin puppet, and then they did? Yeah, I mean, up to a point, it's Viktor Yanukovych. He was the president. He was an elected president, but he was thoroughly corrupt,

and there was no law in Ukraine, and he had used his position to amass an enormous private fortune, and the country was very poor. And he had promised or he had indicated that he was going to apply to the European Union for membership for Ukraine in the EU. I mean, he was going to seek an invitation at a conference in Vilnius where it was expected that that would happen. It didn't happen. And there was no indication of when or even whether it would ever happen.

And that was a huge disappointment to Ukrainians who looked to the West, looked to the European Union for the possibility of a it was like okay Ukraine's not going to join NATO but was there any type of handshake agreement that they weren't going to look to join the EU or other organizations as well there was nothing that said that they wouldn't join NATO either uh the uh and certainly nothing uh that uh no agreement to not to join the European Union there was a lot of pressure from Russia on this score but Ukraine never agreed to that mmm got it so that whole thing is what initially launched Putin's taking of Crimea in 2014 which I think we talked about as well. Well, I think that Putin took Crimea for a very specific reason, in order to distract the attention of the Russian people from the Maidan revolt.

The thing is that there were 200,000, 300,000 people on the street in Kiev. I saw it. I was there. And Putin had to be afraid, especially after the protests in 2011 in Moscow that took place after the falsification of parliamentary elections, that the example of what happened in Kiev could be imitated in Moscow. And it was imperative from his point of view to change the conversation, to switch the attention of the Russian people from the example of a self-organizing democratic anti-corruption movement in Ukraine to the restoration of Russian greatness, so-called, which he best achieved by seizing Crimea.

And it worked. And it worked. The Russian public as a whole stopped paying attention to what was happening on the street in Kiev and gave itself over to mass euphoria over the annexation of Crimea and the idea that Russia's greatness is being restored. So the majority of the people were very very in favor of that absolutely and it uh it uh pushed putin's popularity uh to if i'm not wrong 82 percent is that number real or is that inflated? Unfortunately, it's probably real.

Wow. Wow. But again, that's a while ago now. And so we can fast forward to get to the present day. You effectively were in that country from 1976 when it was still the USSR until 2013, 2014. You spent a lot of time to this day in Eastern Europe on the circuit, especially now. So there's a lot of context we can add. But you talk about having some sort of – not a stalemate, but Putin effectively takes this land, changes the narrative as you lay out. And then we have seven and a half, eight years where it's kind of status quo like that for the most part well not entirely because they also invaded eastern Ukraine the Donbass region yeah and the Donbass region there was a war going on and that war never ceased and did that happen I think you did say this last time I just can't remember did that happen at around the same time where they did the bullet list takeover of Crimea?

Yeah, it came almost immediately afterward, and there was heavy fighting there, which eventually settled into trench warfare and a stalemate. Right. Up until, of course february 24th invasion but outside of that argued over region where they were fighting the rest of the actual situation including business of the land as far as natural gas flowing through ukraine into europe stuff like that that was all somewhat status quo and then put Putin decides to come into the country on, I guess, February 22nd. 24th. 24th of 2022.

Yeah. So let's start here. Where today, as you understand it, where do things stand in Ukraine? How much, like, obviously the people of Ukraine have put up a very valiant fight. This has not been something where Putin was just able to come in and run train and take over, which I think it, like where are things right now and how positive does it look for Ukraine to continue to hold their lines? Well, the Russians have withdrawn from Kherson in the south. So that was the last major city that they had taken.

So they're not in control of any major cities. I'll put that map in the corner of the screen. But there's a lot of territory that they still occupy. And of course, they occupy Crimea. And they occupy large sections of the eastern Ukraine, which is what they annexed before. Annexed in the sense that they took over and created these little statelets, the Donetsk People's Republic, the Lugansk People's Republic, and so on. against the Ukrainian army, but they're trying to entrench themselves in the occupied territory and then rain destruction on the civilian economy of Ukraine, which means the population as well, bombing electrical stations, infrastructure, anything that, heating plants, anything that heating plants, anything that can be done to inflict misery on the population and death. And in that way, force Ukraine to submit,

and submission would take the form of not contesting those areas that the Russians have seized and that they still occupy and where their troops are dug in. Well, there's an incredible amount of, as I think with any war, but especially in a modern day war with the Internet, there's an incredible amount of propaganda online. And it does come from different directions. And I understand why Ukraine would have to take part in some of that if it's like fighting fire with fire it's just a shitty part of war i guess but you know i find myself when i'm researching on the war and and trying to figure out exactly what's going on assuming that nothing i see is is the full story right away and that makes it difficult because there are a lot of narratives

out there but one of the things that is really a narrative that's starting to take over in the u.s that i wonder how much of it is is actually based on what the people here are thinking versus what they're being told to think which i don't know the balance there but the thing that's happening in the u.s is we're we're starting to have a lot of people question the amount of money flowing to Ukraine. And for context, Ukraine has roughly – I think it's like a $225 billion annual GDP prior to the war. I'm sure it's lower given that the war is going on. But we have given at this point I believe 12 figures worth of money in less than a year to the country and so when i look at this and especially when i've had some of the cia guys in here like bustamante especially him with this and and jim lawler as well in discussing it it seems to me like zolensky and the ukrainian government government are effectively in the midst of them getting

invaded and needing help to fight against that invasion, which the rest of the world does care about, they're effectively becoming somewhat of a client state to the US. Do you think that's fair to say? Well, I mean, they're totally dependent on the shipments of arms to defend themselves. If they didn't have that, they could not defend themselves because Russia started the war with a far greater arsenal than Ukraine. But to be a client state, that means that we determine everything that they do or most of what they do. And that's not the case Hey guys got an important announcement for you, and it's pretty exciting We officially launched a clips channel on YouTube the page is called Julian Dory clips

And you can find it by going to the current show page clicking the channels tab, and it's right below there Please please please go over and subscribe We're posting daily clips from the episodes of the show and hopefully it's going below there. Please, please, please go over and subscribe. We're posting daily clips from the episodes of the show and hopefully it's going to help this thing grow. Anyway, if you haven't already, please be sure to share this episode around on social media and with your friends. I say it all the time and I will keep saying it because it is very, very true. Sharing the show is the best possible thing we can possibly get because it spreads the word, it helps the algorithm big time, and it gets us out there so that we can continue to get great guests like this and even level up

and make this show as great as possible so thank you to all of you who have been sharing the show around and thank you to all of you who are going to do it now if you haven't already subscribed and liked the video please be sure to do that and i would love to hear from you guys down in the comments below finally if you haven't left a five-star review on Spotify or Apple, please take a second and do that. It's a huge, huge help, and I appreciate everyone who has already done so. I almost forgot. We are, in fact, working on a Patreon. Finally, we should have something live within the next month or two, and I will let you know as soon as that is up and running. Can't wait. I think that what's happening is that the United States,

for its own reasons and in its own interest, is trying to help Ukraine defend itself. Because we defend the principle of non-aggression and respect for territorial boundaries, not just in this case, but all over the world. And the world has an interest in a rules-based international order in which people understand that aggression is unacceptable. And it's that understanding that preserved the peace as a rule in Europe since 1945. So in effect, what we're doing is by giving arms to Ukraine, we're defending the world order on which we ourselves depend. We're not losing any lives. They're the ones losing the lives, and they're suffering terribly. But at the same time,

we're providing what we can provide much more easily, which is equipment, military aid, ammunition, weapons, the things that make it possible for them to stand up to an aggressor and in the process reinforce stability for everyone so when i look at this from a high level and try to figure out potential outcomes here because everyone would like to see world peace we know that doesn't exist but in when situations like this break out getting it to a point where things are put back into order and and lives can be saved is is always a priority of people but to me it does seem like there is an awful lot of pushing down on any suggestion that there is intelligence that suggests that there could be some peace on the table and to expand upon what

i mean by that there was a letter that we've talked about on this show now in at least like three or four episodes but there was a letter that the progressive house caucus wrote to biden in a few months ago and it was leaked which means you know they probably purposely leaked that thing out of some fear. But the implication of the letter was they wanted to reiterate they're huge supporters of Ukraine and they do not want to see Ukraine take a loss and they would like Russia would be willing to come to the table where we could get some sort of solution where Ukraine does not get – the lines are redrawn back to pre-February 24th and we get some peace because, again, in addition to Ukraine, the world is dealing with the fact that Russia is a major nuclear power who has a leader who's a sociopath and also doesn't look long for this world with his health we can talk about that later but you know people get worried that some crazy shit could go down so do you think that there has been a little bit too much call for just complete russian blood as opposed to a little bit of say common sense to get ukraine a w maybe not the w that like russia still does exist afterwards they're not like gone off the face of the earth but at least now there's support and there's precedent such that there's an understanding that if russia dares sends another missile into Ukraine, the world will act.

That's a complicated situation here because if we make peace with Russia on Russia's terms, in other words, if we pressure Ukraine, we could say, you know, just a hypothetical situation, we're going to cut off the money, the weapons. You have to make peace. I mean, that's what happened with the South Vietnamese. We cut off the weapons to them in 1975, I think it was, and they were overwhelmed by the North Vietnamese. They couldn't continue. And in fact, we cut off the weapons in Afghanistan, too, because we removed the contractors who are critical to servicing them. But let's say we made that threat to Ukraine. We're going to pull out. You have to accept Russian terms.

Then that doesn't serve our goal of reinforcing the principle that you cannot seize territory by force. Turns out you can. And not only that, but we're endorsing it. It doesn't matter in this case that maybe Russia will pull back from a couple of critical places. The idea that they've taken this territory in an unprovoked attack, and that they're able to keep it after committing war crimes, massacring civilians, raining down destruction on civilian infrastructure. I mean, that's not a precedent that we want to, that's not something that we want to encourage.

The other thing is, and this goes back to the question of a warning, you know, if you send one missile then all hell's going to break loose. Well, I'm not sure that, but the one way to make those threats credible is to defeat them and create a situation in which they understand that peace is better because you have nothing to gain from war so but if we were able to draw the lines to pre-february 24th and basically force them to retreat and act also add into any deal that there is a renewed reinforced protection of ukraine against any future funny business wouldn't that be some sort of a win considering that as things stand right today though ukraine has fought valiantly and not lost the war at all and they're they're doing a good job they they have lost some land you know they've lost 10 20 percent of land and they would be able to get that back and get the russians the hell out of their country wouldn't

that be pretty solid i think it lee that means that they're basically, Russian aggression is not punished. That they've started a war, they've killed tens of thousands of people, and they haven't paid any price for it. They've merely evacuated territory, if indeed they would evacuate territory, that they seized illegally anyway. I mean, if we go back to the February 24th lines, in other words, it's just as if the war had never taken place. That means there's just as if the war had never taken place. That means there's no punishment for the war.

