On Tucker Carlson’s Recent Interview with Vladimir Putin: Some Useful Context
Running counter to the MSM narrative, ten factually verifiable talking points.
Below are ten talking points, as it were — factual statements which may provide useful if not essential context for Carlson’s recent interview with Putin. Several of these were mentioned either in passing or discussed with some detail during the Carlson-Putin interview — but the purpose of the interview was not to provide sources, links, and references.
This post does. For each of the ten points, following the list, your author will provide more details and appropriate source citations via link. Your author apologies for the summary format rather than a proper essay, but better done than not at all.
Thank you for your consideration.
The Ukrainian Biolabs are real and contained (as of 2022) pathogen collections directly derived from the former USSR Bioweapons program.
The USA supported the 2014 Maidan coup in Ukraine. The new government that same year used cluster-muntions on Ukrainian civilians of Russian ethnicity in Eastern Ukraine.
Ethnic Russians have lived in what is presently Eastern Ukraine for generations — indeed, centuries. The current state boundaries are a relic of the Soviet Union.
The promise of “Not One Inch More” — no more NATO expansion — was made by our leadership to the Kremlin leadership.
The USA also subsequently REFUSED Russia’s pleas to join NATO.
The current Russian-Ukrainian conflict was not only predictable — it was forecasted with great accuracy in 2014 by John J. Mearsheimer in Foreign Policy — among many others. Our elites knew this was a highly likely outcome of their actions.
History shows that Russia’s security concerns about their Western front (their shared border with Ukraine) are well-founded. Not Putin paranoia.
Despite repeated MSM claims to the contrary, we have NO evidence that the Russia plans to invade NATO Europe —Poland, Germany, the Baltic states, Finland, et cetera. Nor does Russia have the military and economic power to do so.
Boris Yeltsin, not Vladimir Putin, destroyed Russia’s post-Cold War efforts at democracy and let corruption among the oligarchs run wild. Moreover, the Clinton Administration helped Yeltsin win an election which qualified observers deemed neither free nor fair.
While Hillary Rodham Clinton (HRC) was Secretary of State during the Obama Administration, the Clinton Foundation raised large sums of money from Ukrainian elites. Qualified observers expressed their concerns about HRC engaged in influence peddling.
(1) The Ukrainian Biolabs are real and contained (as of 2022) pathogen collections directly derived from the former USSR Bioweapons program.
American Exile has covered this with way-too-much verbosity and detail.
On 11 March 2022, the Pentagon issued a FACT SHEET which confirmed both the biolabs and the existence of the pathogen collections. (For an analysis of the Pentagon Fact Sheet).
The labs did — and this verified true as of early 2022, with no further information publicly available after the invasion — contain pathogen collections directly derived from the former Soviet Union bioweapons program. (The Soviet Union ended in 1991).
In the words of Robert Pope, PhD, director of the Cooperative Threat Reduction Program under the USA Defense Threat Reduction Agency, reported on 25 February 2022:
“they [the Ukrainian government] have more pathogens in in more places than we recommend.”
The USA has been involved with the Ukranian Biolabs for two decades, at first for the best possible reasons — to prevent the proliferation of WMDs. Below, from 2005, Barrack Obama, then a Senator from Illinois, meeting in Kyiv, Ukraine, in a Biolab, with Andrew C. Weber, a Foreign Service Officer engaged in reducing the threat of WMD proliferation, who is showing Obama some vials of anthrax (Bacillus anthracis). This was not naturally occurring anthrax, but a source directly derived from the former USSR bioweapons program: hence a CDC Category A Bioterrorism Agent.
Yet in 2022 for certain, seventeen years after this image was captured, the pathogen collections were still there. For such pathogen collections, Ukraine lacks the secure facilities required by internationally recognized standards.
Ukraine also lacks any clear rationale for retaining — as opposed to destroying — these “research materials” directly derived from the former USSR bioweapons program. Based on Open-Source Intelligence, your author identified the Ukranian holdings at a minimum to include:
Anthrax (Bacillus anthracis): CDC Category A Bioterrorism Agent/Disease
Plague (Yersinia pestis): CDC Category A Bioterrorism Agent/Disease
Tularemia (Francisella tularensis): CDC Category A Bioterrorism Agent/Disease
Cholera (Vibrio cholerae): CDC Category B Bioterrorism Agent/Disease
Our leadership was particularly sensitive about this topic because we used false claims of Iraqi bioweapons to justify the Second Iraq War and overthrowing Saddam Hussien. Remember Colin Powel’s testimony before the UN Security Council?
