Scott Horton Show - Just the Interviews - 6/20/24 Ted Snider on Further Proof the West Blocked the 2022 Peace Agreement between Ukraine and Russia

Episode Date: June 21, 2024

Ted Snider joined Scott on Antiwar Radio this week to discuss Ukraine. They first review some of the new evidence that the West pressured Ukraine to abandon the peace process and fight back in the spring of 2022. They also touch on some of the alarming statements Biden made during his interview with Time Magazine and attack the ridiculous assertion that Putin is trying to conquer all of Eastern Europe.  Discussed on the show: “Encouraging War in Ukraine, New York Times Misses the Point” (Antiwar.com) “Joe Biden’s Time Interview Should Set Off Alarms” (Antiwar.com) 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. To support Ted’s work, you can make a PayPal contribution at [e-mail]. This episode of the Scott Horton Show is sponsored by: Roberts and Robers Brokerage Incorporated; Tom Woods’ Liberty Classroom; Libertas Bella; 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

For Pacifica Radio, June the 20th, 2004, 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 I'm the author of the book, enough already time to end the war on terrorism you can find my full interview archive more than 6,000 of them now going back to 2003 at scott horton.org and at youtube.com slash scott horton show

and all your podcatchers and video sites and so forth just look for the scott horton show and of course i'm here every thursday from 233 on kpfk 90.7 fm in l a all right and our guest today is the great ted snider he writes for us at the Institute and at anti-war.com. Really great stuff lately, almost entirely focusing on Eastern European issues. Welcome back to the show. Ted, how are you doing? I'm doing well, Scott. Thanks a lot for asking. It's great to be on the show with you. Yeah, yeah. Thank you, man. Great to have you on the show here. And great to read your articles. You're paying very close attention to all this stuff while I'm writing my history book. You're keeping tabs on all the current

stuff for me. Yeah. I actually have the tab open here, of course, but I haven't gotten to it yet. The New York Times finally put out a bunch of papers from the negotiations at the very beginning of the Ukraine-Russia war in 2022. This is very famous now. We've been compiling all the various evidences and leaks and confirmation about just how close or far apart Ukraine and Russia were before America and Britain. Britain put the kibosh on the negotiations and said they wanted to fight. That's a paraphrase, but there's a lot of various evidences for that. So now Vladimir Putin has said, I propose peace along the lines of you surrendering where the lines are now, or even fact, maybe even a little more than that.

And so on that occasion, it seems like the New York Times went ahead and put this story out. that was your conclusion that you come to in your article, that the New York Times story was sort of an answer to Putin's offer of calling it timeout where things stand? It was striking to me, Scott, because the West has been very publicly, has been very skeptical about even the existence of this draft agreement or what's called the Istanbul communique. And in fact, there's been Western officials that have gone so far as to mock Putin when he held up the document at a conference of African leaders and said, you know, if Putin has the document, why doesn't he publish it? They've been very, very, very skeptical about

even its existence. And then Putin comes out and he offers a peace proposal. And his peace proposal is based on four points. The most important one, it's always been the most important one is that Ukraine has to not be a NATO member. The second is that Ukraine has to withdraw from the four territories that Russia has annexed. The third is that they had to limit the size with their armed forces. And the fourth is that to guarantee the rights of Russian-speaking Ukrainians. Fine. That's really nothing different than Putin said all along. What seems to have riled the New York Times is when Putin said that the parameters of this proposal should be doable because they were all agreed upon in Istanbul in 2022, that everything was agreed upon.