Well, what about – just two devil's advocates there. What about the fact that, A, there are continuing financial implications and world trade implications that we correctly put on them? And, B, they also – I mean, Putin has sent a lot of russian let's call it what it is borderline kids 18 19 year olds untrained oh yeah this war who have died yeah who don't even know why they're there i mean that is a price too it's it's not just like it's a price in human terms but in terms of this russian leadership it's not important. They literally don't care. Well, that's sick. I mean, and this is what's so frightening about them.

They will sacrifice those young men without limit. And in fact, Putin himself recently made a statement in which he said that Russians are willing to sacrifice everything for their motherland. This is something the West doesn't understand. Well, the real meaning of that statement is that I'm ready to sacrifice all Russians for my welfare, but it's, of course, not phrased that way. So that price doesn't worry them. As for the sanctions, the sanctions could be significant over a long period of time. But they in and of themselves will not force Russia to give up the remaining territory and they will not uh prevent Russia from starting a

new war at the earliest opportunity I think the big thing that comes across to me in the fear there is not necessarily you know like if you looked at Russia with their GDP, for example, that which we know of. Yeah. It's the size of Italy. It's big, but it's not anything like China or something like that. The fear is that you have a dictator who has been president forever, right? Changed the constitution. And that dictator, one thing they do have is they got a hell of an arsenal of nuclear weapons. And that just makes people, for all the right reasons the world over, say, a couple of the immediate issues in Ukraine just to make sure that we avoid D-Day, like a bad interests of the whole world, but the interest of the world is best served, I think, and I think many would agree,

by not rewarding aggression and making sure that the conditions no longer exist for renewal of the conflict. Russia fought the first Chechen war, and they pulled out. They even pulled out in the end ahead of time. When was that? This was in 1996 with the pullout. The war began on New Year's Eve, 1994. And even though they signed a peace treaty with Chechnya, three years later, they bombed the building and launched a new attack, claiming, of course, they were defending themselves against attack. Yes. So, you know, it's possible that we could buy a couple of years of peace, but the basic problem would not have been settled, which is the right of Russia to dominate its neighbors and seize their territory. Yeah, it really, it's one of those situations where it feels like you're looking at losses all around, like you're kind of stuck, like you're a gambler at a table a little bit.

And that's not the fault of, in this case, the world. I mean Russia is the one who did the invasion. But I get worried that – I mentioned it a few minutes ago, so maybe we can even talk about this now. But according to intelligence reports and also if you use your eyes a little bit, you can kind of see it. Not that that is all the answers, but Putin doesn't look like he's in good health. He did confirm that he had cancer in 2015 or 2016 or 2017, somewhere in there at least. He had told Oliver Stone that and oliver stone also quickly confirmed that it had returned about six months ago we see the videos of putin holding the table i'll put

that in the corner where he's where he's like holding on for dear life and shaking it appears there's some elements of like a parkinson's like disease there and it lines up with the fact that he did a crazy clearly not well planned invasion when all this is going on. And it makes you think like, okay, narcissistic, sociopathic dictator type wants to leave his legacy. You mentioned it earlier talking about like a renewed, restored Russia. Does that mean that someone like that could also say fuck it and try to take everyone with him when things aren't going his way because he's not going to be here long anyway. Well, that's a worry that he could behave recklessly.

As for his health, we don't have any confirmation of that. And I personally don't consider Oliver Stone a very good source. But I think that there are more actors here than Putin himself. I mean, to launch a nuclear attack definitely requires the cooperation of other people, not all of whom would be enchanted by the idea of starting a nuclear war over the annexation of a strip of Ukraine. So, of course, they will do everything they can to scare us with that. And we're right to be scared because there's aspects of the situation we don't control. But, you know, we also have nuclear weapons. We have, you know, if he's going to go down and take the whole world with him, that means there's even more reason to somehow try to get him out of there and

bring about a change in Russia. And the most important agent for doing that is military defeat. Because that would break the chain, the connection between lying propaganda, horrendous military losses, foreign aggression, and the sense on the part of ordinary Russians that their country, by brutalizing others, is returning to former greatness. Right. Well, how realistic do you think it is? Let's assume Putin is healthy and great.

How realistic do you think it is to remove him from power at any time soon? We don't know. We don't know what's going on. We don't know who in the leadership. I mean, that's the best chance that people in the leadership would insist on his leaving power and or conspire against him. But they, you know, they're all, they're informers everywhere. And people are spying on each other.

No one can be sure that if he begins to organize a conspiracy that it will stay secret for long. So oftentimes dictators in this type of situation hold on for decades. Is there any type of real picture or better picture now as opposed to the last time we talked as to, let's say, candidates of individuals who might replace him in that event? Or do we really have still no idea? We can speculate speculate i don't think we really have a clear idea i think it could be someone in the end who is very unknown to us and it's scary because i mean you assume it gets better with whoever replaces him that's not necessarily true yeah but i don't think it would get a great deal worse i think we're we're touching we're touching the bottom. That's the campaign for the war.

It can't get worse than this. No, if they use nuclear weapons, which they could do, to stave off defeat, it will get worse. But what's the alternative? The alternative is for us basically to allow them to win and then create the conditions for a new war. I think – and that's where that Catch-22 comes in. You and I may have touched on this, but it comes up in some podcasts where no one wants to be Neville Chamberlain. No, of course you know but also what is then you get in this situation where it's like well what is a real hitler situation versus what is one where it's like okay there's i mean can can putin be negotiated with yes can he is he reasonable will he accept will he accept uh

a fair solution well all indications are he's not and he won't. But if there were, if that did change, it should be looked at as a possibility to keep those lines of communication open to try to get a peaceful solution. They are adept at suggesting things they know are non-starters. For example, they say, well, let's negotiate. We're ready to negotiate an end to the war. What they don't say is that we're ready, is that this negotiation is intended to allow them to keep the occupied territories.

Yeah, and one of the things that does bother me at this point, because it's difficult to defend, as someone who has for a long time been fascinated with the rise of Vladimir Putin and was at least somewhat aware of the downsides of him, you know, that wasn't widely talked about by a lot of people before this war. It kind of was less of an issue, which was part of the problem you had. But it's getting harder for me to defend some of the theatrics that you see coming out of the Ukraine side. And I have no doubt that there is propaganda arms who want to make sure everyone like me sees that coming out of russia so that we can turn the tide and suddenly not be rooting for ukraine but what i'm wondering is why is why are they parading zelensky to do things like a vogue cover shoot or to have sean penn come in there and give him a

fucking oscar trophy like these types of things make people think at home like what is this i thought this is a war we're doing cover shoots like why why is there why is the western media so obsessed with almost pushing this reality tv narrative on what on top of what is a very very real war and kind of taking away from what's actually happening i think the ukrainians are very concerned to maintain popular support in the West. And anything that they think will make them more popular, they will definitely be in favor of. Whether they do it in a very intelligent and effective way or not is another question. Maybe they don't.

I think that's the issue. It's very tough. it's very tough it's very tough i mean they aren't they don't know you know they're dependent on a country that they don't really understand and don't know very well hang on i think that this oh did that go out came out let's just put it back in yep and then twist it hold on now hear now? Now I hear you great. There we go. I just usually tuck it in the side of my chair right there. So don't go anywhere. Okay, no, that's fine.

That makes a big difference. You were just getting a little faded on me. Oh, all right. Well, I'm glad we got you right back there in the earphones. But staying on this topic. Sure. Got you right back there in the earphones. But staying on this topic, do you think as we move – as the calendar moves into 2023, we're recording this a few days ahead of time. And this is going to be the first episode that we put out of the year where we're coming up on – in a month and a half, call it. We're coming up on the one-year mark.

And you had mentioned very early on when we were talking that this is the kind of thing that has the makings of something that could go on for years do you think that we are going to see any talks that are in the realm of trying to remove that russian aggression punish them for it and actually get a solution here where there's not civilians dying on the ground every day or do you think that's very unrealistic to see this year i don't i don't know a lot's going to depend on the there's so many imponderables here we don't know the effect of western sanctions on the russian economy we don't know how much ammunition the Russians have left. They've been expanding it at a fantastic rate. We don't know how the Russian people will react to these horrendous casualties. I heard a story that gives you an idea of just how bad it is. belgarod which is a town in russia but on the border with ukraine there's a big railroad yard and a lot of freight cars and uh people in the area are

complaining that this that the smell from those railroad cars is becoming unbearable and there these are the bodies of r Russian soldiers that have just been dumped. The Russians aren't even collecting the... They're dead and wounded. So how long will the Russian, agree to this, how long will the U.S. continue to embargo or weapons that could hit Russian territory that would have the capacity to take out those points that are bombarding Ukraine right now? How long will it be before the West begins to really answer Russian propaganda seriously by, for example, telling the truth about the apartment bombings and demonstrating to the Russian people

that the Putin regime is their enemy as well as the enemy of the Ukrainians. These are all questions we don't have answers for right now. Do you have any source, I'm curious, do you have any sources who are telling you what, if there is some serious dissenting sentiment on the ground in Russia right now that's growing, or is that also just totally unknown? Well, we know that the population is becoming more skeptical. We know that. Polls show that Putin still has about 74% support. Now, that's with the benefit of state television, which is the chief source of information,

which knows how to act on the emotions and prejudices of the Russian people. But still, that's a very high level. That is a high level. And especially after all these casualties, after all the obvious lying, after the mobilization announcement. But still, I think that Russia is organized like a movement. It's much more than like a normal country. And a country organized like a movement is always ready to go and attack somebody.

And that's one of the things we have to deal with. That's one of the things Ukraine has to deal with for its long-range security. I'm hoping that the factors will begin to create pressure on the Russian leadership to stop what they're doing. It's going to take resolution, both in terms of supplying arms, which NATO is willing to do. Wait, what was that? It's going to take a resolution supplying arms? Resolution in terms of supplying arms to Ukraine. Oh, right.

I misheard you. So we will not lose heart, will not lose determination. But it's going to take really the effort of an entire society and by this I mean Western society to bring this to an end. Just as a simple example, a lot of the green activists, a lot of the climate change activists are very much against any expansion of the production of fossil fuels. But we need to wean countries off of Russian oil and gas. We can't do that if we don't expand our production.

