Scott Horton Show - Just the Interviews - 9/19/26 Ben Aris: A Deep Dive on the State of the War in Ukraine

Episode Date: September 24, 2026

Scott interviews Ben Aris about the war in Ukraine. Aris uses his deep expertise of Russian society and the ongoing war to give us a window into the evolving nature of the conflict and the barriers to peace facing both sides. Discussed on the show: Radio Moskva IntelliNews Ben Aris is the founder and editor-in-chief of bne IntelliNews.  Sign up for the Scott Horton Academy of Foreign Policy and Freedom at scotthortonacademy.com For more on Scott's work: Check out The Libertarian Institute: https://www.libertarianinstitute.org Check out Scott's other show, Provoked, with Darryl Cooper https://youtube.com/@Provoked_Show Read Scott's books: Provoked: How Washington Started the New Cold War with Russia and the Catastrophe in Ukraine https://amzn.to/43D82oY (The audiobook of Provoked is being published in sections at https://scotthortonshow.com) Enough Already: Time to End the War on Terrorism: https://amzn.to/4eMQblu Fool’s Errand: Time to End the War in Afghanistan https://amzn.to/4a5fKvx Follow Scott on X @scotthortonshow And check out Scott’s full interview archives: https://scotthorton.org/all-interviews This episode of the Scott Horton Show is sponsored by: Tax Attorney Matt Sercely https://agoristtaxadvice.com; Moon Does Artisan Coffee https://scotthorton.org/coffee; Tom Woods’ Liberty Classroom https://www.libertyclassroom.com/dap/a/?a=1616 and Dissident Media https://dissidentmedia.com; and Crowdhealth https://www.joincrowdhealth.com/ (use promocode Horton) You can also support Scott’s work by making a one-time or recurring donation at https://scotthorton.org/donate/ or https://patreon.com/scotthortonshow Audio cleaned up with the Podsworth app: https://podsworth.com Use code HORTON50 for 50% off your first order at Podsworth.com to clean up your voice recordings, sound like a pro, and also support the Scott Horton Show! Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Yes, sir, it's the Scott Horton show brought to you by expat money. That's expatmoney.com slash Scott. Ladies and gentlemen of the press have been less than honest. Reporting to the American people, what's going on in this country? Because the babies I'm anxious. We're dealing with Hitler revisited. This is the Scott Horton show. Libertarian foreign policy, mostly.

When the president visit, that means that it is not only... We're going to take out seven countries in five years. They don't know what the fuck they're doing. Negotiate now. End this war. And now here's your host, Scott Horton. All right, you guys. Introducing Ben Aris.

He is the founder and the editor-in-chief of B&E in Tele News. I was a former journalist for the Daily Telegraph. Welcome the show. How are you doing? Good, good. Yes. I was in Moscow many years as Moscow bureau chief of the Telegraph. planned on and off 30 years.

But now I'm in Berlin. All right. So first of all, here's the substack. Radio Moskva, where you write. And I was trying to find your archive at B&E. I know I've read a lot of things from you there, but I had a little difficulty finding that, but that's my fault. Anyway, here's some stuff on the substack.

Ukraine is slowly losing the war. Tensions in Ukraine's government mounting. Ukraine's mirror is cracking. So this is the kind of stuff we're going to be discussing today. But I wanted to tell you, first of all, that thank you for doing the show. And I cite you in my book, Provoked, on the economic crash of 1998. Gosh. Your interview with Mikhail Kortikovsky.

The other thing, I wrote it down. Hang on. I just named my reading glasses because I can't ever remember anything anymore. Oh, and then also on the failure of the negotiations for the EU Association. agreement in 2013 as well. I was placed. I am by a series of bizarre coincidences, I arrived in Moscow in 93. And I've lived 15 years there altogether and had a ringside view to the collapse, the first

years after the Soviet Union, then the boom years in the Nautis when it became a normal country, and then Putin, and it's all sort of gone off the rails since then. And oligarchs, wars, I think have eight crises under my belt, and lived a very Russian life because I wasn't staffer. I wasn't sent there by a newspaper. I just started freelancing and then set to be ending up publication now about 20 years ago. And it's been fascinating. I mean, I've worked in many other markets, India, Japan, Germany,

and I keep getting drawn back like moth to the flame to the Russian story, just because it's how do you do that? How do you take a collapsed country and build a new economic system, society out of it and the politics of it too, the contrast between KGB. Putin is in charge, but at the same time,

he delivered a measure of stability and growth that the Russian people are very grateful for. And then we've got the clash with the West, which, as far off from my perspective, is in decline. And that's all produced a lot of tensions. So I don't know. There's a lot to talk about. It's a pretty complicated story.

Yeah. Well, if we focus on you for just another moment, have you written books? I'm in the middle of writing up my memoirs. The Nauties, the Putin era, has been very well covered, although I've got a lot to say about that too. But what I'm doing at the moment is trying to capture the 90s. And people on the outside don't realize. just how bonkers that period was and how painful it was.

And in the West, and this is a classic Russian story, in the West, the Yeltsin is seen as the savior of Russia, the first democratic leader. In Russia itself, he is hated with a vengeance for the pain and the collapse that everyone had to suffer. And that's context to today's story with Putin. And on the outside, everyone sees him as an imperialist,

dictator, you know, violent and starting wars. On the inside, they have a lot of sympathy because life in Moscow, I argue today, the best quality of life for the average citizen in Europe is probably in Moscow. And that's a shocker for most people, because, you know, incomes have gone up tenfold. The economy's gone up tenfold. It's stable. They're spending on infrastructure. They just opened a brand new station in the Moscow metro.

and wages have been going up. People have pensions that they didn't have before. And so it's this constant contrast between how it's seen from the outside and how it's seen from the inside that drives this story. And I think everyone's missing, you know, to the connect, which is what's making this whole situation so fraught. But having said that, the Russians themselves at the moment are very unhappy with the war and the economy is hurting and dissatisfaction is rising.

And people are worried about an escalation. They're worried about a direct conflict with NATO and they worry about being mobilized and being forced to go and fight in the weak fields of Ukraine. Yeah. Well, yeah, one could imagine for sure. All right, so there's so much to talk about, but I guess I might as well say now.

I hope it's okay with you. I'd like to send you a copy of my book and see what you think of it. Please, please. I mean, mine memoirs, I'm working on it. I'm hoping to get it done before the end of the year. And I've also got 30 years worth negatives that I just can. So I'm going to try and do a photo exhibition in parallel. Oh, great.

Well, you can put off reading provoked until later. But yes, I'm a student of Paul Plednikov and, you know, others of that era, you know, on that question, the great reports reporter who wrote his book on the oligarchs and during that turmoil. And I have a whole thing on the shock therapy. and the aftermath, all that, the politics of the Elsinara and all that. So if you thought that I was anything close to accurate, I would take it as a great compliment, you know? Please, please send me. I'd be very interested to read it.

Great. Okay, cool. Well, now I'm going to ask you about things. So, oh, geez, I want to ask you about all kinds of stuff. No, you're right. We should talk about the war in Ukraine. First of all, and you can build in, you know, whatever context and background you think that people need to understand regarding where things stand on the battle. field regarding where things stand in the European and American capitals and all of these different

things. If you want to, to whatever degree you want to, the floor is yours. But the question that I want to narrow down to is how close is any kind of potential deal? They sent the CIA director there. And I thought maybe there was one report that said he was actually there just to beg them to put pressure on Iran for us, please, which seemed like the most plausible thing. The story that he was trying to talk them out of attacking Europe. That didn't seem very plausible. But then just a few weeks later, a couple weeks later, they sent the son-in-law to follow up.

Now, that would not be probably about Iran. That would be more about trying to strike a deal on Ukraine war. And I saw in one of your pieces here, you quote Kushner saying, we have a deal if only Ukraine would give up the very last little bit of Donetsk. I was wondering, you know, how seriously you take that and however else you want to put that in context for us, what you think that all means? Well, it's like everything in Russia.

It's all like, you know, enigma wrapped in a riddle, wrapped in a carpet. On the Radcliffe CIA director visit, I mean, we really don't know what they talked about and there's lots of theories. One, my preferred theory, and I'm just reading between the lines,

is that he was warning about Russia attacking a NATO country. And certainly if you follow the news in detail, There's been escalations and the big change to understand why that is an issue. The big change is that America is now stepped out of the war and stepped out of the mediation process. And Europe has run out of missiles and money and Ukraine needs to be supplied. So the solution to this problem has been for European factories to start producing arms and send them to Ukraine. And the Kremlin's line on that is that until now, you've been quote unquote,

supporting Ukraine as a friend. However, the fighting has been done by the Ukrainians. And now you are participating in the war by directly making and delivering arms. Specifically, the UK has been providing these, I forget what they're called the Nipa drones or NEPTA. Anyway, they're extremely accurate. They carry a small payload, only 20 kilos of TNT. But the point of that is part of Ukraine's campaign has begun to take the fight. to Russia. This is new. Part of the escalation strategy has been to not attack Russia, particularly

not its oil sector. And Ukraine has abandoned that, and they're using these UK drones to hit refineries. And the difference between Russia and Ukraine is Ukraine has no missiles. It just has drones. And the drones themselves don't do much damage. But these UK drones are so accurate that what you do is you fly them in and you hit the distillation tower. And that can't be repaired. And those things have to be re-imported. And consequently, Russia has been plunged into a real fuel crisis, which is a huge problem for Putin.

