0062 Sir Gene Speaks - Interview of Sir Gene on Ukraine and Dombas

Let's dive into Ukraine, even the heavyweights, the heavyweights of the conservative media bill O'Reilly and Sean Hannity, we're having a conversation about this and they disagree greatly at the end result of all of this for Putin, O'Reilly thinks this is going to lead to Putin's downfall candidate things. Putin's going to skate through this and be fine. What do you think? Well, on that question, I think. And certainly there's a, a segment of the Russian population that does not want any involvement in wars It's a little different when you're just shelling like Siri or something. Right. But when you, when you have a hundred thousand troops, that's presumably human beings out there. So there is certainly some backlash going on for that, whether that's enough to flip the popularity under 50% for Putin, I don't think so. His popularity has been uh, it depends where you measure. I mean, if you ask the Americans, it's like 1%, but if you ask the Russians and you look at the results of the elections, and again, contrary to what U S media reports, Russian elections are a lot less rigged than American elections. I'm sure it's, some places are rigged. I'll totally give you that. That's true of anywhere. Well, not what I understand. The Russian oligarchs, there's this group of guys that are basically ones that Putin has to keep happy. And it sounds like maybe they're not happy with what's going on here because that's going to cost them money. Yeah, I think Boudin's always had a, a bit of a contentious relationship with rich people in Russia. So if you want to call them oligarchs, because on the one hand He can't just do things that are good for them, because then you'll have a huge uprising. People kick them out of office. On the other hand, a lot of these guys control the wealth that's flowing into Russia. So they're responsible for a lot of the, the GDP. So he's got a walk, a bit of a tight rope on that front. And Russia does have a military production, nowhere near the capacity of the U S one. Like Russia does sell weaponry, but it sells just a tiny fraction compared to what the U S sells. So there, there's not like it's not enough to justify a war just to sell more weapons to your neighbors. Eh, if you're Russia in the U S it's pretty close. it may be justifiable to start a war just to. Be able to sell more weapons. And a lot of people are saying that's kind of what's happening right now. So now what does hoop, what does Putin hope to gain with what he's doing here? There's I think a big picture in the, a short version so I think simplistic view that some people share which I don't completely agree with, but I'll bring it up anyway. Is clearly putting the ones to just rebuild the Soviet union. I think that is way overly simplistic, and it may appear that way at times, but that's not the full story. But I bring it up because from the outside, if you're just looking at it, Russia has been slowly gaining territory over time. Territory that used to be part of the Soviet union, right. About this in the past, right? The unified Soviet union. Once again. Well, I don't think he's used that term, but he, he more frequently would talk about Russia before the Soviet union, the Russian empire and all the lands that were part of the Russian empire. And take certainly pride in that. I think the bigger issue for Putin, isn't so much restoration of the landmass as that he was in government, but didn't have sufficient enough standing or power at the time to really make decisions about the way that the Soviet union was split up. So if you remember back then He was a, I don't know if he's a deputy or, but he was originally, he was running St. Petersburg and then he was in Yeltsin's administration. And so he was, getting prep through that process. Everybody knew Yeltsin was a alcoholic there's a little bit of a Biden thing there because people realize that he's not really fully there and making good choices, right. Not on his game, these islands game. Good way of phrasing it. And so, consequently he wasn't around for too long, but at the time of the splitting of the Soviet union, I think what a much younger Pluton saw was the wrong decisions being made as to both how to divide up like where the borders are and who, and how to completely just turn into their own countries. Because some of these places have a genuine unique historical country that was on that piece of land. A lot of the Eastern European countries, countries like Poland, for example, Poland was never part of Russia. Poland was never a part of. Of the Soviet or the Russian empire going back a thousand years, like there was two different groups of people there, but they were part of the Soviet Eastern block. So they weren't, they weren't technically part of the Siri union, but they were completely under the control of the Soviet union. Sort of like, east Germany was, and a lot, a lot of those Eastern European countries, if you remember that far back. So what he remembers is that you have the Soviet union and you have the, the Soviet puppet states and satellites and, and having all of those become independent was one thing it's, it's understandable when the government crashes the country collapses, but then taking what was parts pre Russian revolution and what was part of Russia itself and was referred to as a, a district or it'd be the equivalent of states in the United States, right. That had not existed as a standalone country. And, and then taking that group of states and saying, okay, now each state is its own country. And good luck to you guys because a lot of those states immediately following the collapse of the Soviet union collapsed even harder than Russia itself because they were completely reliant on trade and resources during the Soviet union times internally. And they could not stand on their own. They needed a lot of support us and Europe and the west provide a lot of that. It also provided support to Russia, provide a lot of loans to Russia, which put nos always likes through and people were paid back. And so there is a difference in his mind between what were basically Russian states, areas that were part of Russia, pre Soviet revolution. And then what were simply countries that were during the Soviet era into being