The political pressure not to do that is paid for with the lives of Ukrainian soldiers. Yeah. Yeah. It's kind of like you're in a position where you got to make some sacrifices of your beliefs, even in the short term, you're saying. I understand that. And of course, we have to be ready to accept economic hardship, which is the hardest thing of all, especially for comfortable Americans and

Western Europeans. And that's what... Yeah, good luck selling that. Yeah, no, it's not easy. It's not easy. And it's certainly not easy if people don't see the underlying point. I think it's way different when you have something that you talk about, like economic hardships, and you see, let's even say from a rationing perspective, for example, the sacrifices that Americans made in World War II, say. That's one where, A, the whole world is actually involved on the battlefield, and B, so are we. Our own people are there too. It's very hard when you don't have – and by the way, I give Biden a ton of credit for not putting boots on the ground there because I think that would turn into a world war and I think that's disastrous. But we don't have that and so there is this it's over there sentiment that is going to be a part of that conversation regardless of how much a guy like you knows or other people who really know the implications here try to pound the table and say, no, no, no, but you don't understand.

People are going to vote with their wallets. They're going to be concerned about their way of life, and it's not just in America. It's in other places too. So when we're talking about making sacrifices around the world, I don't think politicians are going to be able to sell that because their people are going to vote them out of office if they do that. Well, this is the problem and um so the next best thing is to ship weapons which which do make a difference and allow the ukrainians uh to do the fighting and they do the die the dying which is one of the reasons why zielinski is so insistent. And it maybe even shows what Americans see as a lack of gratitude because the way he sees it, the way we see it, we're giving him weapons.

The way he sees it, they're sacrificing lives. And that's a very fair way of putting it, in my opinion, because every day that this war is going on, as the leader of his country, he is losing his citizens. Of course. That's just the nature of it. And I think people have to understand that. People are being bombed and are experiencing terrible hardship being subjected to war crimes. So, of course, he doesn't think that just the supplying of weapons is such an

extraordinary thing sure particularly insofar as the ukrainians are fighting for our principles not just theirs yeah and i think it's you know it feels it feels oddly reminiscent. Like, obviously, the Russian government is, in an order of doing business, a different side of the coin in a negative way also as well, though, than it was with the USSR. It was a different type of politics back then. in a parallel way to that iron curtain that descended where you kind of have to not even political but like way of life ideologies at battle here and the proxy war in the middle of it is the fact that it's the Ukrainians who are on the battlefield right being victimized by it and the Russian citizens who are losing their lives who are conscript conscripted to go fight in this war. Yeah, I mean, what you have is you've got a small criminal group in Russia that is

killing both sides. Yeah, yeah. And it's indifferent to their lives and their loss and the losses. I mean, even that statement that Putin made that Russians are willing to sacrifice everything for their motherland. Well, that gives you an idea of the extent to which he feels he has an inexhaustible supply of cannon fodder in the population. Yeah, I think that's fair. I mean, but on the other half of it, like, because this has been a situation that you've been on top of for 50 years as we've laid out, almost 50 years. It's like, how much, were you following Zelensky's shift to politics, like, right when he initially started looking at it? Like, how much are you a historian of him as well? And, like, what he's about and why he got into this and moved away from what was a

great life I mean he was like a very successful actor and everything and got into politics like what what is it about him that that made him made the people of Ukraine say oh this is our guy this is who we want to lead us before the war and everything well there was so much corruption under Poroshenko. I mean, Poroshenko replaced Yanukovych, and then the same corrupt system exerted itself, and so the result was a rebellion against Poroshenko, and Zelensky took 70% of the vote in the election.

But conditions didn't improve all that much under Zelensky took 70% of the vote in the election, but conditions didn't improve all that much under Zelensky. And people said that, in fact, before the invasion, he only had about 30% support. Why was that? Well, I think it was partially the fact that Ukrainians are impatient. They want to see improvements. And he wasn't delivering them, and many of the same corrupt structures continued to hold sway. But, you know, it's another question of what he could have done and did he do his best, but the fact that now he's in power under conditions in which he's fighting an invasion and in which he's the country's only hope.

I mean, that changes all that calculation. who was president, and who was not solving the problems. It was kind of logical that an outsider like Zelensky would be elected. And when he didn't solve the problems, it made sense that there was discontent with him. But when Russia attacked Ukraine, and people are losing their lives, and the country is being menaced, and Zelensky took over and directed the effort, it's also logical that those pretensions, that discontent that existed in the past is now forgotten, at least for the time being, until such time as the war is won. Well, he's a wartime leader.

I understand that. And so that's, you know, both outcomes are logical. I mean, in the sense that it was logical that when the country was not at war and, you know, one problem after another uh manifested self that the person in charge would be blamed it's also logical that now that the country's at war all that's forgotten because he did behave very bravely yeah he stayed back you know there was the talk right away when it was going out like oh they're going to get them out of there yeah of course well that and that kept the country from collapsing i mean had had you know what would there would have been guerrilla war of course but if the president had had and the you know and the government had evacuated uh the uh you know the organized

resistance would not have been what it was in in addition to him staying on the ground though with his people as like the leader of the country i i think another thing that sometimes gets lost in translation of like how things are working just because we hear the top line news is what what it means for his role as the head of the military every day so you know you had mentioned before and i know bustamante had talked about this on here and jim diorio as well that there's a lot of elements of on the ground civilian trench warfare going on in city streets and things like that but what about the military organization of ukraine like is does does Zelensky have a set of generals where it's kind of like there's a top-down mandate, but then they're all making their own military decisions,

or are all major decisions coming directly through Zelensky? Like, what do we even know about how that's working? Well, he has to approve. He has to approve the decisions of the Ukrainian general staff. But I've talked to Ukrainian politicians who are much more familiar with this than I am, and including members of the Verkhovna Rada, the parliament, and they say that Zelensky basically, you know, his role is to kind of, you know, approve the plans of the top generals. And he is not a great strategist, but he puts a face on it. And of course, I guess when there are conflicts, he has to decide. But he doesn't have a military background no it was an actor yeah it was an actor so really you know his role in this whole situation is to you on behalf of the country to approve the the the plants that have have been presented to him by the military leadership,

which is what he's doing. And that military leadership has undergone quite a lot of modernization. How so? Well, partially they've been trained by NATO. The Russian military is very top-heavy, and units on the ground have much less freedom of action than would be the case for a NATO country or a NATO army. The Ukrainians have been trained by NATO on the NATO model, and they're much more flexible. And that's one of the reasons that, you know, they're fighting in much smaller units.

There's much more initiative at lower levels of command. And it's made a difference. It's made a difference. But the overall strategy, after all, that's something that has to be put together by the general staff and approved by zelensky well how effective is the other thing you hear about in the background on various stories is the some of the work of the ukrainian intelligence as well who's in the middle of a war zone on on their home here. But like how, that wasn't before this war, I'm not

going to sit here and lie to you and pretend to have known a damn thing about Ukraine's intelligence apparatus. But like, how good are they versus how much is it they're getting a lot of resources and help from other intelligence organizations in Western powers? Including the US. Yes. Yeah, but it isn't only that I mean remember that this is all being fought on Ukrainian territory and it's being fought on tear in areas where people support Ukraine now we could say if we looked at the Donbass that meant that some of those areas that were occupied were areas that were Russian speaking ethnically Russian and and pro-Russian.

But the war now is being fought in many areas where the patriotic sentiment is Ukrainian. And so they get intelligence from the population. It's not a mystery. It's a true militia type organization in that way. They're fighting for their land and they're basically, of course. And they, and, and,

and that's understood. Sure. That makes me think of a parallel issue though, that maybe, maybe has something to do with this as far as like how to read the situation or maybe doesn't. And you can fill me in, but you know, you've mentioned in our last episode in a little bit today about these chechen wars you

had the first chechen war the second chechen war and chechnya is a region as you've explained to the south of russia that has their own sect of people who have had in the past serious disagreements with russia and have wanted independence but today now call it 20 years after say the second chechen war maintain as i understand it actually a relationship with vladimir putin and have even fought on his behalf in some some some chechens so i guess the question there is, you know, is there the fear that – because obviously that involves leadership of Chechnya coming over to the side of Vladimir Putin. It involves perhaps some propaganda going into their people to agree that this isn't the worst thing ever. Is there fear that there could be a similar sentiment shift over a five ten year period in Ukraine as well that's what uh Putin and his and his associates are hoping for and counting on

um uh they that they would there would be enough of a a fifth column in Ukraine to make it possible for them to rule. I mean, that has not materialized so far. Outside of the Donbass and outside of Crimea. Which was already kind of the case as you laid out. Yeah, I mean, we kind of knew that in those places. Yes. But the other areas that have been invaded and annexed or taken over since February 24th, we don't have evidence of a lot of collaboration. That's good.

At least not. I mean, there were some collaborators. Some of them were of collaboration. That's good. At least not, I mean, there were some collaborators. Some of them were actually killed. Some of them fled. But widespread collaboration sufficient to govern those territories, even if the war stopped, so far is not not in evidence well what do you think you and i have talked at length today already about the issue of the precedent this would set if you didn't do something to combat what russia's done and i think for pretty much anyone listening that's completely understandable and a pretty easy concept but from a hypothetical situation minus the precedent it would set if they

did pull this off and say annex ukraine worst case scenario something like that what would be if you're talking about russia as a threat and that happened strategically speaking other than the obvious of they get a big chunk of land that was on mainland europe of a nation that was supposed to be sovereign but now isn't like what are the major implications of that do you think it becomes now now putin wants to start grabbing land across europe and starting to to invade eu? Or do you think it's more there's the unknown and we don't want to deal with the unknown? Well, under the existing circumstances, bearing in mind the degree of Ukrainian resistance, the chief consequence of a peace settlement on Russian terms now

would be simply to reinforce the hold in power, on power, of Vladimir Putin. Because he would depict it as a victory. With the help of the propaganda on state television, the Russian people would accept this explanation, and he would be in a position to launch – first of all, he would have undermined world stability with a successful invasion and land grab, but he would be in a position also to terrorize his own people and to launch further adventures in the future and there are other candidates and we do see that there's like there's been an inability as you mentioned to turn off the a lot of the dependence on russian

oil and natural gas that's still been in line since the war started I mean you have what's crazy to me is you have Ukrainian companies who are pumping natural gas from gas prom Through their country which you know, they they got to make their money and try to keep the lights on I totally get it But that's wild to me literally the nation who is invading them one of the oligarchs they are one of the people i forget the name of the guy who runs gas prom but like a government-related rich guy individual who runs this company his nation is invading you and he's still business i mean the whole the problem is that this this complex energy infrastructure was

built up around russian supplies yes and it's not a simple matter to disconnect it overnight no even for the ukrainians and you well exactly it's it's such a weird that one was such a weird like conflict of interest to me but like i don't have an answer for i'm like oh turn it off like that's gonna crush them if they do that and then it crushes the countries well and also they need they also need the gas yes yes they also need the gas i mean it's uh people were betting you know ronald reagan uh when he was president warned warned against a gas pipeline. Because gas can only move over pipelines unless it's liquefied natural gas. And once those pipelines are in place, you're attached to Russia,

attached like an umbilical cord and when you stop by the way like from a political perspective you've seen like the emphasis the eu has put on anti-fossil fuels and things like that which somehow is certainly understandable you then well that hits the fan yeah well you go. Now they don't have it. They don't have the capabilities. Yeah. We need, you know, if we could expand our use of fossil fuels, we can make up for some of those Russian supplies. Yeah.