The Scholarship on Powell’s Testimony
In her excellent analysis of the same, Kathleen Vogel, PhD, at the School of Public Policy, Center for International Security Studies, University of Maryland, noted (2014):
Within a year’s time, a diverse collection of government and nongovernment analysts had discredited the purpose of the captured trailers and all of the intelligence evidence about the mobile biological labs presented in Powell’s UN speech. We now know that Iraq’s bioweapons program ended back in 1996 and that it is unlikely that Iraq ever had a mobile bioweapons capability. (p 133).
By 2004, proven false. But let us rewind back to the moment.
As Gregory D. Koblentz, PhD, Associate Professor and Director of the Biodefense Graduate Program at George Mason University, Schar School of Policy and Government, has reported the scene (2009):
With George Tenet, director of the Central Intelligence Agency, seated directly behind him, Powell reassured his colleagues on the Security Council that “every statement I make today is backed up by sources, solid sources. These are not assertions. What we’re giving you are facts and conclusions based on solid intelligence.”
What we as citizens hope for in a government report or briefing. What our elected officials require to make informed decisions. What our allies require likewise. Facts and solid intelligence.
But as Koblentz (2009) has reminded us, things are not always what they seem (boldface mine):
As we know now, these conclusions were not based on solid intelligence. In fact, after the March 2003 U.S.-led invasion of Iraq, investigation of Iraq’s WMD programs has shown that every single U.S. allegation regarding Iraqi biological weapon (BW) activities was wrong. According to the bipartisan Commission on the Intelligence Capabilities of the United States Regarding Weapons of Mass Destruction (also known as the Silberman-Robb Commission), this failure to properly assess Iraq’s BW capabilities and intentions was “one of the most painful errors” committed by the intelligence community before the war.
To quote that highlight: “every single U.S. allegation regarding Iraqi biological weapon (BW) activities was wrong.” Every single one. But these were not presented as allegations — they were presented as truths.
Unfortunately, we are now living the reverse. The allegations about Ukranian biolabs made by the Russian government which were denounced as lies and propaganda — these have largely been proven true.
(2) The USA supported the 2014 Maidan coup in Ukraine. The new government that same year used cluster-muntions on Ukrainian civilians of Russian ethnicity in Eastern Ukraine.
For the first part, they got Victoria Nuland, then Assistant Secretary of the State for Europe, on the wire. BUSTED! As reported on by the BBC (7 February 2014) and the Washington Post (6 February 2014) among other MSM outlets, we have both the recording and transcript from a phone call Nuland made on 28 January 2014.
According to the Washington Post (6 February 2014), Nuland’s conversation exposed a “deep degree of U.S. involvement in affairs that Washington officially says are Ukraine’s to resolve.” Her “Fuck the EU” clarification in that phone call merited considerable attention.
To state the case less politely than WaPo, Nuland was running through a preferred list of candidates for regime change — she did not want EU interference, she wanted Arseniy Yatsenyuk as Prime Minister. By 22 February 2014, less than one month after Nuland’s “Fuck the EU” call, the US-supported uprising would lead to a coup against the democratically elected, but unarguably pro-Russian, President Viktor Yanukovych. Success! And Nuland got her man Yatsenyuk installed as Prime Minister. Putin responded shortly afterwards by taking Crimea. Win-win?
Writing for The Guardian back in the day when we had a free press in the West, Seumas Milne (Apr 30, 2014) pulled no punches in declaring that the “Ukrainian president was replaced by a US-selected administration” and so
Putin's absorption of Crimea and support for the rebellion in eastern Ukraine is clearly defensive, and the red line now drawn: the east of Ukraine, at least, is not going to be swallowed up by Nato or the EU.
Back to the phone call. The BBC analysis of the transcript (7 February 2014) largely confirmed the Washington Post remarks, but also called particular attention to role then Vice President Joseph Biden was being positioned to play. In Nuland’s own words:
… when I wrote the note [US vice-president's national security adviser Jake] Sullivan's come back to me VFR [direct to me], saying you need [US Vice-President Joe] Biden and I said probably tomorrow for an atta-boy and to get the deets [details] to stick. So Biden's willing.
Atta-boy! Victoria Nuland, Jake Sullivan, and Joe Biden: the band is back together, or rather, they never stopped touring. For more information, please start with Richard Sakwa (2014), Frontline Ukraine, chapters 1-4; and John J. Mearsheimer (2018), The Great Delusion, page 175.
