Shaun Newman Podcast - #998 - Tim Kirby

Episode Date: February 10, 2026

Tim Kirby, an American-born radio host, journalist, and political commentator originally from Cleveland, Ohio, who has lived in Russia since 2006. He founded the private American Villages in Russia project (americanvillages.ru) around 2023–2024 to attract English-speaking conservatives—mainly disillusioned Americans—seeking to escape progressive policies like "LGBT propaganda" by relocating to rural communities near Moscow. We discuss the Russia/Ukraine war, Epstein Island, the mythical illusion of everyone being involved in democracy and the Russian view on geopolitics. Tickets to Cornerstone Forum 26’: https://www.showpass.com/cornerstone26/Silver Gold Bull Links:Website: https://silvergoldbull.ca/Email: [e-mail] Grahame: [phone]Bow Valley Credit UnionBitcoin: www.bowvalleycu.com/en/personal/investing-wealth/bitcoin-gatewayEmail: [e-mail] Get your voice heard: Text Shaun 587-217-8500

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I have an infection in my leg. I've been at the hospital on and off. I should have maybe led with that. I was there yesterday. I got to go today. I got to go tomorrow. So I'm having fun. I'm having a lot of fun, folks.

I had to listen to Jocko. Good, just to remind myself as bad as I feel. It's not that bad. It's never that bad. but it's been a it's been a fun couple of days if you're listening or watching on spotify apple youtube rumble x facebook substack make sure to subscribe make sure to leave a review if you want to throw a prayer in there for my old leg i'll take that too now let's get on the tail of the tape today's guest is a radio host expat who's lived in russia for the past 20 years i'm

talking about tim kirby so buckle up here we go welcome to the sean newman podcast today i'm by Tim Kirby. Sir, thanks for hopping on. Oh, great to be here. You're quite the podcasting legend. Matt Erritt introduced us, and I looked you up there, and I'm surprised I didn't know a lot more about your podcast because you have quite a big history, and I am thrilled to be here and speak in English. Any interview in English, except with the mainstream media, is a pleasure. Yes. Well, I tell you what, I was just telling you about my YouTube fun on, you know, covering the Freedom Convoy and a channel disappearing. It's interesting to be shadow banned at times and for videos to go absolutely nowhere,

for interviews to go absolutely nowhere. So it doesn't surprise me that you don't know who I am. I think that's kind of become commonplace. Well, yeah, I think we both share that. You know, I had a channel on YouTube with 200,000 subscribers. That got banned for amorphous reasons. I got kicked off of Facebook because we think a child is using it. And it's such a deep ban that I've tried.

to like make a new account on Instagram because Facebook and Instagram are on both by meta. It knows who you are. So I've kind of given up. You know, I'm over here. I try to focus my career more on building within the media within Russia. The only problem is, is that because I'm a foreigner, people always expect me to know what's going on over there and to have a presence over there. And at some extent, you know, man, I've been banned basically everywhere except telegram and Twitter. And so at this point, but I don't really like using Twitter very much. So at this point, it's kind of like, I kind of just do it in order to have like the kind of minimum in order to be foreign guy in Russia and be famous here or something like that, you know, or influential. But supposedly, man, you know, you never know.

People sometimes come out of the woodworks and thank me all the time. And I have no idea how they get any of my content and zero idea. Well, Tim, for the listener hopping on today. Yeah. Tell us a bit about your story, how you end up in Russia. And I don't know. I don't know how long or short you want to go, but, you know, there's a ton of people that obviously have no idea who you are because they can't find you. So tell them a little bit about yourself.

Well, we're going to go on the short end because anyone who moves to Russia, who is a Western foreigner, is going to have to answer the question. Why did you move to Russia once every three days, sometimes more often? In fact, I even wrote a book in Russian that's called Why I Move to Russia, just because I started to want to just give people, the link and also make money off it here here's the link pay me a couple hundred rubles and everyone's happy right uh but for you guys it's uh free essentially uh some bad things uh happened to me during the process of high school some things that were definitely not to say not in line with the u.s constitution there and i also had a sort of crisis of identity as i'm from the hood baby and uh you know as a white guy in the hood you don't have many prospects and you'll