part of the Eastern block and all of those countries. I don't think he has any thoughts about those becoming part of Russia, but areas that used to be part of Russia were never in the belt. You know, You think about it. If you actually look at the history, the amount of time that you crane existed as a country is about 30 years in the last thousands. I'm not in the, Biden's a lot of money for the whole three years. I'm not saying Russia should swell up Ukraine. I don't, I don't like that either. I want Ukraine to stay as a country right now, but the problem is Ukraine had a fully us funded. We have the records, revolution driven by whatever agencies and that revolution took over the capital and pushed back. What was the legitimate government up to that point and kept pushing back further east until they ran into sufficient numbers of people resisting the revolution. The anti-revolutionary is if you will. And those anterior revolutionaries then held them back long enough for there to be documents signs. And that has been sort of the stands for the last eight years. And so. Now of course, and from the us perspective, those people that were the counter-revolutionaries that were holdovers from the original elected government of the country. Now they're seen as the, the revolutionary rebels by the U S but in fact, if you think that Taiwan is a legitimate country of its own and not part of China, then you should be happy and celebrating that the Donbass region and the east side of Ukraine is finally gotten their independence because they are literally following the exact same path as Taiwan did, which is the original government and people that supported the original government fleeing during a revolution revolution to help it happen in both countries, and then establishing a base for themselves in a small portion. Of the country or an island in the case of Taiwan. And then the main country is just saying, no, that's part of us. That's like just China saying Taiwan is part of China. Ukraine is saying, yeah. Then bus is part of Ukraine. they can't rely on old borders because those borders didn't exist. Those were just regions. They weren't countries, they weren't country borders. It's literally that area where Ukraine is currently was either part of Russia, part of the Austro-Hungarian empire or part of the Polish Lithuanian empire. Those were the three conquering, large empires that had transferred that region back and forth. And in those transfers back and forth, what is now Eastern Ukraine was almost always held by Russia. And that was where the. Territorial lines were drawn. So even when a good chunk of what is Ukraine today was part of the Polish Lithuanian empire, even though in those days the border didn't go all the way to where the monitoring border of Ukraine with Russia as the border went to just pass. What is the Napa river? I can't remember. I don't have a map in front of me, but essentially it was the central and Western part of Ukraine. And the Eastern part of the crane was still part of the Russian empire back then. So there's not much to sort of point at, from a historical standpoint. I'll give you another example that is hard to argue here as well. For anybody who says, well, Russia needs to leave Ukraine and get out of those areas that it's occupying. When is England leaving Ireland and Northern Ireland being given back to the country of Ireland. Again, it's literally the exact same scenario where you had people that were, that that owned the territory. There was a revolution in Ireland that revolution that resulted in the British being ousted, except for the Northern part of Ireland, where they had strongholds, were holding out. And so eventually when the treaty was signed, Northern Ireland was excluded. Well, that's the same thing, the same thing as Donbass. It's like, yeah, you've, it's always been Russian, it's it? And that's, I guess the difference is in Ireland, at least at some point, Northern Ireland only had the Irish people. It didn't have any English until English came over and conquered. But Eastern Ukraine, which is full of Russian people at historically for a thousand years, been the Russian. Now there were also invasions, if you want to count that and say, oh, it wasn't always Russian. Yes, that's true. Sometimes it was hold held by the Mongolians by the Mongolian hordes that were coming down to invade Europe. So certainly Crimea was Crimea was one of the strongholds of the Mongolian hordes. I think the golden horde spent quite a while there. And it has a history of being held by Mongo. And Vader's the toddlers Brent as well, that's changed hands quite a bit. It has changed quite a bit because it's a peninsula that has access to open water that goes out to the ocean, which is very useful for everybody. So, that peninsula was always along with what is now currently considered Eastern Europe. Part of the Russian empire territory, other than the times where it was controlled by the invading hordes. Why is this important now? Why it's important now is because there, there seems to be a very, I don't know how to explain it, but like politicians have extremely short-term memories when it, when it's convenient. So as soon as the revolution that we support happens in another country, we, we will then from that point forward claim that the first elected government of that newly revolted region is the legitimate government because it's grain-free democracy will never accept anything else. Yeah. And now I don't know if people remember in Egypt, we did that. We had a color revolution in Egypt. It lasted about a year. And after a year, the military came in rousted, the us installed. And they haven't been allowed since back. And I mean, they've got elections, they, everything, I don't know if they've ever been a true democracy, but they're close enough. They're not a dictatorship in Egypt, but they absolutely kicked out the uh, post revolutionary government, which the U S so as the legitimate government of Egypt. So I think going back to Ukraine historically I think for a lot of people, not just Putin, seeing a break between Ukraine and Russia was sort of like having Texas decide to become a part of Mexico once again, and the border was moved and now you had to, go through a bunch of crazy rules of the border to go see your