Scott Horton Show - Just the Interviews - 10/3/25 Ted Snider on the Conditions Necessary for the War in Ukraine to End

Episode Date: October 5, 2025

Scott interviews Ted Snider about where things stand with the war in Ukraine and the recent Russian incursions into NATO airspace.   Discussed on the show: “For Both Ukraine and Russia, Compromise Aligns With Necessity” (Antiwar.com) “Why Were There Russian Drones Over Poland?” (Antiwar.com) 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].  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/47jMtg7 (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/3tgMCdw Fool's Errand: Time to End the War in Afghanistan https://amzn.to/3HRufs0 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: Roberts and Roberts Brokerage Incorporated https://rrbi.co 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 You can also support Scott's work by making a one-time or recurring donation at https://scotthorton.org/donate/ https://scotthortonshow.com or https://patreon.com/scotthortonshow Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Ladies and gentlemen of the press have been less than honest reporting to the American people what's going on in this country. Because the babies are making this. We're dealing with Hitler Revisited. This is the Scott Horton Show. Libertarian foreign policy, mostly. When the president visited, that means that it is not illegal. 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, y'all. Welcome back to the show. I'm me. And introducing Ted Snyder. He writes for us regularly at anti-war.com and at the Libertarian Institute.

And especially on Russia-Ukraine issues. Welcome back to the show. Ted. How you doing, man? I'm doing well, Scott. Thanks for having me again. Yeah, good to have you here. So we got a couple of important articles, one at the Institute, one at anti-war.com, which is being featured today.

But I want to go back to last week, this one that you wrote with Nikolai Petro, whose books I cite in my book quite heavily, a real great expert on Ukraine issues. And this is called from both Ukraine and Russia, compromise aligns with necessity. Well, you know, that's what I think, too. Why not just call a time out on this stupid war right now? And yet there's a real problem, which I think can be boiled down to. Ukraine still controls about a fourth of Donetsk Oblast. And they're not going to turn around and walk away. And yet the Russians aren't going to stop before they're done taking it.

And they've actually indicated that they're willing to climb down on Zaproja and Kurson and claim only the territory that they've already taken and draw new lines there. They've already got the whole Azov coast all the way to Crimea, the so-called land bridge and guaranteed access to the freshwater resources of the Neeper River there. So fine, they're willing to call a compromise it looks like in Novo-Rusia, but not in Donetsk. And yet their progress there is, you know, incredibly slow, even though they are steadily taking territory every day, it could be another year before they're really done taking Donetsk. And so that's the way it looks like to me is what the impasse is really all about.

But tell me, first of all, where you think there may be room to compromise here and then the chances for it. Well, I mean, compromise has been the problem, right? And I know, Scott, you and I've talked with, and we've both said this before. That's how you were open just now. I mean, why not just call it? Because it's going to end with certain things that it would have ended with at the very beginning. beginning of the war, Ukraine not being in NATO, Crimea being part of Russia, the Donbass being part of Russia before the war, Donbass could have still been part of Ukraine if it was autonomous

and the rights of ethnic Russians were guaranteed. That's too late now because, you know, the Minskut courts were a deception. The war got started. You know, Russia went to war for two reasons, really. To stop NATO from coming to Ukraine, because Putin was terrified that if Ukraine was part of NATO and Ukraine went after Crimea, as they said they will, their constitution as they will, then Russia would find itself a war with NATO, which, by the way, it's why it's really silly when people keep saying Russia's going to go to war with NATO. Russia went to war not to go to war with NATO. They're certainly not going to go to war, not to go to NATO to start war with NATO.

So that's going to happen. That's one of the necessities that Professor Petron and I talk about is this war is, this war is, not going to stop until Russia has legally binding guarantees that Ukraine won't be part of NATO. They're going to win that on the battlefield. They're not going to give that up the negotiating table. They're going to either get at the table or on the battlefield. And it won't be enough this time to get some kind of promise. At the end of the Cold War, they had a promise that NATO wouldn't expand East and that promise

was broken. They've been stung by that. And it's going to be this time, like, legally binding. It'll be part of Ukraine's constitution and it'll be declared by NATO. So that's one of the necessities. The other is that the ethnic rights of Russian-speaking Ukrainians and the Dombas are going to be protected. And I don't believe Russia is going to give up the Dombas. I think one of the compromises that you alluded to already, Scott, is that Putin has indicated,

and you never know whether it'll stick. He's indicated that he might be prepared to give up some of the other territories and sort of have the Donbass and freeze the line there. There's that compromise. There's the compromise on the European Union. Years ago, Russia was pretty adamant about Ukraine not being in the European Union because the European Union is not just an economic union. It does imply certain security ties with Europe also.

