Colonel Jacques Baud holds a Master's in Echometrics and post-graduate diplomas in international relations from the Graduate Institute of International Relations in Geneva. He worked several years in the Swiss Strategic Intelligence Services, and was trained in U.S. and British intelligence services. He was an advisor to contingents in the African Union's International Peace Support Training Center in Nairobi, before being seconded to NATO by the Swiss government to head NATO. He contributed in establishing the concept of intelligence in UN peacekeeping operations, and headed the first integrated UN Joint Mission Analysis Center in the Sudan in 2005 and 2006. He also headed the research department on the International Peacekeeping Training Centre in the Kenyan capital, Addis Aboud, before serving as the head of NATO's International Liaison Department in the Middle East and Africa. He retired as a Colonel in General Staff, which is a rank of colonel who had commanding activities, but was able to lead any part of the Swiss Army's General Staff. In this episode, Colonel Baud explains why Switzerland is a "neutral" country, why Switzerland's neutrality is so important, and what it means to be a country that is willing to stay out of conflict and defend its territory, and why Switzerland should be recognized as a country with a neutral status by the rest of the European Union and the United States, and the other countries it has good relations with, like Australia and Japan. in this episode of the podcast by and by . is produced in English and German. . . . is a podcast about the Swiss neutrality, and is available on all major podcast directories, including the New York Times, the BBC, the New Statesman, NPR, and NPR. , and the Washington Post, among other media outlets. You can find us on all social medias, if you search for us on social media, including your favourite podcasting platform, and listen to our podcast on the podcast on your favourite streaming platform, by searching for , or any other podcast you might be interested in listening to my podcast on this podcast. Thank you for listening to this podcast! Thank you so much for your support, I really really appreciate it. I hope you enjoy it! - EJ Baud, EJ, Ej, Efek, EK, and EJUY, EJEK, Ej and EjEZ, .
00:00:02.000Colonel Jacques Baud holds a master's in Echometrics and postgraduate diplomas in international security and international relations from the Graduate Institute of International Relations in Geneva.
00:00:16.000He worked several years in the Swiss Strategic Intelligence Services.
00:00:20.000He was trained in U.S. and British intelligence services.
00:00:23.000He was an advisor to contingents there.
00:00:44.000He installed mine action programs, presumably meaning removal of landmines, in Chad, Sudan, Somalia, and Ethiopia.
00:00:53.000He contributed in establishing the concept of intelligence in UN peacekeeping operations, and he headed the first integrated UN Joint Mission Analysis Center in the Sudan in 2005 and 2006.
00:01:07.000He was head of policy Doctrine at the UN Department of Peacekeeping Operations.
00:01:13.000He headed the research department on the African Union's International Peace Support Training Center in Nairobi before being seconded to NATO by the Swiss government to head NATO. You know, it's interesting about your biography.
00:01:40.000It doesn't show that any kind of military...
00:01:44.000Were you in the Swiss military at one point?
00:02:11.000I started with the command of a commando unit, then I was in command of a tank battalion, a Leopard 2 battalion, and I ended as colonel in general staff, first for intelligence, and then at the general staff of the Swiss Army, and that's my current, I say, I retired if you want.
00:02:33.000That's my current rank, if you want, Colonel in General Staff.
00:02:37.000Colonel in General Staff in the Swiss Army is a rank of colonel who had commanding activities, but in General Staff means that you are able to lead any part of a It's a little bit of
00:03:12.000a paradox because the Swiss are famously neutral in wars.
00:03:18.000They really try to stay out of wars, correct?
00:04:02.000Of course, we are neutral since the 19th century because, precisely, we came into a situation in which you had Swiss soldiers fighting against other Swiss soldiers.
00:04:15.000The only mercenary service which is currently allowed by the Swiss Constitution is the mercenary service for the Vatican, the Holy Siege in Rome, and this is the Vatican Guard.
00:04:27.000This is the only mercenary service which is allowed.
00:04:30.000But we used to be mercenaries, and that's precisely for that reason that we learned from that lessons and we decided to be neutral.
00:04:38.000And even during the Cold War, Switzerland had still had an army.
00:04:44.000Switzerland had one of the biggest fleet of armored artillery, for instance, had almost one of the biggest fleet of tanks also during the Cold War.
00:04:58.000Tries to stay out of conflicts, but it's ready to defend its territory.
00:05:04.000And in fact, it was even one of the obligations set by the so-called great powers at the beginning of the 19th century, when they granted to Switzerland the status of neutral state, but with the obligation To prevent any misuse of its own territory.
00:05:24.000And in fact, it's interesting that you asked the question because that's also the status that was suggested for Ukraine, meaning a country that is neutral, But has the ability to defend its territory and prevent any use or misuse of its own territory.
00:05:44.000And that's exactly the situation of Switzerland.
00:05:47.000That's the reason why, by the way, since the Swiss neutrality was not unilaterally declared, such as, for instance, when at the beginning of World War II, the US was neutral.
00:05:58.000But the neutrality of the US at that stage was unilaterally declared, meaning that the US declared themselves neutral.
00:06:05.000For Switzerland, the problem is different because all the European nations have recognized the neutrality of Switzerland.
