The Ben Shapiro Show - Is Ukraine Going To Be A Stalemate? | Ep. 1457

00:00:00.000 Defense analysts say that the war in Ukraine may be a stalemate.

00:00:03.000 Russia claims it used a hypersonic missile.

00:00:05.000 And China continues to play both sides.

00:00:07.000 I'm Ben Shapiro.

00:00:07.000 This is the Ben Shapiro Show.

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00:00:21.000 We'll get to all the news in just one moment.

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00:01:27.000 Well, the analysts now say that this war in Ukraine for Russia is looking more and more like it could be a stalemate.

00:01:33.000 According to the Washington Post, Russia's attempt to conquer Ukraine could be headed toward a stalemate as heavy casualties and equipment losses take a toll on unprepared Russian forces that have failed so far to achieve any of their initial objectives, Western officials and military experts say.

00:01:46.000 The front lines have barely moved in more than a week.

00:01:49.000 Russians are being killed or injured at a rate of up to 1,000 a day, according to Western intelligence estimates, and even more according to Ukrainian ones.

00:01:56.000 Russia has basically been stalled out.

00:01:57.000 They've been unable to take any significant city inside of Ukraine, including Mariupol, where the siege continues.

00:02:04.000 They've been unable to surround Kharkiv.

00:02:06.000 They've been unable to surround Kiev.

00:02:07.000 They've been unable to cut off weapons shipments into Ukraine.

00:02:10.000 And this is a stunning defeat for Vladimir Putin.

00:02:12.000 who is supposed to be the head of this mighty war machine, and it turns out that they cannot even take over and defeat a nation that has one-tenth of their military budget or so.

00:02:22.000 According to the Washington Post, the ferocity of the Russian assault has only intensified as the advances have slowed, with Russia substituting harsh bombardment of civilian populations for progress on the battlefield.

00:02:31.000 Regular Ukrainians living in cities surrounding or partially surrounded by Russian troops are paying the price for a war effort that began to go wrong in the very first hours.

00:02:39.000 But in the absence of substantive progress on the ground, given the scale of the losses being inflicted on its ranks, Russia's military campaign could soon become unsustainable, with troops unable to advance because they lack sufficient manpower, supplies, and munitions, according to analysts and officials.

00:02:51.000 The next two weeks, they say, could be critical in in determining the outcome of the entire war. Unless Russia can swiftly improve its supply lines, bring reinforcements, and bolster the flagging morale of the troops on the ground, its goals may become impossible to achieve.

00:03:02.000 Rob Lee, former U.S. Marine, is now Senior Fellow at the Foreign Policy Research Institute.

00:03:07.000 He says, I don't think Ukraine forces can push Russian forces out of Ukraine, but I also don't think Russian forces can take that much more of Ukraine.

00:03:14.000 An assessment Saturday by the Institute for the Study of War went further.

00:03:17.000 They said Ukrainian forces have defeated the initial Russian campaign of this war.

00:03:20.000 The conflict has now reached a stalemate.

00:03:22.000 Now, The Russian strategy when it comes to this sort of stuff is, if things don't go well for us, then we just up the amount of carnage that we inflict on the enemy.

00:03:32.000 And Russia is firing more and more materiel into civilian centers.

00:03:36.000 Russia is getting harsher and harsher on the civilian centers in Ukraine.

00:03:40.000 And they're also beginning to use weapons that are largely directed at reminding the West to stay out of the conflict directly.

00:03:45.000 So over the weekend, Russia said it twice deployed its newest Kinzhal dagger hypersonic missile in Ukraine, claiming on Sunday to have destroyed a fuel depot near Mykolaiv.

00:03:54.000 And on Saturday, an underground missile and ammunition storage site in the West, the state news agency RIA Novosti has said the attacks represented the first use of the next generation weapon since the start of the war in Ukraine.

00:04:04.000 Western analysts said that these were the first time hypersonic missiles had ever been used in combat.

00:04:09.000 Vladimir Putin has described that missile as an ideal weapon.

00:04:12.000 It's designed to be launched from a MiG.

00:04:13.000 It can fly up to 10 times the speed of sound and, like a slower cruise missile, can maneuver in mid-flight, making it harder for air defense systems to track and intercept.

00:04:21.000 Missiles can be used to deliver conventional warheads at higher speed and more accurately than others.

00:04:25.000 They could also be used to deliver nuclear warheads.

00:04:27.000 And so the reason that Russia is using these, presumably, they say that it's because these are more efficient at destroying underground storage sites, but Most people actually think this is just because Russia is attempting to dissuade the West from getting more broadly involved in Ukraine, reminding everybody, yeah, we also have hypersonic missile technology that can evade your air defense systems, and that could theoretically put a nuclear weapon down in a Western city.

00:04:50.000 Meanwhile, Russia is upping the ante in Mariupol, which is located in the southern part of the country.

00:04:57.000 According to the New York Times, of firing rockets and bombs from land, sea, air, and probably for the first time, from warships in the Sea of Azov, Russian forces broadened their bombardment of the besieged Ukrainian city of Mariupol on Sunday and have forcibly deported thousands of residents, according to city officials and witnesses.

00:05:11.000 Among the freshly devastated was an art school, where about 400 residents were hiding, according to city officials, who claimed it had been bombed by Russian forces targeting civilians.

00:05:18.000 The number of casualties was not known.

00:05:20.000 Apparently, they had actually written on the ground the Ukrainians were children in Russian right outside of this particular art school, and the Russians had bombed it anyway.

00:05:29.000 Into the fourth week of the Russian assault on the country, the coastal city, a strategic port that would have given Russia control over much of Ukraine's southern coast, has increasingly become a grim symbol of Russian frustration that its superior manpower and weaponry have not forced the quick capitulation of the country.

00:05:43.000 According to the New York Times, the city has been without food, water, electricity, or gas since February 24th.

00:05:48.000 But its situation deteriorated even more over the weekend, with reports of raging street battles and Russian forces successfully conquering three neighborhoods.

00:05:55.000 And on Sunday morning, the Azov Battalion, a Ukrainian regiment that has drawn far-right fighters from around the world and is charged with the city's defense, said four Russian naval vessels had shelled the city, largely cut off from the outside world.