relatives that just lived across the border. So the idea of, people who live. A hundred or 200 miles east of the Korean border. When, when that was just one country up until 30 years ago, do you think Putin just sees this as reunification? So I think that's, that's part one, right? And I think there's, it's a, it's not a simple, single reason for him. The second thing is Putin has been saying now for literally eight years that he needs a signed document that says there will be no NATO expansion up to the border of Russia because it already happened in the Baltic states. But at least they're tiny here. Ukraine is the biggest country in Europe, you know what I did not. Yeah. He's been saying that he didn't just start saying that a month ago. He's been saying that for eight years and eight years of no movement on that front, no concessions from us or NATO or Europe, but yet further movements towards Ukraine becoming part of NATO, but all the bearing on any of the media as well, Putin knows this is destabilizing the world and he's an evil guy. Is that anywhere near accurate or what is it accurate that these destabilizing the world? I don't, that that's insane. Look at it from his perspective. What is the biggest resource that Russia has other than uranium oil, which is something that the United States had a lot more of what happens to the price of oil in the last week? Skyrocketed? How is this destabilizing? They're making more, they're making 20% while not quite 20. They're like 14% more today than they did a month ago on the same amount of Soldo off. Yeah. And I think the United States, it's like 11% of the stuff they bring in comes from Russia. Russian oil. Yeah. Wow. Thank you, Putin. Yeah. Well, thanks also Biden for shutting down the pipeline and making all of this. Yeah. The oil, obviously I'm being facetious, but yeah, Russia was having serious problems. When oil prices dropped to 20 bucks a barrel, like all of a sudden they were making a quarter of what they were previously making in exports. And it was having a significant impact on the country because unlike the U S Russia does have quite a few state owned industries and gas from, and well, there's a whole slew of them that. The country effectively took over after the original founders, shall we say, were found to have been guilty of tax evasion. Now it's all wink, wink, nudge, nudge, because, they, the original oligarchs, which a lot of them have lost their fortunes were, they were the wheel wheeling and dealing makers, right at the fall of communism, they were the ones that figure out the fastest ways to scam getting equipment that was state-owned and factories that were state-owned and, and raw materials that were state-owned for not 10 cents and a dollar like for a penny on the dollar. And that's how they got to be very rich, very fast, but a lot of people that get very rich, very fast, Play fast and loose. And those guys did as well. And in his early days before he was the president of Russia, Putin actually worked in the department of what was it called? It was a, essentially an anti-corruption department. So like that was, that was his mandate. It was to find corruption and, and then penalize people. So he is a smart dude anybody that thinks Putin is an idiot demonstrates their own IQ more than anything else. Oh yeah. There's no way. There's no way he's an idiot. I mean, but this is where everybody's now playing the the. Quarterback where it's like, well, why is he, why is he doing this? Is it economic? Is it just because he has an ego? And he thinks he can, is he is he the next Hitler who just wants to take over the whole region? I mean, you've heard everything, the media. Absolutely. Absolutely. No. And, and there's, Putin, splaying 3d chess and everybody else's playing checkers kind of thing. It's I mean, there's a lot being made out of the fact now that old Russia has taken over Chernobyl. Oh my God. It's like, so, yeah. And he literally said that what he's going to do and then did it, which was the big surprise for everybody. He's like, what, what, what how's he actually, how how's he doing the things that he said he was going to. cause they just expected a lot of hot air, a lot of a lot of talk. And what they got was action that they weren't expecting. Sean Penn is rushing to the region to make a documentary. Oh my God, the world is saved. Sean. Penn's coming so we talked about the reason, number one, the reason number two is Putin. I think came to a point where he realized no amount of negotiation to not bring him. Ukraine is going to work without some form of physical motivation. See, that's a great euphemism. Right? Right. Well, the question is, is engaging in physical motivation. Currently you're getting from everybody else, including Joe Biden, new, which is all economic sanctions. Is that enough to deter what's going on here? It doesn't seem like it. Yeah, exactly. Is the hope for Putin, which is just, well, I'll push as far as I can, and then we'll get them to release the sanctions. What is the what is the bottom line here? I mean, a lot of people are trying to tie in China and Taiwan into this, which is Putin and Xi, who seemed to be pretty friendly at the Olympics. So this is a big thing going on. Well, and everybody's describing all kinds of big observational things that nobody talked about. So I, I sent a signal message to Adam February 18th. So what is that? Five days ago basically outlining what is currently happening right now? Right. So I totally predicted this. It is. Gamed out. So they knew exactly what they needed to do by playing different scenarios previously. But I would not go quite so far as to say that the timeline was planned or anything else. I think they, they did the right steps from the Russian perspective in the right order, which is your first test, the waters to make sure you're not stepping on the grenade. And once you're, you're ensured that that's not going to happen, then you start moving your troops through. And the mistake that Ukraine got goated into. So all I remember, we started by me saying there's really good propaganda flying back and forth, but except for on TV, TV is for sure propaganda. But between the countries themselves, there's pretty good propaganda. Like if you listen to voice of America and then you listen to Al