Vladimir Putin unleashes a strike against a Ukrainian base along the Polish border, Iran fires missiles at the U.S. consulate in Erbil, Iraq, and China generously offers to mediate between Russia and Ukraine. Ben Shapiro explains why the Russians are ratcheting up the pressure in this war on Ukraine, and why they know exactly what to do to get the West to back them up in order to force the Ukraine government to do what they want. The Ben Shapiro Show is sponsored by ExpressVPN. If you haven t gotten a VPN yet, get ExpressVPN on your computer, phone, or tablet, and you will be well on your way to becoming a free member of the ExpressVPN community. You can get a 30-day, risk-free guarantee, so you literally have nothing to lose. You will save 50% off your very first month of coverage. That s PureTalk. PureTalk is simply smarter, wireless, wireless Switch over the way I did today, and still save a fortune. Go to puretalk.co/theBenShapiroShow and use promo code Shapiro to save $50 off your first month! You'll get FREE 3 months of PureTalk membership when you sign up! Subscribe to the show and get access to all the latest news and features including the latest epsiode of the show! and access all my favorite shows on the airwaves wherever you get your favorite podcast spots and social media platforms! Subscribe and subscribe to my podcast! I'm Ben Shapiro is a podcasting platform that gets the latest episodes of the Ben Shapiro's newest episodes on the show? Ben Shapiro Podcasts Subscribe on Apple Podcasts! Subscribe on iTunes Subscribe on Podcharts Subscribe on Audible Subscribe on the App Store Subscribe on Poshmark Learn more about Ben Shapiro on Podcoin Subscribe on Spare Cash App Subscribe on Strava Rate and review on iTunes Learn more at Podcoin Learn more on the Podcoin Leave Us a Review on PODCAST or become a Friend on Pizzarello s Podcasts & Shoutout Connect with Ben Shapiro s Podcast? Subscribe & Share on Spanky Shout out to Ben Shapiro Learn more like Ben Shapiro On The Samee s Podcast Podcasts on Podcrush Podcasts on the Podcasts On The Podchronicity & More And more!
00:01:33.000Alrighty, so Russia continues to ratchet up the pressure in this war on Ukraine.
00:01:38.000According to the Wall Street Journal, the latest that a Russian airstrike on a Ukrainian military training center close to the Polish border threw into sharp relief the hazards of the Western push to deliver arms support to Kiev while avoiding direct conflict with a nuclear adversary.
00:01:50.000The airstrike killed 35 people at the facility in Yavoriv, about 10 miles from the Polish border, early on Sunday, far to the west of where the conflict has been concentrated.
00:01:58.000If you look at the map, you can see that Kiev is sort of two-thirds of the way west of the eastern boundary of Ukraine.
00:02:04.000And this particular facility is right on the border.
00:02:06.000It's one day after Moscow warned the West it would consider arms deliveries to Ukraine as legitimate targets.
00:02:12.000A large portion of the military aid from the West passes through Poland into western Ukraine.
00:02:16.000Part of the fine line, the US and NATO are walking between aiding Ukraine militarily while steering clear of providing troops or enforcing a no-fly zone that Ukraine has called The expansion of Russia's aggression to a target close to Poland also increases the risk of war encroaching on NATO territory, which the United States has already warned would be treated as an attack on the alliance.
00:02:33.000Any strike on Poland would bring the full force of the NATO alliance to bear in responding to it, according to Jake Sullivan, the U.S.
00:02:40.000So right now the question is, what exactly are the Russians doing?
00:02:43.000And the answer, of course, is that the Russians are ratcheting things up.
00:02:46.000They are attempting to pressure the West into cracking.
00:02:49.000They see cracks in the Western alliance as far as how far the West is willing to go.
00:02:53.000They see vulnerabilities and they are currently seeking to exploit those vulnerabilities.
00:02:57.000What they understand is that if they pressure the West enough into not giving Ukraine the kind of support it needs, the high likelihood at that point is that Zelensky makes the sorts of concessions the West doesn't like, but that do preserve Zelensky in power in Ukraine while limiting what he can actually do on behalf of Ukraine.
00:03:14.000What Russia is asking for right now, demanding, not asking for since they have 200,000 troops in country, what they are demanding is that Ukraine recognize as independent the breakaway regions of Donetsk and Luhansk over in the eastern part of Ukraine, that they recognize the Russian annexation of Crimea, which has been a longstanding Russian demand because the majority of Crimea are Russian speaking people.
