TRIGGERnometry - Historian Roger Moorhouse Explains Russia/Ukraine Crisis *Special Live Recording*

Episode Date: March 4, 2022

SPONSORED by Babbel: Go to babbel.com/play, and use promo code TRIGGER for an extra six months free. SPONSORED by: Ripples in Reality - The Series by JS Powell - buy the books here: https://www.amazon.co.uk/s?i=stripbooks&rh=p_27%3AJS+Powell&s=relevancerank&text=JS+Powell&ref=dp_byline_sr_book_1 SPONSORED by: Easy DNS - Domains, DNS, web hosting and email. Exactly how you want it. Go to https://easydns.com/ Roger Moorhouse is a British historian and the author of a number of books, including Killing Hitler, The Devil's Alliance and First to Fight. Join our exclusive TRIGGERnometry community on Locals! https://triggernometry.locals.com/  OR Support TRIGGERnometry Here: https://www.patreon.com/triggerpod Bitcoin: bc1qm6vvhduc6s3rvy8u76sllmrfpynfv94qw8p8d5 Buy Merch Here: https://www.triggerpod.co.uk/shop/​​​ Advertise on TRIGGERnometry: [e-mail] Join the Mailing List: https://www.triggerpod.co.uk/sign-up/​​​ Find TRIGGERnometry on Social Media:  https://twitter.com/triggerpod​​​ https://www.facebook.com/triggerpod​​​ https://www.instagram.com/triggerpod​​​ About TRIGGERnometry:  Stand-up comedians Konstantin Kisin (@konstantinkisin) and Francis Foster (@francisjfoster) make sense of politics, economics, free speech, AI, drug policy and WW3 with the help of presidential advisors, renowned economists, award-winning journalists, controversial writers, leading scientists and notorious comedians. Join our exclusive TRIGGERnometry community on Locals! https://triggernometry.locals.com/  OR Support TRIGGERnometry Here: https://www.patreon.com/triggerpod Bitcoin: bc1qm6vvhduc6s3rvy8u76sllmrfpynfv94qw8p8d5 Buy Merch Here: https://www.triggerpod.co.uk/shop/​​​ Advertise on TRIGGERnometry: [e-mail] Join the Mailing List: https://www.triggerpod.co.uk/sign-up/​​​ Find TRIGGERnometry on Social Media:  https://twitter.com/triggerpod​​​ https://www.facebook.com/triggerpod​​​ https://www.instagram.com/triggerpod​​​ About TRIGGERnometry:  Stand-up comedians Konstantin Kisin (@konstantinkisin) and Francis Foster (@francisjfoster) make sense of politics, economics, free speech, AI, drug policy and WW3 with the help of presidential advisors, renowned economists, award-winning journalists, controversial writers, leading scientists and notorious comedians. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

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Hello and welcome to a very special live episode of Trigonometry. I'm Francis Foster. I'm Constantine Kissen. And this is a show for you if you want honest conversations with fascinating people. As you know, with the events in Ukraine, there's been a lot of discussion and debate about the history of that country, the history of the conflict and how we are, where we are. And because of that, we are absolutely delighted to be joined today by a British historian who's written a number of books about that part of the world, about what. World War II, including this book, which I'm a huge fan of, The Devil's Alliance. Roger, welcome, Roger.

But before we welcome, Roger, just to let you know that it is a live episode, and we will also be doing Super Chat. You get your chance to ask questions to Roger during the break, so it'll be 50 minutes. We'll have a quick break, and then we'll be asking your questions to Roger. So send us a Super Chat if you want that. Apologies, Robert. That's all right. Welcome.

So good to have you on the show. I've been meaning to get you on for a long time anyway, but the opportunity is now presented itself. Before we get into the subject we're going to be talking about, tell everybody a little bit about who you are, how are you where you are, what has been your journey through life that leads you to be sitting here talking to us? A twisted journey a little bit. Yeah, author and historian, I studied in the early 90s at the School of Slavonic Studies in London, had a sort of fascination with Central European history particularly, which grew out of 89, which is ironic really, given what we're talking about now, because that's the sort of start point of where we're now

potentially at the end of that sort of, you know, 30 year piece. So I was fascinated by the events of 89, and that sort of inspired me to go to university, studied that and it all carried on from there, ended up researching with one of my professors, the great Norman Davies, and then started writing in my own right as a freelance. So I've written a few books. Now I do also lecture at a visiting professor at the College of Europe in Warsaw. And it's great to have you with us. You've written a bunch of other books, including your latest book, which is called First to Fight, which is about the invasion of Poland in 1939. And you've written quite a few books about the cooperation between the Soviet Union and Nazi Germany

in that time, which I hear has, it doesn't keep everybody happy, particularly on the eastern side of the world. Yeah. Yeah. So, I mean, particularly that one, the Devil's Alliance, which is the period of the Nazi Soviet Pact, which is, I think, one of the most sort of crucial events in World War II, actually. And that German-Soviet relationship is one of the most crucial great power relationships for the war. But it gets, you know, routinely ignored in the Western narrative. We treat the Nazi-Soviet pact essentially like it's the last sort of chess move in the run-up to war. But it's actually... the opening salvo in a two-year relationship between the two, between Moscow and Berlin,

which is very thoroughgoing. And there's collaboration. There's like four economics treaties in that time. They collaborate actively in the destruction of Poland in 1939. So it's the forgotten great power relationship. And that's the story I wanted to tell, which I think I did reasonably well. The Russian narrative currently, which has hardened a lot under Putin in the last years. That came out in, I think, 2014. At the time and then since the Russian narrative on the Nazi Soviet pact has hardened a lot. And it's very dismissive, really, of that, you know, particularly my effort to try and put it into a proper context. They still very fixed on this sort of, the immediate

Stalinist justification for it, which came after 41, which was just to say that this was, you know, a defensive necessity, that we knew Hitler was going to attack us and we had to do this. It really isn't that simple. It's much more complex. The reason I bring it up is the elements of that story that will become relevant when we start talking about the history of Ukraine, which is what I want to do now. So prior to the invasion, as you know, Vladimir Putin made a speech in which he essentially made three big claims, let's say. The first of which was Ukraine was created by Vladimir Lenin and allowed to be expanded by

other communist leaders like Nikita Khrushchev. and these are weak decisions made by weak leaders that resulted in creation of a fake country, essentially. That's the first argument. The second argument is that this led to the splitting up of the Russian people, the Russian nation, and a piece of the Russian nation was split off and glued together with pieces of Poland and pieces of Hungary, which is where we're going to come onto the Nazi Soviet Pact potentially. And the third argument is the eastward expansion of NATO since 1991 is a threat to Russian, Russia. Russia is about to be attacked by initially by Ukraine with Western help. And this is Russia

defending itself by sending peacekeeping forces into the Donbass. We have seen how that has played out over the last few days. So let's stick to the history first. What is the history of Ukraine? Did it exist? Was it artificially created by Vladimir Lenin? Talk to us about that. Yeah, that's a whole crock of nonsense, I have to say, for a start. I mean, the idea that Lenin sort of creates Ukraine. Like all of these things, there's always a sort of a kernel of truth that they then elaborate and run with at the expense of everything else. And in this case, the sort of kernel of truth here is that the early days of the Soviet

Union of necessity, the Soviet policy, particularly under Lenin, was very accommodating towards the nationalities of the Soviet Union, particularly in the Caucasus, where you've got these sort of fractious Armenians and Azeris and the rest of it. but elsewhere as well. So it's very, very accommodating. Because central power, you know, during the Civil War was so weak, in 1980 onwards after the revolution, you essentially had to make those concessions.

But they made it, you know, as part of, you know, part of the sort of almost the moral argument of communism was that we're going to be nice to the nationalities in the way that the Russian Empire wasn't. And a lot of people brought into that. Very quickly at the end of the 1920s, once Stalin's got back into power, after 28 onwards, this tolerance of minority ideas and so on is completely crushed.