Jazeera and you listened to our T you listen to stations in countries. Aren't necessarily American super friends. Right? You, you see a much better view of what the propaganda from both sides looks like. But what they did was they go to Ukraine into an intensifying, their attack on the Eastern regions because of this whole anticipation. And you almost could think that like Biden was doing this to help Putin. It almost feels that way because Biden's fanning the flames and all Putin is holding up as just one match. And Biden's trying to catch more shit on fire, which is why the question comes all. You've heard about the Biden family over the past four or five years. Oh, well that in China. Yes. True. And it's some China in there, but so essentially. What Putin needed for legitimacy to move forward, to actually pick a start date for this was to have Ukraine intensify it shelling of the Eastern regions, which are mostly Russian. And they've been doing this on and off for literally eight years. Like the ceasefire has never been a real ceasefire. There's fighting for the whole eight years, but, occasionally it sparks up and then drops back down and you could also point the finger and the more blame than the rest of the country at the Nazi battalion that I can't remember the name of right now uh, I posted a link to it, didn't know John, the social, but essentially Ukraine has this something battalion, which has a strong ties to the Nazi ethos. And they're, they're sort of special forces dudes. They're the. Extreme violent ones when they're attacking. And they're the ones that effectively Putin named in his speech. The saying that Russia will do not certify Ukraine. So he effectively said that we're going to be removing military installations, but as far as people we're going to get rid of all the Nazis, which was be that battalion they're going in as peacekeepers that's the, and the, and they are in no different form than, than any other us or European peacekeepers have you're looking at yeah. In the Balkans. When, when countries were splitting. Oh, my gosh country's was split up how's that work because some part of the country wanted the independence and the us supported that in defense. And now that was a good thing. Here's some part of Ukraine wants independence. And since we just did a revolution on them eight years ago, nine years ago, well, no, we don't want independence for that group. Peacekeepers rarely bring peace. in one of my favorite sci-fi TV shows Farscape that's the one. So Farscape, if you remember the, the bad guys in it were called peacekeepers, the empire or whatever, the official government forces were, were the peacekeepers. Makes sense. Do you not remember this? Watch Farscape oh, okay. Well, whatever. Anyway, so that was in Farscape and one of the main characters, which was played by Claudia. Claudia was the first thing. Yeah. I, I, I, I like her all I'm sure she's looking like these in their sixties now, but she, anyway, she's now finally in your love in your wheelhouse. No, no, no. That would be. It's the perfect day. It's the perfect age for a woman. That's 24. Anyway, so back to the topic here, peacekeepers that we went on a little detour where I can remember shit. The point with Russia calling what they're doing peacekeeping is that by a strict definition, that is exactly what they're doing. So if you think of those regions as either what is left of Ukraine pre-revolution so it's the anti or counter-revolutionary portion of Ukraine, or you think of it as a brand new country that just got recognized by Russia and a few other countries as a independent in either scenario, they're still getting shelled by the Ukrainian military. There's still conflict there. So. They have a treaty with Russia, which they signed very quickly and Russia by that treaty is just like the NATO treaty, article five it's whatever the equivalent article is for this new treaty they created as now coming in to provide peacekeeping for this region, this country, this new country that they have a treaty with. And that peacekeeping activity, according to Russia. And I know this will be a hotly debated topic is whether they're doing what they say they do, or just doing whatever they want, but Russia spelled out what and who they're targeting. They were, they're going to target this special forces, Neo Nazi battalion that Ukraine has. Every one of those people will be dead. Through Russian special forces troops going through Ukraine to kill them. They are targeting military installations in Ukraine. And here they're using the broad brush. So they're not saying just the ones that are really close to Donbass that are actually showing down baths. They're just saying, look, if there's one military installation in Ukraine that is currently attacking this new country that we have in lines with, then we will take out all military installations in Ukraine to prevent that from happening. Right. This is something that happened with Saddam Hussein. The first thing where you didn't, you didn't kill his whole army and then you had to go back. Yeah, well, same thing that we were doing under Clinton bombing Kosovo. So we're just taking out military objectives. We have a no fly zone over over Yugoslavia, over the Balkans. Same thing here. There's no fly zone over Ukraine right now. No planes coming or going. They, as part of the military equipment, they took out armaments. They took out radar installations and they took out runways at airport. And that's literally exactly what we did in every conflict we've ever entered into rock. Yeah. It's the standard playbook for everybody. The first thing you have to take down are the things that allow the enemy to weaponize. So that's what Russia did. And they've been constantly repeating over and over that we are not targeting civilian areas. They're encouraging all Ukrainian troops to go home, leave your weapons. There'll be destroyed when our rockets drop, but go home and your homes will be safe, which is the greatest wherever. If you just like, we're coming, just, just go home, which is literally what Americans were saying in Iraq. During Bush one and plenty where we're flying helicopters, playing this in Arabic and dropping leaflets that said the exact same thing and plenty of them did. And they, in fact, I knew a guy