Scott Horton Show - Just the Interviews - 1/27/23 Ted Snider: Were the Minsk Agreements a Lie?

Episode Date: January 29, 2023

Scott talks with Ted Snider about former German Chancellor Angela Merkel’s recent claim that the Minsk agreements were never meant to bring peace to the Donbas. Merkel said that instead, they were implemented to give Ukraine time to build up its military. Some are doubting whether Merkel’s comments are true, but Snider explains why this is a big deal whether she’s lying or not. Scott and Snider explore the dynamic around the Minsk agreements and examine the crucial years between the 2014 ousting of Yanukovych and the 2022 invasion. They also touch on where things stand today and on whether the best window for negotiation has already passed.  Discussed on the show: “Did Europe Lie to Russia About Peace?” (Antiwar.com) “The U.S. Approach to Ukraine’s Border War Isn’t Working. Here’s What Biden Should Do Instead” (Politico) “Did the West Miss Its Window?” (Antiwar.com) “CIA director holds secret meeting with Zelensky on Russia’s next steps” (Washington Post) Ted Snider 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. This episode of the Scott Horton Show is sponsored by: Tom Woods’ Liberty Classroom; ExpandDesigns.com/Scott. Get Scott’s interviews before anyone else! Subscribe to the Substack. Shop Libertarian Institute merch or donate to the show through Patreon, PayPal or Bitcoin: 1DZBZNJrxUhQhEzgDh7k8JXHXRjY Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

All right, y'all, welcome to the Scott Horton Show. I'm the director of the Libertarian Institute, editorial director of anti-war.com, author of the book, Fool's Aaron, Time to End the War in Afghanistan, and The Brand New, Enough Already, Time to End the War on Terrorism. And I've recorded more than 5,500 interviews since 2004. almost all on foreign policy and all available for you at scothorton dot four you can sign up the podcast feed there and the full interview archive is also available at youtube.com slash scott horton's show okay you guys on the line i've got ted snider regular writer for anti-war dot com welcome back to the show ted how you doing thanks god i'm doing well

how are you i'm doing good appreciate you joining us today man there's a lot going on with this Ukraine War and you write so much good stuff about it. Let's start with the story about Angola Merkel and for that matter, Francois Holland as well, telling the European press that the Minsk 2 deal, I guess Minsk 1 and Minsk 2 of 2014 and 15, that they were essentially hoaxes, that they never meant to implement a peace deal. They were just trying to buy more time for America to build up Ukraine's armed forces before the war got back started again. What do you make of that?

You know, I think the ramifications that are huge, and I think, like you said, so much has happened so fast since then. It didn't get, the story didn't get the shelf life to get the attention it deserves, but this is a major story, Scott, because it totally rewrites history if it's true, and if it's not true,

it's equally significant for its consequences. So I think the big story here is, which we'll talk about is the consequences of what Merkel said, whether she's telling the truth or not, because some people think she's not. And I think the second big story is that this is much bigger than Angela Merkel, because although you alluded to what Scott, almost nobody else has, it wasn't just Merkel.

There were three parties involved in the negotiations, the Ukrainian president of the time, Piotr Poroshenko, German chancellor Angela Merkel, and French president of Francois, Francoe, and every single one of them, not just Merkel, but every single one of Putin's interlocutors have come out in a short period of time and said that it was a, it was a trick. So this isn't just Merkel. This is way, way bigger than Merkel. This is everyone. Now, so tell me a little bit about what you're saying about people not believing her. I'm not

sure I do, actually. Yeah. So I think there's a couple things here. The first is that she's never said this before. She's never something like this before. There's nothing in the historical record up to now to indicate that's what happened. It seems to have been a genuine thing. I think Zelensky thought was a genuine thing.

I think Putin thought of the genuine thing. So there have been some fairly insightful commentators who have suggested that Merkel is simply rewriting history now for because it looks so bad that the result

that she tried to negotiate a settlement, ends up in a war. And because it's become so politically incorrect to say that you negotiate or talk to Putin, that what Merkel is really doing is under pressure going back in this sort of Orwellian rewriting of the past, she's just recasting the story because it looks so bad on her. So there is this theory that there's really no truth to what Merkel is saying. But Scott, I think the important thing about that is that it doesn't matter because if what Merkel's saying is true, then that means that Europe and the West never intended for there to be a diplomatic solution to what was already a huge problem in the Donbass. It means that they were lying to Putin and making him believe there was a diplomatic solution so that they could low. him into a piece long enough to build Ukraine up for what was always intended to be a military

