Latest / International Flavor: Where the Truth Tastes Better / Orban’s Warning, Zelensky’s Sabotage, Lavrov on Energy Control, Booed Olympics, Greenland Tension, BRICS, Belarus, Moldova, Europe’s Rightward Swing.

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Orban’s Warning, Zelensky’s Sabotage, Lavrov on Energy Control, Booed Olympics, Greenland Tension, BRICS, Belarus, Moldova, Europe’s Rightward Swing. · International Flavor: Where the Truth Tastes Better

0:00
Hello, good Monday to you.
0:02
Happy freaking Monday to you.
0:05
I am Samuel Trapp.
0:07
This is International Flavor.
0:10
You are listening to DAMN Radio this Monday
0:14
morning, and I'm glad you're here and frankly,
0:18
I'm glad I'm here.
0:19
And the weather seems to be cooperating a
0:23
little bit with me, which I like.
0:28
It's been an interesting weekend, though.
0:30
Lots of news, lots of protesting, lots of
0:36
Olympics, lots of sporting events, but I've been
0:42
working or recovering.
0:45
It seems like I have a lot of
0:47
things going on, and so therefore, I've been
0:49
a bit a bit busy.
0:52
I had to paint a ceiling yesterday.
0:57
That was about the extent of any hard
1:01
labor, and then I painted the walls the
1:04
day before, and so try to keep myself,
1:08
I don't know, somewhat active doing something.
1:10
No, not that I don't work.
1:12
I work my little tail off for the
1:15
most part.
1:19
I've been, you know, I've been following so
1:23
many things.
1:23
It's hard to tell where I wish to
1:25
start.
1:25
I think I want to start with Hungary
1:34
and Viktor Orban.
1:36
He said yesterday, I think it was Saturday
1:41
actually, it just got translated to us on
1:43
Sunday.
1:44
He said that Ukraine is going to be
1:50
considered that if they're, you know, it's basically
1:54
if you're not part of the solution, you're
1:56
part of the problem, and he, in a
2:00
speech, said that they were going to be,
2:05
they were very quickly moving toward the realm
2:07
of enemies.
2:09
Not, not just not with us.
2:13
They are our enemies, and it's for a
2:15
lot of reasons they were talking about this.
2:18
Orban has been against this from the very
2:21
beginning.
2:21
He's against them being in the EU.
2:24
There's talks all about the horror story of
2:31
Zelensky and the Verhovna Rada were also not
2:39
happy when Ruta was there speaking last week
2:43
when he indicated that even if after the
2:48
conflict is done and there are Western or
2:54
European so-called peacekeepers sent in, and they
2:59
were targeted by Russia, because Russia says that
3:04
is unacceptable for the, for European or American
3:08
troops to be stationed in in Ukraine, you
3:13
know, just probably like we would say or
3:16
have said that you can't let China and
3:20
Russia be in Greenland or Cuba or anything
3:24
like that, that if Western troops were in
3:27
Ukraine and Russia attacked them, that would not
3:32
indicate that Article 5 of the NATO Charter
3:38
would be, you know, they wouldn't consider that
3:41
an attack on the country of origin of
3:46
the soldiers, if that makes sense.
3:49
And, well, it does make sense, and I
3:51
get it, and people were not happy about
3:54
that indication.
3:58
Zelensky has been trying to kill the peace
4:00
deal ever since it started.
4:03
There's been a bit of a, a bit
4:05
of a, an effort to have some kind
4:08
of a counter-offensive.
4:09
Now, I think it's because a lot of
4:11
weapons have come their way, because they were
4:14
basically out of everything.
4:17
And then in recent, last couple of weeks,
4:22
and a couple of indicators, the use of
4:27
Starlink by Russian forces has been terminated, unregistered
4:33
use of Starlink has been terminated by Elon
4:37
Musk.
4:38
And so that has apparently led to some
4:41
issues on the ground for some Russian areas
4:44
of the front.
4:46
It doesn't mean they aren't still beating the
4:49
snot out of, out of Ukraine in, in
4:52
many places.
4:53
It just means that there, that it's harder.
4:56
They got to do work around and maybe
4:57
level the playing field a tiny bit, because
5:00
Russia's been beating the snot out of them.
5:03
I mean, Ukraine over the weekend was bombing
5:05
the heck out of Russian infrastructure as well.
5:10
And so, Zelensky gave a speech.
5:14
There was also an assassination attempt on a
5:17
high-ranking Russian general.
5:20
And so, you know, all kinds of news
5:24
today.
5:25
I wanted to start with the, telling the
5:28
whole story instead of just the, the snippets
5:31
of Orban.
5:39
Excuse me.
5:40
So, European officials have been, and Zelensky, have
5:43
been trying to derail peace in Ukraine ever
5:46
since it was first started.
5:47
They don't want peace.
5:48
They want Russia to, what do you call
5:51
it, have a ceasefire so they can re
5:56
- structure everything that they, they wish to
6:01
do in there, regroup, send new soldiers in.
6:04
There's been now, the Verkhovna Rada in, in
6:10
Ukraine has now authorized the use of military
6:14
weapons against people to be mobilized.
6:19
Used to be they didn't have any of
6:20
that.
6:20
They'd just beat the crap out of them
6:22
and throw them in a, in a crucifixion
6:25
van, and now they are authorized weapons.
6:31
That's great.
6:32
Wonder when the first person is gonna get
6:33
killed there.
6:35
And that's what Orban was complaining, you know,
6:37
people have been talking about as well.
6:40
And it's, Western heads of state have been
6:44
acting like nannies to Zelensky during his talks
6:49
with the U.S., said Hungarian Foreign Minister
6:52
Peter Szijjarto.
6:54
In an interview with Georgia's Rustavi 2 channel,
6:58
where that showed on Sunday, Szijjarto said Ukraine's
7:02
European backers rallied to prevent Trump from pressuring
7:08
Zelensky to agree to a peace deal with
7:11
Russia.
7:13
European nannies accompanied him, European leaders, I'm sorry,
7:16
accompanied him like nannies.
7:19
It was humiliating for Zelensky.
7:22
It was obvious to outside observers because his
7:26
caregivers would not let the patient go alone.
7:30
If you are the leader of a sovereign
7:32
country and you are invited somewhere, you don't
7:35
take six, eight, or ten other leaders with
7:38
you, said Szijjarto.
7:40
He said that the entourage traveling with Zelensky
7:43
was a very bad look.
7:47
Multiple media outlets said that Prime Minister Starmer
7:51
and French President Macron coached Zelensky.
7:56
Now that was, remember that when that came
7:57
out a while ago?
8:00
Coached Zelensky on how to repair relations with
8:02
Trump, you know, kiss his ass, basically, following
8:06
their explosive argument at the White House in
8:08
February of 2025.
8:10
Leaders of UK, France, Germany, Italy, and Finland
8:12
all accompanied Zelensky during his subsequent visit in
8:17
the U.S. So he argued, Szijjarto, that
8:21
Ukraine's European backers had convinced Zelensky to walk
8:27
away from the first peace talks with Russia
8:30
nearly four years ago.
8:32
And if an agreement is made now, it
8:34
will clearly be worse for Ukraine and worse
8:37
for Europe compared to what was agreed upon
8:41
and signed in April of 2022.
8:44
And last year, the EU denounced Trump's peace
8:47
plan, which called for Ukraine to withdraw troops
8:50
from the Donbass and make territorial concessions.
8:53
They don't want to end the war.
8:54
They want it to continue and they want
8:57
to force Russia to give Ukraine back the
9:01
Donbass because they got a lot of money
9:03
tied up in that.
9:05
And the bet is that if the U
9:07
.S. will continue to try to force that
9:13
issue, that they can get those rare earths
9:18
and the Zaporizhia nuclear power plant.
9:22
Apparently that was a big bitching point over
9:25
the talks here in the last few days.
9:29
Well, last week, I mean, that they've been
9:31
talking about and that Zaporizhia nuclear power plant
9:36
needs to be turned back over to the
9:40
Z monster and a couple of other, well,
9:46
territorial concessions.
9:47
You know, Zelensky has been saying and he
9:50
said it again over the weekend.
9:51
I mean, he's trying to tank any chance
9:54
at settlement.
9:55
There's also talks of a huge Russian deal
9:58
in the works with the United States worth
10:01
trillions, is what the general
10:13
newsworthiness in other countries is saying.
10:17
And that is something to keep an eye
10:22
on if that turns out to be accurate.
10:27
Lavrov, for his part, Sergey Lavrov, Sergey Viktorovich,
10:31
he spoke and said he had an interesting,
10:36
I listened to his speech the other day.
10:38
He was giving a, well, he gives them
10:40
all the time.