00:06:13.000As a result, Switzerland has a country that is acknowledged, recognized by all its neighbors, and therefore its neutrality has in fact more, let's say, weight than other countries.
00:06:32.000Yeah, Australia is in the same situation, but it got its neutrality later on.
00:06:37.000That was after World War II. But it's a similar situation that neutrality was in fact imposed the rest of Europe.
00:06:44.000That's the reason why this is a neutrality which is respected by those countries who imposed it to the countries.
00:06:52.000But Switzerland has never been, let's say, has never thought, for instance, that it would be exempted for a war in Europe.
00:07:01.000Of course, it didn't enter the war in World War I, World War II. But for instance, during the Cold War, Switzerland was convinced that if a war would erupt in Europe, Switzerland would be part of it.
00:07:15.000And in fact, as you rightly saw in my biography, During the Cold War, I was strategic intelligence officer, but I was trained in the US. I was not trained in the Soviet Union, you see.
00:07:29.000So we were part, I mean, Switzerland is definitely part of the West.
00:08:13.000So Switzerland is neutral because it doesn't want to enter or contribute to conflict, but it's ready to wage a war, to defend its territory and to join other countries.
00:08:27.000And during the Cold War, it was clear that if any war would erupt, it would be between East and West.
00:08:33.000And therefore, Switzerland would certainly be integrated into the Western, let's say, the Western part of the conflict.
00:08:42.000So it's neutral, yes, but with, let's say, strong Western flavor.
00:08:47.000I want to talk about Ukraine and then maybe a little bit about Gaza.
00:08:51.000Let me ask you very briefly one question.
00:08:54.000What is the relationship between Switzerland and NATO? Well, Switzerland is part of the so-called Partnership for Peace.
00:09:01.000You may remember that at the end of the Cold War, as Eastern European countries asked for entering NATO, there was some reluctance in NATO to absorb all these countries at the same time.
00:09:18.000And therefore, it was decided to create kind of a waiting room, if you want, for NATO. And that was called the Partnership for Peace.
00:09:26.000And in this Partnership for Peace, you had all the Eastern European countries, including Russia, by the way, Ukraine, Russia, Belarus, And neutral countries like Sweden, Finland, Austria, Switzerland were also part of this partnership.
00:09:45.000Slowly, you had those countries accessing to NATO, so they became allies to NATO and no longer partners.
00:09:55.000Switzerland is a NATO partner, while if Switzerland would enter NATO, it would become an ally.
00:10:02.000And in the NATO, you have basically within NATO, most staff are obviously members of the allied countries, meaning NATO members.
00:10:14.000And for my position, I stayed five years in NATO, but that was the result of a special negotiation between Switzerland and NATO in the framework of the Partnership for Peace.
00:10:25.000And in NATO, I was responsible for the struggle against the proliferation of small arms.
00:10:31.000In that capacity, because I was there between 2012 and 2017, and that's precisely the time when you had the Euromaidan revolution in Ukraine.
00:10:45.000And NATO had concerns about where the Ukrainian rebels, meaning the Russian-speaking rebels, got their weapons from.
00:10:55.000And since it was my area, in fact, I had to follow the situation in Ukraine.
00:11:02.000And in addition to that, as you have seen in my biography, I am also a UN expert for the security sector reform.
00:11:11.000And in 2014, as Ukraine had a huge problem within its own military, I was asked to join a NATO team to help the Ukrainians to rebuild their military system and to have something which was supposed to be more functional Because the problem of the Ukrainian army at that time is that you had,
00:11:37.000within the Ukrainian army, you had both Ukraine speaking and Russian speaking, meaning ethnic Ukrainians and ethnic Russians.
00:11:47.000And that created huge tensions within the armed forces.
00:11:51.000And they had, in fact, they had a lot of murders.
00:11:58.000And that explains also how the rebels in 2014, they got their weapons because we expected, in fact, the Russians to deliver weapons to the rebels.
00:12:11.000What happened is that you had mostly Ukrainian units Ethnic Russian units, basically, defecting to the rebels.
00:12:20.000And you had completely artillery regiments changing sides, literally.
00:12:25.000And that created a lot of tensions within the Ukrainian army.
00:12:31.000The Ukrainian army was no longer reliable for the new authorities in Kiev.
00:12:38.000And they had to replace In several areas, they replaced the Ukrainian army by those paramilitary forces.
00:12:46.000You may have heard about these Azov battalion and other private sector battalion, which were, in fact, extreme right-wing units, by the way, which were extremely brutal, that were not really trained for military work, but mostly for military Kind of brutal repression, we can say that way.
00:13:11.000And that created a lot of tension with the UK. So Ukrainians asked NATO to help them to rebuild their armed forces along a more Ukrainian ethnic line.
00:13:23.000And that's what NATO did, in fact, or helped to do.
00:13:29.000I'm not sure this was really made properly, but at least NATO attempted to respond to this request, and I was involved in that as well.
00:13:39.000So I went several times in Ukraine to assess the situation, everything under the heading of NATO. And that was for me quite special because, first of all, it gave me a very much insider view within the Ukrainian revolution and everything that happened just after that.