So anyone with sort of any ideas about, not necessarily separatism, but even, you know, a national policy in somewhere like Ukraine is crushed. And you can see that as one of the drivers behind the terra famine, the Holodomor of the early 1930s. Part of that, part of it's ideological, and part of it is also an effort to crush, Ukrainian national ambition. So there's an element there where, yes, they were, you know, encouraging of national identity and national ideas in places like Ukraine after revolution, but as a tactic.

But Ukrainian identity and Ukrainian national identity goes way, way back. They go right back to sort of Kievan Rus, which actually predates Moscow, so, you know, if you go right back to sort of 10th century Kievan Rus, you know, if Putin wants to play, you know, who's the senior partner games, then, you know, Kiev wins hands down over Moscow. So it's a nonsense to say that Ukraine has no sort of history beyond the 20th century. It's simple nonsense. It seems to me, and again, correct me if this is wrong, we don't understand Putin and his actions and his attitude to Ukraine because we don't understand the culture. we're not really taught about the Soviet Union. So his actions to us seem completely bizarre.

Is that fair to say? I think so. I think there's two things here. I think one aspect is, and I've sort of rail about this quite a lot, I have done almost into the void up until last week, is that we in the last certainly 20 years since Putin's been in power, and I think during the period of the Soviet Union before that, we in the West have fallen into the trap of treating Russia and before that the Soviet Union

as if it's a normal state, as if it's a rational actor on the world stage. And they aren't. And we're now seeing the truth of that, right? It behaves like a rogue state. It behaves like an Iran does. It's ideologically driven. And it behaves like Iran would do in the same way. So we have to get our heads around the idea that Putin now and Russia's behavior

is that of a rogue state. And we're seeing that. That's now an easier argument to make now than it was 10 days ago. So that's one thing. And then the other point is, and you touch on this, Francis, that we don't know enough about Soviet history in the West.

That I think is absolutely true. There's been some shifts. But I think that policy, whenever it was that came in the 1990s with the educational reform where you've got this foregrounding of German history, Nazi history, with the Holocaust attached, which is all well and good,

but it leaves generations, certainly of British kids and others beyond as well, with a sort of an imbalance in their knowledge of 20th century totalitarianism. And I think you can see that playing out with a lot of the footage and stuff and a lot of the memes on social media and so on, and the comparisons made in opinion pieces in the last week, that sort of juxtapose Putin's actions with Hitler's from 1938-39. And there's an argument to be made there. There are parallels.

It's quite a strong one. But, you know, Putin is playing out Stalin's playbook as much as he's playing out Hitler's playbook. I mean, it's a totalitarian playbook, right? And if we knew more than just sort of, you know, Hitler and Nazi Germany collectively, then we could actually make some meaningful comparisons and meaningful comments. But we're kind of stuck in this world where the only point of reference that we have historically for the bad guy and the bad regime is Nazi Germany and Adolf Hitler,

which is kind of rather silly. Isn't it because we also had to get into bed with the Soviets in World War II in order to win? Yeah, that's part of it. Yeah, so there was this shift. I mean, it's interesting that, you know, talk about the Nazi-Soviet pact. In that two-year period when they're collaborating, the West is pretty clear-eyed about what's going on. Churchill in particular. Yeah, Churchill and others.

But, you know, you can look at, you know, editorials and newspapers and, you know, across the West of the world, talking about this, you know, it's referred to in one in one editorial as Tuto Slavia, you know, as Nazi Germany and the Soviet Union as one entity, all the way from, you know, the Rhine effectively to Vladivostok, referring it as one entity, which, you know, to a large extent it was. They were collaborating. And then you do have that shift with the Grand Alliance in 41 of necessity, right? And that necessitated then a huge kind of rehabilitation, a huge propaganda effort to rehabilitate Stalin in the eyes of the world. He was no longer the monster.

He was cuddly Uncle Joe who sat on his sofa with church. And that was kind of a necessity. But that essentially was what stuck. I remember publicizing that book in 2014, 2015, and I was doing a public event and old chap stood up at the end. And he was obviously the wartime generation. He stood up and said, how dare you talk about? Stalin like this. So these

ideas are still out there. Stalin's somehow a good guy. I mean, I find that absolutely astonishing. And it's particularly prevalent on the left who refused to condemn the Soviet Union many times, despite knowing that there were atrocities happening. Yeah, this is one of those peculiarities particularly of the Cold War that

you know, that sympathy for, not you didn't even have to be a card carrying communist, but just sympathy on the left that socialism in the communist sense was seen as something that, yeah, it might have, you know, it might have broken a few skulls in Ukraine, it might have, you know, made a few mistakes, but it was still something that was worth defending. So you kind of caught yourself short of criticizing, even when it needed to be criticized. So that meant, again, that imbalance is just perpetuated,

that you've got all of this sort of study on Arts in Germany, on the Holocaust, all of which is right and proper. But it's not balanced out by a concomitance study of, you know, the Holodomor, for example. And there's four million people died in the Holodomor. Well, actually, there's some dispute about that. Absolutely. Even the Russian State Duma, I think, recently acknowledged there was seven million. Yeah, I mean, that's part of the point. We don't know how many died.

It's huge. I mean, a sort of a central guest figure is about four million, which is what I was give. But you're right. It could be much higher. Well, let's come back to the present day, because I think that's what a lot of people watching this and listening to this will care about. and rightly so, of course, with what's happening in Ukraine now.

One of the things that, so the way I see the media landscape shifting in the last few days even is initially nobody knew what the hell was going on. So Francis and I had a conversation, which I know you watched and which I laid out some of my thoughts as a sort of amateur historian who's a big history buff and pays a lot of attention to it and modern politics as well. But there is a competing argument, which I'd like us to talk about, which says that Russia is not an aggressive, country under Vladimir Putin. It was not an aggressive country until NATO started expanding eastwards. And apparently, some people argue, the verbal commitments were given to Russia, to Mikhail Gorbachev in particular, that Russia would not expand, that NATO would not expand eastwards, therefore sort of entering the strategic area of interest for Russia. And instead, what happened was in 1999, Poland, which has a small border with Russia and a couple of other

countries were allowed to join NATO. And then in 2004, Latvia, Estonia, countries that sit right on the border of Russia and form a corridor between Kalinandrad and Russia, very strategically important for Russia, were allowed to join. And over time, this was an irritant for Russia. This is the equivalent of, you know, Mexico entering a defensive alliance with the Soviet Union of the peak of the Cold War. People argue. And as a result of that and further encroachments, and now Ukraine sitting right on the border, part of the historical Russian sphere of influence, etc. NATO's planning to, they've said they would let Ukraine and Georgia in.

That's when Vladimir Putin went into Georgia. And now he's gone in Ukraine in 2014 when he could see that, you know, these people don't, the people who say this don't understand the history of modern Ukraine. This was not a neutral government. This was a Russian puppet who was about to be replaced with someone who was pro-Western. And so when Vladimir Putin saw this, he saw a country on the border about to join NATO. He went in and he tried to wreck the country to prevent it from being a bullwark against Russia for NATO. What say you to that? I think the key phrase in all of that,

I mean, there was a lot packaged in that constant. But the key phrase in there was the idea of a Russian sphere of influence, which is kind of an item of faith in the criminal still. And it isn't for the rest of the world, effectively. And certainly for the world that we're talking about, Baltic, States, Berlin, and now Ukraine as well. And this is where I think we'd come back to that sort of wider issue of where we are in a sort of geopolitical sense. We've had a 30-year piece, effectively, from the Cold War. We in the West, you know, arrogantly, naively, whatever, we thought the Cold War was over in 1989-91, Soviet Union collapsed. Places like Poland finally become independent, so, you know, 40-odd years after the end of World War II,

when British and the French went to war to supposedly defend Polish independence and integrity, that isn't actually restored until 1989, tragically. But again, 91, Baltic states, reemerges independent states, and have flourished done brilliantly. So, you know, from the Western perspective, this is all good, right? Russia's independent. Russia is under this strong man, but, you know, someone we can supposedly do business with, we thought, Ukraine is somewhere in between independent states. And we see that world as a positive development.

These are free countries that are, you know, forwarding their way, making sovereign decisions, whether they join the EU like the Baltic States did or join NATO, like again, like the Baltic States did and Poland. That to us is all fine and normal. This is how normal states pave. From the Kremlin perspective, they're still thinking, in terms of a Russian sphere of influence that has been undermined, that has been damaged by that process.