always be an outsider and be hated there but uh white pick offense america didn't really seem to me very much because I grew up with all black people and I sort of in some ways have their attitudes towards a lot of things in life. And when I was a teenager, I went to visit my relatives who still lived at that time in Poland, you know, in Eastern Europe. And I went there and I was only there for a few weeks. I was like, wow, my life is so much more interesting and better here. I don't care if people are poorer. This is probably the way I want to go. And then later on, I joined the US Peace Corps. I served in Kazakhstan for two years. That's where I learned to speak Russian and I moved to Moscow and got a job in the video game industry actually

became popular on YouTube when YouTube was very young and then I shifted over from video games to the media although to be honest there's not that much of a difference between video games and media it's all it's all media baby so how long you've been in Russia uh 20 years so walk me through Russia yeah because I've been saying this a lot of different guys when me and Matt started talking about you, I'm like, you know, I'm starting to begin to think everything I've been told about Russia where it sits today, not 50 years ago, but Russia today is completely different than what I'm told. I'm told if I go to, I'm paraphrasing and I'm maybe, maybe a touch hyperbolic that if I show up on the border of Russia, I'm going to be arrested and thrown in the gulag and everything else. And the more I talk to people that have been there, it seems like it's almost one of the most welcoming places on the planet currently. Where does it fall in there over the last 20 years?

Like you're a guy who's traveled to country. It's not a matter of 20 years. All information about Russia that's written in English is generally wrong and it's lies compounded upon lies. If we go back to the Crimean War, that's when the British Empire really started to crank up the anti-Russian propaganda. Why? Because after the Russians defeated Napoleon, it kind of looked for.

from England standpoint, that the opposite might happen, that Russia is really going to be like the next thing that might actually sweep through Europe and take the whole damn thing. And so they immediately created with the very, you know, this is at sort of the very dawn of media in a lot of ways, this anti-Russian campaign. And they sort of laid the foundation for the Russophobic worldview where if you speak English, again, all information you get about Russia from every history textbook, every website, pretty much everywhere, is all either partially lies, complete lies, or is just manipulated in order to make the country seem bad. So this extends to the Soviet Union, it extends to the Russian Empire.

It includes the current Russia that there is really no easily accessible English language information about Russia that Russians themselves would say is even close to true. Thus, every person who is some sort of Sovietologist or Russia specialist for every university is raised on that false information, which leads them to having these, you know, bad information in, bad output out, you know, it leads to that syndrome. But the syndrome has existed for now almost, let's see, 200 years. So you got the Russia-Ukraine war. Yeah. Okay. Now, I've been interviewing a ton of people who talk about Russia in a, I would say positive light, Tim. Just like they're trying to be like, that isn't true. That isn't true. That doesn't make sense. Look what Putin's doing over here, et cetera, et cetera.

You're sitting in the country at war with all of NATO. Yeah. Right? Being provoked at every turn corner on and on it goes. Do Russians pay attention to that? Are they engaged? Like, you lived in the United States, right? Yeah, correct. Trump gets shot. I'm sitting in a hotel the morning after in Idaho, huge Republican state. And I'm looking around, two of us knew what was going on.

The rest were just, nobody had a clue. So I'm curious about Russia, if they're engaged or if this is some power play by Putin and everything else. Let me try to compare it this way. You know how there's sort of like a media cycle in the West? There's some sort of event and it becomes, It's the biggest thing ever.

Like a week. All the tragedies get motivated. And then, you know, maybe three to four to five months later, they switch over to the next tragedy, the next big issue. And you're the sort of eternally shifting sort of like over to the window of the attention of North America, right? In Russia, since the beginning of the Mideon protests, the beginning of them, the number one issue in the media has been the Ukraine's huge. situation, be it during the Maidan's revolution, color revolution, coup d'etat, be it after that, being the suffering of the people during the dawn, bass, being the beginning part of the special military operation, being up to this present day. That is news issue number one for over

a decade. Wait, not, yeah, over decade. Sorry, sometimes the numbers in my mind fizzle around. So they don't understand that over here in North America, people are not paying attention. Like we put in all these rules, but if you were to walk around Canada, where I sit, the amount of people that know anything more than surface level, you go to Ukraine, bad Russia is very small, very, very small. Well, yeah, well, here's the thing. I don't see now this question you just kind of asked you that is it's a little bit different than what I explained. So what I explain is sort of like where the media's putting its attention. Sure. Okay.

