Scott Horton Show - Just the Interviews - 7/22/22 Kyle Anzalone on the Ukraine-Russia Grain Deal and the Evolving State of the War

Episode Date: July 28, 2022

Kyle Anzalone is back this week on Antiwar Radio to update us on all things Ukraine. Anzalone explains the grain deal both sides reached after Turkey hosted negotiations. If honored, the deal is expected to free up 22 million tons of wheat. Next, Anzalone lays out how the battle lines are evolving after Foreign Minister Lavrov announced Russia has expanded its objectives beyond the Donbas region. There’s also some good news about deals between Russia and the EU which will ease sanctions and open up the railroads into the Russian enclave of Kaliningrad. However, the Biden Administration and Congress have been escalating their military support for Ukraine with promises to send more advanced weapons systems into the conflict.  Discussed on the show: “Russia and Ukraine sign breakthrough grain deal brokered by UN and Turkey” (Middle East Eye) Scott’s Debate with Cathy Young about Ukraine Kyle Anzalone is news editor of the Libertarian Institute, assistant editor of Antiwar.com and co-host of Conflicts of Interest with Will Porter. Follow him on Twitter @KyleAnzalone_ 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, July 24th, 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. editor of the new book, Hotter Than the Sun. Time to Abolish Nuclear Weapons. You can find my full interview archive more than 5,700 interviews, really, going back to 2003, all at Scott Horton.org, and at YouTube.com slash Scott Horton Show.

And you can follow me on Twitter at Scott Horton Show. All right, introducing this week's guest. It is anti-war.com's opinion editor, Kyle Anselone. Welcome back to the show, sir. How are you doing? doing great scott thanks so much for having me back on i'm very happy to have you here and of course tied for first place and the worst things in the world with yemen is the war in ukraine uh which america is very much a co belligerent in legally speaking and factually and morally speaking as

well and there's just so much news coming out of there every day and you and all the guys that anti-war.com are doing such a great job of helping keep track of it all. So can we start with the good news? Is it right that there's a deal now to get that grain out of there and to the global south where people are going hungry? It does appear so, Scott. This is from Turkey. So officials from Ukraine, Russia, and Turkey are supposed to meet in Istanbul today

as we're recording July 22nd. And Turkey says that they are going to sign an agreement that's going to, to allow a lot of grain to start to enter the rest of the world through the Bled Sea, the Ukrainian ports and the Russian ports, and anybody who's been unable to export from there, this grain is going to start coming out. So this does seem like really good news. Okay. And then so what's been the hold up actually here?

So pretty early on a month or two months ago, myself and Will Porter wrote a story for the Libertarian Institute about Russia saying and Turkish officials saying that, you know, they were open to this. Russia said that they would give the ship's safe passage. And that meant that the outstanding issue was the Ukrainian water mines. And Ukrainian officials said that they weren't going to engage in these thoughts. And so it does seem like Kiev must have finally come around to engage in tots. And that's what had this finally taped place. And, you know, I don't know if you have any idea of metric tonnage, this or that, but is there any way that you can give us some kind of ballpark of how much food has been held up and how much of effect that's already

had on people who normally would be importing it? I come to understand that, in fact, one of the poorest and because of American foreign policy, one of the most famine-stricken places on the planet right now, Yemen, some of the food that they were getting was coming from Ukraine. And they've not been getting it. And I wonder if you have other stories along those lines. Yeah, well, from the Middle East I, I had in my news roundup for the Libertarian Institute that Turkey said they thought it would free up 22 million tons of wheat. And, you know, you mentioned Yemen there.

There's an excellent new article out from Hassan Al-Tayeb on how important it is to put some pressure on right now. And so I know there are a number is, I think, 1-833 stop war. And, yeah, because that, as you said, is so important. And right now is the time to push on Yemen because that ceasefire issue. And even freeing up this grain may help Yemen a little bit, but it's going to be negligible compared to, you know, the major problems that are going on. Right.

