Latest / International Flavor: Where the Truth Tastes Better / Managed War Fatigue, Western Spoilers, Ukraine’s Political Endgame, and the Machinery Delaying Peace

Transcript

Managed War Fatigue, Western Spoilers, Ukraine’s Political Endgame, and the Machinery Delaying Peace · International Flavor: Where the Truth Tastes Better

• 0:00
  Hello, good morning.
• 0:01
  Welcome.
• 0:02
  I am Samuel Trapp.
• 0:03
  This is International Flavor.
• 0:05
  You are listening to DAM Radio coming to
• 0:08
  you live from the Lake Ozark real estate
• 0:11
  of the art studio.
• 0:13
  You can listen to us every day at
• 0:14
  damradio.com forward slash live.
• 0:16
  You can go to all our podcasts and
• 0:18
  show.
• 0:20
  If you don't have a chance to listen,
• 0:22
  you can go to them at damradio.com
• 0:24
  forward slash podcast.
• 0:25
  And for mine in particular, you can go
• 0:27
  out to internationalflavor.com and hear all of
• 0:31
  the shows in order that you can listen
• 0:34
  to them all, all over again.
• 0:38
  If you feel like calling in this morning,
• 0:40
  why am I hearing some kind of an
• 0:42
  echo?
• 0:43
  It's kind of weird.
• 0:43
  Shouldn't be, I don't think.
• 0:45
  But at any rate, you want to call
• 0:49
  in 573-746-8020.
• 0:52
  And I might even answer who knows, sometimes
• 0:55
  I do, sometimes I don't.
• 0:56
  That's the way the cookie crumbles.
• 0:59
  All right.
• 0:59
  Lots going on in the world.
• 1:02
  Yesterday, I gave you the news, like a
• 1:06
  review of all the news basically of over
• 1:08
  the weekend and since I came in on,
• 1:11
  since I was last in on Thursday.
• 1:14
  So I'm not doing Fridays anymore, but, or
• 1:17
  I haven't been, but I'm going to start
• 1:19
  doing them again because of my projects that
• 1:22
  are coming to fruition.
• 1:24
  One of them being civicoutlaws.com.
• 1:27
  If you haven't heard of our efforts, it's
• 1:31
  a 501c3.
• 1:33
  We go after government overreach.
• 1:35
  We have several projects that we're working on.
• 1:37
  We're getting a lot of attention and we're
• 1:40
  beating up on quite a few things.
• 1:42
  I wrote an article that I'd like to
• 1:44
  share with you, but I'm not going to
• 1:46
  share it until Friday.
• 1:47
  We're going to kick off a Civic Outlaws
• 1:50
  radio program, podcast, whatever.
• 1:55
  And I may have one of the other
• 1:56
  founders come in with me for this project
• 1:59
  and we can talk about what we're doing.
• 2:02
  But I'm going to share my article.
• 2:04
  I'm going to share it with you on
• 2:06
  Friday.
• 2:07
  And I want that article, I think people
• 2:10
  need to start taking notice of the administrative
• 2:13
  state and the changes that, you know, I
• 2:17
  beat up on Trump quite a bit because
• 2:19
  of the international BS that goes on in
• 2:24
  the name of America that I don't care
• 2:26
  for.
• 2:27
  And I've been against that for a long
• 2:29
  time, but I'm not against Trump.
• 2:31
  I was against any Democrat doing the same
• 2:36
  thing over the last 30 years.
• 2:38
  I was against Bush when this crap was
• 2:40
  going on, when I was still serving in
• 2:42
  the military as an interpreter for the.
• 2:47
  It's called Onsite Inspection Agency.
• 2:50
  Now it's called Nuclear Threat Reduction Agency, I
• 2:52
  believe, because Onsite Inspection Agency doesn't exist anymore,
• 2:56
  but the mission was folded into what they
• 2:59
  were doing for the Nuclear Threat Reduction Agency
• 3:01
  is where I understand it.
• 3:03
  And so when I watch my complaint process
• 3:07
  in my my.
• 3:10
  What would he call it?
• 3:12
  You know, this is probably off topic.
• 3:15
  In fact, I know it is, but there's
• 3:17
  a when I it's pretty funny because I
• 3:20
  think of the words that I want to
• 3:22
  say in Russian, and it's pretty funny because
• 3:24
  in Russian you can say stuff that you
• 3:27
  just can't say in English, not without 20
• 3:31
  words, right?
• 3:32
  One word describes it all.
• 3:33
  Now, to be sure, some of it goes
• 3:35
  on in the in the on the opposite
• 3:37
  side, but you call it a the word
• 3:40
  I was looking for, Stalknovania.
• 3:43
  And Stalknovania is basically a conflict.
• 3:47
  So I was looking at the conflicts that
• 3:49
  come up, but there's a special nuance that
• 3:51
  goes with that kind of word.
• 3:53
  And they have so many cool words over
• 3:55
  there that you can use that that say
• 3:57
  something that gives it an intonation that in
• 4:01
  that in English sometimes just doesn't exist.
• 4:04
  Anyway, I encourage everyone to learn a foreign
• 4:07
  language and find out the beautiful things about
• 4:09
  what goes on in the world, unbeknownst to
• 4:12
  a good chunk of Americans.
• 4:15
  And so that's kind of what I bring
• 4:18
  to you here.
• 4:18
  I hope I bring a different point of
• 4:20
  view.
• 4:20
  And on so tomorrow's the biggest day in
• 4:24
  Lake Ozark radio.
• 4:26
  Damn radio on Wednesdays is a big day
• 4:29
  for us.
• 4:29
  We have quite a few shows that come
• 4:32
  up on the day and I could read
• 4:33
  to you the schedule, but I'm not going
• 4:35
  to pull it up.
• 4:36
  I've got where I want to go today.
• 4:38
  I've watched a lot of international commentary.
• 4:42
  And so today, you know, yesterday I provided
• 4:46
  kind of the map, the sweep.
• 4:49
  You know, I told you yesterday about news
• 4:51
  items that have been on for the last
• 4:53
  week.
• 4:54
  Hungary, Orban, Zelensky, Starmer, Macron, the Olympics, the
• 5:00
  protests, assassination attempts, Belarus, Moldova, Spain, Greenland, NGOs,
• 5:06
  forced mobilization in the steady drumbeat of conflict
• 5:11
  escalation that it feels so normal anymore that
• 5:16
  nobody even flinches.
• 5:18
  You know, we don't we don't pay much
• 5:20
  attention to it everywhere around the world.
• 5:23
  We generate conflict.
• 5:25
  And we, I mean, the entire West, and
• 5:28
  it's done in our name, but a lot
• 5:32
  of times without our desire to do so.
• 5:35
  You know, I don't have any desire for
• 5:37
  Israel to beat up on Gaza.
• 5:39
  I don't have any desire for Russia and
• 5:42
  Ukraine to be in a conflict.
• 5:44
  And yet, on our behalf, the Western society's
• 5:50
  behalf, we have created and pushed that conflict
• 5:54
  because of government overreach.
• 5:57
  So everything comes back to the government doing
• 6:01
  things in our name that shouldn't be done
• 6:07
  for us, or that the bulk of the
• 6:10
  people are not for.
• 6:12
  And it's a, how do you want to
• 6:16
  call it?
• 6:17
  Limitless, unchecked, unregulated bureaucrat who is
• 6:27
  spending, spending, spending.
• 6:29
  And so I dislike, the biggest thing that
• 6:33
  I complain about is bureaucracy.
• 6:36
  And so this article that I wrote, there
• 6:38
  have been changes over the last year in
• 6:41
  Missouri, in the United States, started with a
• 6:46
  key case that I want to share for
• 6:48
  you, and I'm going to for my article.
• 6:50
  The article is already posted out on the
• 6:53
  internet if you'd like to read it.
• 6:55
  And I don't have the address for you.
• 6:57
  I wasn't planning on that.
• 6:59
  But I know it's posted out there.
• 7:01
  It's been posted on our Civic Outlaws Facebook
• 7:04
  page, I believe.
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  But I'm not in charge of that page.
• 7:08
  I just shared the article with the person
• 7:10
  who is in charge of our page.
• 7:11
  And so it's supposed to be out there
• 7:13
  already if you want to read it in
• 7:14
  advance.
• 7:15
  But I'm going to share that entire article
• 7:17
  with you at the birth of the Civic
• 7:21
  Outlaws show on Friday morning.
• 7:24
  And we're going to go from 730 to
• 7:26
  845, maybe 730 to 830, something like that,
• 7:30
  where we talk about the topics of government
• 7:34
  overreach.
• 7:35
  Specific for now to Missouri, but we're interested
• 7:38
  in other states, okay?
• 7:41
  And in association with that, I'm building the
• 7:44
  modern law, or we, I shouldn't say me,
• 7:47
  but most of it falls to me, that
• 7:50
  we are organizing something called the Modern Law
• 7:54
  Ecosystem.
• 7:55
  You want to know about either one of
• 7:57
  these, you should go out to ModernLawEcosystem.com.
• 8:02
  If you type in ModernLawEco.com, it'll get
• 8:05
  you the same place.
• 8:06
  And those are the beginnings.
• 8:08
  The base of it is already formatted and
• 8:11
  already there.
• 8:12
  There's plenty of edits I got to do
• 8:14
  to the website, and that is in the
• 8:16
  works.
• 8:17
  But it is, the base information is there.
• 8:21
  And what I'm building is basically a coalition,
• 8:24
  a legal structure, a foundation, an ecosystem.
• 8:29
  That's why I call it that.
• 8:31
  It's an ecosystem of lawyers and law-related
• 8:35
  professionals.
• 8:39
  I'm looking for paralegals.
• 8:42
  I need another paralegal to come and work
• 8:46
  because basically what we're doing is providing the
• 8:49
  back office for attorney's office.
• 8:52
  We're not attorneys.
• 8:54
  We're the back office part.
• 8:56
  We can be the front as well, but
• 8:58
  that's a different structure altogether.
• 9:02
  We try to work, lawyers want to do
• 9:04
  nothing but practice law.
• 9:05
  They want to go to court.
• 9:06
  They want to go, they want to deal
• 9:08
  with the clients.
• 9:09
  They don't want to do the back office
• 9:12
  crap.
• 9:13
  So we've created the back office for all
• 9:15
  kinds of lawyers.
• 9:16
  And if you have excess capacity, well, you
• 9:20
  should join our ecosystem and we can farm
• 9:23
  out work to you.
• 9:24
  If you have a law office and you've
• 9:26
  got a paralegal, it's not as busy as
• 9:28
  you'd like.
• 9:29
  You can farm out some stuff to us
• 9:31
  or farm out your paralegal to us and
• 9:36
  we can pay an hourly rate for some
• 9:38
  of the research that we need done or
• 9:39
  vice versa.
• 9:40
  We have paralegals that can do that stuff
• 9:42
  for you, but it's your case, your legal,
• 9:46
  what do you call it?
• 9:48
  Strategizing your legal foundation.
• 9:50
  And so we're providing that to a number
• 9:53
  of attorneys in a number of practice areas.
• 9:55
  And we're looking to grow that sort of
• 9:59
  ecosystem.
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  This is the way the world is going.
• 10:03
  It's unavoidable.
• 10:04
  It is absolutely unavoidable.
• 10:07
  And lawyers need to understand this.
• 10:10
  You know, a lot of bar associations have
• 10:11
  been talking about this for years and I
• 10:14
  follow this stuff.
• 10:15
  I still keep track of it and I
• 10:17
  have my complaints with it.
• 10:18
  You can go back and see my complaints
• 10:20
  with the legal system, especially in Missouri and
• 10:24
  the way it's has been bureaucracy.
• 10:29
  It's been bureaucratized.
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  Is that a word?
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  I'm not sure, but if it isn't, I
• 10:35
  just made it up.
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  The practice of law has been bureaucratized by
• 10:39
  people who have no, they have no business
• 10:43
  regulating what they are regulating.
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  It's nonsense.
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  And there's no oversight of any of them.
• 10:48
  We've talked about that before.
• 10:50
  And I think there's a, and I know
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  already there's a national effort to discuss these
• 10:55
  things and bring them out.
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  And I'm a mini expert.
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  I don't want to say I'm God's gift
• 11:01
  to the planet.
• 11:01
  I'm understanding this, but I, but I understand
• 11:04
  it.
• 11:04
  Okay.
• 11:05
  And I understand where we are going and
• 11:07
  what the problems are and how to create
• 11:09
  an ecosystem that works for everyone and protects
• 11:13
  the things that need protecting the relationship between
• 11:17
  an attorney and his client.
