Samuel P.N. Cook graduated from West Point in 2000 and served as a U.S. Cavalry Officer in the Battle of Tal Afghanistan, which was cited by President George W. Bush as a turning point in the war. When he returned from Iraq in 2008, he went on to get a Master s in Russian and Ukrainian History at NYU's Jordan Center for Slavic Studies and then taught History at West Point from 2010 to 2013. He has spent the last four years living in the Ukraine, and he has been an outspoken skeptic about U. S. foreign policy in Ukraine. In this episode, he talks about how he ended up in Ukraine, why he moved there, and why he founded a tech company there. He also talks about why he thinks Ukraine is a good place to be in the world, and what it means to be pro-Ukrainian in a post-World War I era. He also shares his thoughts on the Ukrainian conflict, and his hopes for the future of Ukraine in the post-Yanukovych era, and how he and his fianc are planning a trip to Ukraine in order to visit his daughter in the summer of 2019. And, of course, there's a special guest, Robert Kuchuk, who was born in Northern Ireland, and grew up in a Northern Irish family in the 80s and 90s, and now lives in Kiev, Ukraine. This episode is sponsored by Sanity Desk, a company that makes software for small businesses and media, and is building a digital media company that helps connect people around the world. Thank you, Robert, for joining us on this episode of the podcast. We really appreciate you! and we really appreciate the support you're showing us the world through your words, your support, your attention, your presence, your words and your presence and your support and your words. - Thank you so much, you're so much more than you can do that we can be heard across the globe, we appreciate it, we really really appreciate it. We appreciate you, thank you, really really well, we're really really, really, and we appreciate you. Thank you. We're grateful you're listening, really appreciate all of it, really mean it, truly appreciate it... we really do appreciate it - thank you... - P.A. -- Thank you for listening, bye, bye. -- MRS. -- P.P. Cook
00:00:00.000My guest today is Samuel P.N. Cook, who graduated from West Point in 2000.
00:00:06.000He went on to become a U.S. cavalry officer and served as regimental adjutant for Colonel H.R. McMaster in the Battle of Telefar in Iraq in 2005 to 2006, which was cited by President Bush as a turning point in the war.
00:00:27.000He had a front row seat to history, and Sam was responsible for the media messaging and writing the history of this campaign.
00:00:35.000In 2007, Sam returned to Iraq as the commander of Crazy Horse Troop, 1st Squadron, 3rd Armored Cavalry Regiment, Where he was cited in the Washington Post and in Tom Ricks' best-selling book on Iraq for his novel counterinsurgency strategy that combined tribal negotiations and police-trained parole systems for mass surrender.
00:01:00.000When he returned from Iraq in 2008, Sam went on to get a master's in Russian and Ukrainian history at NYU's Jordan Center for Slavic Studies.
00:01:11.000He then went on to teach history at West Point from 2010 and 2013.
00:01:17.000Sam has spent the last four years living in the Ukraine.
00:02:29.000I started a media agency that works in digital marketing and film.
00:02:35.000And then I also started a tech company called Sanity Desk that produces software for small businesses.
00:02:41.000And I moved there specifically and founded my tech company there because of the extreme talent pool that resides in Ukraine, technical talent.
00:02:50.000Just the second best educated workforce in the world and the poorest country in Europe economically, unfortunately.
00:02:57.000So I moved there because of the amazing talent pool for the projects I was working on.
00:03:02.000Just out of curiosity, who's the first best educated workforce in the world?
00:03:11.000I'm guessing it may be Ireland, but that may be personal prejudice.
00:03:16.000I actually was born in Belfast, Robert, and I did grow up in Northern Ireland for the first nine years of my life, and probably it would be Ireland if I were to guess, but that's certainly why people go there and set up their companies.
00:03:29.000I heard a joke when I was in Ireland from an elf-ass cabbie, and the cabbies, when you get in there, they're talking about, you know, Harold Pinterblaze and Shakespeare and all this.
00:03:42.000He said to me, if you ask an Irish carpenter, The difference between a girder and a joist.
00:03:49.000I'll tell you, a girder wrote Proust and a joist wrote Ulysses.
00:03:54.000Well, the Irish have a, especially the Northern Irish, have a blend of, I think, the best of both sides of the conflict there.
00:04:04.000Certainly, I really enjoyed living there growing up and miss it, actually.
00:04:09.000And I think that's probably why I go to countries like Ukraine to live, because Ukraine's been at war for the last eight years.
00:04:17.000I was living in Kiev for the last four years, yeah.
