War in Ukraine: What's Next? *Recorded Live on 9th March 2022*
Episode Stats
Length
1 hour and 20 minutes
Words per minute
182.70047
Harmful content
Toxicity
10
sentences flagged
Hate speech
41
sentences flagged
Summary
In part two of our first episode on the first day of the Ukraine conflict, Francis Foster and Constantine Kishin talk about their views on the conflict, and why they think it's a good idea to have a conversation about it.
Transcript
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Of course. What's not to love? Incredible interviews, hilarious raw shows, plus we're going to start doing weekly satirical comedy like the ones that we used to put out.
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I'm Constantine Kishin, and you may remember me from my stint, hosting a kids' TV show on Al Jazeera.
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And I'm Francis Foster, a man who looks like a cross between Louis Theroux and a beaver.
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Hello and welcome to a very special live episode of Trigonometry.
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And this is the part two to our brilliant first episode that we did on the very first day of the war in Ukraine, where Ukraine was invaded by Russia.
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The way the interview is going to work is going to be a little bit like this.
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We're going to be doing an hour, just myself and Constantine talking.
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We're then going to have a break, and we're going to have that break to collect your super chats and your PayPal's, where you're going to be asking questions to us.
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And then in the last half an hour, I'm going to be fielding your questions to the both of us or to Constantine.
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I've spent the last few days thinking about my own views and behavior and positions on this, but also talking to a lot of people on the ground in Russia, in Ukraine, who are involved in one way or another, but also talking to people who used to be in the Russian government, including my dad, who was a minister in the Russian government, whose job it was to deal with former Soviet countries, including Ukraine.
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And he's got a very different view to me on all of these issues, talking to people who have advised several U.S. presidents, talking to people who are currently in the British government, who have the inside track and all of this.
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So we're going to talk about a few things there.
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The first thing I wanted to briefly talk about our fundraiser, which we'll do in a second.
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Also wanted to tell everybody what is happening on the ground in Ukraine, because this isn't really being covered.
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We're seeing refugees fleeing, we're seeing bombs exploding, but the strategic situation isn't really being properly covered, I think, in the West.
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I also think another thing that's really not being covered or understood in the West at all is what's happening in Russia.
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And this is very important in terms of the other stuff we're going to talk about with the fundraiser and all of that.
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And then the final thing I wanted to talk about is we never really got a chance to deal with it.
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And I think some people would have got the impression that we underestimated or underplayed the importance of the NATO side of things and NATO expansion.
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What is the historical and the broader perspective here?
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And again, on that, I think there's some important things that we've got to share with people.
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So with that in mind, let's talk about the fundraiser.
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Now, we're both incredibly proud of the fundraiser.
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Well, we should tell people the amount as of today, it's £60,000.
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And if you imagine how many people got involved in that and the generosity of people and their willingness to put something behind their words and the feelings.
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However, as we let people know and locals a few days ago, you and I both, I think, had a few reservations about the fact that this money that we raised initially, and this was my idea and I take full responsibility for it.
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We originally thought that the best use of that money would be to give it to the military in Ukraine to help the Ukrainians defend their country.
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And we had some thoughts about it, and on reflection, I don't think that would be the best way to protect people's lives and to help people in Ukraine.
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And we'll talk about why, and that's really the main reason we wanted to have this discussion.
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But we want to ask permission of the people who gave us money to allow us to donate that to humanitarian purposes.
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And if people don't want to do that, that's their money.
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So, but let us at least explain why our thinking has changed.
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Yeah, and I think it's very, very important because we did have a conversation where it wasn't uncomfortable, but it was a moment of realization from both of us as to what we've done.
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And it's quite a challenge when you say to hundreds of thousands of people, look, we're raising for this very, very noble cause.
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And then you have to not roll back on it, but admit that the money is going to be diverted to still a very worthwhile...
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If people want their money back, they can get it back.
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But we're offering them an opportunity to donate it to humanitarian causes.
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So it's going to be given to humanitarian causes as opposed to the military.
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So the first part of that, before we get into the first part of that, I just wanted to say from my own perspective, it's been quite a couple of weeks for me personally.
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I've been dealing with the emotion of my family in Ukraine being in this position, my family in Russia also being in a strange position as well,
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going on Question Time, talking about this on different shows.
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And I think, like me, for me, it's much more intense, of course.
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But for a lot of people in the commentary space and whatever, we've kind of all gone through the stages of grief, right?
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Even when I was saying the invasion is coming, no one wanted to believe it.
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And even when it happened, I think we all felt slightly in denial about what was going on.
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And I think a lot of people are still stuck in that position.
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And I was in that position for a period of time last week.
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And I was definitely towards the end of last week as I was starting to really feel what was going on and knowing that my family,
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most of whom are basically now either in occupied territory or about to be.
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And towards the end of the week, I was feeling very sad.
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And now I've actually, believe it or not, crazy as it sounds, come to a place of acceptance of what's happening.
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And I kind of just remembered, because, you know, I've spent a lot of time doing personal development of various kinds,
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that every religion almost and every spiritual teaching is basically the same thing,
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which is suffering is caused by trying to pretend that you can change things that you can't.
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And there's nothing I can do to change the situation.
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And the truth is, as I think we'll talk about in a second,
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I don't think there's a lot any of us can do about the situation other than help people who are going to be suffering from this,
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So we've all got to let go of our emotions here and just look at what is going to be the right thing going forward.
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And I want to apologize to a few people, actually, in terms of my behavior last week,
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because I got a bit carried away with the emotion of it all.
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And so people would say to me, well, what do you think about this thing that this guy said?
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And I'd be like, well, I remember this thing he said a week ago, the last time I had a chance to read what he said.
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Well, actually, for example, someone like Peter Hitchens, I spent a bit of time over the weekend reading some of his articles.
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And there's stuff I don't agree with, but there's a lot of stuff.
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I mean, he retweeted an article from 2017, which is absolutely accurate and bang on.
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So I just want to say the emotions of the of the moment carried me away or I got carried away or whatever.
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And I think that doesn't help the conversation.
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So I'm going to go back to what our mission is here at Trigonometry, which is we are covering what's going on.
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We are chronicling the decline of Western society and the destruction of civilization.
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Let's stick with that rather than becoming players in this game.
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I think that's why people trust what we do and they respect what we do, because everybody knows what we think.
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But we try and approach things from a balanced perspective.
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And I think that was starting to go a little bit by the wayside last week.
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So I hold my hands up on that and I apologize for that.
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So with that in mind, and this is going to be a very difficult conversation because I'm going to say some things that nobody wants to hear.
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But it's going to you know, there's a lot of things that people are not going to want to hear on all the sides of this conversation.
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So let's first of all look at what is happening in Ukraine on the ground.
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What is the narrative that we are hearing in our media right now in the West, would you say?
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So our narrative in the media is that we have the Ukrainian army, the Ukrainian forces, which have been supplemented by ordinary civilians and even people like celebrities, athletes who are putting up a plucky and spirited resistance against the Russian army.
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I was going to say the Soviets seems more appropriate against the Russian army and they're doing really well and the Russian army are in disarray.
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I mean, I don't think that's an inaccurate analysis on the face of it.
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But if you look at the broader picture of what's happening, yes, the Russian army is really struggling.
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Yes, the equipment is falling apart in some cases.
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Yes, the Western weapons are helping, the javelin missiles and the stingers.
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And yes, they haven't got complete air superiority.
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However, however, the truth of it is that, and by the way, in their position, that is what I would be doing.
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If I was a Ukrainian in Ukraine and my home was being attacked, I would be fighting to defend my country right now.
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And I have so much respect for their courage and their bravery.
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However, the first thing to say is, Anton, if you pull up a couple of maps that we talked about.
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The way that Russia approached this is they positioned their troops on the north side of Ukraine, in Belarus, on the east side in the two Brekoa regions, and on the south side in Crimea.
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And they pushed from three directions at the same time.
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So they're pushing from the north, they're pushing from the south, and they're pushing from the east.
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And yes, their progress is slow in the north, and yes, their progress isn't particularly quick in the east, but they're making very quick progress in the south.
00:12:06.540
They're stalling in various areas, but they're making progress.
