Russia calls off humanitarian deals and ratchets up indiscriminate military attacks, Vladimir Putin cracks down on dissent, and threatens a wider war, and the West talks about shipping planes into Ukraine. Meanwhile, a mother and her kids were killed trying to leave a boat that was attempting to reach Europe, and a couple of kids were trying to make it back to their parents who were on a boat and were killed by a bullet from a Russian artillery attack. Ben Shapiro is back on The Ben Shapiro Show, where he talks about it all, and explains why it s a good time to get into precious metals like gold, silver, and silver, which are rising in value. Subscribe to the show to get notified when Ben Shapiro deconstructs the latest news and discuss what s going on in the world, and give you the inside scoop you need to help you prepare for the coming financial crisis in Ukraine. You can get a free information kit on buying gold or silver in a tax sheltered account. Don t wait. Text BUY TODAY! to 989898 to receive a FREE information kit from Birch Gold, the only company I trust. Don t miss it! You ll get 20% off your first month with discount code: BUYALERT! at CHECKOUT TODAY. CHECK OUT CHAMPION! CHEERS! The show is sponsored by ExpressVPN! Subscribe, rate, review, and subscribe to our new episodes of the show on Apple Podcasts, and become a Friended! Shout out to Ben Shapiro on Anchor on your favorite streaming platform, and get 10% off the best deal on the best streaming service in the entire world! and receive 20% OFF your first week of your ad-free version of the new ad-only version of The Daily Mail, The Economist, The Financial Times, The Huffington Post, The Independent, The New York Times, and Hustler, The Wall Street Journal, and The Economist? and The Financial Post? The Economist Subscribe and subscribe on iTunes! Learn more about your ad choices are all listed here. Get the Deal of the Week? and much more! Get exclusive VIP access to our VIP access and access to all the best deals on the world s best deals, including VIP access, the latest in the best places to watch the best travel and social network, the most authentic reviews, including The Financial Republic, the Economist, and more.
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00:01:34.000Well, as expected, there was no let up over the weekend in the conflict between Russia and Ukraine, the invasion of Ukraine by Russia.
00:01:41.000According to the Wall Street Journal, Russian forces intensified strikes across Ukraine, pushing toward the capital Kiev.
00:01:46.000And the country's second-largest city, Kharkiv, while killing dozens of civilians and disrupting evacuation efforts.
00:01:51.000After beating off an initial Russian offensive, Ukraine is now preparing for a second wave of Russian attacks focused on major population centers around the country, Ukraine's national security adviser, Oleksii Danilov, said in a social media post on Sunday.
00:02:03.000All of this according to the Wall Street Journal.
00:02:05.000The Russian plan, he said, is to encircle Ukrainian forces and create a situation of humanitarian disaster for the civilian population.
00:02:11.000Essentially, Ukraine's center is now surrounded On three sides you have the Russians making significant gains in the south.
00:02:18.000They are also bordering on Odessa now.
00:02:20.000They've taken over Mariupol, surrounded Mariupol.
00:02:23.000They already controlled the eastern regions of the Donbass and now they've been invading from the north and they are all the way to the borders of Kiev.
00:02:30.000Officials in Kharkiv said several civilians were killed after a Russian Nagrad multiple launch rocket system fired on a line outside a grocery store.
00:02:37.000None of this is a shock, the Russian military tactic for a very long time has been if you can't control, destroy.
00:02:42.000Images from the scene showed at least five bodies in streaks of blood on the snow.
00:02:45.000Russian airstrikes also hit the local TV station disrupting broadcasts, as well as several residential neighborhoods and government buildings.
00:02:51.000Kharkiv officials said that two Russian bomber jets were downed over the city, providing footage to corroborate their claims.
00:02:56.000Meanwhile, around Kiev, Russian forces were engaged in a heavy fight with Ukrainian forces northwest of the capital city, seizing parts of the town of Irpin.
00:03:04.000As thousands of civilians streamed out of Irpin, Russian shelling of the evacuation route killed eight people, according to local authorities.
00:03:10.000For the second straight day, Russian shelling disrupted the planned evacuation of some 200,000 civilians from Mariupol.
00:03:16.000Civilians had been expecting to leave, starting in Mariupol and near Volokhnovka.
00:03:21.000Civilians had been expected to start leaving Mariupol and nearby Volnovokha on Saturday in a deal overseen by the International Committee of the Red Cross, and then the Russians shut that down.
00:03:32.000That evacuation of Mariupol was a giant failure, and so the civilians remained trapped at this point.
00:03:37.000Meanwhile, the Russian forces killed a mother and a couple of kids outside of Kiev in Shelling, and this was a picture that kind of zoomed around the world.
00:03:47.000So much of these wars now is I would say driven by or at least fomented by pictures like this one.
00:03:55.000We all remember the picture during the Libyan war of a kid who had been drowned because he was attempting to reach Europe on a boat and that boat went down and this was a worldwide scandal.
00:04:04.000Well, this picture obviously has been making the rounds.
00:04:06.000You have a mother and a couple of kids who were killed as they were attempting to leave Kiev.
00:04:12.000This is on the front page of the New York Times.
00:04:14.000Meanwhile, the Russian offensive continues to be somewhat stalled.
00:04:17.000Apparently, over 1,000 troops were killed inside of a day inside of Ukraine.
00:04:23.000According to the UK Mirror, Russian forces have lost at least 1,000 troops a day to a ferocious defense from Ukrainian troops and defiant citizen warriors, according to the official Ukrainian numbers.
00:04:32.000The Russians, of course, deny this, and they say that it's a fraction of this.
00:04:35.000The Ukrainians say there's been a loss of 11,000 soldiers, sailors, and airmen by day 11 of the invasion.
00:04:40.000The Russians, of course, say that it's Under a thousand at this point.
00:04:44.000Defense experts usually calculate invading commanders usually need an advantage in numbers of around three to one to attack a defending force.