And what the Kremlin has said, right, these drones are made in Wiltshire in the middle of England. This factory that makes them is now a legitimate military target. And this all, you know, is threatening to, they're threatening to hit the factory with ICBM, which they have. And if Russia did that, it would be an act of war against the NATO member, triggers Article 5.

Off we going to third world war. Where the negotiation stands where Kushner was, he's taken a different track, and the Kremlin is much more open to talking to Kushner than the answer to CIA. And he was there basically to do a deal. And what was agreed, as far as we know, was this so-called Demetriath package.

of deals, which apparently count up to a total of $12 trillion, and they cover everything. Raw materials, oil, gas, infrastructure, a tunnel between Russia and Alaska. I mean, all sorts of stuff. And $12 trillion is actually six times the size of the entire Russian economy. And if you look at it in economic terms, this actually makes perfect sense, because America, the Trump administration has got itself, or America's got itself into a strategic bind because it doesn't have any critical minerals and the entire tech sector depends on that where China has a monopoly. Russia has everything American needs. And if it did do a deal with Russia, it could produce all

of the gallium, rare earth metals, everything it needs and break that dependency on China. and I think Trump is actually correctly very interested in doing that deal because America's over a barrel. I mean, China has it completely over a barrel and could kill its tech sector tomorrow by turning off these tech, these highly, these critical mineral supplies. And uranium, not to mention the oil and gas and everything else. However, so Trump is very focused on that deal. And so Kuchner went as far as we know to say to Putin, like,

And then to Zelensky the next day. Finish this war. Let's do a deal. Reconnect Russia to the global economy. And we'll invest heavily. We'll take some of that $300 billion of frozen money and invest it into developing all this stuff. And Putin in December is basically signed off on this deal.

The sticking point is Zelensky. Because Putin is insisting, and he says it over and over again, he's insisting that Zelensky give up the last big. of Donbas, they don't control. And Zelensky stuck his heels in and said no. And he's been backed by the Europeans. But then that commits him to continuous war, ongoing war. And those substack pieces you showed at the beginning,

I mean, basically I've become extremely pessimistic because I don't see how Zelensky is going to get out of this. That, yes, he's going to fight on. But the key to understanding of where the war is today, is that Ukraine has a lack of men, missiles, and money. And they're acute, all three of those categories. And on the other hand, on the other side of the fence, Russia has serious economic problems,

but it can cope with them. Just the liquidity in the banking deposits is enough to pay for the war for another two years if they went and raided that, which would be difficult and politically unpleasant. And missiles, they're produced, they've doubled production in the last year. Drone production has also rapidly expanded and they've switched from these Gerard 2 drones which were prop driven to these Gerard 4 and 5 which are jet driven.

And Ukraine not only has no interceptor missiles left to bring down Russian ballistic missiles, which means the skies are open and Putin can blow up anything he wants. at will. But now on the drone front, the new Gerards, these jet-powered ones, those can get through Ukrainian defenses as well. And so they can blow up anything they want with the drone, which means artillery, infantry, defensive positions. So Ukraine is wide open. And on the manpower front, Russia has had one partial mobilization in the first September first year. But everything since then has been on a voluntary basis and they have this vast pool of people 145, 6 million people and they can go and press gang if they wanted to they could put another

half a million people into the field in a few months and on the Ukrainian side they're down to four million men of military service age left in the country and those are in hiding they're doing everything they can to avoid it they've got nine million people outside the country, of which at least a million are military-aged men, that they can't get back. And they're running out of men. They're huge holes in the Ukrainian defensive line, which they're filling with drones, effective. But it's all coming to a cusp, which is why I've been so pessimistic. I'm not predicting the war's going to end, but if it continues, the damage that's being done to Ukraine,

demographic in particular, you could strongly argue, as his former press secretary, just did to the European Parliament, that the country is already destroyed and it's already a failed state and that if the war did end, what reconstruction, it's going to be, it's going to be, I don't know, it's just a Herculean task to get this country back on its feet. Yeah. Hey, guys, if you sign up for my substack at Scott Horton Show.com, then you get all the shows a day early and without ads. pretty good, right? Scott Horton Show.com. Hey, look, guys, Scott Horton Show and Scott Horton Academy,

Shwag. Just look at the YouTube channel there, and under every video, there's links to all the stuff. All right, well, okay, so first thing, on the potential deal there, I've read this a couple of times, and it sounded kind of sketchy.

I know the first time it was from the Wall Street Journal, but they claimed that the sourcing was Russian sourcing. They weren't hearing this from Washington. and they were hearing this from somebody in Moscow anyway, was that they were, and I'm inferring this from what you just implied, I think that the Russians might be willing to draw the lines where they are in Ziproja and Kurson, rather continue the war to seize all of Zeproja and Kersan,

where they still have Zeproja city or however we call, the major population center of Zeproja is still out of their hands, and where one third or so of course, her son is on the other side of the river. So if they were to draw the lines there, that would make a lot of sense, actually. They already control the entire Azov coast, the so-called land bridge to Crimea and all that.

So is that really right? Do you know that that's right, that they really would be willing, as Kushner is saying here, that if, like, let's just say, for example, maybe Kiev isn't willing to give up the last little bit of Donetsk,

but the Russians just take it anyway in the next few months. Well, that's on the cut. Maybe. That's not because. So, look, I mean, as far as the Kushner-Dombas comment, so this is on the record. He was just in Kiev at the Yotter Economic Summit and said this out loud.

So that bit's confirmed. And he said specifically that Putin would stop if Zelensky gives up the last bit. And he also said that Zelensky, who he met just before speaking, has refused. So that's clear. As for the deal where they would draw the line, the problem there is the grandkids shifting. And back in December when they did this 27-point plan, that the Kremlin was willing to compromise on some of the land questions.

And I think Putin at that point was still insisting on all of Dombas, but he said for the other two regions are in contests, Zapparizna and Heson, that he would be willing to draw the line on the line of contact today. However, since Zelensky in July, massively upscaled his attack on Russia and went beyond the oil refineries and started blowing up warehouse,

it's attacking the retail, this company Wildberries, which represents 10% of Russia's retail. Putin gave an interview that weekend and said, look, you've opened Pandora's box. And the Russians have not only hardened their position, but the retaliation has been brutal. And Russia's retaliation on warehouses, supermarkets, they've knocked out 90% of Ukraine's warehousing, modern warehousing, which means the supermarkets are now emptying.

The shelves are empty. And although Ukraine doesn't have any oil refineries, the only one they had got blown up in the first year, Russia's now gone off after the petrol stations and they destroyed two, 300 petrol stations and now Ukraine is having a fuel crisis because they have these very accurate drones that they can use and they're just taking them out one by one. And even more recently,

they've just blown up 300 railway trains. And so the whole infrastructure to support the people in terms of food, getting around the country, And not just the economic assets, but, you know, basic things like supermarkets and megastores are being targeted. And he's now trying to cause humanitarian crisis. And we haven't even got into the cold weather. So it's going to get worse. And when it comes to talking about drawing lines on maps, there's no conversation.

There is no peace negotiations going on. I really think that Kutner and his last trip. to Kiev. That was the last round we've had. That was the only conversation there's been because the Europeans have normally taken over this process, but there's nobody in play. There's no representative. They failed to choose someone when it came up earlier in the spring. The Kremlin is not talking to them anyway. I mean, Lavrov, the foreign minister, is saying that there's nobody on that side we're going to talk to. We're not talking to Von der Leyen, who's a hawk and wants to destroy Russia. We're not talking to Cassia and Kallas, who

who normally is the foreign policy chief of the EU, who's also an even more extreme Russian halt, and the criminal would laugh if they suggested negotiations with her. And the criminal aside, the only name they came up with and said, well, we will talk to Gerhard Schroeder, the former German chancellor. But he's worked for Gazprom. He's got a job with the Russians,

and is seen as a good friend of Putin's, and could take the message Putin would meet him, and he would negotiate. But it would come back to the same position that Trump's had, which is basically he's been demanding since the beginning that Zelensky given to all of Putin's demands, particularly giving up Donvass. That's a non-starter for Vancouver. So we're left in the situation where they have funding for another year of war, possibly two,

and they'll just keep going until they've run out of men completely. They're about to run out of money because they've actually overspent. and the missiles, the protection from the interceptors, the Patriot interceptors that stop the ballistic missiles, they're gone, they're finished, there's none left. Ukraine doesn't have any, no one in Europe has any, even the Americans are about to run out. Right. Yeah, as we've been watching in Jordan over just last week.

Yeah. All right, well, I mean, the slippery slope is obvious to everyone, and Putin, I'm not sure if this is the same interview, you're talking about, but it was just a few weeks ago where he said, yeah, you know, not until we're done liberating the Donbass and Nova Rousia, which I don't think he's always phrased it that way, but that could imply, of course, including Odessa.