00:06:05.000 The toll on civilians there is difficult to assess.

00:06:07.000 By the way, we'll get back to the Azov Battalion in just a second, because notice how the New York Times is soft-pedaling what the Azov Battalion is?

00:06:12.000 The Azov Battalion is a neo-Nazi group.

00:06:14.000 We'll get to that in just a little while, because this has been used by Putin as a pretext for invasion, saying that the Ukrainians are basically Nazis.

00:06:22.000 And then everybody on the right side of the aisle in the West, everybody in the West has been saying that, no, well, Zelensky is Jewish and that means there's not a Nazi issue in Ukraine.

00:06:32.000 Zelensky's resistance to the Russians can be heroic, number one.

00:06:35.000 The Russian predations in Ukraine can be despicable, number two. 0.81

00:06:38.000 And also, Ukraine can have a Nazi problem. 0.90

00:06:40.000 Which they do.

00:06:41.000 We'll get to that in just one moment.

00:06:43.000 Last week, a Mariupol theater sheltering hundreds of people was reduced to rubble.

00:06:46.000 The word children was written in huge letters on the pavement there, clearly visible from the air.

00:06:50.000 Even now, the fates of most of those people remain unknown.

00:06:54.000 So that is the current status of the war in Ukraine.

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00:08:16.000 Russia's assault has uprooted about 10 million people so far.

00:08:21.000 American Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin says Russia is targeting population centers in order to inflict damage.

00:08:27.000 The UN High Commissioner for Refugees, Filippo Grandi said, quote, "'The war in Ukraine is so devastating, 10 million have fled, either displaced inside the country or as refugees abroad, which means almost a quarter of the country's pre-war population Roughly 3.4 million people have already left Ukraine since the Russian offensive began February 24th.

00:08:44.000 Pretty much all of those are women and children bound for Poland. 0.99

00:08:48.000 The UN says the number of refugees could reach 4 million people.

00:08:52.000 Lloyd Austin said that Putin has not been able to achieve the goals he wants to achieve as rapidly as he wants to achieve them.

00:08:56.000 It's had the effect of him moving his forces into a wood chipper.

00:09:01.000 Russia's Defense Ministry on Sunday gave defenders of Mariupol until Monday morning to surrender.

00:09:06.000 They said we call on all units of Ukraine's armed forces, the battalions of its territorial defense, and foreign mercenaries to cease their military activities and lay down their weapons.

00:09:14.000 And he basically threatened to raze the city.

00:09:16.000 This is Mikhail Zintsev, the head of Defense Ministry's National Defense Control Center, according to Interfax.

00:09:22.000 He said, otherwise, the military tribunal that awaits you is only a small part of what you deserve.

00:09:26.000 The streets of Kiev, according to the Wall Street Journal, are mostly deserted at this point.

00:09:30.000 Some city officials suspect more than half of its inhabitants have left, though the exact numbers are not yet known.

00:09:35.000 And the Russian Defense Ministry showed no signs of letting up, even as its own military has taken big losses at this point.

00:09:40.000 On Sunday, the governor of the Crimean city of Sevastopol reported the deputy head of Russia's Black Sea Fleet was killed in the attack on Mariupol.

00:09:47.000 Which is, I believe, the fifth or sixth Russian general to die in this attack so far, which is just an insane thing.

00:09:52.000 I mean, the Russian incompetence here is a huge part of the story. 1.00

00:09:56.000 And it demonstrates, once again, dictators can generally not trust their own people.

00:09:59.000 Because, as it turns out, if you spend all of your time threatening people, everybody just lies to you.

00:10:04.000 There are all these jokes about the Soviet era where we pretend to plant the potatoes and you pretend to buy the potatoes.

00:10:12.000 That is the sort of old Soviet joke is that when people are threatening to kill you, you will tell them whatever you want to tell them in order to prevent being killed.

00:10:19.000 It turns out all of his generals were telling Putin, everything is going to be fine.

00:10:23.000 Everything is swimmingly.

00:10:24.000 Everything's going swimmingly.

00:10:25.000 Everything's great.

00:10:27.000 So all of this is prelude to what comes next.

00:10:30.000 And what I mean by that is that now that Russia is stalling out, the question becomes, can Putin afford to not use something like a weapon of mass destruction?

00:10:39.000 Can Putin afford not to completely level cities?

00:10:42.000 Because the alternative apparently is just him losing.

00:10:45.000 And if the alternative is him losing, he's boxed in.

00:10:46.000 We've been talking about this for a week.

00:10:48.000 And there's this sort of odd level of triumphalism that has arisen in the West, that when you box in a dictator like Putin, who has demonstrated repeatedly his willingness to level civilian centers ranging from Grozny in Chechnya to Aleppo in Syria, when you're dealing with that sort of dictator, the triumphalism that basically says, don't worry, Putin is going to lose and it'll all be fine.

00:11:13.000 I'm just wondering where that triumphalism is coming from, particularly because, again, the one thing that Putin knows is that NATO and the United States are not going to get directly involved in this war in Ukraine.

00:11:23.000 So Chuck Todd spent the weekend asking NATO's chief, Jens Stoltenberg, the Secretary General, how long can you stand by and watch?

00:11:29.000 And the answer is that they can stand by and watch a rather long time, and they're going to stand by and watch for a rather long time because if they set up a no-fly zone, they're afraid of being in a direct nuclear exchange with Vladimir Putin.

00:11:40.000 How long can NATO stand by and watch Russia target civilians without finding a way to help more when it comes to the Ukrainian resistance?

00:11:51.000 Okay, and Stoltenberg basically answered, you know, I don't know what you want from us.

00:11:57.000 You're asking us to do a thing that is not really possible for us to do.

00:12:02.000 It's easy for members of the media to be like, how can we let this happen?

00:12:05.000 But the answer is, once deterrence failed, there were not a lot of choices that were available.

00:12:09.000 Stoltenberg said NATO allies are stepping up their support to Ukraine, partly by delivering military support, human battalion support, and billions upon billions of financial support to Ukraine.

00:12:17.000 And then of course, we also impose those unprecedented sanctions.