00:04:20.000In Kiev, there's actually very, very strong support for the war, right?
00:04:26.000Actually, across the whole country, there is.
00:04:29.000And it actually shocked me, because when I was living in Kiev, observing what I saw as this pending invasion we were hurtling towards, I wasn't sure that the Ukrainian people would...
00:04:43.000One, I wasn't sure the government would survive the initial shock of the invasion.
00:04:47.000I think most intelligence agencies assess that the government would quickly fall.
00:05:16.000And if necessary, I'll take the women out and go back and go to war.
00:05:20.000And he said, you know, your job is to take care of my daughter.
00:05:23.000And when I read that, I was first of all, I was a little bit shocked.
00:05:27.000I was getting all my tech company workers out of the country and something kind of sparked in me.
00:05:33.000I said, wow, this is I didn't expect that from the people.
00:05:36.000But I also it's kind of shocking even to people like him to say that because there's a natural affinity in eastern Ukraine for Russian culture and Russian language.
00:05:45.000Her mother, my fiance's mother is Ukrainian, but speaks Russian at home and teaches Russian literature.
00:05:51.000And, you know, obviously since 2014, that's not as in vogue in schools anymore, Russian literature, but still has a huge affinity for the culture and the language.
00:06:00.000So something went wrong in the Russian game plan here because they lost the Potential natural loyalties they had in eastern Ukraine, which I was surprised by the unity of resistance in the east, which is where the war is being fought, the south and the east.
00:06:18.000Because the Ukrainian government has essentially been in a civil war with the ethnic Russians and the Basques.
00:06:30.000Well, the Donbass is really interesting because most of my friends in Ukraine from, I thought the Donbass was really pro-Russian, but a lot of the refugees, I think a majority of the refugees from the Donbass have actually fled to either Europe or Or to Ukraine itself.
00:06:50.000And one of the interesting facts I've learned about the Donbass is a disproportionate number of Ukrainian soldiers who are on the front lines are actually from the Donbass because they want their homeland as they see it to be part of Ukraine.
00:07:04.000Now, there are also people obviously as part of the Donbass, which is these separatist regions that do fight against their own brothers on the other side.
00:07:14.000But it's really tragic because Most of the people on that front line are literally cousins or sometimes even brothers fighting each other.
00:07:22.000What you're saying is that even a majority of people in Donbass may be opposed to Putin's invasion of Ukraine.
00:07:44.000And he's the military analyst for the top independent newspaper in Ukraine called the Kiev Independent.
00:07:50.000And he speaks about this all the time, and he'd be a great person to also speak to on the show to give a Ukrainian perspective, someone who's from the Donbass.
00:08:25.000But there's a healthy majority that have moved actually either to Europe or to Ukraine, which just shows their orientation on where they wish the Donbass was situated, I guess, politically.
00:08:38.000I'd love to get your opinion about this.
00:08:57.000So the fact that there's so much polarization, even in agreeing on the facts, I think you're a perfect person to give us what your assessment is.
00:09:09.000Well, look, since the war started, I actually couldn't focus on my day job, and I started interviewing Ukrainians that were in the territorial defense, that were in the Defense forces and refugees, people who'd volunteered, not in the military, but were volunteering in society.
00:09:27.000And we've done 23 episodes, the Borderland show, Stories from Ukraine.
00:09:31.000And what I found out from all of these interviews, we have three or four guests on every time we do a show, how united Ukrainian society has become over this.
00:09:42.000And it's imagine America level of polarization in Ukraine, which is essentially what they were experiencing before the war, a very unpopular president, 23, 25% approval ratings.
00:09:53.000And they are 93% behind their president now, 90 plus percent believe Ukrainians believe they're going to win.
00:10:02.000And 47% believed that they're going to win in the next two weeks.
00:10:06.000So that's what's going on among Ukrainian people.
00:10:38.000In fact, Ukrainians who want to join the army can't because the next people allowed in that are being mobilized are veterans who have combat experience.
00:11:00.000They're having serious logistical problems.
00:11:03.000Ukraine has consistently counterattacked and regained a lot of, not a lot of territory, but a significant portion of territory around Kiev on the west and the east side, and even around Sumy and Kharkiv close to the border.
00:11:17.000So on all fronts, Ukrainians are pushing forward in very localized attacks.
00:11:22.000So I wouldn't say the war is close to over, but what I would say is the Ukrainians are...
00:11:28.000More likely winning than the Russians if you look at what are the war aims of both countries.
00:11:34.000The Ukrainian war aim is to survive and to regain at least the status quo of 24 February.