And then it's so obvious you just look at the map from Odessa, well, geez, you can bang near the Transnistria from here. So you might as well just keep going and go all the way to Transnistria, consolidate that so-called Land Bridge, and also deprive Ukraine of their jewel, Odessa. If that's the way... The Ukraine becomes a landlocked country.

It has no coast left. Yeah. And the... Yeah, I mean, the point here is, I think since the Pandora's box was opened, that the Kremlin has sufficiently hardened its line. And at the same time, underreported, is that it's been making steady progress in the Donbass.

So what the three fortress cities, one of them is already fallen. and the other two had Russians like at the gates. However, in the last week or so, there's been this Vivaldi counteroffensive. And in the Lyman direction, which is in that patch, basically the Ukrainians have suddenly broken through and had a big victory and taken about 200 kilometers, which cuts off the Russian, you know, flanking moves into the fortress cities. So it seems like, you know, despite all the chaos with the change of the defense minister

that's been the last month, that they actually got their act together and have launched an effective counter-offensive. But it's a limited, you know, it's a small victory. It was like when the Ukrainians walked into the Kursk region in Russia and actually invaded Russia last year, very spectacular, great for morale,

nice talking points, very useful for Polinsky politically now when he's asking for more than arms to actually have some sort of success to keep people's hopes alive. But to, maintain it, hold it in the face of these big pressures they have with lack of money, men with SARS is going to be very difficult. But it's the nature of this war. It just

drinks on. It's an absolute slug, a bloody slug fest. And it doesn't come down to who has better trained troops or better equipped troops. It's just who can last the longest. And the way the Russians have always fought is you just pour men in. You don't worry about body bags. You don't about the death talk, that you just keep pouring men in until the other guy loses. And I think the ratio now is there's like one Ukrainian dies for every, somewhere between five and eight Russian soldiers that fall. Is that really true? Well, we don't know.

I mean, on the death figures, it's a state secret on the Ukrainian side. And so there's a lot of estimates. But, you know, people throw out figures every now and again. So, but it's possible to make some estimates, you know, when you look at the body. swaps that go on between the two sides. But it's somewhere around... Does these spots favor the Russian side? Don't they have more casualties on the Ukraine side?

Yeah, but it depends. Like, when the Russians were advancing, they were picking up both their dead and the Ukrainian dead. But then when it comes to a stalemate, the dead just lie in the middle. And so those numbers are only very vague. But, you know, you have various officials give the ratios every now and again. And so you guess.

But the point of the... is, I mean, if you look at the Second World War, then in the Second World War, the Nazis lost about 9 million, that the Brits and the US lost between 400 and 500,000 each, but the Soviet Union lost 25 million people, which if you think about that hard, that's a stunning number, and it's the way the Russians fight is that they don't care about casualties, and they pour people into was flying. So that one to eight, if that's true, that one Ukrainian death is the Kiwa, not the eight dead, Russians. Because you have one less Ukrainian and you have not. Well, I really take your point, but, you know, because I've read a lot of stories like that

from the Ukraine side. And of course, both sides have an interest in playing down their own casualties and playing out the other sides. But, you know, like for all this stuff about the human waves and all that, there were some reports about that kind of early. earlier in the war, but like lately I've been reading about, well, even just the last few years, even like two, three years even, that they've really broken their units into smaller and smaller teams and just infiltrating guys here and there and now more and more drones and stuff. So much less of these kind of human wave attacks because they don't really work anyway. Quantities don't work when there's so many.

The tactics have changed. I mean, when you had like fights like Bachmouds, a divka, the two big cities that fell in last two years. Then those were human waves and you did frontal assaults. But for the both sides and particularly the Russians, it's too expensive in men and the drones changed the nature of the game. So Russian forces have taken two key cities in the Dombevas region,

Prokofka and Costa, and Nica. And they've taken them. They've driven the air few out. I'm sorry to interrupt you, Ben, but please be. careful about thumping the table there because it's getting on. Sorry.

No, it's all right. We all speak with our hands, but just keep them in the air. But they've taken those two cities on paper and declared victory, but they don't control them because the problem is, is now that you have a drone team operating 20 clicks away. And now every time the Russian soldiers who normally are going out to patrol the city they're captured, as soon as they step out the door, it's death from the air. And so they don't control. And so this whole binary thing, which was true only a year ago in Ukrainian war,

where you took a city and you controlled it, it's not true anymore. There's no binary falling. It's that, you know, one force is dominating there, has people on the ground. But with the drones, you can kill anybody who steps out the door. And so this is one of the reasons why the whole Donbass thing is so bloody. But against that, I mean, Krammatos can stop. the two remaining cities that are under the Ukrainian government control, they've just started evacuating the civilian population.

Because, again, although they're under Ukrainian control, there's footage. You can see on any of the Milblogger's channels of Russian drones flying around the city, looking for military vehicles, soldiers, and blowing them up. And I saw an interview with a local resident, and she was like, we have to keep our windows closed. Because if we don't, then a Russian drone is going to fly through the window into the kitchen and kill us all.

And this is an Ukrainian-controlled territory in the Donbass. And how sustainable is that? I don't think it is at all. But normally, Ukraine controls those cities, but to the point where the locals are keeping the windows closed and putting up netting to stop Russian drones flying into their kitchen and killing. So it's a mess.

And unfortunately, I think both sides can continue to fight and stick to it. And you can claim you can't capture cities in the way that you used to be able to only a year ago because of all this progress in the drone technology. And unfortunately, everybody's willing to sacrifice the people. I mean, like we said, we have no clear idea on the number of debt. But it's on the order of a million people. whole generation of Ukrainians are deads. Yeah.

It's horrific. It's absolutely horrific. All right. So, man, there's so many different things. I mean, well, I'll remember to get back to the, to, uh, I want to ask you about, uh, you know, Russian control and other places too beyond the Dombas where they already have men like in Sumi and Harkin, even whether they can be expected to just exchange and walk away from that territory, you know, in a deal.

then I wanted to also focus on the part of the deal that you mentioned there about all the economic ties, just waiting. I mean, we're competitors and being oil exporters and timber exporters, I guess. But like, for the most part, there's so much that we could develop in terms of a codependent economic relationship with the Russians, as you mentioned, especially to start on the precious rare earths and all that, that the military value so highly and that kind of thing. And so it makes so much sense, especially Donald Trump, to say, all right, Moscow, here's the grand bargain. We're going to do, as you described, this massive economic deal. But then my question is, as well as you understand the Russian point of view on this, does anybody in Moscow believe that those promises can withstand the end of the Trump administration? because President AOC is just going to do whatever Washington wants her to do.

And it doesn't seem like Trump represents Washington's consensus on this at all. I think, so to be clear, you have to, when talking about the whole Russia situation, you have to distinguish between the economic arguments and the political arguments or geopolitical arguments. And they're very distinct. And they're actually at loggerheads with each other. And it's one of the ironies, one of the contradictions in the, this whole situation. But the economic arguments are very strong and very appealing. And I think if those deals were done, that they would actually be quite robust. And I point to the failure of the sanctions

as an example. So Russia has had extreme sanctions put on it, 30,000, most sanctioned nation ever. And they've targeted things like oil, fertilizers, uranium, metals, critical medicals. I mean, all the stuff that people actually want and are in short supply. And if you look at the EU, it's, for example, sanctioned pretty much everything. It's gas exports from Russia to the EU more or less stopped. And yet they exempted LNG liquefied gas because Europe doesn't have any. It doesn't produce any. It's one big field in Holland that's just being closed out.

And the tanks are now half full when they should be nearly, 80% full ahead of the winter. And so actually, the EU is importing as much LNG from Russia as it can. In the last month, it poured every single tanker that left Yama in northern Russia. Every single one of them went to Bruges in Belgium and were sold to the Europeans. And yet, if you listen to Vondalayan, she's like, we're going to ban Russian gas, including LNG, completely, but we're going to do it from next year. And the things, they're very persistent because at the end of the day, there's a lot of hypocrisy. And the companies here in Germany, I can tell you, they're dying for the sanctions to be lifted. And the AFD, this far right party that just won in the regions, they actually reached out to Kiril Dmitri,

the main business guy on the Putin team. and they're proposing talks to restart the gas imports, which is actually going down pretty well with the German population or a section of it, and certainly go down with the industrialists. So if Trump does do one of these deals, then I'm pretty confident that because of the money, the new administration will gloss over it. And they'll just find a fudge.