Now we come to the second part, the use of cluster-muntions on Ukrainian civilians of Russian ethnicity in Eastern Ukraine. As Milne (Apr 30, 2014) stated, Putin backed the separatist movement in the Donbass, which was now in rebellion and seeking autonomy. The new pro-American Ukrainian government hit back hard.
Let’s share what the New York Times (Oct 20, 2014), once-upon-a-time our newspaper of record, had to say:
The Ukrainian Army appears to have fired cluster munitions on several occasions into the heart of Donetsk, unleashing a weapon banned in much of the world into a rebel-held city with a peacetime population of more than one million, according to physical evidence and interviews with witnesses and victims.
But never rely on just one source. After conducting their investigation, Human Rights Watch (Oct 24, 2014) concluded:
Ukrainian government forces used cluster munitions in populated areas in Donetsk city in early October 2014.
Yes, the pro-American Ukrainian government in 2014 used cluster munitions on Ukrainian civilians of Russian ethnicity.
Quick geography note: Donetsk is the major city in the Donetsk Oblast, in the Donbass region of Ukraine. Image below courtesy of Goran_tek-en, CC BY-SA 4.0.
(3) Ethnic Russians have lived in what is presently Eastern Ukraine for generations — indeed, centuries. The current state boundaries are a relic of the Soviet Union.
Travel back in time to Imperial Russia — think pre-Rasputin, not just pre-Lenin. The understanding was that Russians, Ukrainians, and Belarussians all comprised one greater Slavic people — all descended from the Kyivan Rus’, circa 900AD to 1300AD. The Kyivan Rus’ itself, although it refers an amalgam of principalities, is more truthfully what some historians refer to as a “useable past” — a part factual, part mythical reconstruction. [ref 1]
Our current strong desire to separate Russians from Ukrainians has more basis in politics than history. But we do have some data on migration patterns. Russians began settling in relatively sparse areas of what is now Ukraine in the late 16th century. After the Cossack rebellion against Poland in the late 17th century, more Russian speakers inhabited lands in what is now Ukraine. [ref 2; ref 3]
Large-scale Russian settlement in the Crimea began in earnest after their victory over the Ottoman Empire in 1774. In the late 19th and early 20th centuries, more Russians immigrated to what is now Ukraine, particularly the Eastern regions, largely due to industrialization and economic development. Finally, there was a smaller post-WWII influx of Russians tracking the region’s economic recovery. [ref 2; ref 3]
It's hard to get good recent data because of the conflict and the politics, but the following data from a 2004 survey by the Kyiv International Institute of Sociology is worth a look [ref 3]:
Russian is used at home by 43–46% of the population of the country (in other words a similar proportion to Ukrainian) and Russophones made a majority of the population in Eastern and Southern regions of Ukraine. [A breakdown of the Eastern and Southern regions by oblast (by province)]:
Autonomous Republic of Crimea — 77% of the population
Dnipropetrovsk Oblast — 32%
Donetsk Oblast — 74.9%
Luhansk Oblast — 68.8%
Zaporizhzhia Oblast — 48.2%
Odesa Oblast — 41.9%
Kharkiv Oblast — 44.3%
Mykolaiv Oblast — 29.3%
This holds with other more recent sources which claim that Russian is the most common first language in the Donbass and Crimea regions of Ukraine. [ref 2]
Finally, and again sources are suspect to political bias, but the map collage below [left; right] shows the location and percentages of the Russian-speaking population in Ukraine based on the 2001 census:
The MSM wants us to view Russia and Ukraine as two diametrically opposed entities, one evil and the other good. Their peoples and histories are deeply entangled.
(4) The promise of “Not One Inch More” — no more NATO expansion — was made by our leadership to the Kremlin leadership.
Mary Elise Sarotte, the Marie-Josée and Henry R. Kravis Distinguished Professor of Historical Studies at John Hopkins University, has worked the archives, done the interviews, and established a major chunk of the historical record in her masterwork Not One Inch More: America, Russia, and the Making of a Post-Coldwar Stalemate (Yale UP, 2021).
NATO will “not shift one inch eastward from its present position” — Baker to Gorbachev.
Not inch more as in “not one inch eastward” — the end of NATO expansion. These words were spoken by USA Secretary of State, James Baker, to the leader of the Soviet Union, Mikhail Gorbachev, on 9 February 1990. The Cold War was ending.