10:41
So I don't remember exactly which one it
10:43
was I was listening to.
10:44
But he said that the U.S. wants
10:48
to take total control of the energy supply
10:51
of the world.
10:53
And that's what their actions are, that's what
10:56
they're doing right now.
10:58
And they have to resort to this coercive
11:01
measures.
11:03
In order to push for economic dominance.
11:06
Now, anybody who knows, and I'm going to
11:08
tell a story, another story I read over
11:12
the weekend that really tends to, I disagree
11:16
with this kind of, I don't know, scenario,
11:21
this kind of putting things out.
11:23
I just don't like it.
11:24
It's not friendly.
11:25
It's not world friendly at all.
11:28
And it's, I don't like, I don't think
11:31
it's a good look for an American president
11:33
to do stuff like this.
11:35
And I really don't.
11:37
By the way, the ice, everybody protested over
11:41
the weekend about ice protests.
11:44
That's, I'll let JR tell those stories.
11:48
That'll be a lot of fun for him,
11:50
I'm sure.
11:51
And I do plan on listening.
11:53
So, you won't talk about real international flavor
11:58
though.
11:59
Elon Musk says he's going to plan a
12:01
self-growing moon city.
12:04
A city on the moon.
12:07
Now, that's international, isn't it?
12:13
Got to finish my coffee before it gets
12:15
too cold.
12:17
Anyway, the US is trying to take control
12:19
of all international energy supply routes in an
12:22
attempt to attain global economic dominance.
12:26
Once again, said Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov.
12:30
During his speech at the World Economic Forum,
12:33
he said, Donald Trump has claimed that he
12:36
made America the hottest country anywhere in the
12:39
world in terms of business activity.
12:41
He called the US the economic engine on
12:44
the planet.
12:45
Said, you all follow us down, you follow
12:48
us up.
12:48
Remember when Trumpster said that?
12:50
So, in an interview with TV Bricks Media
12:54
Network Monday, ahead of the celebration for February
12:59
10, Lavrov said the US objective to dominate
13:02
the world economy is being realized using a
13:05
fairly large number of coercive measures incompatible with
13:11
fair competition.
13:13
As part of the push, the Americans want
13:16
to take control of all the routes for
13:19
providing the world's leading countries and all continents
13:23
with energy resources.
13:26
Now, it doesn't take a genius to say
13:28
that he's right.
13:30
You know, he's absolutely right.
13:32
On the European continent, they're eyeing Nord Stream,
13:36
which was blown up three years ago.
13:38
The Ukrainian gas supports a transportation system and
13:42
TurkStream, said the minister.
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So, there's efforts to take all of those.
13:47
Lavrov also referred to the sanctions against Luke
13:51
oil and Rosneft.
13:52
The war against tankers in the open sea
13:54
is waged by the US, which announced an
13:57
oil blockade of Venezuela, kidnapped the oil rich
14:00
company's president, Nicolas Maduro, in January.
14:04
They are trying to ban India and other
14:07
partners from buying cheap, affordable Russian energy resources.
14:11
Europe has long been banned, and he is
14:16
forcing them to buy US LNG at exorbitant
14:19
prices.
14:20
All true, by the way.
14:23
All absolutely true.
14:25
Trump has repeatedly threatened secondary sanctions and tariffs
14:29
on countries purchasing Russian energy.
14:31
Now, if you take it from a business
14:35
point of view, you know, if you want
14:36
to play, what Trump is a corporate raider,
14:44
you know, and you can maybe honor that
14:46
kind of thing, I suppose.
14:48
Frankly, I don't.
14:49
I don't like that kind of stuff in
14:51
corporations, just like I don't like it with
14:54
countries.
14:56
But at least in business, when you argue
15:01
that that's all because of, you know, money
15:06
and people, you know, in search of a
15:09
good return for your investor class and a
15:13
healthy bottom line, that's not everything you're supposed
15:17
to consider.
15:18
The only thing you're supposed to consider in
15:21
politics, you're supposed to have some sort of,
15:25
I don't know, country equality or the proposition
15:31
that you're not going to kill and capture
15:33
leaders, you know, of another of another country.
15:36
And people have been doing that for generations,
15:39
by the way.
15:39
We're just the latest empire to do so.
15:44
And that's, you know, that's reality.
15:48
So with the U.S. creating artificial barriers
15:52
for trade and energy, the BRICS nations are
15:55
forced to look for additional secure ways to
15:59
develop financial, economic, integration, logistics and other projects,
16:05
said Lavrov.
16:07
And so BRICS is coming up again where
16:12
they are talking about those sorts of things.
16:16
Did you see the U.S. relations are
16:21
really not in a good state?
16:23
OK, Trump had to win when Vance was
16:27
at the Milan Olympics opening.
16:29
OK, and this was a couple of days
16:32
ago.
16:33
The Team USA were coming out and being
16:35
cheered and they were then they showed the
16:39
camera on the big screen, went, showed J
16:44
.D. Vance.
16:47
And he was booed.
16:50
And so U.S. President Trump expressed surprise
16:56
after hearing that J.D. Vance was booed
16:59
at the Olympics opening ceremony in Italy.
17:02
The Winter Olympics opened on Friday with the
17:06
traditional parade of nations at Milan's iconic San
17:11
Siro Stadium.
17:12
Team USA entered the stadium to applause.
17:15
But when the camera briefly showed Vance and
17:18
his wife, Usha, waving American flags, booing began.
17:25
And I've got the well, we can watch
17:28
it on X, but oops, those are a
17:31
lot of boos for him whistling during some
17:35
applause.
17:36
Not a long shot for him on the
17:38
screen there.
17:38
CBC commentator said on the live feed in
17:42
the video quickly went viral.
17:46
So Trump on Air Force One said he
17:48
hadn't seen the broadcast, but found the reception
17:51
surprising.
17:52
That's surprising because people like him, he said,
17:56
adding that Vance is in a foreign country.
17:59
In all fairness, he doesn't get booed in
18:01
this country.
18:03
In my 22 Olympics, it probably has happened,
18:06
but I sure don't remember it.
18:08
Longtime USA Today sports columnist Christine Brennan wrote
18:13
on X.
18:14
Some people suggest the frosty welcome was linked
18:18
to public discontent over recent US policies.
18:25
US and EU relations are quite strained since
18:29
Trump returned to office, marked by trade disputes,
18:33
tariffs, digital regulation, Ukraine, Trump's threats to take
18:38
over Greenland, domestic unrest over Trump's aggressive immigration
18:43
enforcement also appears to have spilled over into
18:46
Italy.
18:47
Hundreds protested in Milan on Friday against the
18:51
presence of US immigration and customs enforcement personnel
18:55
assigned to provide security for the US delegation.
19:01
That was weird.
19:02
Why in the world are we sending immigration
19:06
enforcement to Italy?
19:09
I don't know.
19:10
Vance was not alone in getting booed.
19:12
Team Israel received a frosty welcome.
19:15
They had anticipated a hostile reception due to
19:19
Gaza and global support for Palestinians.
19:23
The Olympics will run from February 6th to
19:26
the 22nd.
19:27
Thirteen Russian athletes will compete under neutral flags
19:31
because Russia's Olympic Committee suspension over Ukraine, a
19:36
decision Moscow denounces as political, as do I.
19:41
It's, you know, not it doesn't happen, but
19:45
it happens.
19:46
You know, nowadays, you know, we cancel.
19:48
We still have that cancel culture.
19:52
And it's nonsense.
19:54
It's I just I disagree with it completely.
19:56
If you aren't inviting all of the Olympians
20:00
of the world, how in the world can
20:01
you pretend that you've won?
20:05
It may if you don't compete against all
20:07
comers, then you don't compete.
20:10
That's not a competition.
20:11
It's nonsense.
20:13
And the Russian teams are usually, you know,
20:16
pretty, pretty solid, you know.
20:20
So we have nannying.
20:22
We have nannying in the Olympics.
20:25
We have complaints against that.
20:28
We have Zelensky trying to kill the chances
20:31
for Russian-Ukraine peace that where he was
20:36
the this is by Nadezhda Romanenko, who's a
20:40
political analyst.
20:42
Decent article.
20:44
And I don't know if you heard about
20:46
it, but maybe you have not.
20:48
But Lieutenant General Vladimir Alekseev, who's the first
20:52
deputy chief of Russia's main intelligence directorate, is
20:56
Zelensky's latest desperate bid to sabotage emerging Russia
21:02
-Ukraine-U.S. negotiations in Abu Dhabi and
21:06
prolong the war, which he wants to do.
21:10
When negotiations gain traction, spoilers surface.
21:15
That's negotiation 101.