00:04:50.000In house-to-house combat in inner cities, which is what Moscow is attempting, this calculation can be as many as four to one necessary.
00:04:57.000Russia apparently began the invasion with about 230,000 troops, including the troops in Belarus, as well as the troops that were in the Black Sea.
00:05:05.000That's only a few thousand more than Ukraine's entire armed force.
00:05:07.000There is some doubt as to whether the sort of inevitability of Russian victory is quite so inevitable after all.
00:05:13.000Meanwhile, Russia apparently in a bid to just throw warm bodies at the situation, they're now recruiting Syrians into the Ukrainian invasion.
00:05:22.000And I've heard reports on the ground, of course, that Russia has been using Chechnyan Soldiers in order to invade Ukraine as well.
00:05:30.000Apparently there's some reports of human rights abuses taking place from those Chechenian soldiers, including up to and including rape.
00:05:36.000Some of the reports that I've been hearing.
00:05:37.000Moscow is currently recruiting Syrians skilled in urban combat to fight in Ukraine as Russia's invasion is poised to expand deeper into cities, according to U.S.
00:05:44.000An American assessment indicates that Russia, which has been operating inside Syria since 2015, has in recent days been recruiting fighters from there, hoping their expertise in urban combat can help take Kiev and deal a devastating blow to the Ukrainian government.
00:05:56.000By the way, the Syrian experience with urban combat has basically been rubble and leveled cities.
00:06:03.000If you take a look at the major cities like Aleppo in Syria and you will see that the solution by the Syrian forces there was to just completely destroy the city.
00:06:13.000It's unclear how many fighters have been identified.
00:06:16.000Some are already in Russia preparing to enter the conflict, according to the Wall Street Journal.
00:06:19.000Officials declined to elaborate on what else is known about the deployment of Syrian fighters to Ukraine, the status or precise scale of the effort.
00:06:25.000Apparently, Russia is offering volunteers from the country between $200 and $300 to go to Ukraine to operate as guards for six months at a time.
00:06:33.000Which, by the way, demonstrates just how impoverished much of the world is when you are offered $200 to $300 to go risk your life in a country you've never heard of.
00:06:41.000for six months at a time, demonstrates just how terrible things are in Syria, which is a country of course that was basically farmed out to the Russians to handle, thanks to the Obama administration drawing a red line, then refusing to enforce a red line about the use of chemical weapons and then handing over the entire issue to Putin, who promptly came in and essentially made Syria a Russian tributary. Ukraine is turning more and more into a proxy war.
00:07:03.000You've got the West sending in fighters.
00:07:04.000You have the Russians now recruiting fighters from Syria.
00:07:07.000It's turning into more and more of a mess.
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00:08:20.000Fighters are also pouring into the country to fight on the side of the Kiev-based government.
00:08:23.000Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky said last week 16,000 foreigners had volunteered to fight for Ukraine, part of what he described as an international legion.
00:08:31.000With volunteers from other countries flowing into Ukraine, the conflict there could become a new center of gravity for foreign fighters, said Jennifer Caffarella, National Security Fellow at the Institute for the Study of War in Washington, D.C.
00:08:42.000She said the Russian deployment of foreign fighters from Syria into Ukraine internationalized the Ukraine war and therefore could link in Ukraine to broader cross-regional dynamics, particularly in the Middle East.
00:08:53.000So the battle for Ukraine continues apace.
00:08:57.000The human rights violations that the Russians are now engaged in are fairly clear at this point.
00:09:03.000The Ukrainian foreign minister His name is Dmytro Kulebo.
00:09:07.000He says that the people of Ukraine are paying the price for NATO's unwillingness to act.
00:09:12.000Now, of course, NATO has suggested that it does not want to set up a no-fly zone because they don't want to be in direct combat with Russian forces.
00:09:17.000Pretty much everybody in the West agrees on this.
00:09:19.000Once the deterrence failed, all you have left are bad options.
00:09:23.000Here's Ukraine's foreign minister saying that Ukraine is paying the price, which is true.
00:09:26.000It doesn't mean that we should set up a no-fly zone.
00:09:29.000Those countries who had never supplied us with weapons are now doing so.
00:09:45.000It's Ukrainians, it's the people of Ukraine who will pay the price for the reluctance of NATO to act.
00:09:53.000Okay, meanwhile, the Russians are starting to make demand.
00:09:58.000Zelensky, for his part, is asking desperately for sending planes.
00:10:02.000According to the Associated Press, fighting for his country's survival, Ukraine's leader made a desperate plea on Saturday to American lawmakers for the United States to help get more warplanes to his military and cut off Russian oil imports as Kiev tries to stave off the Russian invasion.
00:10:14.000Zelensky opened a private video call with U.S.
00:10:16.000lawmakers by telling them, This could be the last time they see him alive.
00:10:20.000That apparently is not an ill-founded concern.
00:10:22.000There were rumors that Vladimir Putin had actually told Israeli Prime Minister Naftali Bennett, who'd been acting as an emissary at Gobitz, we will talk about that in a moment, that he actually said, we know exactly where Zelensky is.
00:10:32.000So the question of whether Zelensky's life is in danger is really not an open question.
00:10:35.000Zelensky, of course, has remained in Kiev in the capital, which has a vast Russian armored column threatening from the north.
00:10:42.000Apparently, Zelensky told Congress Ukraine needs to secure its skies either through a no-fly zone enforced by NATO or through the provision of more warplanes so Ukraine could better defend itself.
00:10:51.000And that was the major move over the weekend by the United States, was to basically give the go-ahead to a shipment of foreign planes into Ukraine in an attempt to make sure that the sky remains open.
00:11:01.000Meanwhile, the Russians have announced their demands for ending the war in Ukraine, according to Patrick Rievel, who's a Moscow reporter for ABC News.
00:11:08.000He said that Ukraine, according to the Kremlin, Ukraine must change its constitution to formally guarantee it won't join any blocs, i.e.