The Berlin Wall had collapsed on 9 November 1989. German re-unification was underway. But as Sarotte (2021) explains: “thanks to the Soviet victory over the Nazis in World War II, decades later Moscow still had hundreds of thousands of troops in East Germany and the legal right to keep them there.”
How to persuade Moscow to remove those troops?
Moscow was not the only problem. In fact, Baker repeated largely the same words in a letter to West German Chancellor Helmut Kohl one day later, on 10 February 1990, in an effort to keep Germany in NATO. From the German Government archives, an excerpt of Baker’s letter (boldface added):
Would you prefer to see a unified Germany outside of NATO, independent and with no US forces or would you prefer a unified Germany to be tied to NATO, with assurances that NATO’s jurisdiction would not shift one inch eastward from its present position? (Deutsche Einheit Sonderedition, 794)
Some context, please. Baker needed to persuade Kohl as well as Gorbachev that the USA was ending the Cold War, was de-escalating the threat of nuclear holocaust, and would be generous in victory. The West Germans had soured on all the USA troops and weapons stationed near their homes. As Sarotte (2021) reports:
Particularly unpopular with West Germans were short-range nuclear missiles. ... The shared, bitter joke in divided Germany was that the shorter the missile range, the “deader” the Germans.
How bad was it? This bad:
Polling showed that 84 percent of West Germans wanted to denuclearize their country entirely — not least because all of the nuclear weapons in the country were controlled by foreigners — so a majority would be not only willing but happy to trade those weapons for unity. (Sarotte, 2021)
So Baker faced a dilemma.
Both Germany and USA wanted those “hundreds of thousands of [Russian] troops” out of East Germany. But the USA and NATO had a considerable military presence in West Germany: over 900,000 troops along with the weapons needed for an apocalypse. If Gorbachev undertook an unconditional withdraw, other leaders in the Kremlin would have removed him from power in short order — and the recently ended Cold War might turn well turn hot.
Gorbachev needed something to appease Moscow. In turn, Kohl was ready to leave NATO if such were the price of German unification. But Kohl did not want to Germany defenseless either. If NATO stayed true to its defensive commitment, if NATO did not appear the threating aggressor, if NATO did not expand to take advantage of Moscow’s weakness and likely retriggering hostilities — yes, Germany would stay in NATO. Kohl could sell that to his anxious people.
“… assurances that NATO’s jurisdiction would not shift one inch eastward from its present position” — Baker to Kohl, 10 February 1990
Likewise, Gorbachev in his memoirs (1996, page 529) claimed that Baker’s promise on 9 February 1990 to halt NATO expansion had “cleared the way for a compromise” on the reunification of Germany and the withdraw of Soviet troops.
What happened next as they say is history. After the Soviet Union fell in 1991, NATO expanded against the repeated protests, warnings, and fears of Moscow.
(5) The USA also subsequently REFUSED Russia’s pleas to join NATO.
Gorbachev raised the possibility on 25 May 1990 (Sarotte, 2021). The issue took on more urgency after the USSR collapsed and it became apparent that many former Warsaw Pact states, Eastern European nations such as Poland, Hungary, and (then) Czechoslovakia were seeking to join NATO.
Gorbachev’s successor, Boris Yeltsin pushed for NATO membership more forcefully and vocally — to the point where the New York Times (Dec 21, 1991) took notice: “Yeltsin Says Russia Seeks to Join NATO.”
Otherwise, Moscow made clear it was threatened by NATO expansion. The Soviet Union was history. The Cold War won by the West and allegedly over. To rebuild their economy and improve deteriorating standards of living, Russia was seeking greater integration with Europe. Yet the West tightened the military encirclement of Russia.
In July 1994, with Yeltsin still making NATO membership noises, the Clinton Whitehouse in response closed ranks on policy and agreed that “Russia was never going to join NATO” (Sarotte, 2021). There it ended.
For an internal Whitehouse document directly concerned with Russia as a NATO candidate, please consult Madeleine Albright, “Memorandum for the President, the Vice President, and the Secretary of State and the National Security Advisor, Subject: PfP and Central and Eastern Europe,” January 26, 1994, Department of State, Office of Information Programs and Services.
(6) The current Russian-Ukrainian conflict was not only predictable — it was forecasted with great accuracy in 2014 by John J. Mearsheimer in Foreign Policy — among many others. Our elites knew this was a highly likely outcome of their actions.
Around minute 44 in his 2015 lecture “The Causes and Consequences of the Ukraine Crisis,” Mearsheimer bluntly concluded “the West is leading Ukraine down the primrose path — and the end result is, Ukraine is going to be wrecked.” The lecture was a re-cap and slight updating of Mearsheimer’s 2014 Foreign Policy essay “Why the Ukraine Crisis Is the West’s Fault: The Liberal Delusions That Provoked Putin.”