Suddenly now, the New York Times can produce these documents, which, by the way, it's clear from their own writing that they've had for months and months and months, because they say that they've been interviewing and stuff like that for a number of months. But suddenly they can produce it. And they produce it. Sometimes I wonder, Ted, if the New York Times is really even in that big office building in New York City or whether they're really just an office of the State Department. Yeah. Well, you know, others have published it, but the New York Times hasn't. And then suddenly they do. But Scott, they don't publish it, you know, in support of Putin saying, look, there was this agreement. Instead, they focus on the differences and say that

the negotiations, quote, fizzled. They say that they, that they failed, that there were points of disagreement, that they clashed over issues. And they've got all this focus that Putin's full of it because he wants to base on this terms that were agreed. They were never agreed. They were a mile apart. In fact, the documentary evidence is that they were really close. And a number of Ukrainian officials who are actually present have said it was 90 percent agreed. upon that we managed a very real compromise. We were very close to a peaceful settlement. I mean, they were really close. And then remarkably Scott, and this is right in the Istanbul communique. And keep in line, by the way, let me just clarify for the listeners. The draft agreement

that was signed by the Russian and Ukraine negotiating teams was based on this Istanbul communique, which summarized agreements. And it was written by the Ukrainian officials. Okay. So this is not Russian stuff, okay? The Russians wrote the draft proposal that it's based on this Ukrainian authored Istanbul, communique. And remarkably he's got the final point of the Kuhniquay states, and I'm quoting,

the parties consider it possible to hold a meeting sometime in 2022 between the president of Ukraine and Russia with the aim of signing an agreement and or making political decisions regarding the remaining unresolved issues. So there were unresolved issues.

They hadn't agreed on territory. They hadn't agreed on the size of the caps. They'd agreed there would be territorial changes, but hadn't agreed on exactly what they were. They'd agreed the military and Ukraine would be capped, but hadn't agreed on exactly what they were. So there were things like that. But they thought it was possible that Zelensky and Putin could meet after to, quote, resolve those remaining issues. So despite this closeness, the times instead focuses on that Putin's baseness on these agreements that didn't exist when clearly they did exist. So this seems to be a New York Times attempt to undercut Putin's claim that if people stopped interfering and blocking

it, Ukraine and Russia really could arrive at an agreement. Yeah. Now, one thing that they say was outstanding was the security guarantees. Yeah. That Ukraine wasn't going to sign on to this unless they had a promise from Russia, which to the Ukrainians obviously ain't worth much, but they wanted promises from America and all of our Western allies, too, that we would give them essentially some kind of de facto NATO membership. Was that really necessary, or could they have been made to climb down from that? Or that sounds like a hell of a sticking point, Ted? It's a complicated point, and I think there's a ton we could say about this.

It depends where you want to go first. The security guarantees were one of those items that were in. principle agreed upon. They agreed there would need to be security guarantees, but the details were not yet agreed upon. There were a couple of models out there. The one they seemed to have settled on was that a number of countries would be guarantors that if Ukraine was attacked by Russia again, that they would in some way come to Ukraine's defense. Now, whether Russia would be one of those guarantors, which would mean they could be though happening or whether they wouldn't was part of the sticking point. I think the thing that's important here, though, Scott, this is a thing. I mean, given what's happened last few years, this was really important, they had, in principle, agreed that there'd be security guarantees. They were arguing about the details. But had the West picked this up and encouraged negotiations, which they clearly did not, instead of blocking them, then progress could have made. Look, parties always come to the negotiating table with max minimalist positions. Of course, Ukraine's going to go to their extreme. The Russia is going to go to their extreme. And the whole art of diplomacy negotiations is, as the text said, finding compromises. So the West could have encouraged this. Instead, they squashed it. All right. Now, hold that thought one second here. It's anti-war radio. I'm Scott Horton. I'm talking with Ted Snyder from anti-war.com. And we're talking about the New York Times story about the negotiations, what could have been two years ago. And so if you could really drill down and focus on this

particular point for the audience here, Ted, what exactly do we know? about America and Britain's take on Ukraine and Russia's negotiations at that time? And what difference does it make? So it was really clear that the decision had been made both in the West and in NATO not to support negotiations, at least until Russia had completely withdrawn from Ukraine. The West had made the decision not to support the negotiations. Beyond that, they had actively interfered. So Boris Johnson famously shows up. We were talking with security guarantees a moment ago. Boris Johnson famously shows up in Kiev and threatens Zelensky, you can sign whatever security guarantees you want. We're not going to. The West didn't want to sign any security