21:17
And this week's second round was precisely in
21:20
Abu Dhabi was precisely the kind of movement
21:23
that unnerves actors who fear ballot reform and
21:27
accountability more than the inevitable defeat on the
21:30
battlefield.
21:32
This is obviously the Zelensky regime.
21:35
The target choice reinforces this point.
21:38
Alekseev is the second in command of the
21:42
GRU chief Igor Kostiakov, who sits on Russian
21:47
delegation in Abu Dhabi.
21:49
Striking the number two is the number one
21:52
shuttles between sessions is very is a very
21:55
deliberate message and an attempt to rattle Russians
21:58
delegation, inject chaos into the decision loop for
22:04
security overdrive and ultimately to provoke Moscow's withdrawals
22:09
from the talks.
22:10
There's already rumors that Russia's gone, you know,
22:13
as B.S. Why in the world are
22:15
we here?
22:16
Nor is this the first time theater is
22:19
tracked with diplomatic motion.
22:21
Recall the attempted drone strike on President Putin's
22:25
Valdai residence in 2025 that coincided with particularly
22:29
intense U.S. and Russia exchanges.
22:32
You don't have to be a cynic like
22:34
I am to see a pattern.
22:37
Whenever a diplomatic door cracks open, someone tries
22:42
to slam it shut with explosive drones or
22:45
bullets and then retreats behind a smokescreen of
22:49
denial and proxies.
22:51
It's called plausible deniability as a policy.
22:56
Why would Kiv's leadership gamble like this?
22:59
Well, let's start with the raw political incentive.
23:03
Vladimir Zelensky extended his tenure beyond the intended
23:06
March 2024 election under martial law.
23:10
We're almost two years into that, right?
23:14
March is two years from when elections were
23:17
supposed to take place and never did.
23:19
And then May will be the two years
23:21
where a new president was supposed to be
23:24
in.
23:24
And he's still there.
23:25
If hostilities wind down and emergency powers are
23:29
gone, the ballot box looms.
23:32
There's been talk that Trump and the American
23:37
side wants some kind of a deal and
23:41
elections forcing the Z-man out, which is
23:45
basically what's going to happen.
23:47
Everybody knows it.
23:48
But they'll twist it and claim that he
23:51
won.
23:51
They'll stack the elections and, you know, stand
23:55
with guns at the ballot boxes or something.
23:59
His standing, Zelensky's, has eroded amid war fatigue,
24:04
unmet expectation, and massive corruption scandals that are
24:08
swirling around his administration that infuriates many Ukrainians
24:14
and have dealt Zelensky's image a huge blow.
24:18
End the war without a narrative total victory,
24:22
and he risks owning a very messy piece,
24:26
a grueling reconstruction, and a reckoning at the
24:31
polls.
24:32
Facing voters at a stadium famously worked well
24:36
during Zelensky's initial presidential campaign, but now endlessly
24:41
moving the goalpost is his only hope of
24:45
clinging to power.
24:46
That's absolutely true.
24:49
Then there's the strategic logic of spoilers.
24:53
Negotiations compress time, clarify trade-offs, and create
24:58
deadlines, none of which benefit Ukrainian maximalists.
25:03
If an agreement would force Kyiv to accept
25:06
hard limits or expose fissures with its more
25:10
hawkish backers, creating a pretext to stall makes
25:14
sense from a narrow survival lens.
25:18
A brazen hit inside Moscow during talks does
25:23
exactly that.
25:24
It dares the Kremlin to harden its stance,
25:27
fractures trust at the table, and lets Kyiv
25:30
posture as unbowed while keeping the wartime rally
25:34
framework at home.
25:36
Even if direct authorship can be obfuscated, at
25:39
least on paper, because nobody will buy claims
25:42
that Kyiv had nothing to do with it,
25:45
the practical effect is what counts.
25:47
Of course Ukraine is saying, oh jeez, we
25:49
didn't have anything to do with it.
25:50
But where'd one of the people run off
25:52
to?
25:55
Ukraine, naturally.
25:56
You think they'll be found there?
25:58
No.
25:59
Particularly Ukrainian defenders will object.
26:02
Kyiv has every incentive to keep U.S.
26:04
support flowing, so why risk alienating Washington with
26:08
an operation that screams escalation?
26:11
Because incentives are not monolithic.
26:14
They're filtered through domestic politics, factional competition within
26:19
security service, and the temptations of a successful
26:22
spectacle.
26:24
And remember, spoilers don't have to be centrally
26:26
ordered to be useful.
26:28
A wink, a nod, a green light to
26:29
make pressure can travel a long way in
26:33
wartime bureaucracy.
26:36
Also, his party, Zelensky's, is soon to be
26:42
one short of having a, they'll need a
26:48
coalition.
26:49
They can't do it unilaterally, his party, because
26:52
they've lost so many and there can be
26:54
no elections to replace them.
26:56
So they're bleeding now, not only men on
27:00
the front line, they're bleeding people in Nuroverhovna
27:02
Rada.
27:03
So the most important thing for Russia and
27:05
the U.S. at this stage is to
27:07
firewall talks from bloody theatrics.
27:10
For the negotiation process to provide real results,
27:13
it has to be built to survive shock.
27:16
There's already talk of Russia going, screw this,
27:18
we're out, you know, because the shocks will
27:21
keep coming.
27:24
That means insulating prisoner exchange and humanitarian work
27:27
groups from headline provocation, revalidating military de-conflict
27:32
channels, and demanding verifiable behavior change rather than
27:36
trading barbs about attribution in the press.
27:40
The larger point is simple.
27:42
If we let every well-timed bullet dictate
27:45
the peace, the pace, I'm sorry, of diplomacy,
27:48
we're outsourcing strategy to those who fear peace
27:52
the most.
27:53
That's the Z monster.
27:55
The Alexeyev attack fits a familiar script.
27:59
Choose a symbolically loaded target, hijack the narrative,
28:03
and hope negotiators flinch.
28:05
The right response is the opposite.
28:07
Call the bluff, keep the calendar, raise the
28:10
cost of sabotage by refusing to let it
28:13
reset the table.
28:15
Zelensky's regime may calculate that its political survival
28:20
depends on endlessly throwing up a hurdle for
28:24
peace and calling it resistance.
28:26
If so, the fastest way to test that
28:29
proposition is to keep pressing at the negotiation
28:32
table.
28:33
Talks are not a favor to one side.
28:36
They're a filter that separates leaders who can
28:38
face the endgame from those who can only
28:42
survive in the fog of not yet.
28:46
I liked that article.
28:48
And that's very true, by the way.
28:56
Z monster can't afford to be taken out
29:00
of power, you know, financially either.
29:03
But he's got to maintain the power or
29:06
the war would be over, no doubt.
29:09
I mean, it's not like there's a lot
29:10
of stronger, more warlike people than Zelensky.
29:19
You know, he's no longer the Boy Scout
29:22
wearing a green T-shirt.
29:24
You know, now he's switched to black.
29:26
Have you seen that?
29:27
Everywhere he goes now, it's no more the
29:29
green nasty T-shirt.
29:32
It's now the black with even a black,
29:35
he wears a black coat and, you know,
29:40
a long sleeve shirt all the time.
29:43
But he's still, it'd be nice to see
29:45
a little bit of variety.
29:47
He's still trying to claim, you know, this
29:48
wartime dressing, I suppose.
29:55
Mm hmm.
29:57
Crazy, crazy world in which we live.
30:02
Did you hear about the Canadian, Canadian?
30:08
This is a get this France to France
30:10
and Canada are sending what they're moving into
30:16
Greenland.
30:16
What have they done?
30:18
Canada and France have established consulates in Greenland.
30:24
So, you know, nobody's had them before.
30:27
But now they're making console.
30:28
The French and the Canadians have put a
30:31
have open consulates there.
30:36
Amid a rift between the U.S. and,
30:39
you know, Europe over the U.S. wanting
30:43
to seize Greenland.
30:45
Now, to be fair, Trump hasn't been going
30:48
crazy over it this this week.
30:50
He's switched to Iran.
30:52
They've already seized.
30:54
And it's pretty funny.
30:55
What have we heard about Maduro recently?
30:57
Anything?
30:59
Anything?
31:00
I imagine they'll let that go and then
31:02
they'll say they'll just let let him and
31:04
his wife, you know, retire to some place
31:06
with, you know, a stipend from the U
31:09
.S. government.
31:11
Somebody will kill him in their sleep later
31:13
on and everybody will move on as if
31:15
nothing happened.
31:16
And that we didn't go in and overthrow
31:20
yet another country and steal all their oil.
31:26
That's that's just how it goes.
31:27
Throwing throwing Venezuela back an additional set number
31:32
of years as well.
31:33
We aren't doing them any favors with what
31:35
we're doing, by the way.