So in the last 20-201st package of sanctions, that they banned EU tankers from transporting Russian oil. However, they exempted Greece. And Greece alone makes up a fifth of the so-called shadow fee, the Russian shadow fee, a fifth, 20%, and earns huge amounts of money. And so that 21st round of sanctions was supposed to take all the money away from the Kremlin that uses to fund the war. But by exempting Greece, you actually just put $60 or $70 billion in the Kremlin's pocket

and also huge profits for the Greek shipping tankers. And everyone was like, you know, because when we object to this, they're like, oh, but we've just put in the toughest sanctions ever. But except we've exempted, you know, huge amounts and actually weird funding. The amount of money that Europe has sent to Kiev in the last four years, exceeds the amount of money they've sent to, sorry, the amount of money that Europe has sent to Moscow in the last four years, exceeds the amount of money that they've sent to Ukraine

by a factor of truth. The amount of money we spent on buying stuff from Russia, despite this anxious regime. So it's a joke, or rather it's rhetoric, you know, that we're trying to come across. But the business, unsolying it, is very powerful because money is more important to most European.

nations than the rhetoric is. And the ones who are most vocal about, you know, destroying the Russian economy are all the northernly, you know, the frontline states like Estonia, Lithuania, Vilnius, Poland obviously is a major country up in that corner. But the ones are on the front line who are actually really scared. But you go down to Belgium, to Spain, to those countries, they're busy doing business. So I actually think that, for me, the interesting part of this is that, that Putin's made it perfectly clear that he's interested in business too,

and that he would be willing to let the Americans in and do all these deals. And again, if you want to understand that, it's because he has now a dependency problem on China that he's uncomfortable with. And doing business deals with America is a really nice counterbalance to that dependency on China. So he would happily play that card. Man, it's so cool. I own Liberty Stickers again.

Liberty stickers.com. Everyone else's stickers suck. But these ones are really good, like, for example, this one I made back years ago. So what if they never tell the truth about the Oklahoma City bombing? I mean, who cares, right? That's supposed to be ironic and sarcastic, you get it? And then here's one.

Join the CIA, creating tomorrow's enemies today. That kind of thing, you know, so you can put them on the back of your truck and tell everybody else how stupid their politics are. Liberty Stickers.com. Oh, so now I'm so interested in that. I mean, my oversimplified narrative, I guess it didn't wrong. It was just that, you know, Biden made this massive error in giving Putin the sort of 300 front kick to the chest

and kicking him right the hell out of Europe and Western civilization and go be friends with Asia then. And then the Russians are like, all right, then. and of course the Chinese are willing to accept them in open arms and all of that, but you're telling me that even after all of this, Putin is still a Westernist and would still rather not just get along with Europe, but get along with the United States on the far side of Europe from there. If only we'll let him, just like back in the Bush years when Joe Biden said, no Russian leader in all of world history has tried to align with the West as much as this guy Putin.

he did um i mean in in the first of decade of his uh his rule from 22 000 onwards i mean he made multiple efforts to try and make friends because they see themselves as european so i i had um i know dorkovych who was first deputy prime minister number three in the iraqi and i went to talk to him about this and i said like but what about china i mean surely this is a natural ally and He was like, no, the problem with the Chinese is that they're too different to us and they're too far away. And we are a European country. And I know most of Russia is in Asia, but actually 80% of the population lives along the Ukrainian border in European Russia on the eastern side of the Euro mountains. And they see themselves as Europeans.

And they want to be friends. And so Putin went to see Draghi in Brussels. And so we want to join the European Union. And Draghi said, no, because look, you're far too big. You would just swamp all our institutions and that's not going to happen. And so then Putin went off and set up instead of you've got the EU on here on European side, but he set up the EU, the Eastern European Union. And I talked to the founder of that and she said,

we specifically built a mirror copy of the EU. The point being is that if we can't join the EU, then we can have an EEU-EU deal where they interlocked. And this is a piece of rhetoric. You don't hear it anymore. But Putin for the longest time was talking about single market from Lisbon to Vladivost to integrate the two markets. Fine.

We can't join with too big. And when it was set up, the EU has all the same regulations, rules, quality standards, like everything. So that you could just like, you know, legos. snap them together at any point. And Putin was pushing for that for the longest time. And if you listen to the rhetoric coming out of Merkel and Macron whenever they were before the war, when they were on good terms, then Merkel and Macron would come up with this Lisbonne of Vladivostok. I mean, your listeners are interested, Google it, and you'll see it's a theme that runs through.

And that was the plan. That was Putin's preferred policy plan. But now he's been driven into the arms of China. And again, if you're a student of Russia, you know that the Russians and the Chinese are not natural allies. They really don't trust each other. But at the moment, the geopolitics of the world, this post-Pax Americana that we've been arguing, is such that their natural, it's a convenience, but they're natural allies in that sense. And the global south, too, has been looking at this and they've been sitting on the fence for the last couple of the years. But Trump has been so aggressive and caused so much damage that I think everybody is now looking at, and at this alliance, the Briggs or the G20 or whichever one of those organizations we want to look at.

But they're all like, no, we need to club together because we live in a two-speed world, particularly as far as the Americans are concerned. And that if you're on the outside, then you're vulnerable to sanctions, you're vulnerable to tariffs. And the new wild card is that you're vulnerable to having your hard currency reserves in dollars seized by the states on a whim. And if you look that the decision to freeze the Russians 300 billion has had huge consequences. If you look at the share of the dollar in the reserves of all the other non-alli countries, it's tanked and it continues to fall.

So we're in a de-dollarization. But that's going to take a decade's by air. I mean, you can't do that quickly. So there are all these consequences. And we just had a brick summit in India. And now you've got this bizarre alliance between China, Russia, India, and China and India as friends is crazy.

They're virtually at war with each other on the northern border. And yet they're making these pragmatic relations and they're trying to make it work because they feel they need to protect themselves against, you know, the chaos, the unpredictability of US tax, which keeps with Trump. So post-Trump, I don't know, there's an opportunity for a real statement to come in and start trying to rebuild those relationships.

But in the meantime, you've got very rapid development of this Global South block that are rapidly working together. And it's gone beyond just economic and trade and buying minerals or oil. That there's an emerging, and this has been very very very very. visible in Iran, there's now this Kink alliance, which is China, Russia, Iran, North Korea. And economically they're tied together, but now they're militarily cooperating. And we're seeing North Korean ballistic missiles being used by Russians in Ukraine just recently. And we're seeing Russian tech, because they've advanced the drone tech, which they bought from Iran,

going back to Iran, which is being used against the Israelis. and they found themselves with their trousers down because the new tech is sufficiently sophisticated, they can't stop it. So that's not a good thing. That's not in the West's interest by creating this Kink alliance. And Korea has, what, 50, 70 warheads

and it's about ballistic missiles that can reach Japan and South Korea, so that that is a new wild card that's entered the game. So this is all, horribly destabilizing and could go horribly wrong. Well, I like the part about China and India getting along. That's a pretty shiny silver lining in all of this.

That's like, you know, I don't like the idea of them ganging up against us in the nuclear war or anything like that. If America fights China, India stay out, please. But as far as them not having a nuclear war over where to draw the line in the Himalayas, I'm sure you saw where a few years ago, the military clashed up there, the military's clashed up there. and they all dropped their weapons and had a big fist fight. That is like, that's the coolest war I ever heard of, dude. That's exactly what we should do

is just send all the infantry out there with bare knuckles and just all this thing, mono and mono. But anyway, so yeah, if they're getting along better, I like that. So before I let you go, I do want to give you a chance to talk about some of the stuff that you've written in depth about at your substack here

about the corruption in Ukraine. and just the unraveling of the Ukrainian state here, the head of the Anti-Corruption Bureau just got arrested by the federal prosecutor who was because he was going after him? Is that right? Yes, no. Again, the first place I ever lived in Eastern Europe

was Kiev in 93. And although I moved up to Moscow, I continue to cover out, go there regularly, have lots of friends there, have some friends in government. And it's always been insanely corrupt. And when we came up to 2014 sanctions after the Crimean annexation, I saw some diplomats talking about, like, should we support Ukraine? And the warnings that went back to the European capitals was like, be careful. It's like off the charts, corrupt.

And it's always been like that. And I had a friend of mine who was minister at the time explained it to me that the way the system works, because you have no institution. that work. There's no courts that you can rely on. There's no checks. What the politicians do is they appoint people to lucrative positions. They expect them to skim off the top. And then the power you have over that appointee is the ability to take the job away. And consequently, they do exactly what you say. And that's how it's always operated. Zelensky was a breath of fresh air because he came in on an anti-corruption platform and he did put through some banking law. laws, Manti Kolomoisky, oligarch laws, and actually did start to start the process.

And again, the Western donors had insisted on these three institutions, the National Anti-Corruption Bureau, NABU, and then SACO, the investigators, and the Anti-Corruption Court. All of those have been ring-fenced from the government. The government has no control of, and that's what's causing all these investigations now. But it seems like with Zelensky, I think his heart was in the right place. He did make a start. But it's so rotten. It's so endemic.

And it's so normal to most Ukrainians. I mean, if you ask a regular Ukrainian, if I was appointed deputy, you know, energy ministers, would I steal? And they're like, yeah, of course I was. Timoshenko, you know, the famous revolutionary firebrand with her plait braid. in Ukraine she's known as the gas princess. She's worth $350 million because she was minister of gas during that period.

And so even her, who's the absolute poster girl of the revolution and the new democratic Ukraine, walks around in Chanel suits. I don't know, you meet her. She's macularly dressed and she's one of the richest people in the country. outside the oligarchs.