00:11:43.000That's their war aim right now is to negotiate getting all the Russian troops out of at least what was not occupied since 2014.
00:11:53.000The Russian war aims were topple Zelensky, regime change, and basically subsume, if not all of the Ukrainian territory, at least everything from the east side of the river, which would include Kiev.
00:12:08.000So if you just look at what each side strategically wanted to accomplish, I would say Ukraine's much closer to winning Thank you.
00:12:21.000And if he gets killed, someone will step in.
00:12:24.000Because Ukrainian people have never been so united, which is amazing.
00:12:27.000Because nobody was that confident in the Ukrainian government's ability to survive the shock of an invasion.
00:12:33.000And actually, I was interviewing a prominent economist from Ukraine who's advised multiple administrations.
00:12:40.000And he said the reform the Ukrainian government has done in the last 30 days since the war started, economically building a lot of systems that should have been built a long time ago, is breathtaking.
00:12:51.000Their lawmakers are finally getting their act together on reforming the country.
00:12:55.000So I'd say Ukraine's a lot closer to victory, but the war is far from over.
00:13:00.000Hundreds of soldiers dying on either side every day, and civilians are obviously caught in the crossfire, especially in Mariupol, and that doesn't mean the war's been won on either side.
00:13:12.000Oh, at our maximum troop commitment to Vietnam during the Vietnam era, the United States had 250,000 troops in Vietnam.
00:13:22.000During the 20-year war, we lost 56,000 casualties dead, and then 2 million Vietnamese were killed.
00:13:31.000What is the military commitment by Russians right now and Ukrainians?
00:13:38.000And what has been the casualty count on each side?
00:13:43.000Well, actually, Robert, I know you lived through the Vietnam War, or you probably remember it, and I don't have any recollection.
00:13:50.000I think militarily, from a historical perspective, our maximum troop count might have been closer to 500,000.
00:13:58.000I couldn't remember whether 250,000 at a time was there, or 500,000 over the 20-year period, but you may be right.
00:14:08.000I think 500,000 on a rotational basis in country was the height of the war, probably when in the 68 campaign through 71 or 72, that was the maximum.
00:14:19.000And yeah, we took 56,000 killed in action in the United States Army during that period.
00:14:27.000And before you go on, tell us what's happening in the Ukraine.
00:14:34.000Our commitment in Iraq at the height of the surge was about 175,000.
00:14:38.000When I was there in 2008, I think we peaked north of 150, closer to 175,000.
00:14:45.000There were 4,000 killed over 12 years, or I think 17 plus years now, in Iraq, U.S. soldiers.
00:14:54.000And in Afghanistan, I think our highest troop count was 130,000.
00:14:59.000And over the 20 years, there were 2,400 and some casual or killed in action in America.
00:15:06.000The Soviet Union from 1979 to 1988 lost, I think, close to 15,000 killed in Afghanistan.
00:15:14.000And they're Troop count was, I don't know the exact numbers, but I think a couple hundred thousand there on a consistent basis.
00:15:22.000So what, compare that to what's happening in Ukraine now.
00:15:26.000Well, what's happening in Ukraine is a lot more akin to World War II. And the first 30 days, it's assessed.
00:15:35.000The Ukrainians assessed 17,000 killed in action.
00:15:39.000NATO estimates are between 10,000 to 15,000.
00:15:43.000There was a Russian pro-Kremlin website which published a figure about two weeks ago of 9,800-something killed in action, and then they quickly took it down.
00:15:57.000And the Ukrainians, about two weeks ago, published their killed in action as 1,300.
00:16:05.000And probably it's closer to 2,000 or more at this point, especially because they have a lot of troops surrounded in Mariupol.
00:16:14.000And the Ukrainians could well be understating their killed in action.
00:16:17.000But When you just said NATO's count was 17,000, did you mean Russians killed or total killed?
00:16:25.000Ukrainian claims are 17,000 Russian killed.
00:16:29.000NATO intelligence believes it's between 10,000 to 15,000 killed and 30,000 to 40,000 wounded or missing or captured on the Russian side.
00:16:39.000And Ukraine has publicly published 1,300 about a week and a half ago.
00:16:45.000And Ukrainian society, they're a lot like the Americans in that they will not typically leave dead soldiers on the battlefield.
00:16:54.000That's one of our tenants in the American military is never leaving a dead comrade behind.
00:16:59.000And the Ukrainians are pretty similar in that respect.
00:17:02.000And they are doing their funerals publicly.