But ever since the war began, really, Putin has been saying that Ukraine could be part of the European Union. So those are two compromises that I think we could see. The frustrating thing is what you alluded to the very beginning of the show, Scott, is that Ukraine's not going to win this war on the battlefield. This war is going to end the necessity of Ukraine not being in NATO and the loss of some territory. Europe keeps pushing Ukraine to fight the war, to continue to fight the war. It's not going to get better for Ukraine. They're going to lose more people. They're going to lose more land.

Europe's not capable of providing the weapon. So they're pushing Ukraine to fight a war that they're not capable of helping them fight. And all that's going to happen is Ukraine is going to lose more people and more land. So it's really very, it's the title of next book, but it's really very tragic because it could be stopped now. It could have been stopped before the war started. It could have been stopped in the first months of the war. And at any one of those stop phases, the outcome would have been the same. Ukraine not being in NATO and Dombas being autonomous or part of Russia.

All right. Well, on the first point about NATO membership, at this point, it seems like there's nothing that's going to get Kiev to sign on to that, short of full regime change in the capital city, which would mean not just the conquering of the Dombas, but everything east of the river. before they get to Kiev, which is mostly on the western side of it, although not entirely. But, or they could just, you know, carpet bomb the place, I guess, and say, well, it ain't a capital city no more. And, you know, declare a new regime based in archive or something. I don't know. They got a real hurdle there. And I think that's the kind of thing that, I don't know, Trump has indicated he was willing to take the Russian position on that before. Now, his administration seems to be moving more and more to Ukraine's side. And I don't know if you saw the Seymour Hersch piece where he said that they are now saying

that Ukraine doesn't have to accept the loss of any territory whatsoever. And Trump has claimed to have seen a report like this, but General Kellogg has talked like this that they really think, or they're claiming to pretend to think that they can help Ukraine retake all of its territory back to 1991 borders and no reason to stop. Until then, no reason to give an inch to the Russians now. They had their chance to negotiate on Trump's terms and they blew it. And so now this is the new take. What do you think of that?

I think it's just the continuation of the tragedy. First of all, Putin didn't say no to what Trump said in Alaska. He seemed to be pretty on board, but he wasn't just going to stop the war, right? There need to be all kinds of details worked out and Ukraine had to come on board that they would give up that land, which they never did. Europe never did. So the idea that Trump offered Putin a golden platter in Alaska and Putin walked away, that's not true. But worse than that, Trump's advisors, including Kellogg and Mike Waltz, seemed to have impressed upon him that Russia is in desperate economic straits and that

the military has been utterly ineffective and that therefore Ukraine can take can take more land back, maybe all of it back. Russia, by the way, says that Trump is telling them something different privately than he's posting publicly in social media. I don't know. But if he's being told that, one of two things are happening. Either Trump is posturing to try to pressure Putin to the table by saying, Ukraine can win and we're going to help them.

So you better get to the table because we're going to give them long-range missiles to do it and everything. or Trump's just being misinformed because every military analyst that I've read or spoken to says that Ukraine's not going to take back the territory and the reason simple Scott if Ukraine stays on the defensive they're not going to take back anymore territory they're just going to gradually lose more and they're not capable of switching to the offensive because this war has proven to us that in this kind of drone war, to go on the offensive and push to their country back

means you've got to have a three to one or four to one manpower advantage. Ukraine doesn't have a manpower advantage. They're running out of soldiers faster than they're running out of weapons. The reason why Russia is making advances is because the Ukrainian line is stretched so thin now that it's porous. And every time Russia goes to break through a hole and Ukraine moves people to fill that hole is just a bigger hole and it seems like a slow advance but what it's really doing is a trident ukraine of all of their troops and all their weapons and more scary for ukraine as that line gets

more and more porous and it looks like a slow pounding by russia eventually that line can just collapse and break through it's like a bone with osteoporosis it gets more and more and more porous and then it just breaks but so ukraine's not going to push them back on the defensive they can't go back on the offensive because they don't have the three to one or four to one manpower advantage ukraine's losing people to to um death injury draft dodging they're losing people russia on the other hand is is beating its recruitment numbers every single month the army's growing they're producing more weapons than they need now for the first time in the war russia's actually starting to sell weapons again to other countries whereas ukraine's running out of weapons