And thereby, you know, make it harder for Russia to wage this war. You know, there's a lot of, how to describe it, there's a lot of infantile thinking in the West, and including in the U.S. I mean, the fact is, you know, I want what I want, and I don't care about the consequences. But the consequences can be very serious for other people. Well, it's because you're fighting for your next election, and you don't want to cost your people money now well of course you kick the can down the road well we've seen it yeah and we had the one of the things that happened since the last time we talked one of the many things was you saw the nordstream 2 pipeline blown up and you know i think i was telling you i talked to you shortly after i

recorded a solo podcast on that you know i almost i recorded that podcast i put it out and i immediately thought like even the possibilities i put out there were wrong because i'm like well i see it could be one of four places it could be russia it could be the u.s it could be ukraine or maybe it could be china and you know we're really zoned in on russia and the u.s it could be ukraine or maybe it could be china and you know we're really zoned in on russia and the u.s and now the news is starting to trickle out that like they even said like that's not the case like it appears russia didn't do this which i thought it might make sense for them to do it but they didn't and it doesn't appear like the u.s did it which means you know there's some it could be like ukraine trying to like Ukraine trying to keep the West on board.

But at the same time, what's confusing to me is that there wasn't really much running through it at the time. It was basically like turned off. I was able to review and other people can find online, it appeared that the Europe, Western Europe was going to be okay with what they had, meaning this wasn't going to affect things right away. So, you know, I guess the question is like, why do we have other forces at play here, like other nations who are just enjoying the chaos of what's going on and and trying to in ensue some sort of distrust among the people on both sides of this issue be it russia be it the united states and the west hard to hard to imagine i think that it probably was russia who blew up their own pipeline but they did it in a way uh that would uh they hoped would affect the market but would not permanently.

They didn't want to take a step that would be irreversible. What's the upside to them? That's what I couldn't figure out. Just a warning, the warning, the warning the West of their vulnerability. Because I couldn't think of a ton of upsides. There aren't a lot of upsides there aren't a lot of upsides but we you know we have to begin to think the way they think and we're thinking this is the problem when westerners try to think rationally and they they operate always from their perspective

but russians oftentimes are very keen remember this is a r Russia is the country of the psychological novel. It's a country in which with the national game is chess. Russians think ahead and they think in terms of psychology in a way that we don't. Can you explain that? Well, for example, I mean they they will act not to achieve a specific concrete effect but to have a psychological impact like a mind games type thing you're saying yeah huh that actually that makes a ton of sense because that would make sense with you know some of the things they do to to even with even if we go back to the apartment bombings uh you know does it make sense to bomb your own people uh no unless you're trying to change the psychology of the country right and create a completely different atmosphere

i mean an american wouldn't think of doing something like that cue the conspiracy theorists in the comments on that one yeah all right well maybe people will call in and say that I'm that a that Trump or Hillary Clinton would do it maybe they I don't know but even I think those two wouldn't yeah I mean I think we're I think we're prone to having bad people do bad things too. I would like to think and I do think overall we've done better in the world. But our bad people are less imaginative than – their imaginations are more restricted. I think you might be right about that.

I think there's degrees to this stuff and I can point out evil things that we've done, of course, around the world. And I can point out evil things other we've done of course around the world and i can point out evil things other places have done and i think overall i you know yeah i see more i'm not just talking about russia i'm talking about places of totalitarianism and some of the things they do to their own people you know that that that i i think are worse there's a saying in russia you know terrorize your own people so that others will be afraid. That's real? Yeah. That's pretty on brand right there.

Yeah. And what is, during the whole war though, like, as a lot of people know, when the Soviet Union flipped over, it changed to basically being called the FSB, but it wasn't that much different. You know, the KGB became the FSB. Right, right. Yeah, the KGB was under the Soviet Union. The secret police were the FSB. Right, right. Yeah, the KGB was under the Soviet Union. The secret police were the KGB.

And then after the Soviet Union fell, there were various permutations and changes. And the organization which emerged was the FSB, which is in Russian, Federalnez Luzhba Bezopasnosti, means the Federal Security Agency. So they effectively were the byproduct, the afterproduct of the KGB, kind of like name change and name only type deal, doing a lot of the same thing.

A lot of the same things, but they were different too, because the KGB was an ideological organization that believed it was spreading socialism. And they were actually very clever. The FSB is very corrupt, and they're much more murderous. The KGB tried to achieve its objectives with psychological manipulation, and at least in the later years, did not rely on brute force as much. Really? Yeah, although they could.

They could. That's not the narrative you're used to hearing, you know? Well, we're talking, you know, well, listen, before the KGB, there was the NKVD in the 30s that was responsible for murdering, you know, for murdering hundreds of thousands of people. Like the pogroms and stuff? No, no, no. Pogroms were ethnic, anti-Jewish for the

most part. Right. No, this was the great terror during the 1930s that Stalin launched against real and imagined opponents in order to bring the country completely to its knees. What did that consist of? I don't know a hell of a lot about that. Oh, well, alright. Maybe

let's take it a step at a time because the Soviet Union, after it was created, declared that it was going to have a final reckoning with the counter-revolution. And they created the first, you know, the secret police who were called the Cheka. And the Cheka was responsible for the Red Terror, which took place in the 1920s. The Red Terror cost maybe 400,000 lives. And what was that? That was taking hostages, that was fighting against anybody who was opposed to the Bolshevik regime with mass killings.

In Sevastopol and Crimea, 50,000 people were hanged, and that earned Sevastopol the nickname, the city of the hanged. But then there was the Great Terror, which took place in the 1930s, 1937-38, and Stalin basically launched a drive against anyone who could conceivably be his opponent to create a perfect totalitarian system. And, you know, 800, well, 150,000 people in that period were arrested.

No, not 100, excuse me, 1,500,000 people were arrested during that period were arrested no not 100 excuse me a million five hundred thousand people were arrested during that period eight hundred or seven hundred thousand were shot right away of those who went were sent to the camps many never returned oh god you know and then these were all these were anyone who just opposed the Soviet communist principles? Anyone they suspected of opposition but also went beyond that. The purpose was to completely terrorize the country. So let's say that you had studied in Poland as a graduate student, okay? You were automatically a Polish spy.

And anyone who was in your notebook or in your address book was your co-conspirator. And that created, you know, the fear that that engendered. And the purpose was to engender fear. And it was the, I knew a woman who was the wife of an ambassador in Moscow at that time. And she said, you know, the terror was so great that if a foreigner approached Russians on the street, they scattered like mice. And people who were literally afraid to say anything to each other. There was one story of a conversation on a train in which one person said, yes, Fyodor Mikhailovich, yes, Vitaly Ivanovich. But beyond that, they were paralyzed with fear and couldn't say anything else. Who were those people?

Just people on a train, someone recalling in a memoir what conversations were like during the period of the Great Terror. And that continued in a less extreme form because the war broke out until Stalin's death in 1953. And then in 1956, Khrushchev made a speech, it was known as the secret speech, in which he revealed the crimes of Stalin and began freeing people from the labor camps. So the terror, the level of terror diminished, but the KGB still used repression to control the population and they could kill people, you know, it was not mass killing anymore, but there was selective terror. When did they change their name from the other one it was not mass killing anymore but there was selective terror when did

they change their name from the other one it was to kgb from the nkvd to the kgb i think that was in the 50s it became first the mgb which was the ministry of security of state security and then it became the they decided not to call it a ministry anymore, and it became the Committee on State Security, the KGB. And then after the Soviet Union, and in the last days of the Soviet Union, after Gorbachev basically initiated this huge period of liberalization, the KGB did not, you know, carry out terror attacks on the citizens. And they, in fact, were much more concerned with grabbing property for themselves. And they began, you know, seriously to degrade and become corrupted. And when killings took place, were fights over property not not not not

political struggles uh and then after the fall of the soviet union what had been the kgb became after certain changes and name changes the the fsb which is what we have now and did some of it and i want to come back those that fsbB, just to finish what we were saying, was different from the KGB in that it was much less, the KGB in the latter period, for example, when I was in Moscow, was much more concerned to use psychological control over people. And the FSB inherited that, even though they became rather murderous because they were also fighting for money and property. But they never lost the concentration that had become traditional on psychological manipulation. So in the case of the apartment bombings, they combined a horrific crime with a psychological objective, the idea to terrorize the population and create the conditions for Putin to come

to power. That's the most important thing to remember about the Putin regime, that it's an illegitimate regime, and it was game to power as the result of an act of terror against its own people. Was there aspects, though, and I want to come back to Stalin in a second, but just real quick while you're on this, where the intelligence transformed to getting to the FSB, were there also aspects of the KGB, because that's the only intelligence organization we hear about from the USSR years, I guess the second half of it, but were there elements of the KGB that got split off into the GRU as well, so they kind of like made an extra

area of intelligence? No, that was the GRU as separate. GRU is defense intelligence they the the uh they those are rival intelligence agencies the kgb and i mean they the kgb is state security uh the gru is military security of course they overlap to some extent i was going to say because the gru for example is who's responsible for like hacking in in our country into discourse and things like that oh they still exist uh the uh i think you know i'm not sure if they still use the name gru uh i think they do they do yeah they do yeah and there the SVR, which is foreign intelligence that works with them. These – there's a process of organizational reform and reorganization that takes place. stalin though because as we've mentioned earlier on you're you are a true historian of the entirety of the soviet union and and how it got to where it did and then how when it was supposed to change over it did but it didn't they kept a lot of elements which we'll talk about but you know

it's such a hard moral thing for me to think about in hindsight in that we we already used the example and something else today about like neville Chamberlain bowing to Hitler and what that did to the world. But when we went to beat Hitler, who we can all agree was a horrible dude and did these awful things to human beings, we also partnered with a guy who did a lot of these things too. Oh, absolutely. You know? Absolutely. with a guy who did a lot of these things too absolutely you know absolutely like stalin the more i hear about him i mean this was a murdered murderous awful guy and so i kind of struggle with that in hindsight in the sense that it's almost like we we batted one for two when we did that war and it's not to take away from the importance of what we did and and not just us but all the allied powers in preserving a free world to exist within parts of the planet after that

obviously but like you know that set off a cold war because the people the person in this case in particular who's in charge there was was the same well yeah, I mean, these were two totalitarian regimes, and people particularly in Eastern Europe point out that communism claimed more victims than Nazism, partially because they had more time. But the special horror that is reserved for Nazism is that Nazism was murder as an end in itself. The communists killed, but they killed in order to create what they said was a worker's paradise or a just society. The numbers were astronomical in both cases, but the idea of simply murder, the Nazis elevated murder to the highest principle and the highest goal of politics. Whereas once the Soviet regime was established and once it no longer was fighting against various enemies, the mass killing stopped. The goal was not to kill, but rather to create a certain type of society. In the case of

