Scott Horton Show - Just the Interviews - 10/1/26 Ted Snider on Why the War in Ukraine Isn’t Ending

Episode Date: October 5, 2026

Scott interviews Ted Snider about Ukraine. After years of Western journalists acting like Ukraine had just started turning the tide toward victory, the conflict remains frozen in a bloody stalemate. Scott and Snider dig in and discuss what’s actually going in and why all parties seem unlikely to pull back or stop any time soon. Discussed on the show: “The Myth Of A Turning Tide In Ukraine” (Libertarian Institute) “Canada Has A Ukrainian Blindspot” (Libertarian Institute) “Ukraine’s Deep Drone Strikes Bring Danger” (Libertarian Institute) Ted Snider is a Fellow at The Libertarian Institute. He has a graduate degree in philosophy and writes on analyzing patterns in U.S. foreign policy and history. He is a regular writer for Truthout, MondoWeiss and antiwar.com. To support Ted’s work, you can make a PayPal contribution at [e-mail].  Sign up for the Scott Horton Academy of Foreign Policy and Freedom at scotthortonacademy.com For more on Scott's work: Check out The Libertarian Institute: https://www.libertarianinstitute.org Check out Scott's other show, Provoked, with Darryl Cooper https://youtube.com/@Provoked_Show Read Scott's books: Provoked: How Washington Started the New Cold War with Russia and the Catastrophe in Ukraine https://amzn.to/43D82oY (The audiobook of Provoked is being published in sections at https://scotthortonshow.com) Enough Already: Time to End the War on Terrorism: https://amzn.to/4eMQblu Fool’s Errand: Time to End the War in Afghanistan https://amzn.to/4a5fKvx Follow Scott on X @scotthortonshow And check out Scott’s full interview archives: https://scotthorton.org/all-interviews This episode of the Scott Horton Show is sponsored by: Tax Attorney Matt Sercely https://agoristtaxadvice.com; Moon Does Artisan Coffee https://scotthorton.org/coffee; Tom Woods’ Liberty Classroom https://www.libertyclassroom.com/dap/a/?a=1616 and Dissident Media https://dissidentmedia.com; and Crowdhealth https://www.joincrowdhealth.com/ (use promocode Horton) You can also support Scott’s work by making a one-time or recurring donation at https://scotthorton.org/donate/ or https://patreon.com/scotthortonshow Audio cleaned up with the Podsworth app: https://podsworth.com Use code HORTON50 for 50% off your first order at Podsworth.com to clean up your voice recordings, sound like a pro, and also support the Scott Horton Show! Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Yes, sir, it's the Scott Horton show brought to you by expat money. That's expatmoney.com slash Scott. Ladies and gentlemen of the press have been less than honest reporting to the American people. What's going on in this country? We're dealing with Hitler revisited. This is the Scott Horton show. Libertarian foreign policy, mostly. When the president visit, that means that it is not only...

We're going to take out seven countries in five years. They don't know what the fuck they're doing. Negotiate now. End this war. And now, here's your host, Scott Horton. All right, you guys. Once again, introducing Ted Snyder. And he is, of course, something or other fellow at the Libertarian Institute.

And, well, he writes for the American Conservative magazine. I always do this during the intro instead of before it. Sorry. Hang me along. Here we go. He writes for TAC and he writes for responsible statecraft. And most importantly, he writes for the Libertarian Institute at Libertarian Institute. At libertarian institute.org.

And we're very happy to have them and all of this great stuff. Hey, welcome back to the show, Ted. How you doing it? Thanks, Scott. I'm doing my right. Thanks for having me back on. Hell yeah. Happy to have you here.

A bunch of great stuff to talk about. But, well, you know, I want to start with this. Tom Woods interviewed me the other day on his show, and he asked me kind of a raw question, and I didn't really know how to answer it other than kind of just my uninformed speculation. But the question was, what is all this hype about the Europeans, at least alleging to be convinced, alleging they are convinced

that Russia is preparing to attack them and attack NATO and start the Third World War. Is there anything to that? And I mean, it doesn't seem to me like there is and obviously there's just domestic politics inside the European countries and whatever kind of, that was my simple explanation for it, but I don't really know.

So I was just wondering, I mean, I obviously doubt that I'd have to be convinced. And again, I screwed up before about stuff. So I don't know. What do you think? You know, Zelensky raised this of the General Assembly speeches the other day, like in front of the whole world. Zelensky made two claims. The first was that Russia is going to invade a European or NATO country.

The second more extraordinary claim he made was that they have the intelligence evidence for this. And that's just a lie. They don't. If you do a survey of Baltic countries, which is where he says they're going to invade, Lithuania, Latvia and Estonia, their intelligence agencies all say they have no evidence of an imminent conventional attack. Now, I said conventional, Scott, because they are worried about sabotage and cyber attacks and things like that coming from Russia. And as Ukraine offshores their drone production to Europe, you know, remember, Russia tries to strike drone manufacturing plants with missiles, right? If you move them into Europe, you know, that raises those sorts of dangers.