Russia is producing more than they need. Ukraine's running out of man. Russia is getting more than they need. So they can't go on the offensive because the offensive requires a manpower advantage that they're not capable of getting. And so the states can say publicly, well, we'll give you a magic weapon, you know,

we'll give you tomahawks. Well, first of all, there are no magic weapons. Okay, Russia has missiles like tomahawks. They have missiles better than tomahawks. If that could win the war, the war would be over by now. it's not a matter of weapon but also scott the thing that's really confusing about the promise to give ukraine tomahawks is two things one the states doesn't have very many of them and they used a lot of them in in you know with with iran they don't have very many to give they're painfully expensive and they

only produce a very small quantity a year um so they they don't necessarily have them to give Even if they had them to give, Ukraine doesn't have the platforms to launch them. So even if Ukraine had those Tomok missiles, they can't fire them. They don't have the ships or the submarines or the land-based platforms to fire them. And even if they had the weapons and had the platforms to launch them, they can't use them without the U.S. giving them targeting intelligence, both in terms of selecting the targets and guiding them, which is a red line that because Zelensky is saying,

will actually target the Kremlin. So if the states targets the Kremlin, that clearly crosses a red line that brings the states into war with Russia, which Trump's been trying to avoid since day one. Ted, Tomahawks are nuclear-capable missiles. Now, right now, under the old treaty,

they were not tipped with hydrogen bombs because of the INF, but it was Trump that tore up the INF back at the end of his first term. And so that, to me, would be the real consideration there. I agree with you that whatever they can hit, they want to hit oil refineries or arms depots or whatever behind Russian lines, force them to move their depots further back out of range or

whatever like that, fine. That's not going to really make a major strategic. No, that's already happening with U.S. Yeah, yeah, exactly, because they've been doing missile strikes across the lines for a long time. But the real problem here is a nervous radar operator who sees a Tomahawk cruise missile coming in and says, hey, boss, what do we do? And then somebody decides, we assume that it's tipped with a fusion bomb instead of assuming it's not. Yeah. And I think I say that in one of the pieces I have up today or yesterday, somewhere that the danger of this is not, it's not that

Ukraine's going to go on the offensive and win the war, because it's not going to happen. The danger here is that this is a really, really reckless and irresponsible escalation that through accident or otherwise could lead to exactly where nobody wants to go. There's nothing good going to come of this, and it's not going to help Ukraine take back Crimea, and it's not going to get Ukraine in NATO, which wasn't going to happen even before this war, by the way. By the way, are they just bluffing to? I mean, all the Trump's talk about, oh, I think Ukraine could just retake the whole country, and there's no need. And yeah, all they need is some more weapons is that was he just trying to play hardball and get Putin to negotiate?

Well, I think certain people like, I think people like Kellogg and Waltz are actually telling him that. So the question is, does he believe it or not? So either he's being misinformed or as I've argued, it is part, it may be part of a narrative designed to pressure Trump back to the table. Think about this. Zelensky said, pardon? Sorry, go ahead. You call Putin Trump, but just- Sorry, sorry.

Zelensky said, this is the weapon I need to force Putin back to the table, whether I use it or not, okay? So now you get this narrative. You get, you know, you get drones over Poland and Romania and planes over Estonia, and you get Europe all up in arms that this is a security threat to Europe. Russia is going beyond Ukraine. We need to pull the states back in.

We need European defense. So you get this sort of outcry to enhance the war. Then you get Trump saying, not only do you know, that Europe's come back in, that we actually think Ukraine can win, he says to Putin, and we're prepared to give them the long-range weapons to do it. This could all be part of a narrative to scare Putin and pressure him back to the table. After all, as I say in a piece wrote before, Zolensky and the people around them before they were a government,

there were people that wrote and produced movies and TV shows. Like what they do best is write scripts. And this is a very well-written script to pressure Putin. You've given us the motive by flying over countries in Europe and threatened to expand the war. We have the opportunity because Ukraine could actually win. We have the means because we're going to give them Tomahawk missiles. So you better get back to the negotiating table.