One issue. Hold on this one issue. Hold on. It's been on this one issue for a decade plus unchanging. It is the absolute most important thing to people in Russia who are even partially politically minded. But now we're shifting over to the ability of the average person to really sort of participate in politics or be politically active. The thing is throughout all human history and all human societies, the average person, toils. So now we're not getting into maybe Russian views on things, although obviously my views are very influenced by Russians. This is more my own sort of set of beliefs is that regardless of the system, regardless of the times, the average person toils, be they the feudal surf, be they

the laborer at the communist factory, be they the office worker under capitalism so far and so forth. Right. And so I think a lot of times I talk to people in the West, we have this mythical illusion that there could ever be a time where everyone is, somehow well versed in politics, really has a deep understanding of what's going on politically, really understands the nature of how things works. It's kind of like how if God came down and was like, Tim, I will not allow there to be any new technology unless you design it. Well, that'd be the death of technology, wouldn't it?

Because I'm not an engineer. I'm not a math genius, right? And it's kind of the same thing. the average person is just not geared to understanding those mechanisms. It's a specialized knowledge in the same way that I'm not the next super engineer or physicist or mathematician or so on and so forth. People are a bit more specialized and that's the way it goes. And if you look throughout history, there's never been a time where the average person really understood what politics are going on. So sorry, it's a little bit of Russian pessimism there, but that's the way I see it.

No, no, this mythical illusion. Yeah. And that's what you want to get into. I am also a very big sort of critic of democracy as a concept. Someone would say, oh, that's because you're evil. You're part of the Putin autocracy. No, Putin loves talking about democracy. But it's a really flawed concept that just doesn't really have a replacement yet, or maybe

ever. But we could even have maybe even democratic-like systems, but we could really change the wording of them to make them more truthful. But we're never going to do that. So not during my lifetime. Well, I'm sitting here and I'm like, wait a second, this mythical illusion. That's an interesting way of putting it. Because one of the going thoughts is we need more people to wake up so we can change what is happening. Right? They don't wake up. They are woken up. People do not rise up. They are risen up. If you look, successful revolutions, one of the things about this whole color revolution concept, right? Why color? Because they pick sort of a color or symbolism, and people can rally around that.

All these revolutions are organized. Look what just happened in Iran. How they sent over, what was it? They discovered something like, well, I might be mistaken numbers, but the 6,000 Starlink communications. This was all organized with your Mossad, your probably MI6 and the CIA to an extent, all organized. The fall, even in the Soviet Union near the end, they had the big referendum, whether they would keep going with the Soviet Union or whether they would break it apart. 77% of people voted to keep the Soviet Union going, but still broke apart anyways. And all the different color revolutions that have been attempted in Russia, the two that were successful in Ukraine. Well, the first one was kind of successful. in Kyrgyzstan in like the Balkans.

Revolutions only happen when there's support from outside. Take maybe the number one example is, do you know, how did Vladimir Lenin, what was he doing right before 1917? Where was he? I have a different thought, and I don't want to pull you off your current one, but I have a different thought because it's going to bug me. Yeah. I was part of the, I went with the Freedom Convoy.

And I don't think that was influenced from outside. But did it succeed? I guess. Okay, fair enough. That's the thing. From the outside, then you look at, you look at success as being. Achieving the ultimate goal, whether that be revolution or whether that being something else. You see.

Because there's Chinese protesting. That's a different thing. I was talking about color revolutions and that sort of bigger revolutionary change. So what's a Chinese protest? A Chinese protest is where people in one party China get together. They have a problem with the plumbing, right? And they go up to the local authorities. Pipes, pipes, pipes, we want more pipes.