“The West is leading Ukraine down the primrose path — and the end result is, Ukraine is going to be wrecked.” Mearsheimer, 2015.
Now that Ukraine is in the process of being thoroughly wrecked, as predicted, it is worth returning to Mearsheimer’s original analysis. Ukraine, he held, must stay neutral (Mearsheimer, 2014; emphasis added):
This is Geopolitics 101: great powers are always sensitive to potential threats near their home territory. After all, the United States does not tolerate distant great powers deploying military forces anywhere in the Western Hemisphere, much less on its borders. Imagine the outrage in Washington if China built an impressive military alliance and tried to include Canada and Mexico in it.
Russian leaders have told their Western counterparts on many occasions that they consider NATO expansion into Georgia and Ukraine unacceptable, along with any effort to turn those countries against Russia — a message that the 2008 Russian-Georgian war also made crystal clear.
The verdict by Mearsheimer (2014):
The taproot of the trouble is NATO enlargement, the central element of a larger strategy to move Ukraine out of Russia’s orbit and integrate it into the West.
We had two clear paths. One, business as usual. The other, shared peace and prosperity — at the expense, unfortunately, of the American neocons and at the temporary expense of our Military-Industrial complex. As Mearsheimer clarified the future outcomes (2014):
The United States and its European allies now face a choice on Ukraine. They can continue their current policy, which will exacerbate hostilities with Russia and devastate Ukraine in the process — a scenario in which everyone would come out a loser. Or they can switch gears and work to create a prosperous but neutral Ukraine, one that does not threaten Russia and allows the West to repair its relations with Moscow. With that approach, all sides would win.
Lose, Lose — but business as usual, so no disruption to the Uni-Party and the Deep State. Or Win, Win. But then a world perhaps less slightly dependent on American military might and hence perhaps slightly less responsive to dictates of Washington. This prospect was more terrifying to our leadership than a nuclear WWIII.
So here we are — business as usual and possible nuclear WWIII. Seumas Milne (Apr 30, 2014), among many others, also saw this coming in no uncertain terms:
The reality is that, after two decades of eastward Nato expansion, this crisis was triggered by the west's attempt to pull Ukraine decisively into its orbit and defence structure, via an explicitly anti-Moscow EU association agreement. ...
No Russian government could have acquiesced in such a threat from territory that was at the heart of both Russia and the Soviet Union. Putin's absorption of Crimea and support for the rebellion in eastern Ukraine is clearly defensive, and the red line now drawn: the east of Ukraine, at least, is not going to be swallowed up by Nato or the EU.
The reality is that our leadership simply does not care because we — not they — have always paid for the consequences of their hubristic decision-making.
(7) History shows that Russia’s security concerns about their Western front (their shared border with Ukraine) are well-founded. Not Putin paranoia.
Start with the obvious analogies. The USA would not tolerate China or Russia having large troop concentrations, military and missile bases, et cetera in Mexico and Canada. “This is Geopolitics 101,” Mearsheimer (2014) reminds us, because “great powers are always sensitive to potential threats near their home territory.”
Beyond theory or commonsense, geography and history make a conclusive case.
Geography and Military Logistics
Geography still matters because large armies whether on foot, horseback, or in armored personnel carriers must travel over land and be resupplied. (Large armies: so special operation units, and strike-force units which would work in advance of the main military, are not our concern here).
Russia’s great vulnerability to conventional military operations: the western border it shares with Ukraine and partially with Belarus (a staunch Russian ally).
Below is a physical map of Europe, stopping at the border with Russia — Russia’s western border. A political map of western Russia has been placed next to it like a missing puzzle piece. The scale (fit) is not absolutely perfect — but you’ll get the idea. (Image below courtesy of GIS Geography, (c) 2022. Cited under Fair Use for Educational Purposes).
The Great Northern Plain to the Russian Heartland
To invade Russia from the West — from Europe, armies travel across the relatively flat expanse — the Northern European plain — which starts in Poland but expands greatly as one enters Ukraine (and to a lesser extent, Belarus). Invading Russia across the mountainous territories to the south, or across the mountainous area of fjords to the north, has never been practical for large military formations.