The problem is it's not going to work because Putin doesn't believe any of it. I mean, Putin doesn't think that his drones were flying over Poland to bomb Poland. After all, they were unarmed and- Well, hold that thought one second because I want to interview you about that whole piece. Okay. I got questions, but- So Putin doesn't- Putin doesn't believe it because he doesn't believe Ukraine win the war. He's very confident that Russia is going to win the war in time, that they have the economy that will outlast the Ukraine economy.

me, they've got the manpower, the outlast the Ukrainian manpower, and they've got the weapons production that'll outlast the Ukrainian weapons production. So he's not afraid of that. He may be afraid of the Tomahawks, but they know, and they've said publicly, who's going to fire them? Because Ukraine doesn't have the platform. So I think, and believe me, Scott, the last thing I want to do is try to guess what Trump is thinking because I can't guess what Trump is thinking or that he's going to stay on that thought. But it seems to me to be a narrative to try to pressure Putin to the table. But as you said earlier, it's a narrative that's not going to bear fruit, but could be incredibly dangerous. Yeah. Hang on just one second for me. Hey,

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That's expatmoneysummit.com. Hey, y'all, I've been working on the audio book of my new book, Provoked, how Washington started the new Cold War with Russia and the catastrophe in Ukraine. I've now finished and posted part three of the audio book to my substack and Patreon at Scott Horton Show.com and patreon.com slash Scott Horton Show. So that finishes all of George H.W. Bush and Bill Clinton. I know there's still a long way to go, but just these first two children. chapters are almost 10 hours of audio to get you started. I promise I'm doing the rest as fast as I

can. Get the audiobook of Provoked first. Subscribe at Scott Horton Show.com or Patreon.com slash Scott Horton Show. Hey, y'all, here's how you can support those who support this show and stay awake while you're doing things. Moondos artisan coffees. Moondosartisan coffees.com Get it? Starbucks supports the war party. Moondos is with us. And it's really good. Good. Get to Scott Horton's show blend. Just click the link in the right-hand margin at Scott Horton.org. Hey, guys, I had some wasps in my house. So I shot them to death with my trusty bug assault 3.0 model with the improved salt reservoir and bar safety. I don't have a deal with them,

but the show does earn a kickback every time you get a bug assault or anything else you buy from Amazon.com by way of the link in the right-hand margin on the front page at Scott Horton.org. So keep that in mind. And don't worry about the mess. Your wife will clean it up. Well, folks, sad to say, they lied us into war. All of them. World War I, World War II, Korea, Vietnam, Iraq War I, Serbia, Afghanistan, Iraq War II, Libya, Syria, Yemen, all of them.

But now you can get the e-book, All the War Lies, by me, for free. Just sign up the email list at the bottom of the page at Scott Horton.org or go to Scotthorton.org slash subscribe. Get all the war lies by me for free. And then you'll never have to believe them again. All right. So I wanted to follow up with you about what they've been saying about the Russian economy, because that is a major part of it. Yeah. Oh, well, they're broke.

They're at the edge of having to quit. So we have inflicted on them a strategic defeat. The suckers, they fell for it. And it's worked. And so if we can just help the Ukrainians hold out a little bit longer, the Russians will have to quit. And I mean, obviously, they have spent at least tens must be more than $100 billion on this thing. They've lost a hell of a lot of guys in the war, you know, probably north of 100,000 dead. And so maybe that's right. Ted, what do you know about the state of the Russian economy now?

So I can't handle my own household economics, let alone Russia's. I'm not an economist, but I'll tell you what I've gleaned from reading and talking to people who know more about economics. And that's got as that is that that's as big a dream as the other stuff we were talking about. For two reasons. One is the question is not whether the Russian economy is in trouble. The question is which economy is going to run out first, the Ukrainian or the Russian one. And the Ukraine economy is in way more trouble than the Russian economy. They're on the verge of going off the cliff.

And the IMF just said they've actually underestimated what Ukraine needs by tens of billions of dollars. Ukraine is in serious financial trouble. They're spending $170 million a day on the war. They have a deep, deep deficit that there are tens of billions of dollars short of paying. The states hasn't sent any money. Europe can't afford it. They're spending, and again, I'm not an economist, Scott, so I don't even entirely know what this means. But they're spending 34% of GDP on the war.

That is the highest military expenditure in the entire world. Russia, by contrast, is spending something like 5% GDP. And in their budget for 2026, they're actually cutting what they're spending on the war. So Russia's cutting back what they're spending, Ukraine, spending more and more and more. The West threw the biggest sanction regime they possibly could throw at Russia. They survived it. They're the 11th biggest economy in the world. Their projections for GDP growth are bigger than any country in the West.

