Scott Horton Show - Just the Interviews - 2/24/22 Greg Palast on Russia’s Invasion of Ukraine

Episode Date: February 25, 2022

Scott interviews Greg Palast about the situation in Ukraine. They discuss the political, economic and religious context behind Putin's actions. Discussed on the show: Support KPFK Investigative reporter Greg Palast covered Venezuela and oil for BBC Television and The Guardian during Hugo Chavez’s presidency. He is the author of several New York Times bestsellers including The Best Democracy Money Can Buy, now a movie available on Amazon Prime. A documentary of Palast’s work for BBC-TV, The Assassination of Hugo Chavez, is available as a free download at Palast’s site, GregPalast.com. This episode of the Scott Horton Show is sponsored by: The War State and Why The Vietnam War?, by Mike Swanson; Tom Woods’ Liberty Classroom; ExpandDesigns.com/Scott; EasyShip; Free Range Feeder; Thc Hemp Spot; Green Mill Supercritical; Bug-A-Salt and Listen and Think Audio. Shop Libertarian Institute merch or donate to the show through Patreon, PayPal or Bitcoin: 1DZBZNJrxUhQhEzgDh7k8JXHXRjYu5tZiG. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

For Pacifica Radio, February 27th, 2022, I'm Scott Horton. This is Anti-War Radio. All right, y'all, welcome the show. It is Anti-War Radio. I'm your host, Scott Horton. I'm the editorial director of anti-war.com, and author of Enough Already. Time to end. The War on Terrorism. You can find my full interview archive, more than 5,600 of them now going back to 2003 at Scott Horton.org and at YouTube.com slash Scott Horton show. And it's still fun drive here at KPFK. We're going to be doing some pitches here in a minute. But first, introducing our guest, it's my old friend, the great Greg Pallas, author of numerous different versions and updated books called The Best Democracy Money Can Buy, A Year's Special.

on Republican voting shenanigans and also the international oil industry and lots of really smart stuff formerly with BBC News Night and he writes for the Rolling Stone and whatever else. Welcome back to the show. How you doing, Greg. Scott, how are you? Gregpalus.com. I meant to say that too. That's where you find all this stuff. Now, so here's the thing. How are you, my old friend? I haven't spoken with you in too many years. in many years well you know the world's in flames and it's not happy is it it's a sad day now we're recording this on uh thursday morning so by the time everybody hears this on sunday things almost certainly will have gotten worse but as we record this now we're about half a day into a full

scale invasion of ukraine by russia apparently they're taking odessa the last i saw they're moving on Odessa, I guess might as well place our bets on the idea that the Russians are going to, in fact, invade and take the whole country all the way to the Romanian border. Is that what you believe, Greg? Well, Putin hasn't talked to me in weeks, so I have no idea what this head. That's one of the problems we have here. And in fact, you know, as we sit here on Thursday, the information we get is confused. All we do know is that Russia has certainly been hitting with maybe missiles, maybe artillery or planes, probably missiles, airports throughout Ukraine. Tanks have rolled through the border areas. We really don't know much more than that, but it looks like a grim situation. Horrible.

Yeah. And for those familiar with the geography of Ukraine, I guess it looks. almost certain that they're going to keep everything east of the Nipa River here, give or take Kiev, we don't know yet. Then the question is whether they're going to conquer the west of the country as well. That's how it looks at this point, right? Well, you know, it's, I'm just wondering if Russians are getting that old Afghanistan feeling. You know, when they try to swallow Afghanistan, the Soviet Union choked on it and blew apart.

whether that will happen with Russia now, I don't know. But, you know, it's very hard, you know, let's face it. This is one of the problems we have. You know, people know Greg Pallas, know me, a lot for my work on elections and vote suppression. And one of the things I've constantly said is that when you have unelected leadership, they're out of control. if if George Bush had to really face the electorate and felt he couldn't stay in office by stealing elections we wouldn't have invaded Iraq I think Putin has decided that he doesn't have to face the the judgment of his own people he's got his main opponent Navalny in prison this week

you know you can't you can't divide these things you can't divide the the the repression of the Russian vote from the invasion of Ukraine. Even there, Navalny ain't much of an opposition figure. It's not like he leads some major party that would otherwise be the ruling party if only Putin wasn't stopping him or something like that, you know, so. We don't know, do we? That's one thing about not having elections. You know, it's like I've been in these areas.