solution to the Donbass. That's huge because that's one of the major causes that led to the current war. We can talk about that more if you want to. But if what Merkel's thing is not true, it would sound like, okay, then it doesn't matter. It's just not true. But it matters a lot. Because in 2014, when Putin annexed Crimea, he was actually acting under permission by the Russian parliament, not just to take Crimea, but to take all of the Donbass. And Putin didn't. He restrained himself. It's unpopular to say that Putin was a restrainer, but he restrained himself. And he sincerely seems to have believed that there was a way to solve the problem by keeping the Donbass in Ukraine by granting an autonomy. He seems to have continued to believe that right up almost to the last

minute before the war. And the thing that's important about that, Scott, is that hardliners in Russia for eight years now have been highly critical of Putin. And what they've charged him with is that you could have solved this whole problem if you'd taken the Donbass in 2014. And you could have because the people that Donbass had voted, they wanted to follow Crimea back to Russia. Like the people in Donbass wanted to be part of Russia,

you had a reason to do it because the ethnic Russians were being treated. very badly in the region, so you had a reason to do it. They wanted you to do it, and you certainly had the military capability to do it. It would have been easy then, right? So they said you could have taken Donbass, you blew it, you trusted Germany and France that they were sincere about Donbass, and you were naive to trust Germany and France. You never should have. And the problem with this, Scott, is that if Angela Merkel is telling the truth, then they were right all along. And if she's not telling the truth, then what she's done now is destroyed any last confidence that Putin could have in trusting what anybody's saying.

So this is why, you know, Putin on New Year's Eve, he gives a speech to the nation. And he says that for ages and ages now, the West has been telling us that they wanted to solve the Donbass peacefully. But really, they've been talking about his quote is, the West lied to us about peace while preparing for aggression. And today, here's the thing, they no longer hesitate to openly admit it. He's referring to Merkel, like, openly telling this lie and completely destroying the credibility. So if it's not true, then it's equally serious because it's, it's substantially and reinforced the Russian belief that they can't trust the West. It's just, it's a nightmare scenario either way. And so it's really, it doesn't matter whether she's telling the truth or not telling the truth.

If she's telling the truth, it rewrites the history. If she's not telling the truth, then, you know, it destroys the trust and gives Putin no reason to trust the Western negotiations now. Man, that's really something else. And as you said, yeah, with Holland and Poroshenko saying the same thing, that, yeah, it was all essentially just a scam. Well, it's funny, I'm going back to, like, at the time, Merkel and Holland came to D.C. to it was reported ask permission essentially from the world emperor

Barack Obama in person she didn't just call him she got on a plane and she came here and she said to him listen I'm going to Minsk and I'm hammering out of peace deal here this has gone on long enough this is November 2014 and Obama said okay lady fine go ahead

right that was the narrative at the time and you know I guess it's possible that he said okay but it's all just a scam we don't really mean it except that his policy was to not arm the ukrainian government because he was afraid of what an escalation that would cause in the war and and afraid of what the azav battalion might do with weapons that he gave them um and so it seems to me like you know they probably are lying right i think At the time, it made more sense that they really were trying to end the war.

I mean, they went back a couple of months later in February of 15 when Minsk won wasn't good enough and they needed to tinker with it and make it better and get better concessions. I agree with you, Scott, and I've always thought it was sincere. And I do think, you know, when Zelensky got elected on a promise to implement Minsk, I think he at first was acting like he thought it was sincere too. But the American rules... Agreed. Yeah, I mean, he won with a great deal of support in the East because he promised peace. Well, he did. And when he got elected, his comments were all about continuing to do that at first. But Scott, the American rules really complicated because the U.S. didn't want to broker Mitz. They stepped back and they let Germany and France broker Mitzk.

But the U.S. and the U.N. both agreed to Minsk. But, you know, there are reports that the U.S. was advising Zelensky to not implement Minsk. Like they actually directly told them don't implement it. There's reports of that. I can't confirm that, but there's reports that they directly told not to implement it. Indirectly, they discouraged Minsk

because right after the signing of Minsk, they started flooding defensive weapons into Ukraine. So they say on the one hand, well, not exactly. I mean, I don't think they started putting the weapons in until 17. I don't think Obama did. Obama gave him Humvees. and boots and MREs and stuff, right? Trainers, but.