No one's talking about overthrowing the government. No one's talking about getting rid of the Communist Party. We just want the pipes. And those are probably not funded by the CIA. Who knows? Maybe they like to go crazy what they're spending. And what happens is that the real pressure then gets put on the local authorities because the guys at the top see that there's a protest,

that they don't want to grow into potentially becoming a color revolution type protest. And so they crack down on the general lower middle management, right? And then the local people get their pipes and everyone goes home. So the Chinese protest, the objective isn't to create some sort of major political change. It's to get one or maybe two things accomplished, right? And so that's different. When I'm talking about these big protests that create like revolutionary change, there's always some sort of leadership. And again, I go back to Vladimir Lenin was in Europe. And he came packaged like a biological weapon on a train that went through to the finish, as in Finland, not finish as incomplete, the Finnish train station in St. Petersburg, now, Petrograd,

then, which became Leningrad, and opened it up, and they released him. And there's tons of evidence that supports that a lot of the sort of communist activists were all supported from the West, especially London, right? That's how you achieve a revolution, is with that kind of backing organization. You know, it's kind of like, why were the medieval knights always able to crush any peasant uprising? Because the peasants were disorganized. A few dozen knights show up, and no one knows what to do against thousands of peasants.

There's no organization. As soon as you get people who are organized to fight, even though the knights are very well trained and their equipment is, you know, excellent. A thousand guys, if they're organized, you're not going to be able to stop them with 24 guys on horses. You know, just in pure numbers, they could drown them in their blood. And that's the thing that in the West people have to understand is that, oh, it's also a sort of ego thing.

We, you and me, because we're not part of the elite, we're normal people. We, like our ancestors, throughout every political system that's ever existed, in every political system that ever will exist, we toil. We are the masses, right? And we are led. And it's our choice to more or less attach ourselves to the best leaders, rather than be arrogant enough to think that, oh, I am so enlightened. I am going to make the change by standing by McDonald's holding a sign.

you see and again these are my personal views on politics not particularly russian views just to be clear they're different fair i i yeah um it's interesting you know when you talk about you know we the people toil right and then there's a different group and you know it's it's been interesting like the different group seem to have been at epstein island a ton right oh boy oh yeah oh yeah Yeah. Even Gorensky. Right. And all of a sudden, you're like, man, a second, right? Like, not that, you know, I've known off and on, we've talked about these different places,

different people, how they conspired different things. But Epstein, Epstein's island, right? Like this, this thing seems to have looped in everyone, right? Like, I mean, you know, you start doing it. The abroad, broad, very ironically diverse group of Western elites. Yeah, we have everyone from, you know, banking finance to politics, to royalty, to people who are like guru self-help types, to, of course, the fashion industry and all these other, let's just say, sex mills of a sort.

sex mills. I don't know what you want to call it. But yeah, I'll put it this way. I'm never letting my daughter go to a modeling agency, that's for sure. What do it does, I'm always curious, you know, like, does, does Epstein, that entire thing, does it penetrate further out than North America, right? 100%. It is, I would say, the war in Ukraine is topic number one, as always. Yes.

Topic number two, the Epstein files. Just before we were on air, I was listening to Alexander Dugan on the, what was a recording of a radio program that he does every week or twice a week or something. And the main topic was the, you know, the Epstein Files and this, that and the other. So yeah, of course, it's a big issue. But of course, because people are Russian, they're going to, they're very interested in how is this connected to Zelensky? How is this connected to apparently some girl who graduated from Emgymo University, which is like the university where the diplomats come from, very prestigious? just somehow she graduated and then became part of the sex mill that was able to send young girls to Epstein.

So of course, the Russians are looking at this from sort of their own standpoint. But also, you have to remember that people like, let's just take him, because he's number one, is Alex Jones is very well known here, okay? It's very well known here. A lot of the things he does are translated. even before the ability to auto-translate things. And so all these things that he was talking about, which have now been proven to be true,

people, again, who are more politically astute or politically energetic or thinking, should have been well aware of. Also in Russia, like going back, try to remember what the media was like 15 or 20 years ago. All the things you couldn't say because they were a conspiracy. Well, here you could. at some point after like the 90s I think when Putin maybe was the second term or something

there definitely was a big shift in the Russian media where they were like of the concern if the conspiracy theories involve the West let them fly so that's one of the things that makes a lot of Westerners feel extremely free when they come to Russia is all of a sudden you can just talk about anything that's forbidden over there you know what I mean the Overton window here has a vastly different shape, especially when you're dealing with the more liberal West. Obviously, if you're talking about like the conservative West, like, I don't know, what can be said on the Tucker Carlson network? Okay, well, there's a lot of overlay between what Tucker Carlson talks about what you can say in Russia. In fact, they're super, super similar.