• 11:19
  And so that is important.
• 11:21
  And in the, in the structure that we're
• 11:24
  building, we're going to get into that.
• 11:25
  It's not my intent to discuss that all
• 11:28
  today, maybe tomorrow, but I don't think so
• 11:32
  today.
• 11:33
  I wanted to, I told you about the
• 11:35
  map and what was in there.
• 11:36
  And I just wanted to give you kind
• 11:38
  of a taste of what I think Friday
• 11:39
  is going to be for civic outlaws.
• 11:42
  Go out to civic outlaws.com.
• 11:44
  Check out some of the efforts that our
• 11:46
  charity 501C3 has going on to attack government
• 11:50
  overreach at many, many levels.
• 11:53
  You know, flock cameras are on there.
• 11:55
  We have the ATC regulating.
• 11:59
  There's some horror stories out there that people
• 12:02
  just don't understand and, and, or don't realize
• 12:05
  are happening.
• 12:06
  And the only way to deal with them
• 12:09
  is to vocalize them, to give them an
• 12:11
  outlet.
• 12:12
  We are that outlet and we will look
• 12:15
  into it.
• 12:16
  We've discovered things and there are ways to
• 12:18
  get information from them.
• 12:20
  You can see our current efforts at civic
• 12:22
  outlaws.com.
• 12:23
  I do hope you go out there and
• 12:25
  check that out in modern law ecosystem.com.
• 12:28
  It's been building and growing since the first
• 12:30
  part of the year that we have been
• 12:34
  researching it for many months and you know,
• 12:38
  put in, putting effort and time into this
• 12:40
  and the structures and the foundations are basically
• 12:42
  done.
• 12:43
  And this is going to be a huge
• 12:44
  project and we want, we're looking for partners.
• 12:49
  You know, if you're associated with the practice
• 12:51
  of law, chiropractors, court reporters, I don't know,
• 12:55
  investigators, accident experts, you know, I don't know.
• 13:00
  And what are some process servers, you know,
• 13:04
  stuff like that.
• 13:05
  We want, we want you in the ecosystem
• 13:08
  from all around the country because we have
• 13:11
  to find them anyway.
• 13:12
  You know, if a case comes in for
• 13:15
  a lawyer that's in our ecosystem, they come
• 13:17
  to us to help find the answer to,
• 13:20
  geez, how do I get service done?
• 13:22
  You know, do you have a process server
• 13:24
  in your ecosystem that can serve somebody in
• 13:28
  Utah quickly, can serve somebody today, because they're
• 13:32
  there today.
• 13:34
  Can we get that done?
• 13:35
  And the answer is yes, we can.
• 13:38
  And we know how to do that.
• 13:40
  We are your back office and we can
• 13:44
  get things done, whether it's research, case specific
• 13:47
  stuff.
• 13:47
  Anyway, I'm advertising and that's not the point.
• 13:50
  I wanted to continue yesterday's discussion because what
• 13:54
  I did last night and never sleeping, I've
• 13:57
  been up since three and I didn't go
• 13:59
  to bed till midnight.
• 14:01
  And so I'm kind of on a roll
• 14:02
  and I'm a little bit coffeed up this
• 14:03
  morning, might have to play a song and
• 14:05
  take a break for a minute.
• 14:07
  And I think I will in the middle
• 14:08
  of the program.
• 14:09
  But I want to get I want to
• 14:11
  get past the first basics.
• 14:13
  And I want to talk about the there's
• 14:17
  one of the biggest horror story going on
• 14:19
  in the world, unfortunately, is still Ukraine.
• 14:23
  And I am a very I follow the
• 14:27
  peace processes.
• 14:28
  I report to you the news.
• 14:30
  And yesterday I gave you the map of
• 14:32
  all the events that went on today.
• 14:35
  I want to give you then.
• 14:36
  And that's world view.
• 14:38
  That's usually the West view.
• 14:39
  That's usually things that the West is doing.
• 14:43
  Europe is is cocking it all up by
• 14:46
  funding Ukraine and have been forever.
• 14:51
  I shared with you some of the history
• 14:53
  of Ukrainian alleged independence and what they did
• 14:57
  working with the Nazi groups, killing off Jews
• 15:00
  and killing off Poles, ethnic Poles.
• 15:04
  And now they're doing that.
• 15:05
  You know, they're they're they're sending ethnic Hungarians
• 15:08
  to fight the battle for Ukraine from the
• 15:11
  western half of Ukraine, because there's a lot
• 15:13
  of them in that in that trans the
• 15:17
  trans area where everybody's gone back and forth
• 15:20
  for centuries through Moldova, all the way to
• 15:23
  Hungary, Austria, Hungary, pushed back.
• 15:26
  And, you know, it's gone on for centuries.
• 15:27
  And so we went through some of that
• 15:29
  yesterday.
• 15:30
  And today, what I wanted to do was
• 15:32
  go through what important information also over the
• 15:37
  weekend that was put out by three people.
• 15:42
  Maria Zakharova, who is the the spokesman for
• 15:46
  the Russian foreign ministry.
• 15:48
  She works for the next guy I want
• 15:50
  to talk about.
• 15:51
  But but she is the I would say
• 15:55
  the harsh.
• 15:56
  Here's what we're doing.
• 15:57
  Here's why it matters.
• 16:00
  And, you know, that she talks about and
• 16:02
  Lavrov, Sergei Viktorovich Lavrov is the the second
• 16:10
  person I want to talk about.
• 16:12
  He gave an interview.
• 16:13
  There's an English translation of it out on
• 16:15
  the Internet, but I don't like them.
• 16:17
  And it's hard to do when the when
• 16:20
  the party being interviewed doesn't speak the same
• 16:24
  language as the party giving the interview.
• 16:26
  And this was done by a guy on
• 16:29
  a Western U.S. channel interviewed Sergei Lavrov.
• 16:35
  And it was I watched the whole thing.
• 16:38
  It's a little more than an hour.
• 16:39
  And there were several questions that come up.
• 16:41
  So I want to start with Zakharova here.
• 16:43
  You know, today is not that.
• 16:45
  This is why this keeps happening, you know,
• 16:49
  because I want to talk about why it
• 16:51
  keeps happens, because if all we ever do
• 16:53
  is replay daily headlines, all we really do
• 16:56
  is help maintain a fog of war, a
• 16:58
  fog of everything.
• 17:00
  And the fog is useful, sometimes very useful
• 17:02
  to the people who cannot afford for the
• 17:05
  war to end.
• 17:07
  People like Lindsey Graham.
• 17:09
  This is useful for them.
• 17:10
  People like the people that want to continue
• 17:13
  to fund it.
• 17:14
  People who voted to put another 400 million
• 17:16
  dollars to Ukraine in the budget for 2026
• 17:20
  and 2027.
• 17:22
  These are the people that are funding the
• 17:25
  war because Ukraine can't fund it themselves.
• 17:28
  They can only do it with OPM, other
• 17:31
  people's money.
• 17:32
  And so this war is not being fought
• 17:35
  to win.
• 17:36
  This war isn't being fought to win.
• 17:38
  It hasn't been.
• 17:39
  It's four years old.
• 17:40
  It's being fought to delay the consequences of
• 17:43
  peace.
• 17:44
  Everybody that that sentence should explain far more
• 17:47
  than most commentary you hear all week long.
• 17:51
  And, you know, you need to understand that
• 17:53
  this is what we're watching now.
• 17:55
  That is why every time negotiations start to
• 17:58
  gain oxygen, something gets blown up, something explodes.
• 18:03
  This is why every time diplomats talk and
• 18:06
  attempt to resolve this, somebody gets shot.
• 18:08
  There's an assassination attempt.
• 18:10
  This is why forced mobilization is so brutal
• 18:14
  in Ukraine.
• 18:15
  They need this war to continue.
• 18:17
  And it's not the people who are fighting
• 18:19
  the war.
• 18:20
  It's the people who need it to continue
• 18:22
  to create international agendas and continue the fog
• 18:27
  BS that they can hide money around in
• 18:31
  while the rest of us, you know, send
• 18:33
  our our sons and daughters to to fight.
• 18:35
  You know, it's nonsense.
• 18:36
  This is why European leaders sound exhausted, but
• 18:40
  they can't quit posturing about, geez, we need
• 18:44
  more war.
• 18:45
  Geez, we got to keep going.
• 18:46
  This is why escalation is almost a ritual,
• 18:50
  why we keep why we keep going.
• 18:52
  Tomorrow, we might talk about some of the
• 18:54
  math that goes along with this money, debt,
• 18:57
  exhaustion, Ray Dalio and his long cycle warnings.
• 19:00
  Elon Musk's cold arithmetic and why permanent emergency
• 19:06
  politics runs head first into economic reality.
• 19:10
  It happens all the time.
• 19:12
  But today is the a lane to Ukraine,
• 19:15
  Russia, Europe and the people who cannot survive
• 19:18
  peace, namely Zelensky.
• 19:21
  And to do this without turning it into
• 19:23
  my own propaganda or cable news theater, I'm
• 19:28
  going to use the three voices that I
• 19:30
  talked about, each one with a different position.
• 19:32
  In the conflict, first, Maria Zakharova, who's the
• 19:36
  spokesperson for the Russian foreign ministry.
• 19:39
  She isn't trying to persuade anybody.
• 19:41
  She's doing something else entirely.
• 19:43
  She's telling the reality from the Russian point
• 19:46
  of view.
• 19:47
  And then second, Sergey Lavrov, who's been Russia's
• 19:50
  foreign minister for more than almost 26 years.
• 19:54
  And he doesn't talk in slogans.
• 19:56
  He talks in his own personal memory and
• 20:00
  in precedent of what's gone on this whole
• 20:03
  time.
• 20:03
  He knows exactly what has gone on.
• 20:06
  And he's a he's a diplomat and he's
• 20:09
  a good one.
• 20:09
  And the interview that he gave that was
• 20:11
  an hour or something long is is highly
• 20:14
  useful if you want to go out and
• 20:15
  watch the whole thing.
• 20:16
  I don't like watching the translations that go
• 20:18
  on because I get stuck going, well, that's
• 20:20
  a bullshit transaction or translation.
• 20:23
  That's not what he said.
• 20:25
  You hear what they're saying.
• 20:27
  You go, well, that's not quite right.
• 20:28
  And I could be a little bit.
• 20:30
  Well, I'm definitely a little bit cynical, but
• 20:32
  so is Lavrov.
• 20:33
  And he talks from the point of view
• 20:35
  of of memory.
• 20:37
  And and that memory is important to understand
• 20:42
  where we are.
• 20:44
  And I just lost my my outline and
• 20:48
  I have to use the the music break
• 20:54
  that I'm going to use here.
• 20:55
  But I think I'm going to wait for
• 20:57
  another 10 minutes or so, if at all
• 20:59
  possible, is get to where I want to
• 21:02
  be.
• 21:03
  But tomorrow we'll probably go into Ray Dalio,
• 21:06
  Elon Musk and some of those things.
• 21:10
  Right.
• 21:11
  And talk about those.
• 21:13
  Then we'll finish up today with another voice
• 21:16
  that I talk about fairly frequently.
• 21:19
  If you want to listen to and I
• 21:21
  do it in Russian because Alexei Aristovitch doesn't
• 21:25
  speak well, he might speak English, but his
• 21:28
  shows aren't in English.
• 21:29
  And so I listen to him in Russian
• 21:31
  because he always has an interesting point of
• 21:35
  view.
• 21:35
  And he's from the Ukrainian nationalist point of
• 21:39
  view.
• 21:40
  But he's cynical about what is going on
• 21:42
  in Ukraine.
• 21:43
  And he was a spokesperson and there was
• 21:46
  talk of him becoming the president of Ukraine
• 21:48
  at some point.
• 21:49
  He'd never I don't think he would ever
• 21:52
  be a what do you call it, a
• 21:55
  victor in there.
• 21:56
  And then I want to take those three
• 21:58
  voices and I'm going to weave through it
• 21:59
  the fourth voice, which is mine, because we
• 22:02
  need to talk plainly about assassination attempts, spoiler
• 22:06
  alerts, first forced mobilization in the political truth,
• 22:10
  the simple political truth that elections terrify the
• 22:15
  leaders who survive on emergency powers.
• 22:19
  That's all that's happening in Ukraine is we
• 22:22
  have a leader surviving on emergency powers.