personally, back then that had over a hundred people, surrender to him. Personally, you have to stop. We're done. We don't want to do this. We know what I get to trade my weapon in and I get free food and I'm not going to get shot. That's a good trade. That does seem like a better day. They were putting zip ties on each other to hurry the process up. I have photos until they realize they're getting a blended lemon as their drought. They wish they were getting a blend that the hell out of them. But I I've got some stories about that timeframe. I actually had some access back then. So I got to see some equipment and stuff from satellites, and there were contact points where Russian, the helicopters were landing at American pads. So a lot of interesting stuff that, you don't find out about until somebody writes a book. Yes. Well, there's intricacies of all of this stuff that makes all of the difference. And you said that Biden seemed to be fanning the flames, and that is the other big debate that's going on, which is, I don't know why I like, I I'm completely clueless on this tab. I have no idea why Biden did what he did. Because it, it seemingly made it easier for Putin to justify doing what he did faster. Well, there's a lot of people that think if you want to go down the conspiracy rabbit hole, that Ukraine has some dirt on. Yeah. But why would Biden want to destroy Ukraine? How's that going to help him? Well, I don't know, except for the fact that it's been a part of the Biden family history, which I don't know, maybe it's the other way around, maybe this is Ukraine trying to get something that gets them free of what's. This Alaska was pissed off with Biden. He was talking about how he thought that Biden was, agitating things and making it harder for him. Well, Biden is fairly incompetent. It seems not on the top of his game to say the very least. And we know that the people that are surrounding Joe Biden. Are a lot of the ilk of the far left radical who wants the world to be destabilized, build back better. Can all that is already failed here as far as the bill form. Well, if the world keeps destabilizing, well, then maybe they'll get, build back better. Okay. So let, let me, let me go back to the Ukraine thing. So we, we covered two of the reasons, right? So why he's coming in there, maybe even three. And then one other thing that he said in his, like, we're going to get rid of the Nazis. We're going to impose peacekeeping by destroying military equipment and Ukraine, and then the third or fourth, whatever count thing is he said that given the aggression that Ukraine has displayed over the last eight years more recently with the attacks, Ukraine will not be allowed by Russia. To have nuclear weapons. And that was something that is Zelensky was being an idiot and talking about how well maybe Ukraine just needs to turn on its nuclear weapons, manufacturing facilities, if it wants to not have Russia be talking down to it. Well, congratulations. You just threatened nuclear weapon use and now you're not going to get them ever. Yeah. That's poking the bear. That's that's seriously poking the bear and that's you're literally Ukraine is right by the bears foot. Yes. Like the bear is just sitting there, laying down and you're you grabbed the stick, made by the U S in the form of a rocket and you're literally poking him right in the foot. So this is something Poona has expressed that Europe and Russia or Russia, Europe and America would have an extremely hard time. Pushing back on this concept that we're not going to allow you cause a Ukraine to have access to nuclear weapons because wait a minute, isn't, isn't the U S doing the same thing with Iran. Exactly. Yeah. It runs not allowed to have nuclear weapons. Well, neither is Ukraine that you're on still building them. So, I mean, there's that you think, do you think Ukraine won't be of course destabilization maybe is the reason for all of this. So here's the, I don't, I don't know how long we're going, but here's the end result. The end play of this thing is that the newly declared countries that have been formed are going to stay formed probably long enough for a little bit of time to pass before they do a referendum. In which the question will be posed of. Do you want to stay in independent country or do you want to join. And I suspect the answer to that referendum will be an overwhelming 87%. Gotta be cool if I was right on this, any sounds present in favor of joining Russia. But that's, I think the most likely outcome of, of the situation of Russia will have permanent troops in Ukraine. Ukrainians, I think in a lot of ways responsible for getting to this point, but Ukraine will be treated like a child moving forward by Russia, not like a little brother, like they used to be treated, but literally like a, a child that can't be left alone because it's going to stick a fork into an outlet and effectively inviting NATO and nuclear missiles in Ukraine. The way we have nuclear missiles in Poland right now is exactly that it's like sticking a fork into an electrical outlet as far as Russia. Bullets and escalation, there's no question. That's an escalation. So, whatever way you slice it, I mean, Putin will keep calling this a peacekeeping effort, but again, what we have peacekeepers in Afghanistan for 20 years. Yes. That's exactly the case peacekeepers. Yeah, exactly. And it's like, he's not doing anything that the United States hasn't done somewhere in the world over the last a hundred years themselves. Now here's the question. That's also being bantered around. If Donald Trump was still president, is this happening right now? No, I think you're absolutely right. I'll tell you why is because Trump is a negotiator. He's horrible at hiring people. We figured that out and he's even the worst at firing people, but he, he is in the co-share. So there, so would there have been this provocation and push of Navy? Pushing into Ukraine. Absolutely not because after conversation with Putin, Trump and Putin would have absolutely come up with a strategy that says, okay, we're not going to say Ukraine is done. We're going to be part of NATO. What we are going to say is that Ukraine will not be a part of NATO for the next 100 years. It's a compromise right there. They're not permanently barred from coming into