00:03:38.000They held a plenum In 2014, it was an election that wasn't particularly clean, in which the people of Crimea supposedly voted to join Russia.
00:03:49.000In all likelihood, the reality is that if you held a clean election, it's possible, maybe probable, that Crimea votes to join Russia anyway, although in the aftermath of this particular attack, it's possible that that goes the other way.
00:03:59.000In any case, what Russia is demanding is that those breakaway regions Which were essentially seeded by Vladimir Putin by putting his so-called little green men inside to start some sort of insurrectionary war against the Ukrainian government and then create breakaway provinces that would join with Russia in foreign policy that Ukraine recognized that it does not have any control over those regions.
00:04:17.000They also want Ukraine to say that it will never join NATO or join the EU.
00:04:22.000Those are the big asks and demands from the Russian government.
00:04:25.000And the longer this war goes on and the more weakness the West shows, the more likely Zelensky is going to say to the West, listen, you guys are more than happy to see this war go on with Ukrainian bodies in the streets, but you're not willing to give us the kind of support that would be actually necessary to beat the Russians back to Russia.
00:04:41.000All you really want to see is us continue to resist, but not strongly enough that it would trigger a larger war.
00:05:01.000So what exactly do I have to lose by cutting a deal here?
00:05:05.000The longer this goes on, in other words, the more it looks like Putin's gamble, which is that the West was going to chicken out, that the West was essentially going to back down to him.
00:05:12.000It looks like that gamble was not entirely misplaced.
00:05:17.000One, this was a miscalculation by Putin because he thought it would, number one, be a cakewalk.
00:05:21.000And number two, the West wouldn't respond at all.
00:05:23.000And number two, Putin's basic premise, which is that the longer he holds out and the more damage he does, the more likely that the West is going to cave to his demands.
00:05:32.000Because, as it turns out, folks in the West, leaders in the West, are still highly dependent on Russian oil and natural gas in Europe, for example.
00:05:41.000And as we will see, the Biden administration is still counting on the Russians to cut a crappy Iran nuclear deal.
00:05:46.000So Putin is just figuring if I ratchet up the tension, if I kill enough people, then Zelensky is going to cave to me.
00:05:56.000Sure, it won't have been what I really wanted, which is to kill Zelensky and take over the entire country.
00:06:01.000But the reality is that the guerrilla war that has essentially started inside Ukraine And the Ukrainian military fending off the Russian military is a suggestion to Putin that a long-term occupation is a really, really bad idea there.
00:06:12.000So maybe the best thing that Putin can hope to get out of this is Zelensky in power, but essentially conceding the major points that Putin wants in Ukraine in the first place.
00:06:24.000Now, the reason I say all of this is because the West is showing signs of cracking.
00:06:29.000The West, when this first happened, they said we're going to ship as much weaponry as we could possibly want into there.
00:06:33.000There was an open talk just last week by the Secretary of State, Tony Blinken, on national television about how we were going to help ship old MiGs into Ukraine so that they could make sure that Russia couldn't create a no-fly zone over Ukraine.
00:06:48.000That was off the table because we didn't want to go to direct war with the Russians in the air.
00:06:52.000But the second was, don't let Russia have a no-fly zone.
00:06:55.000Make sure that Ukraine can still fend them off in the air, and that would have meant shipping MiGs, old Soviet MiGs, into Ukraine.
00:07:02.000Now, by the way, the reason you ship MiGs into Ukraine as opposed to, say, F-22s or F-35s is because the Ukrainian pilots don't actually know how to fly F-22s or F-35s.
00:07:11.000They know how to fly old Soviet MiGs because that's what their air force is at this point.
00:07:15.000But the problem is, every time Putin pushes, the West seems to crack just a little bit.
00:07:21.000So, for example, This whole debate over sending MiGs into Ukraine, it started off last week with the Secretary of State saying, let's do it.
00:07:29.000And by the end of the week, the United States was saying, we absolutely are not going to do it.
00:07:32.000And as it turns out, that was a call directly from the top.
00:07:48.000And we're also going to be pretty cautious about allowing the Poles to do that as well.
00:07:52.000Here was Joe Biden over the weekend saying that he thinks that if we had sent planes into Ukraine over the border via Ukrainian pilots, that this would have been World War III.
00:08:01.000But we're already sending all sorts of anti-air batteries.
00:08:05.000We're already sending Javelin missiles in there.
00:08:08.000We're sending all sorts of weaponry over the border.