guarantees. They didn't want to get drawn into North Russia. They weren't, you know, they weren't going to do this. And they told Zelensky, you can sign guarantees. We're not going to talk to Putin. and just go fight Putin and we'll give you whatever you need for as long as you need. We know from several people who were involved in the talks, including two or three Ukrainian officials who were involved in the talks. Sorry, not two or three, one or two, two or three is a different concept, one or two Ukrainian officials who said that the West interfere with the talks. Nafthali Bennett, the former Israeli prime minister who was involved in the talks,

said that the West blocked it. The former German Chancellor Schroeder also said that Ukraine had to check everything with the states and the states blocked it. The Turkish officials who were at the Istanbul Conference said that the West blocked it. There's all kinds of evidence that the West blocked it. One of the interesting things, Scott, that struck me about the New York Times piece is in trying to be dismissive of this idea that the West blocked it, they maybe inadvertently introduced two new pieces of evidence that I had never seen.

seen before that the West blocked it. One of them was the U.S. where the Times quotes U.S. officials is rather patronizingly saying to the Ukrainians who had agreed to the terms that they were alarmed by the terms and wanted to know if Ukraine understood, very patronizing, that this was just unilateral disarmament, and we're talking them out of it. That's interesting. But the one that was really interesting to me, Scott, is that we've heard of the U.S. and the U.K. blocking negotiations. The Times introduces for the first time this idea that Poland did also.

I'd never seen it widened beyond the states in Britain before. And they say that Polish officials, this is actually an interesting quote, so I want to read it the way it actually said that Poland feared that Germany or France might try to persuade the Ukrainians

to accept Russia's terms. So Poland was afraid that there'd be European pressure to support the negotiations instead of the U.S. and UK were blocking negotiations. And so the Polish president held up the negotiate attacks to the NATO leaders and said, you know, which one of you would sign this to try to try to talk them out of it. So this is also Poland actively discouraging NATO to support the negotiations. So the New York Times actually adds evidence to the idea

that the West, rather than encouraging and support negotiations, which were not finished but promising, blocked them. So that was kind of a staggering piece of the Times article for me. Yeah, indeed. All right. Now, one thing I saw, I guess, a headline that came out of the New York Times story was the spin

on it was, can you believe the Russians were trying to nitpick over street signs and stuff? Yeah. It just goes to show how completely crazy they are or worse that this was just a pretext. That they just wanted

to resupply their forces or something and, you know, cause a delay. But no serious negotiation would include street signs in someone else's country, Ted. Come on. Yeah, this was presented in the Western media as, you know, petty Russian interference in, you know, Ukrainian culture and Ukrainian race, stuff like that. That's not the way it was worded at all. I mean, I mean, what Putin said is they must ensure the rights of the Russian-speaking citizens of Ukraine.

He wasn't talking about just the renaming of street signs. He was talking about street signs that are glorifying ultra-nationalist historical figures in Ukraine that, for example, collaborated with the Nazis and things like that. This was not just like, we'll tell you how to name your streets. This was a request to stop glorifying ultra-nationalists who had participated on the unmask killing of Russians, Poles, and Jews. So this was not a petty, we'll tell you how to name your streets. This was a request to stop glorifying Ukraine's ultra-national past, which for Russia isn't the past, because it's still very much the present in the Donbass where Russian speakings

feel this idea in Ukraine that the true Ukraine can't involve two cultures, but must be monocultural and have to completely squash Russian language, Russian church, Russian means. media, Russian, literature, Russian culture. So this was Putin's request to protect the rights of Russian-speaking Ukrainians. It wasn't some petty thing about street signs. Yeah. Well, and the thing is, is renaming all the streets after these guys and building statues to them, Steppenbendera and the others from the OU.N.