So the collapse of the Soviet Union, obviously, in 1989, they lose that effective control over Eastern Europe, which they had through communism, through those satellite communist regimes, and then the Soviet Union itself collapses. For them, that is, you know, Putin said this, I think, in about 2000 or just before. He said the collapse of the Soviet Union was the greatest geopolitical catastrophe that happened in the 20th century, which is saying something. In World War II. Yeah, that's, that is Putin's mindset.

The collapse of the Soviet Union is the greatest geopolitical catastrophe of his time, which is astonishing. And what he's good. Why would he say that? Because it is Russia losing that position of influence, that sphere of influence. You know, Russian power, Russia as a great power, whether it's. riding on the coattails of the Soviet Union, that was effectively Russia writ large, right? Effectively.

But now Russia is an independent state, you know, it's not enough for the Kremlin to be within just the borders of Russia as it is. That's not acceptable. Why not, Roger? Why not? Don't we live in this wonderful world of peace and trade and we can all just exist within the borders that we have and just be, you know, unicorns and rainbows and all that? Well, yeah, we thought so.

We thought that was the world we lived in. And it's not a ridiculous. assumption, really. It's a question of perspective for the Western world. It's about sovereign nations and trading and all of that, which is all, you know, that's the world we live in and we're quite happy with that. But you have to understand that from a Soviet perspective, from a Russian perspective, Freudian slip there, but from a Russian perspective, that's completely nothing.

That's not the way the world works. The world works in terms of spheres of influence. And particularly, you know, the example of Ukraine is absolutely salient here. You can kind of justify letting go of the Baltic states, right? Because they've got Russian minorities, but they're Lithuanians, their Bolts, they're, you know, they're Latvians, you know, they were never really with us from a, from a Kremlin perspective. And letting them go was probably, you know,

easier than trying to keep hold of them in 1991. But letting Ukraine go is unthinkable. And it goes back to what you said earlier on about this idea of, you know, Russian nationalism isn't just Russia. in its, you know, modern boundaries, it implies a sort of claim to Ukraine. It has this sort of greater Russian idea to Ukraine and also to Belarus. So to let one of those two go is absolutely not acceptable from a Kremlin perspective.

And this is where, you know, Belarus, the problem with Belarus from, again, from a Kremlin perspective, has kind of been solved, right? He had the election of last year. Lukashenko's still there, defying a lost election. He's clamped down, thrown out those that, you know, legitimately should be the government. Sienukh Skaya's done a brilliant job of going around the world and getting handshakes and photo ops with the rest of the world.

I fear that's probably game over for Belarus, for the foreseeable. So that, from a criminal perspective, is Belarus problem solved? But Ukraine was edging towards some sort of, you know, looking westward increasingly democratic, reasonably successful, functioning. These are all things that the Kremlin can't accept. But wasn't 2014 a coup supported by the CIA, I hear? I mean, this is just, this is just, there's that great line, Kremlin 101 or Dictator 101 is kind of a accuser enemy of what you're doing, right?

And that's a great example of this. I don't see that idea of Western meddling. It just doesn't really happen. We don't have the sort of the brain power and the will. We just don't. I mean, it's rather ridiculous. And I think, you know, that is a great example. NATO, of course, is a defensive alliance.

You know, the Kremlin at the moment is doing a great job of advertising. for NATO, right? You can see the Finns and the Swedes are now thinking about that. They're also being berated by Putin and saying, you know, if you watch it, if you apply, there'll be trouble. But they probably will. And why wouldn't they, given the current situation? So if you offered a NATO membership to Ukraine now, they'd have your arm on. You know, so he's the greatest recruiting sergeant for NATO membership that you could imagine. So it's a response to him. It's not, he's not responding to any sort of provocation. NATO is a response to Russia.

I'm going to make what could be seen as a cross illusion, but I think it's got merit. It sounds like Russia's having a sort of weird midlife crisis. Were they looking back at their youth of the earlier times going, this is great powerful. Those were the days. Yeah, those were the days. This was great powerful.

Stop being racist. Rosophobic, mate. And they were looking back at the days and the halcyon days of the Soviet Union where they were great and powerful. they're looking at their place in the world, they're feeling diminished, and they want to impose themselves once again,

despite the fact that the world's moved on. I think there's a lot of that. And you can see, you know, to coin a phrase, you know, Putin is wanting to make Russia great again. That's where he's heading. You can see the same thing. Historically, you can see the same drivers in Nazi Germany, you know, because that was a great power,

humiliated at the end of the First World War. populations outside of its, of its redrawn frontiers. Taken away from it. Taken away, you know, national humiliation. And then he's got the great leader who comes in and restores, you know, Germans faith in themselves and restores its position in the world. And then starts going after these erudenta and these disputed territories. So there's definite sort of parallels there,

which is kind of, you know, from our perspective now, as of last week, are profoundly worrying. I'm not going to go down the route of, saying this is World War III, but this is certainly, I think, Cold War II. Well, 100%. So the one thing that I think differentiates Hitler from, I nearly said Stalin, from Putin, is he doesn't seem to have a racial animus. Yeah.

It does it? Not in that conventional, not in the sort of conventional, you know, rabid sense that Hitler did. I think Putin has, I mean, in terms of ideology, I would have said, I think up and probably a couple of weeks ago, I would have said that Putin is kind of doesn't really have an ideological angle. Quite. Apart from this sort of, you know, robber capitalism, kleptocracy that he runs and an aggravated sense of Russian nationalism, right?

But then that, what happened last week kind of, I think, throws that idea that he's a rational actor out of the window, because that is not the behavior, behavior. a rational politician. Now, he was getting what he wanted while sabre-rattling against Ukraine, but, you know, he was getting the Western politicians flying to Moscow and elsewhere, you know, and talking about redrawing the sort of security structure in Europe. And he was already strangling Ukraine just by making sure that Western companies were leaving or they weren't going and investing there. He was already doing what he wanted to do, which was making sure that he had Ukraine essentially by the ball. And it wasn't going to go anywhere.

which is why up until Thursday last week, like many others, I thought he'd be mad to invade. He's not going to invade. It would be ridiculous. And then, of course, he invades. So this is where we have to start thinking that actually there are some ideological drivers behind this that we collectively weren't really seeing. And this is why I think that, you know, there's an element here

where some of those thinkers around the Kremlin are pretty close to what you're you could call kind of Russian fascism. And this is where it gets much, much darker. And yet, it doesn't have necessarily that racial element, but it is certainly a sort of a greater Russian ambition, not uniting all the Russian people in one state, that sort of thing, which is, you know, is sort of essentially one of the sort of ambitions of classical fascism, you know, is ethno-nationalism. So you're on the same path. The thing that's worrying what you say about that, you think, well, then is another World War inevitable? Because if he's going to carry on encroaching, once he's locked down Ukraine, he'll probably think that is it then going to be right.

I've got what I want from here. But actually, those countries over there, they were once part of the Soviet Union. They should be part of Russia. Let's go. Well, this is, I would preface anything I say by, again, reiterating that I didn't think he'd invade last week. So any of my predictions I did. Let me answer that question. Fairly worthless. But my gut feeling on this is that, you know, as I've just said, there's this strong element of Russian ethno-nationalism, which from a, you can see from Putin's speech last week, very strongly includes Ukrainians and Belarusians in that sphere.

That's the world he's looking to reunite. By definition, really, that means you don't want the Baltic states, you don't want to go into Poland and so on, plus Baltic States, Poland, they're all NATO members. So that would be a direct slap in the face for NATO. NATO would be obliged to respond. So that would be a massive, massive step further. So I can see, you know, as I said, that the Belarusian problem is, or Belarus problem has kind of been solved from a Kremlin perspective.

and he's in the process of very bloodily and brutally solving the Ukrainian problem. That was even the phrase that was used in that, or a speech from last week, which is rather clumsy formulation, historically speaking, solving the Ukrainian problem. So to my mind, I think that would be job done, but it does mean from Western perspective,

it means effectively that Ukraine is lost, which is a tragedy. because that we need to collectively stand up and I think defend that freedom which I've been amazed at what the West has done in the last week I think I've been astonished. Me too actually. And positively, absolutely positive.