00:08:09.000Why exactly would this be any different?
00:08:11.000And if the idea is, well, you know, it's because Vladimir Putin is going to get pissed, Vladimir Putin has already declared that economic warfare is a form of warfare.
00:08:18.000He's already threatened nuclear war here.
00:08:20.000So do you really believe that Vladimir Putin is going to launch a nuclear war if you send a few MiGs over the border?
00:08:26.000Not to fight the Russians directly, by the way, to just land at Ukrainian air bases that the Ukrainian military can fight the Russians.
00:08:37.000Here's Joe Biden basically caving under pressure from Vladimir Putin.
00:08:42.000The idea that we're going to send in offensive equipment and have planes and tanks and trains going in with American pilots and American crews.
00:08:51.000Just understand, and don't kid yourself, no matter what you all say, that's called World War III.
00:09:00.000Okay, so now he's just parroting whatever Putin is saying.
00:09:03.000First of all, we weren't talking about sending American pilots and American planes over the border.
00:09:07.000We were talking about sending old Soviet planes over the border without American pilots, like Ukrainian pilots.
00:09:19.000Please explain to me the difference between sending Javelin missiles And anti-aircraft missiles that are going to take down planes and sending in planes that are going to take down planes.
00:09:27.000You're gonna have to explain the logical differentiation between those two things.
00:09:31.000Nobody's talking about sending in Soviet MiGs.
00:09:33.000They can attack Russian bases in Russia.
00:09:37.000So Vladimir Putin looks at this crazy old man.
00:09:39.000He's like, well, I feel like I can just keep going here.
00:09:42.000And the longer I go, the better chance they are going to back down.
00:09:45.000And it's kind of an amazing thing, because right now you have a second-rate world power, which is what the Russians are.
00:09:50.000They are a nuclear arm, but they are a second-rate world power.
00:09:52.000They are a gas station with a nuclear arsenal, dictating terms to the United States, the most powerful country on planet Earth, with a military significantly more powerful than any in the history of mankind.
00:10:04.000And Wendy Sherman over at the State Department, she's saying the same thing.
00:10:07.000The Pentagon says that, you know, if we move jets to Ukraine, it could get very complicated.
00:10:10.000So in other words, when Putin threatens you guys enough, you back down.
00:10:13.000So why would you think that Putin... That's why Putin is ratcheting things up.
00:10:17.000As it turns out, every time you show weakness to the bear, the bear attacks.
00:10:21.000The Pentagon, however, made an assessment that trying to move these planes was very complicated, that backfilling them was virtually impossible, that what Ukrainians really needed were anti-aircraft, anti-tank and anti-armor weapons, which is what we are supplying them in great measure and coordinating with other countries to do the same.
00:10:44.000Well, it seems like they were directly asking for those jets.
00:10:48.000Now, when John Kirby from the Pentagon, he says it's the same thing, you know, well, you know, it's really not in their interest for the United States and Russia to get into an air... Who's talking about an air war?
00:11:34.000And I don't think it's in anybody's interest, certainly not Ukraine's interest, for the United States and Russia to be getting in a war in their airspace.
00:11:47.000We've been shipping millions of dollars in weaponry over that border consistently since the beginning of this war.
00:11:53.000Well, the West is showing some signs of cracking against Russia, but you should not show any signs of cracking when it comes to making sure that you eat healthy.
00:13:32.000And now, according to Politico, in December 2021, senior U.S.
00:13:36.000military officials told lawmakers they wanted to send a few hundred additional special ops personnel to Ukraine to provide military advice and training on unconventional warfare.
00:13:44.000At the time, Russia had amassed roughly 100,000 troops on the border with Ukraine.
00:13:47.000Concerns were growing in Washington and Europe about a broadening invasion.
00:13:50.000But the White House had concerns about the deployment.
00:13:55.000Apparently, Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin planned to directly press Joe Biden to approve the mission, and Biden turned it down.
00:14:02.000A senior military official told House lawmakers the White House was concerned sending the troops would escalate the already tense situation with Russia.
00:14:08.000Yeah, I mean, good thing we didn't send those troops.
00:14:09.000Otherwise, the Russians might have crossed that border and invaded Ukraine or something.
00:14:15.000A third congressional official told Politico, a Pentagon official briefed the Senate Armed Services Committee, that plans have been scrapped due to those concerns.
00:14:22.000The Biden administration hoped diplomacy might still work and feared an influx of U.S.