I've been in the, from, I was in Kazakhstan. Zerbaijan, plenty of places where, you know, they said, well, there doesn't seem to be in the opposition. Well, that's because you get killed, imprisoned, poisoned, destroyed. And then we just saw the uprising in Kazakhstan where, you know, I was assured, I was there. I was assured that everyone loves the great granddaddy dictator, you know, who gets elected technically with 112% of the vote or whatever. So it's not clear. I mean, why would Putin jail his opponents if he didn't fear them? If he didn't fear them, he wouldn't jail them.

All right. Hold on one second. Listen up you all. It's fundraising time again at KPFK. I know it's annoying, but we have to do it. For 11 years here on KPFK, this show has brought you the whole and horrible truth about the wars in Iraq, Afghanistan, Libya, Syria, Somalia, and Yemen, debunk the lies about Iran's nuclear program, told the truth about the Israeli occupation.

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That's 818985-5735 or KPFK.org. All right now, Greg, I think you're right about that. I'm not so sure that elections provide much accountability, as the great Tom Woods says, no matter who you vote for, you always get John McCain. And it doesn't seem like there's much variation there. Biden, I think, you know, he's a 20-time loser, right? what does he have left to screw up at this point that he hadn't already ruined

but you know I don't know how about this if we could just zoom out just a little bit since America is the superpower and yeah this is my bent but I think it's also right doesn't it make sense to

question first and foremost whether or not this is a failure of American diplomacy supposedly they know how to handle these Russians and they know how to handle the Chinese. They know how to handle keeping America in and the Germans down and the Russians out and all this smart stuff. And yet somehow all their greatest plans have led to this. Now, of course, it's all Vladimir Putin's fault, but maybe it's also Bill Clinton and W. Bush and Barack Obama and

Donald Trump and Joe Biden's fault, too. What do you think about that? Well, it wasn't Bill Clinton in a tank crossing into Odessa. Right now there's fighting as we speak in Chernobyl. You know, so, yeah, I mean, I don't agree with that. You'd be growing in the dark. Yeah, so exactly. So one of the things we want to be careful of is the idea that, you know, for all of the ills and evils of U.S. imperialism doesn't make,

it doesn't mean that the U.S. is responsible for every evil in the world. And, you know, yes, if you go to Greg Pallas.com, you'll see a story, seven facts about Ukraine. Because I'm interested in the facts. You don't need to, you know, I'm not a pundit. I'm an investigative reporter. I have a team of people who've been in Ukraine for many years. And there's no doubt that we have to look at the center of this conflict. And it's not the usual, you know, the play is to make.

at the new Cold War. This is more medieval. That is, it's a religious war. In the east of Ukraine, in the Donbos area, that population is almost entirely Russian Orthodox, with about 15% Muslim population. There are no Muslims in the rest of Ukraine, virtually not. And a few Orthodox who follow the Moscow Patriarchate, most of Ukraine follows the Kiev or Ukrainian Orthodox Church or the Greek Orthodox Church is a bit smaller than that. Why am I mentioning these things? Because this is in the end actually a religious conflict. One of the things that's driving Putin, his base of power, and while I said, he doesn't have to worry because he doesn't really have elections, but he does have to get reelected.

matter how much he crushes, poisons, jails, opposition, you don't last long without some popular support. And at the base of his popular support is that he is selling the Russian people that he's defending, he's defending their co-religionists, those who follow the Moscow Patriarchate. And what he calls defending them against genocide in the east from the Ukrainian Orthodox. now i can't tell you scott the difference between the ukrainian uh the moscow and the greek orthodox churches uh they all have different funny hats like every um like every religious sect their leaders have funny hats whether it's jewish muslim or the various flavors of orthodox that might be it you know as george carlin said he thinks maybe that's what the fighting is all about is just the difference in the

funny hats that your funny hats are way different and wrong compared to ours yeah well it's what freud actually called before George Carlin, I guess, you know, his ghostwriter, what Freud called the vanity of small differences. So we have to look at this to a great extent as religious war because Putin cannot stay in office no matter what happens with the elections without the support of the Patriarch Kirill in Moscow. This has been the base of his support, just like we have the Christian evangelists who are very powerful in the U.S. Greg, you're saying that this Patriarch has been on Putin's case lately? Very much, because there's a concern, he had a concern, which is, there's two concerns

of the church that they've expressed. One is the killing of, we've had about 14,000 people killed in the eastern Ukraine over the past eight years. This war didn't just start. It's been going on for eight years. In 2014, well, in 2010, I hate to do history, but we have no choice. No, do it. history always bites us in the ass. In 2010, Victor Yanukovych was elected president of

