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Debunking Myths About Ukraine | Dylan Burns
148 Plays8 months ago
We sat down with Dylan Burns, a Journalist focused on covering the war in Ukraine, to debunk a series of myths and false narratives that are circulating around the war in Ukraine.
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Transcript
Misinformation in the Ukraine War
00:00:00
Speaker
Welcome to this week's episode of the Project Liberal show. I'm your host, Josh Echol, one of the co-founders of Project Liberal. And today I am joined by probably one of my top three favorite journalists, um Dylan Burns. Dylan Burns is is is a guy who's been spent a lot of time in the last couple of years reporting on the situation in Ukraine after the war broke out in 2022. He runs a show on dylanburns.tv. Dylan, thanks for making time for me. And I know we're streaming live to your audience as well.
00:00:30
Speaker
happy to be here happy to be here i gotta say that you're definitely in my top three liberal theme podcast as well that's good okay good i'd say that's probably of like five or six that exists so we'll say we we've made an eye on the threshold uh... i i i appreciate you making time and i i've uh... obviously you and i've connected our across our paths across many times the last couple years and um... i i think you have done an amazing job of kind of cutting through the bullshit on what's going on in the war in Ukraine. And as you know, as well as I do, Russian propaganda, Russian misinformation is like seeping through our discourse at every level right now. And so I i personally believe that the work you're doing is incredibly important and incredibly valuable.
00:01:15
Speaker
so that was actually the reason the thing that i wanted to cover tonight my hope was that maybe you and i could talk through a handful of like the myths that are floating around in the ukraine space i mean if you're on twitter anywhere on social these things are everywhere and so i took i basically took the ones i saw on twitter and i wrote them all down because i wanted to see if we go before we get into that i wanted i wanted to say something quick because I understand that getting into debunking culture can get quite annoying to be like, oh, I'm going to debunk this, I'm going to debunk that, I'm going to debunk your mom, your dad, your grandma, I'm going to debunk everything.
00:01:50
Speaker
but ah It is a lot easier to spread feces on the wall than it is to clean it up. It is much easier for me to just say a bunch of completely garbage made up numbers, right? Like that 40% of Project Liberal podcasts end with somebody saying something horribly big at it. I could just throw that out there.
00:02:09
Speaker
And then you have to go like, okay, well, I went through all the episodes and I found that only 10% of the podcasts end with something bigoted, ha ha. Or you'd have to go through and find all these numbers do that. And so it's a lot more effort to go through it and clean clean up the mess. But I will say that even though, of course, the misinformation doesn't dominate in every conversation, there are
Russian Propaganda and Misinformation Challenges
00:02:30
Speaker
elected leaders that even fall for it. yeah um I've seen, ah for example, and I hate to go straight for the bottom of the barrel, but Marjorie Taylor Greene going on state TV saying that ah that the Ukrainian government is harvesting the organs of babies to pay for the war effort. That is not only conspiracy theory, that is like old blood libel style, weird type of 1920s stuff. Not the type of stuff you even hear with these conspiracy theories that that get into the public's facing sphere as much. Maybe like adrenochrome is like the closest I can think of that you sometimes hear of. There were nine elected leaders in our government that voted against ah the ah condemning the kidnapping of Ukrainian children. yeah
00:03:13
Speaker
um That is pretty embarrassing and there and I don't think that every single one of them is just paid by the Russians. I think that would be a simple solution. I do think even them, they doom scroll just like the rest of us. They are no better human beings than the rest of us. They get their brain interceptors hooked on social media just like the rest of them and it can hurt them. And even if they're in an elected office, they can come to these failings too. So I do think they're, for at least the most popular ones that spread around, there is some service at at least addressing these questions, addressing like, a hey, I heard about this before. That doesn't mean you need to give more attention
Moscow Terror Attack and Misinformation
00:03:50
Speaker
to these theories necessarily, but once they've reached a certain point that you have to address them, you gotta address them.