This has been a major agenda of the far right in Ukraine over the last 20 years. and so it's not a matter of that's how it's been all along and now these cooks want to come change all the signs these were relatively new changes and they were made as you're saying as part of this agenda to force this far western culture onto the rest of the society there it's a big country it's the size of texas which is big this is a feature of the the administrations that came to power after the two thousand 2014 coup that saw it as part of the agenda to make Ukraine not a multicultural society, but a monocultural society that they had to erase everything that was Russian and glorify that to some extent that national has passed. But this erasure of everything that's Russian is part of Putin's point that that the war he argues did not start a couple of years ago with with an invasion of Ukraine. It started with a civil war where the sort of monoculture Ukraine was waging war and, you know, erasing, waging war on the Donbass and erasing Russian culture in the Donbass that sees this war as in part of protection of that. Of course, in large part, is to stay out of NATO, but the two are connected because Putin's enormous fear is that Ukraine could join NATO and then attack Crimea. or Donbass, and Russia would suddenly find itself at war, not with Ukraine, but with NATO. That's Putin's huge fear.

Right. This is what this is all about. So those points are seriously connected. So point number one about not being innate on point number two, about assuring the rights of Russian-speaking Ukrainians, they're not radically different points. Right. Hey, y'all, let me tell you about Robertson Roberts, Brokerage, Inc. Nobody trusts the U.S. dollar anymore.

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an important uh part of it is uh and you wrote a whole article about this for antiwar dot com about uh joe biden's interview with time magazine and of course the question of ukraine in nato came up there and i know there's some other points too and i want to hear you talk about all of those but this point where you know and in fact you have a whole other article like this too about how america will die well no america will get a bunch of ukrainians killed for the sacred principle of their right to want to join NATO

however we're never going to let them in because that would mean more with Russia what are you crazy if we're not willing to put our troops in there to defend them right now then why would we be willing to put our troops in there to defend them after we signed a piece of paper with them might as well not sign a piece of paper with them right we've already

proven comes down to it we're not going to nuclear war of Ukraine so why bring them into NATO but then if we're not going to bring them into NATO why all the fussing and infuting in the first place there, Ted? Yeah, and Scott, we could talk, I mean, if we had more time, we could talk a lot about whether Ukraine just has the right to join NATO

because it's not so clear that countries just have the right to choose their alliances. But the thing about the time article, the time interview, Scott, and I'd love to know your take on this because I just don't know what to make of it. The article was, it was concerning to me because of the extent that Biden at times seemed like confused or misinformed. sometimes just dead off message. And the most off message he seemed to have gotten was on this question of Ukraine and NATO. Because the last question that he was asked was how the endgame looked in Ukraine.

And he really strangely says that the end game doesn't mean NATO. No, just to say your listeners, no, I'm not just pulling this out of a hat. The question to Biden was, what's the end game? And Biden seems to answer that the end game is not Ukraine and NATO. So he says, and I'm quoting, he said, it means we have a relationship with them like we do with other countries, where we supply weapons so they can defend themselves in the future. But that relationship, Biden goes on to say, quote, does not mean NATO. And then he goes on to kind of strangely explain, I was the one, the one that I was saying that I'm not prepared to support the NATOization of Ukraine.

Now, he may have been talking about the past there where he says I've never supported the NATOization of Ukraine, but talking about the present, he defines the security relationship with Ukraine as us supplying them weapons so they can defend themselves, but that doesn't mean NATO. So here's Biden, unless I'm reading it wrong, just totally off message telling Time magazine straight. up, the end game for Ukraine doesn't know of NATO. Well, I mean, it's consistent, though. I mean, he's right. If you go back for two and a half years, he did say that we're not going to bring Ukraine into NATO, not any time in, like, say, the next 10 years or something. He just wasn't willing to sit down at a table and put it in writing.

That was all. But he acknowledged that it would make no sense because they don't really have a democracy. They don't really have anything like a free market. The country's so corrupt. and they're completely divided on these east-west type issues, and that's what they've been saying for 30 years. Well, we can't bring Ukraine into NATO because of all these reasons. And he was basically saying that on the eve of war, and he just wasn't willing to actually shake on it, you know? And you're right.