00:12:21.000 He also said NATO allies have trained and supported Ukrainian armed forces for years.

00:12:25.000 But is NATO willing to go to direct war with Russia?

00:12:28.000 Not particularly.

00:12:29.000 And so what this has led to is this strange insistence by a lot of people that Putin is on the verge of falling.

00:12:34.000 Now, maybe he is and maybe he isn't, but I have yet to see the evidence that his generals are on the verge of overthrowing Vladimir Putin.

00:12:41.000 And where is the actual evidence of this?

00:12:44.000 So members of the West seem to have this sort of bizarre notion that there's going to be a revolution inside Russia that overthrows Putin.

00:12:52.000 When does this happen?

00:12:53.000 Like really, what is the history of this sort of thing happening in the modern era where a dictator with Modern weaponry and the ability to corral all of his oligarchs by basically holding up all of their money.

00:13:06.000 Where is the history of a revolution that has been successful against, let's say in the last 20 years, against a hardcore dictatorial leader?

00:13:15.000 It hasn't happened in North Korea.

00:13:16.000 It hasn't happened in China.

00:13:17.000 It has not happened in Iran.

00:13:18.000 It's not happening here.

00:13:20.000 My prediction is, no, Putin is not going to end up at the end of a rope thanks to the people who are surrounding him.

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00:14:45.000 But according to the UK Mirror, there is this, again, sort of wishful thinking that is set in?

00:14:50.000 According to the UK Mirror, Vladimir Putin invaded Ukraine because he is terrified of a pro-democracy revolution in Moscow, Boris Johnson has said.

00:14:57.000 The Prime Minister said Putin was in a total panic about the prospect of a popular uprising in his own country if freedom was allowed to flourish in Kiev.

00:15:04.000 The Tory leader claimed the war was a turning point for the world, forcing countries to stand up to Russia rather than making accommodations with tyranny.

00:15:10.000 Failure to support Ukraine now would result in a new age of intimidation across Eastern Europe from the Baltic to the Black Sea.

00:15:16.000 Johnson said Putin's actions were not the result of concern about NATO or the prospect of Western missiles being based there.

00:15:21.000 He dismissed Putin's crazy essay about the historical unity of the people of the two countries as a semi-mystical goth.

00:15:28.000 He said, I think he was frightened of Ukraine for an entirely different reason.

00:15:31.000 He said he was frightened of Ukraine because in Ukraine they have a free press and in Ukraine they have free elections.

00:15:34.000 Well, as we will get to in just a moment, that is sort of true and it is sort of not true.

00:15:38.000 I mean, it is a fact that Ukraine is a developing democracy.

00:15:40.000 It is certainly better than Russia. 1.00

00:15:42.000 It is also the fact that they have some pretty significant internal corruption problems inside Ukraine and they have for a very long time.

00:15:47.000 Again, none of this justifies Putin's actions in Ukraine.

00:15:51.000 What is to say is that I really doubt that this was motivated particularly by the fact that Ukraine had something approaching free elections.

00:16:00.000 I don't think that's what drove this.

00:16:01.000 I think what drove this is that Putin realizes that he's in the last days because he's 70 years old and may not be in great health.

00:16:08.000 And he realizes that his legacy, like all Russian great leaders' legacy, is reliant on expanding his borders, whether you are Stalin or whether you are Peter the Great or whether you are Catherine the Great.

00:16:17.000 It is the expansion of Russian borders that has made you a historic figure in Russian circles.

00:16:21.000 Putin is certainly not going to go down in history as the man who revitalized the Russian economy, which is moribund and has been moribund for the last 20 years.

00:16:28.000 But there's something dangerous about this idea that if you just keep pressing Putin and you push him and you push him and you push him, there's not going to be any sort of real backlash from a person who's, again, shown himself willing to kill hundreds of thousands of civilians in places ranging from Syria to Chechnya.

00:16:47.000 There's a piece in the Wall Street Journal, however, that is sort of along the same lines as the Boris Johnson notion.

00:16:52.000 There's a man named Bing West who's writing for the Wall Street Journal.

00:16:58.000 He says, Biden's objective must be broader.

00:17:01.000 Putin has challenged America as a defender of democracy and of Western values.

00:17:04.000 NATO is providing aid to Ukraine within timorous structures.

00:17:06.000 After Putin muttered threats, Biden forbade the transfer of MiG-29s to be flown by Ukrainian pilots over Ukrainian territory.

00:17:12.000 The administration is clearly hedging.

00:17:14.000 Satellite images show Russian warships gathered off Odessa.

00:17:16.000 These are legitimate targets, but anti-ship missiles are absent from the weapons the administration has approved for Ukraine.

00:17:20.000 Allison, I'm a fan of sending all of these weapons to Ukraine. 0.79

00:17:23.000 I think it's a good idea to send all these weapons to Ukraine. 1.00

00:17:26.000 But what Bing West makes the case for is basically going for outright victory here.

00:17:30.000 He must declare that the sanctions crippling Russia will remain in full force with no exit ramps as long as Putin remains in power.

00:17:37.000 OK, well, if there's no exit ramp, why exactly would Putin settle and then leave?

00:17:42.000 Wouldn't he just ramp this up some more?

00:17:45.000 And you're starting to see the same thing with regard to Zelensky.

00:17:48.000 So Zelensky is now operating under the assumption that he's going to have to give up nothing here in order to get Putin to leave.

00:17:54.000 And I just don't know where this is coming from.

00:17:56.000 And Zelensky came out over the weekend, he said, if the Russian peace talks fail, World War III is likely at this point.

00:18:03.000 And as I'll explain in a second, you know, it's going to be on Zelensky to make hard concessions that people are not going to like in order to end this thing.

00:18:11.000 I think that we have to use any format, any chance in order to have the possibility of negotiating, the possibility of talking to Putin.

00:18:23.000 But if these attempts fail, that would mean Okay, well if that's the case, then wouldn't you think at a certain point that you need to start making some sorts of concessions here?

00:18:38.000 But Zelensky is rejecting some concessions because apparently he thinks that he can hold this thing out indefinitely and that Putin is not going to go whole hog, right?

00:18:44.000 He's playing chicken with Putin a little bit.