• 22:25
  We have a Verkhovna Rada surviving on emergency
• 22:28
  powers.
• 22:28
  That's it.
• 22:29
  And if we could get rid of those
• 22:31
  two things, you have an election.
• 22:32
  This war is over.
• 22:34
  You have an election.
• 22:35
  You're going to have people who are tired,
• 22:37
  exhausted.
• 22:38
  They are they can't live their lives because
• 22:41
  they have no power in their homes.
• 22:43
  A lot of times no water.
• 22:44
  It's freaking cold in Ukraine these days.
• 22:47
  And Russia is suffering some, too.
• 22:49
  I don't mean to but Ukraine is suffering
• 22:51
  far more.
• 22:52
  And I'm an advocate for common decency.
• 22:56
  Let's call it that on both sides, but
• 22:58
  especially in the West.
• 23:00
  If we quit funding that war, it would
• 23:03
  be over.
• 23:05
  Period.
• 23:05
  The end.
• 23:06
  End of sentence.
• 23:08
  They're waiting for the next 400 million.
• 23:11
  There was a thing yesterday where everybody gets
• 23:13
  online.
• 23:15
  It was almost like he was crying.
• 23:18
  The old Z monster was almost crying about
• 23:20
  the loss of some of the Harkov region.
• 23:23
  And he had a couple of soldiers in
• 23:25
  there.
• 23:25
  Oh, geez, we're getting beat up by the
• 23:27
  Russian.
• 23:27
  Well, of course you are.
• 23:29
  Quit fighting.
• 23:30
  Get, you know, capitulate.
• 23:32
  Those areas are gone, just like Crimea in
• 23:35
  2014.
• 23:36
  They are gone and they should not be
• 23:39
  fought over anymore.
• 23:41
  And I'm not saying Russia is absolutely right,
• 23:44
  but they've had good points all the way
• 23:45
  along.
• 23:46
  So, you know, I want to before we
• 23:49
  get to the heart of I want to
• 23:50
  do something important.
• 23:52
  I want to take Europe, especially Britain, out
• 23:55
  of the realm of personality gossip and put
• 23:58
  it where it belongs in structure, because Europe
• 24:01
  is not escalating this war because it is
• 24:04
  confident they are escalating this war because they
• 24:09
  are politically trapped into a narrative that they
• 24:12
  created.
• 24:14
  And strategically, that's exactly what's going on.
• 24:18
  So let's talk about Starmer in the politics
• 24:20
  of fatigue.
• 24:21
  We talked about optics.
• 24:23
  I told a little bit about Starmer and
• 24:24
  Macron coaching Zelensky, escorting him, the nanny state,
• 24:30
  the humiliation of Ukraine that when and of
• 24:34
  Zelensky personally, when the foreign leader of Ukraine,
• 24:38
  supposedly a sovereign head of state, when he
• 24:42
  couldn't walk into a room with Donald Trump
• 24:45
  without handlers and over the last six months,
• 24:48
  you want a story, take the story that
• 24:51
  he has to be coached.
• 24:52
  He's changed his his appearance, the way he
• 24:55
  dresses.
• 24:56
  He's changed the way he talks a little
• 24:58
  bit.
• 24:59
  He still has his rhetoric on his on
• 25:01
  his B.S. Instagram channels and his B
• 25:04
  .S. Telegram channels where he gets to beat
• 25:07
  up on whatever he wants to beat up
• 25:09
  on.
• 25:10
  But it's totally different when he's in a
• 25:11
  room.
• 25:12
  He's been coached into what he has to
• 25:14
  say to suck up to Donald Trump.
• 25:16
  So let's go deeper than the optics.
• 25:18
  The European leadership itself is boxed in by
• 25:21
  its own rhetoric.
• 25:22
  For years, European leaders have spoken about Ukraine
• 25:25
  in absolutist moral language, and they can't get
• 25:30
  out of it.
• 25:31
  It's this is democracy versus dictatorship.
• 25:34
  This is freedom versus tyranny.
• 25:36
  This is existential.
• 25:39
  It's an existential threat.
• 25:40
  B.S., of course, all these are crap.
• 25:43
  This is based on the on the rules
• 25:45
  based order we're talking about.
• 25:47
  Also, crap.
• 25:48
  This is a line that cannot be crossed.
• 25:51
  When you talk in absolutes, compromise is treason.
• 25:56
  The absolutes territorial integrity.
• 25:58
  Once you frame a conflict as civilizational, existential,
• 26:04
  canceling an entire culture, not even allowing them
• 26:07
  to participate in sporting activities or public events
• 26:11
  or cultural exchanges, you've lost already.
• 26:16
  It's existential.
• 26:18
  And that is the trap that Europe and
• 26:20
  to some extent America, although Trump's trying to
• 26:23
  pull us out on the positive side of
• 26:25
  that, but he's still stuck in the same
• 26:27
  crap, and they're just trying to hold on.
• 26:30
  The neocons are trying to hold on.
• 26:33
  And by the way, they're gaining a footing
• 26:35
  in America, and it's almost business as usual
• 26:39
  again under Trump.
• 26:40
  If I have a bitch, that's the bitch.
• 26:43
  That he hasn't changed that kind of thing.
• 26:45
  He hasn't changed what the MAGA people and
• 26:48
  those Make America Great Again supporters wanted him
• 26:52
  to.
• 26:52
  We're still stuck in the same international conflict
• 26:55
  bullshit.
• 26:56
  We're still creating the same old war footing
• 26:59
  in different countries that we had no business
• 27:01
  invading.
• 27:03
  None.
• 27:05
  We have no business taking over Greenland.
• 27:08
  I had read an article about what he's
• 27:10
  looking to get in Greenland, an opinion piece.
• 27:12
  Very good.
• 27:13
  And there's not enough time in the day
• 27:16
  or time in this show to share it
• 27:18
  all.
• 27:18
  You cannot pivot to negotiating a war, getting
• 27:21
  rid of it, without admitting that your earlier
• 27:24
  absolutist rhetoric was inflated, was misleading or an
• 27:30
  outright lie, and it's completely false.
• 27:33
  You cannot accept a settlement without your own
• 27:36
  public asking, me asking, what in the world
• 27:41
  is all of this death and destruction?
• 27:44
  What did anybody gain?
• 27:46
  Because we have a neocon.
• 27:49
  Well, we have a unit party.
• 27:50
  The neocons and the Democrats are all in
• 27:53
  line with the globalist theory.
• 27:56
  And that's America.
• 27:57
  That is what we have lived for the
• 28:00
  past 30 to 50 years, especially post-collapse
• 28:04
  of the Soviet Union.
• 28:06
  What is the sacrifice for?
• 28:08
  It's for a lie.
• 28:10
  And it's been for a series of lies
• 28:12
  the entire time.
• 28:14
  And those lies are not changing.
• 28:16
  So Europe keeps on going.
• 28:18
  They keep on escalating, not because it has
• 28:21
  a plan, any sort of plan to win,
• 28:24
  any sort of plan to improve the Latin
• 28:27
  life for its own citizenry.
• 28:30
  The right, I told you about elections that
• 28:33
  are leaning right, that are leaning, look, Ukraine
• 28:36
  has to be cut off.
• 28:37
  Let them do this on their own.
• 28:39
  Why in the hell are we funding this
• 28:41
  crap?
• 28:41
  It doesn't do anything for our country.
• 28:43
  What's it doing for Europe?
• 28:45
  Destroying it.
• 28:47
  They're paying six times as much, according to
• 28:49
  Jeffrey Sachs, six times as much for energy
• 28:53
  than they would pay getting cheap Russian energy.
• 28:56
  And why are we working in a world
• 28:59
  of war when we should be with the
• 29:02
  businessman Trump working in a world of economic
• 29:05
  success, allegedly unlike any success ever.
• 29:12
  But he's right back in the same old
• 29:14
  globalist game with the same old globalist assholes
• 29:18
  that have been doing it for a generation,
• 29:21
  two generations, probably, if you count it all
• 29:24
  up, and training the new generation of politicians
• 29:29
  and bureaucrats that this is how it's supposed
• 29:32
  to be.
• 29:32
  This is how we keep the money train
• 29:34
  running globally.
• 29:36
  And America's funding it all.
• 29:38
  And it's nonsense and it shouldn't be.
• 29:41
  So that's why Europe keeps going, not because
• 29:44
  it wants to win, but because it has
• 29:46
  no plan that it can realistically explain why
• 29:52
  this needs to end.
• 29:53
  Because then people will go, geez, these guys
• 29:56
  are a bunch of liars.
• 29:57
  Well, they are a bunch of liars.
• 29:58
  They've been a bunch of liars.
• 30:00
  Take that as a given and end the
• 30:03
  war so all of these people quit dying.
• 30:06
  That's what I'm asking for.
• 30:07
  If you layer in the domestic politics on
• 30:10
  top of all of that, here in America,
• 30:13
  especially, immigration backlash, corruption scandals everywhere, economic
• 30:18
  stagnation, energy costs, voters going away from the
• 30:22
  establishment parties, rising support for right wing so
• 30:27
  -called movements.
• 30:29
  In many cases, that's just shorthand for people
• 30:31
  who refuse to shut up like me.
• 30:34
  I'm a right winger, I suppose, but I'm
• 30:36
  not.
• 30:37
  I'm far more centrist.
• 30:38
  I'm a right winger when it comes to
• 30:40
  end these freaking wars, but the right wingers
• 30:44
  are just as bad as the left wingers
• 30:46
  and the unit parties keeping this crap going
• 30:49
  on for generations.
• 30:51
  This is not new.
• 30:53
  Russia becomes the external villain all the time.
• 30:58
  They're an external villain that is conveniently distracting
• 31:01
  from any internal crap going on in Europe
• 31:05
  and everywhere else.
• 31:06
  So this isn't new.
• 31:08
  Empires and declining coalitions have always done this.
• 31:12
  Britain is a particularly sharp example right now.
• 31:16
  Starmer's problems.
• 31:18
  He governs a country with a declining industrial
• 31:21
  capacity, political fragmentation, public exhaustion.
• 31:25
  They're exhausted by their own immigration problems.
• 31:28
  They're trying to posture as a moral leader
• 31:31
  in a war that he cannot define how
• 31:36
  it ends.
• 31:37
  Russia's bad.
• 31:39
  Russia's bad.
• 31:39
  Russia's bad.
• 31:40
  That's all we've heard.
• 31:41
  What happens after the war ends?
• 31:43
  And they don't even consider any Russian point
• 31:46
  of view.
• 31:46
  You're not allowed because the moral thing, their
• 31:49
  alleged morality has built all of this.
• 31:53
  And the bureaucrat is in control.
• 31:56
  The bureaucrat state, the military industrial complexes, and
• 32:00
  all of the global funding that keep these
• 32:04
  conflicts going are just as strong as they
• 32:07
  always were.
• 32:08
  So Russia is the external villain.
• 32:11
  And, you know, Britain is a particularly sharp
• 32:14
  example right now.
• 32:16
  Starmer has no confidence.
• 32:18
  They've had what?
• 32:18
  How many prime ministers?
• 32:20
  They've had like six or seven in the
• 32:22
  last 10 years.
• 32:24
  So it's not leadership.
• 32:26
  It's a maintenance of a failing narrative.
• 32:29
  Democracy and narrative maintenance is extremely expensive because
• 32:34
  that's all you got.
• 32:36
  And that comes back to the core thesis
• 32:38
  of what I want to tell you.
• 32:39
  The war that is going on in Ukraine
• 32:42
  is nothing but a way to delay what
• 32:46
  happens when peace finally arrives.
• 32:48
  Delay buys time.
• 32:50
  Delay avoids accountability for those who have forced
• 32:54
  this issue upon the world for years.
• 32:57
  Delay postpones elections for Zelensky two years.
• 33:03
  Audits, it would audit and show huge corruption
• 33:07
  investigation in a ton of uncomfortable question, which
• 33:11
  brings us to Maria Zakharova.
• 33:13
  And what she talked about, she's not trying
• 33:15
  to sell you anything.
• 33:17
  She's not trying to charm you.
• 33:18
  She's not trying to sell you optimism.
• 33:21
  She's not even trying hard to persuade you.
• 33:24
  She is documenting her own case file, her
• 33:27
  point of view, the Russian side of the
• 33:30
  story.
• 33:31
  She speaks like an institutional archivist, a librarian.
• 33:36
  Her job is not to win the argument.