31:38
But Canada and France have established their consulate
31:41
in Greenland.
31:42
And Trump recently reiterated that, you know, last
31:46
month, strategic island.
31:47
He wants it to become part of the
31:49
U.S. He cited supposed Russian and Chinese
31:53
threats.
31:54
Both Moscow and Beijing, you know, laugh about
31:57
gum.
31:57
What in the hell are you talking about?
31:59
Most of the world agrees.
32:01
You know, what are you talking about?
32:04
Nobody's trying to steal Greenland.
32:07
Denmark, along with several other European nations, rejected
32:11
Trump administration's push to take possession of Greenland.
32:16
And on Saturday, Canadian Foreign Minister Anita Anand
32:21
met with her Danish and Greenland counterparts, Lars
32:25
Loke Rasmussen and Vivian Motsvelt in Nuuk.
32:29
During her visit, she opened Canada's new consulate
32:33
in Greenland's capital.
32:35
The Canadian diplomat reaffirmed Ottawa's support for the
32:40
sovereignty and territorial integrity of Greenland and of
32:44
the Kingdom of Denmark.
32:46
That was quoted by the foreign ministry.
32:48
A day earlier, French Foreign Minister Jean-Noël
32:52
Barrett.
32:54
Maybe it's Barreau.
32:55
I don't know how you say that in
32:56
French.
32:56
I don't speak French.
32:57
Officially assumed the office of French consul general
33:00
in Greenland.
33:01
A statement by the foreign ministry noted that
33:04
France is the first European Union country to
33:08
set up a consulate general on the Danish
33:11
governed island.
33:13
France reiterates its commitment to respect for the
33:16
Kingdom of Denmark's territorial integrity.
33:22
Last month, Denmark launched a military exercise in
33:26
Greenland with Germany, France, Sweden, Norway and the
33:30
UK sending symbolic contingents of up to 15
33:35
personnel each.
33:38
And Germany sent five and then took them
33:40
home.
33:41
It was, you know, kind of a well,
33:43
you know, those that's some serious military exercises,
33:47
right?
33:47
After several European leaders, including French President Macron
33:51
and UK Prime Minister Starmer, reaffirmed support for
33:54
Denmark.
33:54
Last month, Trump threatened Denmark, Norway, Sweden, France,
33:58
Germany, UK, Netherlands and Finland with tariffs.
34:00
The president dropped his threat shortly thereafter, saying
34:03
he agreed on the framework of a future
34:06
deal with respect to Greenland with Secretary General
34:09
Mark Rutte with no details forthcoming.
34:13
Last month, Erasmus Yarlov, the chair of Denmark's
34:17
Parliamentary Defense Committee, said Russia and China pose
34:21
no threat to Greenland.
34:25
Hmm.
34:26
An assessment echoed by EU Transport Commissioner Apostolos
34:31
Tsitsikakostas, I know I didn't said that right.
34:38
Tsitsikokostas, Tsitsikokostas, sometimes international flavor has a hard
34:44
time with names from Denmark or the EU
34:48
Transport Commissioner Apostolos.
34:51
It sounds Greek to me, Tsitsikostas.
34:55
Russian Foreign Minister Lavrov similarly said Washington is
34:59
well aware that neither Russia nor China has
35:04
any plans regarding the island.
35:08
Yes.
35:10
Isn't that nuts?
35:13
The Socialist Party in Spain has no support.
35:18
Spanish Prime Minister Pedro Sanchez's Socialist Party suffered
35:22
a major defeat Sunday in the Aragon regional
35:26
election, while right wing parties, right wing.
35:29
You ever noticed that it's always right wing
35:32
if you are conservative?
35:35
You're a right winger.
35:36
You're some kind of crazy lunatic on the
35:39
far fringes of reality if you are a
35:43
conservative.
35:44
But if you're a liberal, you are well
35:48
-meaning and highly intelligent and all kinds of
35:52
stuff.
35:52
A normal person.
35:54
Of course, you cancel the rest of the
35:56
world.
35:56
We cancel the rest of people by calling
35:59
them names.
36:00
You know, that's what we do.
36:02
And now the right wing parties are making
36:04
substantial gains and underscoring the government's weakening support
36:10
across the country of Spain.
36:12
The Conservative People's Party won 26 seats, falling
36:18
short of a majority, taking 34%.
36:22
Of the vote, Sanchez's party dropped to 18
36:26
seats, the worst ever regional result, with only
36:30
24% support.
36:33
While right wing Vox doubled the number of
36:36
its seats to 14, coming in third.
36:40
Aragon, often called Spain's Ohio, is viewed as
36:44
the barometer of the national political mood.
36:47
This is not the result we hoped for,
36:50
said socialist candidate Pilar Alegria, who had resigned
36:54
as education minister to run in the regional
36:57
vote.
36:59
Aragon now faces an uncertain horizon.
37:03
Sunday's vote was the first of three regional
37:06
elections scheduled in PP-held areas of Spain
37:10
to be followed by Castilla y León in
37:13
March and Andalusia in June.
37:15
PP and socialists frame the Aragon election around
37:19
broader national issues.
37:21
PP portraying it as a referendum on the
37:23
prime minister, whose coalition has also been hit
37:26
by scandals, naturally, involving his party and allies.
37:31
The prime minister's personal popularity has also been
37:34
dented by corruption involving two of his closest
37:38
aides and his wife.
37:41
Wow.
37:42
The election campaign in Aragon, and this is
37:45
going on Europe-wide.
37:46
The reason I'm telling you this is because
37:48
this is happening all over Europe.
37:51
The election campaign in Aragon, and some say
37:54
it's a result of the Trump kind of
37:59
nationalists make America great sort of thing, right?
38:04
So this northeastern region, Aragon, has about 1
38:09
.3 million people and it has been dominated
38:13
about debates over Sanchez's plan to legalize 500
38:20
,000 immigrants.
38:23
Opposition leaders reacted with fierce condemnation of this,
38:27
framing the move as irresponsible.
38:31
PP leader Alberto Núñez-Fejo accused Sanchez of
38:35
attempting to deflect attention from a mounting national
38:37
crisis, following a series of recent fatal passenger
38:41
train accidents that left dozens dead.
38:44
And by the way, this seems to be
38:49
the pattern everywhere.
38:51
By the far left, maybe you call them
38:54
your left wingers, right?
38:57
You import people from foreign countries, just like
39:01
we did in the United States during the
39:03
Biden hopeful of stealing the elections for generations
39:07
to come, bring in a whole number of
39:10
illegals, give them all kinds of freebies, let
39:15
them immediately sign up for things like social
39:19
security or get some kind of a status
39:23
to keep them here forever, or a piece
39:26
of paper that says, come in three years
39:28
and we give them the ability to work.
39:31
And then you have imported your own voting
39:38
bloc in huge proportions.
39:41
So recent EU elections, just like we said,
39:46
have seen other invasions replacing local populations, right?
39:53
Recent EU elections see a surge in this
39:56
right wing and conservative support, and I have
40:00
to throw in the right wing just because
40:02
that's what everybody else does, just to make,
40:05
I'm doing it to make fun of it,
40:07
kind of.
40:08
Driven by concerns over immigration, economic uncertainty, political
40:11
scandal, in the 2024 European Parliament vote, France's
40:16
national rally led with 31 percent.
40:21
Far right, Austria's Freedom Party topped the polls,
40:24
Germany's AFD made significant gains, right wing parties
40:30
also strengthened in Belgium, Italy, and Hungary.
40:36
Yep, yep, yep, yep.
40:42
Criminal gangs have been branded enemies of Italy
40:46
for being Olympic protesters.
40:50
I'm not going to share that story, though.
40:52
I just thought the title was entertaining.
40:54
Now, Russia says that here we go again,
40:59
and think about this.
41:00
Here we are with more foreign NGOs plotting
41:05
a coup in Belarus, a new color revolution
41:12
to take Belarus out of the sphere and
41:16
away from, because Lukashenko is one of the
41:19
strongest supporters of, probably the strongest supporter of
41:24
Russia, and to turn Belarus, switch away from
41:29
Ukraine for a minute.
41:30
The two largest countries outside of Poland on
41:34
Russia's western border are Belarus and Ukraine, and
41:39
if you can flip Belarus with a color
41:43
revolution and a coup on Lukashenko, which wouldn't
41:49
surprise me in the slightest, and that's a
41:52
cool country.
41:53
My first, my only time there, first time
41:55
there and only time was in the summer
41:57
of last year, 2025, and a pretty cool
42:00
country.
42:01
I mean, plenty of history over there, and
42:04
pretty, pretty, I don't know, I don't want
42:09
to say modern, but, you know, everything, and
42:11
it's a western, very western, you know, lots
42:14
of, lots of new stuff.