00:18:47.000 And listen, you understand it on an emotional level?

00:18:49.000 You're a person leading a wartime effort to preserve your country's territorial integrity against a vicious dictator on your border.

00:18:56.000 At the same time, the West has pledged it's not going to get in direct conflict with that dictator.

00:19:00.000 And Putin, as I've said before, the incentive structure is stacked for Putin to actually use weapons of mass destruction in Ukraine.

00:19:07.000 And yet here is Zelensky saying that he is not going to make compromises with regard to territorial integrity.

00:19:13.000 According to the New York Times, Zelensky said on Sunday he would reject any peace agreement requiring Ukraine recognize the independence of two Russian-backed separatist regions.

00:19:20.000 He suggested there could be a model of understanding to be reached on the territories.

00:19:23.000 He said there are compromises for which we cannot be ready as an independent state.

00:19:27.000 He said you cannot just demand from Ukraine to recognize some territories as independent republics.

00:19:31.000 These compromises are simply wrong.

00:19:34.000 He then laid out his vision for an agreement to end the war, prevent future conflicts with Russia, and approach these territories, which are temporarily occupied, referring to those separatist regions.

00:19:43.000 He said if Ukraine was unable to join NATO, he would seek a more limited coalition of countries, including some NATO members, that could help deter future attacks from Russia.

00:19:51.000 He said, I think without negotiations, we cannot end this war.

00:19:54.000 I think all the people who think this dialogue is shallow and that it's not going to resolve anything, they don't understand this is valuable.

00:20:00.000 But do you see Vladimir Putin ending this war without some sort of territorial concessions with regard to Luhansk and Donetsk, which he de facto controls right now?

00:20:10.000 It's very hard to see.

00:20:10.000 If Zelensky's not offering him enough of an off-ramp, I don't blame Zelensky on a moral level.

00:20:14.000 It's all Putin's fault.

00:20:16.000 But on a negotiating level, if you want this thing to end, everybody's going to have to be unhappy with the deal that emerges.

00:20:20.000 Because look, in the end, the reality is that if Putin decides to really go ho-ho and starts using chemical, biological, nuclear weapons in Ukraine, ain't nobody going to do nothing.

00:20:30.000 John Stoltenberg said exactly that over the weekend.

00:20:33.000 He was asked about it.

00:20:34.000 And he basically said, if Putin unleashes chemical weapons in Ukraine, there's not all that much we can do.

00:20:41.000 You don't have an answer yet on what the use of chemical weapons would do to NATO's stance about Ukraine.

00:20:46.000 So this is something we take extremely serious, but at the same time, again, we are not, we are very much aware that we need to act in a way that prevents this conflict from going, from being a very bloody, ugly, horrific conflict in Ukraine to something that turns out to be a full fledged war between NATO and Russia in Europe, and also in potentially involving, of course,

00:21:15.000 the United States directly.

00:21:16.000 That will be extremely dangerous, and that's exactly what we need to prevent.

00:21:21.000 Okay, so there he is basically saying if you were to use chemical weapons, we're still not going to go to war directly with Russia here.

00:21:31.000 So what that means is Zelensky better find an off-ramp here and he better take it.

00:21:34.000 And the same thing with Putin, he better find an off-ramp and he better take it. 0.60

00:21:38.000 So, you know, this notion that he can just continue this indefinitely, I don't see why he believes that that is the case.

00:21:46.000 I don't see why that is the case.

00:21:48.000 And yet, it seems to be that there is this bizarre hope that's being held out that Putin is just going to fall down on the job, that he's going to have a heart attack or something and die, and that'll be the end of this thing.

00:21:57.000 I don't think that's the way that any of this ends.

00:21:58.000 Meanwhile, Zelensky is going on a publicity tour, right?

00:22:02.000 He's been going around to various countries.

00:22:03.000 He spoke to the US Congress by Zoom.

00:22:05.000 He spoke to the Canadians by Zoom.

00:22:06.000 He spoke to the UK by Zoom.

00:22:07.000 And over the weekend, he spoke to the Israeli Knesset by Zoom as well.

00:22:11.000 And there he tried to put pressure on Israel in ways that he has never tried to pressure any other country, which is kind of astonishing, actually.

00:22:17.000 I mean, I understand that Zelensky is Jewish.

00:22:19.000 That's fine.

00:22:20.000 That's nice.

00:22:21.000 But Ukraine's history with Israel is not particularly good.

00:22:24.000 Ukraine's history with Jews is not particularly good.

00:22:27.000 Ukraine has spent the last several decades voting alongside Russia and alongside Israel's enemies in the United Nations, for example. 0.89

00:22:34.000 Ukraine's history with the Jewish population of Ukraine is really horrible and really ugly. 1.00

00:22:39.000 So Zelensky is apparently very angry at Israel that Israel is not joining in economic sanctions on Russia in the same way that, say, the United States or the UK is.

00:22:49.000 Now, there are geopolitical reasons for that that Zelensky really should understand, considering that Ukraine has had to triangulate between Russia and the West for a very long time, specifically because Russia is on their border.

00:22:58.000 Well, here's the thing.

00:22:59.000 Russia is also on Israel's border, and everybody knows this.

00:23:02.000 So Zelensky, he tried to pull out all the stops with the Israeli Knesset and it didn't go well for him because he made a bunch of references that are just not correct.

00:23:10.000 He made a bunch of requests that are not geopolitically sustainable.

00:23:14.000 And again, I've been saying for a little while here, I think that he's making requests that are not, like, he's been requesting from the West a no-fly zone.

00:23:19.000 That doesn't require the West to actually provide a no-fly zone.

00:23:22.000 It would be a bad policy for the West to do so.

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00:24:48.000 So, Zelensky speaks to the Israeli Knesset, And he tries to pressure the Israeli Knesset into closing down all trade with Russia, into joining the economic sanctions, into giving him the Iron Dome technology as though they have a bunch of Iron Dome units sitting around that they're not using, which of course is not true.

00:25:06.000 The fact is that Iron Dome is also proprietary Israeli technology.

00:25:09.000 And so handing that over to Ukraine, which, again, does not have the world's most wonderful relationship with Israel heretofore, is a bit strange.