But there's no evidence of Russia planning any kind of conventional attack other than sabotage or cyber stuff. And it's not only the Baltic states that say that the U.S., I just forgot his name. He's the U.S. NATO Europe commander says that there's no evidence. The head of NATO says that there's no evidence. So if you ask any intelligence agency, there's absolutely no evidence of a conventional Russian attack on a NATO or European country. I think where this comes from is that Ukraine constantly needs to manufacture motivations to keep Europe in the war. And the most recent one was the turning tide story that Ukraine had turned the tide and was winning the war. The turning tide turned out to be disaster when Zelensky announced his 40-day campaign.

to, you know, long-range strike Russia into submission, so they'd have to negotiate. All that happened is Putin said, okay, you just opened a Pandora's box. You started attacking civilian structure in our cities. And we have ballistic and hypersonic missiles where you have drones. And Russia just did immeasurably more damage Ukraine.

So when the turning the tide narrative failed to keep the world in the war, Ukraine had to manufacture something else. And the best way to keep Europe in the war is to say that if you don't help in Ukraine, you're next. And that's where it came from. But I would argue that from an intelligence perspective, there is zero evidence suggesting that Russia's planning a conventional attack on a European country.

And then the European leaders, they're basically just playing along and pretending to believe this crap. So some of them are. So you know, you get like Poland saying that and you get, you know, France saying that, the leaders of the Baltic countries who you'd think would be the one saying it the most,

they're actually, like, cut it out. This was really dangerous rhetoric that you're engaging in, and they're actually saying, no, that's not happening. Now, look, man, I admit, my attention is just too divided, and so I'm, like, scraping headlines here barely. You remember? I remember. Have there been, aren't there, like, you know, alarming reports?

of drone incursions in Estonia and this kind of thing. Can you run down some of those for us? Yeah, like you, I don't know if I can remember the whole list, but there's been reports of drone incursions. There's been reports of, you know, missiles falling in places. And this stuff's all tough to read, Scott, because first of all, it's really hard to determine whether these are Ukrainian ones that have gone off target

because they cross the Baltic states when they strike Russia too. Are they Ukraine ones that have gone off target? Are they Russian ones that have gone off target? Are they Russian missiles that Ukraine electronically jammed? And so they went off target? Are they, you know, unarmed missiles that are Russian warnings? It's really hard to make anything of this.

I think the concern, even amongst the European leaders, they tend to say there's a risk of a missile accidentally hitting a NATO country, as opposed to them really worrying that a real drone attack, a real missile attack, is going to hit them. I think what the European countries, especially the Baltic countries, are most worried about. And I'm not an expert on this, Scott. But I think what they're most worried about are cyber attacks. And I think they're worried about sabotage.

I think they're worried that as Europe gets more and more directly engaged in the war, and as more and more weapons are being manufactured in Europe so that Russia can't strike them in Ukraine, I don't think they're really worried that Russia is going to strike them. But they're worried about things like fires and sabotage and sort of low-level warfare. I think they are worried about that. But I don't think they're worried at all about a conventional attack that would, you know, drag NATO into the war. I don't think they're worried about that really at all.

Yeah. And look, despite the fact that Trump and Biden are not exactly the same on this kind of thing, if you go back to the beginning of November of 2021, when the CIA was like, you know, all points, bulletin, the Russians are building up, preparing to invade Ukraine, and here's all the intel we got. Front page, Washington Post. Even if Trump would not wish that,

that would be on the front page of the Washington Post anyway, if the CIA really thought that that was true, that, oh, my God, the Russians really are building up and preparing to attack NATO. Yeah. Mr. President, somebody slapped this guy around. We got to switch and change the subject. from Iran back to Europe right now, that's not happening at all.

Oh, no. And the world's biggest loudmouthedist guard dog of all is not barking about this. Yeah, the U.S. isn't barking about this at all, either the White House or intelligence or military. And look, Scott, I mean, I mean, let's be honest. Russia's bogged down in this four and a half year war. in Ukraine, in the absence of a major mobilization, they don't have the manpower to turn their army

on another European country, for starters. And the second point, and I've made this point over and over again, and it's like it's something that just no one in the West hears, but Russia was really, really clear that the key reason they went to war with Ukraine in the first place was to prevent a war with NATO. NATO. It would be ludicrous for them to use the war as an excuse to go to war with NATO. The whole war in Ukraine was to avoid war with NATO. They're not going to use the war in Ukraine

to go to war with NATO. That's why they're fighting. It's a preposterous, it's a preposterous claim that this is really just a cloak for Putin to go to war with NATO. He's doing it not to go to war with NATO. Well, and how absolutely cornered and helpless would the Russian regime have to be to resort to a nuclear war. And they're winning. Maybe not by a lot, but they're winning. You know, it depends how you measure a lot. Like, I would actually argue that at this moment,

they're kind of winning by a lot. I mean, yes, but I guess I just mean slowly, right? They're not just like maneuver warfare, going wherever they want and running the table, doing whatever they want. But I'm just saying their back is not to the wall. We're like, oh, my God, they're about to lose Crimea and Donyesk.