00:11:17.000It must recognize Crimea as part of Russia.
00:11:18.000It must recognize the eastern separatist regions as independent.
00:11:21.000Now, if it were just the last two, if it were just recognizing Crimea as part of Russia and recognizing the eastern separatist regions as independent, I think that that's probably a deal that gets done.
00:11:31.000The reason that probably gets done is because it's just a...
00:11:34.000Recognition of the reality on the ground, which is those eastern provinces in the Donbass region were already run in proxy fashion by Russia.
00:11:42.000They were disputed by Ukraine, but the reality is that Russia had sent its little green men, so-called little green men, into those areas and already secured those areas for a Russian proxy state over there, and Crimea has been formally annexed by Russia.
00:11:52.000So in reality, Ukraine isn't taking back those areas anytime soon.
00:11:55.000It's that first request, that Ukraine change its constitution to formally guarantee for all time that it won't join any blocs, meaning NATO or the EU, that's going to be the one that's a major holdup.
00:12:04.000Because what that means is that Ukraine is then at the mercy of the Russians pretty much anytime Russia wants.
00:12:09.000Because as long, what we found out here, is that as long as you're not a member of NATO or the EU, if Russia attacks, you're on your own.
00:12:16.000We'll provide you some material, but we're not going to come in and we're not going to save you.
00:12:19.000And so why would Ukraine give that up?
00:12:21.000There was also one more demand, apparently, which is that Russia get to name the prime minister of Ukraine serving alongside Vladimir Zelensky, which of course would be a prelude to Russia murdering Zelensky and then putting the prime minister in the president's spot.
00:12:34.000And everybody sort of knows that at this point.
00:12:35.000Apparently, Ukraine has turned down that position.
00:12:37.000For folks who are saying that Ukraine should just take that deal, the problem is that Ukraine can't take the deal.
00:12:42.000Ukraine can't take the deal because why in the world would you say that you are going to give up your ability to make future moves with regard to who you ally with to a state that has now invaded your country and bombed your major cities and threatened to kill your president?
00:12:57.000Imagine that this were the United States and any foreign invader and their only conditions were not that we give up provinces we barely control but also that the United States never have its own foreign policy again and we get to appoint the vice president.
00:13:08.000That would be a pretty much non-starter and that's how Zelensky and the rest of the world are treating the Russian demands.
00:13:13.000Well, with things getting more and more chaotic, you need to get your financial house in order.
00:13:17.000One way to do that is to stop Running up those giant credit card bills.
00:13:20.000You know the interest rate on those things?
00:14:23.000Officer subject to change without notice.
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00:14:28.000Meanwhile, Vladimir Putin is ramping up the rhetoric because, again, Putin, his entire shtick here is that he has reversed Mutually Assured Destruction.
00:14:35.000Mutually Assured Destruction was a guarantee that there would be no more large wars between major powers.
00:14:44.000And Vladimir Putin was like, OK, well, then let's do the proxy war thing.
00:14:48.000The proxy war thing works just fine for me.
00:14:50.000And so he keeps threatening larger wars to prevent the West from getting more directly involved in Ukraine.
00:14:54.000Here is Vladimir Putin over the course of the last 24 hours.
00:15:00.000Now we are hearing a no-fly zone must be established over the territory of Ukraine.
00:15:08.000It's impossible to do so over the territory of Ukraine itself.
00:15:11.000It's possible only from the territory of some neighboring countries.
00:15:17.000Any move in this direction will be viewed by us as participation in the armed conflict, Of whichever side whose territory will pose a threat to our service members.
00:15:30.000That very second we will view them as participants of the military conflict.
00:15:33.000It would not matter what members they are.
00:15:35.000So he's saying you try to set up a no-fly zone and we will then bomb Poland is essentially what he's claiming there.
00:15:40.000Now he did not say that the shipment of foreign material into Ukraine would be treated as an act of war because of course that would be an act of foolishness.
00:15:46.000If the idea is that a shipment of arms across the Romanian border is considered an act of war by Putin by Romania and by NATO.
00:15:54.000He's declaring his own suicide on a foreign policy scale because the reality of the situation once again is that the only thing that Putin has is those nuclear weapons.
00:16:02.000If it came to a conventional war straight up between the West and Russia, Russia's done.
00:16:06.000And Putin knows that, which is why he keeps threatening nuclear war, of course.
00:16:10.000Meanwhile, internally, Russia has been cracking down on dissent in some pretty significant ways.
00:16:15.000According to the Wall Street Journal, Russia passed a law that threatens prison time for anyone publishing what authorities consider to be false information about the country's invasion of Ukraine, which the Kremlin refers to as a special military operation.
00:16:25.000The law, a change to the country's criminal code, which the lower chamber of Russia's parliament approved on Friday, says anyone found guilty of knowingly disseminating false information and data about the use of Russia's armed forces would be punished by a prison sentence of up to 15 years or a fine of up to 1.5 million rubles, equivalent to about $14,000.
00:16:42.000Reporting data on Russia's military casualties not provided by the Russian Defense Ministry would also be considered a violation.
00:16:47.000This is what straight up authoritarianism looks like, obviously, is you shut down anybody who even utters a word of dissent.
00:16:55.000The move caused news organizations to weigh their options, including suspending operations in Russia, limiting use of their reporters' bylines, or adhering to the Kremlin's description of its actions in Ukraine as a special military operation or peacekeeping mission.
00:17:07.000This basically shut down all foreign media in Russia.
00:17:10.000CNN on Friday said it would completely stop broadcasting in Russia.
00:17:13.000The BBC and Bloomberg News suspended the work of their journalists inside the country to avoid those people being taken hostage by the Russian government.
00:17:21.000The Kremlin spokesman, Dmitry Peskov, told reporters on Saturday the law was justified.
00:17:25.000He said it was urgently needed in connection with the absolutely unprecedented information war unleashed against our country.