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Now, the Ukrainians are defending very bravely, but if you look at the map of Kiev in particular, Kiev is about to be encircled.
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So the Russian army came down from the north side on the western side of the river, and they're about to encircle Kiev completely.
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Cut off supplies, cut off evacuations, cut off medical supplies, cut off supplies of ammunition, weaponry, reinforcements, all of that.
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So at the moment, it's looking very much like they're going to at least encircle Kiev.
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Once they do that, they're going to keep moving south.
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The southern group is going to keep moving north and west.
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They're cutting Ukraine off from the sea to prevent resupplies and all of that.
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Now, the Ukrainian army is in the eastern part of Ukraine primarily, the bulk of their army.
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So the moment they complete that line along the river, all of that army is going to be completely encircled and cut off.
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This is how, in World War II, the Germans blitzkrieged their way through a huge swathe of Soviet territory.
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All they did is they just enveloped armies, encircled them, and cut them off.
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They were killing one for every 12 prisoners that they took.
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So while Ukraine is putting up a very brave resistance, from a military perspective, it's not looking good.
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The second thing to say is when you speak to people in Ukraine on the ground, they're very brave, and they're determined, and they're defending their harms.
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And you can only respect that and support that and all of that.
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But they also all say, look, if they don't quote-unquote, this is how they say it in Russian and Ukrainian, close the sky, by which they mean a no-fly zone, it's a matter of time.
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And as I said two weeks ago, the West is not going to implement a no-fly zone because that would be the start of World War III.
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Now, there have been some suggestions of how that could be gotten around.
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For example, Poland said, look, why don't we give our planes to the Americans, and the Americans then donate them to Ukraine?
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That way, Russia can't say we gave planes to Ukraine and invade us.
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Well, Anton, if you pull up that article as well, the U.S. have knocked that back because they know how dangerous that is.
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They're not going to allow planes or anti-aircraft systems, not Stingers, but other stuff, to go to Ukraine.
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And even the Ukrainians on the ground, who are determined and driven, et cetera, are all saying, you know, it's a matter of time unless that can happen.
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And the third thing that we should say as well is for reasons that we'll get into when we talk about what's happening in Russia, Russia is pulling up weaponry that it hasn't really yet used.
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It may use it going forward, but it hasn't yet used.
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And what we're talking about is not nuclear weapons.
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But it's horrific weaponry that is designed to flush people out from defensive positions.
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They're called air fuel bombs in English and thermobaric munitions.
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And what they do is it's a two – there's two compartments in the bomb.
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And what it does is it spreads small particles of combustive material, fuel basically, into the air around it.
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And the second explosion ignites it and creates a fireball that spreads rapidly, killing anyone in the fireball area.
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But it also sucks all the – it consumes all the oxygen in that area.
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So even if you don't get burned alive, you suffocate and your lungs rupture and you die in an awful way.
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And this is a way to destroy defensive positions that otherwise couldn't be destroyed.
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So if you've got some kind of reinforced bunker or whatever, as long as it's not completely sealed, right, that's what – and these are awful weapons.
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And my concern is the longer this goes on and the longer that Ukrainians are putting up a fight, the more likely it becomes that Russia is going to use heavier and heavier weapons, as they are already starting to do in terms of shelling.
00:16:21.480
Just to interrupt you there, what's the radius of these weapons?
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So the Americans use them in Afghanistan to flush people out from caves or to kill people in caves, really.
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And they can be as small as a hand grenade or they can be a huge 42-ton bomb.
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So the Americans made one of these bombs called the Mother of Obombs.
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And in response, the Russians made one called the Father of Obombs, right?
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And the longer this carries on, is my point, the more likely things like that are going to be used, right?
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And why am I so convinced that Russia will amplify the level of destruction?
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00:17:04.160
You have to look at what's happening in Russia.
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You have to look at what's happening in Russia.
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Now, I've spoken to people in Russia of all – and we'll talk about was Russia provoked and is blah, blah, blah.
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But let's just focus on what's actually happening.
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So I spoke to my aunt, for example, who lives in Armenia.
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Armenia is a Russia-friendly country in the Caucasus where Russian people would be welcome.
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And normally, there are three to four flights between Russia and Armenia a day.
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My aunt said last week on the day I spoke to her, it would have been Saturday or Sunday, there were 42.
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And that's because the people in Russia who are against this are all fleeing.
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Most of them are fleeing, or many of them are fleeing.
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And the rest of them are going on small protests a few thousand at a time and being arrested.
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I think at the last count, it's about 6,000 or 8,000 people that have been arrested in Russia for protesting.
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So the people who are against this are either leaving or making protests that are not going to be effective and being arrested.
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All TV channels that deviate from the official line are shut down and closed.
00:18:18.760
And every day on Russian television, they do three-hour marathons with this guy called Soloviev who hosts the main show, which is, it's not like question time where you get people with different views.
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Even in the format that, you know, people will say, well, question time doesn't really represent blah, blah, blah.
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And what they're saying is there's a genocide happening in Ukraine.
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Ukraine is run by Nazis, et cetera, to the point where there's videos now of captured Russian soldiers saying, I thought, I'm shocked because I thought there'd be swastikas everywhere.
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So, the Russian media communication strategy is very powerful.
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They're showing really, like, emotionally driven clips of refugees fleeing Ukrainian Nazis and all of that, quote unquote.
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People are blaming the sanctions and the war on the West, primarily.
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Sure, the people who are against the war feel stronger about the war being wrong.
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But the vast majority of people are more on Putin's side.
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And they're building a kind of new – I don't know how to describe it.
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So, I'll just explain very briefly what they're talking about.
00:19:46.080
So, they're saying, we are in St. Petersburg, which used to be called Leningrad, a city in which 800,000 people starved to death during World War II because it was cut off from Russia by the Germans.
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And they're saying, do you really think that we're here in St. Petersburg, where we starve to death to fight Nazis?
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And do you think we're going to give up because we don't have dollars in iPhones?
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And they're saying, we have to – our boys are over there in Ukraine pulling the noose around the throat of fascism and Nazism.
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And it's our job here to protect our streets from traitors and provocateurs.
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And at the end, as you'll see, they chant for Russia, for Putin, for Russia, for the president.
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And I just want people to get a visual sense and just a feeling of what that's like.
00:20:45.580
Великую Отечественную, более 800 тысяч ленинградцев отдали своей жизни.
00:20:51.940
Неужели вы думаете, что мы – потомки людей, которые годами умирали от голода,
00:20:57.300
но били фашистов и держали фронт, продадим родину за доллары и айфоны?
00:21:05.800
Мы никогда не променяем своих героев на персонажей Марвел.
00:21:09.940
Советская армия и блокадники разорвали фашистское кольцо вокруг Ленинграда.
00:21:14.080
Задача наших военных сейчас – насмерть затянуть петлю на шее нацизма,
00:21:17.500
прекратить, наконец, восьмилетнюю войну и ужас на Донбассе,
00:21:21.300
защитить наших людей, вынужденных бороться за право свободно говорить на родном языке.
00:21:25.900
А наша задача – защитить улицы российских городов от предателей и провокаторов.