• 33:38
  Her job is to make sure that when
• 33:39
  the war is over, however it's over, Russia's
• 33:42
  version of legitimacy has already been written and
• 33:46
  their version of the truth is already out
• 33:50
  there.
• 33:50
  That is what she is doing.
• 33:52
  And you need to understand another person's history
• 33:55
  and reality or you're never going to solve
• 33:58
  a conflict.
• 33:59
  And the conflict, nobody, nobody chooses to understand
• 34:02
  Russia's point of view because they don't want
• 34:05
  to end the conflict.
• 34:07
  So, and to understand her in specific, you
• 34:10
  have to understand the function that she serves
• 34:13
  in the Russian system.
• 34:15
  She's not a strategist.
• 34:17
  She's not a negotiator.
• 34:18
  She is a record keeper.
• 34:20
  Her message is consistent, repetitive, deliberate, and rests
• 34:25
  on four pillars.
• 34:26
  Number one, institutions are captured.
• 34:29
  In her framing, international institutions are not neutral
• 34:33
  referees.
• 34:35
  They're the jerseys that are worn by one
• 34:37
  side.
• 34:37
  Everybody gets to wear a NATO jersey.
• 34:39
  The OSCE, the EU, the alleged rules-based
• 34:43
  order.
• 34:43
  In her history, in her library, these are
• 34:47
  not independent mechanisms.
• 34:49
  They're tools selectively enforced to discipline enemies of
• 34:54
  the rules-based order, so-called, and to
• 34:57
  excuse actions by those who are the creators
• 35:01
  of the alleged rules-based order.
• 35:04
  Whether you agree or not isn't important.
• 35:08
  It's almost secondary.
• 35:09
  What matters is that Russia does not believe
• 35:11
  that procedural promises made inside these institutions are
• 35:16
  reliable.
• 35:16
  It's the same thing I complain about every
• 35:19
  day.
• 35:20
  The bureaucratic state cannot be trusted to act
• 35:24
  on behalf of the public.
• 35:26
  And this is what Russia is documenting.
• 35:28
  It's almost like Zakharova is me talking about,
• 35:34
  I don't know, the Missouri Bar or the
• 35:37
  alcohol tobacco control goons, you know, that are
• 35:40
  doing things that we're going to talk about
• 35:42
  on Friday.
• 35:42
  So it's like, if the referee works for
• 35:46
  one side or the other, you can't agree
• 35:49
  to play by his or her whistle.
• 35:51
  And the referee is always on the side,
• 35:54
  is always on the other side, if you're
• 35:56
  Russia.
• 35:57
  So that belief, right or wrong, governs what
• 36:01
  Russia, the decisions that Russia makes.
• 36:04
  Pillar two.
• 36:06
  Rules are enforced selectively.
• 36:08
  And she's the record keeper of that.
• 36:10
  She repeatedly points that sanctions are declared as
• 36:13
  law.
• 36:14
  We're seasoned tankers because I imposed a sanction.
• 36:17
  That's not international law, but we're doing it
• 36:20
  anyway.
• 36:22
  Asset seizures are framed as justice.
• 36:25
  Media bans are called democracy.
• 36:28
  Canceling a person like, what was her name,
• 36:31
  Diana Penchenko, getting rid of her two million
• 36:34
  followers and closing her YouTube channel.
• 36:37
  That's openness.
• 36:39
  That's democracy.
• 36:40
  And postpones elections are justified as, oh, it's
• 36:44
  an emergency.
• 36:45
  Her argument is simple.
• 36:46
  When the rules are applied selectively, they're not
• 36:49
  legitimate.
• 36:50
  Selective enforcement does not strengthen world order.
• 36:53
  It teaches everyone watching that the rules themselves
• 36:57
  are a lie, a bureaucratic lie.
• 37:01
  And unstable rules produce unstable alliances and unstable
• 37:07
  peace agreements.
• 37:08
  This isn't a pro-Russia argument.
• 37:10
  It's a system argument.
• 37:13
  So pillar three.
• 37:14
  Negotiations themselves are often used as a weapon.
• 37:18
  This is where she says becomes central to
• 37:21
  the war to delay peace thesis that I'm
• 37:24
  talking about today.
• 37:25
  This war is only an effort to delay
• 37:28
  what happens when peace is finally achieved, because
• 37:31
  everybody knows it.
• 37:33
  Somebody has to capitulate.
• 37:35
  And so nobody wants to have peace.
• 37:38
  You know, in her case, negotiations are not
• 37:41
  designed to end the war.
• 37:43
  They're designed to manage the war, to reposition,
• 37:47
  to restructure, to rearm, to reset under the
• 37:50
  cover of alleged diplomatic language.
• 37:53
  That's why she's so interesting to listen to,
• 37:55
  I got to tell you.
• 37:56
  And she tells their point of view.
• 37:58
  And if anybody spoke as bluntly and as
• 38:00
  openly, I tell you what, on the American
• 38:03
  side, I mean, she gives every week, she
• 38:05
  gives a three hour almost, two and a
• 38:08
  half to three hour, and I like to
• 38:10
  watch it, thesis that she goes through and
• 38:14
  talks about the history.
• 38:15
  What happened this week?
• 38:16
  Here are the records.
• 38:18
  This is what's happening.
• 38:19
  And it's important from an international point of
• 38:22
  view.
• 38:22
  I wonder why we don't have something like
• 38:23
  that.
• 38:23
  I assume we do have some kind of
• 38:25
  a State Department brief that you can read,
• 38:28
  but nobody gets up and actually tells you.
• 38:31
  And you can hear from the point of
• 38:33
  view of the right person.
• 38:34
  You get snippets.
• 38:35
  America's the world of snippets.
• 38:37
  And I like it much more in depth.
• 38:39
  So from her perspective, a ceasefire without structural
• 38:43
  change in the system itself will not bring
• 38:47
  you peace.
• 38:48
  It's an intermission.
• 38:49
  This is why she emphasizes root causes and
• 38:53
  nostalgia.
• 38:55
  It's not nostalgia.
• 38:56
  It's a veto power that everyone else has.
• 38:59
  What she really says all the time, we're
• 39:01
  not going to sign up for another pause
• 39:03
  that allows the war to resume under better
• 39:07
  conditions for Ukraine.
• 39:08
  That's a common theme.
• 39:10
  Pillar four, sabotage during negotiations is a structural
• 39:14
  part of the negotiation.
• 39:17
  It's not an accident.
• 39:19
  This is where the narrative connects directly to
• 39:21
  assassination attempts, repeat their own strikes right during
• 39:26
  the alleged negotiations, and then spoilers.
• 39:30
  Every time, I told you this yesterday, every
• 39:33
  time there's a negotiation, there's a spoiler of
• 39:36
  some sort.
• 39:37
  Zelensky says, well, I'm doing that from afar,
• 39:40
  and he's not even there.
• 39:41
  Any progress they make in the United Arab
• 39:44
  Emirates, he gets to torpedo from his Instagram
• 39:48
  channel in two minutes, and he does it
• 39:51
  every time.
• 39:52
  And so do the rest of the people
• 39:53
  who do not want peace.
• 39:58
  Zakharova talks about it.
• 39:59
  She doesn't treat these incidents as rogue actions
• 40:01
  or unfortunate coincidences.
• 40:03
  She talks about them as part of the
• 40:05
  conflict architecture.
• 40:06
  And so when negotiations gain momentum, there's always
• 40:10
  a spoiler, somebody to throw a monkey into
• 40:13
  the works.
• 40:14
  So a wrench in the works, a monkey
• 40:15
  wrench, maybe we could do that.
• 40:17
  But this is not conspiracy.
• 40:19
  I'm not talking conspiracy.
• 40:21
  It's negotiation theory 2026 101, a class.
• 40:27
  This is your negotiation theory 101 in 2026.
• 40:31
  This isn't diplomacy of any kind.
• 40:33
  This is bullshit.
• 40:35
  And spoilers do not need to win.
• 40:37
  They only need to make peace feel dangerous.
• 40:41
  Oh, gee, what happens if?
• 40:43
  We're not going to get our land back.
• 40:45
  We can't agree with that.
• 40:46
  We got to keep sending more guys to
• 40:48
  die.
• 40:49
  You already lost people.
• 40:52
  Just stop this BS.
• 40:55
  At some point, the war is going to
• 40:56
  end.
• 40:57
  They always do.
• 40:58
  As a kind of a she isn't celebrating
• 40:59
  the war.
• 41:00
  Her tone isn't triumphant in any way.
• 41:03
  She's more like a prosecutor.
• 41:05
  And she's very tired, you know, of the
• 41:08
  war.
• 41:08
  I mean, she's she's well-spoken and she
• 41:11
  you know, it's it's it's it's fun to
• 41:13
  listen to her.
• 41:14
  But governments that think they are winning sound
• 41:17
  triumphant.
• 41:18
  Governments that think they are enduring a 10
• 41:23
  year slog sound like accountants.
• 41:26
  And so she sounds like an accountant who's
• 41:29
  blaming the operations manager in a corporation.
• 41:35
  She's gone.
• 41:36
  Look, I'm telling you why this is happening
• 41:38
  and you're not changing what you're doing.
• 41:41
  No wonder we're losing.
• 41:42
  And boy, now it's good now that you've
• 41:44
  cocked it up so badly.
• 41:45
  We need another six years to extract ourselves
• 41:48
  from this.
• 41:49
  This war, when people were talking under the
• 41:51
  Biden administration, they were talking, this is going
• 41:53
  to be a 10 year war.
• 41:54
  They've already funded it.
• 41:55
  They just got out of their 20 year
• 41:57
  war in Afghanistan and they had to fund
• 42:00
  another one.
• 42:00
  And we have willing idiots and willing participants
• 42:03
  in the alleged democracy of Ukraine.
• 42:06
  So this brings the bridge to between Sakharova
• 42:10
  and the next portion, Sergey Lavrov.
• 42:13
  Sakharova tells you what the Russian state is
• 42:16
  writing down and is remembering.
• 42:18
  She's the librarian.
• 42:20
  Sergey Lavrov is telling you how the Russian
• 42:23
  state thinks.
• 42:25
  And he epitomizes that as a world class
• 42:30
  diplomat, the most experienced, you know, more than
• 42:36
  arguably in the world.
• 42:38
  He has held that position for 26 years,
• 42:42
  nearly, I think it's 25 and a half.
• 42:44
  But he is the longest serving foreign minister,
• 42:49
  certainly in a large country.
• 42:52
  And trust me, he remembers what happens and
• 42:55
  he's telling you how they think.
• 42:58
  And finally, Aristovich Alexei is from the other
• 43:01
  side.
• 43:02
  He tells you what happens when the slogans
• 43:05
  of war stop working and the exhaustion is
• 43:08
  taking over.
• 43:10
  So those are the two things that I
• 43:11
  want to finish for today when we get
• 43:13
  to the next point.
• 43:14
  So let's go to Lavrov.
• 43:15
  And that's kind of part two, because, you
• 43:18
  know, I hope, I think I can, if
• 43:21
  I go quickly, I think I can finish
• 43:23
  my thesis of this without having to continue
• 43:26
  it tomorrow, because I want to finish up,
• 43:29
  you know, when peace becomes politically lethal, war
• 43:32
  is governance.
• 43:34
  And when war is governance, sabotage, coercion, delay,
• 43:40
  these are not aberrations.
• 43:42
  They are policy.
• 43:45
  And Europe, the West, Ukraine, certainly, all of
• 43:50
  it is the policy of war and continued
• 43:54
  conflict to do what has been done for
• 43:57
  at least 30 to 50 years.
• 44:01
  And, you know, it's a shame, because everybody
• 44:06
  recognize, well, most people that have any brains
• 44:09
  at all recognize what has happened.
• 44:12
  And so it's, I don't know, I want
• 44:14
  to move into the second voice, you know,
• 44:17
  that we were talking about.
• 44:17
  And this one really matters.
• 44:19
  If Maria Zakharova is the accountant ledger, Sergey
• 44:23
  Lavrov is the logic engine of it all.
• 44:26
  He's not a flashy man.
• 44:28
  He doesn't perform outrage.
• 44:30
  He's not one of those guys that's going
• 44:32
  to pound his fist on the table.
• 44:33
  And he does not improvise or move recklessly.
• 44:38
  He speaks like somebody who has survived every
• 44:41
  single phase of the post-Cold World Order
• 44:46
  and remembers, remembers very well exactly who promised
• 44:52
  what and who did not deliver.
• 44:55
  He remembers it.
• 44:56
  By the way, so do I.