How much more we can do? I don't know. That's a question for the strategists and the field marshals. Roger, let's come back to the history a little bit because we talked about the comparison with Hitler's expansion following the humiliation of Germany. And this is what I think a lot of sort of 22-year-olds on Twitter who are now experts on geopolitics don't seem to understand

is that I would argue, and I've got to be very careful about the way I phrase this, so I'm going to preface this by using a bit of identity politics by saying that my great-grandfather died fighting Nazis, probably died in the Holocaust, Jewish, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. But Hitler had quite legitimate reasons from his, perspective to demand the Sudetenland, to demand the Anschlis, to demand all of that. Like, there were Germans in the Sudetan land, and they were being badly treated, right? Yeah.

The reason I bring it up is what I'm trying to get at is, like, people like Putin and who others, they will make claims that have a kernel of truth. Yeah. It does not mean that the claim is true. Yeah. I think you can actually draw a very close comparison between the Sudetenland issue in 1938. Yeah. and Donietskina is going to have been

quite now, right? Or prior to last week. To a large extent, they're manufactured crises that you then are obliged to find a solution for. The Sudan land problem, as it were, was, you know, ethnic Germans within that sort of fringe of Bohemia and Moravia, which is now Czech Republic,

that bordered onto Germany. But actually, all of their cultural references, they spoke German or rest of the course. But all of their cultural references of the Sudeten Germans went southwards, went towards Austria. So a lot of them didn't feel themselves to be Germans. They felt themselves still to be Austrians because that was, you know, where they'd been marooned from in 1918 at the end of First World War. So there's a lot of diversity of opinion. Yes, they spoke German.

This is like Daniel Hensk in La Hance, right? Yes, they spoke German. It didn't necessarily mean they wanted to go and join Berlin because they saw that as, That was a Protestant country. Those were the Prussians, as they used to call them. They were all sort of Catholic and they were very South German, more in common with Austria, more in common with Bavaria. So there are sort of profound differences.

And what you have is, yes, they're not well treated within pre-war Czechoslovakia. But you've got the sort of creation of a problem that Hitler then goes in and solves with the annexation. So it's very analogous to Donyetsky and the Hansk at the moment, or up until last week. And what do you make of the sort of commensurate claims that Russia is making that there's a genocide happening in the Donbass? I mean, I find it difficult to entertain this conversation

because I have family and friends who live there who talk about it. But you are here to give an objective opinion about it. So what do you make of the claims that there's been a genocide? Thousands of ethnic Russians are being annihilated every day. Yeah, as far as I can tell, there's been absolutely no proof of that, right? I mean, I haven't seen any proof anywhere, serious proof. The problem you have with this is that, you know, you look back again to the sort of the halcyon days of the European dictators in the 1930s and 40s. They're constantly inventing problems like these that then require a solution.

So, and again, sort of false flag operations, which we saw last week as well, you know, that ridiculous false flag. Again, I think it was in Donetsk Oblast, wasn't it? There was, you know, some burnt out truck with a body in it that, you know, the skull of which had patently been used for, had already been autopsied. And they were saying this was the result of Ukrainian violence against Russians. I mean, it's the clumsiest sort of false flag you could possibly imagine. Oh, you know, supposed provocation. This is what these regimes do. it's part of the playbook. And this is why actually, you know, I'm always wary of this idea of, you know,

history as a sort of a teacher in a way, you know, because we're constantly, I think, to some extent, abusing history in the Western world. But this is a good example where a good knowledge of that period and how these regimes functioned.

As a matter of course, you look at the Glyvitz incident in 1939, you know, the run up to, the night before the German invasion, You look at the Maynilla incidents. Hold on. Sorry, I'm so sorry to Trump. No one knows in the West in my experience, because I tried to talk to people about the Syclyvis incident. About Glibis. So most people in the West think that World War II started when Germany invaded Poland.

What they don't know is World War II started, if the Nazis had won, the history books would read, when Poland invaded Germany. Tell us about that. Yeah, the night before. So the German invasion of Poland, of course, is dawn on 1st of September. The night before 31st of August, there is a raid on a German radio station in the town of Glyvitz, which was about five kilometres from the Polish border. It was in Germany, about five kilometres from the Polish border. It's now Gliwitzer in southwestern Poland.

And a group of about eight men in civil, so not in military uniform, burst into this radio station, fire a couple of shots into the air, tie up the station personnel, who are Germans, of course, put them in the cellar, and then start. to try and broadcast an incendiary message in Polish, one of them spoke Polish, which basically said, you know, we're the advance guard, we're waiting for the Polish forces and we're advancing on Berlin and, you know, down with Hitler and down with Nazism. Of course, they're all SS men, right? They don't actually manage to broadcast their message. They cock it up.

You get a lot of white noise, apparently. Apparently there was nine seconds of the message was heard, and then after that it was white noise, nobody knows why. Anyway, they don't know that. They think they've done their job. They leave the site, and they leave one guy, rather unfortunate poll,

who had been a Polish agitator in German Upper Silesia called Franchisek Honyok. And he's left behind and shot. He'd already been drugged, and he's shot and left behind as bloody proof that this was a Polish operation.

And then, of course, the following day, if you jump forward to 9 o'clock the following day, Hitler makes a speech in front of the Reichstag, German Parliament, in Berlin, where he says, you know, we are fighting back since 545. So he's weaponising that spurious false flag operation from the previous night. This was an idea that came from Himra and Hydrich, apparently. Soviet Union did the same in Finland?

Soviet Union did the same in Finland, I was going to say. So the Maynella incident in Finland, 30th of November, 1939. the Red Army shells its own border post, kills about three or four Red Army men, shells its own border post, and then blames the Finns, and then invades Finland in response. I mean, this is how totalitarian powers behave.

And I think what's fascinating is that back in the day, in 39 and beyond, you know, I mean, Gulf of Tonkin is another one in 1960s, not just totalitarians do this. But back in the day, because of how broadcasting works and how information gathering works, the rest of it, you know, the outside world didn't know the truth, right? So you kind of left with just accepting or not the official account, right?

But now with, you know, social media and the rest of it, which is a very, very democratic form of communication, it's very, very bottom up. You know, you can have people on the ground, like that example last week that I mentioned, you can have people on the ground filming it and going, this doesn't look like an ordinary corpse. This has already been autopsy for what's of doing here. And immediately the narrative kind of

is destroyed. So that might have worked. That might still work for domestic Russian consumption. If they showed that on Russian TV and said, you know, this is proof that these Ukrainians are doing dastity things,

then maybe that works in Russia. It just doesn't work for the outside world anymore. That's the difference. And the worry thing is that we talk about Hitler and we're making these comparisons. And the more comparisons there are and the more specific comparisons there are, the more worried and anxious I become. And then you think to yourself that on top of that, Russia's got, isn't it the highest

amount of nuclear weapons or the second highest amount compared to the United States? At least Hitler didn't have nukes. Yeah, true. That is the sort of great specter hanging over all of this. And I mean, this idea, if we accept, as I kind of described earlier on, if we accept that Putin is motivated more by ideology than we've traditionally thought. Like as I said, we just thought he was a Russian nationalist and a kleptocrat, right? But if there's more going on than that, more ideological kind of background, if you like,

then I don't know if that makes the prospect of, you know, him pressing the, button more or less possible. It's certainly worrying. I'd still cling to the hope that he's not that mad and his ideology isn't that ridiculous that it would drive him to that. But as I said, I didn't think he would invade Ukraine in the first place. Well, let me make Francis slightly more depressed than he already is by saying I've spent the last few days. I'm grateful to be able to speak Russian to understand the country having lived there and being from there, etc. watching Russian television, state television. And for people who are listening to us, they should understand Russia isn't like Britain or in America in the, like we think everyone in Britain's on

Twitter, they're not. But in Russia, the overwhelming majority of people get their news from mainstream television in a way that people in this country no longer do. I've been shocked by how religious it is. Religion never used to get talked about. And Putin mentioned the religious split in the Ukrainian and Russian churches in his speech. there is a very clear signaling that there's a religious element to all of this. And that worries me tremendously, I have to say, because, you know, becomes like a crusade. Right.