00:21:51.320
there we go francis now i've just seen that to western eyes that looks quite amateurish
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dare i say it and it looks like it's presented by three fat grad students at university indeed
00:22:08.540
however first of all one of the things that people are asking in the chat is what does
00:22:12.440
the z stand for no one knows they've invented a new symbol that no one knows what it stands for
00:22:17.920
now uh because there was a russian gymnast a couple of days ago yes on the podium yes who was
00:22:24.120
roundly criticized for what for that symbol so it's a new symbol nobody knows what it means but
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essentially what they're trying to do is create a new ideology and the reason i brought up the point
00:22:32.980
at the end where they're shouting for russia for putin imagine this through the western eyes how
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many american soldiers do you think are wherever they are now going for america for biden or how
00:22:45.620
many people in the uk are go soldiers in the uk or people who support british soldiers would be
00:22:51.460
shouting for britain for for johnson or for boris but is that part of the reason for that isn't that
00:22:58.400
because of our democracy yes well that's my point exactly what i'm the point i'm trying to make to
00:23:04.400
you is they are i'm not saying they've got to the cult of personality stage but putin has become
00:23:12.880
not just the president not someone who's employed by the people to administer the country but he's
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now seen as the head of state like the queen for queen and country right so in other words there is
00:23:24.700
a kind of permanence to this thing and there's an there's a personality issue there that they're
00:23:30.260
embracing now look people can say i'm being critical of this or not i'm just telling you what's happening
00:23:35.600
and i'm showing it to you i'm not i'm not advocating against or for whatever i'm just telling you what's
00:23:40.440
going on right so russia is building a a national identity that is based around a strong leader the
00:23:49.660
nation etc right so that's what's going on and there is no question that for vladimir putin now
00:23:56.880
this is existential he the entire country is now in the grips of uh the idea that ukraine is overrun by
00:24:05.700
nazis that these nazis have committed genocide against people in the east of ukraine uh that
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this is the fight against fascism that that russia did and the soviet union did in the last century
00:24:18.240
and this is its mission he can't come back from that he can't row back from that there is no coming
00:24:24.420
back from that without a win right so there's absolutely no question in my mind that he's going
00:24:32.680
to do whatever is necessary to win the fight and unless the west is prepared to get involved which
00:24:39.100
it's not and it shouldn't in my opinion purely because that would start world war three and i don't
00:24:43.580
think that's a good idea i mean in my opinion and i could be wrong i could be wrong but in my opinion
00:24:58.040
the likelihood of ukraine winning this is very slim and what's worse about that is in my opinion the
00:25:09.900
harder the fight is all the only thing that will change is the number of casualties on both sides
00:25:15.000
it's not going to change the outcome at this point now i could be wrong but if that's what i believe and
00:25:21.240
i honestly believe that and i'm i say it for the 50th time i could be wrong but i do believe that very
00:25:25.780
strongly now based on the conversations that i've had with people who know what's going on
00:25:29.440
i'm very uncomfortable at giving what is essentially a hundred thousand dollars
00:25:34.940
to ukraine to intensify that fight whereas there will be millions of people in ukraine who are
00:25:42.460
desperately in need of humanitarian aid supplies medical equipment you know blankets all that sort
00:25:49.440
of stuff and that stuff will definitely be useful and it's definitely not going to hurt anyone
00:25:53.280
right whereas if that money from the fundraiser goes to the military in my opinion 99.9 all it
00:26:00.680
will do is end up killing more people because more people are involved now it's a it's an awful
00:26:06.120
conversation to have it's an awful conversation and i don't i don't want to be the person sitting
00:26:10.680
here go we must just let the ukrainians you know or we must force them to surrender if i was a
0.98
00:26:15.580
ukrainian or if i was in ukraine i'd be fighting for my country too but as we sit here now i i i can't
00:26:24.620
in good conscience give that money to be spent on weapons or whatever so like i say if people want to
00:26:31.740
if people are okay to trust us on this one and go with the humanitarian aid option i would be very
00:26:37.620
grateful i'd be really really grateful because we've raised an awful lot of money and that money can
00:26:41.660
do a lot of good but like i said if people want their money back because they wanted to go to the
00:26:46.240
military we'll give it back to them and we'll give them the account to which they can send it okay so
00:26:50.640
that's my ask that's what i ask of people to trust us one more time and allow us to give it to
00:26:56.680
humanitarian purposes if that's okay if not please contact us and we'll we'll give you a refund and i
00:27:02.140
think it's worth reiterating again that this is not a decision that we have taken lightly no this isn't
00:27:07.280
something that we gave a five minute conversation to this came after a lot of thought after a lot of
00:27:15.220
discussion this came from you having a lot hours long discussions with different people this is a
00:27:21.620
considered opinion and it's something i can tell is you know it's obviously very very painful for you
00:27:27.080
having to make that decision yeah well i'm sorry that i feel responsible and i am responsible
00:27:32.420
because you and anton and i talked about it and that was my idea and i asked you if you're okay
00:27:37.200
with it and you guys were okay with it but i think on reflect it was my my i it was a decision
00:27:43.660
initiated by me and you followed my lead on it and i feel like i took us down the wrong path and i feel
00:27:49.280
like i took people down the wrong path and i didn't know what i didn't know but but it was a mistake
00:27:54.260
and i regret it so i asked people to forgive me for that and to to to trust me one more time to trust us
00:28:01.240
one more time now we've talked about what's happening on the ground in russia and ukraine
00:28:06.560
now i think there's a historical part that we should talk about here as well there's one thing
00:28:12.580
that i want to talk about when we're talking about ukraine which i think is very interesting and very
00:28:17.900
important and you described it as a bit of a side issue but i still feel it's important to talk about
00:28:23.020
it and it's president zelensky yeah now he's been painted in the western media as this kind of
00:28:29.120
incredible statesman somebody who is leading you know the fight against his nation against you know
00:28:35.500
the russian nation he is everything that a good statesman should be yeah is it as clear-cut as that
00:28:42.420
i don't know do you want to criticize a man who's defending his country and leading his people
00:28:47.400
in defending it i don't i think he's an incredibly brave man whether he's making all the right
00:28:55.120
decisions i don't know as you can hear from what i've said i i don't personally think ukraine
00:29:00.460
continuing to fight to the last man is the right decision but i sit here in a comfortable london
00:29:06.000
studio he's in kiev being bombarded every day seeing his people being maimed and killed seeing children
00:29:11.700
killed uh seeing russian soldiers commit atrocities and seeing his own soldiers commit atrocity because
00:29:17.260
that's what war is it's an awful thing i'm not going to sit here and criticize zelensky one bit
00:29:22.680
he's a man and he's done what a man should do in that situation and if you're a man and you want to
00:29:28.460
you know we talk about how oh there's a sort of feminized west blah blah blah well when war comes
00:29:32.860
it's time to step the fuck up you know so i've got no criticism of president zelensky whatsoever i think
0.74
00:29:39.200
he's doing what most people would do in his position or should do in his position
0.95
00:29:44.000
is he able to make the best geostrategic decisions is he able to on two hours sleep a night and
00:29:52.480
threats of death every day may do the right thing for his country not knowing exactly what the outcomes
00:29:58.260
are is he able to balance motivating his army at the same time of thinking about what the right
00:30:04.540
peace would be that's not for me to judge man and people who are not in that position should really
00:30:10.760
just be quiet i have no criticism to make of him we can talk about all this other stuff did he make
00:30:15.740
the right decision here did he make the right but right now the man's defending his country and he's
00:30:20.140
leading his defense i've got no word of criticism of him whatsoever so that being the case we're now
00:30:27.820
going to move on and look at the historical context yeah and the geopolitical context of this so so let's
00:30:34.160
delve into it let's so the first thing to say and this is something i've been thinking about a lot let
00:30:38.980
me just see how much time we've got left so okay cool so we've got another probably 20 25 minutes before
00:30:45.020
we go to our break and questions so people can submit their questions super chats paypal all that
00:30:49.020
the one thing i've been thinking about very carefully about this situation over the last few days is
00:30:57.080
the fact that any situation has a different meaning any event has a different meaning depending on
00:31:03.720