the Nazis, the killing would have never stopped. Because once they had finished with the Jews, the next target was the Poles. And then even those people, even Germans who were mentally handicapped. Yeah. So, it was an extermination machine set in motion by one basically gifted psychopath. It doesn't, my only issue with that is i agree with you on on nazi germany and what that was i think that it's been well documented pretty easily and there is the element that like yes stalin did kill jews for example people on on the basis of their their background their ethnic background but it seems to me like nazism was more to preserve

ethnic and and racial insanity tied to their identity as a party of their country whereas it was the same thing in russia except it was more to preserve political identity so how would they you know like i don't know stalin died i guess in like 1953 or something but yeah let's say he had lived another 20 years and i'm not sure this is what you're saying but correct me if i'm wrong here it's like you think the killing would have stopped at some point where he said okay we're good it doesn't seem to me like that was on the table. Stalin was constantly looking for new, in fact, he was on the verge of deporting and exiling the Jewish population of Moscow when he died, and those plans were dismantled. and uh but the uh the level of murder on the level of the great terror uh you know there were periodic purges to kind of you reinforce his hold on power

rather than because he needed to carry out these purges what about at the very beginning too like he became this guy he became the longtime leader of the ussr yeah but you know i think sometimes we forget at least in america we forget about that part of history of like how it began i mean this thing was you had czar nicholas and his family essentially as royalty in charge of the country up to 1917 and then they were rounded up and executed by communist rebels who who formed the ussr but you know was there you're talking about filling us in on the history of the 20s and 30s in particular and these various mass killing machines that went on you know obviously the government had control the media they could suppress the spread of news but they're still

taken as you said 1.5 million people just for that one program those people have family you know people talk and stuff like based on when the ussr formed or started to take over in 1917 with communism like how long was it before there was a serious societal wide backlash against it versus a lot of people were just like no this is kind of cool like like was there there was never a backlash against it until – a significant backlash until Perestroika and Gorbachev began to provide truthful information because the combination of propaganda and fear was enough to – The Stalin purged people in leadership positions, ordinary people by and large were not touched as much. And it's unfortunate characteristic of Russian people that they have a vision of government as a force that terrorizes.

And a strong government is a government that terrorizes a lot. This was the case in their attitude toward Ivan the Terrible, who was very popular among Russians. When was he? Well, that was the 16th century. Way back. Way back. And Stalin remained popular and remains popular today.

Really? Yeah, in Russia, despite his methods. Because it was seen as in the interest of the state. And we have an echo of this in the recent statement of Putin that I mentioned earlier, that Russians are ready to give everything, to sacrifice everything for the motherland. In other words, it's a very warped situation

in which they so identify with the state and so little with their own individual dignity that they consider it normal for people to be killed in the interest of the state. And that's part of the reason why they're able so easily to invade a country like Ukraine because there's no check, there's no limit of conscience, no limit of social institutions that keeps Russia from engaging in barbarous behavior. And it's one of the reasons why they commit atrocities, as they did at Bucha in Ukraine and in other places, Mariupol, when they invade foreign countries, because they consider that this is their right. There was a young Russian officer who expressed the point of view when he talked about his role in the war in Chechnya. He said that, I answer for my men, my platoon.

I don't answer for anyone else. If there's a sniper on top of a building, I call in artillery strikes on the building in order to destroy the sniper, even though I know there are civilians living in the building. If people are unhappy about that, they should take their complaints to the people who cooked this kasha. In other words, the people who created this situation. My job is to destroy the sniper. The fact that there are civilians, including old

people, women, children, and so on in the building that I'm going's civilians including old people women children and so on in the building that i'm going to blow up just so that the building collapses and the sniper is killed uh that's their problem it's just a different very much so trained mentality but i mean what how did you have a regime that's built on reinforcing that mentality. And I'm talking about the USSR now and, of course, also today. But there was a point there when, as we've laid out, when the USSR fell that it was like, oh my god, Russia might become a democratic stronghold or whatever where there's free elections and fair elections and stuff like that. And that's not how it turned out but what led up to that was you had a guy get into power i guess in like the late 70s or early 80s with with gorbachev who as you said decided to with his perestroika right

was that what it was well the reforms and they were called perestroika, yeah. Right. So how did they're finally, like, what led to him getting power? And, like, did he have a change of heart as he climbed the chain of command and then realized, like, oh, I'd rather us be more democratic? Or was he always that way and wanted to reform the system that they had put into place? I doubt he was always that way. He was somebody who moved up step by step in the Communist Party hierarchy. And he saw, however, that the Soviet Union faced problems that only, as he understood it, liberal reform could solve. And one of those problems was it was falling behind the West technologically and economically. So that was the inspiration for it, but also because many of the younger Communist Party officials were

mesmerized by the material wealth of the West, and they wanted personally to share in it. Those were all factors that led Gorbachev to take the risk of reform. And he also, you know, he left power after the USSR fell and everything, but he lived up until August of this year. So I've seen some stuff online, but first of all, how much did he even have an ability to speak his mind without the threat of his life and his later life. And secondly, like what were his – was he very supportive of Vladimir Putin or – No, no. And I mean – and I think – but he was silent. He was silenced. And I think, you know, living in Russia, he almost had to be. Yeah.

He, you know, he was what he said uh was carefully controlled and what he could say it must be wild for him because he's supposed to be the guy who got them to a place where it wasn't like that and people could do what they wanted but it didn't you know you replaced psycho left wing with psycho-wing which is kind of the same thing where the political circles meet each other Yeah, and and you get what you get but you know something you and I had talked about towards the end Last time just a little bit, but I wanted to get in more it is actually one thing that I feel like is kind of Now not talked about at all So maybe you can shed some light but that is the whole oligarch system and what you had a chance to lay out last time was how in the 90s there was a giant

power vacuum that happened and in the the democratization what was supposed to be the democratization of the ussr you had limited individuals basically get control of all key industry as we know the oligarchs a lot of them were backed by crime or were criminals themselves. And then basically formed this group who controlled all the GDP of the country and therefore the politics. Well, not all of it, but a very, very significant part. A lot of it. Yeah. So the reason I bring it up is because one of the main stories at the very beginning of the war was these sanctions we were putting on Russia.

And a big part of that was the sanctions we were putting on the oligarchs, most of whom have interests abroad, outside of pretty much all of whom have some sort of interests or residencies abroad in other countries. And I haven't heard a ton about that since and what i was wondering is you know behind the scenes was there was there any real threat of like waning support or or having some of these robber barons so to speak switch sides because putin was costing them their ability to have influence and be themselves in foreign lands? Or have they all basically said through either threat or just political agreement that, hey, this is the right thing and we're getting behind this guy and we'll deal with the fallout? Well, they don't, their opinion doesn't matter. I think they were all unhappy about what happened because it threatened their economic interests for sure.

But Putin had basically reduced the power of the oligarchs to the point that they were dependent on the political authorities and not the other way around, which was the way it was under Yeltsin. And so therefore, he had much more over them than they had over him. So we haven't heard much from them. What do you mean he had much? Because that seems an obvious statement to me, but how so? Well, you can arrest them. You know, they can be, he controls the justice system.

He can seize their property. He can control their movements, take away their passports, ground their airplanes. A lot of things he can do. But do they hold also any sway behind the scenes quietly that the public doesn't know about in still some of these Western nations where they've had a foothold for a long time? Oh, in the Western nations probably because they have extensive business interests. So like in the UK where there's a significant presence of Russian oligarchs. I haven't heard much about – we heard the sanctions at the beginning, but it seems like these guys are alive and well and doing their thing. Are they buying favor? They're rich and they have money stashed away.

And some of it they've lost and some of it they're just spending. But obviously their position is not as is not what it was but also on the other side of it is there a similar setup like i've i have a guy pulled up behind you right here if you look at the screen right behind you this dude ihor kolomoisky is that how you say it so he's curious to me i don't know much about him but he's reported as like a ukrainian oligarch so he's on the other side of the issue is there is there a similar cohort of people who effectively curry the same level of power and favor like that in Ukraine? Yeah. Oh, yeah. There are, but they were – I mean, the situation in Ukraine was more pluralistic, whereas the oligarchs were all beholden to Putin. Whereas the oligarchs in Ukraine,

they backed very different political. I mean, Kolomoisky backed Zelensky. Other oligarchs backed Poroshenko. And it was a more pluralistic situation. But in the post-communist countries, particularly Russia and Ukraine, certain well-placed people were able to gain access to state assets and create empires, basically on the basis of theft. Yes. In cooperation with organized crime.

And then they tried or they hoped to dictate conditions to government. In Russia, that lasted only as long as Yeltsin was alive. When Putin came into power, he threatened them with criminal prosecution and created his own oligarchs, mainly made up of his cronies, who became rich on state business and state assets. Yeah, I think he threw, who's the one guy he threw in prison? Khodorkovsky. Yes, that's it. So that was one of the guys.

Well, and also, I mean, Berezovsky was forced to flee and Berezovsky was, I believe, murdered. Although the oligarchs are not the key to the situation now. Who is? Minus Putin. I think the Russian military and the intelligence services. And I think that there have got to be people in those organizations who understand that this war has to stop and that the country is being destroyed by the war. Haven't some of those people been disappearing, though, too? No, no. The people who have been disappearing are those who have some type of economic interests that have come into conflict with those in the regime and with persons in the regime,

plus the fact that under conditions of sanctions, there's a fight over diminishing resources. Wait, what? I mean, the U.S. and the West have imposed sanctions, and that's disrupted the economy. A lot of people have had assets seized. A lot of people don't have money that they thought they had. A lot of people have't have money that they thought they had a lot of people have debts they can't repay a lot of people are sitting on money they don't want to return

uh and so a whole new set of quarrels has broken out as a result of a an unexpected and quite different situation i just you know i talked to a guy like you and i was joking with you earlier i don't know if joking is the word but you know when i went to pick you up from the station in in march when you came here it's like a week after the war broke out and i'm i'm the farthest thing from a spy but i find myself sitting in the car looking 300 yards in every direction to see if someone's following you and i didn't see anyone but i might have missed someone i don't know we don't know we never know you walk around with such a a on the outside relaxed demeanor with with your own background and and the threat that you were that your brave reporting has has posed on your life and everything but you know it may be a bit

of a personal question but i am very curious and i know a lot of people out there listening are do you do you worry about things getting you know threats on on your life as a result of the current situation and the fact that you continue to be a guy who will go on anything, on every mainstream platform, non-mainstream platform, and spread the word of the things that you know to be true about Vladimir Putin? Well, you know, you cannot be sanguine about the Russians and about the FSB and about their reach. You have to be aware that they are capable of committing crimes and they're capable of victimizing even Americans, even though that's generally something they avoid.