I meant more the Overton window of like CNN. You know what I mean? Or some other vile vomit pit like the Washington Post. or the New York Times or those other rags that aren't even worth wiping your ass with. When you go back to the Epstein files, you were talking about how what, basically not to oversimplify,

but what Russians are paying attention to is probably, or is different than what Americans, Canadians pay attention, right? I mean, obvious. Canadians are looking for Canadians that were there. Americans are looking at all their Americans that were there. And Russians are looking for the ties. That makes sense. walk me back through this young girl who then opens up a young girl channel to the Epstein Island.

Oh, no, I don't remember her name. I just saw it a few days ago that she graduated from the most prestigious university from which all the major diplomats come from. But judging by her current age, she probably graduated in the 90s, early early 2000s when, let's just say, bribing your way into elite institutions was much. more possible I'll put it that way. And so it was sort of in some ways for people here a little bit of like a well how dare they that's our prestigious. You know what I mean? I don't know. It's like someone in your religion does something bad and they make the whole religion look bad and you're like you bastard you've a spit on the face of Christianity or Islam or whatever religion you believe in right. It was kind of like one of those but she was somehow involved with the whole like modeling and securing girls for for Epstein and stuff like that.

So yeah. A different version of Gillian Maxwell then. Yeah, something like that, I think. Well, you know, it seems like his network was gigantic. So yeah, I don't know. I didn't really research that before a conversation. I probably should look more into it. No, no.

I'm just curious. That's all. I just hadn't heard that, you know, like once again, you know, like one of the things that made, I think big news over here was Bill Gates' wife talking about it. And, you know, like him asking to slip things to her because he caught an STD with one of the girls he slept with, you know, and you're like, this is 2026 right now, folks. This is the strangest thing to be in the news cycle, you know, unless you've been paying attention to the news cycle and then it's kind of status quo. Well, yeah, well, obviously people like Bill Gates, Elon Musk gets discussed a lot in Russia, Bill Gates, all these people, they're all famous here too.

So on some level, if you want to talk about people of note, then yeah, people are paying attention to that. I don't want to make it seem like there's a complete ignoring factor. But again, in Russia, what do people want? They want the war to be completed successfully. I want that to come out correctly. They want, it's not that they want to just end the war, but they want it to be completed successfully and to move on. And most people actually would like to have good relations with the West. Is that possible?

I don't know. A lot of that depends on what's actually happening behind the scenes of Mr. Trump's actions. So I can't really say either way. But yeah. What does war to be completed successfully mean? Well, that's what Putin said. It's demilitarization and denotification. Now, what does that mean for the public?

It means essentially to get rid of the Kiev regime one way or another. But again, what the public will be happy with is getting this thing over with so that way there isn't a repeat war in the near future. That's what they'll be is sort of like their sort of baseline, right? What the public actually wants, the public, not Putin, not the powers that be, not necessarily the military. what the public wants is to take back all of Russia's traditional lands. That's one thing where if you talk to people who have more pro-Russian views, they'll never say that, but I will because that's the truth. It's the Russian public that talks about, let's take Odessa,

because if we don't take Odessa, the next war is going to be in Moldova. You don't hear Putin talk about that. He did say once last year, something like Odessa is a true Russian city or something. So he maybe hinted at it, but that's where you get into like a Russian QAnon where he's saying things like to play to his base here in Russia. But he's not quite saying them in a full substantial way. Like with the, what was it, June 2024 when they sort of up the ante of what the Russians minimum is, is it's all four of the regions around the Donbass. Crimea recognized 100%. that's our bare minimum. That's the negotiating start point. Well, now they've been threatening that

in the near future, that start point is going to be now different. Because after there was the attack in Kursk, the Russians have been talking about the necessity for a buffer zone. They invaded us. They attacked Kursk. They massacred our civilians. We get to have a buffer zone. But the distance between that part of the Russian border and cities like Sumi and Kharkov and so on and so forth, it's actually that big. Like, I think the distance from the Russian border to Harkov is something like 40 kilometers. And the buffer zone that I've heard talked about is they want 100 kilometers. So essentially, the entire northern part of Ukraine that used to belong to Russia for century upon century, there's a political will, a political logic, and public support for taking.