the perspective from which you look at it and let me explain what i mean so my wife and i are about to
00:31:09.340
have our first child for my wife and i that is a huge tremendous just incredible thing it is wonderful
00:31:16.880
and we're delighted and we can't wait and it's blah blah blah right it's amazing on the level of the
00:31:22.140
individual at the level of our friends and family and community it's a really nice thing
00:31:26.880
it's lovely right but but it's not it's not the the most important thing that's ever happened in
00:31:32.700
your life right it might be the most important thing in mine but it's not in yours and certainly
00:31:36.780
in our trigger family and whatever people are happy about it but it's not the most important thing in
00:31:41.300
their life at the level of our nation it's a statistic one other baby is born right and the level of the
00:31:48.660
planet some people might argue it's a bad thing because we're adding to the overpopulation of the
00:31:55.280
world some people i'm not saying i agree with that but some people might argue so your perspective
00:32:00.080
determines how you look at things right and that's going to be important as we carry on now
00:32:05.480
it's going to take me a little time to set this up but this is really important there was a british
00:32:10.680
historian uh called arnold toinby who wrote a book called the study of history and there's a lot of
00:32:17.500
stuff in that that people think is not right or or whatever and he's since been quote unquote
00:32:22.420
somewhat discredited and people don't agree with every way that he looked at it and one of the
00:32:27.760
reasons is that what his conclusions were uh very dissonant they were very frustrating to people in
00:32:35.160
the west because his central argument essentially denied western exceptionalism and denied the idea
00:32:43.280
that western culture is better than other cultures but we don't need to get into that because i'm not
00:32:49.500
even saying what he said is true i'm just saying it's a useful metaphor for thinking about this
00:32:53.600
whole conflict because the basic the very basic concept that he came up with was the idea that
00:32:59.400
on the geopolitical stage over historical periods of time hundreds of years it is not nations that
00:33:07.200
are actors in that world but it's civilizations so think about in the current context if belgium
00:33:13.640
felt very strongly about what's happening in ukraine is there much that they could do
00:33:19.500
well they control the eu so yes well belgium i don't think belgium control the eu unless you
00:33:25.720
have some information i'm not i'm not aware of right sorry i was talking to too many hardline
00:33:29.680
breaks point taken yeah so belgium isn't deciding what the western world does you could argue that
00:33:36.860
america is deciding what the western world does right but if every other country in the western world
00:33:42.440
opposed what america did they'd really have a hard time doing it so that's why for example in the iraq war
00:33:48.460
they really were desperate to get britain on board they could have gone and done it by themselves
00:33:53.020
right but they were they were desperate to get at least britain on board and they wanted france
00:33:57.220
and germany which didn't go along in that instance so the act and that means that yes america is the
00:34:03.880
leading power in the western world right but there is also reverse feedback where the rest of the
00:34:10.420
civilization feeds back into the main one okay so so it's not belgium or britain or france that is
00:34:16.820
doing things it is western civilization and if you think about it one of the big questions people
00:34:21.340
always talk about is why is australia and new zealand considered a western country well the reason is that
00:34:28.140
we are all descendants of the western roman empire the western european christians who then spread out
00:34:34.360
around the world so latin america is part of western civilization even north america obviously part of
00:34:40.540
western civilization australia new zealand basically the descendants of the western part of the roman
00:34:45.260
empire right the other civilization is the eastern part of the roman empire the the byzantine and the
00:34:51.660
remnants of that and russia is the leading nation within that civilization and there's four others there's
00:34:57.620
the indian to the chinese uh and the two islamic ones the persians and the arabs right the sunni and the shia
0.85
00:35:04.680
or the shia and the sunni and his argument was that over historical time periods these civilizations come
00:35:13.140
into conflict with each other and they are in constant struggle for land for power for money for control of
00:35:19.780
territory etc and they all have what they consider to be their own historical space right so eastern
00:35:27.600
ukraine kiev and to the east of that is in every way unquestionably historically part of the
00:35:35.700
orthodox eastern christian civilization right and poland estonia latvia lithuania they are parts of western
00:35:46.340
christian civilization which stalin was able to steal and western ukraine as well because the western
0.90
00:35:54.560
civilization was having a bitch fest they were fighting for the for control of who controls
0.99
00:35:58.720
western civilization because remember world war ii was not a world war it started as a fight between
00:36:06.400
germany and britain and france essentially for who is the top dog in the west right germany wanted to be
00:36:11.980
top dog and britain and france didn't want to let them and that's why the conflict over poland
00:36:17.280
happened again remember i'm not saying this is true i'm just saying this is a useful frame for
00:36:22.580
thinking about the situation so hitler was willing to allow the soviet union to take latvia stone
00:36:28.500
lithuania what is now western ukraine and pieces of poland in order to allow him complete freedom to
00:36:35.120
deal with the british and with the french and once he dealt with the british and the french quite naturally
00:36:40.720
he went well how about we deal with the eastern civilization which i also want to enslave and destroy
1.00
00:36:46.200
right because this is how great civilizations work they don't they don't form permanent alliances they can
00:36:51.820
only be allied for periods of time against someone else right so the moment his that alliance outlived
00:36:57.260
itself and particularly there's some evidence that he thought stalin was about to attack
00:37:00.940
he began that war so what does that mean here well nato expansion right we talked about this and when
00:37:08.480
you asked me last time i would i know i came across as somewhat dismissive of the idea that nato expansion
00:37:14.560
and western influence in in eastern europe had had contributed to this process you asked me do you think
00:37:20.740
that's true and i said it's impossible to tell whether this would have still happened right uh and i
00:37:26.080
still agree with that because we've been living all of us in the commentary space i think in this
00:37:30.040
false dichotomy this idea that either vladimir putin is an expansionist authoritarian he was always going
00:37:37.280
to go west or nato has provoked poor fluffy vladimir putin with his bunny ears or whatever to to react
00:37:46.740
brutally of course it's perfectly possible for both of those things to be true and the civilizational
0.58
00:37:52.700
dimension will tell you if you believe it that the eastern civilization will always try to push west
00:37:58.880
when it can and the western civilization will always try to push east when it can so on that basis if you
00:38:06.360
look at it through history this basically happens in ukraine once a century right this basically happens
00:38:12.900
in ukraine once a century because it is on the border between these two great civilizations and this
00:38:18.360
is very important particularly when we talk about the nuclear side of this because you might say and
00:38:25.220
people and i sort of questioned it as well it's like well why does why does russia care about the
00:38:32.180
nato expanding into ukraine right it's like we're not going to attack them with nuclear weapons that would
00:38:37.280
be insane right that would be insane at the level of the nation right no no one thinks boris johnson is
00:38:43.540
about to launch a nuclear strike on russia right and it's insane that's true she can ask very nicely
1.00
00:38:51.140
no one thinks that but the level of civilization and history you have to look at it on a broader scale
00:38:57.520
and go look russia was invaded by the leader of western civilization in 1930 1941 in world war ii
00:39:05.880
before that by napoleon and on and on and on and on and on it goes so the idea that we've reached some
00:39:11.720
kind of new peaceful world in which no war will ever happen again we can have that illusion at the
00:39:17.920
level of the individual of the community of the nation but the level of civilization we know
00:39:23.580
historically speaking every great civilization tries to destroy its neighbors if it can or at least
00:39:29.500
compete with them in a way that will be to the detriment of the other and so at that level of
00:39:34.460
abstraction i mean if you've got to be thinking it from their point of view and i'm telling you this
00:39:42.780
because that's how they think about it i know this that's how they think about it if the west had
00:39:48.540
complete dominance and was able to destroy russia without being able to without russia being able
0.80
00:39:55.220
to destroy the western return well they might not launch nuclear weapons but they'd certainly demand
0.54
00:40:00.540
things of russia that russia doesn't want to give up they could bully russia into doing things so we
00:40:04.880
are in the new arms race and we are in a new cold war as i said two weeks ago so i think this
00:40:11.240
civilizational analysis kind of helps to understand that tension and that conflict and why of course
00:40:16.300