00:25:19.000 In any case, according to the New York Times, Zelensky appealed to the sentiments of Jewish Israelis but also criticized Israeli policies on Sunday in a virtual address to lawmakers that touched on the most painful periods of Jewish history and what he called the parallel experiences of the Ukrainian people.

00:25:32.000 As according to the New York Times, the address was set up to be emotionally charged.

00:25:36.000 President Vladimir Putin of Russia has branded the Ukrainian government pro-Nazi and controlled by little Nazis even though Zelensky is Jewish.

00:25:41.000 Zelensky, for his part, thanked the Israeli leader, Prime Minister Naftali Bennett, for his mediation efforts with Russia.

00:25:46.000 But also castigated the Israeli government for not taking a strong enough moral stand on Ukraine's side, a position he reiterated on Sunday.

00:25:53.000 Again, I've noticed that Zelensky has had a little bit of trouble speaking to, say, the government of China about this particular issue, or the government of India about this particular issue.

00:26:01.000 One of the nice things about speaking to westernized countries, whether it's Israel or the United States or Canada or the UK, is that they allow you to do this sort of thing.

00:26:07.000 Zelensky said, It is possible to mediate between countries, but not between good and evil.

00:26:13.000 Zelensky then appeared to make comparisons between the current suffering of the Ukrainians and that of Jews during the Holocaust.

00:26:19.000 He asked why Israel had refused to provide Ukraine with weapons like Iron Dome, Israel's vaunted anti-rocket missile defense system, and asked Israel to take in more refugees.

00:26:28.000 Israel has refused Ukrainian efforts to provide defensive equipment, but has sent aid, including six large generators, and is in the process of setting up a field hospital in Mositzkiya in western Ukraine.

00:26:37.000 More than 11,000 Ukrainian citizens have already arrived in Israel since the start of the war, the majority of them non-Jews.

00:26:43.000 After initially limiting entry to 5,000 refugees, Israel's Interior Minister Ayelet Shaked, under public and political pressure, expanded the guidelines to offer temporary refuge to Ukrainian citizens who have relatives living in Israel, on condition that they receive approval before boarding a plane to Israel.

00:26:58.000 Israel's Knesset is currently in recess.

00:27:00.000 There is no special gathering convened for Zelensky's speech.

00:27:04.000 However, some of the stuff that Zelensky was saying here is just not accurate.

00:27:07.000 So Zelensky, for his part, he tried to compare this to the Holocaust.

00:27:12.000 And then he claimed that the Ukrainians tried to save the Jews during the Holocaust.

00:27:18.000 Okay, that's just not true.

00:27:19.000 That's a lie.

00:27:19.000 That is just, that's unbelievably untrue.

00:27:22.000 Okay, the reality is the Ukraine was one of the worst places for Jews during the Holocaust, specifically because there were at least 100,000 people who were in law enforcement in Ukraine who were cooperating with the Nazi regime.

00:27:32.000 There's a reason Babi Yar happened in Ukraine. 1.00

00:27:36.000 Haaretz, which is a far-left newspaper in Israel, fact-checked the address.

00:27:41.000 He suggested that this is like the final solution in Ukraine.

00:27:44.000 It is not like the final solution in Ukraine.

00:27:45.000 They're not setting up gas chambers and forcibly shipping Ukrainian citizens to the gas chambers.

00:27:50.000 This is a war.

00:27:50.000 It's an ugly war.

00:27:51.000 It's just like every other ugly war Russia has produced. 0.99

00:27:54.000 It is a war that does not give a crap about civilians. 0.99

00:27:57.000 It is an act of evil. 0.94

00:27:59.000 War is not the same thing as the Holocaust, the systematic murder of six million Jews and millions of other people as well.

00:28:05.000 That is not the same thing at all.

00:28:10.000 Zelensky said in a speech to the Israelis, quote, The Ukrainians made their choice 80 years ago.

00:28:14.000 They rescued Jews.

00:28:14.000 That is just bulls**t. I'm sorry, that is not true.

00:28:17.000 According to Haaretz, according to testimonies, Ukrainians helped the Germans find, round up, and transport Jews to the death camps. 0.97

00:28:23.000 In many cases, Ukrainians didn't just indirectly assist in the murder of Jews, they killed them directly themselves. 0.96

00:28:31.000 And then Zelensky suggested, You saw Russian missiles hit Kiev, Babi Yar.

00:28:36.000 This is their memorial.

00:28:38.000 You know what kind of land it is.

00:28:39.000 More than 100,000 Holocaust victims are buried there.

00:28:42.000 Haaretz says, it's believed the likely target for the strikes was not Babi Yar, but the television tower that had built nearby.

00:28:49.000 Also, again, the Ukrainian government was pretty specifically fine with the Nazi government going in and murdering pretty much every Jew in Ukraine.

00:29:01.000 The Jerusalem Post was ripping on Zelensky as well, because again, it is one thing to, the way that he approached Israel here is very different than the way that he approached, for example, the UK and America.

00:29:10.000 And I think, for domestic consumption, let's just say that Ukraine is not famous for its love of the Jews.

00:29:15.000 So that's not a giant shock.

00:29:17.000 And when he came to the United States, he didn't mention America's brutal history of slavery and repression, and then be like, it's just like that.

00:29:24.000 And he didn't mention, when he went to the UK, he didn't talk about British colonialism or something.

00:29:30.000 Instead, he sort of mentioned the best of these countries.

00:29:33.000 Then he went to Israel and he tried to compare what's happening to his country to the Holocaust and pretend that Ukrainians were a mass force against Nazi extermination of Jews.

00:29:40.000 That is not true.

00:29:43.000 According to the Jerusalem Post, Lahav Harkov, the comparison did not have the effect Zelensky apparently had hoped for.

00:29:47.000 Rather than stir Israel's leaders and legislators to action in solidarity, the heavy Holocaust comparisons, from saying Moscow is planning a final solution for the Ukrainian question, to saying that Israel should save Ukrainians, like Ukrainian righteous among the nation save Jews, drew more focus from its audience, which criticized the inappropriateness than Zelensky's appeal for weapons.

