Scott Horton Show - Just the Interviews - 10/5/26 Ian Proud on Getting Detained by the UK Government

Episode Date: October 10, 2026

Scott interviews Ian Proud about how he recently traveled to Russia to hear a speech from Putin, only to be detained by his own government upon his return. Scott and Proud talk about what happened and why he decided to go to Russia. They then discuss the broader state of the war. Discussed on the show: “DETAINED BY UK COUNTER-TERRORISM POLICE AT HEATHROW: BRITAIN BECOMES MORE TOTALITARIAN” (The Peacemonger) “Did the Foreign Office tip off Counter-Terrorist Police to arrest me?” (The Peacemonger) Ian Proud was a British diplomat for 24 years from 1999 to 2023, working on Russia for the final decade. Subscribe to The Peacemonger, his Substack and YouTube Channel.   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. Now, end this war. And now, here's your host, Scott Horton. All right, you guys, introducing Ian Proud, the peacemonger, and this is his substack, the peacemonger. And look at this, detained at Heathrow, Un intimidated. And then did the, here's the follow up, did the foreign office tip off counter-terrorist police to arrest me my correspondence with the foreign office prior to attending the Valdai Discussion Club?

Goodness, welcome back to the show. How are you doing? Good thing, Scott. Good to see you again. Absolutely. Great to have you here. So remind us now, you used to work for the UK foreign ministry, correct? Yes, I was a diplomat in, well, I was a diplomat for 24 years, but four and a half of you, of those years when Moscow from 2014 to 2019. And after I came back, I also did lots of the sanctions against Russia. I regret it now, to be perfectly honest. But anyway, that was my job.

I was Mr. Sanctions. And, you know, a good bit of time in Russia, being Russian as well. And have you been turned by the GRU and now you're a pro-Russian trader? And that was why the authorities needed to put their grubby mitts on you? Well, no. I mean, when you spend, I'll give you a funny anecdote. when you arrive in Moscow, the MI5, one of the MI5 people

who basically keep an eye on the people, you know, the Brits and the Russians inside of the embassy, they take the middle-aged men to one side and say every day when you wake up, you have to look in the ugly mirror and remind yourself that you're basically just an ugly middle-aged man. So when you go to Starbucks and Svalana with a big boobies,

you know, shows really interesting you, it's not because you're good looking or sophisticated. It's because you work at the British embassy. and she may have hostile intention. I mean, we spend our life not opening ourselves up to compromising situations that can be used against us, avoiding all entanglements. I mean, it's almost like a mafia style sort of culture inside of the service. And so no, absolutely not.

But I made the mistake of paying my first visit to Russia for seven years. And just to finish. it's like I had a four and a half hour interrogation by the Russian FSB when I arrived it's like they love me I think the people in London think that they're waiting with a gas 24

vulgar sedan with a guy in a trench coat in a fur hat and an ice cold shot of vodka for me to drink as we went back to Lobianca for the debriefing I'm not sure what they expected in London when they got but it was a hostile reception at first the event itself however was very good

All right, well, so what's the baldai discussion club? That's not a nest of spies and traders. No, it's an academic group, and it's literally academics from all over the world, from China, India, Brazil, Argentina, the Middle Eastern countries, European, countries, USA as well. I didn't see any Canadians as far as I recall, but it started in 2004, actually. It's been running for, well, this will be the 23rd years. year. And it's just a chance to kind of have deep discussions about what's happening in the world

today from different country perspectives. But the one thing that sets it out is it's seen as the club that's kind of most exclusive, if you like, in terms of that circle of Seminars. So there's an exclusive invite list, only 120 people in total, you know, half, Russian, half. Bonnors, one of the people invited is quite an honor to be invited. But you get to listen to Putin for three and a half hours. And And you get that insight which very other few people get. And I think that really annoys a hell out of people in London that I was sat in front of Putin for three and a half hours. But, I mean, yeah, it's just a kind of thinking group and form ahead of MI6 as being to it. And I actually told the foreign office before that I was going.

I said, I'm going. This is why I'm going. And obviously, I maintain my commitments on the official Secrets Act, which I do, of course. That reminds me to take that page down. off the screen while we're talking here. So there you had the discourse. So you clear it with them in advance. Listen, I'm going to Russia to go to this thing.