00:17:29.000Against this background, it was necessary to adopt a tough law, which of course is a law.
00:17:33.000It wasn't necessary to adopt a tough law, but they're going to anyway.
00:17:37.000Nick Clegg, president for global affairs at Meta, which is Facebook, said soon millions of ordinary Russians will find themselves cut off from reliable information.
00:17:44.000We'll continue to do everything we can to restore our services.
00:17:46.000So they remain available to people to safely and securely express themselves and organize for action.
00:17:51.000Russian authorities on Friday blocked Facebook completely in response to restrictions.
00:17:55.000It said the social media platform had placed on Russian media outlets, including state news agencies like RIA Novosti, Sputnik and RT.
00:18:03.000ABC Director General Tim Davey said this legislation appears to criminalize the process of independent journalism.
00:18:09.000We're not prepared to expose them to the risk of criminal prosecution.
00:18:12.000Meanwhile, the Russians are just arresting people en masse, apparently.
00:18:16.000They've arrested 3,000 people as protests have grown across Russia.
00:18:20.000Not everybody in Russia is up for a completely useless war, according to the New York Times.
00:18:25.000Despite the threat of years-long prison terms, thousands of Russians joined anti-war rallies across the country on Sunday in a striking show of the pent-up anger in Russian society about Putin's invasion of Ukraine.
00:18:35.000The police reported more than 3,000 arrests across the country.
00:18:37.000That is the highest nationwide total officially reported in any single day of protest in recent memory, according to the New York Times.
00:18:43.000An activist group that tracks arrests, OVD Info, reported detentions in 49 separate Russian cities.
00:18:50.000In the city of Kaliningrad near the Baltic Sea, a woman protesting the war was recorded in a video posted on Twitter telling a police officer she had survived the Nazi siege of Leningrad.
00:18:58.000And the officer said, are you here to support the fascists?
00:19:01.000Repeating the Kremlin narrative about the war in Ukraine before calling over other policemen and telling them arrest them all.
00:19:05.000So imagine that you spend your life living under the Soviet Union and living through the Nazi invasion of Russia only to see Russia turn around and invade Ukraine.
00:19:15.000And then you're arrested for protesting that.
00:19:21.000According to the Wall Street Journal, Russia's military chief is under significant pressure thanks to his failures here.
00:19:26.000The Wall Street Journal reports, when Russian President Vladimir Putin ordered the country's nuclear forces to go on high alert last week, he looked down a long table at his defense minister, Sergei Shoigu, who nodded in assent.
00:19:36.000In his decade at the head of the Russian military, Shoigu, who has never been a professional soldier but holds the rank of general of the army, has worked to modernize and professionalize the armed forces, build their image as an effective fighting machine and foreign policy tool.
00:19:47.000Victories in Crimea and Syria helped propel Shoigu and the military to the center, of Putin's Kremlin power structure.
00:19:53.000However, Russian troops' failure to quickly seize Ukraine has shown Shoigu's changes, while real, did not create a fearsome fighting force.
00:20:00.000Poor logistics, flawed strategy, ill-prepared troops mean any victory will be immensely costly and an occupation very difficult to sustain.
00:20:09.000There's room for an off-ramp here if Putin can get it through his head that he's not going to win.
00:20:12.000The longer Ukraine holds out, the more Putin is going to look for an off-ramp, which is why it's necessary to continue shipping materiel into Ukraine to prolong the conflict.
00:20:20.000Experts on the Russian military place some of the blame on Shoigu's willingness to back Putin's plans, even if they're unrealistic.
00:20:25.000That meant agreeing with the assumption that the Ukrainian military would quickly fold in the face of Russia and that Russian troops would be greeted as liberators.
00:20:33.000Michael Kaufman, director of Russia Studies at CNA, a non-profit research and analysis organization, says, beyond Putin, this is very damning for Shoigu.
00:20:39.000By agreeing to these assumptions and this type of operation, he's essentially thrown the Russian military into full-scale disaster.
00:20:45.000So Putin is in deeper than he bargained for right now, and he doesn't have a particularly easy way out.
00:20:50.000He's trying to propaganda his way through this thing.
00:20:53.000The Russians put out a propaganda video that's rather creepy and weird.
00:20:57.000It's basically just a bunch of people chanting pro-Russia slogans passionately into the camera as they wave Russian flags.
00:21:06.000This doesn't look like a giant outpouring of Russian sentiment on behalf of the Ukraine war.
00:21:14.000I don't know why they've got this bizarre looking chunky fellow at the front.
00:21:18.000And whoever doesn't cheer loud enough will be shot. That's the...
00:21:27.000That's the way these things typically go.
00:21:29.000That is a very enthusiastic Brian Stelter lookalike there in that Russian propaganda video.
00:21:34.000Meanwhile, it is very unclear at this point what is going to come next.
00:21:38.000We are sort of on a razor's edge here, which is why everybody is hoping to go weapons down for the moment.
00:21:43.000The biggest thing that the United States is trying to do is calm our allies, because after you watch the Russian bear trot over your border, it's very difficult to look south if you're Lithuania, Latvia, Estonia, and say, yeah, things are going great.
00:21:54.000According to the New York Times, strengthening deterrence in Baltic states is no longer enough to protect against Russia, according to Lithuania's president.
00:22:01.000An attack on one is an attack on all, said U.S.
00:22:04.000He said, the United States, with all allies and partners, we will defend every, every inch of NATO territory should have come under attack.
00:22:09.000Now, there's been a lot of talk about how NATO, it's really after 91, we should have gotten rid of NATO.
00:22:14.000After the fall of the Berlin Wall, after the Soviet Union collapsed, there was no reason for NATO because NATO, of course, had been formed in the aftermath of World War II in order to provide a protection against Stalin's encroachment into Europe.
00:22:27.000And the answer is, well, if NATO didn't exist, wouldn't Putin already be standing in Latvia, Lithuania, Estonia?