42:15
Western NGOs are preparing a new wave of
42:18
anti-government protests, though, in Belarus that are
42:22
going to be timed to coincide with the
42:24
2030 presidential election, says Russian's foreign intelligence service.
42:30
An attempt to overturn the result of the
42:33
2020 elections led to violent clashes throughout the
42:37
country, but order was eventually restored.
42:40
According to the SVR, western sponsors were disappointed
42:44
in the leaders of the riots and are
42:48
actively looking for new people to try and
42:50
topple Belarusian President Alexander Lukashenko.
42:56
The quote is this, NGOs in western nations,
43:00
including democratizing structures, agencies, and foundations in the
43:05
U.S., as well as Britain, Germany, Poland,
43:07
and other European nations are building up assets
43:10
to again attempt to destabilize the situation and
43:14
change constitutional order in Belarus.
43:18
In order to achieve a color revolution, western
43:22
organizations are taking the shock of opposition activists
43:27
in Belarus, the SVR said.
43:31
Svetlana Tikhanovskaya, the central figure of the 2020
43:36
protests and other people currently based in Lithuania
43:39
and Poland, have demonstrated in the past year
43:42
an absolute inability to influence political processes in
43:47
their home nation in any way, said the
43:50
agency.
43:51
So the SVR does not expect Belarusian citizens
43:54
to support any foreign destabilization operation because they
43:57
have seen the example of Ukraine, Moldova, and
44:02
other nations destroyed in the name of western
44:05
geopolitical ambition under the slogan of calling for
44:09
protection of democracy and human rights.
44:14
Now ponder that for just a second, that
44:17
statement.
44:19
The examples of Ukraine, Moldova, and other nations
44:24
destroyed in the name of western geopolitical ambition.
44:30
Under the slogan of calling for protection of
44:34
democracy and human rights, I suppose one of
44:40
the, you know, how people say these days,
44:42
how that work out for you, you know,
44:44
how's that working?
44:46
Yeah, we got democracy, trust us, we have
44:49
democracy in Ukraine, right?
44:52
Democracy exists, it's there, not really, but there
44:56
it is.
44:57
Corruption is definitely there.
44:58
War is definitely there.
45:00
NGOs were definitely there.
45:03
And, you know, fomenting all this crap forever
45:06
for 30 years took them to do this.
45:09
And how do you do it?
45:10
You change the language, you change your history,
45:12
you change your school, what you're teaching in
45:15
schools, and you bring up an entire generation
45:18
of people, children, that don't know their own
45:23
history, and they've done it.
45:25
They're doing the same thing everywhere else.
45:29
The warning follows a thaw in the relationship
45:32
between Lukashenko and Donald Trump.
45:36
In recent months, Washington secured the release of
45:39
dozens of Belarusian activists who had been sentenced
45:42
for their roles in 2020 riots.
45:45
The freed individuals included Tikhanovskaya's husband, Sergei, who
45:51
was barred from running in the 2020 election
45:53
and jailed for inciting insurgency.
45:55
Since his release, he had prodded supporters with
45:58
video statements complaining that they were failing to
46:01
donate enough money to anti-Lukashenko causes.
46:08
Last October, the Lithuanian government downgraded Tikhanovskaya's state
46:14
-provided personnel security, which was initially offered due
46:19
to her supposed status as the legitimate head
46:22
of Belarus.
46:23
Her office said she may be forced to
46:26
move to Poland because of this, which Lithuanian
46:30
Prime Minister Inga Rudzinina said was political exile's
46:34
personal business, adding, I see neither benefit nor
46:37
loss here.
46:38
She stressed that the Belarusian opposition is larger
46:42
than Tikhanovskaya.
46:44
That's true.
46:45
That is true.
46:48
Let's see here.
46:51
Let's let's talk about Moldova for just a
46:57
second.
46:59
With the formal withdrawal from the CIS underway,
47:03
Moldova is facing mounting economic and political pressure
47:07
amid unresolved questions about where it stands in
47:13
Europe.
47:16
Yeah, Moldova officially will no longer be a
47:20
CIS member.
47:22
The report told about this a couple of
47:25
months ago.
47:25
The process has already started.
47:28
We made this decision recently, and we are
47:30
currently moving through approval stages.
47:33
And by mid-February, we will finalize the
47:36
process and the government subsequent to this decision
47:39
to be taken by our fellow deputies.
47:42
So as Moldova moves to withdraw, the decision
47:46
marks a dismantling of the economic and political
47:50
framework that has underpinned the country since independence,
47:54
even without any binding European alternative.
47:59
Presented in Chisinau as part of an irreversible
48:03
turn toward Europe, the move reflects a strategic
48:07
wager whose implications extends beyond symbolism, with mounting
48:14
economic and political consequences already shaping the country's
48:18
trajectory.
48:20
Tell you what, it could be frightening in
48:24
January when they announce this, and they're trying
48:27
to get out of the CIS.
48:30
I mean, trying.
48:32
They're going to do it.
48:33
They're going to be out of it.
48:34
And face west is what the plan is
48:38
for that.
48:40
Let's see.
48:40
I had a couple more I wanted to
48:42
share with you.
48:44
Where, where, where?
48:45
On the Lavrov end.
48:48
I, I wanted to share a much longer
48:55
story that is pretty, well,
49:08
it's damning to me.
49:09
But before I get that, I wanted to
49:11
talk about that.
49:14
The shooter has put out a video.
49:17
Remember, I told you a little bit earlier
49:19
in the show about trying to kill Vladimir
49:22
Alexei of the number two in the world.
49:24
Moscow, the prime suspect in the shooting, because
49:28
he actually did shoot him, Vladimir Alexei through
49:32
his vehicle.
49:33
And so, and Alexei was in the hospital
49:37
in stable condition.
49:40
The main suspect in the assassination attempt confessed
49:45
to investigators that he acted on the orders
49:49
of Ukraine.
49:50
In an interview released earlier today, Monday, well,
49:54
in Russia, it's eight hours ahead of us.
49:56
Alexei of the first deputy chief of Russia's
49:59
ministry was shot Friday in a communal hall
50:01
of his residence in Moscow.
50:03
Prime suspect, prime suspect, Lyubomir Korba was arrested
50:10
in the UAE at Russia's request and transferred
50:13
to Moscow over the weekend.
50:15
Kiv denies involvement.
50:16
Now, before I finish with this story, though,
50:20
I was quite interested in the UAE extraditing
50:31
on Russia's behalf a, he's a Russian citizen,
50:37
but a lot of people have dual citizenship.
50:40
If they have Russia-Ukrainian ties, they can
50:44
have dual citizenship.
50:45
And they do, a lot of people have
50:47
U.S.-Russian citizenship, and they can be part
50:52
of either country.
50:53
You just got to obey the laws in
50:54
both and pay your taxes in both and
50:57
all kinds of stuff like that.
51:00
But it's pretty rare for the UAE to
51:04
extradite people.
51:06
You know, when's the last time the UAE
51:10
extradited, you know, a terrorist to the United
51:15
States?
51:17
Doesn't happen.
51:19
And I'm not saying it doesn't, but it's
51:22
pretty few and far between.
51:24
And so here, I think it signals kind
51:27
of a larger change in the way the
51:31
world is going.
51:33
Could be wrong.
51:34
I don't know.
51:35
But it's an interesting point.
51:36
Alexeyev, the first deputy chief of Russia's military
51:39
intelligence, was shot Friday in footage published by
51:43
Russia's FSB.
51:46
The 65-year-old Ukrainian-born Russian citizen
51:51
said he was already on Kiv's payroll and
51:55
was promised $30,000 for killing the general.
51:59
Korba stated he was recruited by the SBU,
52:04
Security Service of Ukraine, last August and sent
52:08
to Moscow to surveil several targets and received
52:13
$2,000 monthly from Ukraine.
52:16
He said the order to prepare a hit
52:18
on Alexeyev came in December.
52:22
After the assassination attempt, I was instructed to
52:27
go to the airport and take a flight
52:29
to Dubai.
52:30
In Dubai, there was a ticket to Romania.
52:33
From Romania, I was supposed to be taken
52:35
to Kiv.
52:36
My group of handlers, led by a general,
52:39
was supposed to meet me in Kiv.
52:42
The FSB alleges Polish special services assisted the
52:46
SBU by involving Korba's son, who is a
52:50
Polish citizen.
52:52
Korba's acquaintance, Viktor Vasin, who helped him rent
52:55
an apartment, was arrested in Russia and confessed
52:59
to knowingly aiding the Ukrainian plot.
53:04
A third suspect, Zinaida Serebrytskaya, also born in
53:11
Ukraine, has fled Russia.