00:30:05.000 Communications Minister Yoavs Hendel tweeted, I appreciate the President of Ukraine and support the Ukrainian people in heart and deed.

00:30:11.000 It's impossible to rewrite the terrible history of the Holocaust.

00:30:13.000 Former Cabinet Minister Yuval Steinitz, now Likud member of Knesset, went so far as to say, If Zelensky's speech was given in normal non-war times, we would have said it bordered on Holocaust denial.

00:30:23.000 Every comparison between a regular war, as difficult as it may be, and the extermination of millions of Jews in gas chambers in the framework of the Final Solution is a total distortion of history.

00:30:30.000 The same is true for the claim that Ukrainians helped Jews in the Holocaust.

00:30:33.000 The historic truth is that the Ukrainian people cannot be proud of its behavior regarding the Holocaust and the Jews. 0.83

00:30:40.000 None of that changes the fact that despite the outrageous use of the Holocaust, we must continue humanitarian aid to the citizens of Ukraine.

00:30:49.000 Again, this doesn't have anything to do with the fact that Ukraine is in the right against Russia.

00:30:53.000 But that sort of rhetoric is really, really poorly calibrated.

00:31:00.000 As Alharkov writes over at the Jerusalem Post, when it comes to actually sending weapons or defensive systems like Iron Dome, there's consensus in the cabinet, Israel should not get involved in that way.

00:31:08.000 The reason for this is because actually of the United States.

00:31:12.000 That is because right now, Israel, I mean, and again, Zelensky should understand this, considering his country borders Russia and Russia is an aggressive power that has invaded him. 0.67

00:31:19.000 Right now, Israel is bordered by Syria.

00:31:21.000 Syria is controlled by Russia.

00:31:22.000 Russia allows Israel to hit Iranian targets inside Syria.

00:31:27.000 The minute that Israel overtly sides with Ukraine, that permission goes away, and suddenly Israel has Iran directly on its doorstep. 0.87

00:31:34.000 Because Hezbollah in Syria is run by Iran.

00:31:39.000 Ukrainian officials have repeatedly made demands of Israel that are not possible, like banning Russian channels that aren't even broadcast in Israel, or to place sanctions on Russian officials in a way Israeli law does not even allow.

00:31:50.000 Zelensky's criticism of Naftali Bennett's mediation contrasted with his recent expression of appreciation for the offer, saying that Bennett is taking a middle ground between good and evil.

00:32:01.000 So again, the Israeli people, broadly speaking, support Zelensky and the war against Russia.

00:32:05.000 But geopolitics is a complicated business, and Zelensky knows that.

00:32:09.000 And the way that Zelensky approached this is really, really poorly done.

00:32:13.000 Also worth noting here that Ukraine, I mean, it is unfortunate to say this, and it does not mean that Vladimir Putin claiming that he's going in to de-Nazify is legit, because it's not.

00:32:23.000 But Ukraine right now has a very serious anti-Semitism problem that has not stopped.

00:32:30.000 According to Alan Ripp, writing for NBC News, even though Putin is engaging in propaganda, it's true that Ukraine has a genuine Nazi problem, both past and present.

00:32:40.000 Putin's destructive actions, among them the devastation of Jewish communities, makes clear he's lying when he says his goal is to ensure anyone's welfare, but important as it is to defend the yellow and blue flag against Kremlin's brutal invasion.

00:32:50.000 It would be a dangerous oversight to deny Ukraine's anti-Semitic history in collaboration with Hitler's Nazis, as well as the latter-day embrace of neo-Nazi factions in some quarters.

00:33:00.000 Nowadays, Ukraine counts between 56,000 and 140,000 Jews.

00:33:04.000 who enjoy freedoms and protections never imagined by their grandparents.

00:33:07.000 That includes an updated law passed to criminalize anti-Semitic acts, but the law is intended to address a pronounced uptick in public displays of bigotry, including swastika-laden vandalism of synagogues and Jewish memorials, eerie marches in Kiev and other cities that celebrated the Waffen-SS.

00:33:20.000 Also, Ukraine has in recent years erected a glut of statues honoring Ukrainian nationalists whose legacies are tainted by their indisputable record as Nazi proxies.

00:33:31.000 Also, far-right groups have gained political currency in the past decade, none more chilling than Svoboda, formerly the Social National Party of Ukraine, whose leader claimed the country was controlled by a Muscovite Jewish mafia.

00:33:44.000 And, as we mentioned, we mentioned the Azov battalion, which is currently defending Mariupol from the Russians.

00:33:49.000 That is a neo-Nazi battalion. 0.62

00:33:51.000 Neonazis are part of some of Ukraine's growing ranks of volunteer battalions, according to NBC News.

00:33:55.000 They're battle-hardened after waging some of the toughest street fighting against Moscow-backed separatists in eastern Ukraine following Putin's Crimean invasion in 2014.

00:34:03.000 One is the Azov Battalion, founded by an avowed white supremacist who claimed Ukraine's national purpose was to rid the country of Jews and other inferior races.

00:34:11.000 In 2018, U.S.

00:34:12.000 Congress stipulated its aid to Ukraine could not be used to provide arms training or other assistance to the Azov battalion.

00:34:17.000 Even so, Azov is now an official member of the Ukraine National Guard.

00:34:20.000 So, for all the people in the United States who are complaining about white supremacism and suggest that America's military is rife with white supremacism, the Ukraine actually has an actual unit that is integrated into its National Guard that is openly white supremacist and neo-Nazi.

00:34:34.000 None of that justifies what Russia is doing right now.

00:34:37.000 It is to say that when Zelensky suggests that this country has been, that deserves some sort of special treatment from Israel and Israel should overlook its own national interests in pursuit of helping out Ukraine.

00:34:49.000 Again, real world politics is a hard business.

00:34:53.000 And when you have to balance the needs of your people for safety and security against the attempts to provide help to places that are under siege, This is why it always comes back to the fact that America is a superpower.

00:35:05.000 It's a global superpower.

00:35:06.000 If you want America as a global superpower to guarantee the free trafficking. 0.67

00:35:11.000 of human rights loving and democracy loving nations.

00:35:14.000 America needs to guarantee that security when it makes it more dangerous.

00:35:16.000 For our allies?