00:03:55
Speaker
Yeah, and and you're damn right. I mean, like it takes two, three seconds to lie on the internet and it takes you know it could take two, three, four, five days even more to disprove, disunk debunk that. And one of the things that you know i'd I'd like to frame, it at least for for for my audience, society is the The lies that are permeated right now in society surrounding this issue, they're not just social media posts. I mean, these things, as you mentioned, affect legislation, they affect human lives on the ground. And so spending the time to like come to understand what the truth of the situation is, is incredibly important now, especially on this issue. So yeah, I'm i'm in. um And I wanted to kick us off with the one that's the most timely, or at least start with that one, because I see this as a,
00:04:41
Speaker
likely going to be another escalation in the war. And this to me comes across as completely false intuitively. But I don't know if there's any facts on the ground that you want to share. So ah your audience knows us probably as well as ours does. There was a major terrorist attack in Moscow a couple days ago. Actually, it was early last week. And what was the death town of over 170 people, I think, at last check that had died? 144. 140, okay.
00:05:09
Speaker
um I think a lot of people early in that were looking at that and and and really concerned about what Putin was going to do to escalate. And obviously, the news has come out and said that the U.S. intelligence warned Putin about it in advance and they didn't take necessary precautions. But the narrative that I've heard from Putin's mouth the day after was that this ISIS now was established as an ISIS-K terrorist attack in Moscow was the Ukrainians had given them a window to escape.
00:05:38
Speaker
And I'm curious as to what you've seen about this. How do you address this fact that's flying around, that Ukraine was in the mountain vault? We were talking about this earlier because there was an update to the story that broke today from ah unlikely third party. But there's two main angles to this that I've been trying to hit on the most. The first is who did it. And immediately once the attack happened, everybody started going out to establish the narrative.
00:06:02
Speaker
And I remember when when I was speaking at Liberty Con, I talked about ah this briefly, is the idea that immediately once one of these attacks happen or some some event happens, each government's going to release their footage or whatever they can to angle it towards their interests.
00:06:17
Speaker
And so you cannot come out and the Ukrainian government says this, Russian government says this, you can't just take any government at face value unless they have sufficient ah evidence to back it up. Of course, you can judge some governments as less credible than others. Like if one government has a track record of lying consistently about something, you could say their word's probably worth less. If another country has is really credible about something, um say maybe as a third party intermediary or or some other thing, then then maybe you could give them more credibility, but at the end of the day, ah if the two countries have interests involved, you cannot take them either of them at face value. But something that really disturbed me online was just how much everybody else jumped on it, started throwing out theory after theory after theory after theory before the bodies were cold. But this happens with so many different ah terror attacks and horrific events that I feel like we're getting pretty numb to it. But I feel that we need to socially isolate the people.
00:07:11
Speaker
that jump on these tragedies right when they happen and start saying, I heard this rumor and then they cite their source and it's another link on Twitter. I i don't want to call out anyone directly, Mario Newfall, but there are people who who do that and it's embarrassing. And those people came out and said, hey, look, this was actually a Chechen soldier. that person is currently in the Ukrainian forces on the frontline fighting so it'd be pretty crazy if he somehow made an escape over there and they had to retract it later because they jumped on it so quick so the first thing is when these
Russian Security Oversights in Moscow Attack
00:07:40
Speaker
events happen these attacks happen wait just wait wait until all of the evidence settles
00:07:46
Speaker
You will have some preconceived notion in your head about who you think probably did it. From the style of the attack, when it happened, the politics surrounding it. But we've seen ISIS-K embarrass conspiracy theorists back to back. First, it was the terror attack in Iran. And because of the war between Israel and Hamas, everybody took that attack and put it in their own preconceived notions of the geopolitical struggle that's happening right now and is most present in the media. But ISIS has attacked Iran again and again and again for like the last 10 years.
00:08:15
Speaker
And it's been horrific, it's been an awful thing for Iran, but it seems like for all these people who cared so much about that terror attack, they didn't know anything about that history. And then as more time passed, I think it now it's pretty clear that it was an ISIS terror attack. In fact, one of the suspects related to the bombing, and this is the big story that came from today,
00:08:33
Speaker
told the Iranians that there was a plan to attack Russia, and that there this plan to attack Russia, they then took this warning and gave it to the Russians, the same way the United States gave the warning to the Russians. What's interesting though, and this is the big news from today, is they gave it to them from this interrogation evidence, but we went to them with evidence from um intercommunications, like intercepted communications. It's the same way we found out that they were gonna invade. We have really, really good signals intelligence.