And that's just normal. Everyone accepts it. Now, Russia's corrupt too. And again, no one's got concrete figures on this. I mean, Mabid, if the former president, he's worth $2 or $3 billion for sure. But I think in Ukraine, the system is built on it still. And this is what NABU is doing at the moment with these investigations. It's opening up a can of worms.

And it's another problem for Zelensky, who's got all these other problems to deal with, keep the war going, is that his entire circle has been implicated in numerous scams and scandals. That Irina Morda, who is the number two in the presidential administration, she's just been arrested for racketeering, using influence in the law authorities

to take companies that she fancied and take over control and then sell them. This is a record. And Budenov, who's the former head of the military intelligence, and now the head of the administration, has just been named by Nabu of working with Mudra on one of these racketeering or money laundering schemes. So it goes to the heart of it.

And you ask the Ukrainians, there was an amazing poll, I think last month, where the Ukrainians in the poll said that they're more worried about corruption in the president's administration than they are about being hit by a Russian missile. For them, the bigger existential threat is the corruption in the government than the aggressor of Russia attacking their cities.

So describe it too, is that you have even different intelligence agencies killing each other. Shooting missiles through into the window of the head of the SBU had a drone fly into headquarters into his office. Happily, he wasn't there that day.

Because they just had a shootout with the military intelligence the day before with machine guns on the streets. So it's, I don't know. I mean, I wrote one of my blogs saying it's all pulling into pieces. It looks really bad. And I got a lot of a flack and unpleasant responses from Ukraine supporters. But then that's the other thing I should emphasize that there's a difference. I mean, Ben, if we had the CIA and the FBI shooting at each other in the streets of Washington,

then I would say, hey, you're right to raise the alarm here. something is going wrong. But I should emphasize that that story was really unpopular. And then the whole thing with the drone going through the window of the acting head of the SBU the next day got played down. And another problem we have, and it's actually keeping us in business, is that the narrative on the whole Ukraine story is so deeply entrenched after four and a half years that people are very reluctant.

to put up any negatives. And we try and report it as we see it. And the situation in Donbass has been getting worse and worse. People haven't reported that. The counter-offensive, this is Vivaldi, counter-hanser is getting reported because it's an upbeat story. And this all came to a head with Yulia Mendel, who's Zelensky's own former press secretary.

And she was invited to speak in front of the European Parliament the same day they've underlined as gave her state of the nation. and then she was sanctioned the day before and she was barred. Tucker Carlson interviewed a couple of them. She did that too, yeah. And she was barred from speaking. And her message is exactly this one. No men, no missiles, no money.

Too many people are dead. And it is impossible for us to win this war. Impossible. Therefore, we should at least open the discussion on stopping it. And unfortunately, that means concessions. That probably means territorial concessions. but, you know, face reality, because there's not much of Ukraine left.

So, but I mean, agree with her or not, it's a valid point, and it should be debated. But then the Western press reaction to her speech was like she's a Putin puppet because they don't want to hear it. They just don't want to go there. No one wants to discuss. He's former press secretary,

the Muscovite agent there. To her credit, Timoshenko has even, and, you know, call for peace as of a couple of years ago now, call for negotiations for the same reasons. That, look, we're losing slowly, but there's no light at the end of this tunnel. We've got to quit while we're only this far behind and not earlier.

What the hell? Yeah, it's a prior victory at best. I mean, as I say, we follow the economy and the demographics closely. And if you look at it from that perspective, Ukraine is already a failed state. And we're giving 90 billion from the, the EU for the next two years to pay for the war. The allocation for the rebuild of post-war Ukraine, assuming 2028 in the EU budget is $10 billion a year. That's what's been earmarked for

the rebuild. The World Bank estimate, the damage now at something on the order of $586 billion. And where that money is going to come from, no one even is going to talk about it. Unfortunately, I think what's going to happen is that Zelensky government, could easily collapse, particularly on the back of these corruption scandals, which is just getting worse and worse. And the new guy, Zolosni maybe, comes in and we'll do a deal to end the war, and he can blame Zelensky for the horrible terms that he'll have to accept. We'll get a Finland scenario where you give up 10, 20% of the country.

Ukraine becomes neutral, and then they have to rebuild. But this is one of the questions that Mendel's brought up, It's that future for Ukraine. Is it Finland, which was a rosy solution in the end, or is it Afghanistan, which is the other possibility? You just have a failed state which has been smashed to pieces and there's no money to fix it. And then everybody leaves. Because those four million men who are left in Ukraine who can't meet because of martial law, as soon as you end the war and take martial law down, there's a strong argument that they'll just go and join their wives in Poland, Germany, wherever they are and not come back.

you'll have no labor and no money as well. And so you'd just be sending money back to all the Babushki who are still there because of the 20, 25 million that are left in Ukraine, 12 million of those are pensioners. And you've got another 4 million who are disabled from as a result of the war. So you're just having like basically a hospital ward left, but it would be funded by remittances from Ukrainians who are working elsewhere. I mean, that's a very pessimistic scenario,

but this is actually a real possibility. And again, none of us has been talked about or debated or contingency plans on how to deal with it. So it's depressing. And I think it's close to the point where we have to be realistic and start asking these questions. Yeah. All right. I can see your phone is blown up there. Can I ask you one more?

You've got to go. No, please go. Go on. Okay, one more. So along these same lines. I mean, you mentioned this Operation Vivaldi. This is led by, in my understanding, Andrew Beliskey, the leader of what's now the a third army corps and his counterpart in the National Guard,

proopenko, or propopenko, whatever. And these guys are a couple of Hitler loving Nazis. And I wonder whether you think that there's a real danger. I saw some polls that said, Boleski's probably the fourth, third or fourth most popular figure in the country. And if he survives the war, which he has so far, he'll be hailed as one of the great military leaders and heroes of this war, from the Ukraine side, his third army corps is, from what I've read, the most successful

of all of the different major army divisions and even has their own kind of separate chain of command and their own separate links to American commanders in Germany and weapons providers, because they love to fight. Yeah, as of, I mean, as of this paramilitary group that it was far right, has been emerged as very effective fighters. And this whole far right thing, I mean, you know, these guys openly wear Nazi insignia on their uniforms or derivatives that are, you know, to make it clear. And the link between them and the administration is extremely tight. And this whole nasty far right elements, they had every year a parade down Khrushatik in the middle of Kiev where people openly walking with Nazi uniforms are.

And it's being, again, downplayed by the Western press. I actually got into a fight with Radio Free Liberty last year saying Russian narrative, Russian talking point is that Ukraine needs to be denazified. So this is a thing. And here you have a parade with a whole bunch of Azaf guys wearing Nazi uniforms on Krishatic, 3,000 of them with torches. This is not a small thing. And you didn't report it.

and they're like, no, it's insignificant. It doesn't mean anything. They reported it in the past. I mean, you could cite only Radio Free Liberty and have a thing this thick on the Ukrainian Nazi regime since they're reporting from 2014 through 22. It's, it's, um, through 21.

It's generally, it is a problem and it raises questions about who's going to. If Zelensky's government is ousted, who takes over? And then what's the role of the far right? And let me ask you that, Ben, just to interject here real quick, isn't it the case that this is part of the economics of politics from Zelensky's point of view, is that he can't negotiate the surrender of the last of the Don Bass, or Belensky will shoot him in the head to death?

Yeah, I think, I don't know. I mean, I don't even try and speculate on the various scenarios. Well, I mean, it threatened to, Beletsky and Dimitri Yorosch have both threatened to kill Zelensky in the past. Exactly. And I think that's one of the motivations, for him not doing a deal because there is possibility of another Maidan revolution, but this one will be armed and that people like Zelensky will get shot for giving up.

And so if he offers to give away territory, because they would rather fight for the end. It's a kind of worms, isn't it? I mean, it's not simple. And a lot of these currents, very strong currents, like the role of the far right, again, they're not being addressed. It's just like, you know, Zelensky is Churchill, and we have to do it. You listen to Von der Leyen, that they're standing for a democracy and everything. But then occasionally when they're forced to do it, the EU have just,

they're missing Zelensky said in his Independence Day speech that we're missing $27 billion from the budget, which we need to fund defense for the rest of the year. And von der Leyen had a very nice, nasty, backhanded quip in her speech yesterday. during the state of the nation, where she said, if you want extra money, finish the reforms. And the accession process that's going on at the moment is all about the first cluster, the fundamental packet. And the fundamental packet includes anti-corruption, judicial reform, cleaning out those bureaucrats and then the law enforcement who are just helping themselves,

and they're not doing it. And consequently, I think it's about three or four billion euros being held back because of this lack of progress. And again, this should be like, you know, front-page story at least if you're doing serious coverage of Ukraine. It's like, you know, Ukraine is desperate for money, huge hole in the budget,

and failing to put through fundamental reforms that relate to fundamental problems that has always had. And this is a bad thing. But again, no one wants to paint the black image. And it's all rah-rah stand with Ukraine for as long as we can. And it's not realistic.