NATO. And I'm obviously, etcetera, I would never be a hundred. It might be 20. But using those tensions, you're easing the tensions. You're giving them things. You don't do. I do this literally every day I did this today. I negotiate it's it's w it's how I make money. It's what I do. I'm a negotiator. You know, You've got some hostages here. You've got some diamonds there, you figure it out together. You figure out a solution, right? There's always a solution. I I've yet to come up against a situation that can be solved one way or another. As long as people are interested in something, then I can leverage that interest in whatever that thing is. The only people you can't negotiate with are fanatical religious people. Like if you're doing this and you're planning to die doing it. Okay. And when you give them anything that's going on, I guess we can accelerate that for you if you really want, but that's about it. Right? So just to wrap up the Ukraine thoughts that the areas that are no longer Ukraine will stay in a longer Ukraine. They may or may not become part of Russia. I think. That's where my, my hedging would be as on that side of it. But it will be framed as the people in that area saying, yes, we want to be part, but it doesn't even have to be framed. They are literally Russians living there. Who've always been Russians. That area is Russian. It wasn't in the Russia for 30 years after Ukraine became an independent country. But it was Russia before that for a thousand years minus the invasions by the Mongolians. Yes. Yes, yes. But like, they've always been Russian people. I remember going to Crimea to visit my relatives back when I was a kid one time ago. And it was absolutely Russian. I mean, it's not to say that there weren't people that were ethnically from other parts of Ukraine that came there to sit on the beach and, it was it was kind of a. Vacation spot, but definitely it was Russian speaking and Russian history, most importantly, and same thing with the two new countries that were created just recently as well. That used to be part of Eastern Ukraine is they there's just a history. It's, it's kind of like, again, if you want to use the analogy, it's like, taking the upper peninsula of Michigan, which has been in the United States for, however long Michigan has been a state. And then deciding that we're going to trade the upper peninsula to Canada as part of some grand deal And now all the people living in the upper peninsula are Canadians instead of. Can we sell California to somebody maybe, oh God, I'd love to do that. I mean, I've, I've hoped that it would fall off the edge. If the earth is flat, maybe California can drift away. I don't know. But a point is taken that it gets to be very complicated as these areas. And there are areas between Pakistan and India, that that happened to where, when the British drew the maps, they put people who were religiously and ethnically Pakistanis on the side of the Indians. And there were other parts of the border, where was the other way around. And it's like, they don't care. They're British right there. They don't live there. They don't give a shit about the border, but people don't like when you give them to another nation and effectively, that's what happened here is this region was given to Ukraine when Ukraine was first. In uh, 19 17, 19 18. I can't remember exactly the year, but it was shortly after the Russian revolution. It was an idea conceived by Lennon and the reason he did it, which has been, explained if you actually read Russian history, which most Americans don't even know what that is. The reason he did it is because the communists were barely holding on to power. And one of the solutions that Lennon came up with at the time was that what if we create these sort of regions within what was just the Russian empire and then have each of the region send representatives to the Duma, which is like the, the house or Senate And then we're going to have regional representatives because the fear was that the further away from Moscow, you were the more suspicious you were of the communists taking power. And so by involving them in the government, not really, but pretend wink, wink, nudge, nudge. We're going to be able to hold down the full empire territory instead of having places break away. Because now we're going to say, oh yeah, well, you're, you're the you're the Ukrainian representatives here from the Southwestern part of Russia, the Ukraine region, and you've got voting rights, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. So it was a scheme to maintain power over the entirety of the Russian empire, which likely would not have happened if he didn't come up with this idea. because they, the, the communist revolutionaries were kind of seeing that. Very Moscow driven. It's kind of like, we look at DC, we got to drain the swamp. We don't trust the people there. That's the way a lot of the regions is Russia looked at at the brand-new communist that grabbed power after the revolution. That's probably 1918. Can you say Americans don't read Russian history. They don't read American history. That's true too. That's So I think, I think Russia will just simply have peacekeepers and Ukraine the same way that America had peacekeepers in Afghanistan for 20 years. Yeah. I think that makes sense. And there, there's also the possibility that, this is a quick thing and then Russia withdraws, but I don't see any external forces that are going to be strong enough to make them do that. And I think this is a game of let's push and see how far we can go and what happens. I don't think there's any, and I hope I'm not shown wrong a year from now, but I don't think there's any interest from Russia or Putin to go. Into Poland or into, hungry or any country, which was part of the Eastern block, which used to be a country. And not simply just a part of Russia, because what he's done to date in, in Georgia, in what, what was the grain here is he's taken back. What was part of Russia, the country, right. Which is the, when I, then when I hear the Hitler comparisons, it's like, there, there are differences and that's one of them. And it's not based on ethnicity here. It's based on the population because when you take that segment of what was Eastern Ukraine and you do run a poll or a referendum, there