00:09:02
Speaker
And so these are two separate pieces of evidence, two separate sources on two separate ends of the political spectrum on geopolitics. Different sides, the Iranians will have good reason to be our friends. We are not we we are not their friends. ah I mean, we are not we're not friendly countries. But we came to the same conclusion about this. And the reason we came to the same conclusion about this is because the evidence overwhelmingly points towards that. If you look at the people who did the attack, they're not professionals. If you look at how they're holding the rifle, it looks like they're throw trying to throw bullets.
00:09:31
Speaker
at the people that they're shooting. And you don't see somebody jump jerk around a gun like this and like do that to try to throw a bullet at someone, unless they've never shot a gun before or they're like an untrained militiamen or they're a terrorist. When you see that ISIS released footage, ISIS claims it through the Amok News Agency. The evidence at this point is pretty overwhelming. And to be quite blunt, this is the style ISIS does terror attacks. This had ISIS written all over it from how the terror attack was done.
00:09:59
Speaker
And so all the evidence points in that direction. There were two countries, one a Russian ally, one a non-Russian ally, that were fulfilling their duty and warning them about this. And so, to me,
00:10:12
Speaker
ISIS is the clear candidate, number one, by miles and bounds. If anyone says that it's likely it's anyone else, I think you could
Gonzalo Lira's Controversial Role and Misinformation
00:10:20
Speaker
disregard them. I'm not saying it's impossible. I'm just saying we have yet to see any evidence. And of the cryptocurrency stuff the Russians have brought up or any piece of evidence that they've brought up, they have yet to provide anything to substantiate it. um like For example, when people talked about that ah ride to Ukraine, like they were trying to I think Scott Ritter said they were returning to North or whatever.
00:10:42
Speaker
ah Originally, they had this picture of a van that they said was the Ukrainian van that they were using to transport back. ah It had Belarusian plates. They said it was Ukrainian plates. It was Belarusian. It's just people didn't know that. And so they assumed it was Ukrainian plates. And the Russians have yet to provide any evidence that they were returning to Ukraine. And of the cryptocurrency thing they said, which is that the Ukrainians paid them to do the attack, they have yet to show any of the wallet transactions.
00:11:06
Speaker
They have yet to show any of the stuff that anybody who knows anything about crypto would know that there's some record of when these types of transactions happen. um So for me, that question's already kind of settled. um But the second thing, and this is what I think the first question's all about in the first place, is to avoid the horrific scandal that this should be. is This is an example of the Russian government being warned by two separate parties, one of which is an ally, one of which is not, that there was going to be a terror attack. One of those warnings even said the city that it would happen, and even said that it would happen in somewhere, it could happen somewhere like a concert hall. which is where it happened. These are pretty scary warnings with the Russian government completely disregarded. Putin said three days before the attack that this was just meant to cause discontent within Russia. ah This was meant to hurt Russia. And so if you take the FSB and you concentrate them all and occupied Ukraine to arrest Ukrainian children, tying yellow ribbons to trees, then there's gonna be less of them to take on the real terror threats in Russia trying to do terror attacks.
00:12:13
Speaker
And there should be a real scandal here. But because the it's being fingered at Ukraine and all the direction it's being, oh, this is just part of the war. It's almost like it's a natural disaster. Now it's being treated like the Russian government, almost like there's nothing they could have done to prevent this, even though they were given warning. They could have concentrated on other real security risks to their nation state. And so I think that a lot of the first conversation is to blur the facts and evidence and and what is true, what isn't true enough, so that people don't get to the second point of the conversation once the first one would reach its natural conclusion. Now that we know who did it, who is at fault for it happening?
00:12:52
Speaker
And a lot of that blame would fall on the Russian government. I mean just – like we talked about that – I think it was the Yovaldi shooting where the where the where cops had the terrible, terrible response time. I believe it was Yovaldi. We have so many – Yeah, where they were waiting outside the the school, and it was a national – It was a national tragedy, and it was a scandal, and it was rightfully scandalous.
00:13:15
Speaker
They, an hour and 20 minutes was like the response time from the Russian police to get there. The guys got away and of all these cases, the guy was blockaded in the building. That's why they waited.