Then you go to the thing. You listen to Putin. We'll get back to that in a minute, I guess. But then you get on a plane, you fly all the way back to Heathrow. And they pretend to be very concerned about your foreign service career having nests there. And they grab you and they take you to the back room. for three hours they interrogated you? Yeah, that's right.

And what did they ask? They really pretended to believe that you were some kind of traitor or what? Well, mostly is most of the time's taken up with processing, which is just incredibly tedious, man, it really is. But I mean, when you get off the plane,

they start chatting to you nice as if it's going to really friendly conversation. Hey, where have you just been? Have you just come back from Moscow? What are you doing there? I'll just let you know I'm from the police and, you know, we're keen to going to talk to people today

and, you know, we have this power under the counterterrorism and border security yet. I mean, a counterterrorism bit sounds worse than actually is. I mean, this is what he actually said is like some adult groominging a child. And you can go along and then he says, well, actually, you know, we have the power to detain you for up to six hours.

This is not an arrest. You're not suspected of anything, they say. And actually, you don't have the right to remain silent because you haven't been given, you know, an arrest caution. So you don't have the right to say nothing, but you haven't been arrested. And we don't suspect you of anything. So eventually you get into a back room and they whip away your phone.

So we're going to, you know, keep that. And, you know, you have to give us your PIN number and your password for your laptop. Otherwise you'll be arrested. So you have to give them that detail. And by the time you know it, you've been subjected to an intrusive personal search. They got my baggage from the.

baggage carousel. They searched everything in that. I mean, there's nothing to find. I had a stash of money about $6,000 just in case it got stuck in Russia because you can't use Western credit cards in Russia and your phones don't work. It's a bit of a difficult place you're going to navigate. You did have to give them your password to your computer?

Yeah. Yeah. Otherwise, I would have been invested in charge with a criminal offense of not giving them my password. Man, that is pretty rights violation-y, it sounds like, man, do you have a lawyer or this is just, I know you guys don't have a bill of rights over there in England or anything like that,

but it seems like you're supposed to still have the rights of proud Englishmen or something to protect you, you know? Yeah, well, I do actually work with a lawyer on sanctions cases, believe it or not, and I contacted him and he helped another person who had this treatment last year, and he got one of his solicitors to call me, and it was fine. I mean, you know, the interrogation bit was, once they realized why he was,

they clearly didn't know who I was. MI5 or somebody in MI6 had told them to pick out this dude. They'd given them the photograph and they'd single me out, but they knew nothing about my background. They didn't know how many sanctions I'd authorized against Russia.

They didn't know that I hadn't been to Russia for seven years. This was my first visit since I left. They knew nothing about me. And once they did, the interrogation a bit quickly fell into kind of chat anecdotes, because I'd worked for the police

before during the foreign office and they realized what you're really describing here is that they just did this to harass you and delay you for a day. They weren't really seeking anything here other than just let's let him know we don't like him and we want to push them around

a little bit like a bunch of bullies. It was pure intimidation because the processing bit, that's where they read out this long, tedious thing, explaining your duties. You have a duty. to allow them to search your property,

you have a duty to give them your passwords. And then, you know, they had to speak to a solicitor. They had to do all the fingerprints, which took forever because they had this computer thing that didn't work very well. It was just embarrassing how crap the technology was. But that took forever.

They're taking away photographs, you know, from every possible angle. You know, a sergeant came in to confirm, you know, what the process was happening. They just took forever. It just took up to you forever before we actually got a chat and well guys I don't really understand

where he brought me in here because you clearly didn't know my background at all but it's just a total fishing trip and yeah bullying exercise yeah well they mess with the wrong ombrae I know you're not going to give in to a man

so that's good I'm glad to see this you know unintimid and I do hope that your lawyer tries to pursue it you know to some degree or another I don't know what can be done the state is not really accountable to the law You know how that goes. The thing is on my tech back, because I just got a fancy new DJI Osmo camera, this really cool thing that you can walk around and do vlogs, but you can also have it static. And I've done some person-to-person interviews with that.

I've got a whole shed load of interviews that on this like a head load. I like that. That's fair. Shedlay, yeah. Yeah. You say that right on YouTube and not good censored. Go ahead. Yeah.