No, they're not. That whole turning the tide thing was a bunch of crap, as you just talked about. It was just a much propaganda. Yeah. And as we saw with the escalation of 23, I mean, they wrote this in the Wall Street Journal that really they know that the escalation, it won't work,

but the counteroffensive, it won't work, but they're trying to demonstrate to the allies that they still got some fight in them. And so essentially it's just PR. They're throwing their own guys away and a, you know, fields full of minds, just to keep, you know, Britain and Germany pumping in the money.

They have to keep, they have to keep uranium. Look, look, Zelensky kept Ukrainians nourished on the war with very large claims of winning back all of their territory, of NATO membership. He stayed everything on this, and it's been a disaster. They're not going to get NATO. They haven't won territory.

They've lost more territory. He can't just sign and finish now. They'll literally kill him. Literally kill him. They have to keep Europe in the war. And Europe needs to stay in the war. They've staked everything. Billions of dollars, ruined economies,

everything that they can show they can win this war. These are desperate attempts to stay in the war. And when you talk about who's winning and who's losing, the West is always obsessed with measuring wars on territory gain. And by that measure, no, Ukraine. Russia is only winning it very, very slowly. But, you know, Russia has been very clear. This war was never about territory gained.

And so as long as you keep measuring it that way, you're going to keep mismeasuring the war. This war has always been about forcing Ukraine into a position that they'd be willing to sign a legally binding document that they'll never join NATO, as they promised when they became an independent country in the first place. And secondly, some kind of protection of the rights of ethnic minorities in Ukraine,

which if this war had never happened, could have meant keeping Donbass in Ukraine, but with a certain degree of autonomy, that's gone now. So now it's probably going to mean recognizing some kind of independence or the Donbass being part of Russia. But it was never about winning maximal territory in Ukraine or conquering all of Ukraine.

It was about getting those two concessions. Note Ukraine in NATO and protection. for ethnic rights. So you can't measure this war in terms of territory. Hey guys, me here for crowd health at join crowdhealth. com slash Horton. And what it is is it's a replacement for insurance. It's not insurance.

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I mean, it was crucial for them to seize the entire Azov coast in the so-called land bridge from Donetsk to Crimea and reopen the freshwater resources to Crimea. And, you know, once the war started, those minimal land goals became more important, does Crimea? In September of 22, after the one big success of the Ukraine in Le Honsk and in Kurson, then that was when Putin got mad and called up another 300,000 men and declared that he's also, by the way, annexing Ziprocia and Kursan,

which, you know, he still only controls about, you know, half of, of Ziprocia, I guess, and two-thirds of Kurson, but one-third of Kursons on the other side of the river. So if he's going to actually take that, which is officially enshrined in the law now, then we got still potentially years of fighting ahead. Yeah, and time will tell. I mean, I think, you know, Crimea and Donbos,

those are done deals for Russia, whether they'll in the end insist on more territory or whether that might still be negotiable. We'll see. And these claims increased and the greater mobilization you talked about increased when Ukraine was pushed to walk away from a peace deal. When Ukraine started attacking oil and civilian sites, those goals changed as Russia tried to get more of a buffer zone. And I totally agree with you on all those territorial stuff. But I think when it when it, the bottom line in the end is that Russia's goal wasn't to acquire territory.

It was to inquire security guarantees and protection for, you know, ethnic Russians. You know, remember, had Russia and Putin wanted the Donbass, they could have taken it in 2014, either when Putin had licensed from Parliament to go ahead and take it, he had the easy ability to take it militarily then. He also could have recognized the referendums in the Donbass calling for autonomy, and he didn't recognize them. In fact, he discouraged that Donbass room taken. So had they wanted Donbass, they could have done it through referendum. They could have done it militarily.

They didn't because they didn't want Donbass. It became something they felt they had to do once this war started going, you know, certain ways. But this wasn't about territory. This was about forcing Ukraine to make concessions on the negotiating table. And I think if you measure the war that way and you look at, the loss of life, the economic and infrastructure damage, the military and economic helplessness that Ukraine is in, the serious risk now that whatever happens at the end of the war,

Ukraine will be a country that's so damaged, that it'll take decades and hundreds of billions of dollars to repair. They can't sustain this forever. They are getting pushed into this position. So I don't think the war is being won on territory, although it's slowly being one there also. It's being one in these other ways, which is becoming very desperate for Ukraine,

who's running out of people, and I mean that in two ways, Scott. They're running out of soldiers in the front line, but they're literally running out of people. I mean, the population of Ukraine is disappearing. The economy of Ukraine is disappearing. They can't export things anymore. Plants are closing down.