53:14
She traveled to Turkey on the eve of
53:16
the shooting and is now in Ukraine.
53:20
How about that?
53:24
Yeah.
53:26
I'm keeping my eye on that one.
53:29
That's an interesting story, and not the first.
53:31
There's been several successful assassinations inside of Russia
53:37
carried out by the Ukrainian security services, and
53:43
people allege that the Ukrainian security services had
53:48
something to do with that Krokus concert shooting,
53:52
festival shooting, several years, a couple, three years
53:57
ago.
53:58
The UK has given Russia every reason to
54:01
view it as the party, as a party,
54:05
to the Ukraine conflict.
54:06
I watched a, so the Russian ambassador to
54:11
Britain, his name is Andrei Kelin, and he
54:16
allows himself to be interviewed fairly frequently in
54:20
Britain.
54:23
And I like to watch it.
54:24
It's always in English.
54:26
He's well spoken.
54:27
I try to watch him when they come
54:30
out and get his take on current events
54:35
and the things that he is saying.
54:36
And he was pretty brutal in this one.
54:39
He said that the UK has given Russia
54:44
every reason to view it as a party
54:47
to the Ukraine conflict, including by deploying troops
54:52
to Ukraine, said this past week.
55:00
Britain's involvement is deep, reflects a strategy of
55:05
containing Russia.
55:06
In this interview was published earlier today, Britain
55:11
provides Kyiv with political direction, supports it financially
55:16
and materially, shares its intelligence, arms, and trains
55:21
and fights alongside Ukrainian armed forces and other
55:25
militarized structures.
55:27
We have every right to consider London as
55:30
a de facto party to the conflict.
55:34
Now, he's not alone in saying this, that
55:37
they've been parties to the contract or the
55:40
conflict for ever, ever since it started.
55:44
And frankly, all the way back to 2014,
55:47
you know, Britain has a lot of money
55:50
in Odessa.
55:51
They've put tons of money into that, into
55:53
that port city.
55:56
They want to have access to trade from
56:00
their exports of Ukrainian things through the Black
56:03
Sea to England, through the, you know, Bosphorus
56:08
Straits and, you know, through Turkey and all
56:11
of that and around and into England to
56:16
give them an alternative route.
56:18
And they want to have, as does the
56:20
United States, presence in the Black Sea.
56:23
And Russia is very much against that.
56:26
Turkey is too, frankly.
56:28
But it's every, he said that everybody, they
56:34
have every right to think that there are
56:37
British troops in Ukraine.
56:38
The presence of active duty troops in Ukraine
56:41
from Britain is now openly acknowledged, as shown
56:47
by a service member's death last December while
56:51
observing Ukrainian forces test new defense capabilities, said
56:57
the Ministry of Defense.
56:59
London avoids confirming combat roles, said Kielan.
57:02
But there are many ways to present incidents
57:06
in a relatively decent light.
57:09
British veterans served as mercenaries in Ukraine, also
57:14
inspired by media rhetoric and the government's message
57:18
that Kiev needs to be supported in every
57:20
way.
57:21
Russia has long said that a lot of
57:24
the traffic over the radio that they hear
57:29
is in English, U.S. English and British
57:32
English.
57:34
You know, they were there, especially in the
57:38
very beginning.
57:38
The U.S. had a lot of people
57:40
there.
57:41
Kielan described Moscow-London relations as long being
57:44
strained by successive British government antagonism.
57:49
Using Russia as the boogeyman to distract from
57:54
domestic issues is alienating voters from mainstream parties,
58:00
he suggested, and pointing to the rise of
58:04
Reform UK.
58:06
Interesting side note for you.
58:09
Do you know what the boogeyman is in
58:13
Russian?
58:15
Baba Yaga, and it's kind of a witch
58:17
kind of, and it could be several things
58:19
like the boogeyman, a witch, and they show
58:23
Baba Yaga.
58:24
She's not very pretty, but sometimes they show
58:28
that it's basically a witch.
58:30
So there are plenty of witches running around.
58:32
So I wanted to share with you, and
58:34
it's a pretty long, pretty long opinion piece.
58:44
Uh, who is this by?
58:46
Um, it didn't have a nice byline, so
58:49
I think it's a staff article.
58:52
Uh, here we go.
58:53
Sviatoslav Kiyazev and Anastasia Sekirina.
58:59
Uh, let's see.
59:01
This article has to do with torture, murder,
59:07
ethnic cleansing.
59:09
And, uh, if you don't know who the,
59:14
uh, impetus of this is, these are radical
59:20
nationalists that collaborated with Nazi Germany and left
59:26
a bloody legacy celebrated in Ukraine today.
59:32
In early February, 1929, 97 years ago, a
59:40
group of Ukrainian political emigres gathered in Vienna
59:45
to formalize what they believed was a movement
59:49
of national liberation.
59:52
What emerged, however, was not a campaign for
59:56
statehood, but a radical organization that rejected democratic
1:00:01
norms and embraced political violence.
1:00:05
Members of the Organization of Ukrainian Nationalists took
1:00:10
part in Nazi Germany's aggression against Poland and
1:00:15
the USSR, carried out mass killings on ethnic
1:00:19
and political grounds and conducted sabotage operations for
1:00:24
the Third Reich and later for the West.
1:00:27
Those members of the OUN who survived and
1:00:32
could not flee to the West faced criminal
1:00:35
charges in the USSR. However, many were granted
1:00:40
amnesty by Soviet leader Nikita Khrushchev in an
1:00:44
effort to promote internal reconciliation in Ukraine.
1:00:51
So, this article examines how the OUN developed
1:00:55
into a militant movement whose actions during and
1:00:59
after World War II, nice history lesson to
1:01:02
give you a backdrop of Ukraine and a
1:01:06
controversial historical legacy, which is being embraced right
1:01:11
now by many, many Ukrainians as very positive,
1:01:14
like the Banderovs who killed 120,000, I
1:01:19
believe the number was, of Polish citizens in
1:01:22
Lvov.
1:01:23
Nonsense.
1:01:24
And so now these Ukrainian nationalists are being
1:01:30
given, you know, nostalgic for affirmation, I suppose
1:01:38
you would call it.
1:01:39
So, the history of Ukrainian nationalism is brief.
1:01:44
The term Ukrainian is not used and wasn't
1:01:49
used until the late 19th century.
1:01:51
According to historians, the idea that, and I've
1:01:55
said this forever, the idea that Ukrainians were
1:01:57
separate from Russians was seized upon by the
1:02:02
Austro-Hungarian authorities who recognized the anti-Russia
1:02:08
potential.
1:02:10
In contrast, Gallican Russophiles who advocate for unity
1:02:14
between Carpathia's region and Russia's face severe repression
1:02:19
from Austro-Hungary.
1:02:24
During World War I, Austrians actively promoted Ukrainian
1:02:29
nationalism to recruit volunteers for their own army.
1:02:34
So, like I say repeatedly on this program,
1:02:38
the wars in Europe have been going on
1:02:41
for centuries and Russia has always been the
1:02:46
boogeyman on the far right and being as
1:02:49
huge as they are and have always been.
1:02:52
And they haven't started any wars.
1:02:55
Find one that they started.
1:02:58
Just please find one.
1:03:02
So, they want, if the Austro-Hungary, Austria
1:03:08
-Hungary empire could use anti-Russia potential and
1:03:13
create a separate Ukraine.
1:03:16
I told you before, which is basically on
1:03:22
the edge, on the frontier, right?
1:03:24
Ukraine is the frontier, but they were still
1:03:27
Russia and they had a mix of languages
1:03:29
over there and the people, you know, overrun
1:03:32
by Poland, overrun by Turkey, overrun by Genghis
1:03:36
Khan, for God's sake, you know, it's been
1:03:40
going on forever.
1:03:41
So, this history is not something that we
1:03:47
should be involved in.
1:03:49
Historians note that amid the revolutionary events in
1:03:51
1917 in Russia, Ukraine nationalism became a political
1:03:57
elevator for various public figures.
1:04:00
The nationalists argued for the necessity of creating
1:04:03
an autonomous political space within what is Ukraine,
1:04:07
formed the Central Rada and tried to persuade
1:04:10
Russia's provisional government to grant them authority.
1:04:14
And following the October Revolution, they proclaimed the
1:04:17
establish of the Ukrainian People's Republic.
1:04:21
UPR leaders liberated and armed Austro-Hungarian prisoners
1:04:25
of war to suppress uprisings by local residents
1:04:30
who supported leftist movements.
1:04:33
However, the nationalists fled Kiev when Bolshevik forces
1:04:38
approached the city.