History of the Military Invasions of Russia
So why should Russia fear an invasion from the West — from Europe? Tim Marshall (2015) answers that for us:
The Poles came across the North European Plain in 1605, followed by the Swedes under Charles XII in 1708, the French under Napoleon in 1812, and the Germans—twice, in both world wars, in 1914 and 1941. Looking at it another way, if you count from Napoleon’s invasion of 1812, but this time include the Crimean War of 1853–56 and the two world wars up to 1945, then the Russians were fighting on average in or around the North European Plain once every thirty-three years.
Since 1812, the Russians have been defending their western borders against foreigner invaders roughly three times per century. But with a history going back far longer. The Kremlin knows this for certain: the roads to the Russian heartland, including Moscow, are through the wide part of the Great Northern Plain — Ukraine.
Imperial Russia did fight a war with Imperial Japan — the Russo-Japanese war of 1904-1905. This over colonies in Korea and Manchuria. But the heartland of Russia, safely behind the Ural Mountains and vast areas of bogland and permafrost tundra, has never been invaded by Japan or China. The threat comes from Europe not Asia.
(Intellectual debt acknowledged here to Marshall, 2015: Prisoners of Geography).
(8) Despite repeated MSM claims to the contrary, we have NO evidence that the Russia plans to invade NATO Europe —Poland, Germany, the Baltic states, Finland, et cetera. Nor does Russia have the military and economic power to do so.
Intensive propaganda by the MSM has repeatedly assured the public that Putin seeks to establish a Russian empire by retaking all the territory formerly controlled by Soviet Union and then some more. No evidence — none — has been offered. Just alleged or acknowledged experts repeating other MSM-anointed experts who also provide no evidence. Not like the MSM experts have ever lied in unison before.
Mearsheimer, the late Stephen Cohen, and others have offered their rebuttals / debunking of this propaganda. Your author will take a slightly different approach: even if Putin wanted to, Putin could not do this — successfully invade NATO Europe. We can take the USA out of the equation, please. The alliance in Europe, with no USA support whatsoever, is far stronger than Russia and Belarus combined.
As proxies for military strength, since valid and exact numbers are hard to come by, let’s crunch the population data and economic data, On one side, Russia and Belarus; on the other side, just six of the larger NATO nations — Germany, Poland, France, Spain, Italy, and the UK. If Russia were to invade the small Baltic nation of Latvia, these six nations (and more) by NATO charter would go to war against Russia.
Our data source is the CIA World Factbook for 2024. Some population counts date back a year so, but the differences are not enough to make a difference. For economic data, we are using the CIA’s Real GDP Per Capita figures — for a quick and dirty definition:
Real GDP per capita is a measurement of the total economic output of a country divided by the number of people and adjusted for inflation. It's used to compare the standard of living between countries and over time. (The Balance, 2020)
Population Comparison
Even if we include Belarus, team Red has roughly 41% the population size of team Blue — and that’s just six (6) of the twenty-nine (29) team Blue nation members. Yes, NATO currently has twenty-nine (29) European nations as members.
Who’s zoomin’ who here? European NATO has the overwhelming advantage in military personnel, actual and potential. But, but … Yes. But wars also count money.
Economic Comparison based on Real GDP Per Capita
Again, we will compare Russia and Belarus to the same just six (6) EU NATO nations. Please keep in also that Russia is paying for its share of the Ukraine war, so it has diminished resources to fund a greater war. The Treasury Department of Russia cannot print money and then sell debt like the USA. Now, let’s see the numbers.
It’s not even close. It is a brutal beat-down across the board by team Blue, by just six (6) of the twenty-nine (29) European NATO members. Russia knows it can neither invade NATO Europe nor win a conventional war against NATO Europe. Hence for Russian self-defense, nuclear options must remain on the table.
But We have Numbers!
Okay, let’s crunch the military strength estimates publicly available. [ref red; ref blue] These totals include Active Duty, Military Reserves, and Paramilitary (including Milita) — the whole shebang. Russia and Belarus combined have a total force across the board of 4,318,850 personnel — impressive! In contrast, NATO Europe, with the USA and Canada excluded, 6,011,246 personnel.
Simple math: NATO Europe has a military strength estimate roughly 1.4 times greater, and with the population potential to raise a vastly superior military force. Given that NATO Europe would be defending their territory under this MSM scenario, the defeat of Russia an aggressor seems assured — even without USA intervention.
But Geo-Political Logic does not Apply!
The final gasp on this MSM false narrative is that Putin is an evil madman who does not think rationally. So he will lead Russia into an invasion against NATO Europe because he is an evil madman, and that is what evil madmen do. (Please repeat the above with teary-eyed conviction in your best Kamala Harris voice).