And if you're going to press a button to kill everyone in the world, we know that ideologically speaking, there's a very good way of, you know, doing that. But let's come back to a bit more sort of historical conversation. I'm putting arguments to you that I see people out there putting, which just boggles my mind. So Ukraine is a country that elected Vladimir Zelensky, who's a Jewish comedian president. And it's full of Nazis, apparently, Roger. Yeah, again.

Everyone's a Nazi. Now, look, there's some things we should address because in Western Ukraine, there is a history of fascism. And there were some people who collaborated with the Germans. And not only for pure convenience, they collaborated with the Germans because they were fascists. They believed in it. That was their ideology, Stepan Bandera, undoubtedly, a fascist. There's no question, and there's some people in Ukraine who want to deny that, and there's some mistakes have been made about sort of trying to clean up his past,

which I think was a mistake. And there's a battalion, there's aft battalion, which is full of neonities in Ukraine. So how do we square all of that? How do we square that, sir? Yeah, I think that, I mean, that, to some extent, that's sort of, you know, the private sector and the, as of battalion, and so on, I think to some extent that tends to happen when you have a state, you know, being invaded by its neighbour. It's kind of almost a, you know, it's a natural reaction.

We would have probably, if we were invaded by Scotland, we'd have a battalion of EGL boys up there, you know, doing the same thing, waving flags and saying unacceptable things. So to some extent that, again, it's a reaction to circumstances. And again, I mean, every country has that in it. It's part of the spectrum of politics. We can not like it, but it's there. It doesn't mean that the entire country is,

run by and, you know, dominated by Nazis. It's a ridiculous extrapolation. So I think, you know, in the modern sense, I think, you know, yes, it's there, but, you know, to say that that's how the country is run and that's who Zelensky is nonsense. Historically, I mean, is more complicated. And you mentioned Bandera. We have to bear in mind, I agree with what you say actually about Bandera and the way Ukraine in, in, you know, groping its way towards the symbols of nationalism and creating its nation and its national myth and so on, which every nation has to do. You know, you have to sort of find your heroes and so on. And you have to create a usable myth of your existence, which incidentally what's going on now,

brutal and bloody and murderous though is, is a brilliant foundation myth for a future Ukraine. Yeah. And there will be statues of Zelensky in a future Ukraine without question. So this is a little bit, to my mind, the echo here is a little bit of the Warsaw rising in 1944, which I don't want to damn and sort of prejudge what's going on in Ukraine, but was ultimately doomed. But as a brilliant kind of uprising against German rule and instantly against the possibility of Russian rule, Soviet rule, but was doomed and was betrayed and, you know, hundreds of thousands killed. but as a sort of foundation myth for the democratic poland that emerges in 89,

it's tremendously powerful. And I think you're kind of seeing an analogous situation here as well. I mean, hopefully it's not going to be another 40 years, but you're seeing an analogous situation. So every country needs to find its usable history. And I think that's reaching for Bandera is profoundly questionable. I think wrongheaded, right? Same with banning the Russian, not banning, but not using Russian language in official documents.

Yeah, that doesn't help. There's no question in the desire to build the nation, there have been mistakes made. Absolutely. No question about that. And that's not the same as what people are saying. So I'm a Russian speaker. I don't speak a word of Ukrainian. My wife is a, she speaks Ukrainian, but she's a Russian speaking Ukrainian.

Most of my family are Russian speaking Ukrainians. Some pro-Russian, by the way, some pro-Ukrainian. Not a single person would claim to have ever been discriminated. against for being a Russian speaker of Russian ethnicity in Ukraine. That's just a lie. Now, mistakes have been made, I agree, and glorifying people like Stepan Bandera was a mistake. I think I'm not to defend Bandera, but I think as well we have to, again, a common problem is to look back at the sort of maelstrom of Central Europe in 1942,

43, right, the height of the Holocaust, the height of, you know, various, you know, Central Europe is a mess in that period. There's sort of pockets of Polish occupation or Polish populations still in a Ukrainian sea and vice versa. It's all mixed up and then Jewish populations all over that are being slaughtered, right?

And Bandera effectively hitches his wagon to the Germans because he thinks he might be able to create some sort of Ukrainian state let out of it. He might be able to, you know, ride the Nazi tiger to some form of Ukrainian statehood, right? And he misjudged

he ends up in Saxon Housens. He does, but I'm sorry to interrupt, but I just wanted everyone to be clear about this. He was a fascist. Yeah. It's not that he saw an opportunity. And so he went, oh, let's just join these guys. I know they're bad, but it's okay. No, no, he was a fascist.

Yeah. He wanted the same thing in Ukraine that they were doing in Germany. Yeah. And he wanted to eliminate the Jews. He wanted to eliminate the polls, right? That was the ideology. This is not a good person. to be making international hero.

But I think there's a peril in here. I agree with all of that, but there's a peril here of looking back and judging people in 42, 43, in that absolute maelstrom of war in Central Europe, which is unbelievably brutal. Yeah. And judging them by our sort of comfortable...

I'm not judging him. I'm judging the people who've tried to make him into a national hero sense. Yeah, I agree. Okay. I was going to say, the thing that I find, because obviously with your history and your knowledge of the region, I'm looking at this very much through the eyes of a complete layman.

The thing that I find worrying is that you're making parallels again and again with World War II, the beginning of the World War. And for somebody who doesn't know a lot about World War II history, a lot of it is to do, I think, with complacency, complacency with people like Chamberlain who don't realize the rising threat of Nazi Germany, who don't understand what they're dealing with with Adolf Hitler and the Nazi party. Are the same mistakes being made again with Putin and his party and Russia in general? I think we have been remarkably complacent in dealing with Putin and Russia,

particularly since the turn of about 10 years ago. I mean, the invasion of Georgia was 2008. we should really have seen the writing on the wall then. Prior to that, maybe it's acceptable that you could have said, you know, Putin's a tough guy, but he's okay, and, you know, he's for stability and the rest of it. I mean, he comes to power in 2000, kind of promising Russians, you know, stability and prosperity and all the Western things that they wanted. And look where he's taken them 22 years later. But we should have seen the writing on the wall, certainly 2008,

failing that with the Euro-Mirondon in 2013-14. We've just been too slow. We've been too slow in actually recognising that threat. There have been enough voices. I mean, I'm a small voice, but I've been sort of consistently critical, and it comes through in my books as well. I do see the Soviet Union and by extension Russia as a sort of malevolent player in the region.

And that's sort of fed by the history, and it's just plain to see. And once you've seen it, it's one of those things you can't unsee, effectively. There have been a few, you know, statesmen of that region. There's been a few journalists that specialize in that sort of region. People like Edward Lucas has been brilliant on this and consistent on this all the way through. So they have been voices, but they just tend to get dismissed, and people say, well, you're just being Russophobic. You know, we can do business.

You know, the Germans with their wonderful phrase, they had this wonderful phrase up until last week of Vandel-Durzhandle, which means change through trade, right? So we'll trade with the, we'll do trade with the Russians. But in that way, by showing them the benefits of being part of the club, we will change them for the better, right? That has crashed and burned as of last Thursday. But isn't there also?

Francis, before you jump in, I'm really sorry. Just remind it, guys, everybody, if you want to ask questions of Roger or of us, send in the super chat, send in the PayPal, our team will collate them. And after we have a break in a few minutes, we'll come back and answer all those questions. Sorry, carry on.

No, it's cool. We're sitting here in London. Let's be honest, a lot of people in London have got very rich, very fat of Russian money. A lot of it, incredibly, incredibly dodgy. Wasn't it as well? It wasn't in a lot of people's

best interest. There are, I say, a lot of politicians to criticize Putin, to criticize Russia when we had all that money being funneled into the city of London. Yeah, I think, I think there's a danger here of kind of seeing patterns that weren't necessarily apparent. Yeah. In retrospect, I mean, some people were saying that, and I mentioned, Lucas, he was saying that all the way through. It's been consistent, but, you know, it's all very well in retrospect to sort of pull these things up. Hold on, Roger. Come on. This guy has poisoned people on the streets of the streets of the country. He's killing off his political opponents. He's exiled anyone. Like, these are just, I'm putting a counter argument, right? He's destroyed any sort of democratic opposition in Russia, whatever.