1:04:39
Later, the German command engaged representatives of the
1:04:44
UPR for negotiations in Brest.
1:04:47
And Brest is such a cool country, I
1:04:49
mean, a fortress area right in between Poland
1:04:55
and Belarus.
1:05:00
It was, talk about history over there.
1:05:03
I spent a whole day just wandering the
1:05:06
fortress inside of Brest.
1:05:09
Wow, that was cool.
1:05:12
And if you haven't ever had a desire
1:05:15
to see something like that, tell you what,
1:05:18
you could be missing out.
1:05:20
The German authorities considered UPR representatives unreliable, ineffective,
1:05:26
linked to criminal activity.
1:05:27
One day, a German patrol entered the Central
1:05:30
Rada's meeting hall, arrested suspects, and dispersed the
1:05:34
others.
1:05:35
The new appointee of the German administration was
1:05:39
a former czarist general, General Pavel Skoropadsky.
1:05:45
However, following Germany's defeat in World War I,
1:05:49
his regime collapsed.
1:05:51
Former political figures of the UPR, headed by
1:05:54
Simon Pilatura, then seized control of the UPR.
1:05:58
After suffering a defeat at the hands of
1:06:00
the Red Army, Petlura's followers fled to Poland,
1:06:08
promising to cede Western Ukraine in exchange for
1:06:11
assistance against the Bolsheviks.
1:06:13
But as a result of the Polish-Soviet
1:06:16
war, much of modern Ukraine was under the
1:06:19
control of the Ukrainian SSR, while Poland took
1:06:22
Galicia and Volhynia without granting any concession to
1:06:27
Petlura's faction.
1:06:29
Petlura fled to Europe and was assassinated on
1:06:33
May 25, 1926 in Paris by Samuel Schwarzberg
1:06:38
in retaliation for atrocities committed by nationalists against
1:06:43
Jews during the Civil War, and a French
1:06:47
jury acquitted Schwarzberg.
1:06:49
With the leaders gone, Ukrainian nationalists that managed
1:06:53
to flee abroad formed radical organizations.
1:06:57
On January 28, 1929, they convened in Vienna
1:07:02
for a Congress of Ukrainian Nationalists, also known
1:07:07
as the First Great Assembly.
1:07:10
They agreed to fight for Ukraine's detachment from
1:07:13
the USSR with the aim of establishing a
1:07:17
national dictatorship.
1:07:20
The participants declared the formation of the Organization
1:07:25
of Ukrainian Nationalists and elected former Austrian officer
1:07:32
and Petlura's ally Yevgeny Konovalets as its leader.
1:07:37
The Congress concluded on February 3.
1:07:40
The Congress formalized a radical movement rooted in
1:07:43
extreme nationalism and rejection of democratic principles.
1:07:47
Yevgenia Tarniagrina, a methodologist at the Museum of
1:07:51
Victory, said in an interview, according to historians,
1:07:55
Ukrainian nationalists were dissatisfied with the fact that
1:07:59
they had no independent state in which to
1:08:02
legally promote their own ideas.
1:08:05
Rather than addressing problems by fostering political dialogue
1:08:09
and human rights advocacy, they turned to violence,
1:08:13
conspiracy, and ideology of integral nationalism, where the
1:08:19
nation's interests were superior to individual rights, and
1:08:23
terror is viewed as an acceptable and even
1:08:26
desirable political tool.
1:08:30
Konovalets quickly established ties with German intelligence, which
1:08:34
became particularly strong after Hitler came to power
1:08:38
in Germany.
1:08:38
Ukrainian nationalists promised to support the Nazis in
1:08:43
their aggression against Poland and the USSR. Following
1:08:47
the terrorist attack orchestrated by the OUN at
1:08:51
the Soviet consulate in Lvov on October 21,
1:08:55
1933, Soviet intelligence decided to neutralize Konovalets, and
1:09:00
on May 23, 1938, Konovalets was killed by
1:09:06
NKVD agent Pavel Sudoplatov.
1:09:12
So, under the banners of Hitler and NATO,
1:09:15
shortly after Konovalets' death, the Organization of Ukrainian
1:09:19
Nationalists split into two factions.
1:09:22
Emigrants in Western and Central Europe wanted to
1:09:25
see Konovalets' relative Andrei Melnik as a leader
1:09:29
of the organization, while militants from the Nationalist
1:09:32
underground, operating in Poland and later in the
1:09:36
USSR, backed the radical Stepan Bandera.
1:09:41
Ultimately, this division led the two factions known
1:09:45
as OUNM, led by Melnik, and OUNB, led
1:09:50
by Bandera.
1:09:51
Both Melnik and Bandera were recruited by Nazi
1:09:55
intelligence as agents.
1:09:58
In 1939, Ukrainian nationalists, as part of Hitler's
1:10:04
forces, took part in the invasion of Poland
1:10:07
and were subsequently redirected by German intelligence to
1:10:11
engage in espionage and sabotage against the USSR.
1:10:19
Under the direction of Abwehr, Roland and Nachtgall,
1:10:22
battalions were formed.
1:10:24
They were made up of OUN members and
1:10:27
took part in Hitler's aggression against the Soviet
1:10:30
Union.
1:10:31
Additionally, OUN members joined mobile groups serving under
1:10:36
German and carrying out punitive operations during the
1:10:42
operation.
1:10:43
Some members of the Bandera faction soon developed
1:10:46
political ambition and attempted to declare their own
1:10:50
state under the protection of the Third Reich.
1:10:54
Coupled with the lack of discipline and widespread
1:10:57
corruption, within Bandera's ranks, the idea considerably irritated
1:11:04
the Germans.
1:11:05
They curtailed the autonomy of Ukrainian nationalists, reassigning
1:11:10
former saboteurs to police units and placing Bandera
1:11:14
under arrest.
1:11:17
However, the Nazis did not completely abandon the
1:11:21
idea of using nationalists for their own purposes.
1:11:26
Bandera supporters played an active role in mass
1:11:30
killings of Jews, most notably during the Lvov
1:11:36
pogroms, the Babi Yar massacre, and other brutal
1:11:41
actions against Jewish populations.
1:11:43
One of Bandera's aides, Roman Shukhevich, who had
1:11:47
previously worked for the Abwehr, served as a
1:11:50
Hitlerist auxiliary police and took part in punitive
1:11:54
operations in Belarus.
1:11:55
After resigning, he returned to western Ukraine and
1:11:59
helped establish the armed wing of the OUN,
1:12:02
called the Ukrainian Insurgent Army, which he headed.
1:12:09
OUN UIA militants launched military actions against Soviet
1:12:14
partisans and began systemically killing Polish citizens.
1:12:20
Estimates suggest the death toll from ethnic cleansing
1:12:24
known as the Volhynian massacres could have reached
1:12:30
up to 200,000 people.
1:12:33
At the same time, OUN UIA militants eliminated
1:12:37
Ukrainians that could have supported the Soviet regime
1:12:41
following the arrival of the Red Army.
1:12:43
Entire families, including elderly parents and small children,
1:12:49
were brutally murdered.
1:12:52
These might have been the first nationalists in
1:12:54
history for whom the lives of their fellow
1:12:57
countrymen meant absolutely nothing.
1:13:02
Alexander Makushin, an expert from Russia's National Center
1:13:07
for Historic Memory, said at the same time
1:13:14
OUN members were involved in forming the SS
1:13:18
Galicia Division and separate SS police units that
1:13:22
conducted punitive operations.
1:13:26
And following the defeat of the Galicia Nebrodi,
1:13:29
many of the fighters fled and joined the
1:13:32
UIA.
1:13:33
In 1944, the Third Reich realized it would
1:13:37
have to relinquish territory to the USSR. The
1:13:40
German authorities released Bandera from custody and intensified
1:13:46
cooperation with the UIA.
1:13:49
Shukevich was provided with tens of thousands of
1:13:53
firearms, ammunition, money, and trained saboteurs for operations
1:13:59
against the Red Army.
1:14:02
As the front advanced, the nationalist attack districts
1:14:05
and regional centers looted shops and pharmacies, assaulted
1:14:10
draft offices.
1:14:12
After the defeat of the Third Reich, nationalists
1:14:15
established contact with intelligent agencies in Britain, the
1:14:18
U.S., Italy, and West Germany and received
1:14:21
support from them.
1:14:23
And so, basically, this is the story of
1:14:28
how a century of political violence is linked
1:14:31
to the atrocities of today, because there's plenty
1:14:37
of them going on as well inside of
1:14:41
Ukraine.
1:14:44
I find the history of all of that,
1:14:47
to me, is very telling on what's on
1:14:51
today.
1:14:52
And yet, like I always say, an indication
1:14:58
of why we should not be, we, America,
1:15:02
should not be involved in any of it.