nato expansion contributes to russia being bullish in pushing westwards now i personally do think that
00:40:25.000
a president of a country who's been in power for 23 years who's destroyed any semblance of democracy
00:40:31.040
any semblance of the free press who said that the collapse of the soviet union is the greatest
00:40:36.060
geopolitical catastrophe of the 20th century whose talk about creating the russian world etc
00:40:42.260
he was always going to move west if the west retreated and think about this what if natal wasn't in
00:40:48.540
latvia estonia lithuania poland etc right do you think he would have just sat on his hands
00:40:53.520
that's the question that i think people need to ask themselves so when people very well educated people
00:40:59.820
and who people who are making good points john meyerheimer um vladimir posner both people i really
00:41:05.420
want us to get on the show and so do you when they talk about well we've provoked putin okay let's
00:41:11.580
accept that argument if we were in the internet age in 1938 people would say well the vasai treaty
00:41:19.000
of vasai provoked hitler and i just be clear i'm not saying putin is hitler i'm not saying he has a
00:41:24.300
racial animus i'm not saying he wants to enslave everybody around the world at all but he wants
0.87
00:41:28.840
control over those territories that used to be part of his world as he sees it so there's always an
00:41:34.500
explanation of why things are happening and in any relationship as you know both parties are
00:41:39.360
responsible so i i do think we underplayed when we were talking about it a couple of weeks ago the
00:41:46.640
nato angle of this because i frankly was stuck in the false dichotomy of well either it's putin or it's
00:41:52.660
the west provoking him it's both right uh so that's kind of what i think has given me this ability to
00:41:59.300
come to acceptance that this was always going to happen and i i don't know that you know it could
00:42:06.160
have been avoided now personalities matter right russia could have had a different president
00:42:11.340
and that president could have resolved this differently america could have handled this
00:42:16.720
differently and if it had a different president president trump i don't think this would have
00:42:20.360
happened even now uh even as far as nato has provoked russia whatever he would have found some
00:42:25.300
way to negotiate or and also he would have been much scarier for for russia to upset in this situation
00:42:31.620
broadway's smash hit the neil diamond musical a beautiful noise is coming to toronto the true
00:42:38.600
story of a kid from brooklyn destined for something more featuring all the songs you love including
00:42:43.840
america forever in blue jeans and sweet caroline like jersey boys and beautiful the next musical mega
00:42:50.640
hit is here the neil diamond musical a beautiful noise now through june 7th 2026 at the princess of
00:42:57.580
wells theater get tickets at mirvish.com so that's where we are uh and that's why i think i i i'm
00:43:08.560
asking people to let us donate this money for humanitarian causes because russia cannot they
00:43:15.000
can't give up they're not going to stop they're going to flatten what they need to flatten because
00:43:20.180
for them this is existential this is civilizational for putin it's personal and the the the way things
00:43:26.640
are in russia now they're not going to give up man they're not the sanctions are only fueling
00:43:32.440
their they're emboldening them now look over a 10-year period if we keep the sanctions up yeah people
00:43:37.580
are going to get pissed off with putin for for what what's going on but they're not going to end
00:43:41.420
this war so that's my position on it i don't know if that makes any sense you know it makes complete
00:43:47.380
sense i want to talk about sanctions a little bit yeah so there's been some very intelligent people
00:43:52.900
who've been making the point that all you're doing with these sanctions is driving them further
00:43:58.300
driving putin further and further into the arms of the ccp do you agree with that because you're
1.00
00:44:04.660
cutting them off with trade from the west they're going to become isolated their only option is going
00:44:09.300
to be trading with the other superpower who are obviously the chinese i don't know enough about
00:44:15.020
that to really say what's going on i mean it would seem to me to be a reasonable conclusion yeah
00:44:18.700
but it's a worry isn't it because if you isolate russia it's what uh sun tzu said you've got to
00:44:28.040
give them the golden bridge yeah when they retreat you can't humiliate them and if you constantly
00:44:33.300
isolate them and you're going to financially cripple them then eventually that's their only option
00:44:38.220
you you yeah absolutely the only thing is i mean china from what i understand and look as i said i don't
00:44:44.000
know much about this so just take that with a pinch of salt they've played a very neutral hand on this
00:44:49.140
one they they've they've they voted they abstained in the vote the the russian tv is full of pro china
00:44:59.000
stuff right now so they're desperate to do that what the chinese are going to do we don't know because
00:45:04.400
the chinese are a much more natural enemy to russia than the west is well they share a border well they
0.99
00:45:10.560
share a massive border and the far east of russia is essentially being slowly taken over by chinese
0.99
00:45:15.400
people they're just moving there a lot of the organized crime in the east of russia is chinese
00:45:20.520
i can see you've got a joke in your mind you sound like a russian youtube yeah exactly well i used to
00:45:25.500
when i used to be a translator i used to translate a lot of stuff about the migration statistics from
00:45:29.300
that area there's a very heavy inflow of chinese labor chinese business people into the far east of russia
00:45:35.540
so whether china and russia are going to get along is an interesting question um that i don't know
00:45:41.960
enough about to answer but that's just what i know about it see to to me it's an interesting situation
00:45:49.540
because you have china on one side who superficially i thought they would have been alive allies but what
00:45:56.600
you're saying makes it seem not the case they might be they might be but we don't know but they haven't
00:46:02.560
come out and you would have thought if they're going to be allies they would have come out and
00:46:05.540
been loud and proud and you've got to remember as well like nobody actually wants nuclear war
00:46:09.820
you know this narrative that uh mad vlad or whatever i i think he he's certainly dictatorial
00:46:18.240
and he's becoming you know culty i don't think he's mad and the people in charge of china very smart
00:46:25.880
people so none of nobody wants nuclear war uh so they're going to try and stabilize the situation
00:46:31.440
as best they can and what that looks like we don't know i remember you said on question time that
00:46:37.640
if he was backed into a corner there was there was no way out he would yeah i think so yeah so let's
0.73
00:46:45.920
just explore well backed into a corner is like fucking nato troops on the border of russia that's
0.94
00:46:49.760
what i mean really yeah then of course well if nato gets involved i mean that's his only play
0.78
00:46:54.940
because nato would crush russia in the conventional war and how much do you think this is insecurity
00:47:02.440
of russia it's sort of a it's a cross way to describe it but a midlife crisis almost
00:47:09.120
you know russia looking back to the glory days of putin looking back to the glory days of the
00:47:13.980
soviet well if you talk to vladimir posner that's what he would say is the big russian complaint is
00:47:18.260
we are a great civilization and you tried to keep us in the box
00:47:22.440
we we've got the most nukes in the world why are you trying to keep us in a box why are you trying
00:47:29.840
to intrude on what is our civilizational territory why are you not not treating us as an equal that's
00:47:36.580
what people would say and you've got to understand that a huge part of the russian mindset every every
00:47:42.820
every nation in particular and every civilization they have their own myth and i don't mean myth as
00:47:49.420
in this is bollocks and we should dismiss it and laugh at it i mean i mean that an idea that we all
00:47:55.580
buy into whether consciously or subconsciously absolutely yeah and the western myth essentially
00:48:01.340
is based lately at least on the amer the american constitution and the declaration of independence and
00:48:09.420
the revolutionary war and all of that and the myth is basically this we have created the perfect
00:48:16.280
society right we have found the rules and regulations and the way of looking at the individual
00:48:22.140
and society and government that gives people maximum freedom and maximum wealth and that is the purpose of
00:48:30.160
life and we are now the luckiest most fortunate most successful people in the world the freest people
00:48:36.540
the freest people in the world and that's who we are and that is our myth and therefore we must spread
00:48:41.580
this to other people we must share this beautiful freedom and and prosperity with others that is the
00:48:48.660
western civilizational myth the russian national myth is based on a long history of trying to catch up
00:48:57.440
to the west right the the russian national myth is look we are just as good as those guys over there
00:49:03.820
but technologically and in many other ways we've been behind and they don't treat us the way we deserve
00:49:08.820
to be treated and we are strong we sacrificed 20 million lives to defeat nationalism we won that war
00:49:15.560
it was us right and and the americans landed right at the end of the war to take some of the glory
00:49:22.260
on the beaches of normandy and yeah they did a little bit that's the narrative i'm not saying it's true
00:49:27.160
um and tried to take credit for our success so yeah maybe maybe we're a bit backward and maybe
00:49:34.080