00:14:00.000And of course, as Swiss, it was a kind of a unique position because Switzerland was not supposed to be involved in that kind of activities within Ukraine.
00:14:11.000So that explains why, as the Russians started the special military operation in February 2022, that explains why I decided to explain a little bit the background of this conflict and how this conflict could have been prevented, because we could have prevented that, and to explain a little bit more What are the whereabouts in this conflict?
00:14:40.000Because my view is that the picture that we have in the media, but also, and more importantly, at political level, I would say a decision-making level, in fact, we have a totally distorted view Both of the conflict of the way Russian is waging this war and the way the Ukrainians are waging this war.
00:15:04.000As a result, we have, and that's exactly what we are witnessing right now, we see that we had a perception or a picture of the situation, and this picture was distorted, as I said, and today this picture enters in collision with the reality.
00:15:22.000And that's exactly what we are facing today.
00:15:25.000And that's exactly what the Ukrainians are facing today.
00:15:27.000And then we see the discrepancies between what we wanted to achieve or what the West wanted to achieve and what it is able to do.
00:15:36.000This is exactly the point where we are now.
00:15:39.000And I think we are at a crucial point.
00:16:18.000Well, the picture we have is that we tend to think that Russia attacked Ukraine just for the sake of gaining territory and expanding Russia and recreating Soviet Union or Tsarist Russia.
00:16:37.000And in fact, the reason is much simpler than that.
00:16:46.000At the end of the Euromaidan or the Maidan revolution, the President Yanukovych was...
00:16:52.000Let me interrupt you for a second, Colonel.
00:16:55.000There is a kind of dissenting perception that the Maidan revolution was the result Of US match nations, including $5 billion that were pumped in by USAID, which is often a front group for the CIA. Not often, but almost always.
00:17:18.000And then there's this very damning conversation between Victoria and Newland Absolutely.
00:17:24.000And the U.S. ambassador a month before the overthrow of the government in which you have a U.S. State Department official choosing the cabinet that will be put in place after a revolution that had not yet happened.
00:17:36.000And that, you know, a lot of the world sees that and says, okay, this was the U.S. overthrowing an elected government of Ukraine.
00:17:47.000Of course, I started my history in 2014, but we can go back probably to 2013 or 2012 even.
00:17:57.000The very basic issue was that at one point, Ukraine contemplated the idea of joining the EU. And the problem of Ukraine is that it had an industrial basis that was created during the Cold War.
00:18:13.000And during the Cold War, you had within all the different republics of the USSR, you had kind of a division of labor.
00:18:21.000Specifically, for instance, when you had Ukraine producing engines for Russian jets, for instance.
00:18:30.000So, meaning that the MiGs or Suhoi fighters had engines that were manufactured in Ukraine.
00:18:38.000And after the Cold War, this kind of collaboration continued.
00:18:45.000As a result, you had Ukraine producing engines that were only suited for Russian aircraft.
00:18:54.000The problem is that when Ukraine started to have the idea to join the EU, the industrial capacity it had were not really suited for the European market, but it was very much tailored for the Ukrainian Russian market, if you want.
00:19:13.000And that had severe consequence because the Ukrainians were absolutely not ready to engage the European market.
00:19:22.000As a result, when you had the negotiation with the European Union, they proposed kind of a three-parted treaty or organization that would involve Russia, Ukraine, and the European Union.
00:19:40.000So that Ukraine could keep its industrial basis and its Russia-oriented production while still having a free trade arrangement with the EU. The problem is that the EU didn't accept that.
00:19:56.000They said, no, there is no way you can do that.
00:19:58.000You have to choose either Russia or EU. And then the Ukrainian government said, well, okay, if it's that way, we have to think about this agreement and to see how we can reshape the whole thing so that it can accommodate our industrial interest.
00:20:16.000And President Yanukovych asked for a pause.
00:20:20.000And this pause was then interpreted by Western media As a stop in the negotiation.
00:20:29.000And that triggered a first set of demonstration, the first Maidan, if you want.
00:20:35.000And this first set of demonstration was, in fact, a very peaceful demonstration from the people of Ukraine, asking its government not to abandon the negotiation with European Union, to continue and to proceed in the discussion, because they thought that it was a full stop.
00:20:57.000I don't mean to interrupt this fascinating story, but the first Maidan demonstrations, let's not call it a revolution at this point, but just peaceful demonstrations, was that predominantly ethnic Ukrainians who were participating, or was it even between ethnic Russians and ethnic Ukrainians?
00:21:20.000At that time, the polls show that you had exactly 50% of the Ukrainian population in favor of joining EU and 50% reluctant to join EU. So it was not really a language matter.
00:21:36.000It was a mere question of interest and people were Well, in fact, shared between the two possibilities, because joining EU at this point would mean to have a lot of companies closing and laid off and all that.
00:21:55.000So meaning that the population was very much shared, but this was a very much Ukrainian, regardless of the language.
00:22:06.000The problem is that I think that at that point, Victoria Nuland and so, they picked this moment to see that there was an opportunity to engage into something more, I would say,
00:22:22.000radical and to have then a real regime change because Yanukovych, although he was not really in favor of Russia, but he was, yes, probably more pro-Russia than pro-Western, we could say that way.