Yeah. I had a shed load of interviews, like with Sergei Kalleghanov, for example. I've got a brief clip with Mohammed Mrandi from Iran and all sorts. And I was going to post these on YouTube when I got back. And now they've stolen it. So I've got to wait until I eventually get that back. But my lawyer is pursuing that angle. Yeah.

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. Hey guys, me here for crowdhealth at join crowdhealth.com slash Horton. And what it is is it's a replacement for insurance. It's not insurance. It's crowdsourcing instead.

And who could possibly afford insurance at these prices in this day and age? It makes no sense. But what this is is it's crowdsourcing. You help pay for other people's medical bills and they help pay for yours and it really works. You pay the first 500 of whatever you're doing up front in cash and anything over the that, you bill it to the group and they help you pay. And then when it's somebody else's turn, you chip in a fair amount to pay for them. And it's all for a low monthly subscription fee.

And it's totally a great deal. And I highly encourage you to check it out at join crowdhealth.com slash Horton. Man, that sucks. I can't believe they kept your stuff, man. Hopefully we'll get all that soon. All right. Well, so let me ask you about the trip there. You know, I know the war party would say that like, oh yeah, sure, you're just spellbound by the enemy. He makes you sit there for three hours and inculcate you on his point of view. And at that point, your sentience checks out and you become his mind-controlled, influenced person sent back to repeat terrible Putin talking points to the innocent virgins of the West. Ian, so how badly have you been suborned by the silver-tonged devil, Vladimir Putin here?

did he make any actually compelling points at all, sir, huh? Well, you know, the thing is, it was quite strategic. And what he said really, I mean, I've heard it 100 times, you know, many aspects of what he said. But in terms of NATO expansion, you know, the normal things, Sergei Lavrov came during the conference earlier in the week and spoke about the whole process since 2014. but what it's actually saying, I think, was about the multipolar order

because bear in mind that his audience was really international. I mean, there were some Brits, some Americans, but most of the foreign people were from the kind of developing world. So it's really talking about the multipolar order. And I think what is essentially saying was that actually, you know, why can't we just kind of resolve conflicts rather than just prolonging them? But he also gave a sense that, that he felt that Russia was being pushed right now,

all the stuff around Kaliningrad, nobody's interested in dialogue to the war in Ukraine. As you know, that's a point of view that I just happened to agree with, not because Putin said it, I've been saying it myself, you know, for a long time. And, you know, you come away thinking, well, actually, or just remind of the fact that actually,

I said this to Danny Davis the other day, I mean, Putin is a system. You may hate Putin, or you may like Putin, but I mean, he is the whole political system involves Putin. And if he wants to move, he can move. So if he wants to have diplomatic negotiations, you know, he can move the system to do that. You know, we don't have that in the West. You know, you need to move 27 different countries plus the United Kingdom.

You need to work through the media. You need to work through their think tanks. You need to work through their elected politicians. You need to work through the actual officials that pull the strings up on the background. you need to work through the ministers and the kind of heads of government and state and have everybody move into a diplomacy mindset and what Trump has shown over the past year is that

well he might want negotiations he can't make the system move Trump cannot make the US system move no US Premier has been able to make it move the Germans haven't the French haven't so you know if everybody in the West said well you know let's have a really tough you know elbows out diplomatic discussion, you know, Putin would engage with that because he can make the system move in that direction.

The problem for him is that the West economy. Who does he call in Europe if he wants to have diplomatic dialogue? And if he does, every single newspaper will how, why are you talking to Putin? Because he's an evil guy. So, you know, you either want diplomacy or you don't. And I think he's prepared for it, but he's not going to give it up at any price

if the West keep hammering away and threatening Kalinigrad. things that they're doing. It's a blockage. That's why I say that war is inevitable. A general war in Europe right now appears to be inevitable because all 27 European systems in Britain and

the US are unable collectively to move towards a diplomacy setting to end it. They just can't. And, you know, Zolensky is the kind of orchestra, just telling them which tune to kind of play, it seems to me at least.

Well, now, I mean, but the Russians don't need to hit in the European states to prevent them from helping Ukraine win the war or something like that because Ukraine's not winning. So they'd have to be in a pretty desperate situation to go ahead and hit a NATO state, don't you think, or not? They would, yeah, very much. And I don't think they want to do that. But, you know, some Western nations have been like the pole, for example. There's a firebrand British journalist called Ed Lucas, who's been saying, well, we'll just put pressure on Kaliningrad. Well, okay. You know, talk more about that.