And, you know, the news there is that Senator Sanders and a few others have introduced the War Powers Resolution in the Senate. So, as you mentioned there, 833 Stop War, that is a group called Demand Progress, runs that phone number there. And what it is, is they'll just forge you right on to your congressman or your senator. You just put in your zip code, and the robot takes care of the rest and makes it real easy. And if you go to 1-833 Stopwar.com, they have a few talking points for you there, too. So check that out, and thank you for mentioning that. It's so important, we have a ceasefire, and we have a war powers resolution in both.

houses and so we have an advantage to press but of course the leaders of the republican party and the democratic party are a problem on this probably especially the republicans but the democrats are in control of both houses so it's up to them but they have more than a hundred co-sponsors in the house there's real momentum behind this if people will keep up the pressure and i was on a conference call kyle with some of these anti-yemen war activists and they said that the house staffers had told them, please, more phone calls. It really helps when everyone's calling all at once, right? Not just old man yells at cloud, but when tens of thousands of us are all calling Congress at the same time and saying this is so important. And in fact, as Hassan Tayeb mentioned to me,

for people who are already co-sponsoring it and already pledged to vote for it, they could use a word of appreciation too for sticking their neck out on this important issue. So thank you so much for mentioning that and give me the opportunity to rant all over your Ukraine interview with this Yemen stuff, because this is the most horrible war in the world, and it's one that we are very much responsible for. Obviously, America's involved in Ukraine, but Russia was the one who sent their armored divisions across borders in this one. But the war in Yemen, this is made in the USA for the last seven years straight and really even longer, but still the worst part of it the last seven years. And hundreds of thousands of people have died.

And so as you say, Ukrainian grain or not, ending the war, not just a ceasefire, but a real peace deal is the most important thing that can possibly happen for the people of Yemen. So people, seriously, it's not much effort to just make a couple of phone calls and let yourselves be heard on it. 833 Stop War is the number. 833 Stop War. Okay. So now, sorry, back to your interview. It's Kyle Anzalone at anti-war.com. And so I was wondering if you can give us an update on the battle lines. I know that you're not keeping the closest track of that, but some of this stuff is kind of broad enough by its definition that we can cover it. For example, am I right, that the Russians claim to have control of all of Luhansk province in the northeast there? And then some very large percentage of Donetsk.

And then I read that they have now announced that they're expanding their war goals, which is not a surprise. But can you tell us a little bit more about that, the status of the forces in the field as to your best understanding and what it is this new announcement entails? Yeah, as you say, Lujansk, I think two weeks ago when I was on the show, Scott, it was first announced that Russia had control over that. But, you know, of course, there's always still some fighting going on, counterattats, you know, people who had embedded themselves and then carry out tats once Russia tates over.

Things like this are going on, of course. And then they've kept up operations in the Donnesk. There's been reports of some pretty significant air strikes going on in Ukraine or missile strikes targeting various officials and meetings and things like that and potentially a meeting where they were planning the next ship, what kind of weapons Ukraine would want, in the front battlefield for the for the next round of shipments and so there seems to be a lot of you know fighting going on although i haven't read in the last two weeks about a whole lot of territory changing hands in the donnesque uh maybe a little bit more in the south especially as

they continue to push uh west towards odessa that they have made some gains now as you mentioned i think the big news here scott is the announcement from russian foreign minister sergey labrov who said this past Wednesday that Russia's goals in Ukraine are now expanded beyond the Dombas region. And of course, Russia had taken territory already outside the Dombas region, the territory north of the Crimean Peninsula and south of Ukraine. But it seems that Lavrov is saying that they're going to expand this probably like outside of the Lujansk area as well. And I had kind of speculated that this was always going to be the case that Russia was going to take more territory. And so, you know, this may be just an excuse that, oh, the Western countries are providing more advanced weapons than we anticipated. So this is now we're going to go and take more territory.