we're a bit technologically behind but we are strong we are strong how dare you not treat us as
00:49:41.180
equals that's the russian national myth so these two myths are colliding in a very big way but it's
00:49:48.280
also as well you look at the economy in russia it's the size of the italian economy is that but this is
00:49:54.020
what i'm saying to you this is exactly what i'm saying to you you are doing the western myth to
00:49:59.480
russia you're going well you're not very rich and i'm going yeah but i've got 100 however many 10 000
00:50:04.840
nuclear weapons what doesn't matter how rich i am when i can destroy the whole world and this is what
0.57
00:50:09.200
people don't understand russia has enough nuclear weapons that it doesn't need to fire them
00:50:13.040
if russia detonated its nuclear weapons in russia life on earth would end
0.88
00:50:24.020
so if you've got that kind of clout behind you you want to be taken seriously of course and that's
00:50:30.860
the issue with the nuclear age that we live in now is there are countries in the world that cannot lose
00:50:37.340
in a war doesn't mean they're going to win but they will not lose you see what i'm saying i completely
00:50:44.320
understand what you're saying and what there's quite a few people who or those people talking about
00:50:51.040
that maybe what we need to do is you know just get rid of vlad put somebody else in charge yeah
00:50:58.920
that to me seems like a completely ridiculous idea it's a misunderstanding of the situation i
00:51:05.420
understand why people are saying it because whenever there's a problem we saw it's a style
00:51:10.000
and approach no man no problem yeah the problem you've got in russia particularly with what i talked
00:51:14.920
about earlier with the way that the country is right now and also again the civilizational
00:51:19.800
dimension of how threatened they feel you remember uncle vlad there is a a sort of range of
00:51:28.480
possibilities that looks like this right and vlad is on the authoritarian violent side of that for
00:51:33.960
sure but could be further in that direction i mean you've got history correct i mean by historical
00:51:41.380
standards of of the russian nation remember what i said never had a democracy ever never had a single
00:51:47.680
democratic transition of power ever right vladimir putin but i'm not saying i agree with it i don't
00:51:54.340
like it that's why i live in the west but by the russian standards he's pretty sort of middle of the
00:52:01.260
road he's a liberal democrat he's a sort of you know i don't know he's a liberal democrat i think
00:52:08.760
that's pushing it a little bit you should know the liberal democrat party in russia is the most like
00:52:13.300
extremist pro-war bomb america party ever it's incredible but anyway he's pretty middle of the
00:52:21.180
road by the standards of russian history so careful what you wish for my friend and also here's another
00:52:26.940
thing you come at the king you best not miss what happens if you miss what happens if there's an
00:52:34.560
assassination attempt and you fail well now his life is on the line
00:52:38.500
what's he going to do then you want to roll those dice
00:52:43.940
that you do not want to see that because that's when things could get i mean things are obviously
00:52:53.940
awful yeah but that's taking it to another level yeah so look the long-term perspective is we're in a
00:53:01.920
cold war in my opinion we are going to have to win that cold war but there's going to be a few
00:53:09.760
seat of the pants moments squeaky bum times coming along the way i think
00:53:16.020
man look what the hell do i know but that's my opinion
00:53:18.700
so eventually for the long term you think that what is the future of ukraine do you think
00:53:24.160
well like i said i'm not a military expert i'm not a political expert so i'm just giving you my
00:53:29.700
opinion and it could be wrong yeah but i think russia one way or another is going to win this war
00:53:35.220
they're going to enforce their demands one way or another and their demands are to take crimea
00:53:41.700
to give independence to the two eastern regions and the other two is really what all the fuss is about
00:53:47.420
which is neutral ukraine i'm using inverted commas by which they mean going back to when russia
00:53:53.100
essentially decided who was the president of ukraine and what policies they'll have and by the way
00:53:57.640
zelensky may even stay in power they might keep him as a nominal like president but it will be the
00:54:04.300
prime minister a russian appointed guy basically who decides what happens in the country so in neutral
00:54:09.920
ukraine essentially a ukraine that does everything that russia wants and uh demilitarization which means
0.51
00:54:16.460
basically preventing the ukrainians from being strong enough to ever fight russia again removing
00:54:22.160
nato weaponry etc and what they call denazification by which they mean basically getting rid of
00:54:28.120
the as we talked about before with roger mohouse there is a historical issue in one part of ukraine
00:54:35.100
with uh ukrainian nationalists who are of the fascist variety and he wants to deal with those of course but
00:54:41.720
really it's just about getting rid of people who who've taken a pro-ukrainian nationalist approach
00:54:47.800
some of them will be nazis a small percentage tiny percentage uh like in every country there are some
00:54:53.520
people who are extremists uh and the rest of them will just be people who've been very vocally pro-ukrainian
00:54:58.640
and against the russian and it will mean also changing the cultural direction of ukraine so that they
00:55:04.620
they have russian television russian speaking tv and russian is torn in schools and blah blah blah blah blah
00:55:10.540
so become more like belarus basically uh belarus is a different case because they've got a president for life
00:55:16.920
it's a little bit different but yeah culturally probably something like that this is one of the
00:55:21.300
reasons i say that this was always going to happen because people have been persuaded by commentators
00:55:26.080
in the west to think that oh in 2014 there was a coup and then ukraine took a western direction well
00:55:31.760
first of all to say it was a western sponsored coup is not accurate the west was involved for sure
00:55:37.160
ukraine was moving in the western direction from literally 1991 i remember my own grandfather
00:55:41.900
uh who who was i i loved him i loved growing up on his farm in in ukraine in in the russian part of
00:55:49.020
ukraine and he always spoke russian all the time i knew him the moment the soviet union collapsed he
00:55:54.080
started speaking ukraine and i remember it because he used to piss the hell out of me it pissed me off
0.82
00:55:57.620
because i was like granted i don't understand what you're saying so many many people in an independent
00:56:03.540
ukraine moved in a in a westwards direction and in a pro-ukrainian direction to the point where
00:56:09.000
like my wife used to say like why all these people speaking ukrainian badly when they're russian
00:56:14.320
speakers russian speakers were trying to learn ukrainian and they wanted the wealth and the
00:56:19.920
prosperity and the democracy that that we have in the west and think about this people talk about
00:56:24.860
oh there's a there's a western coup well the president zelensky wasn't didn't come to power as a
00:56:31.400
result of a coup the person the person who came to power in 2014 as a result of the uh of the of that
00:56:37.760
revolution was they call it the revolution of dignity was a man called petro poroshenko
00:56:43.080
he was replaced in a free and fair election by vladimir zelensky vladimir zelensky who got most of
00:56:50.700
his votes from eastern and central ukraine and he ended up having i think about 75 of the total vote
00:56:57.200
he's a freely elected man in a democracy a jewish comedian so that's why they always talk about all
00:57:03.760
the nazis are running around in ukraine the people in the west can say what they want i'm not going
00:57:08.420
to argue with them anymore i've decided there's nothing i can do to change people's minds i'm
00:57:11.640
just going to say what i know and what i think and people can take it from there so that's to me why
00:57:18.260
this was always going to happen ukraine was always going to move west whether the west wanted it to or
0.54
00:57:22.340
not people in most countries that were part of the soviet union would quite like to have more
00:57:27.320
prosperity and more freedom if they possibly can and it's taken a concerted effort to keep that
00:57:32.300
process from happening and do you think the reason that russia has these types of leaders is because
00:57:40.640
it's such a huge country historically speaking yes if you think about you've got to control a massive
00:57:45.460
country where it literally takes weeks to travel somewhere and they're completely cut off and
00:57:50.620
there's no internet no phones no nothing different completely different cultures as well
00:57:54.340
different cultures different ethnicities etc you have to have very strong central leadership to keep
00:57:59.500
that thing going so absolute brutality lopping anyone's heads off who doesn't do what you say
00:58:04.400
you have to have a strong leader you have to have a strong leader and also we spent about 200 years
00:58:10.640
being ruled by the mongols so or have maybe even more than that maybe i don't remember the exact
00:58:14.640
detail my russian history of that period is not not very clear but centuries of being ruled by
00:58:20.260
mongols and the mongols had a very simple uh set of laws yeah the point there were only two things
1.00
00:58:27.160
either you're allowed to do it or the punishment for this is death that was their approach if you
00:58:33.620
ride along the road and you see somebody having a meal and you don't sit down and eat with them
00:58:38.540
you die if you are sitting alongside of the road and you're eating and you don't invite a stranger
00:58:44.440