Like I said, I don't think it won't necessarily blow up. It won't necessarily turn into revolution. But the problems, as I said in that very last piece, which is why you called me in the first place, if you go through the problems, they're on every front, domestic politics, international politics, military, manpower, missiles, ammo, investment,

everything is going anymore. Everything is cruder. Yep. Mm, Moondos artisan coffees. explicitly Scott Horton show flavored coffee from Moondos artisan coffees get it they hate Starbucks because Starbucks supports the war party but Moondos artisan coffees they support peace and um so here you go Scott Horton show flavored coffee it's part uh what sumatran and part Ethiopian all mixed together and taste so good in the morning and also in the mid afternoon

if you start getting sleepy scott horton.org slash coffee. Get you some. All right. You guys, me here for expatmoney.com slash Scott. And what it is is this great guy, Mikhail Thorup, and he's a world traveler and a real expert in what you can do to buy property and invest in property overseas, protect your assets, and look into even living overseas if that is your interest. And if you just go to expatmoney.com slash Scott, you can get this free handy booklet, plan B, residences, and instant citizenships. That's expatmoney.com slash Scott. Well, you know, you mentioned the phrase Pyrick victory earlier, and this is something that goes back

to, well, I gave a speech on, I think, March 4th of 22, so like a week after the war started or so. And I said that, and this was when the assumption was that, you know, within a couple of weeks, Ukrainian military will be broken and Russia will have the run of the place was more less the assumption there. But then I said there that, look, man, war is a government program and self-licking ice cream cone, even if it ain't the Pentagon, it's the Russians doing it. It's the same kind of thing. And so you could see how right there from the beginning, if you just play out the thought

experiment, from the moment they invade, they're essentially taking everyone in Ukraine who likes them out of Ukraine and making them Russians now by drawing this new border around the Donbass. Then, through the war, essentially, if they only go that far, now they're leaving a bunch of people who don't necessarily, you know, have any favorable opinion toward Moscow,

but are culturally Russian and speak Russian and everything, who are now a much smaller minority left between the Nipa River and the Donbass in in Suprosia and Kurson in the south, but in Denepe. bro, Petrovask, or however the hell you say that.

I'll never learn how to say that word. Harkev and Sue Me and the rest. Now, from Moscow's point of view, that to protect those people, too. Otherwise, they're abandoning them to their tender mercies of the government in Kiev, which Po Zelensky is almost certainly to be, one already is dominated by this nationalist right wing

who absolutely are obsessively hate these people. for speaking Russian and not Ukrainian and all that. And that goes even as far as Odessa. Odessa is a Russian-speaking city. So as his kid. The right point of view, now we've got to protect all of these people, everybody east of the river,

and maybe some people west of the river too. And then so now, even if they have some kind of peace deal, first of all, they share a border with Kiev, it's right there on the Nipa River in the middle of the country. So they have a huge, you know, potential flashpoint right there.

and they have a government that's dominated by a bunch of Hitlerians and Vanderites and whatever from the far west of the country who are never going to settle for peace with Russia. And unlike in the east of the country where it's all step, in the west they got forests and swamps and the Carpathian mountains, and they can wage a CIA-backed Nazi insurgency there for decades. It took Khrushchev 10 years to wipe him out back when he only had the ethics of Soviet communism to stop him and could just mercilessly wipe them out. It still took them until, what, like 56 or something,

to crush the CIA-backed insurrection there, 10 years after the end of the Second World War. And so the Russians have just picked this horrible fight for themselves where the more they win it, the more they lead themselves in a terrible position, where now what are they going to do with this, you know, right-wing insurgency west of the NEPA River from now until the end of the 21st century?

Well, another scenario is that because of the failure to fund the reconstruction and the abandoning of Ukraine's core, at this crucial hour, which is, you know, Yugogos going on now, that you have like pro-Russian, pro-premium parties that rise up. The people are like, well, who's going to help us? Because the EU paid for a war to destroy our country, but they're not paying for the rebuild. And then all Putin has to do is like, look at Mariupil. We've rebuilt that. It's in Norfolk here now. But, you know, we'll do the same.

We'll come in and build factories and give you jobs and just take a Russian passport. And then there's a possibility that Ukraine could actually flip and become pro-Russian. That'd be the easy way. Yeah. Out of the self-interest. But you can also see how that could actually break it into

because, you know, it's actually, as you pointed out, that the West is very different from the east of Ukraine. And it's brittle. And then you'd have a Czech-Slovakia scenario where you'd have Uch on one side in Iran and, sorry, Ayn on the other side, and I have two countries come out of it, one that blocks to Russia's fear of influence and one that goes along with Moldova Romania and the EU. So I don't know, it's all up in the air. And nobody seems to spend any time thinking about long-term how to get out of this. And it's disappointing on the EU because the project's EU project was. It was a fantastic idea, and fantastically successful.

But now we're into it now. It just seems to be warmongering. There's been no effort or interest in bringing the war to an end, no serious attempt by the EU to broker any sort of speech, or even talk to the Kremlin. So far it boiled down to one foreign policy advisor from Macron was sent to Moscow last December to open negotiations or conversation. That was it.

That's the only serious E.E. initiative I've seen to actually engage with the Kremlin. And even Macron got a lot of flak doing that, just to go and talk to them. So poor Ukrainians, I don't know.

I mean, we could have given them the wherewithal to win this war in the first year. If we've given them what we've given them since then, then Russia would objected. Well, the Russian army was in just absolute mess. And poorly there.

and just everything went wrong. And they were vulnerable. And the Ukrainians shown themselves to be heroic, like you do. I mean, for me, the key battle was around after the airport. And then there was a column advancing on Kiev from the airport in the first air or two. And the locals came out, put cars across the road and shotguns and held them at bay. It was absolute, you know, there should be a movie made about butcher, that resistance because it stopped what could have been a disaster.

And so they've done, even the Western Allies, again, people I've talked to in defense, they were all shocked that Ukraine didn't fall in three days. It should have done. But it didn't. Here's that guy, Akmenatov. I'm sorry, I'm probably saying his name wrong. He was an advisor to Zelensky. Yeah.

And so he had given an interview. a couple of years before the war. We said, exactly what's going to happen. We're going to have the war, but then we're going to win it, and then we're going to join NATO. We've got to have the war first and this and that. And then he gave a follow-up later

where he talked about how bitter he was, that from his point of view, that had worked, not the join NATO part, but that they had had the war and that they had won the war. And by that, he meant halted the Russian advance exactly where it was and made Putin think twice

and decide, well, hell, let's just go to Istanbul and sign a deal then instead of continue the war. That was the victory that he had sought or that was what he characterized. This was exactly how it was supposed to work. Then the Americans came, and this is the famous Forrest Johnson intervention,

the Americans came and said, don't you do it. But we promise that we will send you all of these arms that you need to really reverse the Russian position on the ground, force them out. of all of the Donbass, and then you'll have the deal on your terms, then it'll be great,

and then the way he put it was, and then the weapons never came. And it was months and months and months, and then they finally dropped some stuff at some airport far out in the west of the country, and it was hardly enough to make any kind of difference, which I'm not taking his word for it, that they had their act together enough

that they could have made use of whatever equipment we could have given them at that time. I don't know, but I do take his word for it, that the Democrats made these gigantic promises and then left them sitting there. No, just the supply of the javelin anti-tank missiles. In the first, if the first year, if you remember popping their tops,

the Russian tanks. It was stunning. It was actually three guys running around the bushes. Pop up, fire a javelin, Russian tank. And that was their main success in the first few weeks, wasn't it? Was the jihad and the anti-saint missiles. And then they came up with the drone idea.

You know, that was a Ukrainian innovation. It's like, let's take what have we got with these grenades? How can we use these grenades? I know that my kid's got like a quadrack. They fly that over and drop it on. And those famous footage of like them getting so good at it, they flew over SUV, which had the sunroof for Russians in. And they flew it over and dropped the grenade through the sunroof into the car and

killed them all. And everyone was like looking at that and like, and that costs 40 bucks to do that. So now they've been heroes and lions and. full respect. But as you intimates it, I think we betrayed Ukraine. You know, we have this constant theme. It's always been too little, too late. We send leopard tanks, but only 35 of them far too late.

We sent F-16s, but only 30 of those again after nearly a year. And I have a video, which I keep putting into pieces of Zelensky, in the first week, the war, calling on NATO. So close the skies, send us weapons, you have everything we need. And these are my people that are being slaughtered. And we have nothing to fight with. And we have no support. And we're being invaded by Russia.

And nothing happened. He was very angry. I mean, he learned his diplomacy very quickly. And the Ramstein meeting, which happened a few months later, where they did finally promise arms, but only after the shock of Ukraine actually might be in with a fighting chance. if we supply them. Because I think everyone was prepared to walk away.

But I think at the end of the day, even then, despite the support we've given was, we betrayed them. And Stoltenberg, the former NATO general director, he put it very succinctly again in the first weeks of the war. And he said, look, our number one priority is to prevent third world war, us fighting Russia. Our second priority is to help Ukraine.