• 44:58
  Because if anybody is somebody that you should
• 45:00
  listen to on a political point of view,
• 45:03
  the why, the history matters in these contexts
• 45:08
  and how they've been screwed up.
• 45:12
  And I don't mean screwed.
• 45:13
  I don't mean done to screw Russia, although
• 45:15
  that's certainly what the West has been trying
• 45:17
  to do, certainly from the U.S. State
• 45:20
  Department point of view and all of the
• 45:22
  alleged experts that back that up.
• 45:26
  Russia has been a mistaken enemy ever since
• 45:30
  the collapse of the wall and everything has
• 45:34
  been done in opposition to creating an economic
• 45:42
  structure for the world to live in that
• 45:45
  doesn't include war.
• 45:47
  So, you know, like I said, he's been
• 45:50
  someone who survived it all and he's been
• 45:54
  the foreign minister for 26 years.
• 45:57
  You know, he gave an interview recently in
• 46:00
  English with a Western interviewer inside the Russian
• 46:04
  Ministry of Foreign Affairs.
• 46:06
  The English version circulated is rough.
• 46:11
  It flattens his meaning, misses nuance, turns careful
• 46:14
  answers into clumsy soundbites.
• 46:16
  You know, we're a soundbite structure in the
• 46:19
  West and I like to listen to the
• 46:21
  whole story.
• 46:22
  A soundbite always has an audience, you know,
• 46:30
  or the reality is different than a soundbite,
• 46:34
  you know, so you can't just play clips.
• 46:37
  You have to walk through the questions Lavrov
• 46:39
  was asked, what he actually said, and most
• 46:42
  importantly, how his answers fit together in a
• 46:44
  coherent endgame theory.
• 46:46
  Because whether you agree with him or not,
• 46:49
  you don't have to agree with him.
• 46:50
  You don't have to agree with me.
• 46:51
  I have my own theories on this.
• 46:53
  I'm providing actual accounts.
• 46:56
  Lavrov isn't a confused person and confusion is
• 46:59
  a luxury that you cannot afford to have
• 47:02
  in war.
• 47:03
  And in the West, everybody's confused, I say,
• 47:07
  or they're intentionally lying, you know, of what
• 47:10
  they are creating.
• 47:11
  So question one, what does Russia believe the
• 47:14
  West is actually trying to achieve in Ukraine?
• 47:18
  And his answer was blunt, and it's been
• 47:20
  very consistent over the years.
• 47:22
  He does not believe the West's objective is
• 47:26
  anything close to democracy in Ukraine.
• 47:29
  He does not believe the objective is anything
• 47:31
  remotely close to territorial integrity.
• 47:34
  And he doesn't even believe the objective is
• 47:37
  even Ukraine itself.
• 47:40
  He believes the objective, here's the objective, not
• 47:43
  Ukraine, not territorial integrity, not democracy, but the
• 47:47
  strategic containment of Russia, using Ukraine as the
• 47:53
  forward operating base for the West.
• 47:57
  And they've been very blunt about this and
• 47:59
  his framing.
• 48:00
  Ukraine isn't a subject of the policy.
• 48:02
  It's just a location.
• 48:04
  It's the terrain where they get to force
• 48:07
  Russia to comply with the global world order.
• 48:11
  So he argues that the West has openly
• 48:13
  declared its intention to inflict strategic defeat on
• 48:17
  Russia ever since the Cold War.
• 48:20
  And when that objective proved unobtainable, only then
• 48:25
  did the language soften, not because the goals
• 48:29
  have changed, but because reality overtook them, right?
• 48:33
  From his perspective, this matters enormously because it
• 48:36
  tells him something about Western sincerity, which doesn't
• 48:40
  exist.
• 48:40
  If your declared goal is Russia's defeat, your
• 48:44
  later offers of peace look less like reconciliation
• 48:47
  and more like eternal repositioning.
• 48:51
  This is why Lavrov, who's been doing this
• 48:54
  forever and is a world-class diplomat, is,
• 48:58
  he repeatedly says, rhetoric changed after the battlefield
• 49:02
  reality set in, not before, which leads to
• 49:07
  his second core point in the second question.
• 49:10
  Well, why does Russia reject a simple ceasefire?
• 49:14
  And I've reported this maybe not well, but
• 49:17
  I've talked about it for a while because
• 49:18
  this is where Lavrov is probably the most
• 49:21
  misunderstood or intentionally misled in any Western commentary.
• 49:29
  To Western ears, rejecting a ceasefire sounds barbaric,
• 49:34
  irrational, and cruel.
• 49:36
  But to Lavrov, rejecting a ceasefire, and to
• 49:39
  all Russians, frankly, rejecting ceasefire is memory-based
• 49:44
  behavior.
• 49:46
  His reasoning is like this, a ceasefire isn't
• 49:49
  neutral if it preserves the conditions that caused
• 49:53
  the war.
• 49:54
  In his view, ceasefires are used repeatedly, especially
• 49:58
  in the post-Soviet space, to buy time
• 50:01
  to contain Russia, not to legitimately resolve any
• 50:06
  conflict.
• 50:08
  He goes back to, rightly so, the Minsk
• 50:11
  Agreements as the defining precedent of this, specific
• 50:15
  to Ukraine.
• 50:16
  Minsk was not a peace process, it was
• 50:18
  a tactical pause admitted by those who lied
• 50:24
  to Russia in the process, that Ukrainian military
• 50:28
  is allowed to be trained, armed, and integrated
• 50:31
  into NATO systems, while Russia was told to
• 50:34
  trust diplomatic assurances.
• 50:37
  Later, admissions by Western leaders that Minsk was
• 50:40
  intended only to buy time hardened the Russian
• 50:45
  political view, and Sergei Lavrov.
• 50:47
  So when Lavrov hears the words, ceasefire now,
• 50:51
  let's talk about the details of peace later,
• 50:53
  he hears, freeze the battlefield so we can
• 50:56
  reset the war, so that better conditions are
• 51:00
  for us, because Ukraine's on the run.
• 51:02
  And if we can reset, and get that
• 51:05
  400 million for 2026, and the 400 million
• 51:08
  for 2027 from the US, and all the
• 51:11
  billions promised by Europe to keep the war
• 51:14
  funded, and get something going, we need a
• 51:17
  little bit of time to implement all that.
• 51:19
  We can't just magically teleport all the money,
• 51:24
  and infrastructure, and weaponry to Ukraine.
• 51:29
  It takes time to get all of that
• 51:30
  there, to take the money, launder it through
• 51:34
  the corrupt processes that you launder it through,
• 51:38
  with everybody taking their percentage, and then taking,
• 51:41
  you know, 20 percent of that, and making
• 51:42
  sure that the weapons get, you know, that
• 51:46
  20 percent that's actual weapons, and might actually
• 51:48
  help the Ukrainian soldier on the ground, that
• 51:51
  he gets his chunk finally in the very
• 51:53
  end, and maybe just enough to keep the
• 51:57
  war going.
• 51:58
  It's not emotional for him, it's a procedure,
• 52:00
  and it's the process that matters more than
• 52:04
  the promises given, because they can't trust the
• 52:06
  promises anyway.
• 52:08
  So a ceasefire without structural guarantees, in his
• 52:11
  words, is not peace, it's preparation for continuing
• 52:15
  the war.
• 52:16
  That's it.
• 52:17
  And if you don't deal with the root
• 52:19
  causes, you won't get there, which leads to
• 52:21
  question three.
• 52:22
  What does he mean by root causes?
• 52:25
  This phrase drives western commentators crazy, but the
• 52:29
  Russians talk about it all the time, and
• 52:31
  they're very precise about it.
• 52:33
  And root causes in this usage do not
• 52:36
  mean a history lecture for its own sake.
• 52:39
  It means a binding constraint of some sort
• 52:42
  to get rid of the root causes.
• 52:45
  The three root causes of this conflict are,
• 52:49
  and this is from the Russian point of
• 52:52
  view, but if you don't understand it, you'll
• 52:54
  never resolve this conflict, is NATO expansion toward
• 52:58
  Russia borders, despite earlier assurances that that would
• 53:03
  never happen.
• 53:04
  Trust me, they remember George Bush one saying,
• 53:09
  we won't go, if you give us East
• 53:12
  Germany, we will not go one inch further.
• 53:16
  Now, nobody ever put that into a treaty,
• 53:18
  and so the US can always go, well,
• 53:20
  geez, you should have put it in a
• 53:21
  treaty.
• 53:22
  They remember that, and how many times have
• 53:24
  they expanded?
• 53:26
  How many times, you know, and Russia has
• 53:28
  stood by and watched it, but Ukraine, Belarus
• 53:31
  have always been no-goes, have always been
• 53:36
  red lines.
• 53:37
  So NATO expansion toward Russia, despite earlier assurances,
• 53:41
  that's one of the root causes.
• 53:43
  The second is the transformation of Ukraine into
• 53:46
  a western militarized platform, hostile to Russia, that
• 53:50
  they want to create a million-man Ukrainian
• 53:53
  army for specific purposes of taking over Russia,
• 53:59
  of going into Russia.
• 54:00
  And the Russians understand this, and the erosion
• 54:03
  of any agreed-upon security architecture in Europe
• 54:06
  that considers Russia as an enemy and always
• 54:10
  will.
• 54:10
  It's nonsense.
• 54:11
  So he argues that unless these issues, those
• 54:14
  are the three, the erosion of security, the
• 54:16
  transformation of military, of Ukraine into a military,
• 54:19
  and the expansion of Russia, of NATO, I
• 54:22
  mean, toward Russia.
• 54:24
  So these issues need to be addressed in
• 54:27
  some kind of enforceable term.
• 54:30
  And any agreement is therefore cosmetic.
• 54:32
  And so from his perspective, ignoring root causes
• 54:35
  is like treating symptoms while refusing to diagnose
• 54:38
  the disease.
• 54:39
  So you'll treat somebody for, I don't know,
• 54:42
  a sexually transmitted disease, but you won't admit
• 54:45
  that you have it.
• 54:47
  You won't admit that.
• 54:48
  This is why they reject the formula that
• 54:50
  involve vague language, open-end agreements, or, hey,
• 54:53
  trust us, just first ceasefire, and then, geez,
• 54:57
  let's take six months to resolve this.
• 55:00
  And six months later, you're involved again with
• 55:02
  boots on the ground.
• 55:03
  He'd rather win decisively, or Russia would rather
• 55:07
  win or lose.
• 55:08
  This is the, well, you're putting up $1
• 55:12
  ,000 with your two pair.
• 55:14
  I call, you know, because I got, I
• 55:18
  got a full house.
• 55:19
  That's why, that explains why, anyway, Russia insists
• 55:24
  on a written, verifiable, treaty-bound end that
• 55:29
  limits, you know, they don't want any more
• 55:31
  rhetorical comment from George Bush, one going, oh,
• 55:34
  geez, we won't go an inch further to
• 55:36
  the east if you give us Germany.
• 55:38
  That really happened.
• 55:40
  As they did many other times.
• 55:43
  Oh, no, no, no.
• 55:44
  We'll stop now.
• 55:45
  But they never stop.
• 55:47
  And Russia remembers.
• 55:49
  So, that's why.
• 55:50
  So, which leads to question four.
• 55:52
  Does Russia want to destroy Ukraine?
• 55:56
  And his answer is careful and misrepresented, as
• 55:59
  usual.
• 56:00
  He says Russia wants to, does not want
• 56:03
  to eliminate Ukraine as a people, as a
• 56:05
  culture.
• 56:06
  He says Russia cannot, though, accept Ukraine as
• 56:10
  a militarized entity, controlled by somebody else on
• 56:17
  its border.
• 56:18
  There's no problems between Russians and Ukrainians, or
• 56:22
  hasn't been forever until the West stoked that
• 56:27
  problem.
• 56:28
  And so, he doesn't want a government like
• 56:32
  Zelensky's, controlled by the West, on their border.
• 56:37
  And trust me, if Canada or America were
• 56:40
  puppet governments of Russia or China, just like
• 56:45
  Ukraine is, there's no way America would put
• 56:49
  up with it.
• 56:50
  You know, Trump won't put up with not
• 56:52
  owning the oil of Venezuela.
• 56:54
  You can say what you want about that.
• 56:56
  He didn't want, he didn't want China helping
• 57:01
  Venezuela.
• 57:03
  He wants to control the world's energy infrastructure
• 57:07
  completely.
• 57:08
  That's, that's, that's Trump 101.
• 57:11
  That's, that's another class we're giving you.