The bridges and roads and railways that bring goods and weapons into, Ukraine are being annihilated, the energy infrastructure is being annihilated. Now even data centers are being annihilated. There's local shortages of food. It's like the situation Ukraine is becoming terrible. And every time the West steps in to help Ukraine stay in the war, all we're doing is prolonging the inevitable ending and making it worse and worse and worse and worse for Ukraine. It's not only time to settle Ukraine, it's time to apologize to Ukraine. Yeah, well, as you said, Zelensky's in between a rock and a hard place there because, you know, all Western pressure aside, he's got neo-Nazis that'll blow his head right off if he makes a negotiated deal.

I guess he could have the CIA do a big purge and help him round up, Dmitri Yaros and Andrew Boleski and some of the most dangerous these guys. What do you think? You know, he's doing the opposite, right? He's doing the opposite. When you hear in the news right now that Ukraine is making some gains in the battlefield in the last couple of days. That's Pelletsky and then. The battalion that strings as the third battalion, which is the renamed Azov Battalion,

which is the extreme right-wing nationalist like Fuletsky. This is Zolensky increasingly turning to those nationalists to, you know, to sort of keep them alive. And this is having political ramifications too because, you know, Ukraine's in a major political cultural war with Poland right now. Because Poland's really angry with Ukraine for they're continuing to honor these extreme nationalist elements because these are the same nationalist elements, you know, that massacre Poles in World War II. And it's more important to Zelensky to honor those nationalists for domestic reasons.

Yeah. Even when it's against the risk of losing Poland. And Poland has been, you know, one of Ukraine's most important and major. supporters during this war. That's one of those where you can read the story in the news if you're looking for it. But for some reason, it's not front page above the fold of the New York Times that, like, Ukraine brings another Nazi war hero home and gives him a proper burial with torches and flags and marching and all the heroic ceremonial, whatever, including Andrew Melnick, who is the head

of the OUNM, who was, you know, one of Hitler's henchmen during World War II. And you're talking about massacre polls, massacre polls, the likes of which, you know, only Eastern Europe has ever seen in that era. You know what I mean? Like, God dang, did they do the Holocaust against the polls there and the Jews, too? And we don't, we don't, we don't, now Western Ukraine, what was then Eastern Poland. Yeah, and we don't, not only do we not talk about in the West, we deny it in the West. We just won't.

And, you know, that's one of things. I think I wrote a piece also for the Liberty Institute recently about, you know, Canada's blind spot to Ukraine. Because when Canada says that they're increasing their partnership with Ukraine because we have, you know, these cultural agreements we're on the same page. You know, that's completely false, right? That's completely false. Not only does Canada not share those nationalist, you know, elements. But, you know, Canada, and I'm a Canadian, I live in Canada. Canada is a country that's based on plurality.

We have a bilingual country. You know, all those things that Ukraine won't do because they follow this monist vision where you suppress the other language, you suppress the other culture. These are antithetical to Canada. And yet, you know, Mark Carney, the Prime Minister for Canada, comes out and makes statements like we're entering 100-year partnership with Ukraine because we're, you know, aligned in our values and stuff. Well, Poland doesn't think we're aligned in their values

and Kovac doesn't think we're aligned in their values. So, no, this is... And that's crucial, too, because, I mean, look, hard feelings about World War II is one thing, but right now, Poland and Ukraine both have this severe interest in resisting Russia together and Poland and helping Ukraine. Poland has a real political reason to turn a blind eye to all this old stuff. But then, for the Ukraine,

are just rubbing it right in their face in a way that's so detrimental to their overall position. But again, Zelensky has to please these Nazis or else. He's going to be doing this otherwise, Ted. Yeah, and Scott, it's not only detrimental to the war. It's detrimental to Ukraine's EU aspirations because the neglect of human rights is one of the things that's keeping Ukraine out of the European Union. And of course, the other one is the rampant corruption. in Ukraine that's keeping them out of the European Union.