00:22:37.000And that prompted the idea of having a regime change.
00:22:43.000That's where Victoria Nuland enters the scene.
00:22:47.000And we had then militias or paramilitaries from some right-wing parties coming from the western part of Ukraine.
00:22:58.000Namely, Lvov, which is historically right-wing.
00:23:02.000It has been historically extremely against the Soviets during the Cold War, even during the Second World War, by the way.
00:23:11.000And you had some kind of militias that came to Kiev and then started a second Maidan.
00:23:19.000That was much more violent and brutal.
00:23:21.000And that's when you had shootings and all that with agent provocateurs and this kind of thing.
00:23:27.000By the way, that was end of 2013, beginning of 2014.
00:23:36.000And at that point, by the way, last year, I think it was in November, a Ukrainian court estimated that Maidan, because you had killings that were said to be ordered by the president, But this court last year decided or judged that, in fact, these killings were agents provocateurs from outside.
00:24:04.000And that's exactly the point where the West enters the game here.
00:24:11.000And you accept that court finding that these were agents provocateurs from outside?
00:24:17.000Well, that's a Ukrainian court, and this Ukrainian court, in fact, has no real interest to say that, you know, because so far the official narrative in Ukraine was these, what I called agents provocateurs, were in fact an agent paid by the government, by the Yanukovych government.
00:24:41.000And today, this version, this story or this narrative Is, in fact, challenged by the decision of the court, meaning that I think we can really rely on the decision of that court.
00:24:55.000And so by agents provocateurs, are they talking about people who were paid by Western intelligence agencies, perhaps?
00:25:06.000I remember at the time we had during the Maiden revolution or the events and riots and all that, we had people involved in those riots speaking perfect American and having the same clauses as, you know, this so-called Blackwater and things like that.
00:25:25.000There were apparently, and there were videos of that, by the way, and there were strong rumors of an involvement of those Western, let's say, mercenaries, or you couldn't call who you want, that were involved in that.
00:25:42.000So there was clearly a covert involvement of some Western powers, probably UK, probably US. But in any case, what happened and what If you referred to this conversation between Victoria Nuland and the U.S. Ambassador Piat,
00:26:00.000this was this idea that in fact the U.S. was in reality monitoring a real regime change and they picked the people that would later lead in fact Ukraine.
00:26:15.000So it was definitely something that was arranged by Western hands.
00:26:20.000In fact, that was acknowledged after that.
00:26:23.000And I think today, I think everybody acknowledged that it was a coup.
00:26:30.000And this coup on the 21st of February 2014 There was an agreement that was signed between the protesters and Yanukovych in order to arrange for new elections and all that.
00:26:49.000Although Yanukovych had been elected through very regular elections, these elections had been monitored by the OSCE and there was nothing wrong in those elections.
00:27:02.000But anyway, in February 2014, Yanukovych agreed To have new elections and, in fact, to have a new process.
00:27:13.000And he would then, after this election process, if he's not re-elected, he would leave.
00:27:18.000But the problem is that two days later, he was, in fact, toppled and he had to leave.
00:27:26.000And then you had, on the 23rd of February, you had a new group of individuals that came to the power that were obviously not elected.
00:27:37.000The agreement that was signed two days before was in fact guaranteed by Germany and France.
00:27:45.000But neither Germany nor France, in fact, respected their signature, in fact.
00:27:52.000So they didn't do anything and there was this regime change.
00:27:57.000The problem is that on that very day of 23rd of February 2014, the first law That was adopted by the new non-elected government, by the way, was to make Russian language a normal language.
00:28:16.000Since 2012, I think, Ukrainian language and Russian language were both official languages in Ukraine.
00:28:25.000In fact, in school or in administration, you could speak either language or even citizens could speak Go to the administration and address the administration in both languages.
00:28:38.000But from the 23rd of February, that was stopped.
00:28:42.000The only official language was declared as Ukrainian, and Russian was just a local language, meaning that in school, in administrations, in all the relationship between the citizen and the state, Russian was no longer considered as an official language.
00:29:04.000It was not forbidden, but it was no longer an official language.
00:29:07.000And that's the implication, especially for education, in school and all that.
00:29:11.000From that point, you had huge protests starting in the whole southern part of Ukraine, but really in the whole country.
00:29:22.000From Odessa to Kharkov, the whole southern part of the country, which is mostly Russian-speaking, started to burst in flames.
00:29:32.000The problem at that point, that's the point where, what I mentioned before, the Ukrainians started to engage these protests with the Ukrainian army.
00:29:44.000But the Ukrainian army, as I said, was both ethnic Russian and Ukrainian.
00:29:51.000So, I mean, the ethnic Russians just defected.
00:29:54.000And as an example, in Crimea, we know these figures because at the time it was given by a deputy of the RADA, so a lawmaker of the RADA. He said that in Crimea you had 22,000 Ukrainian soldiers Based in Crimea.
00:30:15.000But as the language protests started, out of these 22,000, 20,000, so 90%, left to the Russians.
00:30:29.000So that shows the magnitude of the problem for the Ukrainians.