And now getting way beyond what I understand. Part of why the Russian economy is suffering is a deliberate move by the Russian bank that they're doing to control inflation. I don't understand any of that. But what I believe I can tell you is that Russia can easily afford to finance this war for at least two more years in Ukraine cannot. So if the states thinks that they're going to run down the Russian economy, what they're leaving out of the calculus is that their Ukraine economy is going to run out long before the Russian one is. So they're not going to stop the war by bankrupting Russia. Well, and all their threats and sanctions, third party threats against India and the rest have not changed the policy in the rest of Asia. So they're still selling all the oil and gas that they want to, to the Indians and the Chinese especially, right?

Yeah, and Europe. And, you know, and, and, I mean, this is Trump's thing, right? Why should I give you money if you're still buying Russian oil? He says to Europe, but, you know, India couldn't have. made it any clearer than at the last SCO meeting that they're not going to abandon Russia. They're not jumping onto Russia's side and abandon the States. To India, this is a multipolar world. We no longer have to pick one country to follow.

We can have partnerships with the states. We can have partnerships with Russia, but Modi is not abandoning Putin. Certainly China is not abandoning Putin. You know, Brazil's not. It's like, so the sanctions aren't going to work. They're still going to have places to sell their oil. They're not just an oil economy. they're not going to win the war financially

any more than they're going to win the war through arms manufacture or the number of people to fight or efficacy of the weapons, by the way, because one of the things that people have been talking about lately, too, is how Russian, at the beginning of the war, you know, Russia actually had a lower manpower than Ukraine, and they actually suffered a weapons disadvantage

because NATO had given Ukraine, you know, better weapons. Alexander Hill talks about this a lot. He's really good on this. And one of the things that's happened since then is Russia has caught up and passed Ukraine in the drone war. And now there's evidence. And this isn't Russian claims. This is American intelligence claims. There's really strong evidence now that Russia has adapted their ballistic missiles so that they're getting more and more and more effective at getting around even patriot air defenses.

and although Ukraine once had a fairly reputable percentage of knockdowns, I'm reading now that when Ukraine tries to shoot down Russian ballistic missiles, they've got about a 6% shootdown rate because they've changed their ballistic missiles so that instead of taking that regular ballistic course, they seem to fly and then they seem to drop really fast and maneuver at the last second. So Russia is also gaining the weapons advantage. Yeah. All right. So let's switch to the piece on anti-war.com today.

Why were there three Russian drones? No, why were there Russian drones over Poland? It was a lot more than three. Yeah, I want to go through all of this. It's a pretty complicated story the way you tell it here. I want to give you a chance to tell it. Yeah. I don't think it was in here about where they're not also

incursions over one of the Baltic states as well as Poland and I think that was planes not drones and so I guess I was going to say I had originally thought well and you make the case pretty strong here too I think that looks like it was probably jamming and these drones were just off course there's reason to believe that but then again if they're flying planes then over the Baltic states then that would seem to undercut that excuse for the drones over Poland and maybe they really are getting aggressive here and

trying to pick a fight so tell us what the hell's going on as you said it's complicated um there's been four or five claims about russian incursions three of them we know a russian there were 19 drones that violated polish airspace there were um there were um three i think russian jets that violated estonian airspace and there was a um drone that went over Romanian territory and seems to they say orbited hovered there for several minutes before leaving on its own volition going on to Ukraine so so what's happening there's a number of possibilities one possibility is that and this is the one that that you're seeing in the western media that Russia is either very aggressively um attacking or threatening or opening the front beyond ukraine

This is what Zelensky says, that it's open beyond Ukraine. They're flying over European countries now, or that they're probing NATO defenses to prepare for an attack. So the attack story to me is outrageous. And this is the one that I think is designed to escalate the war. The attack story is outrageous for three reasons, Scott. One is there's absolutely nothing on the historical record to indicate that Russia has any desire to expand the war to Europe.