Ukraine. And he was pro-Europe, and we said that was a fair election and wonderful. We're happy for Yanukovych. But he was facing west and trying to join the European Union and trying to even join NATO. But this is after the world economic collapse of 2008-9. So, Ukraine was on its back, but the Germans and the European Union would not give any help or debt relief to Ukraine. So Putin stepped in and said, well, I'll help you out. And so, you know, Kovic switched his allegiance more towards Russia. So when he got re-elected in 2014, we claimed this was an illegitimate election. Suddenly, we liked him before and we thought he was legitimately elected. Now he's illegitimate. And there was an insurrection, just like January 6th.

sixth insurrection in the U.S. The difference was it was called the Maidon Europe insurrection led by the Ukrainian Orthodox leaders. You could see them on the stage at the Maidon. And they overthrew. And the difference between the January 6th insurrection here in Washington and the Maidon uprising in 2014 is that that insurrection succeeded and remove the president favorable to Russia. That led the Eastern, the Russian Orthodox, and who are Russian speakers. And by the way, I have some distant relatives in the Donbos area, quite distant, but they see themselves as Russian.

They speak Russian. They thought of themselves as nothing but Russian. And so that area declared itself independent, and you've had a war for eight years since then. So this is really a – so what is the difference between these two areas? One has been the Donbos area is Russian Orthodox and Russian speaking versus the rest of Ukraine. And that's been at the core of this problem. Plus, you've had the Ukrainian army and right-wing militias killing thousands of people in the Donbos. So this gave Putin his causes bell-eye.

But here's the thing that's so frightening right now is that he won. The Donbos was effectively independent. He recognized its power. in effect the Ukrainian government had never had not controlled the Donboss in eight years so Putin had won so the question is after you win what is the new game he's playing and there is an anger in the Russian Orthodox church that they were kicked out of Kiev um and replaced by a Ukrainian patriarch so you have to understand these really important religious undertones of this whole fight and of course one of the things that's that That's both, you know, one of the almost saving possibilities that we had in Ukraine was that the president is Jewish, one of the few Jews left in Ukraine. And he didn't have a dog in the fight. And he was kind of pushing against his own parliament to try to cut a deal with Russia,

going back to what was called the Minsk Accords of 2015. Remember, Russia was in the Donbos area in 14 after the attacks and the overthrow of the pro-Russian president. So you ended up with the Russian troops there. They left when Ukraine, Ukrainian separatists, France and Germany signed an agreement that said that the Donbos would be autonomous and have certain powers within the Ukrainian government, mainly to keep NATO out of Ukraine. And unfortunately, the Ukrainian government never lived up to the Minsk agreements, though in truth, neither did the separatists and the Donbos, who wanted to be separate, did not want to have an autonomous republic. They wanted to have a republic. They wanted to rejoin Mother Russia. Now, I'm going to give you

a little more history, whether you like it or not. Let me stop you for a second, Greg, because I want to go back to real quick, the regime change in the church that you talked about there. Could you please elaborate a little bit about what exactly happened after the war broke out there and the pro-uncranian Orthodox Church faction took power in Kiev. What was it exactly that they did? I mean, I know they tried to outlaw the Russian language as an official language at first, at least, that caused, that was kind of the declaration of culture war right there. But please elaborate a little bit more about what exactly it was that they did to the Russian Orthodox Church leaders in Ukraine that you were mentioned there. Well, keep in mind that the Russian Orthodox Church, after the fall of the

Wall in 89, and the independence of Ukraine in 90. You still had tremendous power of the Moscow Patriarchate. I know that this sounds very strange to us. These are the issues that people fight and die over, these medieval religious issues. And so the Russian Orthodox Patriarchate was effectively kicked out of Ukraine. And the Russian patriarch, Kirill, was not too happy about that. And keep in mind, they go back historically. Russia.

What do you mean exactly about kicked out? Could you please elaborate on kicked out there? You're talking about this is after the coup and after Crimea and with the start of the war in the Dombas in 2014, essentially, right? You'd already had this shift where the Ukrainian church had replaced the Moscow Patriarchate. And so again, there were followers of the Patriarchate in the east of Ukraine. And this is the core of the battle. But again, the Moscow Patriarchate was not only concerned about the killing of their co-religionists in the Donbos. Remember, about over 3,000 civilians have been killed in the Donbos.