00:30:34.000I mean, a huge part of the army was just defecting to the rebels.
00:30:38.000And that, in fact, started the process in Crimea.
00:30:43.000Well, Crimea, probably also something that needs to be known about Crimea, is that Crimea, before the independence of Ukraine, Ukraine became independent in December 1991.
00:31:00.000But in January 1991, Ukraine asked for a referendum to be detached You mean Crimea?
00:31:12.000Crimea was detached from Ukraine, sorry.
00:31:15.000And that was the first autonomy referendum in the Soviet Union at that time.
00:31:22.000The Soviet Union was disbanded just after the independence of Ukraine, meaning that when Ukraine became independent, Crimea was no longer under the rule of Kiev, but under the rule of Moscow.
00:31:37.000Actually, Crimea was the Autonomous Socialist Republic of Crimea.
00:31:44.000And that's a status it had in 1945, actually.
00:31:49.000They voted that, but the Ukrainian government still felt like Crimea was part of Ukraine, right?
00:31:58.000Well, that's the issue that came after the independence of Ukraine.
00:32:02.000After the independence of Ukraine, Crimea didn't recognize the independence of Crimea.
00:32:39.000The problem is that in 1992, after Crimea made its declaration of independence and declaration of sovereignty, Ukraine refused that.
00:32:50.000And in fact, in 1994, there was a kind of a political tug of war between the two.
00:32:56.000The Soviet Union had been disbanded, as you know, and Russia actually was not in a position to take side in that conflict, in fact, and probably didn't want or had not the capacity to intervene in that.
00:33:12.000As a result, the issue of Crimea and Ukraine was left between those two countries.
00:33:18.000And in 1994 and 1995, Ukraine abolished forcefully the constitution of Crimea and, with special forces, removed the president of Crimea and annexed Crimea.
00:33:38.000And that's the part of the history that nobody wants to remind.
00:34:07.000In fact, the two republics, I mean, as I said, in 2014, you had the whole south of Ukraine that went into protest.
00:34:16.000Finally, with repression, the Ukrainians regained control over most of the south, except the two republics of Donetsk and Lugansk, on the east of the country.
00:34:31.000And what happened is that those two countries, I mean, you had then really kind of war activities between those two republics and the government of Kyiv.
00:34:43.000And this conflict led to the Minsk Agreement, in fact, in 2014.
00:34:49.000But it's important here to say that those two republics initially and up to February 2022, in fact, those republic didn't ask for independence.
00:35:02.000They asked for autonomy within the framework of Ukraine.
00:35:07.000And in fact, if you read the Minsk agreement that was agreed between Kiev and the two republics, in the Minsk agreement, you had more or less the architecture of a federal state, very much similar to what you have in the United States or even in Switzerland, where every state has its own autonomy in terms of language, education and things like that.
00:35:31.000Probably the best analogy is Montreal or, you know, Quebec.
00:35:36.000In Canada, Quebec is one of the 13 provinces of Canada, but it has autonomy.
00:35:44.000It allowed to have its own language, operate its own schools, have its own government, and it's a special autonomous, quasi-autonomous relationship with Canada.
00:35:58.000So there were several times there were some suggestions that they coming from politicians and from various parts that maybe they could join Russia, but Putin refused.
00:36:10.000And in fact, he refused to annex this republic up to the 16th of February 2022.
00:36:21.000And he changed his mind then in mid-February.
00:36:27.000I think it's also important to understand what happened just before the special military operation.
00:36:35.000So between 2014 to 2021, you had a struggle between these two parties, if you want, the autonomists on one side and Kiev on the other side.
00:36:48.000And the Ukrainians were reluctant to implement the Minsk agreement, which, according to me, could have solved the problem.
00:36:59.000And Russia struggled to have this Minsk agreement implemented.
00:37:03.000On the other hand, Ukraine and the two guarantors, which were Germany and France, were reluctant to have a disagreement because they thought it would give an advantage to Russian speaking.
00:37:17.000There was some consideration I never really understood.
00:37:20.000But the fact of the matter is that this MIG agreement was not agreed upon.
00:38:08.000But the political willingness to implement it was simply not there.
00:38:14.000And again, this is for me something which is very hard to explain.
00:38:19.000But probably it has to do with domestic politics in Ukraine.
00:38:24.000The fact is that what happened with Maidan is you had a very much right-wing type of government that came.
00:38:33.000And in Ukraine, right-wing means Ultranationalist and ultranationalist mean strongly against any other kind of, I would say, ethnic group having a power in the country.
00:38:50.000And in fact, there was an idea by those, and that was written, by the way, by those who were in power, that Ukrainian should be the language all over the country, period.
00:39:15.000And by the way, we talk about the Ukrainian minority, but all these language issues affected also the Hungarian minority in Ukraine.
00:39:27.000And if today, for instance, you have Viktor Orban, who is reluctant to to implement sanctions from the EU or how it tends to have a separate way in dealing with Ukraine and the Russians is because precisely the Hungarian minority has been strongly affected by this language law.
00:39:50.000The Hungarian government complained several times to the European Union and the European Commission about the status of the Hungarian minority in Ukraine.