00:14:53.000Like, just take it on a personal level.
00:14:56.000There's a guy, he's walking around your high school.
00:14:58.000He works out all the time, and it just so happens that he might be carrying a switchblade.
00:15:02.000Is that the guy you attack, or is the guy that you attack the one who looks vulnerable and who's carrying around a wallet full of lunch money?
00:15:10.000Like, this is the stupidest thing in the world.
00:15:12.000Well, you know, if we look strong and we carry around the switchblade, that might make them feel more violent against us, and then they might attack Ukraine.
00:15:18.000Well, like really slow clap for the Biden administration, which said in December, we're not going to send special ops people over there for training because doing so might incentivize the Russians to attack because clearly you avoided that attack.
00:15:31.000A White House spokesperson is now trying to deny this, saying no such plans for additional training were ever presented to the White House or the NSC.
00:15:37.000We have no idea what this is referring to, said the spokesperson.
00:15:40.000A Defense Department official said Biden and the White House, quote, did not cancel any planned training activities for Ukraine until U.S.
00:15:47.000Neither official would comment on the Capitol Hill briefings themselves or whether a mission was discussed with the White House informally that fell below the threshold of an official plan.
00:15:54.000So yeah, that means that that happened.
00:15:59.000So Russia is striking near the Polish border now.
00:16:03.000And by the way, they're now threatening.
00:16:05.000I should just point out here that when you have the Biden administration claiming that it's the shipment across the border of the jets that is really going to be the deciding factor as to whether a war begins.
00:16:19.000Let me just point out here that the Soviet foreign minister, Russian foreign minister Ryabkov, he came out yesterday and he said that if you ship in air defense systems, that will be an escalation.
00:16:33.000This is according to the Russian deputy foreign minister.
00:16:35.000So again, they keep just ratcheting up the rhetoric, knowing that the more they ratchet up the rhetoric, the more the Biden administration is going to back down.
00:16:42.000Which is also why they're attacking near the Polish border, because what they're saying is, do you want us to call your bluff?
00:16:47.000Are you interested in us calling your bluff?
00:18:24.000A source at the Elysee Palace says that President Macron and Chancellor Schultz Both pressed Vladimir Putin on that point, emphasizing the growing cost of the war to Russia and urging him, therefore, to change his calculation.
00:18:43.000Okay, so, I mean, they can push Putin as much as they want, but here is the point.
00:18:46.000The folks in Germany know 50% of their energy is coming from Russia.
00:18:57.000Every time he makes a threat, he then seems to back down from the threat other than economic sanctions and economic sanctions.
00:19:02.000It's easy to pull the trigger on those because those don't actually involve loss of life.
00:19:07.000They also don't achieve what you're seeking to achieve as a general rule, unless you're willing to do like a full-time war blockade on a country.
00:19:13.000Economic sanctions, they will squeeze, but they will not stop.
00:19:17.000Here was Joe Biden over the weekend threatening that if Russia uses chemical weapons, they would pay a severe price.
00:19:22.000Well, I remember another Democratic president who once proclaimed that if a country used chemical weapons, it would cross a red line.
00:19:30.000Russia, because if you recall, that was Barack Obama in Syria saying that if Bashar Assad used a chemical weapon, the United States would do something.
00:19:37.000So Bashar Assad used a chemical weapon, and the United States' preferred policy under Barack Obama was, what if I just turn over Syria to Russia?
00:19:43.000And then Russia came in and leveled Aleppo.
00:21:09.000So the left likes to claim that the right is somehow pro-Putin.
00:21:12.000There may be a couple, but there are a bunch of people on the left who seem to be pro-Putin.
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00:22:23.000Now I'd be remiss if I did not note here that the media are playing a particular game where they pretend that there is widespread dissent on the right from the notion that we should stand up to Russia over the invasion of Ukraine.
00:22:34.000Now there is a percentage of the right that believes that basically Putin should be able to do what he wants with Ukraine.
00:22:43.000But there is also a significant portion of the left that is on national television saying that we shouldn't care about Ukraine because it's a bunch of white people.
00:22:51.000I mean, MSNBC's Tiffany Cross, she came out over the weekend and she was like, you know, I find it ironic that Kamala Harris was in Poland because Poland is filled with white supremacists.
00:23:04.000It's not lost on me that she spoke in Poland as some people on the border of Poland were not welcoming to people of African and South Asian descent.
00:23:13.000The vice president herself is of African and South Asian descent.