I mean, Ukraine can't join NATO because a country who is either at war or who has contested territory can't join NATO. But the promise since 2008 has been that the promise was that Ukraine would eventually join NATO and that the State Department kept saying this war is being fought to defend the core principle that countries confuse their lines. Well, and in the fall of 21, the State and Defense Departments both put out big presentations about on the State Department side that we're committed to doing this someday, which is what's the point of that other than a provocation? and then the Defense Department announced

that they were doing more on interoperability and arming and et cetera. So in both cases, provocations, but without the actual war guarantee that would serve as the deterrent. And the latest language is that we are creating a pathway to Ukrainian membership in NATO, but we're not prepared to defend them along that pathway,

which is what they said recently. It's amazing. You have to square this. You've got to square that the states will say, we are fighting this war for NATO's open-door policy. We're fighting this war for the, right for NATO join Ukraine, well, saying it'll happen one day, but never offering a timeline. But this is Biden saying straight out in the New York Times.

It doesn't mean NATO. That's the endgame. The endgame's not NATO. That would be something that would sit very hard in Ukraine to believe that they're fighting this war, you know. They should take that to heart. They should know right now that that was, even if he accidentally said it, that was the truth. Yeah.

We're really not willing to have them in our long. And quite frankly, I think that the Estonians ought to wonder whether we're coming for them and the polls, too. And I would suggest that we're not. And so they ought to focus on good relations with Russia so that it doesn't become an issue. Yeah. And it just struck me as a staggeringly off-message thing for Biden. And one wonders a little bit about Biden in that interview. Well, and you know what?

So let's talk about another couple of the points that he made in there. We're short on time here, Ted. It's Ted Snyder from anti-war.com, and we're talking about crazy old Joe Biden. He also had said to Time magazine, Yeah, but you just don't understand. We've completely destroyed the Russian military. Yeah. Is that right?

And also, you quote him talking about, you've got to understand. Putin himself said he wants to recreate the whole USSR. Yeah. And I'm thinking, look, I know that that's a stupid lie and everything, but that's his stupid lie, right? Don't tell me that he really thinks that. Your inference is that he really thinks that that's right. Yeah, so, I mean, I know we're running out of time.

So let me try to answer them like super quick that the Russian army on like we can do in just like two quotations. Biden said, and he's angry with the Times interviewers, you're skipping over everything that's important. He says, quote, the Russian military has been decimated. You don't write about that. It's been freaking decimated. So that's not true. The Russian army has a deal. He said freaking, huh?

Yeah, he said it's been freaking decimated. That's the way that time wrote it anyway. But just like to counter that, I just want to quickly quote General Christopher Cavali. He's the commander of U.S. European command, Supreme Allied commander in Europe. And his report on whether that Russian army has been decimated is, and I'm quoting, the Russian army is now larger by 15 percent than it was when it invaded Ukraine. It's growing by 30,000 soldiers a month. And then he added that Russia's on track to command the largest military on the continent. So, no, it hasn't been decimated. The second one you talked about was Biden mocking the Times interviewers that they just don't understand that Putin wants to reestablish the Soviet Union. And he keeps pulling out this Putin speech from February 22. And he's mocking them. He says, you probably haven't read it.

I know you haven't read this. And he goes on to say, he says, to quote, Putin saying he's going to reestablish the Soviet. empire. The thing about it, though, Scott, is two things. One, he very selectively quotes. He puts in some of the lines and then he completely leaves out other of the lines. And he says, for example, that Ukraine's not just a neighboring country. It's an inalienable part of our history or cultural spiritual space. And he uses this as evidence that he's saying Ukraine's part of Russia. But the next line, which Biden doesn't quote, is that These are our comrades, those dearest to us, not only colleagues, friends, and people who serve together, but relatives, people bound by blood, family ties.