00:40:04.000So this minority issue is an issue not just between Russians and Ukrainians.
00:40:10.000It is also an issue between Romania and Ukraine and between Hungary and Ukraine.
00:40:17.000The problem is that those minorities are very small and therefore nobody talks about them.
00:40:22.000But for the Romanians and the Hungarians, this is a very serious issue.
00:40:30.000And that's why, in fact, as this government came in power in 2014, which was extremely ultra-nationalist, there was no compromise possible.
00:40:43.000And that's the reason probably why this agreement, the Minsk agreement, was never implemented.
00:40:50.000Now, jump to 2021, because I think that's where...
00:40:55.000By the way, let me inject my own history here.
00:40:59.000In 2019, an actor and comedian with no political experience, Vladimir Zelenskyy, He runs for president of Ukraine.
00:41:09.000He wins with 70% of the vote because he's running on a peace platform.
00:41:14.000He's running, promising to implement the Minsk Accords and finally to implement them.
00:41:22.000And yet when he gets in there, he wins by a landslide because the people of Ukraine want peace.
00:41:27.000He wins by a landslide and then he gets in there and he pivots.
00:41:32.000And we don't know why he pivots, but the speculation is two things.
00:41:37.000One, he's threatened by the ultranationalists within the government who are very able of killing somebody, a president.
00:41:45.000And two, he comes under pressure by the U.S. State Department.
00:41:49.000So two very important forces that are critical to his survival.
00:41:56.000And in fact, so Zelenskyy was elected in April 2019.
00:42:01.000And one month later, in the Ukrainian press, Dmitry Yarosh, Who was the leader of the most famous ultra-nationalist party and today is still the leader of the Ukrainian Voluntary Army, which is a separate army from the Ukrainian army.
00:42:26.000It's not under the Ministry of Defense, it's a separate army that fights alongside with the Ukrainian army in Ukraine, but this is an extreme right-wing army.
00:42:37.000And this guy in the media, in the media, said that if Zelensky would apply his program, he would be killed.
00:42:46.000And they just say it plainly in the media, completely open.
00:42:52.000So meaning that there was certainly pressure from the U.S., But there was also pressure from inside.
00:42:58.000And in fact, I think Zelensky was sitting between two chairs, basically, and he had no other choice, in fact, than going ahead with the situation that was before him.
00:43:11.000And the situation was imposed to him, and he could never implement his program.
00:43:17.000And that's the reason why, in fact, he was pushed towards war.
00:43:22.000And in March, on the 24th of March 2021, he issued a decree for the reconquest of Crimea and the southern part of the country, meaning that he was ready, and he said also that he was ready to take back these territories even by war.
00:43:45.000And from that point on, you had a buildup of the Ukrainian army along the Donbas area.
00:43:53.000And this buildup of forces prompted the Russians to build up their own forces at the Ukrainian border.
00:44:02.000And that's what you had from early April 2021.
00:44:08.000So you had this buildup of force on both sides based on that decree of Zelensky.
00:44:13.000So that means the Russians knew that at one point, Ukraine would launch a big offensive against the Donbass.
00:44:22.000And the signs or the indications for that big operation It came on the 16th of February, 2022.
00:44:34.000And you had this buildup during the whole 2021.
00:44:38.000And in February, you had the first, quite a massive shelling of the Donbass by the Ukrainian forces.
00:44:46.000And you may remember that the 16th of February was the date to which Joe Biden said that he knew that the Russians would attack.
00:44:58.000He said he knew that the Russians would attack on the 16th of February.
00:45:31.000You had exactly the same scenario, by the way, in 2008.
00:45:35.000And I think even a commission of the European Union stated that, in fact, the Russian intervention in Georgia was provoked by By the Georgian government when they started shelling South Ossetian population.
00:45:54.000And that's exactly the same scenario you had early 2022.
00:45:58.000And in February, what happened is that you had this increase in shelling.
00:46:03.000At that point, Putin decided that he would recognize the independence of the two Republic of Donbass, the Republic of Lugansk and Donetsk.
00:46:17.000And based on that recognition of independence, he would make a treaty with those two republics.
00:46:27.000And on the base of that treaty, the two republics asked for assistance to the Russians so that Russia could intervene to help them and to assist them during the Ukrainian offensive.
00:46:40.000That's more or less the scenario that happened between the 16th of February and the 24th of February 2022.
00:47:18.000Exactly the same scenario as in Georgia.
00:47:22.000And then, you know, the end of the story, in fact, that you had this big operation and this with the main focus on Donbass and a secondary operation towards Kiev.
00:47:37.000Not to take Kiev, but just to pin down the Ukrainian army reserves around Kiev so that they could not reinforce the main direction of operation of the Russians in the Donbas.
00:47:49.000And that's more or less the situation that we had in March 2022.
00:47:58.000I mean, Zelensky noticed that he had probably gone too far.
00:48:03.000And he noticed very quickly that because...
00:48:06.000As you know, the special military operation started on the 24th of February, but just one day after, on the 25th of February, Zelensky called the Swiss Ministry of Foreign Affairs And ask him to organize a conference for peace, to negotiate with the Russians.