00:17:04.000And there are a lot of fresh graves and grave sites and funerals in Kiev and around the country.
00:17:09.000So I think Western media can verify because of the public announcement of deaths in Ukraine a lot easier and see if that figure of 1300 or 2000, wherever it is now is accurate.
00:17:20.000But the Russian side, I spoke to someone from Russia on our podcast the other day, and he's a former GRU Spetsnaz soldier who got on and said he was against the war.
00:17:32.000And he said that what's probably happening in Russia is unless they have the bodies and they've processed it, they're probably just counting as many probable KIAs as possible as just missing because the official Russian count right now of their own killed is only 1500.
00:17:48.000And there's a lot of soldiers that the Ukrainians have stored in refrigerator trucks across the country, Russian killed.
00:17:56.000In fact, they're asking the International Red Cross to claim these bodies on behalf of Russia because they've left a lot of dead on the battlefield that have been ambushed across Ukraine.
00:18:23.000Maybe it's 5 or 6 to 1 versus 10 to 1, but I would say it's probably close to 5 to 7, right?
00:18:31.000Let's say 2,000 Ukrainians and maybe 12 to 14,000 Russians.
00:18:36.000I think what you're seeing in the casualty figures is the Russians went in in the early part of the war.
00:18:44.000They basically felt like, and the troops were told at the beginning of the war, they said, hey, first of all, they weren't told until right before the junior officers and soldiers didn't understand they were going to invade Ukraine until a few days before the war, which was a disaster from a psychological perspective and planning perspective.
00:19:03.000When you're going to war, you need to know about it in advance and prepare psychologically and train for it.
00:19:07.000So they were, first of all, surprised they were going into war.
00:19:11.000Secondly, most of the soldiers, and you see this in interviews of prisoners of war, they were told, hey, you're going to go in there.
00:19:18.000Ukrainians, there's a few Nazis holding the entire country hostage.
00:19:22.000They're going to welcome you with open arms.
00:19:25.000And there's even stories I heard from Ukrainians who are fighting of Russian soldiers they captured that had their dress parade uniform and medals for the conquest of Kiev, Lviv, Odessa in their kit.
00:19:41.000Two or three days into the war to be having a parade in the center of Kiev and dancing with Ukrainian girls who are going to be welcoming them with flowers.
00:19:49.000So I think the high casualty rate was literally fundamentally strategic assumptions that were wrong, an arrogance.
00:19:58.000An overestimation of their own abilities and a complete underestimation of Ukrainian will to fight.
00:20:03.000And that's why the casualty rate is probably six or seven to one versus three or four to one, which you'd expect when someone's attacking.
00:20:11.000And how about the equivalency in equipment and training?
00:20:16.000Well, that's the big surprise here from Russian military experts is they have very advanced equipment.
00:20:25.000And Ukrainians had older equipment and a lot less of it.
00:20:28.000But what happened in the initial part of the war, especially with the Air Force, I mean, Ukrainians are flying MiGs, old Russian aircraft, But Ukrainian Air Force still apparently has 80% of their planes left and they're contesting Russian airspace, much more advanced fighters on the Russian side, to the point where Russian pilots are generally avoiding Ukrainian airspace and they're firing precision-guided air-launched cruise missiles from...
00:20:56.000In Belarus and a lot of times Russian territory.
00:20:58.000And when they do come in, there are estimates on the Ukrainian side, at least, of over 100 Russian fighter jets shot down and similar amount of helicopters destroyed.
00:21:09.000So whatever the number of Russian aircraft lost, they're much more advanced and they aren't winning dominance.
00:21:15.000And I think one of the reasons for that is the Ukrainian Air Force has trained for the last 29 years with where you are, the California Air National Guard.
00:21:23.000Especially since 2014, they've really stepped up their training and their modernization of how they fight.
00:21:30.000And the same thing's going on on the ground.
00:21:32.000The Ukrainian, even though they have 10 times less equipment than the Russians, they've captured a lot of Russian equipment during the fighting.
00:21:40.000And they've just made better use tactically of what equipment they do have.
00:21:45.000And they've obviously sustained a lot of losses in their own equipment.
00:21:48.000But this just goes to show that the intangibles in war, the most important thing, frustratingly, is the thing you can't measure as an intelligence agency, which is the spirit of the army, the morale of the army, the willingness to fight and die for a cause.
00:22:03.000And I think what you're seeing is the Russians really don't understand why they're there.