00:23:16.000She didn't address this in her remarks, and we don't know if she addressed it privately or not, but I'm just curious your thoughts on the irony of that situation to see her where, you know, there is documented evidence of rampant white supremacy in Poland.
00:23:34.000Well, I mean, obviously that was top priority.
00:23:36.000I mean, you're in the middle of a war that may involve NATO soon, and Poland is the chief shipping mechanism into Ukraine.
00:23:40.000But, I mean, obviously if Kamala Harris didn't talk about white supremacy and immigration policy at the Polish border, well done MSNBC.
00:23:47.000Just really, really solid stuff from MSNBC.
00:23:50.000Meanwhile, Ilhan Omar is taking the perspective that all of the sanctions on Russian oil and gas, that has to stop.
00:23:58.000The reason, by the way, she's upset about that is because Russia is helping out her friends over in Iran and with regard to Hamas and all the rest.
00:24:06.000We have to think about what this means a year from now, what this means two years, three years from now.
00:24:12.000And I think ultimately this is not going to end well for the actual people of Russia and it's not going to end well for the people of Europe as well.
00:24:28.000Well, I mean, take it from the open anti-Semite in Congress, who openly despises many things about America.
00:24:34.000Meanwhile, the Iranians, over the weekend, decided it would be a great idea to fling a missile at a U.S.
00:25:09.000According to the Associated Press, Iran claimed responsibility Sunday for a missile barrage that struck near a sprawling U.S.
00:25:14.000consulate complex in northern Iraq, saying it was retaliation for an Israeli strike in Syria that killed two members of its Revolutionary Guard earlier this week.
00:25:21.000So basically, Iran likes to lie that Mossad is all over the place and Mossad is in Iraq, and that's why they're attacking Iraq.
00:25:27.000So if only Iraq would join Iran in attacking Israel, then all of this would stop.
00:25:32.000Obviously, there's some pretty significant Shia versus Sunni interplay and violence in Iraq.
00:25:37.000Not to mention the situation with the Kurds, where both the Iranians and the Iraqis are sort of fighting over Kurdistan and all the rest.
00:26:03.000The reason they are doing this is once again, when America's enemies see mush, they push.
00:26:08.000And right now, Russia believes that the United States has an interest in using Russia as the intermediary in order to get this Iran nuclear deal done.
00:26:15.000John Kerry has made this absolutely clear.
00:26:17.000The envoy, Robert Malley, has made this absolutely clear.
00:26:19.000Joe Biden and his team have made this absolutely clear.
00:26:22.000They keep saying over and over and over again, That they want to deal with Iran and they don't care that Iran is a terror sponsor.
00:26:28.000They do not care that Iran threatens American allies ranging from Israel to Saudi Arabia to the UAE.
00:26:37.000And they don't care what the terms of that deal are.
00:26:39.000We've been playing you audio over the last week of the Russian mediator in that deal who's basically, right now, because the United States has a sanctions regime against the Iranians, whatever negotiations are happening in Vienna, basically you have the Russian emissary who's going back and forth between the United States and Iran.
00:26:53.000He's running hotel to hotel to convey particular offers.
00:26:57.000The Americans, in other words, are using the Russians who they are fighting in Ukraine in order to mediate with the Iranians.
00:27:02.000And so right now, the Russians are basically trying to press their advantage.
00:27:05.000The Russians are saying to the United States, we would like an Iran deal where you exempt our oil and natural gas from any sort of sanction so we can sell to Iran and Iran will sell to the world and then they will funnel the money back to us.
00:27:16.000And also, if you don't do that, then maybe Iran will just ratchet up the tension.
00:27:19.000I mean, after all, don't you want Iran under control?
00:27:21.000Don't you want Iran to stop all of this stuff?
00:27:23.000We can help you make Iran stop all of this stuff.
00:27:28.000To pretend that Russia isn't a part of what we saw when Iran is firing missiles at U.S.
00:27:32.000consulates in Iraq is, of course, very silly, because right now, Russia is using Iran as a proxy, as they have been for quite a while, right here.
00:27:40.000Iraq's foreign ministry on Sunday summoned Iran's ambassador to protest the attack, calling it a flagrant violation of the country's sovereignty.
00:27:46.000No injuries were reported in Sunday's attack in Erbil.
00:27:49.000It marked a significant escalation between the United States and Iran.
00:27:52.000Hostility between the longtime foes has often played out in Iraq, whose government is allied with both countries.