And Zelensky is facing a kind of rebellion from his own party in Kiev on this right now too, because the European Union is demanding these corruption reforms before they're released more money to Ukraine. And Zelensky's party is refusing to vote for those corruption reforms because they've done from the corruption too much. So that's stopping Europe from pumping money into Ukraine. So Ukraine's going bankrupt and they're not stopping the corruption and prevent the bankruptcy. They're being kept out of the EU and they're not stopping the, you know, the, the, the, um,

human rights abuses to get them into the EU. So everything they're doing is losing the war, losing the European Union, losing their people. And they blown their budget, right? I mean, everyone said this new young guy who was the defense minister there was so innovative in high tech. And he built this huge drone force and launched this big war and, uh, you know, drone war against the Russians. And then, but at least they said that he blew the year's military budget in half.

half a year. That was why he got fired. I don't know if that's really true, but it was like he got way out over his skis. No one was going to make up that difference. Now what are they going to do? Yeah, and I don't know if that's true. I don't know if that's why he really got fired. But, but yeah, and Scott, it's even worse than that because as Ukraine launches these massive drone swarms into Russia, and Russia adapts. And so fewer and fewer of these drones are hitting their targets, which means Ukraine has to launch more and more and more expensive drones for fewer and fewer and fewer strikes. The ratio of the cost benefit becomes exorbitant, becomes incredibly expensive. And there's other problems too. I mean, the Ukrainian economy is decimated, but the war

efforts becoming incredibly expensive that way, whereas Ukraine is using these, you know, jet-fueled, jet-powered, geron drones and these really inexpensive banderol cruise missiles. So, and, and, and, Ukraine has no more air defenses. So Russia is launching very inexpensive things and hitting all of their targets, whereas Ukraine's launching hundreds and thousands of drones hitting very few of their targets. So it's becoming economically unviable. Then you've combined that with what's happened in Odessa,

where the ports are closed. Ukraine can't export 70% of its wheat, steel plants are closing, its mines, because they're losing by some estimates of Odessa, Scott, But they're losing $70 million a day because, you know, in Adessa, because they started attacking Russia, shipping and infrastructure, Russia attacked back. So, you know, Ukraine just, Europe just gave Ukraine something like $90 billion. And Zelensky went back and told them, you know, we need another $27 billion. And Europe was like, compared to the $90 billion, just go.

And they're not releasing that additional money, partly because, future funds depends on Ukraine getting rid of this corruption that's, because it's part of the corruption that's swallowing this money, Scott. It's not just Fedorov who did the drones. It's also that Ukraine keeps signing contracts, military contracts, with companies who aren't doing anything. You give them billions of dollars to do nothing, and then you sign another contract with them.

And Ukraine has lost billions of dollars in corruption, in, you know, military contracts and stuff. And Europe's nervous about giving more money until some of this corruption gets sealed up because the money just disappears down a black hole somewhere. Yeah, I think I know what's going on here, Ted. Russia Gate, it's said it's Anthony Blinken as the Russian spy. And he did all of this to inflict a strategic defeat on the West

by, you know, obligating us to spend these hundreds, of billions of dollars on this impossible conflict and dragging this whole terrible thing out. What do you think? Yeah, and I think you're obviously right. Yeah, it's like, you know, the war? We're just joshing around for the Trump. Come on.

But we are with every weapon we send to Ukraine. We are allowing them, we are allowing a war that Ukraine is going to lose to go on. And at the end of it, Ukraine's not going to have their territory, They're not going to have NATO. They're not immediately going to even have the European Union. But the thousands of Ukrainians are dying.

You know, everybody keeps talking about the number of Russians that are dying. I think those are grossly exaggerated numbers. But we have very good reason to believe that those very same numbers, $30,000 a month is how many Ukrainians are dying in the battlefield. Partly because Udanov. For overall casualties, I think, was what they were saying, right? Yeah, deaths and casualties bad enough to keep a soldier from, returning to the field.

Poland's president said Ukrainian intelligence told them the number for Ukraine is 27,000 a month. And Budanov said we need to get 30,000 a month to stay even. These are obscene numbers of people being killed or having their life ruined in a war that's going to end the same way it's been going to end since the first day. And the longer we keep this thing going, the more Ukraine loses for no foreseeable game. Yeah. You know, it sucks too. too, because it's sort of like people don't even care about this anymore.

There are so many other things going on. Attention is so divided. And so, you know, it could be, Ted, that honestly, like, what you're saying here might be expressing the consensus in Washington, at least after hours, that, like, they know this too. But then there's no pressure on them to stop. There's pressure on them to not betray our noble, heroic friends for all their sacrifices and all that.

But the parallel to Vietnam and Afghanistan are just too obvious. That like, look, you can sit here and cry about it all you want. You can protest. I don't mean in the hippie way in the street, but I mean you can complain about it all you want. But there's essentially nothing we can do to prop up the South Vietnamese regime that's going to work and last because they just don't have the consent of the government here. Same thing with Afghanistan.

It's not exact parallel here, but it is in the sense of just overwhelming power of the enemy, and the only thing that could stop them, presumably, as far as I know, what the hell I'll give them the benefit of the doubt, would be the U.S. Army and Marine Corps and Navy and Air Force on the ground and engaged in the air and sea there doing everything they can to take it to the Russians. But if they do that, then we all die in a hydrogen bomb war. And so that's why Joe Biden said, we're not doing that. Joe Biden's like, come on, kook, that would be World War III. he was doing that.