However, there's probably some military and, you know, technical advantages to taking more territory now that Ukraine has longer range missile launchers. Maybe they feel they need to take this territory in order to be more secure in the Lujansk and Donbass regions, which – and Donnask regions, which – they really want. And now, so he says here, he mentions Curzon and Zaporizia, I guess, something like that. Now, I know where Curzon is, and that was already on my list to ask you about in a second, but I'll ask you the second thing first. Do you know where this other region is that he's talking about there? I believe it's also one, those regions in the same area north of the Crimean Peninsula.

And so for people, you know, to picture in your mind's eye here, Curzon is northwest of the Crimean Peninsula. And I'm not quoting anyone else. I could be wrong about this, but just what it looks like on the map to me, this is sort of the New Orleans of the Nieper River, right? This is the last major port city before this river empties into the sea. And it's, you know, if you look at the map there, it's not far from there to Odessa. And And then from there, from Odessa, on to Moldova and to Romania is not much further. And so, you know, they've already taken control of it. It looks like more than half of the southern coast.

You count all the Sea of Azov there to the east of Crimea. You know, the longer this war continues, America fighting to the last Ukrainian against their Russian foes here, seems like the Ukrainians have more and more to lose all the time. You know, they could have negotiated a long time before they lost Kurson. Now are they going to lose Odessa, too? And they're going to lose their access to the Black Sea entirely, as it was in times past, where Russian territory, you know, took the whole coastal region there. It's a hell of a fate to see them suffer.

And I fear for the people of Odessa, too, it would be a hell of a fight for that. city. But, uh, all right. Now, Kyle, let me ask you about this situation there in Kaliningrad. Everybody pull out your map and look at the Baltic Sea there in the north. There's this little strip of land between Lithuania and Poland that is Russian territory. And the Russians have a railway that runs through their allied state Belarus that then runs through Lithuania through this corridor, a railway anyway. to Kaliningrad and so then the Lithuanians had put restrictions on this travel saying that they were enforcing EU sanctions on the Russians and the Russians started balking about that and this has

been to anyone with an eye for it what they call a frozen conflict an unresolved problem with this strip of territory of Russian control you know behind NATO lines from their point of view and so seemed like it could be a real flashpoint, but there have been developments on that story. So I wonder if you can fill us in on that, Kyle. Yeah, this is another piece. It seems to be good news. The European Union announced plans to ease some sanctions on Russia. And then I believe, along with the sanctions they are easing up on Russia this week, they also said that the EU is going to say that as long as it's not arms, the sanction goods can be transferred. supported by rail through Lithuania.

And so it does seem that we have some good news coming from the European Union on the sanctions and relieving this issue just a little bit. Yeah, that's good. And now by the EU, does that mean Germany? And does that mean that they've got some opinions wavering about the status quo of this war at this point? Yeah, I mean, it seems that somebody within the European Union must really realize that there has to be. a long-term resolution with Russia here and at some point you know these things will have to be worked out and preferably without war and so that I imagine that's the thought process I'm not

exactly sure which all officials but Lithuanian officials initially seemed very committed to this and so I'm guessing it wasn't Lithuania that was decided to ease up on this yeah well you know there was a flashpoint much like that, started World War II, the dispute over German access to the port city of Danzig. And so, as you say, very good news to hear that they are, you know, seemingly the Europeans are trying to figure out a way to avoid that same kind of crisis this time, at least for now. So what can you tell us about, I guess, two kind of double-prong question here. the weapons the Americans are sending and also the politics

of the sending of these weapons in the United States. Is it just full-scale consensus in both parties, at least the leadership level of both parties, to continue this thing on? Is there any kind of controversy over what the Biden administration is sending other than maybe the cries that they're not doing enough and sending more weapons?