He's shut down every satirical program that they exist. He's now shut down every independent media channel in Russia as well. Now, here's the question, really, is, could we have done anything? That's a different conversation, right? Because can you do something? of the things that we're now doing because he poisoned one guy in Salisbury. I think that should have been a shift. I think Salisbury should have been a shift that we actually put into place meaningful sanctions at that point, which I don't think we did. Over one guy. This is the paralysis of the West. It is, but it's also, you know, that using chemical weapons effectively, you know, on foreign soil is, is astonishing,

astonishing thing to have done. And that, you know, that it was good to see at the time, I remember Theresa May being very firm in the House of Commons, but I don't remember what followed on from that. I don't think there was much in the way of real sanctions by way of punishment. So there's a lot of words and not much action. So that I think should have been a turning point. But to address the previous point about that sort of infiltration of Russian money, of influence, all of that,

I think that's something that we have to be careful now that we don't sort of throw out the baby with the bathwater. because what the Western model is built on is, you know, rule of law and property rights and all that sort of thing. So in the sort of rush to punish, you know, Russian oligarchs and the rest of it, which I'm fully on board with, we still have to make sure that we go down the right routes and the right processes and it's above board. Because, you know, if we end up behaving like, you know, a Russian autocrat and just throwing people out and doing things extra legally, then we're no better than they are. I think we do have to make sure that our response is legal. Anything that screws over Chelsea Football Cup, mate, is all right.

It's a good thing. Well, on that happy note, Roger, we're going to get some questions from our audience, and we've got a bunch of other things that we want to ask you as well. But we're going to go to a quick break, and we're back in a couple of minutes, guys. Send in your super chat, send in your paypals, and I will get your questions after, Roger. See you in a couple of minutes. Hey, Francis, would you like to learn another language? No, Mike.

Already know foreign languages perfectly. O'i Gary, who a Le Bibliotheca? You can't go on holiday, mate, without knowing where the swimming pool is. Le Bibliotech is the library, you idiot. Exactly. You can never be too far away from knowledge

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Move your domains and websites over to EasyDNS right now. All you've got to do is head over to easydns.com forward slash triggered and use our promo code, which is of course triggered as well, and you will get 50% off the initial purchase. Sign up for their newsletter, Access of Easy that tells you everything you need to know about technology, privacy and censorship. Hello, welcome back everybody. We're going to ask some questions of Roger and have another conversation which has been absolutely brilliant so far. Francis far away. The first question is we've got one from regular Ikeke, and he says, I'm sure Putin doesn't believe his own propaganda.

But if you're swimming in misinformation, can't it corrupt your perception of reality? Could Putin absorbing a bit too much of the Kremlin Kool-Aid have led to his overreach? I think that's a pretty fair assumption. And you can see that from a lot of that sort of footage of the last few weeks of, of, the sort of theatre within the Kremlin of how he is presented and how he's presented with other people, that ridiculously long table, for example, and then sitting there in the whole, you know, distance from his, from his oligarchs and his ministers and so on. And this COVID paranoia that he evidently has as well, that everyone has to, you know, provide stool samples and,

you know, two weeks of isolation or whatever it is. I mean, it's insane. But I think that there's an element of that where he has whether it's just psychological or it's also it's also COVID related that he's effectively isolated himself and you isolated in that rather delusional world so I think that's quite a strong case for that being correct yeah and if that is the case then surely doesn't that make him even more dangerous yes because it makes him the chances are that if he's isolated he becomes ever more irrational he becomes ever more erratic and therefore more likely to do so something stupid. Yes. Right.

Sorry, Francis. I agree. Absolutely. You're doing to him what I did when we had our chat. I saw that and you depressed him. I mean, I agree. I watched that and I agreed with an awful lot of what you said. Steve asked what I think is actually a very fair question. He says,

of Putin's three justifications that he gave NATO, I mean, he doesn't mention the fact that Ukraine belongs, according to Putin, to that part belongs to Russia. But he says, NATO, Nati's and Kosovo, we haven't addressed the Kosovo precedent. Can you talk about that? Because that's not something I know a lot about. And I'd love to understand.

Some people are arguing that what happened with Kosovo being split off was a precedent for what Putin is doing. He went, well, if you're doing this, then I'm going to do this. Can you talk about that? He talks as well about, you know, the bomb. Tell us what happened in Kosovo as well, yeah? Right. No one knows. Yeah.

Well, I'm not sure I know. And that's going back to the end of the Yugoslav wars. That was the NATO, first of all, no fly zone and then the bombing of Belgrade, which was deemed necessary at the time. There were obviously voices of dissent. And then the same thing with the creation of Kosovo, which, to a Serbian mind, Kosovo incidentally has a sort of almost mythological element. it's a mythological territory for Serbians, right? For Serbs.

So you can see there that that is something that is still a running sore for Serbian nationalist sensibilities. And there's a close affinity between the Serbs and the Russians, as, you know, Pan Slavs and all of that. And historically, there's always been close ties. Serbia was one of those that actually came out last week and didn't support sanctions against Russia. So, you know, you can see those links are still there. But if we accept that that's an example of sort of NATO overreach, it's where NATO ceased to become, in one example, it ceases to become that purely defensive alliance I was talking about.

It actually was offensive in that case. Then, you know, we can look back and say, yes, you know, Mayor Culp. So maybe that was the wrong thing to have done. But we were trying to, you know, as a humanitarian mission, trying to essentially finish a civil war. So that, I think, you know, is something we can argue out in the West with sort of free discussion of events. But for then, for the Russians to use that as justification, you know, our error is allowing

them to do what they're doing. And the same thing as using the invasion of Iraq, for example, say, well, you invaded Iraq. Well, that's the most ridiculous excuse in the world. Why is that? Because Iraq was an absolute shit show. So why would anyone want to use that as an excuse to do the same thing when it's preposterous? Yeah, it was a mistake, absolutely. But why would you want to then go and do a mistake and claim that that's your justification for doing it?

This is something we haven't covered and we haven't talked about the West's role beyond the NATO conversation. I want to talk to you about this because, as you know, in that conversation, Francis and I had, I was putting very strongly the case that the West has undermined at all. moral authority. There's no question about that. And so even in the eyes of our fellow citizens, criticism of Russia in the situation can sound a bit hollow because of the immoral, illegal, improper, whatever word you want to use, actions that we take time and time again in the last 20, 30, 40, 50, 70, 200, 500 years.

Yeah. Number one. Number two, the other thing about the way. which, as you know, I think we all feel strongly about, is the constant undermining of the values of our civilization from the inside. And therefore, withdrawing from the world. And so we sort of hint to Ukraine that it can come and join the family of Western nations, but we don't do it properly.

We just hint. We say, well, yeah, you're welcome, but we're not actually going to help you make that a reality. What is the West role, in your opinion, and what mistakes do you think we have made that have caused this to happen, I have contributed to what's happening now. Yeah. I mean, I think absolutely we make mistakes. You know, that's every, every nation, every political entity makes the states. The great thing about the Western model is that we can recognize them, we can discuss them freely, we can, where necessary, vote out those responsible, we can prosecute those

responsible. But we don't, do we? We don't. We don't take, you know, Tony Blair to the Hague, but, you know, we can vote him out of office, for example. You know, so nothing's perfect, but, you know, which system do you want to live under? Do you want to live under Putin's system? This is this kind of annoys me this knee-jerk thing that you see a lot at the moment.

There was a great piece, Douglas Murray did a great piece today. I think it's in The Spectator. Very good piece. What the right gets wrong about, yeah, talking about, you know, the American right kind of swooning for Putin. I think, what are you wishing for yourselves here? This is ridiculous. I mean, however much you find, you know, the modern.