Yeah, even Trump said that to Zelensky and that disaster Sovolapa's meeting, you know, even, you know, Trump said that too. And, you know, the Russian nuclear doctrine is really clear that if the, you know... Oh, sure. Yeah, nobody even questions that, dude. So, in other words, just like you say, we got our friends in a fight that they can't win

and they're just getting a crap beat out of them too. And it's, as you say, too, not just like the civilian casualties and there have been, you know, strikes against civilian targets, including the other day in Kiev and elsewhere. But also just the overall war against Ukrainian civilization. That's just taking place at the hands of the Russians, but also of the Kiev regime and the West, you know, devouring the country in order to support the state at war.

And so you have, you know, all the people, as you mentioned here, conscripted and fed into the meat grinder, which must hurt really bad. Then also you have all the people who've already fled, millions of people who've already fled, and they already had the lowest, you know, birth replacement rate in Europe, you know, to start with. Most of those people are never going to come home again.

Yeah. Yeah, life expectancy for Ukrainian man right now is 57 years old. It's like their death rate's higher than their life rate. And, you know, keep in mind, too, we know we've talked about this, Scott, you know, we've talked about this many times that the West pushed Ukraine to fight this war. for the right to join NATO when Ukraine was willing,

at the very first negations, the war, to give up the right to join NATO. So we're pushing Ukrainians to fight for the right for something that they don't even want the right to. Even today, even today, polling in Ukraine shows, and I'm assuming this polling does not include Donbass and Crimea, as we're talking about Western Ukraine, even today polling shows that only 60% of those people

even want to join Ukraine. So if you were to put the country back together again, so we pushed Ukraine to fight for the right to join an organization that they were willing in the first day of the war. Right. To negotiate away. Hey, guys, if you sign up for my substack at Scott Horton Show.com, then you get all the shows a day early and without ads. Pretty good, right? Scott Horton Show.com.

All right, you guys, me here for expatmoney.com slash Scott. And what it is is it's this great guy, Mikkel Thorup, and, he's a world traveler and a real expert in what you can do to buy property and invest in property overseas, protect your assets, and look into even living overseas if that is your interest. And if you just go to expatmoney.com slash Scott, you can get this free handy booklet, plan B residences and instant citizenships. That's expatmoney.com slash Scott. Mmm, Moondos artisan coffees.

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Scott Horton show flavored coffee. It's part Sumatran and part Ethiopian, all mixed together and tastes so good in the morning and also in the mid-afternoon. if you start getting sleepy. Scott Horton.org slash coffee. Get you some. And Joe Biden said in his exit interview at Time Magazine

in the summer of 2004 that like, hey, look, I'm the guy who said they can never join NATO. Like, yeah, but you're the guy who refused to put it in writing. Jerk. Oh, I mean, when Russia gave the security proposal for the war and asked for that, the Americans told them it's not even on the table. So, so, and they, you know, they told them that that's not even on the table, it's going to happen. And, you know, Ukraine, I mean, I just said, Ukraine was willing in the, even, you know, the very first days of the war to give that up.

But that's what we're fighting for because because the U.S. State Department said on the first days of the war, it's still, I think, the most horrible quote from the war that this war is in many ways bigger than Russia. it's bigger than Ukraine. It's about core principles, like countries' right to join the alliances they want to join. And Ukraine saying, like, we don't want to join. And yet they were pushed to go to war to fight for the right to join an organization that they were willing not to join.

It's an open door, which is actually just some jargon and doesn't mean anything, but it's also a sacred principle. And it's not even an open door because NATO doesn't say any country can join NATO. NATO says that they have the right to invite a country to join. It's not even true that countries just have the right to say it won.

Oh, yeah, no, of course not. Open door, yeah, only means that no third country's objections will be taken into account. Because the way they turn it around is they go, well, does anyone here agree that Russia has veto power over who's allowed to join, and then no one raises their hand and they go, okay, then. Right.

So. Right. Well, man, there was one more thing I was going to ask you about the war here. Oh, I know. Well, there's a couple more things, but one of them was, about your piece about, you know, maybe what's left of Ukraine will end up having to tilt back toward Russia in the end because of, you know, EUing and a one and that kind of thing. But I kind of have an opposite theory, which is that the more that Russia wins and takes

on the ground there, oh, you know what? Well, remind me to bring up Kushner a second if I forget, but it seems to me like the more they take on the ground there, the more people who like Russia become literal Russians. The Russians draw the border around them. And then, so they're leaving fewer and fewer people in Ukraine who like them and more and more percentage-wise who hate their cuts and especially after all these years of war. And so it seems to me like even if they take, um, it's a proja and Kersan and, you know, all of the Donbass.