00:27:57.000The attack drew harsh condemnation from the Iraqi government, which called it a violation of international law and norms and demanded an explanation from Iranian leadership.
00:28:05.000The United States, for its part, condemned the strike, said it was an unjustified attack on a civilian residence.
00:28:08.000They said, we will support the government of Iraq in holding Iran accountable.
00:28:12.000We will support our partners throughout the Middle East in confronting similar threats from Iran.
00:28:15.000This is Jake Sullivan, National Security Advisor, said the United States of America stands behind the full sovereignty, independence, and territorial integrity of Iraq.
00:28:24.000Will that in any way undermine the negotiations that are currently happening with Iran?
00:28:31.000Wendy Sherman of the State Department, she comes out and she says, listen, we know that Iran is bad.
00:28:35.000We know that Iran is pursuing terrorism.
00:28:37.000But before we deal with the fact that they are a terrorist regime that is the great spreader of violence in the region, we have to sign a deal with them.
00:28:45.000If Iran has a nuclear weapon, its ability to project power into the Middle East and to deter us, our allies and partners, is enormous.
00:28:55.000So President Biden believes very strongly, as does Secretary Blinken, as do I, that we need to make sure that Iran never obtains a nuclear weapon.
00:29:04.000And then we also need to deal with their malign behavior in the region.
00:29:09.000But first we've got to make sure that they cannot obtain a nuclear weapon.
00:29:15.000Just to get this straight, what she's actually saying is, yes, they're a terrorist state.
00:29:18.000What if we give them a bunch of money and they'll promise us not to develop a new?
00:29:35.000That they've been super honest and open about this nuclear program, which they say is for civilian purposes?
00:29:40.000Why is it, if you, like, who has a stronger interest in the Middle East or anywhere on Earth in Iran not having a nuclear weapon?
00:29:46.000The United States or, say, Israel, which is under nuclear threat from Iran.
00:29:50.000Or Saudi Arabia, which is under nuclear threat.
00:29:52.000Like, if all of those countries that are directly in the middle of that area, within the umbrella of the Iranian ballistic missile program, if all of them are saying this deal sucks, maybe you should listen to them.
00:30:04.000But this administration has no interest in listening to them.
00:30:09.000So here are the leverage points the Russians have now activated.
00:30:12.000The Russians have now activated the leverage point of the Iran negotiations, and they ratcheted it up by having Iran fire this missile at Erbil.
00:30:19.000Because, again, the idea here is that if the Iranians demonstrate that they are full rogue, then the Biden administration will say, well, man, we really need to make a deal with them to stop all this.
00:30:32.000Leverage point number two, the oil and natural gas in Western Europe.
00:30:35.000claim that peace in our time and it's all fine.
00:30:37.000So they're gonna use the leverage point in the Middle East with regard to Iran, because they know that Biden is obsessed with this idea that if he inks a deal with the Iranians, then he gets to be part of the history books, because he's a senile old dullard.
00:30:46.000Okay, so that's leverage point number one.
00:30:47.000Leverage point number two, the oil and natural gas in Western Europe.
00:30:51.000So the Russians are looking West, and they can see that Europe cannot indefinitely undergo the kinds of sacrifice that they're currently undergoing.
00:30:59.000They cannot continue to have energy be 100% more expensive than it was a month ago.
00:31:04.000And so they know there's going to be pressure on the Americans and on Zelensky to make a deal from that angle.
00:31:09.000Meanwhile, they're leveraging their own aggression with regard to Ukraine against the Americans.
00:31:14.000They're saying, listen, if you guys go any further, if you ship a single MIG in here, who knows?
00:31:42.000I mean, one, opening up the production of oil and natural gas in the United States, such that we have more oil and natural gas to export to Europe to alleviate their energy problems and alleviate our own.
00:31:52.000It would mean two, making sure that we are not dissuaded by Vladimir Putin's empty threats, and that we give the Ukrainians MIGs if they want MIGs.
00:31:59.000Doesn't have to be a no-fly zone, doesn't mean we have to fly our planes in there to take down Russian jets.
00:32:03.000It does mean that we should be giving the Ukrainians more than is necessary in order to defend themselves if we wish them not to surrender all of these things, including future membership in the EU or NATO, over to the Russians and essentially align their foreign policy with Russia.
00:32:15.000Three, it would mean dropping this Iran deal and killing it outright and saying, listen, Iran obviously has ill intent.
00:32:21.000Iran is literally firing missiles at us while negotiating with us and using the Russians as a proxy.