So it's always been like, that from the very beginning. And that's good. That's led to, you know, NATO pulling his punches. But, you know, I think, Ben, that, you know, there's, I'm not saying that you're making them, but there are potential huge assumptions about what Ukraine could have done with all those tanks and F-16s and whatever. I mean, they prove that the Abrams is completely obsolete, actually, when it comes to

fighting Russians. They can get them with those same $40 drones and render our frontline battle tanks essentially useless. I know there's one of them, you know, on display in Red Square right now that they catch out there. So, but regardless of that, and I think it's clear, and they made themselves clear at the beginning, the American, that Washington did. What they wanted to see was this were last as long as possible, that they don't give a good GD what happens to the Ukrainians at all. What they care about is driving up Russia's costs. we're going to inflict on them a strategic defeat.

I have a section of my book where I quote, I don't know a solid dozen of these guys, well, maybe half a dozen, but I'm sure there's plenty more you could find. I'm sure you're familiar. When I bring up the idiom, it's now a common cliche around here, that we're sending Russians home in body bags,

we're sending them home in coffins. We're killing Russians. We're making Russians die, and we're sending them home, and we're killing their generals too, and we're not losing any American soldier's lives in the thing. So this is a great. bang for our buck that we could possibly hope to get.

They're senators and pundits and military men, and these people say this over and over again. And in many cases, they don't even mention the Ukrainian sacrifice at all. In fact, David Ignatius in the Washington Post literally put them in parentheses. He says this war is a huge success for everyone. We've got two new members of NATO. We've driven up military spending all over the place. We've consolidated support.

behind the EU and NATO and all this, and we've weakened the Russians and driven up their costs except for the Ukrainians, who, as we said, their entire society is destroyed forever now. I think it's a miscalculation, because the irony is that you've made Russia stronger, and it's significantly stronger now. And the drone technology, that's the scary one.

I mean, that's what this war has taught. And now America has been on the receiving end of that in Iran. where the American Navy, the greatest naval force in the world, great naval power, has been unable to do anything to the Iranians significant. It can't even send a warship through the straits of Hormuz because it will get blown up by drones. A table. And the, oh, sorry, you'll hear the table again.

It'll be blown up by Iranian drones. And the Russians now, not only are producing between 7 and 10 million drones a year, But they've introduced these new classes of drones. And the scary one is the Garam 5, which is effectively a cruise missile. But it costs 60 grand to make it. And just the interceptor missiles, Patriots, are $4 million each. And so this new equation of the cost-to-kill ratio has crept in. And Europe is afraid of a Russian attack.

So they're talking about putting up a drone wall to prevent swarms of Russian drones going into Poland. again. But Europe's entire collective drone production is on the order of 300,000 a year, and Russia's on 10 million. And high, you know, cutting a state-of-the-art drones against which we have no defense whatsoever. And so, Sikorski, the Polish foreign minister was saying, like, we would defeat Russia in six days because we have superior air power. It's crap. You know, the polls have left less than a hundred fighters, some very good ones, admittedly, Russians have, whatever it is, 1,500 state-of-the-art, fifth generation, SU, 25s, 54s, I mean, and 10 million drones as well, and enough hypersonic missiles, a class of missile that the

Americans don't even have, let alone can stop. So I think this is, and at some point, if you provoke Russia too far, it's going to push back. But again, I don't think the Kremlin's stupid enough to attack NATO and trigger third world war because A, what's the point? And B, eventually the economic power of the West will get its act together. And Russia cannot resist that. But in the short term, again, I'm in Berlin. I think, you know, we do the same sort of destruction we had last time route. And the idea that you get the average, get my neighbors to join the army and go and die in the wheat fields of Ukraine is a joke. There would be an absolute revolution,

which is actually already underway with the rise of the right and the elections we had just two weeks ago and the election we're going to have tomorrow where the AFD, who is like end the war, is already doubled its support on that one platform. So politically, it's impossible to do. Europeans would revolt. if you suggested that.

But our leaders are still locked into this same warmongering, don't talk to the Russians, don't even try and engage with them, give Ukraine more support, because they've still got four million men left. And there's now talking about conscripting women. And the other alternative is to drop the age from 25 to 20. So these are two more options to get another couple of million into the army.

And it's sane, it's insane. I mean, you know, you know, run out, but you use the women. I mean, the reason before, which this is like unheard of anywhere in the West, I've never heard of such a thing. You know, we misunderstood it first. There are all these pictures of guys at the front in their, obviously in their late 30s and in their 40s out there fighting. And this was in like the first and second year of the war.

And people were saying, oh, my God, the Ukrainians are already out of young men and they're having to send their old guys to the front. And then it turned out that, no, that's not what's going on here. It's that the Ukrainian government knows. that they're facing this massive demographic crisis. And so even though they're conscripting people from 25 and up, or 27 and up, they're deliberately keeping, or I guess 25,

they're keeping the younger guys in the rear doing logistics and sending the older guys to the front under the theory that the older guys have already had a chance to have a baby. And the younger guys maybe haven't had a chance to reproduce before they get killed. And so they were already with their back, up against the wall. And this is why Lindsay Graham was so frustrated over there saying how it was absurd that the lowest age of conscription was 25 and demanded that they lower it to 18 and send

the 18 year olds to the front right now where you're never going to win this war. And they were saying, look, we don't have enough 18 year olds. And if we did that, then we wouldn't have the next generation of kids here. And so that was already the crisis that they were in years ago was why the numbers were. So now you're talking about the possibility of them lowering it to 20. They're still not talking about 18 because that would be the final absolute national suicide at that point. And they know it. Yeah.

No, I mean, Yulia Mendel, I mean, that's, she just did a piece for the spectator, the sick, the spokesperson. And that was the title. Zelensky's policies on national suicide. And again, agree with her or not, but, you know, it's a valid point. I mean, because the demographics,

I just did a piece for the, But Leonard Saitung on this, the demographics, if you look at Ukraine's demographics today, they're the same demographics that Russia had in the 90s. Oh, God. Everybody was talking, if not worse. I mean, for every life birth, you've got four deaths. So we're not even remotely close to replacement rate. We're shrinking population.

That the UN thinks it's going to continue after the war finishes through to 2001. it. The population was 50, whatever it was 56, Soviet times. It was 45 in the 90s. It's now 20 and it's going to shrink to 15 million. But as I say, if you drop martial law, then you're going to lose. It could go down to 12 million in the next two years if the war ends and they remove the restrictions.

They can survive Stalin and Khrushchev, but not Joe Biden. Yeah. It's ironic. And then politically, that just causes, I don't know, possibilities, everything is possible. And the possibility of a civil war between East and West and the possibility of a rise of a Russian party and so Ukraine flips completely or breaks in tune.

I mean, all of this stuff is on the table with a country that's like in that state at the end of this war. But it's impossible to say. And to be frank, it's, you know, I just want to. to finish. It's got to the point where it makes no sense to fight on and

somebody needs to stand up to end it and for all his flaws, Trump did. The deal he was pursuing was a self-scentred one to make money for him in America, which is unfortunate. And Putin's dug his heels in, but I don't know, I have

the strong impression that he believes time's on his side. And it's demographics at the end of the day. And the increase the industrial production difference and the missile production difference between Ukraine. And we will see very soon the temperatures will start to fall in the beginning of November. And Ukraine went into the war with 55 gigawatts of power. It now has 12.

There's already a 5 gigawatt deficit. And Russia has all these missiles and Ukraine has. no air defense left. So even if they take out half of the remaining power supply, the Ukraine will go through winter with 12 to 18-hour blackouts. And the thing with the Soviet blocks where most people live is you cannot heat those buildings other than central heating. And you need the power system to work.

And the temperatures last year already were getting down to minus 10 inside the apartments, people were putting up tents in their living room and having a candle or, you know, hair dry or something like that run on a battery to keep the tent warm enough so that they didn't freeze to death. And this year is going to be far west because they're also talking about taking out the water in the sewage. So not only do you have no power and no heating, but you have no running water and toilet stuff. So what happens then? Apparently the property prices. We just did a piece about real estate. People are hunting for datches on the suburbs away from power stations, away from potential targets that have wood via heating. And they're

anticipating like they're going to decamp there and stock up and live on potatoes. They did it last year. It's like three or four months. You have to get through three or four months. And people did with these horrific conditions. But this year they've started the whole campaign early and they have they've been stopped the russians have been stopped piling missiles and i think everything's targeted ready to go they're just waiting for the first now yeah hey guys me here for crowd health at join crowdhealth dot com slash horton and what it is is it's a replacement for insurance it's not insurance it's crowdsourcing instead and who could possibly afford insurance at these prices in this day and age it makes no sense but what this is is is

It's crowdsourcing. You help pay for other people's medical bills, and they help pay for yours, and it really works. You pay the first 500 of whatever you're doing up front in cash, and anything over that, you bill it to the group, and they help you pay. And then when it's somebody else's turn, you chip in a fair amount to pay for them. And it's all for a low monthly subscription fee, and it's totally a great deal. And I highly encourage you to check it out at join crowdhealth.com slash Horton. Scott Horton Show is brought to you by Matt Sersely tax attorney.