to eat with you you die do anything else you die you refuse to pay tax you die right and this is what
0.85
00:58:51.940
they did so they ruled russia with an iron fist and you know russians have carried on with that
0.77
00:58:56.780
tradition we love a strong leader do you think part of it is that putin could see ukraine moving
00:59:06.620
westwards democratically elected and he was worried that the russian people might look at that and go
00:59:13.180
hang on a minute they're getting a democratic election you've been in power for 23 years mate
00:59:17.700
well this is why i've always said about why why russia is so worried about these color revolutions the one
00:59:24.800
in georgia the one in ukraine is like it's a bad example to the children yeah it sets a bad example
0.91
00:59:31.080
it's partly about nato getting close to russia's borders but partly it sets a terrible example to
00:59:37.400
the kids look at belarus they tried to have a color revolution there overthrow a guy been in power i
00:59:42.280
don't know 50 years or however long it's been right so it's a bad example yeah and you see he's got
00:59:49.760
quite a high approval rating hasn't he what putin now well massive of course of course people in russia
00:59:55.680
blame the west for what's happening and they blame the sanctions on the west how reliable is that
01:00:01.020
though because it's reliable really yeah because trichescu family had yeah i've made this point
01:00:06.340
before it ain't one of them right now no country is a war and people are united behind their leader
01:00:11.240
yeah so he's stronger than ever now i think internally he's stronger than ever russia is going
01:00:18.080
to get crippled by sanctions but he in terms of his control of the country yeah of course he's stronger
01:00:23.260
than that and do you think he thinks that he made the right decision i don't know i imagine like me
01:00:28.340
he's very surprised by the strength of the western response i don't think he expected it to be like
01:00:33.960
this from what i'm hearing really yeah that's interesting should we uh do q a mate yeah let's
01:00:40.500
do all right so guys we're going to come back in a few minutes with some questions from you we'll read
01:00:44.400
the super chat we'll read the paypats we'll see what you guys are saying hey francis do you like
01:00:49.920
podcasts and politics no mate i'm a real man i'm only interested in football birds and fast cars last
01:00:57.920
time you tried to drive a car you had a panic attack when you got overtaken by a granny she was driving
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01:01:43.560
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01:01:49.340
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01:02:00.800
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and welcome back guys uh we are going to ask your questions to constantin and to myself as well
01:03:56.600
so let's start off first of all with stephanie and she says please will you talk about the no fly zone
01:04:03.420
don't we need to close the sky now not keep sitting and watching i understand the sentiment
01:04:11.660
stephanie i i really really do and i wish we could i really really do you know as you know i have family
01:04:18.340
in ukraine i keep saying it i really really i would love for us to be able to do that but you've got to
01:04:24.860
think about what that means what does a no fly zone mean it means we shoot down any planes that fly in
01:04:31.680
right so now that means we are shooting down russian planes what does that mean well that is
01:04:38.280
an act of hostility it's an act of war yeah if i'm killing your people that's an act of war so then
0.82
01:04:44.420
we're in world war three with russia and as i said yes the west can crush russia in a conventional war
01:04:51.480
if it really wanted to after millions and millions of people dying on both sides but
01:04:55.660
you've got to understand there is no there are some countries like i said before that cannot lose a war
01:05:01.240
and russia is one of them russia has several types of weapons that uh we cannot stop
01:05:11.080
it's developing a nuclear powered nuclear missile nuclear tipped submarine or torpedo which is
01:05:20.440
gigantic and it can basically swim underwater it can not swim it can move underwater uh faster than
01:05:28.040
it can be intercepted and attack uh coastal cities uh like los angeles new york etc and there's nothing
01:05:35.640
we can do to stop it it has uh hypersonic missiles that no anti-aircraft system can intercept so if russia
0.80
01:05:43.560
wants to destroy the west it can and if the west wants to destroy russia it can so if you want to get
0.89
01:05:48.240
involved in world war three that's how it's going to end so i am my heart bleeds for ukraine and i wish
01:05:56.300
we could do do something to help and every ukrainian i speak to says please we need to close the sky
01:06:02.340
but do we i mean we can't kill everybody in the world i mean i sometimes feel like doing it but
01:06:12.140
for entirely different reasons yeah well thank you well thank you stephanie so let's uh let's
01:06:20.380
let's talk about this let's talk about a question from dan mcbean he goes when ukraine
01:06:27.080
is inverted commas defeated what are the chances of a long-running ongoing insurgent war against
01:06:34.840
russian targets supported by the west i think it's high uh based on the conversations that i've had
01:06:41.060
um because of how brave and courageous and spirited the ukrainians are and that's my concern with the
01:06:48.580
war running longer and longer what you're going to have is more atrocities on both sides you're going
01:06:53.220
to see that more and more people uh become go beyond the point of no return or in terms of how
01:07:01.160
they feel they've seen their family members killed they've seen their cities destroyed um and that
01:07:06.520
will only mean that this you know that uh horror continues i think that's very likely and i think
01:07:14.280
the longer the war goes on the worse that partisan war or insurgency or whatever you want to call it
01:07:19.420
will be which is one of the reasons i'm not sure extending it is a good thing that that is the
01:07:26.300
worry isn't it that putin will then take over and then what will eventually happen is that it there'll
01:07:32.560
be just a permanent guerrilla war well it won't be permanent but look if this was adolf hitler who
01:07:39.320
wanted to enslave ukrainians and exterminate some racial minority and whatever we'd be having a very and
1.00
01:07:44.780
it was a non-nuclear age we'd be having a very different conversation right now right but i don't
01:07:51.040
think we can start a nuclear war for someone who wants to control some territory now this sounds
01:07:56.720
awful i say again my heart bleeds for ukraine i want to do everything i can to support people there
01:08:01.940
that's why we raised a ton of money that's why i've gone on tv and blah blah blah i i want to do
01:08:06.400
everything i can i'm just being very honest with people as i always try to be about what i see
01:08:11.780
based on conversations that i've had based on the military situation based on what's happening
01:08:16.540
in ukraine based on what's happening in russia if that makes me an appeaser i guess i guess i'm an
01:08:22.540
appeaser i don't know i don't know what to say it's just i'm torn but but but the practical reality
01:08:27.600
is this we can't start world war three and you in the nuclear age and and creating a no-fly zone
0.83
01:08:33.700
would do that okay um here's a question from xz born he goes what's the difference between
01:08:43.840
american billionaires and russian oligarchs which is a good question yeah i think uh russian oligarchs
01:08:50.960
well it depends what you mean russian oligarchs are russian and ukrainian oligarchs so russian
01:08:55.580
oligarchs are at this point essentially an appointed position you don't rise to the position of billionaire
0.86
01:09:02.940
you get appointed to it by vladimir putin so the people who are billionaires in russia now are
01:09:07.840
people who he is handpicked to be billionaires and the people who used to be billionaires that he
01:09:12.840
didn't like either in prison or dead or in exile right so billionaire is is it's it's like head of
01:09:20.660
the civil service or whatever it's like an the the leader of the country appoints them uh in ukraine
01:09:26.240
it's different in ukraine they have a tremendous amount of influence on on the country and the power
01:09:31.920
and and the way it's the country's government uh american billionaires i imagine that american
01:09:39.980
billionaires other than the owners of the big tech companies have far less influence on what happens
01:09:43.900
in american politics than than they do in russia or ukraine particularly in ukraine well thank you
01:09:49.740
that's a great answer tiffany richardson asks how are we going to convince anyone to give up their
01:09:54.300
nukes in exchange for inverted commas our protection ever again after this well if you're a leader of any
01:10:00.520
country that has nuclear weapons now because the reason she's asking this question is in 1994 uh
01:10:06.420
russia and the western country signed the budapest memorandum which in which ukraine agreed to give
01:10:12.460
up its nuclear weapons in exchange for guarantees of western protection and of russian protection
01:10:17.020
right so everybody said look just give away your nukes and then we'll protect you that way this country
0.58
01:10:23.980
which is quite unstable and not clear politically blah blah doesn't have nukes well if ukraine had nukes
01:10:29.340
this invasion wouldn't be happening right so how are you going to commit well that's why everyone
01:10:33.560
wants a nuclear bomb because it's the one way you guarantee you don't get invaded
01:10:37.160
good point fodsax asks when the soviet union broke up and they actually had a reasonable man as leader
01:10:48.780
was there more we could and should have done to bring russia further in from the cold people will argue
01:10:56.460