We covered this on the show the other day. I had read a story where the Russians were threatening that, listen, if you guys threatened Kaliningrad, we're prepared to use nuclear weapons over it. But then I didn't know what was the antecedent to that. And then I had read a thing this morning with Simplicitists or whatever, something like that on Substack. Yeah, he had a thing there where he's quoting, I should have known, Radislaw Sikorski from Poland and Applebaum's husband, who has been, you know, such a thorn in the side of peace and civilization on this issue for, you know, a couple of decades now, that he was at least one of the ones, you were just alluding to somebody else, I think, But Skorski was one of the ones threatening Kaliningrad and saying maybe it's time to figure out a way to separate Kalenigrad away from Russia violently, put it under siege or some kind of thing.

I mean, you want to talk about getting into a war. That would do it right there, you know. Yeah, it would. I mean, well, it's Russian territory. And, yeah, I mean, the whole point of preventing NATO expansion is to prevent nature expansion is to prevent nature going up to Russia's border. Well, NATO is at Russia's border in Kaliningrad, of course. It's a small place. It does have nuclear-capable missile systems in Kaliningrad, of course.

And the people calling for nuclear strikes on Europe, they're on one wing. There's another wing that just hates that idea in the Russian system. But I spoke to a guy in Valdai, you know, quite a respective guy, Sergei Karaghanov. And he's not representative of everybody, but he would nuke, you know, Europe if they made a move on Clinton Grad or anything else. And he was telling me about a delivery, you know, system they have,

they can have 12 Siput. I think he said 75-killer-ton devices, 12 devices, more than 10 times more powerful than the bomb they dropped on Hiroshima. That's exactly right. They got, you know, the Sarmat 2. that's enough warheads it's at least capable of carrying enough warheads to kill all of

Texas, every important city in Texas with one missile. Yeah, he's crazy. And he said, we've got this. And you know, you want to test. And I'll tell you why, because very often when you have conversations like this, it produces into kind of really empty, vacuous statements,

oh, they'll new, yeah, and all the rest of it. The people who advocate for this are making a strategic calculation. A, that it would so fear and panic in most European states would immediately back down and want to end it all, possibly not including the UK. But probably France,

leaving the UK the only nuclear capable power ready to slug it out in nuclear terms of Russia. That's one. Are the French going to come and rescue Poland if they wipe out all of the Warsaw and the other major cities? It's a labor question. That leaves the UK as the only player with 250 warheads of various, you know, types.

The strategic calculations, the Americans aren't going to come and help. The Americans are just not going to come and save Europe if they kind of provoke this nuclear retaliation. And that is their calculation. You know, the UK will be the only nuclear capable power with the balls to even think about it. And the Americans will say, go on back off, guys, time to end this. I mean, that is their strategic calculation. if the Russians of anything, it's it's calculating. Believe me.

So, yeah, I mean, you know, just why are you talking about invading Kaliningrad? Why not just, I don't know, stop the war in Iraq in Ukraine? It's going to be painful, you know, whenever it stops, we've said all the time we'll beat Russia and we haven't been able to beat Russia. But it's devastating Ukraine. It's devastating the economies of Europe and sowing critical unrest and social sort of lack of cohesion. across Europe. I mean, no one's gaining from this

except the ridiculous firebrands like Sikorsky, Ed, Lucas, Boris Johnson, Friedrich BlackRock Merce, who's lessen 10% popularity rating in Germany. No one's, you know, Zelensky in the billions of Imnis-Kroni-Steel, no one's benefiting from this. And we're talking about, you know,

taking Kalinigrad and risking nuclear war over what? Yeah. Yeah. It's absolutely religious. Hmm. Moondos artisan coffees. Explicitly, Scott Horton show flavored

coffee from Moondos artisan coffees. Get it, they hate Starbucks because Starbucks supports the war party. But Moondos artisan coffees, they support peace. And so here you go. Scott Horton Show flavored coffee. It's part,