Western world with all of this woken nonsense in many cases. However frustrating you find that, a viable alternative is not supporting an autocratic madman. The fact that you don't like that and he doesn't like that

stuff doesn't make you allies. He would have you shot. We have to understand that. He is quite good on the trans debate, though. Yeah, he is. He's very red-pilled-in-based. But on that point, on that point, point, though, and I think we've seen this in the last week, this has been, I think, a very valid and valuable wake-up call for the Western world.

Yes. To actually look at, stop looking at our navels and stop talking about, you know, for once microaggressions and, you know, transgender toilets or whatever it is, and actually look at what values we hold in common, and are they worth defending? And the rest of the world has stood up in the last week, last year, last week, rather. and said, yes, they are worth defending. You know, those basic freedoms, democracy, you know, freedom, rule of law, all of that stuff, is worth defending.

My big concern with what I'm observing in the last week is that, look, the anti-imperialist, anti-war, anti-establishment left has always been very open about hating the West, hating the Western values, cozying up to dictators, whether it be in the Soviet Union and Venezuela or whatever. because ideologically they're motivated by the belief that the West is evil, what it does around the world is evil, and any evil that happens around the world is inevitably a consequence of Western evil. So when Venezuela goes down the toilet, that's not because of what people are sanctions. It's sanctions. It's all of that, right?

And look, people, it's a free country. You believe whatever you want. And those people, some of them are great people. Some of them are smart. Some of them, I don't agree with them. I think they're badly wrong, but that's what they think. what hadn't occurred to me and what I think we're starting to see now

on some parts of the right is they hate the West too now because of all this work shit and so they they will side with anybody who just says yeah men are women and women are women

that to me is a pretty fucking low bar Roger for supporting somebody I agree I agree women are women and men are men but we've got to reach further we've got to have a bit more ambition and a bit more aspiration about who we want to be representing our values.

And if you, you know, this is the point I've been making for years now. I'm sorry that I'm ranting, but I feel strongly about this. It's like, you know, we talk so much about racism and sexism and homophobia in this country. Well, you want to go and look at Russia? What happens to gay people there or China or whatever? Like these countries are not better. They're not better. And I say that to you if you're woke or if you're anti-woke, you've got to remember that, you know,

you don't want to throw away the baby with the bathwater. Absolutely right. And I think we're really, really in danger of doing that, particularly people who, you know, I feel it, I felt with Francis and I were having a very honest conversation about this last night. You know, I think lockdown broke a lot of people's brains, mine included.

I found it very difficult to just hold myself from going over into sort of conspiracy and madness because what was happening around us made so little sense that you could, I think everyone felt a desire to kind of, reach for an explanation. And if what's happening in front of you is so ridiculous, it's natural then to seek ridiculous explanations for what's happening. And that is a big concern for me in terms of the ideological space that we're now in. I agree with all of that, Constantine. The only

thing I'd say, again, is that in the last week, the way the West has responded. Yes. It has been hugely heartening. Yes. For me as well. We have, you know, rediscovered the wood for the trees. We now know what we stand for, you know, and it comes back almost to that, to that old sort of Polish line, you know, for your freedom and ours. You know, we are, right, we're not sending NATO in. We're not allowing the Ukrainians to NATO. That would be kind of suicidal to everybody, I suspect. But we are arming the Ukrainians. We are assisting in any way possible, and everyone's shoulders to the wheel. You know, and we finally, it's almost like, I think woke is almost, woke has almost been like an autoimmune disorder.

It's like lupus. You know, when there's nothing else going on, your body attacks itself. Yes. Right, we've suddenly found out that there is an external enemy and we've got to concentrate on that. And hopefully it means we can concentrate a bit less

on the naval gazing in the process. There's also one country who we haven't spoken about, who are, I'm sure, looking at this with a very keen eye, and it's China. What role do you think they're going to be playing? And what do you think they're going to be taking out of this? I think they're watching very closely, you know, because, of course, they have their claim to Taiwan. That's their sort of piece of Irredenta in the world.

And they're going to be watching very closely as to the Western reaction. And I think, again, I think they will be held back, actually, by that reaction, by the strength of that reaction. Because if you look, all the stuff we've said, right, about the Western world being divided amongst itself. you've got the Brexit thing, you've got the woke stuff going on. You know, the Western world in the last sort of five, six, seven years has been, you know, kind of as divided as I can remember it in many ways, probably since the Cold War when we had those great chasms in sort of opinion and so on.

And yet, in the last week, almost complete unanimity, except for the fringes, you know, your Diane Abbots and so on, who still want to come out and stop. the war and the rest of it. And again, the analogous on the right, which we talked about. But I think their fringe voices. Real unanimity. And I said that sense of this we will defend. And I think it's admirable. And that is a strong message to China as well. So I think they've got a really careful watching brief on what's going on. And I think they will be, their hands will be stayed by what they've seen to some extent. I hope it's interesting watching Russian TV, as I said,

over last week because that tells you what the regime is thinking, right? Because that's where it's coming from. There's a tremendous amount of cozying up to China going on. Tremendous amount. But the Chinese have played a very closed hand on this one. They haven't supported Russia outwardly. They keep talking about how they needs to be peace and whatever. So we wait and see, as you know, in the chat we had a week ago,

I was perhaps a bit doom and gloom about things. I've been surprised, as you have, by the response from the West. and also the Chinese don't seem to have jumped on this as the opportunity to think this is the time to go for the juggler, which is a relief. I think if the West had hesitated in the way that I would have expected, and certainly Germany would have, I thought Germany would be the break on any sort of serious EU involvement. Had that happened, then I think you might have seen some Chinese action elsewhere,

because they're just exploiting the opportunity. That's why I think that they're staying at home. There's a bunch of questions have flown in. Kat says with the 10 Aussie dollars, says what are your thoughts on the cultural sanctions currently being implemented by the West, such as banning Russian artists and athletes? Historically, has this been useful?

It's tough on the individuals themselves, who in some instances, we don't know, but in some instances are blameless in all of that. So there's going to be collateral damage, of course. But then you look at something like the boycott in South Africa that we're running through the 1980s up to the end of apartheid

which by all accounts that cultural isolation, sporting isolation worked right? So it's got to be I suppose part of the of the toolkit of the West. We have to,

I think we do have to hit quite hard. And if that means, as I said, some collateral damage along the way, then that's regrettable but it probably has But I don't imagine you'd support banning Fyodor Dostoevsky's work from some Italian universities. See, I would argue that unless it needed a trigger warning.

I'll tell you what, Russian literature from that period needs a lot of fucking trigger warnings. But what I would say is I think it's very important that sanctions are targeted at people who are supporters and abettors and whatever the right words are, people who are allowing this to happen by their support. rather than just random Russian people who happened to be... Yeah, that makes it sound like a lynch mob, which is original. I mean, there was that example of the Munich conductor who essentially refused to come down either way, refused to condemn it, and he was sacked, which I think is probably pretty heavy-handed.

Yes, I agree. I think friends of the regime are for legitimate targets for me. Having said that, you know, I mean, I understand the West desire to do everything we can, and I think we're both encouraged, all three of us are encouraged. by the response. But also, like, sending oligarchs back to Russia is actually what Putin's always wanted.

He wants that money back in Russia. So I don't know how much punishment there is. And, of course, just punishing, like, Russian people in the West. Most of them are in the West because they don't like the regime. So you're sending Putin's critics back to Russia to punish him. But that, but that, again, and it goes against everything that, you know, the Western model should be. Yes.

In an ideal world, you know, whatever happens with Ukraine, but in an ideal world, there's has been a growing middle class in Russia who have contacts and they have feelers out in the Western world, they know what the West is like. They don't necessarily buy the propaganda. And you need to give them a workable model for them to say, this is what we want Russia to be, right? We don't want to, as you say, throw the baby out of the bathwater and start, you know, arresting people in the street and, you know, breaking our own laws to basically, you know, punish random Russians because that's not sending a positive message. so it has to be, you know, legal and sort of commensurate.