that uh i remember as a kid growing up in moscow eating american donated humanitarian aid right
01:11:03.160
america did try to help what america didn't want to do and this is something posner talks about with
01:11:08.560
the wolfitz doctrine america didn't want russia to become a competitor and so it tried to keep russia in
01:11:13.640
the box what would have happened if russia hadn't been kept in a box well no one knows answer to that
01:11:19.620
question one possibility is we'd be living in peace and prosperity and friendship and whatever
01:11:23.920
the other possibility is russia would have gone back erased itself and gone oh look well why is
01:11:29.940
estonia latvia lithuania poland why aren't they part of our sphere influence anymore right and if
01:11:36.320
nato wasn't there to protect those countries that could well be the case now right because the loss of
01:11:45.060
the warsaw pack countries was very painful for the soviet union it was a very painful thing for the the
01:11:51.020
civilizational identity but they were sort of willing to give it up because traditionally speaking
01:11:56.500
those countries were part of western christian civilization and that's why okay katie kaling
01:12:05.220
has asked what do you think the best outcome for ukrainian people as well as the west can hope for
01:12:11.860
at this point look again i just i need to preface everything by saying i'm not an expert i don't know but
01:12:18.300
here's my opinion right based on the conversations that i've had and what i understand i think the
01:12:22.300
best outcome is basically what's on the table for ukraine now sadly and that is they've put up a
01:12:27.800
great fight they've shown that it's not going to be easy maybe the russians will take kiev and then
01:12:34.540
they'll surrender i don't know but it's basically going to be russia taking crimea independence for the
01:12:40.700
two eastern regions and a cultural redirecting of ukraine eastwards towards russia and the sort
01:12:48.540
of permanent puppet russian government what can i say i mean that i don't see a better outcome
01:12:56.660
the the reason that i don't see a better outcome is you know that i don't see how you're going to
01:13:02.720
get russia to to give up on those ambitions especially now when when yes they're taking great
01:13:07.920
casualties yes the economy is taking great damage but they are making progress and they
01:13:11.660
you know it's only been two weeks man and they're making progress towards what they're trying to do
01:13:18.620
which is encircle the army take the big cities once they do that yeah you can have an insurgency but
01:13:23.680
what's that going to change do you think it's made the west look impotent
01:13:28.560
i think the reality is is that on this one the west kind of was impotent what it did though it
01:13:41.300
kept signaling weakness and so it's allowed russia to do this but i've been surprised by the strength
01:13:46.820
of the response if you remember i said two weeks ago in perhaps somewhat melodramatically that nato is
01:13:51.400
over i don't know that that's not true but it could not be true it could be not true in that
01:13:59.040
you know i don't know what would happen if like if russia invaded lithuania today i'm pretty sure
01:14:04.920
we'd strike back if russia invades lithuania five years from now well it depends on what's happened
01:14:09.800
in the world do you see what i'm saying yeah i do so it's hard to say i don't i don't feel that the
01:14:14.360
west has been particularly weak on this it's done everything it can do you know who's actually and i
01:14:19.940
never thought i'd say this come out of this with some credit it's all but it's boris johnson he has
01:14:25.340
and by the way look i i texted nigel farage the other day going you know we had that big argument
0.73
01:14:30.960
i'm starting to see your point you know and just for the viewers and the listeners well he was saying
01:14:39.720
we should say to to russia we won't let ukraine join nato would that have stopped it it probably
01:14:46.100
would have stopped it in the interim yeah but then you end up in the same thing where
01:14:49.780
russia basically then takes over ukraine either culturally or otherwise one way or another russia
01:14:55.060
would be in control that's what it means to say ukraine won't be joining nato so i think this was
01:15:00.620
always going to happen maybe in the short term this could have been avoided maybe we i can see you've got
01:15:04.540
another joke coming no no no i just uh i was discussing with my very left-wing girlfriend about
01:15:10.500
this and she put forward uh that exact argument and i said you have the exact same opinion as
01:15:17.760
nigel farage i bet she was happy she was furious well she went but it's it's an interesting point
01:15:24.120
isn't it it's an interesting point i i don't think that would have avoided this issue in the long run
01:15:28.900
uh do you think it was inevitable really the moment the nukes were given up the moment they didn't
01:15:35.600
become part of nato ukraine's fate was sealed i know it's a horrible question yeah i do because for
01:15:41.540
the reasons that i told you because the people of ukraine wanted to move west it's what they it's
01:15:46.840
not the cia didn't manipulate them into doing that right they want like my granddad who was speaking
01:15:52.620
ukrainian and what and and lots of other people they wanted to move in a direction of having their own
01:15:58.520
country that was not aligned with russia that's what they wanted so they and as long as they had
0.95
01:16:02.780
democracy they would keep electing leaders that would push the country in that direction so this
01:16:07.140
was always going to happen donna willis asked do you think putin will retaliate soon against the west
01:16:14.460
because of the of sanctions and the support we have given ukraine and if so in what form well i think
01:16:22.540
they will probably try to retaliate against some of the the recent sanctions like the oil embargo and
01:16:27.840
all of that although it's only britain and america really that's done that the countries that actually
01:16:31.820
buy most of their oil and gas are in europe and they're not doing that so we'll have to see um we'll
01:16:37.800
have to see probably i'd imagine so okay they did last time in 2014 they like banned polish apple or some
01:16:43.960
shit uh uh uh uh the corporate withdrawal is from the cancel culture playbook and this is from japan
01:16:53.300
22222 you for or against does it make putin weaker stronger would it be there's a question that
0.98
01:17:01.180
already asked would it be dangerous having a russia unplugged from the west separate internet etc
01:17:06.480
i mean it's already there so i think it's very difficult to say there are two options this can
01:17:16.460
go the two ways this can go one is russia for some reason just goes you know what this isn't worth it
01:17:21.480
we're pulling out and then we we go through a process of de-escalation i don't see that happening
01:17:26.720
the other process unfortunately i see happening is russia carries on we are in cold war ii and
01:17:34.640
we're gonna have to win and the way we defeated the soviet union is by forcing them to destroy their
0.58
01:17:41.040
own economy yeah sending them bankrupt basically basically so maybe that's what happens edvard gotto
01:17:48.760
asked hey hey you do you guys think world war three has started i'm low-key kind of scared to be honest
01:17:56.120
and this might seem like people will look at this and go don't be ridiculous there's a hell of a lot
01:18:01.340
of people out there who are very very anxious about this who are terrified who are thinking is this the
01:18:07.000
start actually of world war three well if it is then we're all gonna die all right mate keep it light
01:18:16.300
in which case if i say now that i don't think it is i'm going to be right either way either it isn't
01:18:22.380
or we're all dead in which case no one is going to come back and go i told you so uh i'm going to say
01:18:28.380
no i don't think it is but we are as close to as we've come for a very long time yeah for 60 years
01:18:36.040
for exactly 60 years since the cuba missile crisis we haven't been closer than we are now to world war
01:18:41.340
three but you don't think this is no because there's a lack of appetite on all sides for war
01:18:48.540
basically yeah okay bam bam buffer asked a question asked a very good question actually he goes how
01:18:55.180
about compromise and send a loot specifically to help injured ukrainian military they send the loot
01:19:02.040
yeah the money that we've raised so some of it yeah yeah well the charities we'll give it to will
01:19:07.060
partly be for that yeah okay so i think that's a very very good idea so thank you very much uh
01:19:13.700
uh bam bam buffer peter ryan has sent one i don't know how true it is uh there might be a rumor that
01:19:21.100
you've heard from your family in russia he goes there have been some reports that uncle vlad has cancer
01:19:26.420
big if true there's nothing more terrifying than a man with nothing to lose is that a rumor that is
01:19:33.480
going around russia is that i haven't heard that okay uh human hue m bean goes it sounds like you've
01:19:43.080
given up on ukraine i realize putin will probably take it but i thought it meant but i thought making
01:19:49.600
it as hard as possible was the best option for everyone in the long term open to your thoughts
01:19:55.620
we know you've been waiting and your full great outdoors comedy festival lineup is here on september
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11th through 13th at arendale park comedy superstars john mulaney with nick kroll mike berbiglia and
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fred armison adam ray is dr phil live with miss pat and tj miller hassan minhaj and ronnie chang with
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michael costa and more hit the stage three nights five shows huge laughs september 11th through 13th
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