1:15:07
None of those disputes are ours, and we
1:15:12
have nothing to do with any of them.
1:15:16
I wonder if I have the content
1:15:30
that I wanted to play for you.
1:15:33
I couldn't find it.
1:15:37
Where did we go?
1:15:44
There's the Trump story, but I wanted to
1:15:46
get the, remember, I wanted to tell you
1:15:48
about the Moon City Elon Musk plans to
1:15:53
create for us all.
1:15:57
But I'm missing one of my stories, and
1:16:00
it's depressing to me.
1:16:02
Where is it?
1:16:07
Remember, I told you about the Hungarian before.
1:16:12
There's a great deal of uproar.
1:16:15
I'm going to summarize this story for you,
1:16:17
because the Hungarians, there's a large overlap between
1:16:26
Ukraine and Hungary of citizenry on both sides
1:16:30
of the border, right?
1:16:31
And so there are plenty of Hungarian national
1:16:34
people living in Western Ukraine, and they get
1:16:40
mobilized too.
1:16:42
And one of the hot stories that is,
1:16:46
what would you call it, going viral recently,
1:16:51
is the story of the Ukrainian citizen, Hungarian
1:16:58
national, that was very, very sick.
1:17:05
He had health issues, big time health issues,
1:17:08
and he was mobilized anyway, at gunpoint, mobilized,
1:17:14
sent to the front within a very short
1:17:16
period of time, two, three weeks, he was
1:17:19
sent to the front.
1:17:20
And he died, not by getting killed, he
1:17:22
died of the same problem that he warned
1:17:27
them about.
1:17:29
He had a breathing problem, lung problems, and
1:17:32
he was not healthy.
1:17:35
And they mobilized him anyway, sent him to
1:17:38
die, and he did die, but not from
1:17:41
war results, but from health conditions, because it's
1:17:46
more important to mobilize even temporarily.
1:17:49
I mean, maybe he could have held that
1:17:52
ground a little bit longer for them, you
1:17:54
know, unable to breathe.
1:17:57
But Budapest is pretty upset with this.
1:18:00
So Ukraine's forced mobilization has become an open
1:18:06
manhunt, with civilians being detained and forced into
1:18:10
military service against their will.
1:18:15
Again, it was Peter Sojarto that he commented
1:18:18
on the detention in Ukraine of a Hungarian
1:18:21
citizen who attempted to help a group of
1:18:23
Ukrainians cross the border because the people were
1:18:27
fed up with fighting.
1:18:28
The Ukrainian people do not want to die,
1:18:31
yet every day there are images of violence
1:18:34
playing out like a TV series.
1:18:38
Open manhunts unfolding on the streets of Ukrainian
1:18:41
cities, he wrote in Facebook yesterday.
1:18:45
Now, I also told you they're changing the
1:18:49
rules and allowing them to use weapons to
1:18:54
shoot people that don't want to go.
1:18:57
They're able to shoot them now, they're changing
1:18:59
the rules.
1:19:00
Ukrainian authorities recently reported detaining a Hungarian national.
1:19:05
The country's consulate general in Beregovoye provided immediate
1:19:11
consular protection.
1:19:13
Ukraine's recruitment drive has grown increasingly brutal amid
1:19:18
its military setbacks and manpower shortages, with hundreds
1:19:23
upon hundreds of documented cases of draft officers
1:19:27
using force to seize men off the street
1:19:29
and multiple reports of death among conscripts.
1:19:35
The case clearly shows that the war must
1:19:38
be ended as soon as possible, said Sujarto.
1:19:41
This violent spiral must be stopped immediately, he
1:19:49
said.
1:19:50
Ukrainian men, a grandfather, a father, a brother,
1:19:54
a son, a grandson, were desperately trying to
1:19:58
flee the country to avoid conscription, deployment to
1:20:02
the front in what he described as likely
1:20:05
death.
1:20:06
Ukrainian border guards, he said, were using every
1:20:10
means available to catch those attempting to escape.
1:20:15
Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban said last week
1:20:20
that Budapest would not accept Kiev's arrogant attitude
1:20:25
toward Hungary and its people and that his
1:20:28
government would not tolerate forced mobilization of ethnic
1:20:33
Hungarians from Ukraine's Transcarpathia region.
1:20:38
Orban said the issue would be raised at
1:20:40
the EU level and that Hungary would support
1:20:43
the families of ethnic Hungarians who died in
1:20:46
the fighting or after being mobilized.
1:20:49
Budapest has repeatedly called for a diplomatic solution
1:20:52
to the Ukraine conflict, urged an end to
1:20:55
Brussels' warmongering policy of continuing to support Kiev
1:21:00
military and financially.
1:21:03
Moscow says the Kiev government and its backers
1:21:07
in the EU and UK are willing to
1:21:10
fight until the last Ukrainian, hard to believe
1:21:15
anything other than that, four years in.
1:21:20
It's coming up two weeks from now, well,
1:21:23
tomorrow it'll be two weeks.
1:21:27
It'll be in two weeks, February 24th, it'll
1:21:31
be four years solid of this conflict with
1:21:35
no end in sight.
1:21:37
No end in sight.
1:21:39
A million Ukrainians dead, 10 million gone, left
1:21:45
the country never to return, at least 10
1:21:48
million.
1:21:49
Some estimates double that amount.
1:21:54
And peace talks sabotaged as we've discussed here
1:21:59
on international flavor.
1:22:02
There's still repeat bombings and plenty of other
1:22:08
dastardly deeds being committed on behalf of Ukraine.
1:22:18
Keeping Zelensky in power when the people aren't
1:22:22
behind him even any longer.
1:22:25
The only ones that are for him are
1:22:27
people outside the country.
1:22:29
People in the country are not.
1:22:32
All the polls indicate that there's no way
1:22:35
he would win in an election, a fair
1:22:39
election.
1:22:39
All the polls say that his likability is
1:22:42
way down.
1:22:44
He was upwards of 72% of the
1:22:47
population with his man of the people party
1:22:50
in 2019.
1:22:52
And he'd be lucky to get the alternative
1:22:54
of that, like 28%, if the elections were
1:23:00
to be held today.
1:23:05
Well, that was the last of my cold
1:23:08
coffee there.
1:23:10
And I'll tell you what, what else did
1:23:12
I want to give you the opportunity to
1:23:16
hear today?
1:23:18
From my history, there was plenty of crazy
1:23:26
news that I watched.
1:23:31
I'm going to share some music with you
1:23:33
before I leave.
1:23:36
And there's been plenty of critical energy hits
1:23:41
over the last week, frankly, on both sides.
1:23:46
But in Ukraine, Russia is attempting to isolate
1:23:52
with lots of hypersonic missiles, with lots of
1:23:57
drone attacks, the critical energy infrastructure in Ukraine.
1:24:04
And I told you last week about the
1:24:06
power plants number four and six being completely
1:24:12
destroyed inside of Kiev and people only being
1:24:15
granted a little bit of time with the
1:24:19
power on.
1:24:20
And now they're well, and they tried last
1:24:24
week, too.
1:24:25
But there have been several hits on substations
1:24:28
that would take out any ability for power
1:24:32
supplies from the western parts of Ukraine and
1:24:35
from Europe to reach Kiev as well.
1:24:38
They're trying to isolate it.
1:24:39
Russia is.
1:24:41
Now, there have been a little bit of
1:24:44
in one one area of Ukraine in Zaporizhzhia,
1:24:47
there has been a bit of a counter,
1:24:50
a counter attack, a counter.
1:24:54
Movement, I suppose you would call it in
1:24:57
a couple of the cities that have been
1:25:01
somewhat effective, reported from everybody.
1:25:05
And like I told you earlier in the
1:25:06
show, that has to do with Starlink, according
1:25:13
to many.
1:25:15
Well, I think that's going to end the
1:25:17
show for us.
1:25:18
I wanted to play a song on the
1:25:19
way out the door.
1:25:21
And I like this, this city, if it's
1:25:26
the correct city, this music, if it's the
1:25:31
correct one here, it is.
1:25:35
I'm going to try to play it here
1:25:37
and get it for you.
1:25:39
I kind of like.
1:25:43
These sorts of.
1:25:46
Concerts and stuff, I told you, I went
1:25:47
to Uzbekistan, went to.
1:25:53
I don't I don't some people I don't
1:25:55
call it, I call it electronic music.
1:25:58
I don't know.
1:25:58
Some people call it trance or something like
1:26:00
that.
1:26:01
I like some of the electronic, but this
1:26:03
one's vocal in it as well.
1:26:06
And so on my way out the old
1:26:08
door, I'm going to share this with you.
1:26:12
Ashley Walbridge, a song called City of Angels.