And when it comes to Odessa, that's a little bit of a different story. But I think everyone knows that that is the necessary. because if they don't, not just the Russian public, but I also believe, because I know so many people from Moldova, that Moldova's next. It's going to be the next one. It's just not going to be as successful, successful for the evil vampiric forces around Jeffrey Epstein as the war in Ukraine. The war in Ukraine was the perfect culmination of decades of work to create this nightmare for the Russians. because the policies about the Russian language and repressing local Russians, this, that, the other, those policies have been mirrored in every former Soviet Republic, in all of them, to one extent or another.

It's just only in Ukraine did they have that large population at a time with the pro-Nazi views and that sort of, I don't know how to put it, the Russian, ironically, the Russian attitude towards war that they kind of like fighting. It was essentially the perfect storm of that. But the European politicians, more than anyone, definitely wanted this to carry over at some point in Moldova. That's ready to blow, except the Moldovans are not particularly bloodthirsty and not particularly interested in notsifying themselves. So I think that that's kind of, there's not the ideological component, even if there is the EU-influfying themselves. even if there is the EU influence Soros Money, sort of MI6 way of doing things going on over there, especially under Maya Sandu, who may or may not have illegally come to power during the last elections.

She did also imprison the previous president, who I've actually met in person, but he was released later. I think the leader of Gagauusia, which is like a sub-republic within Moldova, I believe she is still imprisoned or under house arrest. So again, we're talking about liberal freedoms. We come to power. We arrest all of our enemies because of their pro-Russian views. They're all Putin agents.

So these Gagauzians, at any point in time, what I mean to say is at any point in time, someone from the darkness of the West could pay. someone in Moldova to do some sort of false flag spark thing to make all the Gaguzians get riled up or the Russian troops in Pridnistovia or Transnistria. I'm sorry, that's what's called in English. And, you know, here comes murder. But again, there's way less people, way less money, way less resources, and way less desire to fight in Moldova. But still powder keg. Just a smaller powder keg. I don't know if, well, I guess I sit here and I'm listening to you from, you know,

one of the interesting things is you having 20 years of being in Russia and getting to sit on that side of the planet and stare at this conflict from a different view. Yeah. And then, you know, you rattle off a bunch of things. Like, they like to fight. They do. They're ready to go. Oh, yeah.

Russians lie about that. Russians, but one thing that's just to say is where Russians lie is they always talk about how, how, how I put it, that they hate. when people are aggressive and this, but aggression settles everything in Russia. Like I just started, because I have to create content, I watched that crappy TV show,

the first episode of Ponies, it's called, people of non-interest. It's about two widows of CIA agents in Moscow in the 70s. I think it's just, I don't think it's based on real events. But in their first episode, the one widow is like talking to this woman

who sold her some bad eggs. They were like cracked. And she's being really polite and really trying to be whiny to get her to replace the eggs. The other woman, the other American widow comes up and says, just tell her to go fuck herself. And the other woman, you know, the nicer woman reluctantly agrees. And that settles the thing. That settles it. And so it kind of always frustrates me how Russians don't even see in their own society that aggression settles everything in Russia.

People who are really aggressive who are able to sort of like take from life are the winners in Russian society. and people who are really passive tend to just get smushed. And then they sit at home and they write about how they want the Soviet Union to come back because then they'd have a guaranteed job. You know?

So there you go. Okay. Back to Kursk. You mentioned about the attack and civilians dying. Could you walk me through that? I remember hearing about this. But, I mean, once again, what's interesting about you, Tim,

is you sit, I don't mean literally right there, but compared to me right there. Well, hey, you know, my house was really close to the particular location where the Russian army was going to fight against the Hvgeny Prygosian's rebellion forces. I was going to be right in the mix of that fucking shit, but that didn't happen. He stood down. But anyways, besides that, about the Kursk invasion, if you remember at one point in time, again, I'm really bad with dates. the Ukrainians to try to, again, this is from the Russian perception, to create the PR image that they're winning. They, rather than fighting the Russians where they had been fighting them, sort of in the Donbass, they pushed into the Kursk region, which is a part of Russia proper.