00:22:07.000Probably a lot like our soldiers in Vietnam, sometimes in Iraq and Afghanistan to a less extent, and the Ukrainians know exactly what they're fighting for and why they're fighting.
00:22:16.000And I think that's why the disparity in casualties and equipment losses are so high.
00:22:21.000When the Russians get stuck in the mud, when their vehicle breaks down, they have a high breakdown rate, they just run away.
00:22:28.000They're abandoning their vehicle because they know that they're a target, they can't move, and the Ukrainians are stalking the countryside with anti-tank weapons looking for them.
00:22:37.000What do you think of Putin's justifications about denazifying the country and stopping the slaughter of ethnic Russians on the one hand, and then we'll get to NATO in a minute.
00:22:53.000Well, the mayor of Melitopol was just released from Russian captivity.
00:23:00.000The mayor of Melitopol, which is in southeast Ukraine, was occupied by Russian forces.
00:23:06.000And he tells the story of being captured by Russian soldiers and how frustrating it was when they tried to interrogate him because they said, we're here to find the Nazis.
00:24:26.000It is celebrated, especially among the older veterans who In Ukraine and people who lived in the Soviet era, it's not an unimportant public holiday, but it's not as important now as Ukrainian Independence Day.
00:24:39.000So that's a verified source, the mayor of Melitopol, which really, I think, encapsulates the Russian soldiers came being told all these things were happening, and they're finding that it really hasn't happened.
00:24:51.000Now, in the Donbass, it's not a genocide.
00:24:55.000800-kilometer trench line before the war started of Ukrainian regular forces fighting separatist forces who were backed by Russian officers, Russian snipers, Russian trainers that were in there giving the separatist forces their military supplies, their military training, their military leadership.
00:25:13.000So, you know, a war between Ukrainians fighting each other where both of them on each side of the trench lines are mainly Russian speakers.
00:25:22.000I wouldn't call that a genocide when I'd call it exactly what it is, which is a separatist internal civil conflict.
00:25:33.000And what about the criticism of the Azov Battalion?
00:25:37.000Well, the Azov Battalion, I think, rightly has A reputation issue.
00:25:42.000In 2014, the origins of the Azov Battalion was the Ukrainian military after the Euromaidan revolution collapsed.
00:25:53.000It was infiltrated by people who are sympathetic to the Russian regime.
00:25:58.000So they had no will to fight, no equipment, no training.
00:26:01.000I mean, the Ukrainian army literally collapsed or it was non-existent in 2014.
00:26:08.000So a lot of Ukrainians, especially from Western Ukraine, but really from all over the country, formed these volunteer battalions.
00:26:15.000And they flocked to the front line to help take back the separatist-controlled territory.
00:26:19.000And one of the most famous ones, the Azov Battalion, did have some extremist elements in it, for sure.
00:26:26.000But since the static positions formed, it was incorporated into the Ukrainian military, and it became legally and structurally part of the Ukrainian military.
00:26:39.000But they still retained that heritage, let's call it symbolism, of that volunteer battalion.
00:26:44.000And they have a brand and image issue.
00:26:46.000But it is a very small percentage of the Ukrainian military, the Azov Battalion.
00:26:52.000I guess it's a couple thousand soldiers.
00:26:55.000And most of the Ukrainian army, as you can see now, is very professionalized.
00:26:59.000And they're fighting under a national military structure, even the Azov Battalion.
00:27:05.000But I think it's an interesting point that you bring up, because Mariupol, where the Azov Battalion is headquartered right now and is surrounded, has refused to surrender, and they're probably going to fight to the death.
00:27:23.000The Marines are there, the Ukrainian Marines are there, the Ukrainian Army, and the Azov Battalion is part of that Ukrainian Army contingent.
00:27:33.000We've got wounded here we need to care for.
00:27:35.000We've got dead that we're not going to leave behind.
00:27:37.000We have civilians to protect, so they've refused to leave.
00:27:41.000But I would probably compare the Azov Battalion to some elite ranger regiment or airborne unit in America, where there's a lot of good old boys in our military.
00:27:51.000And maybe, you know, we have some of our own extremist elements in the military, which obviously the American Army really fights against that.
00:27:59.000But there are some tendencies in our own elite units sometimes.
00:28:02.000They're very homogenous, white, southern...
00:28:08.000I think Dezov Battalion has a heritage for sure.
00:28:11.000They have things they've done in the past that have rightfully been condemned by U.S. government, State Department, and other organizations.
00:28:19.000But I think the Ukrainian military went a long way towards professionalizing and cleaning that up while retaining some of their unit heritage.