I think in the present situation, they have a lot on their plate. And, you know, the danger was greater earlier when I was saying things that no one believed. But now that Putin has demonstrated that, you know, to any unbiased observer, that what I was saying is true, taking action against me will not solve their problem. Because now the view that they're capable of doing what I've accused them of doing, i.e. committing acts of terror against their own population, is so plausible that, you know, there aren't a whole lot of objections. I mean, just for example, I have a piece coming out in two days, three days, in the Wall Street Journal in which I discussed the apartment bombings.

But I don't think that there's a danger at the present time. But that's just based on my instinct after many, many years of dealing with them. to do it I think they they don't want to cause anything to draw attention to my accusations and I don't I don't think they you know sit from my seat the international incident that would be harming a Western American journalist I think would make the Jamal Khashoggi implications we saw in a separate situation look tame. Yeah, this is the point. And it's also an attack on – I'm well known in this field. And it would be an attack on the ability of America to understand what's going on.

I mean, it would really be something that would strike at the American political and intellectual process itself. I don't think – and what would they gain from it really? It would only publicize everything I'm saying and i i agree with that my and now now that said that said it pays to be careful yes and i am and even though i may seem casual i'm more careful than you realize well that's good because you're hiding it well but i mean i do wonder sometimes and i had mentioned this to you in the car on the way over here today the colleague in arms on the

russian apartment bombing situation from russia's side of the media was alexander lipinenko yeah yeah and he was a former fsb agent as. So they also have a particular animosity toward people they regard as traitors. Yes. I never worked for them. I mean, as one person explained it to me once, he said, you know, we understand an enemy. You know, an enemy is an enemy. You can't change him. There's nothing you can do with him.

And after all, we're enemies too of some people, you know, and particularly an honorable enemy, you know. But a traitor, this is someone who has, you know, eaten our food as the Russians say or, you know, eaten our food as the Russians say, or, you know, who belonged to us and then turned against us. That's a different consideration. And particularly, and it's also if they see a Russian as a traitor, they feel that they have carte blanche with Russians. They don't feel they have carte blanche with Americans. It doesn't mean that they can't kill Americans.

In fact, they have killed. I mean Paul Klebnikoff, an American journalist, was killed in 2004. Oh, 2004. Yeah, it was a long time ago. That was pre-Litvinenko. What happened to Paul? Paul was a very fine writer. He worked for Forbes magazine. I didn't know him personally, but I was familiar with his work. And I later, after his death, met his widow. He wrote a lot about the corruption of the oligarchs. He wrote a biography of Boris Berezovsky, who was maybe the most famous of the oligarchs.

But he had a tendency to idealize, and this was, I believe, his big mistake, to idealize Putin, idealize the FSB, even for all his talent. And he had a lot. Wait, am I understanding that correctly? Idealize, like make them seem good? I think he saw them as a progressive force, potentially, a force that could bring good things to Russia in the future. I don't want to characterize it too much for him because he's not alive, he's not in a position to say what he thought. But in any case, he did collaborate with them to some degree, in fact, as sources of

information. And that's a very dangerous relationship to be in with them. So why did they kill him? And how did they do it? Well, we have to ask that. But he may have, in their view, overstepped the line of what's acceptable for a foreigner by giving, you know, he may have gotten corruption about the FSB. He might have tried to do something to alert them to the fact that they were on the wrong path or something. I mean, we don't know, but all the evidence is that they organized his killing. Was he killed on U.S. soil?

No, in Moscow. And how did they shoot him? Shoot him, and then when they brought him to the hospital, they jammed the elevator to make sure that he died. Oh, Jesus. Wow. Again, that is back in 2004. Back in 2004, there was another American who was killed in a business dispute,

Paul Tatum, who got into a business dispute with the mayor of Moscow and his various representatives. He was shot on the street. You know, if you get involved, I mean, the full details of Paul's fate are not clear to me, but he got a lot of cooperation from Alexander Karshakoff, who was the chief guard for Yeltsin and a KGB veteran, an FSB veteran, for his book exposing the corruption of Berezovsky. Of course, but Karshakov was just as murderous as Berezovsky. And he fell into a kind of dependent, apparently, apparently, and here, you know, I don't want to be,

I don't want to say anything isn't true, but he seems to have, in his writing and in his statements, had an unrealistic view of the KGB. You know, there's a story. I'm sorry, the FSB. You know, there's a story. I'm sorry, the FSB. There's a story in the novel, The Godfather. Do you remember how it begins?

Mario Puzo's like the Godfather? Yeah, Mario Puzo's. A man whose daughter's been raped goes to the mob and asks them to take care of the person who is. And then they say, but from that point, he belongs to them. Yes. who is and then they say but from that point he belongs to them yes well you know Paul may not have understood that in their understanding they don't just help mmm so the money does something they don't like is that's essentially a

fate-sealer is the implication now I want to stress that that's how it seems to me that's what i believe but it you know but uh and i do believe that this he was killed at at the behest of the fsb but also like you mentioned paul as well as tatum the businessman both killed on Russian soil. On Russian soil, and both of them had, to a certain extent, become involved in the Russian world in a way that I did not. I mean, I was, you know, as an investigative journalist, or as a writer and historian, I was carrying out a function that was recognized as part of my work. I didn't become part of what was happening there, except insofar as my writing and my speeches and so on but I I didn't have kind of relationships that would entangle me with either money or or operations of some sort I see what you're saying but you're still reporting massive truths that are highly oh absolutely and there's no and this is the thing this is the thing about the uh about

the KGB or about the FSB. I mean, we're getting our letters all mixed up because, you know, it was one, the organization had one name under one regime and a different name under a different regime. But what I'm saying is that you can kind of guess what the borderlines are, you can always be wrong what do you mean you can sort of guess what it's safe to do and where you're treading on very dangerous ground and but there's there are no guarantees here there are no guarantees in fact I think I, it must give them credit.

I think the fact that I was expelled from Russia, I'm the only American who was ever expelled from post-Soviet Russia. And has that remained true to this day, like through the war? Yeah. They haven't technically expelled? Well, others have left voluntarily, but yeah. It's a tribute to the fact that they didn't want to do anything worse and they could have i mean have people mentioned to me afterward he said that you can consider yourself lucky to have been expelled maybe that i admit that may well have been the case see i would have said bring in the reason i was bringing in litvinenko is because while you did make the distinction he was an actual Russian who – And he was a former FSB.

Right. So in their mind a traitor. But they did – in 2006 they did kill him on British soil. Absolutely. Right. And they are capable of carrying out those – and he's not the only person who's been murdered in the uk no there who was the guy who they failed to murder script script script paul yeah and his daughter sergey script paul but but um we don't know what condition he's in by the way script paul yeah that was a

while ago right yeah but he's alive but but was he permanently injured or disabled by the attack? I mean, we don't know. It was an attempt to kill. Yeah, it was some sort of, it was the chemical agent as well. No, but bear in mind that Skripal was also a former, he was, I think he was former GRU. He was former, yeah. I don't know if it was GRU, whatever it was. Or SVR, I think he was former GRU. He was former, yeah. I don't know if it was GRU, whatever it was. Or SVR, I'm not sure. He was former Russian government.

Yeah, well, he was intelligence as well. I mean, he was, you know, and he was exchanged. So, I mean, the long answer or the short answer to your question is that um uh it pays to be careful and i try to be careful to the extent that i can but i do want to continue to lead a normal life which is essential if i'm going to keep writing so yeah you see you seem to be doing a pretty good job with it you seem to be all over the place doing your thing so i i hope that that continues. That's also a form of protection, by the way. Going everywhere. Oh, yeah.

Getting your face. Yeah. Well, yeah. Absolutely. I know. I understand. I'm on a podcast that's going to be seen by a lot of young people and not only young people but old people. That's right.

And that's why I love being able to use the platform we're building to get stories like this out there because it's on there for the record. Can't take it off. It is what it is. That's right. A lot of people see it and think about it. Right. So, you know, I would have said – because the heat they got for the Litvinenko thing, and righteously so, was nuts because they did it on foreign soil. It was figured out that they did it and they had sanctions and the world flipped out.

Well, don't overestimate it. It was figured out that they did it and they had sanctions and the world flipped out. Well, don't overestimate it. 2006 Litvinenko was killed. Theresa May, who was the interior secretary, squashed a full-scale investigation for fear of alienating Russia. And two years later, President Obama inaugurated the – actually, it wasn't two years later. It was – I'll tell you when it was. He was 2006. Well, he got in in 2008. And so about a year and a half later, Obama and Hillary, who was then the Secretary of State, announced the reset policy.

Right. As if nothing had happened. Right. So that's not really much of a deterrent. Yes. I mean, the Litvinenko murder was one of many, many, many missed opportunities to limit Putin and prevent what's going on now. And you discussed having meetings with, I think it was you and Nemtsov were meeting with dignitaries of the United States trying to warn them on all this. Boris Nemesov was murdered in 2015 and we spoke to a leading official who was one of

the architects of the reset policy and explained to him how misguided it was. But it was, you know, it was on deaf ears. It went to deaf ears because, you know, he had his career to think about he knew what Obama expected for him to say And he wasn't going to jeopardize that But I would have thought because again this is the o6 is right before social media Started to become a really big thing and and web 2.0 was coming in where there's real mass communication and everything at all times it's like i would have thought that that's not something as in murdering someone else that you don't like on foreign soil was something that putin would use so brazenly but then

you mentioned it's a news report that people probably seen there was a guy a few months ago rapaport what was his first name uh dan rapaport dan rapaport no rapaport he was my friend of mine he he was uh he and we don't know what the story is there i mean i i found it his death very suspicious. He fell from a roof of a building in Washington and was killed. That's what I'm saying. In the United States. And it certainly looks sketchy. So what was his full background? He was someone who spoke out against Putin and the regime.

But what were some of the things he did? Yeah, and he worked against it, and he worked against it. But, you know, he was – at the time, until very recently, living in Ukraine and working on various business deals. And he moved back to the States after the war broke out. And then I learned that he had committed suicide. He was a good guy. And it's all unexplained. It could have been business rivals.

It could have been people who were angry about his work and trying to get companies to disinvest from Russia. But anyway, we're trying to find out what really happened with him. I mean, there are many puzzling details. And you're meeting with his wife. Oh, a little bit later, yeah. Right, today. But I know her, and I knew him, and we want to find out what we can.