Right, but there's stuff going in suggesting that you're not committed to a completely diplomatic solution, but then it gets worse. And we've talked about this before, and I know, you know this stuff really, really well, that, that when Zelensky did get elected on this promise to bring in Minsk, he, you know, Poroshenko had already said, and we still need to talk about what Poroshenko and Francois Halon said, because it's important and it's gotten ignored. You know, the Francois Alon's story got reported. heavily in Ukraine and Russia. But I can't find it in the Western media anywhere. When I try to

Google that story, I still can't find it anywhere. Like, no one paid attention. So we still need to talk about that. But when Zelensky came in and he wanted to implement Minsk, he faced enormous pressure at home not to do it. And Poroshenko had said earlier than even in the recent interviews, Pyotr Poroshenko had said that I signed Minsk, but I knew it would never get implemented. implemented because he said, I knew the political oppression in Ukraine would never let me implement. That was the first hint that it was a deception. He said, I knew it would never happen. And the nationalist pressure on Zelensky was so intense. I mean, according to some reports, it might even have been mortally intense that you don't sign Minsk. And it was very, very clear

that Zelensky could not act on his election promise to implement Minsk unless he got U.S. support because it wasn't going to happen in the Ukraine without U.S. pushing, and the U.S. did nothing to push it. They did nothing. So even though they accepted Minsk, they never acted in a way that that suggested that they were trying to get Minsk implemented. It was a massive failure on the States' fault not to just back Zelensky in 2019 and forced the signing of Minsk. And probably, probably none of this would have happened. If the states had pressured Zelensky to, I mean, in a way, Ted, what you're saying is this whole argument is academic because whether the French or the Germans ever meant it, the Americans never did. If they ever meant it, they never acted like they meant it.

Yeah. Well, you know, I mean, I just read a piece last night in researching for the book from Samuel Charup from the Rand Corporation, from November of 21 in foreign policy. So when the crisis is first starting, the military buildup is going on, and the Washington Post is already reporting that the CIA says Russia is about to invade and all this. And Cherip says in there straight up, look, America's never pressured the Ukrainian government to implement Minsk, too. And they've been very reluctant to implement it for the following reasons. But now is time that we begin to pressure them to tell them to implement it because that's the only way we're going to avoid war here. Just warning the Russians that they better not is not going to be enough to start. And Scott, this wasn't just ran two weeks before the war, I forget the exact days, February 12th and 13th, something like that, less than two weeks before the war, Putin was on the phone with Macron in France and Schultz in Germany, and he was saying to them, put pressure on Ukraine to sign Minsk. This is the only solution.

Well, they even had one more meeting in February, right? did. And so this is like up to the last minute. This was, this was, this was not just like academic opinion that the states needs to pressure it. This was Putin on the eve of the war still saying pressure Ukraine to sign Minsk. This is the solution. And it was the solution. Hang on just one second. Hey, y'all, the audio book of my book, enough already. Time to end the war on terrorism is finally done. Yes, of course, read by me. It's available at audible Amazon, Apple Books, and soon on Google Play and whatever other options there are out there. It's my history of America's War on Terrorism from 1979 through today.

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Make a deal with Expanddesigns.com for your new business or news site. They will take care of you. Use the promo code Scott and save $500. That's expanddesigns.com. Man, I wish I was in school so I could drop out and sign up for Tom Woods' Liberty Classroom instead. Tom has done such a great job on putting together a classical curriculum for everyone from junior high schoolers on up through the postgraduate level and it's all very reasonably priced

just make sure you click through from the link in the right margin at Scott Horton.org Tom Woodses' Liberty classroom real history, real economics, real education. The importance of the cherub thing is that here's the guy from Rand saying we have never, we the U.S. has never

pressured Ukraine to implement the deal, and therefore they haven't because they don't want to. And so he's really confirming what you're saying there. Even if we don't know that they explicitly told Ukraine not to implement it, here we got the guy from Rans saying, well, we sure as hell never told them to implement it. Yeah. And if you look at sort of the academic record, you look at what, you know, scholars are writing about Minsk, you know, it is really clear that the U.S. pressure Ukraine to sign Minsk, and that that is what Zelensky needed. And I don't want to portray Zelenskyes like that they need to pressure Zelensky. Zelensky was willing to sign Minsk.

He needed U.S. support to sign Minsk to counter Ukrainian pressure, not to sign it. Or to implement it, you mean? To implement it. Yeah, sorry, not to sign it. So that's all, that's what was needed, right? So, I mean, and it could have happened, and it probably would have solved the problem. And now you get this sort of very short window of time now where all these signatories to Minsk are coming forward and saying that, you know, that it was a, that it was a trick. So, so you get, you get miracle.