This is not worth your author’s time. Based upon Putin’s extensive political career, Putin could be fairly described as Machiavellian, if one also acknowledges he is calculating as well as manipulative, and invariably deeply informed as well as ambitious. In his service for Russia, Putin has often been harshly pragmatic — not delusional. True, he does not serve the USA — Putin is not our bitch, irrational as that might seem to all the bitches yapping at him. The yapping won’t change the facts.
(9) Boris Yeltsin, not Vladimir Putin, destroyed Russia’s post-Cold War efforts at democracy and let corruption among the oligarchs run wild. Moreover, the Clinton Administration helped Yeltsin win an election that qualified observers deemed neither free nor fair.
Your author covered this in extensive detail with a glorious array of sources and citations. Please see “Why does Putin still have support in Russia?” (Aug 28, 2023). Below, an abbreviated version — although still TLDR for many.
Yeltsin Attacking Democracy
Yeltsin dissolved Parliament by force and diktat. He ordered tanks to fire on the Russian White House (the equivalent of the US Capitol Building), sent in paratroopers, and performed what some political scientists deemed a “self-coup.” He would rule by decree, not by consent — supported by the corrupt oligarchs and the West, not by the Russian people.
Even the Wall Street Journal, albeit again 25 years later, took notice in an op-ed by David Satter, “When Russian Democracy Died” (Sept 20, 2018):
Dramatically violating the constitution he swore to uphold, President Boris Yeltsin signed a decree abolishing the Russian Parliament, the Supreme Soviet, on Sept. 21, 1993. That set the stage for a two-day civil war in October, which cost at least 123 lives, and led to the rise of a dictatorship. By December a new constitution had come into force creating a super presidency and a pocket Parliament, the State Duma, which does not have the ability to contest executive power.
Got it? By abolishing and then attacking Parliament in order to rule by diktat, Yeltsin was NOT engaged in democracy promotion.
A decade earlier than Satter but well into the Putin era, Radio Free Europe / Radio Liberty in 2008 published an op-ed by a member of that Parliament, Ruslan Khasbulatov, who both witnessed the attack and was arrested shortly thereafter. In “Yeltsin Destroyed Parliamentary Democracy In Russia,” Khasbulatov (Sept 29, 2008) identified (at least) three major consequences:
Yeltsin “concentrated unlimited dictatorial powers in his own hands” as he “imposed on the country a constitution that does not even provide any longer for a parliament.”
In this new Russian Federation under his sham constitution, Yeltsin was thus left unhindered to conduct the "endless Chechen wars, Caucasian wars" which resulted in "a society with militaristic tendencies, a society rent by enmity, a society in which people distrust each other.”
And this “war psychology” in turn “has left an indelible mark on the individual and collective consciousness; it is the source of mutual ill-will and the massive increase in corruption.”
Perhaps you think Khasbulatov (Sept 29, 2008) has exaggerated, a woulda coulda shoulda lament, but there is more. We come now to operation re-elect Yeltsin, our naughty boy, our big man in Moscow.
Yeltsin Winning an Unfair and Unfree Election with American Assistance
The Clinton administration, as Cohen (2018) has explained, “arranged for American election operatives to encamp in Moscow to help manage his [Yeltsin’s] campaign.”
Interference in a foreign election? Well, as Cohen (2018) again has recorded:
So large was the role of the American “advisers” in Yeltsin’s (purported) victory that Time magazine bannered it, “Yanks to The Rescue,” on its July 15, 1996 cover and ShowTime made a feature film, “Spinning Boris,” about their heroic exploits as late as 2003. No one asked, as we should, whether any Americans should be so intimately involved in any foreign elections.
All this does — or should — add comedic context to vastly overblown claims of “Russiagate”: the alleged Russian interference in the 2016 American presidential election. But “Spinning Boris” was not enough. We will skip the oligarch participation for now and cut to the voter fraud. Bear with the history lesson, please.
The fall of the Soviet Union followed by the comedically tragic dysfunctional government of Yeltsin resulted in hardships for the people of Chechnya, then (and now again) a republic within Russia. To simplify a complex history, the Russian citizens of the Chechen Republic gave up on reforms and sought independence instead. The Chechen peoples are generally ethnically and culturally distinguishable from Slavic Russians, and Islam is the dominant religion in the republic.