Let's say you run a small business or you're a high salary professional and you're looking to protect your revenue from the revenues who would rather take it and spend it on helping foreign countries kill people or something like that. Well, what you do is you contact Matt Sersley and he's an attorney, not a CPA. And so you can discuss all of your business with him in complete confidentiality. and he will help you construct your taxes in such a way where you pay the absolute minimum. That's agoristtaxadvice.com for Matt Sersely, agoristtaxadvice.com. Oh, that was one more thing I want to ask you, well, let me go ahead. This policy of picking a fight with Russian retail stores, they're wild berries, they're Amazon, I gather, right? And you mentioned this earlier in the show there, where,

Ukraine had started this pretty wide-scale attack against Russian civilian targets in this way. And at the time, this was coincided with this big propaganda campaign about how the tide is turning. Ukraine's winning the war. I read it in the telegraph. Now's the time to crush Putin

because he's on the run and we got him on the ropes and he's partnered and we're kicking his ass with our new drone strifes deep behind Russian lines. Famously manufactured propaganda for the head of the NATO summit. That was the reason for it. Yeah, well, okay.

Okay, and see, part of the argument was, and this is going to force the Russians to the table. They're going to have to deal now. They wouldn't quite say they're going to turn around and leave the Donbass, but we're going to force them to the table. But all it did, of course, was provoke what you already described as this massive Russian retaliation against civilian targets across Ukraine to such devastating effect here.

And so in effect, all either side is doing when they do these things, is they're punishing the other side. But they're not achieving any strategic result. The point of targeting Wildbury factories, as I said, it's 10% of Russian retail turnover. But it doesn't actually, the company doesn't actually produce anything. It's just a distributor online e-commerce. But the point was that all of your, and everyone relies on it, we used to buy our groceries online. And the point was to bring the war into everyday Russians' hearts.

Because what Putin has effectively done as to insulate it. the most of the population from the effects of the war. So life in the summer in Moscow has been very pleasant. And by disrupting wildberries and affecting a lot of small and medium-sized enterprises as well, who basically went bust when their stock was blown up, made everyday Russians conscious of the war because it affected them. But it's a vain hope because what is that intended to lead to? If you're hoping that then the Russians will rise up against Putin and throw them out of office

because they can't buy their favorite lipstick, you know, on their phones anymore, that's a fantasy. And it's political points, but again, it's a bit like the invasion of the Kursk region. It causes it. It causes us a sensation. It's good for PR, but strategically it doesn't bring you forward. But then again, you have to realize. that a lot of Zelensky's strategy has to be focused on producing stories for the West that show they're fighting.

Right. Because half of the spending, the budget, is Western External Fund. So he needs to keep it in the press. So, and they're just, what else can we do? We, you know, we've already hit all the refineries, we've caused a bit of a problem on supplies. What can we do next? I know, let's take it. and then pissed the Russia's off, and then they'll be unhappy,

and that pressure on Putin. But none of it is critical. None of this pressure is critical and make a difference. And Putin, he was talking about a cabinet meeting yesterday, saying, yes, there has been damaged. And actually, one of the bigger effects is it bolsters the Kremlin's line that we're not at war in Ukraine. We're a war with NATO.

They're fighting us via proxies. And most Russians believe that. And these attack on wildberries, I think, only bolsters that argument. Because now those missiles, the British drones, for example, is a PR blunder in so much as that just validates the Kremlin's line. And it makes the Russians, I think most people I talk to my friends, they say, look, is this a stupid idea this war? Ukrainians are our brothers, our cousins. Half my family comes from Ukraine. I've got aunties there and my friends wife is Ukrainian, blah, blah, blah.

Nevertheless, now this war has started. Now we're at war with NATO. We better win. And that's how they think about it. And so these attacks on wildberries just bolsters that narrative. Without giving you a strategy, you can't collapse the Russian economy by taking out its Amazon. Right. People would just go to the shop instead like they used to.

So then, but when you say that that was meant to be a PR stunt for NATO, I mean, there have been so many of those, even the 2023 offensive, was one of those too, they said to the Wall Street Journal back then. But this is CIA running this, right? The drone program and these attacks, and they're not doing that without American coordination the whole time. So was it an American PR stunt against NATO there? Against the Europeans?

Which one? The Torontoics, right? I mean, that has to have been born in Washington or at least, you know, in Virginia on the other side of the river. Yeah, I mean, look, a lot of the... Well, all, everyone's very quiet about it, but one of the key points is with any of these drone attacks, particularly long-distance ones, they're impossible without satellite intel. And so that means a live feed between Langley and Kiev, wherever they're driving those drones from.

And it's always been like that. In terms of using offensives as a political tool, this has been baked into Ukraine well before this war. started. Poroshenko, whenever he was meeting Normandy 4 formats with Merck and Putin and whoever, on, on, that there would always be an escalation in the fighting before the meetings. Because they were playing these cards. The Kersh Strait crisis was again a huge escalation but politically timed in order to put it on the front pages, which it did. And Zelisky does the same thing and Putin does the same thing too, you know, that he'll often escalate. And then Zalunsky escalated with the Wildberries attack and then Putin gave an interview on Sunday night about

Pandora's box and sure enough Monday morning, Kiev got bombarded. Now they're escalating it carefully and then they moved on to Odessa and closed the ports and took out the grain. Then they systematically started bombing the petrol stations in Ukraine, and those are all in flames now. And more recently, they've just moved on to trains. So there's been three or four hundred locomotives that have been taken out. And next, they just declared the general staff that they're moving back to the remaining power stations and substations. But I think with that, they're pacing it because they're going to wait until the snow. Once the snow comes, you'll see it escalate again. And it's all casually, but it's all political.

All these moves are political. And they're designed and announced and propagated. Now we moved on to trains. And suddenly a bunch of trains, front page stories. And it's all designed for Western consumption, the successes. And to assure the domestic audience, like we're doing something or now we're being attacked on this. And it's like, you know, we have to rally behind the state and ignore the corruption scandals and ignore all the other problems to, keep everybody on board.

And I must say that it's still whatever it is, two-thirds of Ukrainians, despite the corruption, despite all the problems, are still prepared standing behind Zelensky. It's like, yeah, we're at war. He's our wartime leader. He's done a good job in the first few years. Like, we're not going to change.

Is that the polls show that he's still supported by the majority? There was one of the KISS polls. I mean, there have been other polls that said that he's training Zalusini, the former commander-in-chief, is most popular. Pullenoff is up there. Fedorov, former defense minister who was just out,

has gone shooting up, although managed to, I think, undermining itself. Zelinsky was ranked four in another poll. And who knows? It's very difficult to gauge the moods. But I think... That said that 60% wanted negotiations

and a negotiated settlement sooner than later. But that same poll said a fair result. So we won negotiations, but we want negotiations, but we want a fair ceasefire. And a lot is wrapped up in that word fair, which means they don't want to give up Don Bass.

So again, I don't think anyone really knows. I don't know. My line is like, let's wait until January and see where everyone starts that because I think the situation would be dramatically worse. And then that would be a natural point to have the negotiations that should be. when Putin has showed exactly how much damage he can do.

And if the people can come through this winter, despite the worst Russia can do, then they'll be encouraged to fight on. And I think, so this is a make-or-break moment. And I think Putin realizes that, which is why he's been preparing for it so hard. And I think they were disappointed last winter where they didn't break the back camel.

And this winter, they intend to try. which is why they're going to not just take out the retail, but to actually destroy the infrastructure. They're going after retail infrastructure systematically and not just destroying the supermarkets and the shopping malls, but the loading bays and now the trains and the trucks. Trucks are being targeted in Ukraine, they're delivering all this food.

And they're literally going to try and make it impossible to live in a Ukrainian city. And will that be enough? Because, you know, that's kind of a cheap way of the alternative is to conquer Dombas militarily, which is very expensive way of doing it. But bringing Ukrainian population to his needs is a cheap way I have to. Yep. They shouldn't have started hitting those retail facilities there.

And they knew that they were overmatched once they picked that fight. I agree with that, you know. I didn't imagine myself in Zelensky's shoes. Like, what would I do? What options have I got left? and he doesn't really have any. In the ministerarily, I don't see what else you can do. This counteroffensive is very interesting,

but is it going to be turning point in the wall? I don't think so. Yeah. It just needs to get a good Kevlar helmet and then go to the table. Yeah. All right, thank you so much for your time on the show today. Ben, this has really been great, and I'm so glad to have finally made your acquaintance here.

My pleasure. All right, you guys. I'd give a quick plug then to, if you're interested in, We ran on this stuff every day, IntelliNews.com. And on there, there's a button on the right hand side of the screen. Editor's Picks, there you go. And that's a free Daily Digest of the Best Stories that we do. And I write a daily blog in there about what I think is going on.

I'll sign up for that right now. So, yeah, I was just going to say everybody, check out Radio Moskba is the substack here. And here is BNE Intel News. and right here, editors picks will all sign up for the morning email. Thank you so much for your time, Ben. Really appreciate it.

My pleasure. Anytime. Talk to it. I was in my head. The Scott Horton show is brought to you by the Scott Horton Academy of Foreign Policy and Freedom,

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