00:28:27.000Whether that was a right or wrong decision on their part, that's how they handled it.
00:28:31.000Let me go back to something I asked you about before.
00:28:35.000Just briefly, what is the comparative troop commitment from Russia versus the Ukraine?
00:28:43.000How big is the Ukrainian army and how many men or soldiers has Russia committed to this fight?
00:28:50.000Well, the Russian military has 900,000 soldiers on paper.
00:28:54.000About 60% of their force is conscript, 40% are professional soldiers.
00:28:59.000And they committed to this fight about 190,000 soldiers, of which maybe 100,000 of those were frontline combat soldiers and the other 90,000 were mainly support elements.
00:29:13.000But they generated about 120 battalion tactical groups to invade Ukraine.
00:29:19.000The Ukrainian military is a lot harder to pin down on how big is it on paper.
00:29:23.000I think it's 250,000, which gives them about 100,000 of combat troops.
00:29:32.000So really, Russia came in with a two-to-one advantage when you think about overall fighting frontline soldiers, 200,000 to 100,000.
00:29:43.000And that Ukrainian number 100,000 is what's out there in the field, which is combat troops and support troops.
00:29:49.000But Russia didn't come in with what you would expect.
00:29:53.000Doctrinally, you would at least probably want 300,000 to 500,000 to overwhelm an army of 100,000 when you're trying to take over a whole country.
00:30:03.000And one of the reasons why Ukrainians didn't believe Russia was actually going to invade the country and try and take Kiev was they assessed, if you're going to want to do this successfully, you guys better bring 500,000 in.
00:30:16.000And 200,000 is just too small a force, as we're seeing now, to accomplish the big objectives that Russia tried to accomplish with a small force.
00:30:26.000And Russia probably thought, we've got more advanced equipment.
00:30:30.000They counted on the fact that they believe they had bought off through their FSB, their foreign intelligence.
00:30:36.000They thought they had a government in waiting.
00:30:39.000That government never materialized, maybe because Zelensky stayed.
00:30:43.000If Zelensky would have left, maybe the people they paid off would have risen up and said, hey, we're going to welcome the Russians in.
00:30:49.000But for whatever reason, whether it's bad assumptions, Putin was lied to, Ukrainians stole the money.
00:30:55.000The Russians had this idea that they only needed 200,000 because Ukraine was going to collapse from within, and it just didn't pan out that way.
00:31:04.000In the United States, one of the key propaganda assumptions is that Putin is a madman who's acting like people who are questioning U.S. policy.
00:31:17.000Point to the fact that he's behaving perhaps rationally by standing up against the encirclement of his country by NATO. In 1962, when my uncle Jack Kennedy was president, The Russians moved missiles into Cuba, which was 1,100 miles from Washington, D.C. And, you know, we were ready to invade Cuba at that point.
00:31:43.000And so do you have, what's your take on that?
00:31:48.000Is there any part of you that's saying, you know, I see his point?
00:31:52.000Well, I'm not a biased observer in this.
00:31:55.000I am pro-Ukrainian because my fiance and her family are from there and I've lived there.
00:32:00.000But if I take my historian hat on and look at Russian history, he's certainly behaving in the tradition of rulers of Russia, which Russia has always either been expanding or contracting throughout history.
00:32:13.000And it ebbs and flows throughout history.
00:32:16.000And what President Putin believes is his historical mission is to reverse the collapse of the Soviet Union and gather their borderland territories.
00:32:28.000Ukraine literally means borderlands in English.
00:32:35.000And with Ukraine, it's very emotional because that's the birthplace of Russian civilization.
00:32:41.000Kiev is much older than Moscow as a city.
00:32:44.000It's where the Orthodox Church started in Russia.
00:32:48.000It's where Russian civilization was literally born, was in Kiev.
00:32:52.000I mean, the The Kiev territories before the Mongols invaded in 1240 covered Moscow all the way up to Nizhny Novgorod, all the way to the Ural Mountains.
00:33:02.000Everything that was in Russia from the Ural Mountains down to the Black Sea, including Belarus, was all Ukrainian territory.
00:33:09.000Actually, Kievan Rus, they called it back in the day.
00:33:12.000So Moscow grew up after that territory was conquered.
00:33:15.000And I think what you see here is it's very emotional for Putin.
00:33:19.000He views it as a rational move because I think every one of us make decisions emotionally and justify with logic.
00:33:26.000I just think that what Putin did here was it makes sense for them from a great power, realistic rail politic to try and get this territory back.