00:22:33.000It was not that we provoked Russia into becoming more aggressive on its borders.
00:22:36.000Russia has historically been quite aggressive on its borders.
00:22:39.000It's that there is a lack of trust by the West for whatever arose next.
00:22:43.000If Russia had turned into a thriving democracy rather than an oligarchic dictatorship run on the basis of oil, it would have been a lot easier to make the case that NATO should have been disbanded.
00:23:03.000It seems like a desperate attempt to swivel out of the fact that what really led to this invasion is the West's weakness in the face of Putin, not the West's strength in the face of Putin.
00:23:11.000It was not that NATO existed that caused Putin to invade Ukraine.
00:23:14.000It's the fact that NATO didn't include Ukraine that caused Putin to invade Ukraine.
00:23:17.000That doesn't mean that the West had to acquiesce to Ukraine's attempts to join NATO.
00:23:22.000The problem is we kept giving them an in-between message.
00:23:24.000Maybe you should join, maybe you should not.
00:23:25.000And then we made clear to Putin we weren't going to do anything if he actually invaded sovereign countries like Georgia as well as Crimea in Ukraine.
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00:24:47.000For their part, the Biden administration seems sort of stuck here.
00:24:52.000All they've got at this point is just saying that we should be grateful that Trump is not president, which is weird since when Trump was president, there was no invasion of Ukraine.
00:24:59.000I'm frankly befuddled by the counterfactual in which we learn that Putin definitely would have invaded even if Trump were president, which is weird because Trump was president and he didn't invade.
00:25:07.000Here is Jen Psaki trying to claim that Joe Biden is doing a masterful job on the world stage here.
00:25:13.000You know, another reason why the American people are grateful, the majority of the American people, that President Biden has not taken a page out of his predecessor's playbook as it relates to global engagement and global leadership, because certainly we could be in a different place.
00:25:29.000It's, um, yeah, I'm just going to say that if Trump had been president, do you think he would have spent six months talking about all the things we wouldn't do?
00:25:38.000I mean, that was not very typical Trump.
00:25:40.000At the very least, Trump was extraordinarily erratic in his public statements about foreign policy, which made people quite wary of not knowing what he was going to do.
00:25:47.000Even if he said something nice about Putin, five minutes later, he might be flinging a bomb into Syria or something.
00:26:12.000We've come from several days of meetings with NATO, the European Union, countries beyond the G7, and we see that support not only continue, security support, humanitarian support, economic support, but that support will increase.
00:26:29.000So Blinken said that Vladimir Putin is destined to lose.
00:26:31.000Well, that's sort of the problem is that he is not destined to do anything, right?
00:26:35.000His fate relies solely and completely on his own decision-making and the decision-making of the West in the face of his aggressive predations.
00:26:44.000Whenever people say, history will say, you don't know anything.
00:26:48.000You don't know what history will say because history has not yet been written.
00:26:50.000We don't know what's going to happen in Ukraine yet.
00:26:52.000Here is Antony Blinken doing the arc of history bends toward justice routine.
00:26:57.000Just winning a battle is not winning the war.
00:27:01.000Taking a city does not mean he's taking the hearts and minds of the Ukrainian people.
00:27:05.000On the contrary, he is destined to lose.
00:27:08.000The Ukrainian people have demonstrated that they will not allow themselves to be subjugated to Vladimir Putin or to Russia's rule.
00:27:15.000Okay, meanwhile, the options for the United States are shrinking rather rapidly.
00:27:20.000And they're trying to offer some sort of off-ramp to Putin.
00:27:22.000And what that really means is you steadily ramp up the military pressure as much as you can by shipping in wartime material, including planes, into Ukraine.
00:27:29.000And then meanwhile, you try to negotiate some sort of off-ramp where Putin doesn't lose complete face with his people.
00:27:35.000He gets to claim some sort of victory and then he goes home and then presumably we continue shipping enormous amounts of material into Ukraine so Ukraine can defend itself and deter Russia invasion in the first place.
00:27:44.000To its credit, the Biden administration is doing some of this stuff.
00:27:47.000So Tony Blinken did say yesterday that the United States has given a green light to NATO countries to send jets to Ukraine.
00:27:53.000What more can the United States do here if, for instance, the Polish government, a NATO member, wants to send fighter jets?
00:28:01.000Does that get a green light from the U.S.?
00:28:04.000In fact, we're talking with our Polish friends right now about what we might be able to do to backfill their needs if, in fact, they choose to provide these fighter jets to the Ukrainians.
00:28:15.000So essentially what we're saying to Poland right now is we will send you some new fighter jets if you send your old fighter jets to Ukrainians so that they can fight for the skies over Ukraine.
00:28:23.000Blinken also said that perhaps the United States would discuss a ban on Russian oil imports.
00:28:27.000I don't know where the perhaps is at this point.
00:28:29.000I mean, either you're at war or you're not at war.
00:28:30.000Like this idea that we're supposed to not ramp up domestic oil production because we have to keep the oil prices low.
00:28:42.000And when it comes to oil, Russian oil, I was on the phone yesterday with the President and other members of the Cabinet on exactly this subject, and we are now talking to our European partners and allies to look in a coordinated way at the prospect of banning the import of Russian oil, while making sure that there is still an appropriate supply of oil on world markets.
00:29:03.000Okay, as we'll discuss in a moment, there's a lot of confusion inside the Biden administration.
00:29:07.000One of the big problems here is that the Biden administration seems pretty confused about its own messaging.
00:29:10.000On the one hand, you'll have people inside the Biden administration openly saying that Putin is committing war crimes, which pretty obviously he is.
00:29:17.000On the other hand, you'll have Antony Blinken obfuscating on war crimes.
00:29:20.000And you kind of know what Blinken is doing.
00:29:21.000Again, I am not a Tony Blinken fan, but Antony Blinken suggesting that Vladimir Putin, we don't know about the war crimes, we're not sure.