00:48:27.000Meaning that I think the magnitude of the Russian operation after just one day prompted Zelensky to react on that and to find a solution, a political solution.
00:48:39.000And at this point, the European Union came into the game and said to Zelensky, I mean, you had a first round of negotiation, by the way, that started at the Belarusian border in Gomel, and the delegation from both countries started to have discussions.
00:48:57.000But the European Union came and said to Zelensky, no, there is no discussion.
00:49:03.000Here is 450 million euro for weapons, but there is no discussion.
00:49:10.000You have to fight against the Russians.
00:49:12.000And so this first round of negotiation collapsed and the war resumed to some extent.
00:49:19.000It was not stopped, but I mean, there was no incentive to stop the operation.
00:49:25.000And then in March Mid-March, Zelensky realized that the situation started to turn dramatically, unfavorably for Ukraine, and he started a second round of negotiation under the auspices of Turkey in Istanbul.
00:50:19.000And interestingly enough, Zelensky made a proposal to the Russians and there were several points.
00:50:27.000I mean, something like ten points to this proposal.
00:50:30.000But the main ones were essentially that Russia would leave Ukraine.
00:50:37.000I mean, they would just withdraw their troops from Ukraine.
00:50:41.000The status of Crimea and the two republics of Lugansk and Donetsk had to be discussed further, so there was no solution for these two, but there was a question of having a further discussion on that.
00:50:56.000And in exchange of that, Ukraine, Zelensky, proposed to have a neutral A neutrality that should be guaranteed by 10 countries, among which Russia.
00:51:11.000And that would be basically some NATO countries and the surrounding countries.
00:51:23.000And the security guarantees would provide for security in case Ukraine would be invaded or whatever.
00:51:31.000So there were some guarantees for Ukraine, but basically it was a neutralized Ukraine.
00:51:37.000The problem of NATO in Ukraine is probably less NATO as such than the opportunity that the US Could use to deploy nuclear weapons on Ukrainian territory.
00:52:46.000The missiles in Cuba were in fact a response to the deployment of nuclear missiles at the Soviet border in Turkey.
00:52:56.000And at the end of the day, I mean, you know better, certainly much better than me, what happened with the Cuban crisis.
00:53:05.000But at the end of this crisis, Soviet Union agreed to withdraw its missile from Cuba and the US agreed to withdraw its missile from Turkey.
00:53:16.000So the issue of NATO touching Russia or Soviet Union is certainly a concern for Russia, but it's not the main concern.
00:53:25.000The main concern is that U.S. could deploy nuclear weapons.
00:53:30.000And why would U.S. deploy nuclear weapons?
00:53:35.000Since 2002, since the George W. Bush administration, the U.S. started to withdraw from all the arms control agreements that were signed during the Cold War.
00:53:47.000And that, in fact, was the starting point of the problem, because Would the U.S. be still part of this agreement?
00:53:59.000Basically, there would be not much problem in having NATO touching Russia.
00:54:06.000And in fact, I remember in the early 90s, I was part of a delegation to talk to the Russian high command About the issue of NATO, because Switzerland was also considering joining NATO, and we were concerned about how this joining NATO would be perceived by Russia.
00:54:29.000So we went to discuss that with some politicians in Moscow and the Russian high command.
00:54:37.000And I noticed that at that stage, the Russians were not so adverse to NATO. They even considered and they told us they were considering asking joining NATO. The problem is that NATO, as you know, is basically a nuclear organization.
00:54:53.000That means that the purpose of NATO is to bring European countries under the US nuclear umbrella.
00:55:02.000Meaning that in such an organization, you cannot have two nuclear umbrellas.
00:55:10.000And that's the reason why, in fact, although the Russians expressed the intention of joining NATO, the US always refused that because precisely of the purpose that would require a change in the substance of NATO. NATO is very much this base,
00:55:28.000as Jens Stoltenberg, by the way, says, it's a nuclear organization, but based on the nuclear capabilities of only one country, basically the US. So that's why it cannot really accommodate.
00:55:45.000And also the reason why, by the way, France left the military organization of NATO in 1966, because at that time, France was building up its own nuclear force.
00:55:59.000NATO was not, in fact, tailored for having two nuclear powers.
00:56:04.000So that's why Charles de Gaulle decided to withdraw from NATO, even if they kept ties on the political side of NATO. They didn't leave completely NATO. But there was an issue with the use of nuclear weapons.
00:56:18.000And that's obvious because U.S. having the responsibility of engaging nuclear weapons cannot...
00:56:26.000And if U.S. has no control over another country within NATO that has nuclear weapons, it could be engaged in a nuclear war without wanting it.
00:56:42.000Let me ask you one last question on this subject, because I know that we've gone way over.
00:56:50.000Why do the Balkan states and the Scandinavian states, why do they want to join NATO? Why is there such an appetite for them joining NATO? Because it seems like it's so controversial with the Soviets.
00:57:10.000Well, we have also to consider that those countries, I mean, I have been several times in Finland and Sweden, we had a good relationship with those countries, and we had military contacts also at intelligence service level, obviously.