it is absolutely 100% predictable that the results of that referendum will be pro Russia. Like there's no. Tinkering needed. It's not like coming in conquering Poland for a Hitler with no opposition, because if you took a referendum in Poland, it would be 100%, maybe not a hundred, but certainly majority percent Hitler leave. Like Poland didn't have an interest in having Germany come in and take over these parts of Ukraine. Absolutely do. And had Ukraine had they not gotten cocky at, they kept the peace treaty and not been attacking Eastern Ukraine. This may or may not have happened, but it sure as hell wouldn't have happened right now, we might be in another month with no troops being moved in by. But the fact that they got cocky and they increased their attacks is that non-reported most misunderstood thing about all of this? I think it's been somewhat reported, but never really punctuated, like a, you know, there's fighting once again, every time you hear the phrase there's fighting in Lavonne or Dumbo, Syria what that actually means is they're being attacked by Ukraine because they don't fight each other. Right. So when they use the word fighting, what it actually means is the country Ukraine is attacking them and that's been reported in the news fairly regularly for eight years now. But more recently in the last month, there's been a big step up because I don't know why. I mean, like, to me, it's the most contrary, intuitive thing to do. If I was working for Ukraine, I should have. And I was trying to negotiate. I would absolutely do what the Canadian truckers did. You want to be super peaceful. You want to have bouncy castles on the border, super peaceful, but super annoying. You want a demo? Yeah. You want a Hong corns, but you want to not do anything that includes any kind of physical violence and it'd be much harder if you did that, to be able to justify any kind of peacekeeping efforts. Because like, well, what is there to keep peace from? We're at peace with the fact that these two areas have decided to pull out. We get that they're mostly ethnic Russians. They don't want to be a part of the new Ukraine created by the CIA. That's fine. They could have done this, like, Zelenskyi could have gone that. But I think there's a lot of Warhawks in Ukraine. There's tons of Warhawks in the U S they're all feeding money and supplies to Ukraine shit. Dude, we had the Florida national guard in Ukraine up until two weeks ago. How do we have national guard troops rather than permanent military be stationed in a country, literally on the opposite side of the world, it seems wrong, but it also seems wrong that there's that connection with Biden and Ukraine now is he helping them try to get out of Russia. So they were like, they're going to pull us in to a war. I mean, there's a little, I think my brain gets scanned here. I think they paid the Biden family, a lot of money for protection and they got no protection. That's what happened. And then like they have protection. Right? You'd agree with that. Yes. Yeah. Like you can't hurt me. I got this other mafia, dude, that them under his protection. Oh really? Okay. Yes. Yes. We're going to, we're going to sink the hell out of you by making your kids not be able to travel to the us. I mean, I didn't look at the sanction, so, transparency here, but I did watch a few videos of people that had said they had gone through the sanctions, the actual documents, and they said that about 40% of the sanctions were the children and families of the politicians, and presumably the rich people in Russia that supported this action. So you're literally telling somebody whose kid is going to Harvard, that we're going to our slap on the wrist for you voting for something that we dislike is we're going to kick your kid out of school and send them back. That sounds extremely politically correct. And not at all. What used to be the American way? How are you polishing the children that have nothing to do with the actions of their parents or grandparents? Most likely it's probably the grandparents, not the parents that are voting for this stuff. How are you, how is punishing the children themselves by, canceling their visas? What, what the hell kind of effort is that in in trying to convince the other country to stop doing what you don't like them doing well, yeah. And that's the scam because from everything that I've heard so far, the sanctions are so weak and they're saying, well, they can continue to step it up, but why, why, again, this is kind of like the not prosecuting people for crimes. No, we're just going to give you a slap on the wrist and that know that the 10th time you come in and then we'll finally be serious. I mean, parents, a lot of them that are like that too, if ever you don't make me come up there, Jimmy turned the stereo down in the yell like 14 times before they go up. Right, right. It's a waste of time. You just yell once. Then you go grab belt. If Biden would have come out straight on and let me know what your thought on this is. Cause O'Reilly who was covering this fairly. Well. I think all along said, the way to deal with Putin is to go to visa, MasterCard, the big banks, and say, if this happens, then those credit card companies no longer take money in Russia, it's it's shut off. And that would cripple Russia. Is that a viable thing? Because I guess, Biden had, it's really not. The credit card is getting him off the swift system for bank money exchange and they did get rid of some very tiny little bank. Not the big bang. So not the same for bank or anything else, which again, it's the slap on the wrist nodding serious side. It is weekend. So here's the risk doing that? Do you really want to force Russia to switch from using us dollar as the reserve or petroleum to using the Chinese or reserve petroleum, which China has been pushing for awhile Russia. I really disliked China. I mean, they're, they're a partner of convenience only. There there's plenty of issues. And for the majority of the cold war, most of Russia, nuclear weapons were actually pointed to China, not the U S well that's vast dislike. I did not know that. Oh, absolutely. Yeah. There's, there's complete lack of trust. They, Russians generally felt that the Chinese. We're going to backstab them at first opportunity at every