00:29:28.000That is a way of saying to Putin, You need to stop this now or we are going to have to come out and accuse you of war crimes.
00:29:34.000He doesn't want to overtly accuse Putin of being a war criminal because once you do that, there are a bunch of new sort of actions that must be taken, including perhaps the implication that you might try to set up a no-fly zone.
00:29:46.000Because if you know that you are indiscriminately bombing civilians from the air, it makes it very difficult for NATO members to stand by and do nothing.
00:29:51.000That was sort of the case when it came to the Yugoslav war in the middle of the 90s.
00:29:56.000So here's Anthony Blinken trying to avoid stepping into a bear pit.
00:30:01.000We've seen very credible reports of deliberate attacks on civilians, which would constitute a war crime.
00:30:09.000We've seen very credible reports about the use of certain weapons.
00:30:13.000And what we're doing right now is documenting all of this, putting it all together, looking at it, and making sure that as people and the appropriate Okay, so, again, they're trying to give Putin an off-ramp while at the same time ramping up the military pressure, which is correct.
00:30:41.000Now, there are some measures that are being taken here that really are unprecedented and, if they are used as precedent, are kind of scary.
00:30:50.000payments firms like Visa and MasterCard said they were suspending operations in Russia completely over the invasion of Ukraine, and they would work with clients and partners there to seek to cease all transactions within days.
00:31:01.000All transactions initiated with Visa cards issued in Russia will no longer work outside the country.
00:31:05.000Any Visa cards issued outside of Russia will no longer work within the country.
00:31:09.000Al Kelly, the Chief Executive Officer of Visa, said, We are compelled to act following Russia's unprovoked invasion of Ukraine and the unacceptable events that we have witnessed.
00:31:16.000For those who are very concerned about the debanking efforts of, for example, the trucker convoy in Canada, they look at the simple fact that this is possible.
00:31:23.000That credit card companies can just, boom, turn off the credit flow and prevent you from going to the supermarket.
00:31:32.000Because if the precedent is that a country does a thing that you don't like, and therefore Visa can just cut off all operations, Would you trust that company?
00:31:42.000You can say that it's justified, but there have to be some pretty strict limits placed, I would assume in American law, on American companies doing this sort of stuff to American citizens.
00:31:50.000Because frankly, I wouldn't want to see this logic extended to anybody outside of what is currently happening in Russia.
00:31:56.000I also have to say, I'm not particularly certain how cutting off the visa cards for a normal Russian citizen is going to somehow solve this conflict per se.
00:32:04.000I see what Visa is doing, I see what MasterCard is doing, but You know, this is going to exacerbate a really growing humanitarian problem inside of Russia.
00:32:13.000Again, I understand that that may be necessary in order to pressure Putin from the ground up, although I've yet to see economic sanctions end with the sort of regime change that people wanted to end with.
00:32:22.000This was tried against Saddam Hussein with regard to sanctions for years and years and years.
00:32:26.000The impoverishment of a regime for purposes of cutting off its military supply and power, like with Iran or with Iraq, that's one thing.
00:32:32.000Trying to just go after a regime that has committed warfare in order to In order to do what?
00:32:41.000That does not have a long, prized history.
00:32:44.000Speaking of which, the United States still has not cut off the Russian oil at this point.
00:32:48.000The Labor Secretary, Marty Walsh, he couldn't give an answer yesterday as to why we have not cut off the Russian oil at this point.
00:32:55.000A lot of people still don't want to touch crude even if there is a carve-out.
00:32:58.000I want to understand the message the administration is sending right now.
00:33:01.000Do you want refiners to buy that crude?
00:33:03.000Or do you want them to step back from it?
00:33:04.000Is that a welcome development, even though the sanctions aren't there?
00:33:07.000Well, again, I'm not in a position to be able to speak on that right now.
00:33:10.000I know that as the president had laid out the sanctions last week, or actually over the last 10 days, he's been very thoughtful in doing them, working across the globe in doing them.
00:33:20.000And I think those, I'm sure those conversations are happening right now.
00:33:25.000And thank you for that obfuscation, sir.
00:33:27.000Meanwhile, the oil prices have spiked to $130 a barrel.
00:33:30.000As the Russians escalated their attacks, according to the Wall Street Journal, oil buyers racing to replace Russia's taboo crude are paying record premiums for barrels that can be delivered now rather than later, reflecting worries about adequate near-term fuel supplies and expectations that high prices will reduce consumption and encourage drilling.
00:33:45.000Prices for April deliveries of crude have shot up since Russia invaded Ukraine.
00:34:25.000The widest spread on record came in April 2020, when the global economy was locking down to slow the spread of COVID-19, and front-month U.S.
00:34:32.000oil futures prices plunged into negative territory.
00:34:34.000The worry was that fuel consumption was falling faster than oil producers could actually shut off the spigot, and so supply radically outpaced demand at that point in time.
00:34:43.000So the oil prices have shot up fairly dramatically.
00:34:46.000Wheat prices are shooting up dramatically as well, because Ukraine is a source of an enormous amount of food.
00:34:54.000According to the BBC, UK food producers don't import many items from Russia or Ukraine, but prices can still rise because of an increase in associated costs.
00:35:01.000Meanwhile, the cost of everyday food might rise in places like Turkey and North Africa, which do rely on wheat and corn from Ukraine and Russia as well.
00:35:10.000And of course, the stock market has been tanking nearly everywhere, so that is going to cut off some pension funds.
00:35:15.000So what is left in the tank for the West?
00:35:19.000I mean, again, I keep coming back to you just have to keep resupplying the military weaponry and hope that Russia does not finish off Ukraine.
00:35:26.000If Russia finishes off Ukraine, then it consolidates its gains.
00:35:30.000And essentially, at that point, the West has a choice.
00:35:33.000They can either continue to suffer in the face of of cutting off Russians oil supply to Europe, or and a new Cold War sort of begins, or they can back down again like they have historically done.