There was a real reason why Putin was, and the Moscow Patriarch was concerned about the safety of the people in the Donbos, is that they were getting shelled and killed, 3,000 in the past year. Now that does, let's face it, there was a kind of causes bell-eye in protecting. the people of Donbos, what Putin called genocide of the people in the Donbos, that may be an exaggeration, but on the other hand, if 3,000 civilians, mostly children were killed, you know, you might take the same view. Hey, let me ask you, Greg, when in February of 2015, about a year into the war, the Dombas region, Donetsk and Lahansk held a plebiscite referendum type of a deal where they voted that they wanted to ask Putin to please join the Russian Federation and he told them no. And now he's taken him by force and then some. So my question to you is, why did he not go ahead and just pull out a Sharpie and redraw the line and say, this is Russian now back then? Well, that was because of what we're called the Minsk Accords.

Again, France, Germany, and the two sides of the Ukrainian conflict signed that. So the idea was that, okay, the people of the Ukrainian east would have a certain autonomy and they'd be protected from attack. that never happened they were never attacked they were never given autonomy though they effectively created a separate republic and so this is what is so horrible and tragic and frankly in my you know i mean uh it's not a great stretch to say inexcusable extension of the conflict because putin did effectively get control of the donboss they were effectively independent he rolled tanks and troops back into the donbos remember they were there in 15th left because of the Minsk Accords.

The Minsk Accords were never implemented, so now they rolled back in. It was a virtual invitation to the Russians to go back into the Donbos. The question is, once they've got these areas back, Crimea, Ulhansk, Donetsk, and by the way, there's a fourth province, which is adjoining called Kersen. And I expected that that would join Russia again. One thing we should know historically, just so people have a sense of history, because history always bites us in the butt, from 1783 to 1954, this eastern Ukrainian area in the Crimea, we're part of Russia. They were not traditionally Ukrainian, which is why it's a different religion, it's a different language, it's a different country. They were always from 1783 to 1954, these eastern areas, including the Crimea, were part of Russia. In 1954, Khrushchev became Premier, head of the party.

And he was in an internal fight in the Politburo with his prime minister, Mellenkoff. So Stalin dies in 53. Khrushchev takes over in 54. and in his fight with Melanchoff slices off part of Melanchoff's base. That is the Crimea, which has the big naval base at Russian naval base at Sevastopol and the eastern Ukraine. So he gave them to Ukraine to give his allies power so that he could reduce the authority of Melanchoff. So basically this area became part of Ukraine as part of some internal Communist Party conflict. but these are not Ukrainians.

It's the same story with Crimea as well. Yeah, Crimea is part of that. Certainly, Crimea is completely Russian. And, you know, again, I follow my issue as elections. And while there's no question that the Crimeans fairly voted to rejoin Russia, in part, by the way, the naval officers, by rejoining Russia, their pensions grew by 500% versus the starvation pensions that you get if you're in Ukraine. So there was no question that the Crimeans were Russians.

They voted to rejoin Russia that made complete sense. It's Russia. It's always been Russia. The Donbos, very much the same. The question is what we have now, and again, this is Thursday morning, so I don't know what the latest developments are. And as you know, truth is the first victim of war. So we're getting all these conflicting reports.

All we know is that the airports have been destroyed. from Odessa to Kiev and Kerasan. We're getting reports. By the way, I have two correspondents on the ground in Ukraine. And so a lot of this comes from them. So we have this destruction of the airports. There may be invasions. There seem to be columns moving through the border area.

I want to be very careful just repeating the fourth-hand reports or getting from the media. but it does look like a how far Putin will go we don't know my question though and I'm confused I admit why after winning it's like he just won the gold medal he was standing on the stand he got the Donboss he has Crimea Putin why this sudden new uh why extend the conflict you've won the war now he's extending it why and I can't I got a theory there we can't tell you yeah I mean I have a theory which is that, you know, one of the main reasons he didn't absorb the Dom Bass back in 2015 was because then he would be essentially tilting the ethnic and linguistic and religious culture war balance in favor of the other guys. Whereas now, even though they're obviously on the outs and suppressed and had their last president overthrown and everything, that there's still the potential that you still have kind of this 50-50 split inside the country.