• 57:13
  So, he, Lavrov is arguing, you know, sovereignty
• 57:18
  is not just a flag and a seat
• 57:20
  at the U.N. Sovereignty means the ability
• 57:22
  to make security decisions independently.
• 57:26
  And like I said before, Trump is nothing
• 57:28
  but a, but a toddler, you know, being
• 57:32
  pushed around in a stroller by Starmer, by
• 57:36
  Macron, by Mertz, by Ursula von der Leyen,
• 57:42
  and told how to deal with and put
• 57:46
  up with Trump until somebody that will give
• 57:49
  up, you know, money without any conditions.
• 57:54
  And somebody that understands that peace is not
• 57:56
  what we want here.
• 57:57
  We want to continue this war globally for
• 58:00
  a long time.
• 58:01
  And, you know, put, put Zelensky in a
• 58:03
  stroller, and because that's what he is.
• 58:06
  He's part of the nanny state of Ukraine.
• 58:09
  They're, they don't, they are not independent.
• 58:13
  And I believe that.
• 58:15
  I mean, anybody who doesn't believe that's got
• 58:17
  their heads up their rear ends.
• 58:19
  And Lavrov is pretty brutal about it.
• 58:22
  Well, we don't want somebody else controlling it.
• 58:25
  He argues that Ukraine, as currently constituted, does
• 58:30
  not meet the definition of an independent state.
• 58:33
  Not because Ukrainians are incapable or they can't
• 58:40
  figure out how to run their country, but
• 58:42
  because external actors have embedded themselves deeply into
• 58:47
  Ukraine for the last 30 years and into
• 58:52
  their security, intelligence, political system, the puppet government,
• 58:58
  which is control, the nanny state of Ukraine.
• 59:01
  From this perspective, Russia is not fighting Ukraine.
• 59:06
  It's fighting a proxy war.
• 59:08
  And that belief drives everything else.
• 59:12
  And Lavrov understands it.
• 59:14
  And so why does Lavrov say Zelensky can't
• 59:17
  deliver peace?
• 59:17
  Well, if you understand what I've said in
• 59:20
  the show, this is one of the most
• 59:22
  politically sensitive parts because he's very candid about
• 59:26
  it.
• 59:26
  Lavrov did not frame this as a personal
• 59:28
  insult.
• 59:29
  He frames it as a structure trap.
• 59:31
  In his view, Zelensky's legitimacy is now inseparable
• 59:35
  from his wartime emergency power.
• 59:39
  Peace would mean, this is the horror story
• 59:42
  for Zelensky that Zelensky can't put up with,
• 59:46
  because peace would mean elections, a new parliament,
• 59:51
  perhaps even some parliamentary accountability, investigations into where
• 59:57
  all the money went, political competition.
• 1:00:02
  Which doesn't exist now.
• 1:00:03
  These people are jailed.
• 1:00:06
  Everybody in a church is jailed.
• 1:00:08
  They can't do that either.
• 1:00:10
  So they're being, at gunpoint, forced to go
• 1:00:13
  to the front lines and defend a corrupt
• 1:00:15
  system.
• 1:00:16
  And the end of the war would expose
• 1:00:18
  massive corruption and the loss of the rally
• 1:00:22
  around the flag of Ukraine effect that has
• 1:00:25
  been tapering off over the years.
• 1:00:27
  Therefore, Lavrov argues Zelensky cannot survive any of
• 1:00:31
  that transaction, transition.
• 1:00:34
  Can't do it.
• 1:00:35
  And from Moscow's perspective, any agreement signed by
• 1:00:38
  Zelensky is inherently unstable because the political incentives
• 1:00:42
  in Kiev favor delay, sabotage, maximalist demands over
• 1:00:46
  settlement.
• 1:00:47
  This is why Lavrov repeatedly questions, who is
• 1:00:51
  Russia negotiating with?
• 1:00:53
  Not rhetorically, but procedurally.
• 1:00:56
  He's asking whether there exists a Ukrainian authority
• 1:00:59
  capable of implementing peace without immediately collapsing.
• 1:01:05
  And that's a devastating question because the answer
• 1:01:07
  in diplomacy is absolutely not.
• 1:01:11
  And why is Lavrov talking so much about
• 1:01:14
  energy is one of the other questions.
• 1:01:15
  Why does everybody talk about energy?
• 1:01:17
  And this is why Western commentary often turns
• 1:01:20
  Lavrov into the villain.
• 1:01:22
  He's the bad guy.
• 1:01:24
  He is Boris and Boris and Natasha in
• 1:01:27
  the cartoon long ago is where they take
• 1:01:30
  him because of what he says about this.
• 1:01:32
  His energy argument isn't about greed.
• 1:01:36
  It's about leverage.
• 1:01:37
  He says that control over energy routes equals
• 1:01:40
  control over political behavior.
• 1:01:42
  Think about this.
• 1:01:43
  Think about it from the Trump point of
• 1:01:45
  view.
• 1:01:45
  Nord Stream, Turk Stream, tanker sanctions, seizing tankers,
• 1:01:50
  secondary sanctions, LNG pricing, and all of them,
• 1:01:54
  they're used as a weapon.
• 1:01:55
  Every bit of it, the West has used
• 1:01:58
  as a weapon.
• 1:01:59
  So in his telling, these are not isolated
• 1:02:02
  policies.
• 1:02:03
  They're part of the coercion that has been
• 1:02:05
  going on and is intended to make sure
• 1:02:09
  that Western oil companies are able to take
• 1:02:13
  over Ukraine, just like they get to take
• 1:02:17
  over Venezuela.
• 1:02:20
  And eventually, they want them to be able
• 1:02:23
  to take the vast wealth of Russia.
• 1:02:27
  So Lavrov's claim is that the United States
• 1:02:29
  increasingly over the last years is using energy
• 1:02:34
  access as a tool of command rather than
• 1:02:38
  a tool of competition.
• 1:02:40
  They force Europe to abandon cheap energy.
• 1:02:43
  They force the allies to buy expensive alternatives.
• 1:02:46
  Alternatives, I mean.
• 1:02:48
  They punish third countries for independently agreeing to
• 1:02:52
  buy cheaper oil or energy of any kind.
• 1:02:56
  And so from Lavrov's perspective, this is not
• 1:02:58
  free market behavior.
• 1:03:00
  It's geopolitical management just like the old world
• 1:03:04
  order.
• 1:03:05
  And that belief ties directly into Russia's push
• 1:03:07
  toward BRICs and alternative trade systems that have
• 1:03:11
  been being created increasingly over the last 15
• 1:03:15
  years and gaining momentum.
• 1:03:18
  Probably longer, 25 years.
• 1:03:20
  Lavrov is saying if the existing system is
• 1:03:23
  weaponized as it is, everyone is beginning to
• 1:03:27
  build parallel rails.
• 1:03:30
  Question seven, why does Lavrov sound confident about
• 1:03:33
  time being on his side?
• 1:03:35
  This is probably an important signal in the
• 1:03:37
  interview, probably the most important.
• 1:03:39
  Lavrov doesn't speak like somebody racing against a
• 1:03:42
  clock.
• 1:03:43
  He speaks like someone who believes that the
• 1:03:45
  West is finally discovering that it can fund
• 1:03:49
  a war longer than it needs to explain
• 1:03:51
  it.
• 1:03:52
  Not that they didn't know that before.
• 1:03:54
  Look at Afghanistan.
• 1:03:55
  He points to European political fragmentation, war fatigue,
• 1:03:59
  economic stagnation and pressure, public skepticism and don't
• 1:04:07
  want to call them riots, but at least
• 1:04:09
  rallies, you know, skepticism and the limits of
• 1:04:14
  sanctions enforcement.
• 1:04:17
  Lavrov's confidence is not based on a personal
• 1:04:20
  or political optimism.
• 1:04:22
  It's based on comparative endurance.
• 1:04:25
  He believes that Russia can tolerate the cost
• 1:04:28
  longer than Western democracies can tolerate their political
• 1:04:32
  incoherence and system of lies that back it
• 1:04:37
  up.
• 1:04:37
  That belief underpins why Russia is very, very
• 1:04:42
  patient and Lavrov specifically is.
• 1:04:46
  When you strip away the diplomacy and the
• 1:04:49
  phrasing of Lavrov's interview, which was awesome to
• 1:04:53
  watch, you know, and to get their point
• 1:04:55
  of view, Lavrov's position is this.
• 1:04:57
  Russia isn't going to accept a pause that
• 1:05:00
  resets the war.
• 1:05:01
  They're very consistent about that.
• 1:05:03
  Russia won't trust any verbal assurance that, oh
• 1:05:06
  geez, trust us.
• 1:05:07
  They don't trust us.
• 1:05:08
  They're never gonna.
• 1:05:09
  Russia believes time is working against the West,
• 1:05:12
  not against Moscow.
• 1:05:14
  Russia believes Zelensky cannot survive the peace and
• 1:05:17
  Russia is prepared to wait rather than sign
• 1:05:21
  another Minsk agreement, call it Minsk-3, that
• 1:05:24
  is a nothing but a lie and a
• 1:05:26
  way to reset it so we can start
• 1:05:28
  this same war again in a month, two
• 1:05:32
  years, six years, ten years.
• 1:05:34
  That's what they're doing.
• 1:05:36
  This does not mean Russia is guaranteed to
• 1:05:38
  succeed.
• 1:05:39
  They understand that.
• 1:05:40
  It does not mean Russia is acting according
• 1:05:43
  to its own theory on how it looks
• 1:05:47
  when it's over.
• 1:05:48
  That does matter because wars aren't ended by
• 1:05:51
  passion or by commitment.
• 1:05:53
  They're ended by alignment of incentives.
• 1:05:57
  There needs to be an incentive to end
• 1:05:59
  the war and there isn't one.
• 1:06:02
  And what Lavrov is telling us calmly, methodically,
• 1:06:05
  is that the incentives offered so far don't
• 1:06:09
  yet favor peace for any party.
• 1:06:12
  And that, you know, brings us to Erastovich
• 1:06:15
  because, you know, where we step out of
• 1:06:17
  the diplomatic sphere and talk about spoilers, assassinations,
• 1:06:23
  forced mobilizations, political survival that turns violence into
• 1:06:28
  governance.
• 1:06:29
  And so, you know, that's where we're headed
• 1:06:32
  next.
• 1:06:33
  And, you know, this, you know, we're done
• 1:06:37
  with the ledger of Zakharova, her librarian.
• 1:06:40
  We're done with the logic and diplomacy of
• 1:06:43
  Lavrov.
• 1:06:43
  Now we're going to get to the part
• 1:06:44
  that makes people uncomfortable because it doesn't fit
• 1:06:47
  on a bumper sticker on a Ukrainian flag,
• 1:06:50
  right?
• 1:06:50
  This is where we talk about the spoiler
• 1:06:52
  alerts, the assassinations, the war on the ground,
• 1:06:56
  and simple political truth that peace is fatal
• 1:07:01
  to a politician, not for the nation.
• 1:07:03
  It's not fatal to the nation.
• 1:07:04
  It helps the nation.
• 1:07:05
  But it's fatal for the people currently running
• 1:07:08
  the conflict.
• 1:07:09
  And I want you to keep this thesis
• 1:07:10
  in your head.
• 1:07:11
  Remember what we're talking about.
• 1:07:13
  This war is not being fought to win.
• 1:07:16
  It's being fought to delay the consequences of
• 1:07:19
  peace.
• 1:07:19
  That's what's happening.
• 1:07:21
  Once you accept that thesis, a bunch of
• 1:07:23
  things that look chaotic suddenly look very structural,
• 1:07:27
  like the spoilers.
• 1:07:29
  What is a spoiler?
• 1:07:30
  A spoiler isn't the bad guy.
• 1:07:32
  A spoiler is the guy who benefits from
• 1:07:34
  the process failing, negotiation process.
• 1:07:38
  It can be a faction, a foreign sponsor,
• 1:07:41
  a domestic political bloc, a security service.
• 1:07:44
  It can be Zelensky itself.
• 1:07:45
  It can be a commander whose budget depends
• 1:07:47
  on the war and his personal life thrives
• 1:07:51
  upon getting funded continually for his own personal
• 1:07:55
  things.
• 1:07:56
  It's a politician whose legitimacy depends on emergency
• 1:07:59
  powers, like Zelensky, or even an industry that
• 1:08:03
  profits from the continuing conflict.
• 1:08:06
  Spoilers don't need to win the war.
• 1:08:08
  They don't want to win the war.