So it's not part of this Donbass or Ukrainian territory. It's part of Russian territory and within the 1991 borders that were created. And they were able to storm in and take various places, including the now. famous or infamous Soudja, right? Depending how you want to spell it, Soudja, or Soudja. And anyways, of course, the Ukrainians massacred the locals, as they want to do. And this is where the North Koreans came in, because since it was a fight on Russian territory, the Russians using North Korean forces sought as an opportunity for partnership

and not so much a violation of international norms because they were like, hey, we just want you to come on our territory. And so here come the North Koreans. And that's where the North Koreans did like all of their fighting through the war. It was in the Kursk region. One thing that people believe the overall objective was, is that they were supposed to push forward way deeper into the region and take the nuclear power plant that's around there. I think it's 80 kilometers from the border, which is quite a far distance. But hey, those NATO planners are optimistic. Remember the summer counter. offensive. That was a very optimistic plan. Very optimistic. So optimistic, they informed the Russians

of what they were going to do in advance. And yeah, so that's how the curse thing went down. When you say 80 kilometers, forgive me, I sit in Alberta, and I mean, we drive 80 kilometers and, you know, the blink of an eye. Why is 80 kilometers a far distance from the border? Well, in a military sense, again, not a military expert, not military expert. Dave, two guys, two casual guys talking this through. Just curious why 80 kilometers is a distance. I play American football here in the Russian Super League. So is it easy to walk to the store?

Yes. Is it easy to walk to the store when I'm trying to block you? It ain't too easy. And it's the same thing. When you have people bombing you, shooting you, this is 21st century warfare, especially with this whole drone nightmare. You stick your head out. it's getting blown off.

You can really only advance by, like, total surprise. And they were able to advance, I think, like 15 or 20 kilometers or something around the Sujah area. And that's when they started to get hit again. And so they couldn't advance. They're just getting hit and getting hit and getting hit. And then you lose men. And then there's also the fact that, like, if you mentioned driving, well, the thing is,

the question is how many of their transport vehicles survived going in? How much fuel do they have? How much food do they have? Because the standards for the Russian elite of the military is under absolute worst circumstances to run 25 kilometers in one day. That's considered like a death march. So let's take half of that. Elite troops should go 12 and a half kilometers a day. So you're already at like the six day mark to get there. Well, that's six days of open walking or jogging. And do you have enough food for that? Especially because as you're jogging with however many pounds of equipment you have on, you're burning calories. The average Russian soldier eats more than 4,000 calories a day. So the question is, how much food can you physically carry? So a lot of it goes down to like logistics.

You know, again, I don't know. There's this stuff called shpik that the Russian soldiers are given, which is like the most caloric thing in the universe. and I don't know like how many square inches of speak you can carry on you before it becomes burdensome. You'd have to talk to someone who's more of an expert on that than I am. But it goes down to logistics. You know, when you're talking about trying to get to the grocery store and having you block them, you sounded like a mob bus.

How easy is it? How easy? How easy you think it is? It's not that easy. And forgive me. I spent like the last decade once or twice a week continuing to develop the art of the block. So if I'm not good at it by now, I'm a moron. You said you play American football in the Super League.

Hey, hockey player on this end. Oh, I see. What is the Russian Super League? Well, the Eastern European Super League of American Football is the sort of top teams in Russia, you know, compete for. the Russian Super Bowl. And I'm a little bit old, as you can see, by the gray hair and stuff. So I'm no spring chicken, so I'm a second string player. We used to have a minor league team, too. I started for the minor league team, but I'm second string on the major league team. And yeah, American football here's a lot more popular than you think. You can even buy American

football uniforms made here, go sanctions. And yeah, I invite everyone to maybe find out more about it. I'd be happy to send you some links or some info. We would really like to expand our fan base. This year we're going to be doing twice as many games. We're going to have like a full NCAA-style schedule. In the past, you only have like five or six games. But now it's going to be like the NCAA. 10 games, then the playoffs.

You have to forgive me on this side. We had like the Super Bowl just happened. And three young kids, a whole bunch of other things. And I think it was the fourth quarter before I realized it was actually happening. And I'm like, oh, yeah, right. Super Bowls. Super Bowl's happening. Oh, yeah.