00:32:27.000And the Russians, meanwhile, are attempting to exploit our own idiocy with regard to this Iran deal to evade the sanctions.
00:32:53.000Do they really think that Vladimir Putin, who is stationed around Kiev right now and shelling Kiev again, do they really think that he's just going to give up and say, all right, you know what?
00:33:17.000Now, the United States is lying, right?
00:33:19.000The United States right now, they're saying, according to the Wall Street Journal, that they will not negotiate exemptions to the Ukraine-related sanctions on Russia in order to save that 2015 Iran nuclear deal, and could try to strike a separate accord, excluding Moscow.
00:33:33.000But that seems extraordinarily unlikely.
00:33:37.000I think the fact is the United States will do exactly what they did under Barack Obama and the administration will basically say we would never allow them to have cash.
00:33:44.000And then in the dead of night you see the pallets of cash go in.
00:33:47.000So they would secretly sign some sort of deal that sort of quasi excludes certain economic aspects of Russia's economy.
00:33:55.000Or an overall deal gets signed with Zelensky in Ukraine and Iran in Iran and everybody is hunky-dory and Putin gets most of what he wants.
00:35:02.000The chance that they have the exact part you need is pretty low.
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00:35:10.000Or you could just go to the interwebs yourself.
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00:40:39.000All right, so meanwhile, China is just sitting over here and they are thinking to themselves, hey, maybe we can play broker.
00:40:51.000Maybe in the same way that Russia is attempting to use its leverage in order to create a deal with Iran and the United States that allows them to evade the sanctions and continue to put pressure on the Americans.
00:41:02.000So China is sitting over here and they are basically Backing Russia's play, and then proclaiming that they are in fact an honest broker.
00:41:10.000According to the Washington Post, Russia has turned to China for military equipment and aid in the weeks since it began its invasion of Ukraine.
00:41:16.000officials familiar with the matter, they told this to the Washington Post.
00:41:20.000The officials, who spoke on a condition of anonymity because of the sensitivity of the subject, did not describe what kind of weaponry had been requested.
00:41:26.000Or whether they know how China responded.
00:41:28.000White House National Security Advisor Jake Sullivan told CNN the administration was communicating directly, privately to Beijing that there will absolutely be consequences for any Chinese efforts to assist Russia in evading sanctions.
00:41:38.000And again, China's like, sure, yeah, I believe you.
00:41:43.000Ukrainian officials said negotiations with Russia will continue on Monday.
00:41:46.000Presidential advisor Mikhailo Podolyak said Sunday Russia is starting to talk constructively and predicted some concrete results in a matter of days.
00:41:54.000Again, because the concrete results are likely to be Ukraine giving Russia most of what they want.
00:41:58.000Because after all, this can't carry on forever if you are Ukraine.
00:42:03.000Russia brought the fighting closer to members of the NATO alliance, as we mentioned, by striking that military facility that is close to Poland.
00:42:10.000But meanwhile, you have the Chinese who are like, what if we broker a deal?
00:42:27.000It'll all be fine, says the Chinese communist tyranny.
00:42:31.000There's a piece in the New York Times by Wang Huiyou.
00:42:35.000And Wang Huiyou is the founder and president of the Center for China and Globalization, a non-governmental think tank based in Beijing.
00:42:40.000Okay, so let me just make something clear.
00:42:41.000There's no such thing as a non-governmental think tank based in Beijing.
00:42:44.000Okay, anything that is based in Beijing is run by the Chinese government or at least approved by the Chinese government.
00:42:49.000You don't see a lot of liberal-minded anti-Chinese think tanks in the middle of Beijing.
00:42:54.000So he has an entire piece in the New York Times talking about how China should really broker something.
00:42:59.000He says, quote, China has a significant economic interest in a quick resolution to the Russian-Ukrainian war.
00:43:05.000China enjoys strong ties with Russia and Ukraine and is both countries' largest single trading partner, though each trades more with the EU bloc than with China.
00:43:12.000Russia and Ukraine are crucial components of the Belt and Road infrastructure program, as well as conduits for China's trade with Europe.
00:43:18.000China-Europe rail transports have experienced a hundredfold increase since the beginning of the 2010s.
00:43:23.000China is also uniquely positioned to act as a neutral mediator between a Western-supported Ukraine and Russia.
00:43:30.000Yes, Beijing and Moscow have a strong and growing relationship.