And what, what she actually is saying is that she, she, she says, I used Minsk during this time to get stronger, as you can see today. Like she says that the whole purpose of Minsk was really a deception to low Russia into peace so that they could build up the Ukrainian forces. And then Poroshenko around the same time, he goes all over the place giving interviews to the media. And he says, I'm quoting him, our goal was to first stop the threat, or at least to delay the war, to secure eight years to restore economic growth and create a powerful armed forces. Like that was, he doesn't say that that was the effect of Minsk, Scott. He says that was the intent of Minsk. Right. Right.

And then a couple of days later than Merkel, Francois Hollande goes, and he gives an interview to the Kiev Independent, which just doesn't get picked up. Now, just to set the context for a bit, Angola Merkel was the main force behind the Minsk agreements. Francois Alon was kind of her sidekick, her assistant. Like, she was the driving force. He was the second one.

So these are the two people in Europe who are negotiating this deal with Russia and Ukraine. And so the key of independence is a Ukrainian newspaper, right? In an interview, asked Francois Hollande straight up, this is I'm quoting, do you believe that the negotiation of Minsk were intended to delay Russian advances in Ukraine? He says, as Angela Merkel has suggested in a reason interview. And Francois Alon says, yes, Angela Merkel is right on this point. he comes he comes straight out and says that again not there but the intent of minsk was to deceive Putin so so what's going on like why do all three of them go public saying this is is it not true

is it just to sort of rewrite the pass so that they don't look bad is it true either way it's this nightmare scenario that that either rewrites history of the cause of war or shatters russian trust and the ability to talk to the West. Now, in a war like this, which hopefully is going to eventually end in negotiations to end this stupid thing, the last thing you want to do is give Putin a reason not to trust negotiations with the West.

So why would you stand up before negotiations to end this horrible war and say, you can't trust this to negotiate? Because he lied to you last time. Right. Look, I mean, that's the key, right? It's a nightmare. Yeah, look, it's, this is simple.

public choice theory economics, right, where there is no national interest. There's just the interest of Angela Merkel, the individual human person who at that time was in charge of Germany. And so right now it's in her individual interest to not look like a sucker who negotiated with Putin and let Putin walk all over her. So she has to pretend that she walked all over him. And so if that means that this undermines the next five decades of diplomacy between the rest of Europe and Russia, fine. Right. And Scott, that's her needs right now.

And that's precisely why this is a big story, whether she's telling the truth or not. Because if she is telling you truth, it rewrites the whole history saying that this war was inevitable because the West was always gearing up for military solution in the Donbass. And if it's not true, then you've undermined the chances of negotiating an end to the war because you just straight up told Putin you can't trust us to negotiate with us so whether this helped cause the war

her telling the truth or helps to not be able to stop the war her lying it's a nightmare and then for Francois Alon and Pieter Poroshenko to come out and see the same thing at the same time in this what almost seems orchestrated is amazing

so this is a very big story you know it's important too to bring up here that uh you know i don't know how sincere poroshenko ever was uh you know i guess it would depend on the circumstances but we know that zolensky ran on peace and originally tried when he came into power as you mentioned there he made some moves he did like a prisoner swap and was trying to have some talks but right after he was sworn in i believe the first week after he was sworn in um andre i think it's andre belletsky the founder of the azov battalion said look at this guy

kind of tries to negotiate a piece with the East, we'll kill him. He'll hang from a lamppost on the main drag in Kiev. And, you know, even the New York Times said, hey, that's a credible threat. These guys have overthrown the government twice now. They can't, I mean, right? Like, this is not just some guy spouting off about we will get our revenge someday, boy, like in Brandenburg. this is a credible threat to murder the president if he tries to negotiate peace. And so that's why Stephen Cohen, the Russia expert, said that if the Kiev government is going to ever implement Minsk, it's going to, one, need to be pressured by the United States. But two, they're going to need help from the United States to round up Boleski and the worst of these Nazis to protect the president's life so that he can try to implement the deal. That's the situation that this guy is in.

And then what do the Americans do? The Americans were like, no, we agree with Pelletsky. Yeah, they walk away. You know, some people have said that Stephen Cohen was wrong about those death threats. But there are, you can actually, there are. Oh, there's plenty of them. I'm writing a book about it. I got a full list, you know?

There are interviews where you can, it seems to me, you can clearly hear them saying to him that he's risking his life. if he goes forward with Minsk. But even if that wasn't true, which I believe it is, but even if it wasn't true, I don't think any serious scholar doubts that the pressure that the nationalists put on Zelensky not to sign was massive.