Yeah, so it does seem that we're sending more weapons. This week, they announced they're sending four more of the Heimras to Ukraine. These are the American-made artillery systems with a range of about 50 miles. Russia has demanded several times that the U.S. not send these systems, and we have continued to do so. I believe it was Mark Millie who said this week, but the Pentagon did announce that they have already delivered the other 12 systems. And they claim, I'm not sure why we would believe this, but the Pentagon is claiming, at least at this point, that none of those systems have been destroyed by Russia. And so I guess it's possible maybe they haven't entered the battlefield, but if they have,

I would assume Russia is probably trying very hard to target those systems. And so I'd be very surprised that they haven't taken out any of them. And then we also have this plan coming out this week. U.S. Air Force Chief of Staff General C.Q. Brown Jr. said that the West is working on a plan to train Ukrainians on Western fighter jets. And the Ukrainians have asked for F-15s and F-16s. So I think that's probably what they're going to plan on giving to Ukraine. But it's not exactly clear yet what kind of fighter jets,

but they are starting to train the Ukrainians on those systems. And that is, I believe, a part of the NDAA that they're about to pass Congress. That's the National Defense Authorization at the Pentagon Funding, I think it's clocking in at well over $800 billion this year coming from Congress, including this aid to Ukraine. Hang on just one second. Hey, guys, I had some wasps in my house. So I shot them to death with my trusty bug assault 3.0 model with the improved salt reservoir and bar safety. I don't have a deal with them, but the show does earn a kickback every time you get a bug assault or anything else you buy from Amazon.com.

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competitors in the key. That's greenmill supercritical.com. Man, I wish I was in school so I could drop out and sign up for Tom Woods' liberty classroom instead. Thomas 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 Woods' Liberty Classroom, real history, real economics, real education. Man, so correct me if I'm wrong, but in the past they talked about, well, maybe we'll give some F-15s and 16s to Poland or to some other, you know, Eastern, former Eastern bloc countries who can then give their old Russian

migs to Ukraine, something like that. But now are they really serious? Like, this is already in motion that we're going to give F-15 Eagles and F-16s. They already are training on them, and they're handing these over to the Ukrainians to use in dog fights against the Russians? It seems Congress is going to authorize it through the NDAA. I mean, it hasn't finally passed Congress. yet, but at this stage

it's very unlikely that they're going to take out any kind of hawkish you know, it's going to conference committee. So this is usually when the bill gets a lot worse from our perspective, not better. And then if you know, but now is the White House saying anything about that? That yeah, that's right. We're going to

put Ukrainians in the seats of F-15s over there. Well, I mean, this is the guy I quoted General Brown Jr. is from the Air Force. So I would assume, you know, Pentagon on his executive branch and that they're on board with this or at least looking at the possibility and seriously considering what Congress is doing. Yeah. Well, yeah, that's certainly the kind of

thing that could escalate into a real war very quickly. I mean, already, you know, even in the New York Times, they go, well, the lawyers say we're co-belligerents. Yeah, so we're co-belligerence in the war. I mean, imagine if the shoe was on the other foot for a minute here. If during say the height of Iraq War II, Vladimir Putin was openly backing the Sunni insurgency against us. You know, the way the Saudis were, our good allies. And they had just been bragging about it and saying, yeah, our whole goal is to bankrupt and destroy America and lead to regime change in Washington, D.C., and all these kinds of things. Think about how America flipped out when the Democrats and the FBI and the CIA just pretended that the Russians had intervened at all in the election of 2016, which is a complete hoax that only idiots believe.

but so many idiots believe that about turn this country upside down and it wasn't even true at all would if Putin was really on TV saying that's right I'm backing al-Qaeda suicide bombers against you because I'm trying to destroy you the way the Americans talk about Russia in this war while literally sending in

as you're talking about long-range artillery talking about giving them fighter bombers and the rest of this stuff it's incredible Yeah, and Congress is 100% on board for this and actually seems, I mean, to be more hawkish than the White House at this point. Not only is Nancy Pelosi playing to go to Taiwan seemingly over the objection over Joe Biden, but they're pushing new legislation now to name Russia a state sponsor or terror that's coming through Congress. There's a bill that will say the war in Ukraine is a genocide being carried out by Russia. Russia. There's a lot of more funding and support for Ukraine within the National Defense