Well, if your team's not playing, it's kind of like the same thing where people always expect me to know all the nuances of the NFL. I like watching the highlights to see the blocking. I love to see when you can see like he doesn't play anymore, but Jason Kelsey, snap the ball, pull and be the first guy to hit the linebacker. That's phenomenal. People don't understand how fast. you have to be and also be over 300 pounds.

This guy, and also the center is, I think, the hardest offensive line position to play because not only do you have less time to act because the defense is physically closer to you, but you're going into a fight with one hand. Because when you snap the ball, you have one hand up to defend yourself, and you have the one hand down. It's a big difference when you're getting hit, like getting hit like this and getting hit like this. It makes a huge difference. So I sometimes could, I can watch any game, especially the highlights, passively,

just for the love of the sport. But I sort of only really intensely watch the Russian League now, you know, because the Browns suck. I'm from Cleveland. The Browns always suck. So I watch them, but there's not much to usually get excited about. The good old Cleveland Browns. Yeah, yeah. You mentioned one thing.

Sanctions. And I guess I'm just going to tie it into. Maybe I go back to your mythical illusion statement. Maybe it's a mythical illusion I have. Is there any way when you look at the things like sanctions and war on your doorstep and on and on and on that Trump, Putin can find a way to bridge the gap between two of the most powerful countries in the world? Or is that an impossibility? Well, you make the supposition that it's the decision of two men to make. And I think from what we see around Trump, there's a lot of Trump himself is doing a lot of obfuscation.

I don't think there's really anyone who should bet their life on knowing exactly what Trump is doing sort of behind the scenes at any particular moment. But you have all sorts of factions trying to bring him down changing. Remember Russia Gate. Remember, you mentioned the bullet in his ear, which could have been caused by the, Secret Service being maybe a little bit purposefully lackadaisical. To say the least. Yeah. The media attacks on every this way, this, that, and the other front.

Look what's happening. Trump promised, hey, I want to stop illegal immigration. We're going to throw these people out. What happens? Essentially, sort of soft color revolution happening in Minnesota against him over and over. So can Trump, the question is, can Trump really actually make that decision? I also think that some of the things related to like treaties and sanctions and all that have to get a vote from Congress. And Congress is not Trump.

Trump respects strength. Trump likes people who are balsy. Trump respects. So when he talks to Xi and Putin, you could see he's like, yeah, these guys are cool. So as he talks like Macron, he's like, get away from you, Homo. You know? And like, if it was his decision, maybe we could. but if it goes to the Congress, I think the Congress is happy.

There have been sanctions on Russia since 1972, Jackson-Vannock Amendment, if memory serves me correctly. Then somewhere around the Obama period, they briefly canceled it. Then Mr. Magnitsky got poisoned. The Russians are very bad at poisoning people. They always survive. And then there's the Magnitsky Act, which renewed sanctions again after that period. So besides that brief Obama-era-thaw, there have been sanctions against Russia since before. for either of us were born.

You know, so, so again, based on that logic, I mean, could they go away? Yes, it's possible, but it's hard to believe because the status quo, again, the Epstein Island status quo is really happy with keeping Russia economically isolated from the West, except for oil. That you can set. Yeah, when we need it, yeah, send it over. Yeah. Yeah, if we need some paper, you can send over lumber, but nothing else.

No, no, no, no, no. Tim, I appreciate you hopping on and doing this. And, well, you make me more and more curious. Every time I talk to somebody around Russia that's been to Russia, obviously living in Russia, you just, you make it somewhere on the old map that I'm staring at curiously. And, you know, I don't know. At some point, I just feel like there's probably a date where I just roll into town and see it for myself.

You should. It's a little bit of a pain of the butt, but there is, if you want to immigrate here, there's now the shared values visa that allows Westerners to immigrate here, which is something that I actually worked on. I'm part of that. So, yeah, but you can always just get a good old-fashioned tourist visa and come visit, but you'll have to fly through like a third-party country, like the United Arab Emirates, also known as Dubai land,

or Turkey or India or some other country that does not care. Fair enough. Well, maybe we'll make me closer to me trying to figure that out. We'll have you back on to walk me through that. Either way, thanks for doing this. And hopefully we'll chat in the future. All right, man. I'm happy.

Like I said, I had a good time.