There was no way he couldn't do it without U.S. support. Right. Even if they weren't threatening to kill him, he couldn't implement Minsk if they weren't willing to go along when there's still these independent militias who can continue to fight on their own orders. And this is the significance of Poroshenko's statement,

not only that he also says Minsk was a deception, but Poroshenko, who, by the way, keep in mind, was also elected on a platform of making peace with Russia, right? He was also elected on that platform. But he said this will never be signed because the forces in Ukraine, and he met the national forces, would never allow it to be signed.

So I don't think anyone disputes the fact that Zelenskyy, could not make good on his campaign promise to implement Minsk unless the U.S. supported him. And they left him to hang. They did nothing to support him. So when he left the path of diplomacy and said, we're going to retake Crimea, you know, even militarily and completely abandoned

the whole peace promise that he'd said he would do, that was at least in part because the U.S. didn't support him at all on the, you know, on the rails to peace. And when he got derailed, they did nothing to push him back on. And neither did Europe. Nobody did. And so, you know, and that leads to the events of today. It's so avoidable, you know.

I don't know whether Minsk was the perfect solution or not, but it was the best and really only solution to the problem at the time. And, you know, really good scholars have said that had Minsk been signed, Jack Matlock said recently that of Minsk had been signed, this war almost definitely wouldn't never have happened. Yeah. Now, well, I think that's true too. I had a great talk with David Swanson the other day about alternatives that Russia had besides invasion. And they all basically centered around finding a peaceful solution to the problem of the Donbass because, you know, NATO expansion and potential anti-missile missiles being deployed and all of those. That is the

future anyway. The real crisis was the unending violence in the Donbass. And so if they had come up with a solution for that, bringing in peacekeepers from a third party nation, this kind of thing, that could have prevented the entire war if they'd. Look, I think, and I've argued this before, I think that the, that the, it's hard, it's so hard to be in Putin's head, right? Everyone wants to guess what Putin was thinking, and I think the only thing you can do is look at the historical record. You can only look at what people actually said.

Hey, he's been in power for 22 years, 23 years. Yeah, and there's been no, there's been no secret about the progression of Putin's comments and Putin's, I don't want to see thoughts, it sounds like what he said. And I think that that historical record shows that Putin's major concern was that Ukraine would be admitted into NATO and then as a NATO power armed with Article 5 would then make a military solution. a military attack into the Donbass in Crimea, and because of Article 5, engaged Russia in an all-out war with NATO. I think on the eve of this war, those were the two things in Putin's head. They're going to join NATO, or they could join NATO, they're going to attack the Donbass. What if both of those things happen?

Right. If they attacked the Donbass and they're in NATO, we're in a NATO war, right? So what needed to be addressed with both of those, but at least in the immediate situation, address one of them. Right? So if you had done Minsk, if you'd taken that out, that would have been a help. It would have prevented this war. It wouldn't have solved the problem forever. Putin would have still needed some kind of guarantee that Ukraine wasn't going to join NATO. And it couldn't be a verbal guarantee because the West had completely broken its verbal promises for NATO not to expand.

And he was very clear about this. He was very clear that it has to be a written legal guarantee this time. And there's this great moment where Putin turns to Lavrov, it's on TV to Sergey Lavar, the minister of foreign affairs. And he just says, he says, we need to get written guarantees on this now. And he said in a speech, he said in the speech, they have to be written because we were deceived about verbal promises not to advance East. So, so it had to be written. And those were the, you know, the security proposals that Putin gave to the states and NATO, you know, just before the war. That's one of the things they were saying is we need We need written guarantees that Ukraine won't join NATO

That NATO won't flood Ukraine with weapons And he needed a solution to the Minsk Accords All right now listen man we're almost out of time Ted But can you give me just a minute or two on the escalation of the tanks And what you write here about the possible window for negotiation And whether we might have missed it Yeah I think Scott there's so much to say there I wish we had it like an hour for this but yeah