Authorization Act. The House passed a bill this week with only 18 no votes. And while the House doesn't have to vote to ratify treaties, it expresses approval for Finland and Sweden joining NATO. And then the Senate is going to vote on it, I believe, I don't know if they're going to do it today or next week. But we already have heard that this is definitely going to pass, even Senator Rand Paul is going to vote present on this. He announced in the American conservative op-ed, which is very disappointing. So the lone no vote actually may be Josh Hawley on that. It's kind of a depressing state of affairs in Congress, Scott.

Completely nuts, man. And now this whole thing, oh, the Russians are guilty of genocide and supporting terrorism on. When every other week on this show, we're talking about a lot of. America's genocidal war for al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula in Yemen the past seven years that according to the UN and their extremely conservative numbers has killed more than half a million civilians. Oh, but anyway, it's everybody else guilty of what the Americans perpetrate. It's just the most blatant thing in the world. It's completely ridiculous. Well, in the best example, of course, is Syria, where Russia is supporting the Syrian government,

Bashar al-Assad, who, you know, not a dictator I would like to live under, but at the same time, he is not genocidal like his ISIS opposition that's been supported by the U.S. for the past 10 years. And so to label Russia as state sponsor terror, why there's still Al-Qaeda stand in Ilib, Syria, that the U.S. and its NATO ally, Turkey are at least preventing, if not aiding the resistance there, is a real problem. Yeah, you got that right. And you couldn't make this stuff up. It sounds like, you know, conspiracy quackery. But, yeah, no, America is blatantly and outright on the side of al-Qaeda in Syria.

Just we have been since 2011. And in Yemen, as we have been since 2015. just as simple as that. Everybody knows that. Here's another headline that I saw that you pointed out in your news brief here. It's Kyle Anselaone from anti-war.com. And you mentioned that they admitted the CIA, I guess, says, was it even the chief of the CIA says? We were just kind of bluffing about Putin being sick and dying and all this stuff, which they must have put out a hundred stories about that back a couple of months ago. Can you fill me in there? Yeah. So it was William Burns, the head of the CIA, who answered a question.

And basically just dismiss the claims and said, I think his actual statement was something along the lines of Putin is unfortunately healthy, which actually seemed to be more of an endorsement of Putin's health than I was expecting. I would assume they say, oh, we can't substantiate the rumors or something like that. But yeah, so that I thought it was worth pointing out in the news round up just because I don't know how many people I talked to that don't follow foreign policy as closely as I do. do who asked me, they're like, so, you know, how's Putin doing? I hear he's in bad health. And then there were a couple times under COVID where he had these photo ops, like with Emmanuel Macron, the French president, where he's seeing an absurd length away from him.

And you do wonder, like, oh, maybe Putin has a heightened sense of COVID, fear of COVID, because, you know, he has cancer or something like that. But at least according to the CIA, now there's nothing to that. Yeah, it seemed like it was part of the talking point that, geez, what could possibly explain the completely irrational actions that he's taking? Connoisse-Rice, of course, famously went on TV and said, well, geez, he's not the Vladimir Putin. I know. I think maybe he has some kind of mental illness now.

Maybe he has some kind of physical illness. People said, oh, this is his legacy. He's about to die, so he has to rebuild the Russian Empire on his way out and all this, because they just don't want to admit that they pick this fight and got these poor Ukrainians into this mess and are helping to keep them in it quite deliberately. And in fact, so how about that for our last subject here? From before this war even started, they talked about it like, of course Russia's going to destroy the Ukrainian military and it'll be an insurgency and we're going to back that insurgency as long as we can. And yet, here the Ukrainian military still stands to a degree. hasn't gotten to the insurgency point yet, but they keep talking about that, right?