00:43:33.000China's demand for resources Russia has in abundance, food and energy, as well as a mutual dissatisfaction with the current state of the U.S.-led world order, have increasingly drawn the two countries together.
00:43:42.000This alliance was cemented when Putin and Xi met last month and issued a joint statement underscoring their deep ties and reaffirming a partnership with no forbidden zones.
00:43:51.000Which, by the way, sounds like a bad pornography movie.
00:44:00.000Russia may possess a mighty military, but its economy is in long-term structural decline, with a GDP not much larger than that of Spain.
00:44:06.000For all the talk of ties with Moscow, it's worth remembering China's economic interests with Russia are dwarfed by those it shares with the West.
00:44:12.000Even if China isn't joining the sanctions, it's possible Chinese businesses and banks will decrease involvement with Russia to avoid a backlash in other more important markets.
00:44:27.000At a time when China faces increasing global criticism for its human rights violations, mediating an end to this conflict could help improve the country's standing with the West.
00:44:35.000Beijing has long striven to convince political and business elites in Europe and America the rise of China does not present a threat.
00:44:41.000Support for Russian aggression, even perceived support, threatens to undermine that assertion.
00:44:52.000Beijing could help to broker an immediate ceasefire as a prelude to talks among Russia, Ukraine, the United States, EU, and China.
00:44:58.000Beijing's goal would be to find a solution that gives Putin sufficient security assurances that can be presented as a win to his domestic audience while protecting Ukraine's core sovereignty and NATO's open-door policy.
00:45:08.000Finding a landing zone for such an agreement is challenging, but not impossible.
00:45:12.000Securing a multilateral resolution to the crisis in Ukraine, says this founder and president of the Center for China and Globalization based in Beijing.
00:45:20.000It says, by the way, he advises the Chinese government in that capacity.
00:45:24.000So securing a multilateral resolution to the crisis in Ukraine will be a tough and risky challenge, but there is no country better placed to do so than China.
00:45:32.000So what is the Biden administration going to do with all of this talk of China getting involved?
00:45:38.000Apparently, Sullivan, Jake Sullivan, the NSA, and officials from the National Security Council and State Department will be in Rome, where Jake Sullivan will meet with Chinese Communist Politburo member and Director of the Office of Foreign Affairs Commission, Yang Jiechi, to discuss the impact of Russia's war against Ukraine on regional and global security.
00:45:57.000So it looks very much as though the Biden administration is open to the possibility that China should broker an end to this.
00:46:04.000So China is the big winner, is how this may come out.
00:46:08.000Meanwhile, the State Department is trying to whistle past the graveyard right here.
00:46:12.000So Wendy Sherman, again on national television, making a fool of herself.
00:46:15.000She says yesterday, you know, people keep saying that Russia and China, you know, that their relationship has strengthened, but we don't, we don't really know that their relationship has strengthened in all of this.
00:46:30.000Quickly, has the Russia-China relationship suffered or strengthened as a result of this invasion?
00:46:36.000I think that's an open question, yet, Brett, to be perfectly honest, we saw Russia and China come closer together, certainly before the Olympics, putting out a long manifesto about their partnership and how they were going to move forward together.
00:46:51.000And at the same time, we've seen China pretty uncomfortable with an invasion of a sovereign country.
00:46:59.000By the way, that's called buying Chinese propaganda.
00:47:02.000So what China is saying is, we're really on the West side on Ukraine, because after all, we would hate it if a sovereign country were invaded.
00:47:08.000Because like, if you guys interfered with Taiwan, that's part of sovereign China.
00:47:43.000Or are you just going to have China try to broker an end to this Russian conflict?
00:47:46.000All the people who are in positions of power are untrustworthy when it comes to how this conflict ends, which is why it probably ends really, really badly.
00:47:54.000The likelihood that this ends with Vladimir Putin going down in flames, that he's cooed out, or that he ends up having to fight a guerrilla war for 10 to 20 years, that the West doesn't cave?
00:48:03.000The probability of that is very low, which is why, again, all of America's enemies are putting pressure on every leverage point they have, every single leverage point.
00:48:16.000Then they didn't fail in their response.
00:48:17.000And now it's starting to look like that unified front that pushes back against Russian predation, and pushes back against Iran, and pushes back against China backing Russia.
00:48:27.000It seems like that unified front may have lasted for about three weeks or so.
00:48:32.000Alrighty, we'll be back here later today with an additional hour of content.
00:48:34.000Coming up soon is The Matt Walsh Show.