00:35:46.000But if they're able to rest If all of this chaos on the foreign front puts you in mind of human mortality, now would be an excellent time for you to get the insurance that you need.
00:35:55.000negotiated solution. That is in fact the best available off-ramp here. It has been for at least a week, really since the invasion began. We'll get to more of that in just one second.
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00:39:16.000Breonna Taylor, she was caught in the crossfire of those bullets.
00:39:19.000As soon as your brain's registering, it's already over.
00:39:22.000The media got so many things wrong in this case, saying we had the wrong apartment, her name wasn't on the warrant, she was shot and killed in her sleep, in her bed.
00:39:31.000This is not true, and all the while you're hearing all these outside influences from athletes and Oprah and Ellen DeGeneres and Kamala Harris and Joe Biden, all those people come in and attacking you, putting your name on their account, saying he should be in prison.
00:39:46.000All these things that they have no idea what they're talking about.
00:39:51.000The more we attack police for doing their job, the less good qualified police you're going to have.
00:39:57.000When you read 12 Seconds in the Dark, you will find out the truth of what really happened the night of the Breonna Taylor raid.
00:40:03.000It's a really important story and remember, this book was supposed to be published originally by an imprint of Simon & Schuster and the wokes over there got it cancelled.
00:40:32.000You're listening to the largest, fastest growing conservative podcast and radio show in the nation.
00:40:41.000So the West is looking for options in Ukraine.
00:40:44.000Again, I think the only option really is you just have to keep the resupply up.
00:40:47.000You gotta get the jets in there, you gotta get the bullets in there, you gotta get the guns in there, you gotta get all of the Stinger missiles, you gotta get what you can get in there.
00:40:55.000and allow the Ukrainians to fend off the complete takeover of Ukraine. If they can do that, then there's an opening for Putin to take some sort of face-saving off-ramp.
00:41:04.000Boris Johnson from the UK, the Prime Minister, who's taken a very hawkish position on this situation, he has a piece in the New York Times today talking about the options that are on the table for the West.
00:41:14.000He says it's now clear diplomacy never had a chance.
00:41:16.000It's precisely because of our respect for Russia we find the actions of Putin so unconscionable.
00:41:20.000Putin is attempting the destruction of the very foundation of international relations and the UN Charter, the right of nations to decide their own future free from aggression and fear of invasion.
00:41:28.000His assault on Ukraine began with a confected pretext and a flagrant violation of international law.
00:41:32.000It is sinking further into a sordid campaign of war crimes and unthinkable violence against civilians.
00:41:38.000There can be no comparison with the assault on Ukraine.
00:41:39.000We in the UK know something of Putin's ruthlessness, says Boris Johnson.
00:41:44.000Four years ago, we endured the outcome of Russian operatives' use of chemical weapons against people in Salisbury, England, and our allies rallied to our side.
00:41:51.000We also warned the world that the world was entering into a period of competition with authoritarian states who test the mettle of the West in nearly every domain.
00:42:01.000He says it's no longer enough to express warm platitudes about the rules-based international order.
00:42:04.000We're going to have to actively defend it.
00:42:06.000So, he says, here's his six-point plan for Ukraine.
00:42:08.000First, we have to mobilize an international humanitarian coalition.
00:42:12.000Second, we have to do more to help Ukraine defend itself.
00:42:15.000Third, we have to maximize economic pressure on Putin's regime.
00:42:17.000Fourth, we have to prevent any creeping normalization of what Russia does in Ukraine.
00:42:21.000We can't allow Kremlin to bite off chunks of an independent country and inflict immense human suffering and then creep back into the fold.
00:42:27.000Well, it's that fourth one that's going to be a sticking point because Russia is not going to give up the Donbass region or Crimea.
00:42:32.000So if the United States And the West take the position that basically Putin can never be given anything here.
00:42:39.000It's going to be very difficult to find an off-ramp.
00:42:41.000He says then we should always be open to diplomacy and de-escalation provided that the government of Ukraine has full agency in any potential settlement.
00:42:47.000There can't be a new Yalta decided over by the heads of the people of Ukraine by external powers.
00:42:51.000And then, of course, he says we have to strengthen Euro-Atlantic security.
00:42:54.000It's that fourth point that he mentions that there can't be any normalization of what Russia does to Ukraine.
00:42:59.000That normalization already took place in Georgia in 2008.
00:43:01.000It already took place in Crimea in 2014.
00:43:04.000The real question now is how do you establish status quo ante and then begin to pour resources into border areas with Russia to deter invasions like this one?
00:43:15.000Because all of these other efforts at mediation are just going to be a giant fail.
00:43:19.000The United States is taking the most bizarre tack with regard to negotiation.
00:43:23.000As I say, I am not ripping on the Biden administration for the amount of military material they are pouring into Ukraine.
00:43:29.000In fact, I think that's a good strategy.
00:43:31.000The attempts to strategize with our European allies to get humanitarian and military aid into Ukraine, that's good from the Biden administration.
00:43:37.000By the way, even the attempt to downplay and deescalate some of the rhetoric is not a bad move by the Biden administration, where they are Completely failing is when it comes to their attempts at international diplomacy.
00:43:47.000And the reason I say this is because they are still operating under the assumption that you can turn states that look very much like Vladimir Putin's states into friends rather than enemies by offering them some sort of concessions.
00:43:58.000At the same time that you're learning the lesson that authoritarian dictators do not care about their commitment and will do whatever they can to maximize their own power, you are attempting to make overtures to authoritarian dictators who are not going to give you anything.
00:44:11.000This is the move that the Biden administration is simultaneously making.
00:44:17.000And when I say that it's bizarre, I mean, like, the United States is now trying to go to Venezuela to act as a go-between.
00:44:24.000Nicolas Maduro is a socialist dictator who has his people eating dogs in the streets of Caracas.