What does she think? Well, I'm going to find out. I mean, so far we don't, you know, there are mixed signals, I would say. Many things don't make sense. But on the other hand, I think that there's still some possibility of discussing it further with the FBI, the Washington DC police, and I don't place a lot of confidence in them. But still they said that the cause of death was of course a fall and – but the manner of death is undetermined. That's so scary. Yeah. undetermined that's so scary yeah because you would think I mean

especially now there's literally a war going on everyone's paying attention to Putin and what he's doing and well a lot there been a lot of mysterious deaths of Russians all over the world people who you know holders of money in one warrior way or another who are some prominent ones that we should know about? Well, just recently in India, a man fell out of a window who was a local politician and the head of a big meat company in Russia.

When I say meat company, I mean a really very major enterprise. One of the leaders of Luke Oil, I don't know if he fell from a window or he fell down steps. Just crazy stuff. I mean, the death toll is somewhere like 13, 14 right now. Absolutely. I mean, it's chilling to think about. I mean, listen, these are gangsters.

And they hate each other and they kill. And they don't have any particular moral limits. Why? This is one of the reasons why we don't want them organizing a massive army with nuclear weapons to attack a neighboring country. Because it's that kind of people who are involved. Why don't we hear as much about these brazen ones? I mean, even the Rappaport thing. Well, there was coverage.

There was some coverage of that one. But like some of these other ones you were telling me about in the car, the one you just out there very very limited i mean i'm look it depends where you're looking of course i mean the thing is you know the internet has become vast yes uh the coverage you know with so many we first of all we once had just the newspapers you know newspapers radio etc now we have internet now we have blogs uh so now we have Twitter. We have Facebook. I mean, there are lots of places to look. And we have YouTube and Instagram.

So the people's attention is fragmented. But those, you know, they have, there are reports. There have been reports. Well, I mean, that's good to hear, I guess guess because maybe that means some of it i haven't seen i mean my my perspective comes from avidly seeing what's trending on twitter as it pertains to specific topics like this and i think that you know we touched on this a bit earlier but didn't go all the way there it's like you know you do see these two teams form and it's only divided as as the war went on where it's it's it's not in style to be someone who kind of sees the nuance of the

situation as i've tried to lay out today it's it's either you are ukraine flags in your bio or you're you're reposting tucker carlson clips and stuff and so when you're someone who's knowledgeable in all this like you who understands what got what's going on also and i mean this fairly it's gonna have some bias because this guy's ruined your life and and killed your friends and you've been there for 45 years or you were there for 40 years and then got kicked out you know like how do you when you see people who maybe are are really pissed off like we talked about it at the money that's all flowing over there and the fact that some of the people who are just screaming ukraine

are some of the same people that scream some of the woke stuff that that the other side may not like like do you find yourself having trouble trying to convince people to look at the bigger picture here? Well, we always have that problem. We always have that problem. The Americans, unfortunately, are pretty provincial in a lot of ways. I mean, it's very hard, especially since we don't have the Cold War anymore. And the result is that America turned inward and began to focus on internal conflicts. We didn't have an external enemy, so we made enemies of our own people. And some of this competition is backed up by careerism because careers are sometimes, especially in government, doled out on the basis of ideological preferences.

Same in the media. It is indeed difficult to impress on people the importance of having a broader historical understanding and the importance of viewing the events not superficially. I was watching a video somewhere on the internet made by a woman whose Christmas was ruined because of a fight she had with her mother over politics, her mother and her stepfather, and she was crying. And she described how she said to her mother that, I've come to realize that my parents are bad people. Over politics.

Yeah, and of course her mother probably reacted in a similarly extreme manner. But this is all possible. See, we don't want to resemble spiders in a jar, you know, fighting each other over things that don't matter. But that's what it's become more and more in the U.S. And the reason for that is, for one thing, a tendency just to look no further than our own selves, our own identity, our own interests, and at the same time a lack of any kind of interest

in history, a failure to be intellectually serious, and a refusal to recognize how much there is that we don't know. I mean, we've got a battle now in this country, and I say this in all sincerity, between the uneducated, who nonetheless rely on common sense, and the half-educated, who think that they're too smart to be guided by common sense, but who, of course, don't understand the half that they need to know but don't Well, I don't have I think it's because they hold what what happens it's basic human psychology even with this and maybe I'm oversimplifying it a little bit, but They find one thing that pisses them off where they have some great evidence to be like Yeah, there's a good reason. This is pissing me off and then They then therefore decide that anything else to come out of that purview therefore must be tainted and not something

i could pay attention so as an example you see people maybe get upset like i was alluding to earlier that zelensky is this media darling or whatever and i i hear this comparison all the time people will be like oh he's their new fauci or something which i do think is totally unfair i think the guy's the president of a country that's under attack right now and he's doing what he's got to do there's some things i've laid out i disagree with but the people who are feel incentivized to go after him can't recognize anything that might be like the reality of it. Yeah, and they're lazy as well. I mean, they're lazy and they're superficial and they don't want to make the effort that's required. And a lot of, I can't tell you a story that might help

illustrate this. When I was growing up, I grew up in Chicago, and every Sunday morning, there were religious programs, usually evangelical Christians, and oftentimes they had rural, I would say, to be kind, accents, and they spoke at length about the evils of dialectical materialism, which is an aspect of Marxism that I'll get back to in a minute. I was a little kid, and I absolutely hated these religious broadcasts, largely because they interfered with programming that I wanted to see like the cartoons. And these preachers, these evangelicals, for me, were just the epitome of ignorance with their nattering on about dialectical materialism. But even from that early age, I remember the phrase.

Well, the years go by. I go to Moscow. First, I go to Oxford and I study political philosophy. Then I go to Moscow and I studied the Russian ideology. And I finally came to the conclusion that everything that happened in the Soviet Union was based on the Soviet ideology. And then I came to the further conclusion that the essence of the Soviet ideology is dialectical materialism. So all these people whose ignorance I had taken for granted were actually right. Wow. And they understood something that it took me a good 30 years to figure out. Now, of course, this is a lesson for all of us. Yes.

A lot of those people who we consider so ignorant and so unworthy of attention and who are in truth oftentimes not terribly well educated, often understand things that the half educated don't understand. And the half educated would be well advised to moderate their contempt for those people. Yes. And try to, first of all, become fully educated, which, of course, is only going to be very few people, but also try to engage with those who have a different point of view and to try to understand. Now, the half-educated also have their certain insights as well. So it should be a mutual process. And that's a great way to bring it full circle because even from a political stance standpoint there, it has to be a two-way street.

The example you lay out is apolitical in the sense that it applies to all angles. And I think you're spot on when you say that we have a serious problem in this country of recognizing those other points of views. I've mentioned this on some other podcasts but I had heard dr. Phil talking I think it was yeah it was a Joe Rogan podcast somewhat recently he was on as a guest and I can't remember I gotta go back and check this I can never remember this if he was saying he was a part of this study like he was running it or it was his friend who was running it but either way he mentioned the study at a college in california where they brought in like the young

democrats club and the young republican club and they put them all in a room and had them on you know they sat on separate sides of the room had them argue about issues and they were just going at each other like crazy and so after a couple hours of that where they were treating each other like animals he they the study runners made the each person from each side find a counterpart on the other side and had them stand directly across from each other like all separately and they just started with things as simple as stare each other in the eyes for two minutes and basic human connection. And then they work their way towards tell each other where you're from or about your family or your full background, things like that. And they did this for a few hours to the point that people were emotional about it. to a man and woman, every single person in the study in their individual breakout session afterwards to discuss the results mentioned how until they did that exercise,

they never viewed the other person as human. And so, I think... Well, that's, yeah, that's how extreme things have gotten. And that's based on lack of education, unfortunately. You know, we were talking about the great terror. You know, the regime in the United States or the system in the United States prevents a great terror. There's so much that Americans take for granted because they don't have historical knowledge. And as a result, we weaken each other. We weaken our society and we weaken our country. And this excessive aggressivity,

which is confined to a set of cliched issues that actually don't matter, is only possible because people cannot see the broad picture. Yeah. Yeah, and it's not – you know, people have their lives. Normal Americans, like any other country, they have their life to go about and priorities and paying the bills and taking care of their kids and stuff like that. And I don't expect people they're willing to break relationships over, those are the issues where they're obliged to learn a little bit. And to say that I don't have time, I'm too busy tweeting tweeting it's not a good explanation i don't disagree that they're that if you're going to if you're gonna fight about the stuff or fight for your stance you you should have knowledge i i agree i agree with that otherwise remain open and listen right i'm saying that the rest of the population who maybe aren't the ones sending those tweets yeah they get pulled

into having to just get annoyed at this constant bitching and moaning going back and forth and well there are a lot of yeah there are a lot of people who would who would who who would prefer a more harmonious and a more open and reasonable atmosphere. And we have to work for that. And knowledge is a great source. Yeah. Now, on another note, what did you make of the Victor boot forney griner trade that went on and before you answer that question i i do want to say i i think the backlash against britney that certain factions have had

is totally unfair but i i understand that on paper if you're're looking at the value of a trade, we did trade away a very dangerous guy. And it's not like we got someone that's a danger to them, so to speak, back in the trade. Yeah. I'm very sorry that Boot was freed. I'm glad to see that Brittany was freed I'm glad to see that Brittany was freed but I would have preferred it not to be for him because he's a very dangerous

and he's dangerous in this situation she's not a dangerous person she made a mistake she did not use good judgment okay but that can happen to a lot of people yes can you pull the mic in just a

little bit sir and I think I well he was you know the person who supplied arms to practically every civil war and every conflict around the world Soviet arms after the fall of the Soviet Union he He was culpable in hundreds of thousands of people being killed. He found the way. He often armed both sides. He was totally cynical. And those networks still existing can be useful to Russia in the war with Ukraine.

That's one of the reasons why he had to stay in prison. So I'm not, you know, should we have, I mean, you know, I'm sure politics played a role. Yeah. And that's unfortunate. And was the price too high to get her freedom? Well, you know, what can you say? I mean, surely we want to get any American out when they're unjustly locked up or given a sentence that's way out of proportion to anything that they've actually done. Yes. At what cost is always the question.

Yeah, I mean, at what cost? I'm thinking of the young man who was murdered by the North Koreans. Oscar? Yeah, the Ohio student. I mean, Brittany would not have been murdered, presumably, but it's better that she's out. I think had I been in Joe Biden's place or in the place of the administration, I would have tried to exchange her for someone other than Boot. And it sounds like in their defense a little bit, it sounds like they took that off the table. It feels like Russia, perhaps correctly so, realized they had a lot of leverage in this situation. I think they did, and they realized that there would be – this was a case that they could use. Yeah.

Given the politics involved did did did boot have i mean you said he would supply both sides of different civil wars well one side or another to be oh he was how much of it was you know it feels like in russia whenever there's powerful people doing things out in the world they're tied to the russian government but how much of it was like completely on behalf of the Russian government versus – I think it was because he was selling off Russian arms, Soviet arms, surplus arms and putting them exactly where they shouldn't be in civil conflicts where they could be used to just – and he was organizing all of that. So he was organizing all of that. So he was organizing wars, in effect. But there's also, it would be fair to say...