He's not quoting the closeness of the Ukrainian people to say he's going to integrate or conquer them. He's quoting the closest to the people that Donbass say he's going to protect them. And nowhere in the speech, in his editor version or the full speech, nowhere does Putin even talk about going beyond Ukraine, reestablishing Soviet Union. So this speech that Biden's holding up, which, by the way, the speech of Putin's that he's holding up, is extremely critical of the Soviet Union. But the speech that he's holding up is proof that Biden said he's going to reestablish the Soviet Empire. It never even mentions that. It doesn't even hint at it.

And he quotes it tremendously out of context. He cherry picks lines. And even those lines don't say he's going to reestablish the Soviet Union. And clearly, he doesn't even want to take anything west of the Nieper River. Scott, if he wanted to do that, he would have done it in Georgia in 2008. he would have done it in Ukraine in 2014. I mean, it's not like Putin has not opportunities. Whenever he's committed his military, they've been with very limited goals.

He didn't the next the Russian provinces. He didn't conquer them when he could have. Well, you know, I mean, it is a government program. And let's say he wins and Zelensky gives him what he wants tomorrow. Well, now he's bordering a country that is now completely dominated by the Western nationalists with no counterbalance from the east that he's now absorbed, and closer to NATO than before, more belligerent than before, and it might make sense in the slippery slope of solving the problem

that you created by creating a worse one for him to go ahead or it might just lead inexorably to a war again against Western Ukraine in the aftermath of this in another 10 or 20 years, which would then, of course, put him right on NATO's borders further, right on Poland and Romania. Go ahead. Yeah. He doesn't want to be on NATO's borders. That's what this whole war is about is trying not to be on NATO's borders, for one thing, right? He doesn't want Ukraine and NATO because it would be NATO and Russia's borders. So he doesn't want to expand Russia West just to be on NATO's

borders. That's what he's trying not to do, for one thing. For the second thing, if he conquered Ukraine, he would have to control this massive hostile country. He'd be facing, you know, guerrilla warfare. He doesn't need or want that. And he stated very clearly recently that he's prepared to end the war now along the current borders. He stated over and over again that the goal is not to expand further west. He's also

warned that if these terms aren't accepted this time, the rallies and ground make the terms harder in the future. But the last statement Putin made is that he's prepared to end the war along the current administrative lines and not go further west. And at the end of his most recent peace proposal, Putin said that if Ukraine guarantees not being in NATO and withdraws

from the four regions that Russia is annexed, he says immediately, I'm quoting, immediately literally at that moment, an order will be given to cease fire and begin negotiations. So do you believe Putin? That's up to you. But do you explore that? You have to be crazy not to. Yeah. No, I think that that's right.

I mean, it's not like he's saying he's willing to compromise. He's just saying he's willing to call time out where the line. are now and plus a little bit. I mean, he's, I take him at his word for that. I mean, it's not like he's feigning generosity. He's saying, you know, when Putin says that my war goals have always been to keep Ukraine out of NATO, NATO out of Ukraine, and protect the rights of ethnic Russians in the East, that's been validated. Like, I mean, do we have to completely accept it? No, explore. But, you know, Zelensky has said that Russia went to war to keep Ukraine out of NATO. The head of NATO has said Russia went toward Ukraine to keep Ukraine out of NATO.

I mean, it's not that we're just taking Putin at his word. This is also the word of NATO and the Ukraine. So it's more than just Putin's word and certainly it's something to explore. And when Putin talks about using the Istanbul communicated as a basis, well, they were really close. Ukraine says they were 90% there and the rest could be talked about between the due president. So why not pick it up and explore from there? You know, what do you have to lose by encouraging negotiations instead of saying? same with the treaty before the war.

You know, Chos Freeman and other real experts, State Department lifelong diplomats said, no, you don't sign on the bottom line, of course. But is this a reasonable basis for negotiation? Absolutely. Yeah. They should have taken them up on it then. I'm sorry, we're out of time.

Thank you so much for your time on this show, Ted. Appreciate it. Thanks, Scott. It's great talking to. Aren't you guys, and that's anti-war radio for today. I'm Scott Horton. I'm at Scott Horton.org, and I'm here every Thursday from 23 to 3. on KPFK 90.7 FM in L.A.

See you next week.