00:33:37.000And I acknowledge that as a historian, as a military strategy historian, it makes sense for them to try and expand their borderlands, their buffer territory, because they don't want to be encircled by NATO. But I think one of the things that we fail to do in America is understand the Ukrainian perspective, right?
00:34:00.000In 1997, the Poles Literally went to Europe and America and said, if you guys don't accept us into NATO, we are going to create our own nuclear weapons because we don't want to be under Russia again.
00:34:11.000They'd been under Russia for 130 years after the Great Partition under Catherine the Great.
00:34:17.000And Ukraine had the same perspective in 2004 after poisoning of their presidential candidate, the one that was running.
00:34:26.000And they said, hey, we're going to start moving west because we don't want to be a Russian puppet anymore.
00:34:31.000And what the Ukrainians have done, and this is what Putin's really messed up over the last 18 years, 20 years, is he felt like Ukraine just should have been part of the Russian world, but his activities from poisoning a presidential candidate to then seizing Crimea and then fostering and supporting the separatist movement in Donbass, every time he stepped in and interfered, Ukrainians kept pushing their orientation to the West.
00:34:59.000And this war, America could not have avoided this war because the Ukrainian people literally, if their president would have accepted the Minsk agreements, President Zelensky probably would have suffered an internal street revolution in Ukraine because Ukrainians were not prepared to accept the key concessions that Putin was demanding over their sovereignty, basically giving Russia a veto in its foreign policy by accepting the Minsk agreements.
00:35:30.000And Zelensky tried in 2019 to make peace.
00:35:33.000And he realized, and I spoke to someone on our podcast, who's part of what they call the Ukrainian resistance.
00:35:38.000He said, look, we were camping outside of Zelensky's hotel room in Paris to let him know we were watching him and that he better not cede one inch of territory, Crimea or the Donbass to Russia in any kind of peace agreement.
00:35:53.000So the Ukrainians have a voice in this, and they really chose this war by not giving in to what were maximalist.
00:36:03.000Everyone really recognized them as unrealistic.
00:36:07.000You know, President Putin, his ultimatum was a lot like our ultimatum to Saddam Hussein in 2003.
00:36:14.000Saddam Hussein was stuck between a rock and a hard place because if he would have accepted it, he probably would have suffered a coup internally.
00:36:21.000And if he rejected it, he knew he was going to get invaded.
00:36:27.000And what kills me as an American is part of our moral high ground was seeded by our own invasion of Iraq because we had done that.
00:36:36.000And I think where America really has lost the plot here, and Russia too, was understanding the Ukrainian perspective.
00:36:45.000America thought Ukraine was going to get invaded, and they thought they were going to fall very quickly.
00:36:49.000They were right on the first one, dead wrong on the second one.
00:36:53.000Russia thought that Ukraine would fold because they felt their intelligence had done the work, and they bought off who they needed to buy off, and the Ukrainian military did know how to fight.
00:37:02.000Ukrainians had a voice in this, and I think you're starting to see that on the global stage.
00:37:06.000And my main critique of America and the West, actually, is Ukraine actually has to make their own decision here on what they want, and don't let them drag this out.
00:37:19.000I think that the war is horrible, and I don't like to see it, but Ukraine, they're fighting for literally their hometown.
00:37:33.000And if someone comes into our town, I have to be here with our people.
00:37:38.000And I think it's just hard in America, because we haven't had that for almost 200 years, to understand that level of You know, what they're up against.
00:37:48.000What about the criticism of Zelensky that he has abolished political dissent in his own country, that he's jailed some of his political opponents, that he's illegalized the other party?
00:38:26.000Yeah, I mean, look, during a war where you have an existential threat to the country, that's why parliaments basically cede dictatorial powers to their president.
00:38:35.000So President Zelensky, he did abolish 11 political parties' activities because the mayor of Melitopol, who was kidnapped by Russian forces and sent away, the one that replaced him was a lady from one of these political parties.
00:38:49.000And she volunteered herself to be one of the puppet governments.
00:38:52.000So Ukrainian intelligence has assessed that these 11 parties are probably part of the FSB payroll that Putin thought were going to rise up.
00:39:01.000So what they're trying to do and whether they're overdoing it or not, they have the power is to forestall any other puppet regimes in any of the occupied territories from being able to rise up legally so that these people know that if I step up and do this, they're going to suffer severe consequences.
00:39:20.000So it's a very practical, hard-nosed thing to do, but it's certainly within the law right now, given martial law.
00:39:26.000No men between 18 to 60 can leave the country.