Yeah. Then they're going to say, well, you know, we have all these Russian speakers because it's sort of a gray scale from ethnic Russians to ethnic Ukrainians and plus speakers and culturally, nationally, whatever, how these things are, you know. And so they could say, look, the Russian speakers of Harkiv and Sumi and Denepro Petrovask and whatever, I'm never going to say that right. Screw you guys. I don't care. That those provinces, those oblasts, east of the Nipa River, that, well, we have to protect them too, right? Because now they are a much smaller minority

left at the tender mercies of Bledsky and his Nazi regime, or at least whoever is the president and his Nazi Third Army Corps who's still going to be fighting from the other side of the river. So it seems like, you know, in the self-licking ice cream cone sense, the Russians have really no choice but to go all the way to the river. And that can take a very long time.

And then even after that, what's left to rump Ukraine is going to be run by Nazis. It's going to be run by people who strictly enforce their no Russian speaking aloud. And we're all Ukrainian, you know, ethnic Ruthenians or whatever the hell it is now. And so and then what the hell of the Russians going to do? Because even if they smash the state, you still have its western Ukraine where they have forests and swamps in the Carpathian Mountains and NATO allies to come. continue to arm an insurgency, which remember, that was their plan in the first place. They assumed that the Russians would destroy the Ukrainian military and that we'd be backing an

insurgency all along. That was, they called it the Afghanistan plan and all of those things at the beginning. So it seems to me like the Russians have kind of painted themselves into, you know, one of these things like, just like an American, you know, a politician or set of generals would do and, you know, make a mistake and then have to keep reinforcing it. in making it worse? I think that's a great point. And I think that remember before the war with Russia,

there was a war with the Ukraine. You know, and I think that even after war with Russia's over, Ukraine risks still having civil war or still risks having extreme nationalists right in the country. I think all things are things going to happen there. I think Russia doesn't want that, but I think Russia can live with that

if they're not a NATO country because their fear was that this hostile country being in NATO. Right. Coming into Dombasa, Karmay who make a NATO war. And I think that in the first years after the war, the hatred towards Russia

and of what's left of Ukraine will be intense. And I think who Ukraine turns to, and by the way, this isn't my original idea. I have to credit this to, you know, Professor Jeffrey Roberts and Cork, who first came up with this idea that Ukraine might have to turn to Russia. And what I argue with that article

is that, you know, Ukraine might not have a choice. When they turn to the West, who they, you know, the whole thing in 2014, you know, with the desire to turn to the West, when they turn to the West and says, okay, we're done, we fought your war. And they find a West saying, thank you, but you can't be in NATO. Thank you, but you can't be in the European Union. And they find themselves betrayed and abandoned by the West. They may have nowhere to turn, but to the East. And whether that can happen, I think, will depend on two things.

If the war keeps going really badly and Ukraine, you know, really gets destroyed, then I think that hatred for Russia will be embedded. That'll be, if the war ends, and there's a settlement, and Ukraine has a sovereign country, and if there's security guarantees, and if Russia plays a leading role in reconstructing Ukraine, then faced with a West who's shutting them out, Ukraine may find themselves inevitably and naturally turning to the only place they can, which is Russia, where there are familial ties and there are cultural and religious and linguistic ties.

And I think this will take time. I think that this won't happen overnight. But I think the argument is that Ukraine might find themselves in a position, ironically, at the end of the war, that the only poll that will open the door to them, is Russia and not Europe. Yeah. I could see that too, you know. What the hell are the Europeans kind of do

with the Western Ukrainian basket case as well? And, you know, some guy, I don't know exactly, I think the story was that it was the father of a dead soldier, but I don't know, maybe the Russians put him up to it or what, but some guy ran up behind Andrew Perubi and put a bullet in his head. He was one of the most powerful of the Nazis in Ukraine. And, you know, I mean, there are a lot of guys, but they only have so many, you know, powerful leaders of their groups

and that kind of thing. So, you know, I don't know, usually decapitation strategies backfire, but not always. I mean, those groups enjoy low-level, you know, voter support amongst Ukraine. They've got exaggerated power because of their radicalness and military ability that, you know, Zelensky's need for them. But it's not like 90% of Ukrainians are going to want to go in that direction after the war.

But there'll be a real force after the war. And they might prevent an end to the war. Yeah. And, you know, Gordon Hahn, I think, nominated Beletsky as most likely to do a coup d'etat and just cease power. He's, you know, General Beletsky of the Third Army Corps now, his men do what he says. And you know what? Maybe you remember if you've seen this same thing. I can't remember my footnote anymore.

I need to go back and find this. But I read a thing about how the Third Army Corps has an entire separate chain of command from the rest of the military and they're directly connected to the Americans in Germany and how they have their own separate supply chains and everything. Because they're like the Alnoster in Syria. They like fighting, man. They rely on them to go and get the job done. They don't steal the money.