So what do we do with a channel like Russia today? Yeah, that's a good question. I mean, that's one that... Which has been banned in the... Has been banned now, yeah, of course. And I think that's probably fair enough. It's a complete propaganda mouthpiece. I was asked to go on it years and years ago

and said absolutely not, and they never asked again. Yeah, I think that's probably... okay. That's, that's, that's, we are in Cold War II. And I think we have to accept that shutting off your enemy's propaganda is probably quite a good idea. That's interesting. I'm, I'm instinctively very hesitant to approve of that for the reasons that you gave earlier, actually, which is, that's a very unwestern thing to do. But I think if we accept the thing that you and I both have actually said, there's an argument to be made at least. I still, I think I would, I would, I would that temptation. But I think reasonable people can disagree about that one. Yeah. Yeah.

So Maverick Christian, what a name. Well done Maverick Christian. Ask the question, why did practically every expert get it wrong on the Russian invasion of Ukraine? Yeah. And not that I'd call myself an expert, but me too. And I think it's that question we addressed at the beginning, is that we're kind of thinking in terms of Putin being a rational actor. And he is getting, he was getting everything he wanted by Saberac. By sort of throttling Ukraine and getting all of that sort of Western attention, which he wants. He wants to be reminded that Russia was of great power and a big player in the world and all of that. And it seems unthinkable that he would want to launch full out, all out wall. It still seems unthinkable.

Like Constantine said, it's like, you know, he almost wake up. It's like a dream. It's mad. That said, there were enough voices amongst the sort of intelligence community and so on who'd seen various briefings. And I listened retrospectively, actually, earlier this week, I listened back to a podcast, American intelligence community podcast, which had three or four commentators on there. And they all differed. I mean, they all say, oh, no, I don't think he's going to invade because he's getting what he wants, that argument that I go.

And this predated the invasion. and two of them said he wasn't going to invade, and two of them said he was. So there were voices that were saying, you know, the intelligence is such that, you know, this is not a drill. So there were voices there that were saying that. But as I said, I think the rest of the world just assumed that, you know, he was effectively Iraq. If you actually look at Putin's history, former head of the KGB, you look at, you know, the case of Alexander Lipvinenko, you look at the poisons in Salisbury. This isn't a man who values human life very highly, particularly if it means that he can eliminate them in order to get what he wants.

But again, this is, I'm sorry to say this with you there, Constantine, but this is kind of also an element of the Russian psyche. 100%. I don't want people to be under any doubt about what you're saying. It's 100% true. I mean, you've got to understand this is a country that killed 20 million of its own citizens. only 70 years ago or 80 years ago, whenever it was. And you go to it, you go to, I mean,

the thing always surprises me in a way. So you go to any of the Red Army's cemeteries. There's three in Berlin, right, from the Battle of Berlin in 45. The biggest one in Treptoa Park, which is spectacular, sort of monuments and all sorts of things. But they're mass graves. They're mass graves of 5,000 people each in each of these mass graves.

So the idea of the individual and they're not repatriated. I mean, the way that Americans repatriate their dead from war as a matter of routine, Russians don't do that, right? Not only do they not do that, they put them into mass graves. So there are no names, right? We don't know who they are.

Which to a Western mind, with all of its individualism and all of that, it's completely anathema. It's kind of, wow, that's punchy. That's just the way it works. It's the way it works in 45. It's the way it works now. that comes direct from the Soviet lens, isn't it?

Where the individual is not important. That's much older than that. I think it goes way that. It's much older than that. I'm much older. And so what do you can see this? The long, hard winter. Yeah, I think it's, you know, man is,

the individual is kind of expendable. There are greater goals to be had. And we get them by moving together. And if the individual falls off the side, then so be in. It's that classic kind of, you know, communitarian mentality that the community is everything, the individual is nothing. There's another piece to it as well, which is Russia is a massive country. And because of that, logistically, it was very difficult to govern.

And what you therefore needed is very strong central leadership to prevent the regions from becoming, you know, mini tardoms in which the local Upperti king would do whatever he wanted. And because of that, the anecdote I always are used to explain this, to try and explain this to people is one of the huge names in Russian history is, of course, Ivan the Terrible. He's not called Ivan the Terrible in Russian. It's not an inaccurate translation. This is a man who killed his own son in a fit of rage, who, as a kid, tortured animals, who did all sorts of atrocious things. In Russian, textbook psychopath. In Russian, he's called Ivan the fearsome. and revered.

Stalin has a 50. Stalin has a high approval rating in Russia to date than Joe Biden has in America or Boris Johnson has in this country. That's the mentality. And nobody in the West can understand this because you can't. You can't, if you operate under the Western moral framework,

it's impossible to understand people who would bury 5,000 soldiers who secured victory in the deadliest war in the history of humanity in a mass grave. you can't imagine that. In an ideal world, in an ideal world, they carry on the negotiations, which I think have been rather kind of cynically led,

particularly on the Russian side so far. That's a ruse to buy time, reorganise, whatever it is. But anyway, at the moment, those negotiations, in an ideal world, you might see Ukraine being able to fight them effectively to a standstill or make the costs so great that Putin is ready to make some sort of deal. And I think the best they could probably achieve from the Ukrainian perspective is

a return to status quo. So you can have Donnyetskluhansk, you can have Crimea, but Ukraine is allowed to exist. Now, whether it can exist with an independent sovereign government is a quite open question. But that's what it should demand. Right?

I think anything else is kind of requiring it to be in a sphere of influence, pandering to Russian paranoia is a hollow victory. So for the Ukraine. So that's an ideal scenario. I think that's about as good as it's going to get. The other side of the spectrum, the realistic side of the spectrum is, I think,

the destruction of Ukraine and occupation of Ukraine, which is going to be bloody. and Ukraine's democratic ambitions, its ambitions to join the West, Western world in general, are going to be put back by decades. So it's very dark. We're in a very dark place at the moment.

And this is why I say this is Cold War II. We can't afford, I don't think, the West, to whatever happens in Ukraine, when it's over, go back to some pretend normal, because that would not be acceptable, and it would be a betrayal of all of those brave Ukrainians who have fought like they have. With that ambition of fighting for their sovereignty and their freedom

and to decide their own future, if we then carry on business as usual, Vandel Doish Handel, there's a betrayal of them, and that shouldn't happen. So, you know, we do need to carry on that fine. Do you think the West, I mean, we've all been surprised in the last week by the resolve of the West, but do you think if Ukraine is overrun, you know, Russia annexes to Eastern and Central Park or installs a puppet government, do you think the West has the appetite to maintain these sanctions in perpetuity?

I hope so. Honestly, I hope so. And as I say, I don't think we can, in all conscience, go back to business as usual until normalization. Because you'd have an effect in a regime like Lukashenko in Belarus in Ukraine. I think that's probably the most likely outcome, which is horrible to say. And to me, that is a tragedy for Ukraine. and it's something that we should carry on, you know, carry the torch, effectively for the freedom of Ukraine. We certainly bolster our defences on that eastern frontier. You know, Poland has to make, you know, realize that it's a frontier country now,

which I said that last week. And prior to the invasion, it already has felt that way with Belarus and with the manufactured migrant crisis of a few. months ago. But Baltic states, Poland, you know, all those NATO members on the eastern fringe of Europe, we have to make sure that that is an inviolable line. But no step further. But that means putting NATO troops on the ground. That means putting troops there. Absolutely. Isn't that going to be seen as an antagonistic gesture? Yeah, I think we're past that now. I think we're way past that. It's the same thing. You go back to the parallels. You talk about 30, The British and the French prevailed upon the polls in three days before the German invasion.

They said, do not mobilize because it would be antagonistic to Germany. Yeah. You know, we're past that. Yeah. All right. Roger Morehouse. Thank you so much for joining us. I'm going to lift this book again because it's really brilliant.

The Devil's Alliance, the other stuff you've written is great as well. But this, I think this gives a little bit of a better understanding of what we're dealing with. I think it's very important for people to read this book and understand the history of that part of the world. and it's beautifully written as well. Really easy reads. I recommend that The Devil's Alliance by Roger Moore House. Roger, thank you so much for joining us. Thank you for watching.

Guys, just so you know, there will be no Raw Show tonight because I'm on question time. So check that out and boo at home and throw whatever you want to throw. But we will see you tomorrow with our Raw Show and the rest of the week will be as normal. So thanks for joining us, Roger, thank you. We'll see you very soon. Take care and see you soon, guys.

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