count that they're not real communists back in the communist Soviet era here, that they're pretend gamut, which is true. They're like, what kind of communists have these large corporations and make products for the whole world? What the hell? Yes. And they have slaves, which you're not really supposed to do if you're a socialist country. So yeah, I mean, if plenty issues there, they will be friendly with them from a convenience both India and China abstained from condemning this Russian action. Incidentally, if people hadn't seen interesting all the little countries and obviously all of Europe and us were full-on condemn nations, but the two biggest population countries in the world did not, and they both had meetings with Putin prior to this happening. There are parts of the Pakistan. And I think in Butan that India would like to take over. And there are certainly plenty of, areas, including the biggest one, which is Taiwan. The China wants to take over pointing back to the great reset cause we know there's stuff the United States wants to do. There is. So this is, I think this is a great anti reset because globalism is the west anti-globalization is the east that's that's India, China and Russia globalism. They both deal in the financial system. So in some ways they're frenemies, right? They're both making money and they're both good. Like right now with the price of oil going up, Russia's making money. U S is it could be making money. If we weren't idiots by shutting down pipelines. The middle east, who is our awesome, great ally is making Buku money right now. The, I mean, I'm saying this facetiously, but basically Saudi Arabia is kissing Putin's ass for this awesome favor he did of raising their GDP by 15 to 20% this year. I mean, you think about that. It's whatever their GDP is, he just bumped it by 15 to 20% for them. Nice. Multiple the hell of a deal. And I do have a photo of Putin sitting next to the prince the PMB or whatever, the initial guy, the, the, from Saudi Arabia, they have a bunch of those, you talking Biden stickers that say I did this in there, the point. So for the grownups in politics, the people that do play chess, not checkers for communicated. They've all discussed this. They all know what's going on. There's zero surprises who is surprised right now, media across most of the world, not just the us. This is a shocker to them that somebody would actually do what they said they were going to do. And the U S government for whom this is a shocker, because while they kept saying, there's going to be the major and there's going to be invasion, there's going to be invasion. they thought it was going to be like a Hitler style invasion. they hadn't thought through that. This cannot be called an invasion unless every us action for the last 50 years is also called an invasion that would be problematic to the people of Iraq invite the United States to help them. No. Did they vote in a referendum to bring the USN? Not at all. Did the people of Afghanistan do this? No. I mean, you look at any conflict, including the ones where Clinton was bombing Europe, and then of course followed up by Bush and Obama. But when he was doing that, there was no referendum. There was the asking the people, it was like, Hey, we're the, we're the big players here. We get to decide. What's good. Good. And what's bad. When NATO peacekeepers went into Libya, what the fuck does that have to do with NATO? It's a different continent. Libya wasn't attacking any country. That was part of NATO. So what were they doing there? Well, what they were doing there is in a post Soviet union timeframe. NATO should not exist and no matter how you slice it, and I know they've taken out all references. Uh, USSR now, NATO if you look at the definition on Wikipedia, it's this nebulous group of countries aligned to protect each other, but no one says from what 100% absolutely created as an offensive group against the expansion of the Soviet union if someday Japan attacks us again or China or whoever, we'll call on Europe. No. Why is NATO located in Europe, north Atlantic treaty organization? Why? Because the threats and it was a totally legitimate threat. I'm not saying NATO shouldn't have been created. I absolutely think NATO should have been created. And it had a legitimate goal, which was to stop the communist spread in Europe. And it did that. It was successful. It was good. It created a. A threat And of course, as a result, Russia created the Warsaw pact, which was the, the Soviet version of the communist NATO which included countries, like, Poland complicated. And it always is changing. But my point is like that worked, having NATO and what Ronald Reagan did, which is scared the shit out of Russia to the point where they bankrupted themselves a Soviet union. See, I said, Russia, I even, I'm not perfect at remembering at that time. So, but what Reagan did was convinced the Soviet union that the technological advantages of America and the west were so great that if they don't keep up the nuclear deterrent will no longer be. In Russia's eyes, the us being the only country that ever used an atomic bomb was always perceived as a first strike country. The U S will always use nuclear weapons. First India won't rush them on China. Won't none of the other countries would use them. First, only energy palliation. The us will always use theirs first because they've done it in the past. And that is an American attitude. And with that belief, and you can say, well, that's the wrong belief. Well, yeah, sure. In America, people didn't want to be, first strike capable, but they sure projected the image of American strength and ability that way. And so when you talk to these old retired Russian politicians in generals, most of them are dead now, but like 20 years ago, there were interviews being done with them by Americans, with interpreters. When you talk to them, all of them across the board, talked about how. Russia was always feeling like it was behind the ball and that they were going to be attacked by nuclear weapons at any minute. The fear of annihilation will get you going. It'll it's sure it's hell. And then it'll get you to bankrupt the country and then have the country fall apart eventually. So anyway, was that a sufficient enough dive into Ukraine for you? I think so.