Once he takes the Donbass, now, you know, he had to make some kind of statement, but now he just reduced his 50% by 10%. I'm making up these numbers, but you see what I mean. And so now, then it's like, well, so now I'm giving the Ukrainian nationalists an even bigger majority in control of the government for the ongoing future. So I guess I better take the whole rest of the country too that. You know what I mean? This is government logic to me is, well, I created a problem.

I better solve it by creating a worse problem and keep going until I run out of money. Well, keep this in mind. 2015, price of oil was plummeting. To understand Russia, you need two things. You need to understand religion, which is their concern for the Russian Orthodox Church and their Russian Orthodox co-religionists in Ukraine. But the second thing is oil. And you say, well, wait, how much oil does Ukraine have?

The answer is almost none, but in, you know, and relative in the world, certainly relative to Russia. Russia doesn't need its oil. It's drowning in oil. But the price of oil is everything to Putin. So when you talk about 15, you have to look at the price of oil, which a shot down by March 2016 and just looked it up to 45 bucks a barrel. And 45 bucks a barrel. And then it began plummeting going up and down. but, you know, obviously hitting the floor in 2020 because of COVID, down to 20 bucks a barrel.

This is devastating to Russia. The price of oil is everything. 40% of the Russian budget, 40% comes from sale of oil gas and the related royalties. Russian government was broke. And the more conflict, the more problems that Putin, can create the higher the price of oil the one thing the minute that he announced the tanks rolling i was wondering how he's going to keep up the price of oil because he got it up to over 90 bucks a barrel and i said well now that he's won the don boss how does he keep up the price of oil the answer is

well you keep pushing the invasion so now oil just busted a hundred bucks a barrel as we are speaking scott and um and um and uh that's what's a concern to Putin and by the way that's also what makes the sanctions that we're imposing that the U.S. and Europe are imposing a laugh. Right. Because while we're imposing these like sanctions, it's like, oh, we're going to cancel your Amazon Prime card, Putin. You know, in America, last year they spent or they imported

approximately 20 million barrels of oil and gas from Russia a month. So I don't know if they're trying to cancel all that now. But here's the thing. We're on a severe time limit here. And so, I mean, even to record this thing, much less to fit on the air. on Sunday. So let me just say that it's fun drive time. We need y'all's support. Otherwise, this show would have to be sponsored by Northrop Grumman, and we'd have to lie to you all morning, like over on the

TV channels. So you've got to support. Let me just give them the number here. It's 818-985-5735. 818-985-735. Of course, KPFK.org. Anybody who donates or pledges more than $75 will get a copy of my book. Enough already. Time to end the war on terrorism. And now you, Greg, kill them dead for about one. minute. Okay. Go to KPFK.org. I have. Just so you know, I've just donated $2,500 to KPFK. Can you match me? You're going to send me that book, but I already have it, don't I, Scott. So KPFK.org, and there's some great premiums there. I just don't talk to talk. I'm walking the walk. I'm writing a check. And by the way,

it's not because I'm loaded. You're in my book, by the way, although I think I just plagiarized you. I'm not sure if I gave you credit my name. Go ahead. I like that. Okay. So I've, you know, if you look out in front of my house, I have a, actually an 18-year-old Toyota. That's what I drive. But I thought, what's important to me? And that's KPFK, keeping open this voice of we the people. So go to kpfk.org. This is Greg Pallist. You're listening to Scott Horton. You know, Scott and I are in different parts of the political spectrum. But what's important is that we We both believe in something that's really important that you get nowhere else. And that's the facts. This is not National Petroleum Radio. It's not the petroleum broadcast system. This is a place where you get information.

You hear nowhere else. It's not a different perspective. It's about the facts. So this is Greg Pallis saying going to go right now, make that call to 818-985-5735, even better. So you don't have to wait online. Just go to K-P-F-K. that's kpfk orrg and by the way

you not only can get scott's book scott horton's book for a seventy five dollar donation if you make it a hundred bucks or make it a hundred seventy five and you could also get tom hartman's um hidden history of the of big brother in america thank you so much that's gregg palest everybody gregg pallas dot com for all his uh great productions his books and his videos and the rest and of course that's anti war radio for this morning i'm scott

You can find the full archive at Scott Horton.org and at YouTube.com slash Scott Horton Show. Follow me on Twitter at Scott Horton Show. And I'm here every Sunday morning from 830 to 9 on KPFK, 90.7 FM in L.A. Again, KPFK.org, to donate or call 8189855735. Tell them you're trying to support this show, and I sure appreciate that, and we'll see you next week. Thank you.