Although the Chechens initially succeeded with their independence movement and did establish a de facto state, the Chechen Republic of Ichkeria, Yeltsin responded with a brutal, multi-year crackdown. Our concern here is the First Chechen War, from December 1994 to August 1996, as it impacted the election in a strange and wonderous way. The brief summary below derived largely from Sarotte (2021).
The First Chechen War resulted in a crisis of Chechen refugees (people who fled Russia entirely) and IDPs (internally displaced persons). When election time rolled around, international observers estimated that fewer than 500 thousand (1/2 million) adults remained in Chechnya.
Your turn. Please estimate the number of Chechens who voted in the 1996 Russian presidential election.
Now, please estimate the number of Chechen votes counted by Russian election officials. If for this second estimate, you guessed over 1 million votes, you are correct!
Now, please guess which candidate received about 70% of these 1 million plus Chechen votes. Boris Yeltsin, the incumbent, who was waging war against Chechnya? Or his opposition?
The correct answer is “Yeltsin.” The Democratic reformer. Below, selected scenes from his “get-out-the-vote” campaign.
As Sarotte (2021) has reported:
Later, a member of the OSCE election-observation team claimed that he was pressured not to reveal the “widespread voter fraud” he had witnessed. A US diplomat serving in the Moscow embassy at the time of the election, Thomas Graham, asserted that the Clinton administration knew the election was not truly fair, but it was a case of “the ends justifying the means.”
The election was neither free nor fair; moreover, it was subjected to massive foreign interference. But permanent Washington, the Clinton administration, and most of our Foreign Policy intelligentsia celebrated both the tactics and the outcome because we got our man in Moscow re-elected. When Yeltsin was unable to finish out his term, he appointed Vladmir Putin. Credit Spinning Boris, credit operation re-elect Yeltsin, for ensuring Putin’s rise to the top. Please see American Exile (Aug 28, 2023) for more info.
(10) While Hillary Rodham Clinton (HRC) was Secretary of State during the Obama Administration, the Clinton Foundation raised large sums of money from Ukrainian elites. Qualified observers expressed their concerns about HRC engaged in influence peddling.
This was allegedly debunked by one or more of the fact-checking entities which sprung-up during the Covid lockdowns in the USA. Some poor right-winger claimed on Twitter (now X) that Hillary Rodham Clinton accepted money from Ukrainian government officials. Nope, and that was NEVER the actual news story, but the thought-police had a dance-orgy on the digital grave of a presumed Alex Jones wannabe.
Let’s walk it back. As the Wall Street Journal (19 March 2015) — that Wall Street Journal — reported in “Clinton Charity Tapped Foreign Friends,” we had high-ranking Ukrainian nationals who were very interested in making contacts and friends with high-raking American nationals. These Ukrainians were not government officials — although they certainly had strong ties to various members of the Ukrainian government and certain wannabe members, these donors were generally counted among the wealthy and powerful oligarchs. That part NOT debunked.
Between 1999 and 2014 — the year of Ukrainian coup, these Ukrainian nationals made donations totaling $10 million to the Clinton Foundation. In fact, grouping the donors by nationality, Ukraine led all other nations — with the much wealthier Saudi Arabia, for comparison, behind at $7.3 million. That part NOT debunked.
Given that Hillary Clinton was a USA Senator from 2001 to 2009, and then USA Secretary of State from 2009 to 2013, this raised some obvious concerns about possible conflicts of interest. Even the hard-left VOX took notice, albeit over a year after the WSJ: “4 experts make the case that the Clinton Foundation’s fundraising was troubling” (Aug 25, 2016). Got it? Like the WSJ, VOX was also concerned about the possibility of influence peddling.
If this was “troubling” to four handpicked experts by VOX, one can only wonder how Russia understood it. Because after the 2014 coup, Ukrainian state violence against Ukrainian citizens of Russian ethnicity began escalating.
For example, genuine Neo-Nazis in the Ukrainian National Guard repeatedly committed acts of terror and violence, including killings. The USA Congress HAD (past tense) a ban on funding these Neo-Nazis. Read all about it in the reliably left-wing Nation (Jan 16, 2016). That ban was removed in 2018. Git some!
To ensure plausible deniability, Congress did impose a ban on directly supplying the same militias with USA military weapons. Read about that in the Hill (Mar 27, 2018). So at this time, money, YES; our military weapons, NO. But how was such enforced? Where did the money go? Et cetera. Meanwhile, supported by the USA, the Ukrainian government was killing Ukrainian citizens of Russian ethnicity. Because democracy?
Best synopsis and expansion of this historic interview. Thank you very much.