They spend the money on the weapons and they use them in the fight. And so the Americans are like, all right, we like these guys. They actually do what they say they're going to do. and they set up kind of a whole different supply chain of command with Voletsky and his Third Army Corps there. I did not know that. I hadn't heard that. I need to find that again.

I need to find that again. But, you know, I got a Google alert for his name. And it seems like whenever any Ukrainian division makes any gain anywhere, is, you know, temporary as it may be. It's him and his guys. Or even if, like, some other guys need a rescue, his guys come in and get him out of there. Right.

It is that third battalion that does. that. The problem is there's been such an attrition of the forces in Ukraine. There's these mild wide holes in the front that Russia exploits that when you move Belaskin's their battalion to shore one up, you just open these wider gaps somewhere else. It's not a long-term solution because there's not enough people to keep filling these holes. And if it's true, they're losing 30,000 men from the battlefield a month. And it seems to be true. You know, that's 300. 60,000 people in the next year. It's like, these are atrocious numbers and they're not sustainable.

And this is probably most of the real Nazi groups, you know, the core of right sector and Azov and the National Guard and then the Third Army Corps that they've already been killed. You know, I mean, I don't know how, you know, quickly they're, they can indoctrinate them as fast as they're conscripting them. I think probably not, you know what I mean? That whole generation of kids who went through those camps in. in the post-Myodon, you know, Azov movement era,

they're probably already all dead. Yeah, and put aside even to the larger general problem of conscription in general and the problem of busification and the pushback amongst Ukrainians and the number of people who do get drafted, who just leave, you know, the numbers are incredible. Like there's just, I think the lesson where I read is that

there's 2 million Ukrainians avoiding the draft and 200,000. soldiers who have abandoned their posts. I mean, these are astonishing numbers because there's not that many people to draw from anymore, right? So it's not even a problem of recruiting, you know, a nationalist who will really, really fight. Oh, and Ted, all the footage of the guys being conscripted off the street. I mean, I must have seen a hundred of these by now.

It's like something out of a movie. You know, it's a nightmare. Some guys walk in with his wife and they come and beat that crap out of them and throw them in the back of a white van and peel out and drive away. And then he's a dead man. He'll be dead in three days because they're just going to send him out there to get blowed up for nothing, you know? I read this thing.

Hell, this is a year ago now, but it was like this British kid, this English kid, Doc convinced he wanted to go and be a hero and do this thing. And they said, okay, your first mission is there's two guys out there and those trees that are stranded without ammunition. And you and this other guy got to bring them ammunition. So go for it. So they're like, okay. And they start running out there and immediately a rush.

drone finds them and blows him up. And he's like an 18-year-old English kid. He's got no business there whatsoever. Whatever he imagined about running around with a rifle shooting at guys and whatever. Nope. He just went out there and died. Like, same thing with so many of these people.

And then, yeah, but I'm sorry, I'm off on the tangent. The guys getting kidnapped, the press gangs, kidnapping conscripts off the streets and forcing them in like this. You know, they talk about, you know, we always do. You can't help it, right? You talk about Kiev, this, or the, Ukrainians, that or whatever.

And you mean the political government, the military leadership, whatever. But let us not believe, as Woodrow Wilson falsely claimed about the Americans in World War 1, that we had volunteered en masse. That's what the draft is. When the country volunteers, meaning no individuals have the right to opt out, you know what I mean? Come on. At the beginning of this war, I think Ukrainians did volunteer en masse.

And that's just, it's not the case anymore. It's not the case. Yeah, or certainly not enough anyway, you know? All right. Anyway, I've kept you too long. Thank you so much for coming back on the show, Ted. Thanks for all your great writing at the Institute and everything. Check out Ted Snyder, everybody at the Libertarian Institute. He's also at the American Conservative and responsible statecraft.

And oh, I meant to apologize for the giant thing on my face. I got a skin cancer biopsy thing. So it's not the world's most embarrassing Zitt. It's a skin cancer biopsy thing, Ted. Leave me alone. All right. I got to go. Bye, everybody.

Thanks, God. This Scott Horton show is brought to you by the Scott Horton Academy of Foreign Policy and Freedom, Roberts and Roberts, Brokridge, Inc., Moondos Artisan Coffee, Tom Woods Liberty Classroom, and APS Radio News. Subscribe in all the usual places and check out my books, fools errand, enough already, and my latest, Provote, how Washington started the new Cold War with Russia and the catastrophe in Ukraine. Find all of the above at Scotthorton.org, and I'm serializing the audiobook of Provote at Scotthorton Show.com and Patriot. dot com slash scott horton show bumpers by josh langford music intro and outro videos by dissident media audio mastering by podsworth media see all next time