The second is, as we said at the top of the show, They're not at all interested in a war with NATO. In fact, they went to war in Ukraine to prevent a war with NATO. It would be absurd to go to war with Ukraine to prevent a war with NATO just to use Ukraine to cause war with NATO. It doesn't make any sense. And the third reason is absurd is because it's not true. The 19 drones that flew over Poland, according to the Prime Minister of Poland,

were unarmed. So it wasn't attack. They were unarmed. Secondly, those drones were fired from Belarus, and according to the commander-in-chief of the Polish army, Belarus contacted them immediately to say these drones are off track on the way, and Poland says that it was largely Belarus that helped them shoot them down. So it wasn't an attack. They weren't armed. They didn't hit any targets, and Belarus helped them shoot them down. So what were they doing there? American intelligence is actually split on this. Some think it was deliberate to kind of test their defenses,

and some think that the drones were jammed. And apparently intelligence sort of split 50-50. But according to some high-ranking U.S. officials, the intelligence committee is actually leaning toward, because of the flight patterns, thinking that the drones were off track because they were jammed by Ukraine. This is common. Russia and Ukraine are very good at using GPS jamming

so they don't have to shoot down drones. They disable them. The objection has been made by Europe and by a ton of people in the Western media that one or two drone goes off, it's jamming. 19 drones goes off. It's not jamming. That's just not true.

They just don't understand jamming. Every expert I've spoken to has said that there's multiple ways to jam and one of them is that you do sort of throw up this curtain and you can jam them all. And they were all programmed together. It's very common. So this is really easily could have been jamming. And American intelligence actually thinks the Polish one might have been jamming.

Now, that leaves Romania and Estonia. The Estonia story has become so hyperbolic. It's almost ridiculous. The way the Western media reports this, Russian jets flew over. Estonia in this provocative It's not true. Russian jets flew over an uninhabited island that belongs to Estonia

that is several miles off the coast of Estonia in the middle of the Baltic Sea. And in fact, what they did is they followed their internationally recognized flight plan. They deviated from it by about five miles but stayed parallel to it. Okay? They never came close to Estonia.

So they were in the middle of the Baltic Sea just slightly off their flight path over an uninhabited island clearly not an attack as for the drones over romania also not an attack they didn't fly over any civilian populations um romania's ministry of defense says they had no point posed a risk and it left on its own however to be fair it did hover there for several minutes and the russian planes did go slightly off course so this leaves the possibility that some analysts who i really respect have argued that some of these were accidents and some of them form a pattern of Russia giving a warning to Europe because Europe has threatened to send troops into Ukraine as part of the peace process

and this, you know, this is Russia with unarmed drones just showing what they can do and just reminding them. If you send troops into Ukraine, that's just NATO under a different name, remember what we can do so I don't think this is an attack I don't think it's war I don't even think it's probing the defenses some of it's accidental and some of it may be

a warning to Europe yeah how's that well I think that sounds right that they're trying to I mean again this is just a guess but that they're trying to controversialize the issue a little bit among you know the public

in Europe. I mean, I know it's super majorities of the populations of every single country in Europe, including the Baltic states and everything, all want a negotiated solution now. So to hell with democracy, the voters of Europe cannot stop the forces of democracy with their public opinion. They must win here. But so it could be that the Russians have decided that, yeah, like you're saying, they're really talking about sending in more weapons. and increasing, you know, financial and intelligence support and whatever. Let's make them think twice about that. Yeah, I think it's, I think it's some combination of drone jamming an accident and an

un- Yeah, the Polish example, the fact that the Belarusians picked up the phone and said, hey, hey, hey, we got drones coming your way, but don't shoot because we didn't mean it and that kind of thing. I mean, that's obviously pretty important goes to show that, yeah, they have. had lost control of those drones and did not mean to do that these other two cases yeah i mean the estonian one might be nothing it was just i mean because the plane wasn't over so it might be nothing but but i think i think it's possible with the estonian one of the romanian one combined it's it's it's possible that this is also intended as a message to europe but the inflating of

this to talk about you know russia provocative landing space or or attacking or or you know expanding the theater beyond Ukraine, this is European hyperbole. Yeah, they made it sound like this was an incursion over the Russian-Estonian border. They sure did. They had to be chased back into Russia. And by the way, Scott, I'm not guessing on this. The flight tracking data has actually been released. You can actually go online.

Anyone can. You can go online and see what the Russian jets did. So that's not speculation. So, yeah, some combination of accident and possibly warnings, but not expanding the war theater, not threatening Europe. All right, everybody, the first one is both Ukraine and Russia. No, sorry, for both Ukraine and Russia. Compromise aligns with necessity. That's at the Institute and at anti-war.com.

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