• 1:08:10
  They want to make peace feel dangerous.
• 1:08:14
  So how do you make peace feel dangerous?
• 1:08:16
  You inject more violence right when the calendar
• 1:08:21
  and the rhetoric is starting to shift.
• 1:08:23
  You create an event that poisons responsibility.
• 1:08:26
  You make negotiators look weak.
• 1:08:29
  You give the public something else to fear.
• 1:08:32
  And you create another reason to say now's
• 1:08:35
  not the time to settle the conflict.
• 1:08:37
  This is why assassination attempts, like the number
• 1:08:41
  two military guy in Russia being attacked, assassination
• 1:08:46
  attempts, sabotage around cluster, you know, often cluster,
• 1:08:51
  you know, remember the attack of the airplanes
• 1:08:52
  in the first round that took place?
• 1:08:55
  Every time a talk comes up, there's a
• 1:08:57
  new attack.
• 1:08:58
  Talk about talks.
• 1:09:00
  It's not because everyone suddenly got emotional.
• 1:09:02
  It's because someone wants to slam the door
• 1:09:05
  on negotiations before they, you know, result in
• 1:09:11
  anything.
• 1:09:12
  And so why the assassination attempts matter, even
• 1:09:16
  if you don't know who did it?
• 1:09:17
  Let's talk about assassination.
• 1:09:19
  Let's see.
• 1:09:20
  I'm not going to pretend we know facts
• 1:09:22
  that we don't know.
• 1:09:23
  There's still an investigation and there's full of
• 1:09:25
  allegations and counter allegations saying that Ukraine is
• 1:09:29
  behind it all, saying that it was independent
• 1:09:31
  Russians who won it in the war.
• 1:09:33
  There's all kinds of stuff.
• 1:09:34
  But strategically, you don't need the identity of
• 1:09:36
  the shooter to understand the function of the
• 1:09:39
  shot itself.
• 1:09:40
  The function is this.
• 1:09:42
  It signals that escalation is available.
• 1:09:45
  It demonstrates reach like a Ukraine bombing airplanes
• 1:09:48
  the last time we happened in this, like
• 1:09:50
  Ukraine bombing infrastructure, Russia bombing energy things.
• 1:09:55
  It implies vulnerability of both sides to war
• 1:09:59
  negotiators and any intermediaries that any settlement path
• 1:10:03
  will be disrupted.
• 1:10:05
  And here's the key portion of that to
• 1:10:07
  continue this war.
• 1:10:09
  It creates a moral fog.
• 1:10:12
  Once an assassination attempt is part of the
• 1:10:14
  cycle or attacks on airplanes are part of
• 1:10:16
  the cycle.
• 1:10:17
  Every side can use it as proof that
• 1:10:19
  the other side can't be dealt with reasonably
• 1:10:22
  and the negotiations fail.
• 1:10:25
  So it's a self-reinforcing concept.
• 1:10:28
  This is what I mean by poisoning responsibility.
• 1:10:30
  It's not just the violence.
• 1:10:32
  It's the narrative payload of that violence in
• 1:10:34
  a war to delay peace.
• 1:10:36
  Violence is not only Connecticut's communicative, it's violence
• 1:10:40
  is what needs to be communicated to the
• 1:10:43
  public and why the money matters.
• 1:10:46
  Why does the new injection of 400 million,
• 1:10:49
  even though it's small from the United States,
• 1:10:51
  why is it still important?
• 1:10:53
  Because it folds into the spoiler system of
• 1:10:58
  the US giving 400 million each year and
• 1:11:02
  Europe giving a hell of a lot more
• 1:11:04
  than that to continue a going nowhere conflict.
• 1:11:09
  Well, it is going somewhere slowly churningly to
• 1:11:13
  the West and it's killing hundreds of thousands
• 1:11:17
  of people in the process.
• 1:11:19
  So let's put that in the proper context.
• 1:11:21
  The US defense authorization discussed in late 2025
• 1:11:25
  and we all forget about, we don't want
• 1:11:27
  to talk about included language.
• 1:11:29
  It provides 400 million a year for Ukraine
• 1:11:32
  via the Ukraine security assistance incentive for fiscal
• 1:11:38
  year 26 and another 400 million 27.
• 1:11:41
  On its face, 400 million is a drop
• 1:11:43
  in the bucket compared to the earlier phases
• 1:11:45
  of the war and compared to broad European
• 1:11:48
  multi-year promises that they're ready to fund
• 1:11:50
  it for another 10 years.
• 1:11:51
  So why does the 400 million matter?
• 1:11:53
  Because it's not only money, it's a signal
• 1:11:56
  that the war remains budgeted, institutional, and routine.
• 1:12:02
  That means it's funded through 2027.
• 1:12:05
  It's not going anywhere.
• 1:12:06
  And the deeper point is this, USAI is
• 1:12:09
  not the same thing as we had surplus
• 1:12:11
  gear on the shelf that we gave to
• 1:12:13
  Ukraine.
• 1:12:13
  USAI is contracting.
• 1:12:16
  It's the mechanism to fund more years of
• 1:12:20
  military industrial complex and it ties Ukraine support
• 1:12:25
  into the US procurement pipelines.
• 1:12:28
  That's the important part.
• 1:12:31
  So even if the dollar figure is smaller,
• 1:12:33
  the strategic meaning is the pipeline is not
• 1:12:36
  shut off and Trump is keeping it going.
• 1:12:39
  He's just saying it's going to be through
• 1:12:41
  European money and a much smaller amount that
• 1:12:45
  Lindsey Graham managed to force through each year
• 1:12:48
  for 2026 and 2027.
• 1:12:51
  And guess what happens the end of 2027?
• 1:12:54
  Elections for 2028.
• 1:12:57
  Sorry, that's the way it goes.
• 1:13:00
  And Europe is spending in the form of
• 1:13:03
  buying US weapons, interceptors, funding replenishments, creating a
• 1:13:07
  second layer of continuity.
• 1:13:08
  So the spoiler logic isn't 400 million equals
• 1:13:11
  victory because it's not going to create victory.
• 1:13:15
  It's not going to change anything.
• 1:13:16
  The spoiler logic is the war still has
• 1:13:18
  plenty of oxygen and oxygen keeps the continued
• 1:13:23
  war incentive a coherent process that keeps on
• 1:13:29
  going.
• 1:13:30
  So if leaders and factions believe the war
• 1:13:32
  can be kept going at a manageable burn
• 1:13:35
  rate, you know, people, money, political will, enough
• 1:13:40
  to avoid a defeat, a global defeat, enough
• 1:13:44
  to avoid further negotiation, enough to avoid elections,
• 1:13:49
  then they will keep the war funded and
• 1:13:51
  going on because delay is the point.
• 1:13:55
  So the war on the ground, why equipment
• 1:13:58
  changes negotiation.
• 1:14:00
  You also wanted to, well, I wanted to
• 1:14:03
  tell you about the new equipment that shows
• 1:14:06
  up.
• 1:14:06
  The key idea is negotiations are temperature sensitive
• 1:14:10
  and Ukraine has showed some counterattacks in the
• 1:14:14
  last couple of months.
• 1:14:15
  So when one side believes the other side
• 1:14:17
  is about to gain capability, it is more
• 1:14:20
  willing to preempt that with negotiations.
• 1:14:22
  So every supply shift, air defense drones, electronic
• 1:14:26
  warfare missiles is a negotiation variable.
• 1:14:29
  Quit bombing my infrastructure, please.
• 1:14:32
  Recent reports emphasize how central drones and new
• 1:14:35
  tech are to Ukraine's combat operations.
• 1:14:38
  The loss of Starlink for Russia, a rapidly
• 1:14:41
  expanding defense tech sector and deepening European defense
• 1:14:45
  industrial cooperation with Ukraine, right?
• 1:14:49
  When a new weapon system arrives, it doesn't
• 1:14:53
  change the battlefield, but it changes the way
• 1:14:57
  people think about continuing the war for another
• 1:15:00
  10 years.
• 1:15:01
  It changes what's happening at the table.
• 1:15:03
  And when the bargaining table shifts, spoilers move
• 1:15:06
  even faster because the calendar is expanded.
• 1:15:14
  So Europe's role in this spoiler, if we
• 1:15:16
  connect it back to Starmer and British fatigue,
• 1:15:20
  Europe is tired, but Europe is also trapped
• 1:15:23
  in the rhetoric.
• 1:15:24
  Like I said in the beginning, they've spent
• 1:15:26
  years speaking in absolutist language.
• 1:15:29
  Peace is expensive.
• 1:15:30
  And here's the paradox.
• 1:15:31
  Unfortunately, the more exhausted the public becomes, the
• 1:15:35
  more the leadership leans on the symbolism and
• 1:15:38
  posture of we're fighting for democracy.
• 1:15:41
  So when you can't deliver victory, you deliver
• 1:15:44
  continued narratives.
• 1:15:46
  When you can't deliver stability, you deliver a
• 1:15:49
  slogan.
• 1:15:50
  This is how you get the nanny state
• 1:15:52
  posture around Zelensky.
• 1:15:55
  Not because Starmer is arrogant and thinks he
• 1:15:58
  can win or Macron or Merz or Ursula
• 1:16:02
  von der Leyen, but because Europe is trying
• 1:16:05
  to remain relevant in a conflict it cannot
• 1:16:09
  resolve.
• 1:16:10
  So European fatigue won't automatically produce any sort
• 1:16:14
  of peace.
• 1:16:15
  It's going to produce something even worse.
• 1:16:17
  Escalation by the inability to move forward.
• 1:16:21
  Inertia.
• 1:16:23
  The machine keeps rolling because no one can
• 1:16:25
  admit that they don't know how to stop
• 1:16:27
  it.
• 1:16:28
  Now about the Zelensky political trap.
• 1:16:31
  The hard part is Zelensky can't deliver peace.
• 1:16:34
  He won't deliver peace.
• 1:16:35
  You don't have to accept what Lavrov said
• 1:16:38
  or what Zakharova, a librarian point of view,
• 1:16:42
  pointed out.
• 1:16:42
  You don't have to accept those things to
• 1:16:44
  accept the political structure of Ukraine and Zelensky's
• 1:16:50
  issue, his problem.
• 1:16:51
  Wartime leadership, his wartime leadership depends on emergency
• 1:16:56
  legitimacy.
• 1:16:58
  Emergency legitimacy thrives on what?
• 1:17:02
  Suspended elections, centralized power, suppression of the opposition,
• 1:17:08
  unity narratives, and the claim that any sort
• 1:17:12
  of dissent equals betrayal.
• 1:17:15
  And you need to be put on the
• 1:17:17
  meritorious list if you don't follow the line
• 1:17:20
  that you're supposed to follow.
• 1:17:22
  And peace would threaten all of those things.
• 1:17:25
  Peace would trigger elections.
• 1:17:27
  Elections trigger an audit of the person in
• 1:17:30
  the government.
• 1:17:31
  Audits trigger some sort of accountability.
• 1:17:34
  Accountability triggers somebody to blame.
• 1:17:36
  And blame triggers who's vulnerable, right?
• 1:17:40
  So in a war to delay peace environment,
• 1:17:42
  we're only having this war to delay any
• 1:17:45
  peace.
• 1:17:46
  The leadership survival is the strategic variable.
• 1:17:50
  That doesn't mean Zelensky is evil.
• 1:17:52
  It means he's trapped in the logic of
• 1:17:54
  wartime alleged leader.
• 1:17:57
  So this is why the spoiler system thrives,
• 1:18:00
  because the political downside of peace is real,
• 1:18:03
  it's immediate, while the downside of war is
• 1:18:06
  deferred, it's distributed, it's corrupted, which is why
• 1:18:09
  Erastovich matters.
• 1:18:13
  And Erastovich is a political commentator, a Ukrainian.
• 1:18:18
  And you'd use him like you're, I don't
• 1:18:22
  know, if you were in a trial, you
• 1:18:23
  could use him as the closing witness to
• 1:18:25
  say, yep, I've listened to all that stuff.
• 1:18:27
  And now I'm going to give it to
• 1:18:28
  you from the Ukrainian point of view.
• 1:18:30
  We'll put me on the stand.
• 1:18:32
  And here's what it's going to do.
• 1:18:33
  So Kharova provided the docket sheet, the facts,
• 1:18:36
  the raw facts.
• 1:18:37
  Lavrov provided the expert witness.
• 1:18:41
  And now Erastovich provides the counterpoint of exhaustion
• 1:18:47
  from the Ukrainian side.