And they were all over the world. It'd be fair to say, though, today, you know, fast forward, there are other people like Victor Boot operating in a very evil way. Oh, sure. Right now. Yeah. Okay. Because that's kind of what, he like it or not essentially what it amounts to is we let him out seven years early he was going to be deported back in seven years and we let him out while this war is going on that's where it really ties in listen uh what's done is done i mean at least uh uh an american citizen has gotten her

freedom and and that's good and uh uh now you know and he's out he's somebody who should have stayed in prison but okay i mean what's done is done and and i'm not uh i'm not you know outraged about it i just think that it's a shame that we couldn't uh couldn't exchange her for someone else whether that you know maybe if we'd been a little bit more patient but then that meant her staying you know in you know sure custody longer shitty situation yeah it was not a good we were not a in a good in a good place with that and it's a warning to Americans generally to be careful when traveling to these countries yeah and I mean I think now it's like why would you even if you're an American why would you even go not at this point yeah she was already there when this yeah no no of course yeah at this point

it's just well alright I mean we should learn from what happened course yeah at this point it's just well all right i mean we should learn from what happened to her yeah and and it's not that there was another guy what was his name paul wheelan oh yeah he's still in the army i and in his case i think the charges are just invented yeah they tried to say it's espionage which is probably well they want to get someone else out for him too i'm sure who else is on the list of like dangerous people like who would be next towards the time i don't know who i don't know who they have in mind but but clearly they're you know they're not they're resisting in his case they think that they can maybe get even more for him i don't know or maybe they don't do you think

there's any world in which putin is not removed from power for someone who's western friendly say so to speak do you think there's any world in which we'll ever see if vladimir putin remains healthy and in power and the situation is resolved we'll ever see you know putin at a g7 summit or any normalization no putin and never again i mean he's responsible for too many mur i mean all these people can be cons who have died in this conflict can be understood as having been murdered yeah uh and no i think that and russia itself will take generations to recover from this in terms of economic integration if ever yeah it's it's amazing how far it fell 30 30 years after the fall of the soviet union yeah no this yeah absolutely feels like they're back at square

zero but we you and i have been talking about another book that had come out recently called putin's people you're talking about this in the car and it was written by belton i think katherine belton there was a guy in there who i hadn't asked you about because i was unaware of him who served as like her main source sergey pugachov yeah right now who who was this guy because you were saying he was oh yeah he was a very much part of the ruling group and he was a banker and very wealthy man he fell out with them or they you know basically they double-crossed him when and this was some years back and he ended up in britain and it's you know carefully trying to expose them expose helix he exposed you know what what it was in his interest to expose and left out what could

actually get him killed uh and uh do you know him a little bit yeah i've seen him over the years um i would not fully rely on him you think he's just scorned because he got that i mean you know that and uh uh i i don't think you know just my knowledge of his life and career suggests to me that he will not share any that he will be very collective selective and what he the end he probably has a lot of good information but not not everything i mean that's a that's a guy being interviewed in the media which is one thing you know he's a public source in that way yeah but what about like behind the scenes obviously it's not like we're going to sit here including you and necessarily no names or anything that's kind of the whole point of it but from a covert perspective how much do you think

that that there's a lot of inroads happening right now with various agencies and governments having a significant growing number of intelligence sources on the ground in russia perhaps even in powerful places or do you think it's been a pretty tight ship where putin has maintained authority and and through through through threats stopped a lot of people from being any help, even if they're motivated to? Well, the thing is, there's a lot of reason to share information, but there's a lot of repression. So I think that people who are outside the country and don't intend to go back are a good source.

I'm not sure how much information you can get in from inside the country right now. Not given the fact that the laws have become much, much more draconian and we don't know where it's going to go. I mean, there could be terror in Russia as well. Yeah. I mean, he was right away when this thing broke out. Yeah. When Saddam Hussein was defeated in the Gulf War, he managed, after the invasion of Kuwait, he managed to hold on to power with the help of mass terror. So we could see something like that.

I mean, I wouldn't count on i mean oh you know our intelligence services no but uh uh i i i wouldn't be confident of that well there was there was another thing i wanted to run by you these guys have a great podcast that talks to a lot of figures in military and intelligence called the team house and there there's a very interesting clip they had because they've been they've had at least in some of the podcasts i've seen and stuff like they've had some people who are knowledgeable about what's going on and everything and have spoken about the importance of of defending ukraine and stuff like that but they just had a dude in who is on the front lines in ukraine i'm gonna read what they wrote here but he was he's basically like training soldiers on on the front lines with

some of the weapons that are being supplied from the west and everything and i'm gonna play the video in our ears and it's it's up behind you there but he had some interesting things to say because this is a man who supports what's going on over there i mean he's on literally the front lines like helping with it but also sees a little bit of the nuance of of some of the the issues with some people on the ukrainian side and and i see something like this, and I worry about this becoming more of a norm and then a fight like this losing all support. Let me play it. And by the way, if you guys hear a skip and we're just talking about this, it's because it's copyright and I can't play it. So the video I will post in the description, but I think we should be able to play this in the corner of the screen, so I'll play it now. It's a corrupt corrupt fucked up society you know so I'm not I'm not a big fan of uh Ukraine

oh what is that this is uh Buffalo Trace um okay and then the Ukrainians are in violation of the Hague Convention. There is a, I forget the exact phraseology, but we looked at this closely, and it's, yeah, there should be no filming of the phrase, the terminology is bringing attention, blah, blah, blah, blah, to media. And yes, the Ukrainians are violating that, you know. Absolutely. And there are, they're filming a number of things that they're doing with POWs is violating law of armed conflict.

And he can't, he can't. Right. Killing Russian prisoners is... Right. And it's interesting because in the past, in, you know, like Latin America or whatever, if U.S. forces or employees were involved with any force that committed, you know, atrocities or whatever, you have to, yeah, you're done.

But we're obviously not going to pull our support from Ukraine at this point. Well, I mean, you know, these violations. Oh, it's atrocities. No, I mean, it still is. I mean, you shouldn't kill dudes who, I mean, everyone knows who surrendered. I mean, and knows who surrendered. I mean, and there was plenty of that. But my point is, it's not about Ukraine.

We're not like, I happen to have, you know, Ukraine flag tied to my bag, but I'm not, oh my God, Ukraine's so awesome. No, because it's, I understand that there are plenty of fucked up people running Ukraine. It's not about that. It's about global norms. Right, right. So what this guy's saying is that, you know, he still, in spite of some of the things he sees, he sees the bigger picture here and sees the threat that an illegal invasion has had from a much bigger nation but it's almost it struck me as he's frustrated that western narratives don't at least point out that like hey while we're doing this let's help fix some of the situation ukraine he's not necessarily

talking about zelensky or anything but in some of the legacy corrupt things that happen there and it does tie all back to some things i at least mentioned earlier where you know you're seeing videos that it's like i feel like they're working against themselves putting them out i'm not just talking about like the sean penn stuff i'm talking about some of the things he's saying where they're showing some of these images of war and again they're they're attacking back against an aggressor, but it does feel like there have been some violations of some internet, as he laid out, of some international agreements on the rules of war and rules and engagements. So should there be more of a message to maybe even from our end to get to a guy like Zelensky and say, hey, chill with being so bendy with some of these agreements because you're going to lose Western support if you keep doing that?

Well, this is a situation we always face when we're backing a country that is, to put it mildly, imperfect. It was the same with the Vietnam War. We were very upset about South Vietnamese corruption and human rights abuses. And that was before the boat people, before Cambodia, before the millions of victims that followed the collapse of South Vietnam. And so the fact is that the shooting of prisoners, if that's indeed going on, and it wouldn't surprise me if it were, is not different. I mean, that the Russians are also shooting prisoners. And that they are committing war crimes on occupied territory. Yes.

Everything began because Ukraine was attacked. Not a single prisoner, a soldier would have been killed. Not a single photograph would have been taken. Not a single abuse would have ever been registered if there had been no war. And it wasn't Ukraine that started the war. And the overall principle has to be understood. I mean, yeah, you can focus on those things, but it does, and it is true that Ukraine was a very corrupt country.

I don't know what the situation is now under the wartime conditions, but Russia was as corrupt, if not more so. And what we're dealing with is a fundamental principle of international relations and world security, that you just don't attack a neighboring country and try and take it over. And it's not Ukraine that, by the way, that's bombing civilian infrastructure or attacking apartment blocks in Russia. It's Russia that's doing that. Yeah. So, I mean, I would not, you know, I would not treat that as a particular, those facts as, you know, they're good to know.

They're not relevant to the question of who to support yeah i and i i do think that's fair i am the reason i bring it up is is because of the people who are paying attention to this lesson are seeing this as an annoyance and then you know they hear tidbits here and there you know they're not fully educated on everything that's going on because it is a very imperfect world and you are no matter who your friend is in the world including with looking inward at your own country you're always going to have elements that are not good there is no place that is even remotely close to perfect so I don't I don't want to hold Ukraine to that standard but I think I'm like a lot of other people where I'd like to see peace and and no war and I'd like to not have the threat of you know some psychos hitting some

red buttons hanging over and until we see some sort of resolution here that is a continuing hanging threat and i think that's very dangerous for humanity but that all said i really appreciate you coming in here again it's a pleasure i always glad to see you julian glad to participate and and i i appreciate you coming up here to do it both times last time you even came in from like france and then by way of new york so i that that was a great episode and people had asked for you back and and i think your perspective is amazing and unique and so so long as this thing may unfortunately go on i i think bringing you through to fill in the blanks on not only some of the things going on, but the history behind everything and why it matters from a precedent perspective, as you got to do a lot today, is awesome for our listeners to get. And I just really appreciate you doing it. Oh, thank you.

And where can everyone you have an article that when this is released is coming out in wall street journal well friday if if i i would ask people who are interested to pick up the wall street journal i've got an article about 100 years of the soviet union got it and you're you've written six books is it is that right five but a sixth is coming because the fifth book is a collection of my articles, and now the publisher wants a second volume of articles. And it's going to be more collections then? Yeah, that will, but I'm working on a seventh book. And what's that going to cover?

That's going to be a history of Russia after the fall of communism. Ooh, okay, I'm in for that one. We'll promote that one when it's coming out. And what's that going to cover? That's going to be a history of Russia after the fall of communism. Ooh. Okay. I'm in for that one. All right. We'll promote that one when it's coming out. All right. For sure. But, Mr. Satter, thank you, and I will see you again.

Thank you, Julian. Take care. Everybody else, you know what it is. Give it a thought. Get back to me. Peace.