00:44:30.000And you've got the blinkin' Biden administration sending negotiators down to Venezuela to use them as some sort of go-between in an attempt to pry Venezuela loose from Russia.
00:44:40.000According to the Washington Post, a group of senior U.S.
00:44:42.000officials flew to Venezuela on Saturday for a meeting with Maduro's government to discuss the possibility of easing sanctions on Venezuelan oil exports as the Biden administration weighs a ban on imports of Russian oil and gas, according to two people familiar with the situation.
00:44:54.000So by the way, how kind of morally disreputable is this?
00:44:57.000What Biden is now saying to Venezuela is, OK, the Russians, they're really bad.
00:45:01.000You know, they invaded a sovereign country.
00:45:18.000We will go to a foreign nation that hates our guts, that sees the United States as a great Satan, and we'll ask them for the oil as opposed to the Russians in order so that we can cut off the Russians.
00:45:32.000According to the Washington Post, The trip is the highest level U.S.
00:45:36.000visit to the socialist state in years and comes as the United States is seeking to isolate Russia for its invasion of Ukraine.
00:45:41.000But here's the thing, we're not even isolating Russia.
00:45:42.000Because in the same time that we are, quote-unquote, isolating Russia, we are now attempting to make overtures to Russia directly in order so that we can make concessions to Iran.
00:45:52.000So the lesson that the Biden administration is taking away from this is not we need a stronger world stance against authoritarian states that hate our allies, particularly our independent allies.
00:46:01.000Instead, the move by the Biden administration is what if we just go to more of our enemies and we make concessions to them?
00:46:08.000And what if we even talk with the Russians about making concessions to them?
00:46:11.000According to the Wall Street Journal, fresh demands from Russia threatened to derail talks to restore the 2015 Iran nuclear deal.
00:46:17.000Moscow said it wanted written guarantees that Ukraine-related sanctions won't prevent it from trading broadly with Tehran under a revived pact.
00:46:24.000So now, because Biden wants some sort of garbage bullcrap deal with the Iranians, the Russians are holding him up.
00:46:33.000The demands made by Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov on Saturday, dismissed by U.S.
00:46:36.000officials on Sunday, came as Western and Iranian officials said they were near to reaching a deal to restore the nuclear pact, which lifted most international sanctions on Iran in exchange for tight but temporary, temporary restrictions on Tehran's nuclear programs.
00:46:50.000Western officials said they wanted a deal on the nuclear file in place this week.
00:46:56.000We're using the Russians as the go-between in the Middle East.
00:46:59.000Well, we are sanctioning them on the global stage and shipping weapons into Ukraine to fight them.
00:47:05.000Meanwhile, by the way, the lead Russian negotiator, his name is Mikhail Ulyanov, he's openly bragging about the fact that Iran is besting the United States in this negotiation, thanks to the help of the Russians.
00:47:16.000The diplomatic incompetence of this administration is truly astonishing.
00:47:19.000You know, when people say, oh, look how they're mobilizing our European allies.
00:47:22.000The European allies mobilized themselves and the United States, as always, jumped on the backseat of the car once it was already in motion.
00:47:29.000When it comes to Iran, the Russians are just leading us around by the nose.
00:48:17.000It's turned into Thomas Friedman of the New York Times begging China to help out because nothing demonstrates strength quite like begging China.
00:48:25.000Thomas Friedman, whose theories about foreign policy have been wrong on nearly along every step of the way.
00:48:31.000I mentioned last week the Thomas Friedman McDonald's theory of politics suggesting the countries with McDonald's don't fight each other.
00:48:37.000Now, according to the New York Times, with every passing day, the war in Ukraine becomes a bigger threat, becomes a bigger tragedy for the Ukrainian people, but also a bigger threat to the future of Europe and the world at large.
00:48:46.000There's only one country that might have the power to stop it.
00:48:52.000I'm sure China is going to do something.
00:48:54.000He says if China announced that rather than staying neutral, it was joining the economic boycott of Russia, it might shake Putin enough to stop this vicious war.
00:49:01.000At a minimum, it would give him pause because now he has no other significant ally aside from India in the world.
00:49:06.000Why would Xi Jinping take such a stand, which would seemingly undermine his dream of seizing Taiwan?
00:49:10.000The short answer is the past eight decades of relative peace among the great powers led to a rapidly globalizing world that has been key to China's rapid economic rise and the elevation out of poverty for some 800 million Chinese people since 1980.
00:49:22.000Peace has been very good for China, says Thomas Friedman.
00:49:24.000Again, completely misunderstanding the nature of the Chinese Communist Party in the same way that he completely misunderstood the nature of Putin in the same way he completely misunderstands the nature of Iran.
00:49:56.000Unless you have, if you have no grand strategy here, what you end up with is a bunch of tactics.
00:50:02.000Some of the tactics will succeed, some of the tactics will fail.
00:50:05.000The difference between tactics and strategy, tactics are how you move troops around on a battlefield, strategy is how you move troops around inside of an entire war.
00:50:13.000Strategy is a higher level than tactics.
00:50:16.000When you don't have a strategy, you just end up making tactical moves without any real plan.
00:50:20.000And that is what the left has been reduced to here.
00:50:22.000Because again, their giant strategy failed, but they refuse to see that their strategy failed.
00:50:47.000As always, they can be prosecuting the war in Ukraine halfway correctly, and at the same time, they can be making overtures to nations which are more likely to make future wars like this one significantly more likely impossible.
00:50:59.000The incompetence really knows few boundaries.
00:51:01.000Alrighty, we'll be back here later today with an additional hour of content.
00:51:03.000In the meantime, go check out our newest podcast, Morning Wire.
00:51:06.000Today's episode is available right now on Apple, Spotify, or wherever you listen to podcasts.
00:51:44.000Wake up every morning with our show, Morning Wire.
00:51:47.000On today's episode, the humanitarian crisis in Ukraine worsens as Russia escalates attacks, the price of gas surges, and Hollywood pulls out of Russia.