00:35:17.000 Places like Israel? 0.98

00:35:18.000 How do you expect Israel to support Ukraine when Israel has to look north and see Russia on its border?

00:35:23.000 How do you expect, by the way, in the future, Ukraine to join Western alliances when it has to look to the east and see Russia on its border?

00:35:28.000 That's not the way any of this works.

00:35:30.000 By the way, Zelensky just banned, I should mention, 11 political parties with ties to Russia.

00:35:36.000 Not the Azov party, not the neo-Nazi parties, but he did ban 11 parties that have ties to Russia, including places like For Life, the Sharii Party, Nashi, the Opposition Bloc, Left Opposition, Union of Left Forces, State Progressive Socialist Party of Ukraine, etc, etc.

00:35:51.000 So things are rather complicated, and they get more complicated when it comes to China.

00:35:55.000 Again, I've noticed that Zelensky's been rather muted in his talk about China, mainly because he knows he's not going to get China to do anything.

00:36:01.000 So the situation in Ukraine, it's pretty bad all around.

00:36:04.000 And China, of course, is helping out the Russians in a pretty major way here.

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00:37:12.000 Okay, guys.

00:37:12.000 March Madness is on.

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00:38:02.000 Meanwhile, the situation with regard to China is growing more and more fraught.

00:38:12.000 So China is the big winner from this war. 0.95

00:38:14.000 China has been buying up Russian assets on the cheap.

00:38:17.000 China has been asked by Russia to help supply more military materiel.

00:38:20.000 So far, they say they are not doing that.

00:38:21.000 It is unclear whether that is the case or not.

00:38:24.000 And Biden and the Chinese held a phone call.

00:38:29.000 Xi and Biden held a phone call on Friday, and they are giving two very different messages.

00:38:34.000 After that phone call.

00:38:34.000 So Biden is like, yeah, we have a bit of an understanding here and China is going to try and do something about all of this.

00:38:40.000 And maybe we can have negotiations in the future.

00:38:42.000 And meanwhile, the Chinese are like, yeah, that sounds great. 1.00

00:38:44.000 And then to their own people like, yeah, we're not doing any of that stuff.

00:38:47.000 So according to the New York Times, Kin Gang, the Chinese ambassador to the United States, said on Sunday China would not send weapons and ammo to support Russia's war in Ukraine and that Beijing would do everything to de-escalate the crisis.

00:38:59.000 Kin's comments, which were aimed at an American audience, presented a softer tone than the one officials in Beijing have used when discussing the war, particularly in domestic settings.

00:39:06.000 The remarks came as higher-ranking Chinese officials continued to accuse the United States and Europe of instigating the conflict and continued to amplify Russian disinformation that served as a rationale for the invasion.

00:39:16.000 They also followed President Biden's warning on Friday to President Xi Jinping that China would face consequences if Beijing gave material aid to Russia in support of its war.

00:39:24.000 China's rhetorical strategy, speaking of peace and de-escalation to an international audience while continuing to support Russia domestically, demonstrates the careful moves Beijing has made in staking out its position on Ukraine.

00:39:35.000 So the United States has been very critical of China, but they're not actually doing anything, is the thing.

00:39:39.000 And they're not really prepared to do anything.

00:39:42.000 So the Chinese ambassador went on CBS' Face the Nation.

00:39:45.000 He said, China's trusted relations with Russia, that's not a liability.

00:39:48.000 And then when he was pushed by CBS News' Margaret Brennan about the relationship with Russia, he's like, stop being naive. 0.99

00:39:55.000 Cut the crap. 1.00

00:39:56.000 We all understand geopolitics. 1.00

00:39:59.000 Why can't you condemn this as an invasion?

00:40:04.000 Don't be naive.

00:40:06.000 Condemnation.

00:40:07.000 It sounds naive to say that's not an invasion.

00:40:10.000 It doesn't solve the problem.

00:40:12.000 I would be surprised if Russia will back down by condemnation.

00:40:19.000 OK, and again, this is his way of saying we're not going to condemn.

00:40:22.000 We are not going to.

00:40:23.000 We're not going to push Russia.

00:40:25.000 And meanwhile, the Biden administration really has no answer to this.

00:40:28.000 The Biden administration continues to kind of futz about.

00:40:31.000 The fact of the matter is that they put out a transcript to the Biden administration and the Biden administration, it wasn't really a transcript, it was more a summary of the phone call.

00:40:39.000 It took them hours and hours and hours to come up with what they said actually happened during the meeting.

00:40:44.000 China came out like right away and like, yeah, we said some words and it doesn't really mean anything.

00:40:49.000 But when it comes to the Biden administration, they really tried to craft this thing.

00:40:54.000 They tried to suggest that there was some sort of agreement and we've agreed to work in the future.

00:40:58.000 No, you haven't.

00:41:00.000 No one believes that.

00:41:01.000 It took you forever to come up with some sort of statement as to what you achieved because the truth is that they didn't really achieve much of anything with regard to China because they don't actually have a strategy with regard to China.

00:41:13.000 I mean, this is a country that still denies openly that it's even abusing human rights of the Uyghurs.

00:41:17.000 And here's the Chinese ambassador on Face the Nation doing just that.

00:41:21.000 A UN human rights panel said there are credible reports that a million Uyghurs are in a massive internment camp shrouded in secrecy.

00:41:30.000 And the High Commissioner for Refugees and Human Rights will go to China soon.

00:41:34.000 Will you give them unlimited access?

00:41:36.000 I totally reject that.

00:41:39.000 So he totally rejects it, okay?

00:41:40.000 And again, there are no consequences for stuff like this.

00:41:42.000 By the way, here's the readout of Biden's call with Xi Jinping, okay?

00:41:45.000 It took them four hours to release this from the White House.

00:41:49.000 President Joseph R. Biden spoke today with President Xi Jinping of the People's Republic of China.

00:41:53.000 The conversation focused on Russia's unprovoked invasion of Ukraine.

00:41:57.000 President Biden outlined the views of the United States and our allies and partners on this crisis.

00:42:01.000 President Biden detailed our efforts to prevent and then respond to the invasion, including by imposing costs on Russia.