I think that, you know, a little while ago, I think it was November when Ukraine had made some advances, how strategically real those were or not is another story, but the many experts in the West, including military experts in the West, were starting to talk about this moment where Ukraine's probably in the best position on the battlefield they can get in. They called it an inflection point that we've reached this moment where we've advanced, Ukraine's advance as far as they can go, this might be the moment to negotiate because Biden has always said our purpose is to put Ukraine a position on the battlefield, the person in the strongest position of the negotiating table. And here were experts, including top American generals, saying

this is that moment where the strongest point in negotiating table. And at that point, they had two choices. They could have forced negotiations or they could say if Ukraine can't get any further on the weapons they have, we're going to give them bigger weapons. and so unfortunately they missed that window and they gave bigger they're giving bigger weapons now this is really really complicated because there's also a story that came out in the Washington Post that really no one I thought everyone would jump on it no one did when when Burns went to Kiev to talk to Zelensky the newspaper reports were all on he's telling them what the states thinks Russia's

military plans are. That's not a story, Scott. Everybody knows the states has been giving Ukraine intelligence on Russian plans. The story was that, according to the Washington Post, what was really utmost on Zelensky's mind is how much longer can I count on flow of weapons into Ukraine? And apparently the message Burns gave him, according to the Washington Post, is that this isn't going to go on forever. And they say, the Post says that their sources told them that Zelensky walked away thinking that he thinks that this current huge batch is happening now, he can can count on for a while, but can't count on another one after. So then you get this idea that that here's the new window, right? That there's that there's one more push. So the US, you know,

sends all these weapons in. But the US is also saying quietly. And by the way, so is Kiev. Although no one talks about this as came out. And you know, the, I think it was, uh, was it David Ignatheff? I think maybe during the posting too, but like really mainstream media. The Kiev also thinks they can't take Crimea. So you give them these tanks and weapons and stuff to make a push on Crimea, but knowing you can't really conquer it, but if you can scare the Russians to think Crimea is vulnerable, then maybe you've got this new position that Ukraine can be the stronger position on the negotiating table.

Those Democrats are just geniuses with their fourth dimensional chess. You're blowing my mind here. Sorry, go ahead. Well, look what they're doing with the tanks now. I mean, I just wrote a piece It's not out yet on Antio War But I'm just writing a piece on the tanks And you know

It seems that the States is promising tanks That they know aren't going to get there on time To fight in this war There's all kinds of Do they think that the Russians don't read the post? Well, I don't know You know, I was talking to give away their whole game All the time, you know

I was talking to one Russian scholar Who said to me To the papers not notice these contradictions or are they codes for like analysts in Russia to pick up? Are they, look, is it possible? I don't know, Scott. I'm just totally winging it here. I should talk to you about this afterward.

Is it possible that the states wants Russia to know? Yeah, we're sending these tanks because it was the only way to get Europe to send the tanks, but don't worry. They're never really going to get there. We're not really. Right. It's just like when Biden chastised Lloyd Austin for saying we're trying to weaken Russia because that's going too far.

But then in the Washington Post another week or two later, they said, no, that is still the policy, though. We just had to say that. Well, obviously, Biden authorized him to say that, too, because the walk back was too far and made him look like a whim. So now he had to walk it forward again. The Russians are reading this, too, dude. Yeah. And Scott, that makes whatever America's intents are, that makes this escalation so dangerous, so dangerous because they're pushing these weapons so, so far. And the only reason they're doing it, they keep saying is that Putin hasn't used a nuclear weapon yet, so we don't really believe that he's going to.

What a stupid gamble to take? First of all, of course, he hasn't used a nuclear weapon yet because you haven't crossed the threshold of where Russia would use a nuclear weapon, which is the same as the states, only not as bad as the states, an existential threat in their country. But if they keep sending in these weapons that can challenge Crimea, and now they're talking about jets, planes, they're pushing and pushing and pushing. So whether they're serious about it, the escalation is so, so dangerous. I suspect the purpose of all this really is just to advance the Ukraine far enough that they think they can scare Russia into more negotiations. There's a little bit of a silver lining, right, that they're thinking that they're essentially admitting that Millie is right. We're not going to dislodge the Russians here. They're going to lose the Donbass.

The only question is when we negotiate that fact and whether they get Ziprogia and curse on to you know yeah yeah so yeah so i think you know the the escalation now is very dangerous and there's a couple really interesting articles out this morning about ukraine already asking for planes now but yeah you know i saw a thing that said poland gave them a couple of migs i don't know i don't know i i haven't seen that i'm so sorry man i i really wish we could go on for an hour but i got another one that i'm already late for but we could we could do another hour on the on the we need to do this more often i think yeah but listen Everybody read Ted Snyder, man.

He's at anti-war.com, and as you can tell, on top of every bit of this for us. Thank you so much, Ted. Thanks, God. It's great talking to you. The Scott Horton Show, Anti-War Radio, can be heard on KPFK, 90.7 FM in L.A. APSRadio.com, anti-war.com, Scotthorton.org, and Libertarian Institute.org.