• 1:18:49
  That's why he's valuable.
• 1:18:50
  He's Ukrainian.
• 1:18:51
  He's inside the psychological architecture of the war.
• 1:18:54
  And he talks like someone who has watched
• 1:18:57
  the same slogans that Lavrov spoke about.
• 1:19:02
  He watches them rot from the inside of
• 1:19:05
  Ukraine.
• 1:19:06
  So when he talks about exhaustion, he isn't
• 1:19:08
  describing a mood.
• 1:19:09
  He's describing the force that changes what is
• 1:19:12
  possible.
• 1:19:14
  Exhaustion has changed what the people of Ukraine
• 1:19:17
  are willing to talk or tolerate, what the
• 1:19:20
  armies of Ukraine can sustain, what the voters
• 1:19:23
  of Ukraine actually believe, and what foreign sponsors
• 1:19:27
  could or could not be willing to fund,
• 1:19:30
  and what alleged leadership can enforce without collapsing.
• 1:19:35
  He's pretty brutal.
• 1:19:37
  And his voice is important because he doesn't
• 1:19:39
  just argue about Russia.
• 1:19:40
  He argues about Ukraine as a political organism
• 1:19:43
  that's under great stress.
• 1:19:46
  And he's like the human endgame that spokespeople
• 1:19:51
  avoid.
• 1:19:51
  In his commentary, he talks about how, first
• 1:19:55
  of all, everyone is tired.
• 1:19:59
  Not only the soldiers who are tired and
• 1:20:02
  dying, but the societies attached to them.
• 1:20:07
  The maximalist narratives that collapsed first among the
• 1:20:10
  elites and then among the public.
• 1:20:14
  Leadership fears the election because elections reveal fractures
• 1:20:17
  in the system.
• 1:20:19
  And spoilers accelerate when they feel the calendar
• 1:20:22
  tightening.
• 1:20:23
  He talked about all of these things.
• 1:20:25
  And so if the war is being fought
• 1:20:27
  to delay the consequences of peace, then the
• 1:20:30
  dangerous movement is when the delay itself isn't
• 1:20:34
  working.
• 1:20:35
  Because when the delays aren't working, which arguably
• 1:20:38
  they're not, you get panic, you get sabotage,
• 1:20:42
  you get further forced mobilization, increased forced mobilization.
• 1:20:47
  Now at gunpoint, you get assassination attempts, you
• 1:20:51
  get peace proposals that are really nothing but
• 1:20:54
  more rhetoric and repositioning.
• 1:20:57
  That's it.
• 1:20:58
  You know, I used to, if she was
• 1:21:03
  still allowed to talk, because you can't have
• 1:21:05
  people speaking the truth in Ukraine, or another
• 1:21:09
  former Ukrainian, and I tried to find her,
• 1:21:11
  and you can only find her on Telegram.
• 1:21:13
  And her Telegram channel is, she used to
• 1:21:15
  have two million people on YouTube, but they
• 1:21:17
  canceled her.
• 1:21:18
  She's been canceled because she tells the truth.
• 1:21:21
  Her name is Diana Panchenko.
• 1:21:23
  And her channel is at, on Telegram, if
• 1:21:27
  you use Telegram, but it's in Russian, at
• 1:21:31
  Panchenko, D-I, Diana.
• 1:21:34
  And she has roughly 400,000 subscribers and
• 1:21:39
  hosting posts, videos, and links because they booted
• 1:21:42
  her off.
• 1:21:42
  They closed her channel.
• 1:21:45
  YouTube just closed it because they couldn't have
• 1:21:48
  the truth.
• 1:21:49
  Somebody forced that issue from the Ukraine side.
• 1:21:53
  And they, she was cut off.
• 1:21:55
  In late 2025, an EU sanctions document described
• 1:22:00
  her as managing a large Telegram presence.
• 1:22:03
  Now it's 400,000.
• 1:22:04
  I found it.
• 1:22:05
  And how, you know, we can use that,
• 1:22:07
  whether you agree with their politics or not,
• 1:22:09
  you can see the pattern because her voice
• 1:22:12
  is influential.
• 1:22:13
  And if it's influential enough, they shut it
• 1:22:16
  down.
• 1:22:17
  And YouTube isn't the only stage.
• 1:22:18
  Telegram is the newsroom now, and the audience
• 1:22:21
  is following the link.
• 1:22:23
  It's when you have censorship, you follow, you
• 1:22:26
  try to find it where you can find
• 1:22:27
  it.
• 1:22:28
  And, you know, now I've covered the three
• 1:22:33
  people that talked.
• 1:22:34
  I would have really loved to put something
• 1:22:36
  about Panchenko because Panchenko has been in, you
• 1:22:39
  know, very vocal voice from the very beginning.
• 1:22:42
  She's also on the Mira Tvorits list, the
• 1:22:45
  kill list for Ukraine, if you want to
• 1:22:47
  call it that.
• 1:22:48
  And they denied that that's what it is.
• 1:22:50
  But too many people have died on that
• 1:22:52
  list, including many that she interviewed, you know.
• 1:22:57
  But why do all of these sabotage of
• 1:23:07
  negotiation talks, why do they matter?
• 1:23:13
  Why does any of this matter?
• 1:23:15
  Because it tells you how this war is
• 1:23:19
  going to end.
• 1:23:21
  It doesn't end when somebody wins a narrative.
• 1:23:24
  You know, it's not going to end.
• 1:23:26
  Russia's narrative has been stronger from the very
• 1:23:28
  beginning.
• 1:23:30
  That don't mean they're going to win.
• 1:23:32
  It ends when the incentives flip, when the
• 1:23:35
  delay is more dangerous than settlement.
• 1:23:39
  Right now, settlement's more dangerous than continuing the
• 1:23:42
  war.
• 1:23:42
  So the incentives haven't been flipped, but they
• 1:23:44
  are bending.
• 1:23:45
  The U.S. putting a smaller but meaningful
• 1:23:48
  amount of money in the pipeline for 26
• 1:23:50
  and 27 tells you that the machine is
• 1:23:53
  still being kept alive.
• 1:23:54
  My argument is that it'll be kept alive
• 1:23:56
  until Trump's out of office and then it'll
• 1:23:58
  be expanded again by the Rubios of the
• 1:24:01
  world.
• 1:24:03
  And, you know, and certainly Lindsey Graham wants
• 1:24:06
  to expand it, as does everybody in Europe.
• 1:24:08
  You have to have your boogeymen and your
• 1:24:11
  boogeymen are Russia and China and anybody they
• 1:24:15
  work with.
• 1:24:16
  Like China has tons of infrastructure projects in
• 1:24:21
  Iran, as does Russia.
• 1:24:22
  Why do you think that war, the narrative
• 1:24:25
  is completely narrative?
• 1:24:28
  You know, the mistruths about it all are
• 1:24:30
  enormous.
• 1:24:31
  And, you know, that so the European multiyear
• 1:24:36
  posture still tells you that the politics of
• 1:24:38
  all of this are still trapped in the
• 1:24:41
  same place they always been.
• 1:24:42
  And the tech evolution on the ground tells
• 1:24:46
  you that each side still imagines it as
• 1:24:48
  leverage, like what do you call it, Starlink,
• 1:24:52
  etc.
• 1:24:53
  And the presence of sabotage and assassination attempts
• 1:24:56
  tells you that spoilers are still active and
• 1:25:00
  they're still going to be active because the
• 1:25:03
  calendar is tightening.
• 1:25:05
  So, finally, you can say that peace is
• 1:25:10
  being delayed not because peace itself is impossible,
• 1:25:15
  but that because the peace is politically lethal
• 1:25:20
  to many people, a lot of people are
• 1:25:23
  going to want to know what happened here.
• 1:25:27
  Why?
• 1:25:27
  How did we get here?
• 1:25:29
  Nobody's asking the right questions now.
• 1:25:31
  It's just Russia bad, Ukraine good, period.
• 1:25:33
  So, tomorrow, we'll talk a little bit, I
• 1:25:35
  think, I might not do this, but I
• 1:25:38
  understand what I want to say on it.
• 1:25:40
  Because when you talk about the debt structure
• 1:25:43
  of what's going on of all of this,
• 1:25:45
  Dalio, Musk had a very interesting hour-long
• 1:25:48
  program that I watched that was pretty cool,
• 1:25:51
  an interview about what needed to be doing
• 1:25:53
  and why the financial system eventually will refuse
• 1:25:58
  to be in permanent emergency mode that is
• 1:26:03
  being demanded by the politics of it all.
• 1:26:07
  So, you've heard about the anatomy of the
• 1:26:10
  delay, right?
• 1:26:11
  You want to hear about the funding of
• 1:26:13
  it.
• 1:26:13
  That'll be tomorrow's funding of the Ukrainian nanny
• 1:26:17
  state going forward.
• 1:26:20
  It's going to continue.
• 1:26:22
  The Ursula Fonder lines of the world, the
• 1:26:26
  Mertzes, the Macrons, and the Starmers are all
• 1:26:32
  going to continue a disadvantageous, I would say,
• 1:26:40
  disadvantageous to their own population policy and the
• 1:26:47
  way they're going to do it.
• 1:26:49
  It's going to be an interesting world if
• 1:26:53
  this ever finalizes and gets final.
• 1:26:59
  And that's my thesis for today.
• 1:27:01
  I very much appreciate you listening to my
• 1:27:05
  ramblings on this topic.
• 1:27:07
  And, you know, I'm hopeful that this nonsense
• 1:27:13
  at some point will end.
• 1:27:16
  I don't think, you know, it's one thing
• 1:27:19
  to talk about reality like I do on
• 1:27:21
  this show.
• 1:27:22
  It's quite another to have any impact on
• 1:27:24
  changing reality.
• 1:27:25
  It's not like listening to my program is
• 1:27:28
  going to change the reality.
• 1:27:30
  But if people listen and understand what's going
• 1:27:33
  on, because I try to listen, if you
• 1:27:37
  don't listen to the other side, you're an
• 1:27:39
  idiot.
• 1:27:40
  You're just an idiot.
• 1:27:41
  You have to listen to their point of
• 1:27:43
  view.
• 1:27:44
  You know, I used to hate it when
• 1:27:45
  practicing law that people would come in and
• 1:27:47
  go, oh, she's nothing but an old evil
• 1:27:49
  bitch.
• 1:27:50
  I want to get rid of her.
• 1:27:51
  It's like, look, dude, at one point you
• 1:27:53
  loved that woman.
• 1:27:54
  You had kids with her.
• 1:27:55
  You lived together for years and years, and
• 1:27:57
  now she's a piece of crap.
• 1:27:59
  What does that make you?
• 1:28:01
  Your selection process sucks.
• 1:28:03
  Okay, let's say that things are horrible between
• 1:28:05
  you.
• 1:28:06
  End them.
• 1:28:08
  Try to end them with as little damage
• 1:28:10
  to each other as possible.
• 1:28:12
  I feel that way about everything.
• 1:28:15
  And that lecture is basically the long form
• 1:28:18
  that you got today from me here on
• 1:28:20
  International Flavor.
• 1:28:21
  I hope you listen to International Flavor every
• 1:28:23
  day here on Lake Ozark, or from Lake
• 1:28:26
  Ozark Real Estate of the Art Studio.
• 1:28:29
  You can go back and listen to all
• 1:28:30
  my past programs at internationalflavor.com.
• 1:28:34
  You can listen, tomorrow's the biggest day in
• 1:28:36
  radio at Wednesday, always big day in radio
• 1:28:40
  for damradio.com, forward slash live is how
• 1:28:44
  you can listen to us.
• 1:28:45
  Great music.
• 1:28:46
  I wanted to end with a music for
• 1:28:49
  you.
• 1:28:49
  Maybe I'll play it and it just won't
• 1:28:51
  play on the show, and I'll stick around
• 1:28:54
  and play it and then let it go
• 1:28:56
  because I wanted to share it with you.
• 1:28:58
  And I think I'm going to try.
• 1:28:59
  I hope it works and that it doesn't
• 1:29:02
  cut me off.
• 1:29:03
  I don't think it will.
• 1:29:04
  But I'm going to play it for you
• 1:29:08
  if I can find it here on International
• 1:29:10
  Flavor.
• 1:29:11
  So let us play this.
• 1:29:13
  This is Dispina Vandi and the song is
• 1:29:16
  called Gia.
• 1:29:17
  It's the original version.
• 1:29:19
  Okay.
• 1:29:20
  And here it is for your listening pleasure.