Do you have examples of people in and out of government talking about how long they want to prolong this war to hurt Russia? I mean, how long it's hard to say, I guess just until there's a change or Russia is weak into the point where they no longer fear Russia. I really think it's more dependent on Moscow than it is a particular timetable or defending Ukraine. I mean, if you, you know, look at the situation, you say it hasn't folded into an insurgency yet. But I just mean that the White House and, you know, the Defense Department and so forth, they keep saying that, right? That they want the war to continue on as long as possible.

Yeah, I mean, they're, I guess maybe not that bluntly, but they're saying that they don't want to engage in negotiations and they're going to continue to provide military support to Ukraine. And so, I mean, that is the de facto statement coming out of the White House. And the Ukrainians, I've read multiple reports this week and the past couple weeks from, you know, mainstream sources, New York Times, Wall Street Journal, talking about how these Ukrainian units are just absolutely depleted, 40, 60 percent casualty rates in these units. And then people talking are the Ukrainian military put down a new decree that if you're, you know, a military aged male within, you know, you have to register with like the head of your county conscription board in order to just travel outside of your county that that's now illegal. And so it seems that they have a pretty strict draft going on in Ukraine to try to feed this meat grinder on the front line. And it's, you know, they're talking. about 500 to 1,000 casualties a day for the Ukrainian side.

Yeah, you know, that's why I really dropped the ball in my debate with Kathy Young in New Hampshire, Kyle, was, uh, she said, no, the people in Ukraine, they love the war. They don't want to quit. And the obvious response to that should have been, well, their democratically elected president wanted to negotiate in the British, and the Americans stopped him. And on top of that, they got conscription everywhere. And so if the people want to fight that bad. It seems like the people would include the fighting age males, no, but they have to be enslaved and forced to fight. And that kind of calls into question right there, just how popular this war is. You know, I think of the Ukrainians as essentially, well, from the point

of view of the Americans, they're just extras in our movie, right? Their job is to help bleed the Russians, help weaken the Russians. In fact, I even read a story where, remember Biden, had released a statement, essentially, or they had leaked this story. Biden has chastised his Secretary of State and Defense for saying two hawkish things about how they want to destroy Russia with this war and weaken Russia with this war. And then they leaked another story about a week later saying, yeah, but that still is the policy, though. But we just wanted to put that out there for some kind of thing, which was obvious at the time anyway.

But, you know, when you have it from the Secretary. State and the Secretary of Defense themselves, that, yep, our goal here is to do everything we can to prolong this war to hurt Russia. I think that's one of those things that you believe people when they show themselves to you kind of deal, you know? Yeah. And, you know, I think Kathy Young mentioned this in your debate with her. And then this also, we are on a panel, myself, you, Dan Midnight and Barbara Brahm at Freedom Fest. And this guy came in at the very end to ask, you know, clearly biased question. But he's then 92% of the Ukrainians support the war. And I wish I had, you know, gone off on this right away. But, you know, Ukraine's a

country now that has disbanded its opposition parties, nationalized the media, and the associated press embedded itself with a Ukrainian police force that was going around and interrogating and arresting citizens who had made, you know, what they deemed to be posed too favorable to Russia on social media. And so it's not very hard for, you know, Zelensky. or General Al-Cici to get a 92% approval rating for whatever they want to do when you round up all of your opposition. Yep, simple as that. All right, well, listen, we're out of time, but thank you so much for your time.

Everybody, that's the great Kyle Anzalone, opinion editor of anti-war.com. Appreciate it. Thanks for having me on again, Scott. All right, you guys, and that is Anti-War Radio for this morning. I'm your host, Scott Horton, editorial director at Anti-War.com. an editor of the new book, Hotter than the Sun. Time to abolish nuclear weapons.

Find my full interview archive at Scott Horton.org and at YouTube.com slash Scott Horton's show. I'm here every Sunday morning from 9 to 9.30 on KPFK, 90.7 FM in L.A. See you next week. Thank you.