00:57:27.000But we could notice that these countries have always been very in favor of NATO. So although they were neutral, they had a very strong, let's say, kind of love for NATO already a long time ago.
00:57:43.000Sweden had even an agreement with the US, a defense agreement, in fact, a bilateral agreement with the US, not with NATO, but with the US, in case it would be attacked by the Soviets and things like that.
00:57:56.000But in fact, it's interesting that you ask the question because today there was no much need for these countries to join NATO. In fact, I think it's even strategically disadvantaged for these countries because Russia,
00:58:16.000I'm convinced, is a country that would respect neutrality, especially on the northern flank, because if you have a war in Europe, it would probably happen in Central Europe, not on the northern flank of NATO or the northern flank of Europe.
00:58:33.000Meaning that having neutral states in this area It in fact suits well the Russians because they feel that they don't have to take care of that part of Europe.
00:58:47.000But having then two countries in NATO, that means that in case of war, they have to take care of that.
00:58:54.000And probably they might even be tempted to take care of that with nuclear weapons, probably, because nobody would.
00:59:03.000And I think that even I don't remember who in the United States used to say that the U.S. will not sacrifice Washington for Stockholm or Helsinki, meaning that if the Russians would have a problem,
00:59:19.000a nuclear problem with Sweden and And Finland, probably the NATO would react, but probably the US would not engage in the nuclear war for these two countries because what would be at stake is much, much bigger.
00:59:37.000So there is no real, let's say, solid rationale for these countries to enter NATO. But what is interesting is that in March 2019, you had a report that was published by the RAND Corporation, 300 pages, a document that was produced.
01:00:00.000It's a strategy, basically, named Extending Russia and Competing from Advantage's Ground or something like that.
01:00:09.000And in this document, the RAND analysts outlined a very complex strategy to weaken Russia.
01:00:20.000And among the, let's say, topics or issues that should be addressed to weaken Russia, there is explicitly the idea of drawing Sweden and Finland into NATO. I said that was my last question, but let me ask you another one.
01:00:40.000In an all-out nuclear war with Russia, what happens to the United States and what happens to Russia?
01:00:45.000I've heard that Russia has more nuclear weapons than we do, and that its defensive capabilities are better than the United States.
01:00:54.000I remember when my uncle, you know, was talking during the Cuban Missile Crisis and during the Checkpoint Charlie Crisis in 62, and he was surrounded by people who wanted a nuclear war with Russia, who considered it inevitable but also desirable as soon as possible.
01:01:11.000They said we would win that war because we would kill 130 million Russians and they would only kill 30 million of us.
01:01:18.000You know, and my uncle did not think that was a good outcome, whatever.
01:01:23.000He didn't want to be killing Russians, and he certainly didn't want Americans to be killed.
01:01:30.000Well, it's a good question, because multiple scenarios, and I've seen, by the way, there was a lot of thoughts devoted to that, especially in the 80s, 90s, in the US, basically.
01:01:44.000And there was a lot of fascinating studies and scenarios developed.
01:01:50.000In fact, the purpose of these scenarios was to develop a strategy, especially for the anti-ballistic missiles, and to have a strategy as to how to use nuclear weapons and how to not use nuclear weapons.
01:02:06.000The problem with nuclear weapons is that you can obviously make a lot of distractions, but making distractions may not solve the problem because, for instance, just as an example, if you strike the Kremlin on one side and the White House on the other side, who will decide then?
01:02:25.000Meaning that if you have a nuclear exchange, you really need to know exactly what is the purpose of the destruction you will cause.
01:02:35.000And personally, I don't think that Russia on the side and the US on the other side will engage quite easily in such a conflict.
01:02:45.000I think if there is a nuclear war, it will not be an all-out nuclear war.
01:02:49.000It will affect mostly Europe, but not the two main actors who have the largest nuclear arsenal.
01:02:57.000Because, as I said, you cannot really decapitate the leadership of a country that has the arsenal, because that would lead to the big holocaust.
01:03:09.000Instead, having a limited nuclear war in Europe basically would cost more to Russia than to the US, but it would cost mostly to the Europeans.
01:03:22.000And in fact, This kind of thinking was exactly what prompted the anti-nuclear movement and pacifist movements in the 80s in Germany, because the Germans realized that if there is...
01:03:38.000At that time, we were talking about nuclear tactical weapons.
01:03:41.000Today, nobody really talks about this because we have alternatives to tactical nuclear weapons.
01:03:47.000But in the 80s, the technical and operational nuclear weapons were quite common and they were deployed even on the European theater.
01:03:58.000But the thing is that with such weapons, you wager war only in Europe.
01:04:03.000So only the Europeans would suffer a nuclear war.
01:04:07.000And the two main actors, those who have the largest arsenal and who have the largest capacity, would probably avoid killing each other because that would really lead to the massive Holocaust.
01:04:23.000So I think the all-out nuclear war is, in my opinion, very unlikely.
01:04:31.000But a nuclear war in Europe is probably more likely.
01:04:35.000And that's the reason why I think we should revive the INF Treaty, so the Intermediate Nuclear Forces Treaty that was disbanded by...
01:04:47.000I may be wrong, but I think it was Donald Trump who...