00:42:05.000 He described the implications and consequences if China provides material support to Russia as it conducts brutal attacks against Ukrainian cities and civilians.

00:42:13.000 The President underscored his support for a diplomatic resolution to the crisis.

00:42:16.000 The two leaders also agreed on the importance of maintaining open lines of communication to manage the competition between our two countries.

00:42:22.000 The President reiterated U.S.

00:42:24.000 policy on Taiwan has not changed and emphasized the United States continues to oppose any unilateral changes to the status quo.

00:42:30.000 The two leaders tasked their teams to follow up on today's conversation in the critical period ahead.

00:42:33.000 Does that sound substantive to you?

00:42:35.000 Anything in there?

00:42:36.000 So when you see what exactly the Biden administration is bragging about, open lines of communication, we talked.

00:42:41.000 Well, congrats, but you didn't change anything that is actually happening.

00:42:44.000 And again, that is the big question is what do you guys do to reestablish deterrence after all of this?

00:42:49.000 Yes, you can brag that you hit Russia with crippling economic sanctions, and that's very nice. 1.00

00:42:54.000 But bottom line is, unless you have the material in order to prevent invasion, What exactly are you going to do here?

00:43:02.000 And let's be real about this.

00:43:03.000 The strategic ambiguity with regard to Taiwan, for example, is significantly greater than the strategic ambiguity with regard to Ukraine.

00:43:10.000 Ukraine kept asking to join the West, and the West was like, well, maybe you can, maybe you can't, but at least we acknowledge you're an independent country.

00:43:15.000 Meanwhile, the West refuses to even say that Taiwan is an independent country from China.

00:43:19.000 And China just claims, well, we have territorial integrity over Taiwan in the same way that we did over Hong Kong, and you guys did nothing with regard to Hong Kong.

00:43:26.000 What are you going to do?

00:43:26.000 Sanction us the same way you did the Russians?

00:43:27.000 Fine, do it.

00:43:29.000 Like really, we don't believe you because you're too tied into our economy.

00:43:32.000 Meanwhile, Vladimir Zelensky continues going sort of country to country in an attempt to garner support.

00:43:38.000 He directly addressed the Germans in a video posted on Monday asking for further restrictions against Russia and supporting Ukraine's bid for EU membership.

00:43:45.000 Now again, he's kind of asking for things he's not going to get, according to the Washington Post.

00:43:48.000 He's now asked for EU membership.

00:43:49.000 Not going to happen.

00:43:50.000 He's asked for NATO to establish a no-fly zone.

00:43:52.000 Not going to happen.

00:43:52.000 He's asked Israel for Iron Dome.

00:43:54.000 Not going to happen.

00:43:55.000 When deterrence fails, it's very difficult to reestablish deterrence based on you going kind of country to country and begging for help.

00:44:02.000 These countries are going to provide whatever support they can so long as it doesn't violate their national interests too greatly.

00:44:08.000 According to Zelensky, he said more measures are needed to cut off Russia's sources of funding for its invasion of Ukraine, including closing European trading ports to Russia and no longer buying Russian oil and gas.

00:44:18.000 He said, please do not sponsor this country, Russia's war machine, not a single euro for the occupiers.

00:44:23.000 The Ukrainian leader then drew parallels between Ukraine and Germany.

00:44:25.000 Again, this is his shtick.

00:44:26.000 He sort of goes country to country.

00:44:27.000 Again, I'm not blaming him for any of this.

00:44:30.000 If America were under attack, I'd want us to do the same thing. 0.92

00:44:32.000 However, this sort of Pretending this is not political strategery is very silly.

00:44:39.000 He went to, so he's speaking to the Germans, and he says that Kiev is the new Berlin, comparing our and your openness, and now he says that Kiev is closed.

00:44:47.000 He argued that Ukrainians are part of Europe, arguing Germans can put pressure on politicians to support Ukraine's application to join the EU.

00:44:54.000 On Monday, Germany's foreign minister, Annalena Baerbock, renewed her call for a solidarity airlift to relieve the pressure on countries that bore Ukraine by resettling some of the country's 3.5 million people who have fled the country across Western nations.

00:45:06.000 So, as this disaster continues to unfold, the question is going to be, once again, we just keep coming back to what is the off-ramp?

00:45:12.000 What is the off-ramp?

00:45:14.000 And the off-ramp is going to have to be something that nobody likes.

00:45:17.000 So that means probably Zelensky is going to have to offer some sort of territorial concessions to Putin so that he stops this.

00:45:24.000 And the West is going to have to relieve some sort of sanctions on Putin in order to incentivize him to stop this.

00:45:31.000 Wishful thinking is the enemy of good policy.

00:45:33.000 And the wishful thinking that Putin's regime is just going to collapse, or that Putin is just going to withdraw from Ukraine, or that if Zelensky begs hard enough, magically, he'll be overwhelmed with largesse from nations who have at best mixed interests when it comes to war abroad.

00:45:49.000 That is not a strategy for this war coming to an end.

00:45:51.000 It's a strategy for its continuation and eventually for Vladimir Putin going ho-hog.

00:45:55.000 All right, we'll be back here later today with an additional hour of content.

00:45:57.000 In the meantime, go check out the Michael Moll's show.

00:45:59.000 Today he discusses Dr. Anthony Fauci's announcement he might retire.

00:46:02.000 You can hear more details about that story over on Michael's show that's available right now.

00:46:06.000 I'm Ben Shapiro.

00:46:06.000 This is The Ben Shapiro Show.

00:46:23.000 Editing is by Adam Sajovic, audio is mixed by Mike Koromina, hair and makeup is by Fabiola Cristina, production assistant Jessica Kranz.

00:46:31.000 The Ben Shapiro Show is a Daily Wire production, copyright Daily Wire 2022.

00:46:36.000 A hulking dude wins the NCAA Women's Swimming Championship.

00:46:40.000 Dr. Fauci announces he might retire after, just coincidentally, after my expose, Fauci unmasked, hit the airwaves.

00:46:48.000 And the deep state gets off rigging the election scot-free.

The Ben Shapiro Show - March 21, 2022

Is Ukraine Going To Be A Stalemate? | Ep. 1457

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