what, Sumatran and part Ethiopian, all mixed together and tastes so good in the morning and also in the mid-afternoon. If you start getting sleep, be Scott Horton.org slash coffee. Get you some. Scott Horton show is brought to you by Matt Sersely tax attorney. Let's say you run a small business or you're a high salary professional and you're looking to protect your revenue from the revenues who would rather take it and spend it on helping

foreign countries kill people or something like that. Well, what you do is you contact Matt Sersley and he's an attorney not a CPA and so you can discuss all of your business with him in complete confidentiality. And he will help you construct your taxes in such a way where you pay the absolute minimum. That's agoristtaxadvice.com for Matt Sersely, agoristtaxadvice.com. Yeah, it is. Just as Pat Buchanan Warren in 1999, he said, Ben, you know, I'm repeating myself,

but it's worse repeating. He said, listen, if we bring the Baltic states into NATO, as some are proposing to do now, which they ended up doing in 2004. So if we do that, then from Russia's point of view, we're leaving Kaliningrad stranded behind NATO lines, which is just completely crazy, right? Like in the current atmosphere, you might think, fine, who cares?

But that's a recipe for absolute disaster to do that. And, you know, what are you going to do? I guess you could try to buy Kaliningrad from them for, a trillion dollars or something, what's the price for Kaliningrad that they'd be willing to give it up for? Otherwise, that's obviously a flashpoint for war.

And as we saw, I quote this and provoked, where it's in the New York Times, the head of the defense committee in the Lithuanian parliament, I think it was, explain that when they shut down the Swaki corridor and the railway

between Belarus and Kaliningrad at the start of the war in 2022. He said, look, we would never dream of sticking it to the Russians this way. If we weren't members of NATO and we didn't have this moral hazard of America promising to protect us no matter what we do. And then the rest of Europe went, no, Lithuania stops. We didn't tell you to do that and made them reopen the thing. But the Russians were threatening war right there.

And, you know, this is exactly how World War II started, you know, the fight over German access to Danzig and, you know, this kind of thing. And so like they got their corridor now. Let's not take it away from them. They're armed with H-bombs. And it's a military base. It's not even just a civilian population, which is a whole other thing, but it's a military base. So somebody needs to tell Ann Applebaum to put her bitch in check.

Well, exactly. Yeah, yeah, exactly. a bitch, raddick. What a pathetic loser that guy is. I mean, yeah, terrible. I really understand the psychology of them either. I mean, do they want nuclear annihilation? I mean, he's just, I think he's just an incredibly arrogant person lacking in self-awareness,

and Applebounds, the same, driven by a compulsive hatred of Russia. But, you know, as I say, often all the time, it feels like diplomacy isn't about friendship. It's not about liking Russia or not liking Russia. you know, it's about how to kind of coexist, so you're not basically kind of blowing chunks out of each other with ever more powerful weapons, right? I mean, it's okay, you don't need to like Russia, they don't need to like you,

but let's just try and stay in your corners of the ring, so you're not killing each other. I mean, it's no more complicated than that. It's ironic that, I mean, the European countries did play their part, but really America took the lead in creating this crisis. Now we have a president who's really, bad on everything and in fact continues American participation in this war. But you can tell at least it's hard.

And then he'd end the war if he could figure out how to. But then the Europeans who really America got Europe into this mess is another way of putting it. Now the Europeans are way out in front of the Americans and wanting to continue the thing and even, you know, ultimately making demands on the lives of Americans and the dollars of Americans to keep this whole thing going on at their own risk and all of ours. I mean, if it had just been up to the Europeans, they would have never pushed this far in the first place, you know?

They wouldn't. The reason, I mean, right up until I left in 2019, the Germans continued to be very, very pragmatic. And the Europeans only started to drift, you know, towards a more hawkish line when the UK was still in the EU and we were taking orders from Washington and basically kind of lobbying the Europeans all the time to have tougher sanctions and things like.