00:39:29.000Everyone has to register with the draft office.
00:39:32.000The whole society is existentially under threat, and the president's doing what he's legally allowed to do right now.
00:39:39.000Did U.S. intelligence agencies participate in the coup in 2014 to replace the Ukrainian government?
00:39:49.000Well, I've seen Oliver Stone's Ukraine on Fire, and I've also watched Winter on Fire, which is, those are like two ends of the spectrum, and I'm a historian, so you always have to watch both sides of the issue.
00:40:01.000Did George Soros and the CIA back that revolution?
00:40:17.000Whether the CIA bankrolls it or not, no revolution is successful without people who are willing to lay down their life.
00:40:24.000100 plus people were gunned down in the streets by FSB agents, probably from Russia, snipers that came in.
00:40:31.000So I'm sure there was a conflict going on between the CIA and the FSB.
00:40:36.000But it would not have been successful because without Ukrainian people who really wanted that political orientation for their country, and I'd say probably 60 plus percent of Ukrainians that I've spoken to were very glad that that revolution happened.
00:40:52.000They weren't happy with the loss of life.
00:40:54.000And there were a sizable majority of people who didn't agree with that revolution.
00:40:59.000And they didn't believe that that was the right way to deal with Yanukovych.
00:41:04.000But Yanukovych really shot himself in the foot by the way he sent riot police out to beat college students right after they started protesting.
00:41:11.000And then that just kind of snowballed.
00:41:13.000I don't think if the CIA backed it in a major way that they would have...
00:41:18.000We've been successful without this really being an organic movement.
00:41:23.000I think we've seen throughout history, and I know you know this more than I do, having seen the government, we're not very good at backing revolutionaries and making them do things that they don't have popular support for.
00:41:32.000I mean, your uncle again in the Bay of Pigs, we have experience of this going horribly wrong.
00:41:46.000I'm sure they supported it, but I think we overestimate sometimes, because I worked with the CIA in Iraq and saw them, I think we overestimate their competence a lot of times and their abilities in fomenting these things.
00:42:00.000At one point in the 1990s, Putin reached out to our country to propose Russia's inclusion in NATO, and we refused him.
00:42:08.000And was that a signal that we wanted to keep the Cold War going?
00:42:12.000Yeah, so I think the incident you're speaking about is when President Putin came into office in 1999, he had a bit of a bromance with President Bush.
00:42:21.000I think President Bush famously saw into his eyes and looked into his soul, which I think is a pretty cringe-worthy historical moment now that we look back on it.
00:42:31.000But the story, as I understand it, is that President Putin inquired that he was exploring the possibilities And I think that he wasn't interested or Russia didn't want to submit to some of the qualification requirements.
00:42:46.000I do think that was a strategic mistake on America's side for not pursuing that option more.
00:42:52.000I think that H.R. McMaster, my old boss, in his book, The Battlegrounds, The Fight for the Future of the Free World, he makes a point that rather than antagonizing Russia or rather than Russia trying to fight us, what they probably should do is look at Joining European Community of Nations and really helping buffer what is the true emerging threat to America is China.
00:43:17.000And I thought that was a really interesting point that General McMaster made.
00:43:22.000And I do think if that's true, that we miss that opportunity.
00:43:25.000We certainly miss an opportunity to bring Russia into the Western world.
00:43:31.000But I also think that how has Putin governed his country?
00:43:34.000And is he willing to govern his country in a way that's A bit democratic and free versus, I think, the repressions that we're seeing now.
00:43:43.000There's probably a lot of fault on both sides.
00:43:45.000But I do think that America failed for a long time to listen to Russia and to potentially engage I think?
00:44:11.000Your enemy's perspective, as I would say, legitimately, I view President Putin in Russia right now as an enemy to my own interests living in Ukraine.
00:44:21.000But I also need to be honest and understand that I have a very biased perspective.
00:44:25.000And as a historian, you have the beauty of hindsight and the ability to look back and see where we made mistakes.
00:44:32.000And I think if we go back through President Putin's reign and see how America Welcome
00:45:06.000You can't, unfortunately, run a split test as we do in tech companies.
00:45:10.000But there's certainly a huge what-if in American foreign policy where that misadventure into Iraq really cost us.
00:45:18.000I think it's cost us our national prestige, our moral high ground in this current situation, a lot of money, lives.
00:45:26.000And I wish we could have done that differently.
00:45:28.000And I wish that President Putin hadn't gone down the path he's gone, because I think he deserves a lot of Thank you so much for really an extraordinarily informative interview.