and things like that. But somewhere along the way, you know, after 2019, really after 2021, the Europeans caught the bug, you know. And I think that's because with the UK outside of the EU tent, you know, the UK and the US ganged up on them. And Olaf Schultz was too weak, taking it back down. And he had a hawkish commission. When I was in Moscow, the commission was much less front foot,

much less in charge. But the commissioners become more centralised. over the past 12 years. So it plays a much more aggressive role than it did when the Ukraine crisis started when it tried to play more of a mediating role like Jean-Clau Yonker when he was, you know, Commissioner President,

the guy from Luxembourg, he came out to the St Petersburg International Economic Forum in 2016 just to talk about dialogue and conflict resolution. Well, that has flipped once in Ersula Bondi and so you have this kind of coming together of different things. You have the, as you know,

as you've studied this in great detail. You've got the re-arrival of the Biden administration. He's president-in-a-law and vice president with exactly the same people in the seats as winning as a vice president. You've got a resurgent commission that basically wants to kind of be best friend of the Americans and you've got liberated the Brits

that is determined to kind of push the Russians as far as they can on red line issues like nature expansion, that basically leaves France and Germany that the only two big power is able to resist, and with Macron and Schultz in charge, they couldn't resist. And that's when the whole thing became a pathology in Europe that everybody's now behind war, except some countries in Central Europe, of course. Hey, I want to ask you, this is a little in the weeds, but I think it's crucial. Michael, Angelo and Merkel, the former Chancellor of Germany, chimed in with a whole bunch of others.

Holland, Poroshenko Zelensky and some of Zelensky's guys and others. I got all the quotes in the book where they all said, you know, the politics of the moment made this look good, at least, in their circles, right? To say that the Minsk deals were always a ruse. We were just shining the Russians on. We were just giving Ukraine time to prepare for the next stage of the war, to arm them up and get them ready. And really Putin fell for it and ceased fire back when he could have done whatever he wanted.

And so, ha, ha, we were just playing. But you just said something that coincides, you know, more along the lines of the way I understood it from the book, but I know you were there at the time, was that Merkel was trying really the whole time. She was when he took the lead on the Minsk deal in the first place, and it didn't seem like for any nefarious secondary purpose. She was desperate to try to end the war and came to Obama and said,

listen, I need your blessing, but I'm doing this. And then turned back around and went to Minsk the first time in November of 14. And then... She didn't go in November. She went in the February. I think, yeah, for my... She went in for Minsk, too. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

What was in November 14? That wasn't her? So November 14 was very much a technical level, you know, agreement. It's when Merkel-Lond, Orschenko, and Putin turn up at the start of 2015, that's when the heavy hitters arrive in town because... Okay. Man, I don't have that. Man, I better check that Minsk one.

I think that's correct. I don't think, I don't think Merkel was, you know, boots on the ground, for Minskwan. I think, well, the problem with Minskwan was because it hadn't, you know, had that kind of high level engagement from principals, high kind of presence and and chancellors and five minutes and stuff. I'll definitely double-checked that. Hey, look, guys, Scott Horton's show and Scott Horton Academy, Schwag.

Just look at the YouTube channel there and under every video. There's links to all the stuff. 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, Residencies, and Instant Citizenships.

That's expatmoney.com slash Scott. then you were just alluding to in 2019 she was still trying and this is when i think you said 2019 didn't this is when the steinmeyer formula was put forward for like a new order of operations for implementing minsk too and trying to end the pseudo civil war there the so-called civil war um so that to me also seems sincere at the time and quite contrary to the narrative that and i'm not saying this about poroshenko or about uh barak obama but in regards to her anyway, it seemed to me, by 19, that would have been the Trump government. She seemed at least, and the Steinmeyer thing seemed to indicate that no, she absolutely was trying to end the war.

And that later on when she said that Minsk was really just a stalling tactic, but that was just public relations during that time because that's what everybody else was saying. And she didn't want to look like she was the one who was the naive fool who was really trying to seek peace in the face of the implacable enemy Putin. So what do you think about all that? So it's a really complicated question, but I'll give her a sort of, well, hopefully not too complicated answer to it.

I think for Merkel, that's a lie. Somebody told me recently that actually, if you look at what she actually said, she didn't say that. There's almost like splice and dice that of a speech she made with, you know, the two separate bits of the phrase at one end of the speech.

and the other end of the speech. But I think for Merkel in particular, and possibly to the less extent for Alon, it was a serious diplomatic effort. It really was. It's also important to note two things. First, that the pre-Minskwan agreement was actually Poroshenko's framework.

It was just a back of a fag packet, sort of short thing, but enlisting essentially the same border kind of concepts that eventually get codified in Minsk too. That's putting back of troops, handing over any prisoners that exist, having some sort of devolution in the Donbass and so on. That gets articulated through the Minsk War Agreement.

That doesn't hold because, you know, the septus and the Ukrainies are still fighting around DeBalseva. The Russians start militarily getting more involved because the Ukrainians are basically kind of bombarding cities in Tunis and things of that. And so that's when Merkel and Alon turned up with Putin and Poroshenka and spend all night because it's like an all-night negotiation hammering out this deal that everybody can live with.

Bear in mind two things. The deal is principally between Ukraine and the separatists. It's not really a deal between Ukraine and Russia as such. And another thing is actually that the deal, Minsk II, was really about devolution, you know, for the Dombas. But it's important to know what you mean by the Dombas. It means devolution for those small bits of the Dombas that the Sepatists had held on to.

It's not even devolution for the whole of the Dombas because when MIS II came out, the septists probably only controlled around a third of the total territory. Definitely no more than a half, right? So it's for them to maintain some sort of devolved control over those bits, you know, that they were they declared to the self-government. So it's quite a minimalist thing. And Ms. 2 would have ensured that Lohansk and Dynetsk remain part of Ukraine.

And, you know, people often forget that, how minimalist the requirement was actually on the Ukrainians to offer devolution to a fairly small bit of the Dombas that actually the Septus have held. So I think for Merkel is a real thing. And I'll finish shortly, but I think who did want to do the Americans and the Brits.

Yeah. You know, but they lobbied hard to ensure that all the sanctions, all the many sanctions that have been imposed on Russia since the conflict had started wouldn't be lifted until the Minsk two agreement was implemented in full. Now, that was clearly disingenuous. It's disingenuous because the minister two agreement can only be implemented in full if the Ukrainians

pushed devolution in the Donbass. And the Americans and the Brits were never going to push the Ukrainians to do that in circumstances where there was a huge amount of resistance, particularly from the far right in Ukraine, to doing that. So Minsk II was quickly ran into challenges.

But when in March, just I think six weeks after the Minsk two agreement was signed, the European Commission made sanctions permanent linked to the full implementation of Minsk too. That's when, you know, the Americans and the Brits had job done because sanctions became permanent. They could backslide on pushing forward with the Minsk, you know, agenda as such and so on. So, I mean, I think for the Americans and the Brits and for the Ukrainians,

it was about buying time. But Alond, he was just going to go in with the flow. But for Merkel, I absolutely feel that she was trying to find a pragmatic way through. and Ms. 2 was much more minimalist than people are making out in terms of the depletion that it would have offered. I think that is the point that very few people can have recognized.

Well, the Kiev sabotage ratified by then I guess, you know, Biden working for Obama and therefore Obama too, even though he had rubber stamped the Minsk deals, both of them. But Biden came in and said, no, first the rebels have to essentially lay down their arms and let Kiev take control, of the entire Dombas

and including all the way to the border with Russia and only after that, then we can hold elections and then we can decide about all these other things, which was not the deal and was obviously made to be a total poison pill. And they would say, well, you can't hold elections under occupation.

But yeah, that was what the other side would say too is that you can't hold elections under occupation. So let them hold their elections first and see what happens then. But so that was obviously Joe Biden screwing everything up deliberately, you know. Yeah, I agree. And the other contentious issue was sealing the border.

And it became a bit chicken and egg. You know, well, we'll think about devolution when you've sealed the border. Well, have elections then we'll seal the border. It just became quite circular, you know, if that makes sense. Yes, once the rebels unconditionally surrender, then Kiev will figure out how to implement the compromise that they arranged, you know. Yeah, right. They don't really want to do anyway.

Yeah. All right, listen, I got to let you go, man. But thank you so much for coming on the show. Thank you for standing up for diplomacy and for your own rights and free speech here. You set a great example for other Englishmen to stop being such wimps and get up off their bellies and stand up for peace like you.

So thank you very much. Stop being pussies. Go for peace. Yeah, that's right. All right, thanks, man. Everybody check out Ian's great subject. He's the peacemonger over there on the side. And check out this great show too.

Thanks. All the best. Cheers, Scott. Bye for now. The Scott Horton show is brought to you by the Scott Horton Academy of Foreign Policy and Freedom, Roberts & Roberts, Brokerage, 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,

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