00:13:28
Speaker
In this case, they were running around, shooting everyone, and then they got away all four of them. There was a possibility they could have all gone away and then did another terror attack. yeah And then another terror, and like a spring of terror attacks because of the response time. This should be a scandal, but because the conversation is focused on, oh, this is just part of the war, so therefore it's not really in our control. It was the Ukrainians, it's the West that did this. You can't have the natural second conversation that the society should have if they want to stop something like this from happening again.
00:13:58
Speaker
Which, for the love of God, we don't want to see something like this happen again. Yeah, of course. Of course. Terrorism is never appropriate not yeah against civilians. I one of the so i mean yeah i think that that was my takeaway from it was,
Comparing Ukrainian and Russian Political Dynamics
00:14:10
Speaker
well, at first when I saw what was happening, my assumption was that Putin was going to use it in some way to bolster the war effort. i mean My assumption at the very beginning was he was going to blame some element of it on Ukraine.
00:14:24
Speaker
And yeah, it looks like due to the domestic failings of of the the Putin regime, that's a lot of egg on his face, right? I mean, that's really disturbing to see that many people fail or that many people pass away because of their failures to listen to intelligence from their allies. so Has there been any evidence at all that Putin provided or that the Russian government provided that was at all compelling? I mean, you you mentioned the cryptocurrency thing. You mentioned the plate. I think I've seen those things. Yeah, the thing is they'll say things, but then they will provide the evidence. It's a good example would be like you remember the chemical weapons that they said that Ukraine had these biological weapons. um I think some stories would go as far to say that would target Russian DNA.
00:15:05
Speaker
Right. It was they they were these super weapons it was like from the X-Men films or whatever. Yeah. um And then they've never provided any physical evidence. Nothing. They just said that. Yeah. I mean, they were they were there and they're doing the research and then they just don't provide the evidence. And this this reminds me of when Bucha happened.
00:15:21
Speaker
the the When the cars came in, the the scene was horrific. I visited some of the people who lived there. I filmed it right before they started the rebuilding process. I visited the mass grave. It really was a horrific, horrific period in Ukrainian history. And the footage was getting spread everywhere of the people coming in and just the body strewn about. It was horrible. And so what the Russian state media did is they just showed the footage and then they just put the word fake on it and that was it.
00:15:49
Speaker
They just put the word fake on it, and that was it. That was the state. Boom. They just said it was fake, therefore it was fake. And that was that. I remember, I know that Steve Rosenberg from the BBC was covering a lot of the press outlets, the newspapers, which are seen even less than the actual state media in the West. And then the newspapers, I heard commentary from George Galloway.
00:16:10
Speaker
which is the a British MP of a very strange kind of schizophrenic variety, in my opinion, and and he was providing evidence like um Obama had a meeting three days before.
00:16:23
Speaker
And i thought I thought that was particularly compelling. Scott Ritter, a Kid Diddler in Chief, he had a segment where ah on on some radio program, he's somebody who does a lot of work for the for the Russians, go on state TV. He went to Chechnya recently and gave a speech to Katerov soldiers. I don't know if you saw that. I did see that video. It was bizarre. Yeah, absolutely bizarre. He said that that when they did the Shahada, they used the wrong hand during the terror attack.
00:16:53
Speaker
When they had one hand with a gun mowing down people and they used one of the hands to perform the shot, they used the wrong one. Smoking gun. Yeah, this is the problem. It's all coincidental evidence. It's stuff that makes you just go, huh, at most. And when I have, when ISIS is releasing the footage, when the Amok News Agency is claiming it, when Iran is saying is pointing towards ISIS, when we're pointing towards ISIS, when ISIS is saying it was us, it was us. When it looks like ISIS, when it walks like ISIS, when it talks like ISIS, it's ISIS. At least that's my perspective, but
00:17:27
Speaker
These bodies are, in my opinion, are being disrespected, and they're not allowed to rest. Even in death, they are being made to serve the end of making more bodies in conquest. I think it's horribly tragic, and the only the only way to to deal with this is to call it out as much as possible, but breaking that information bubble in Russia is extremely difficult. Understood.
00:17:50
Speaker
Well, um interesting to see. And I think that this, we haven't heard the end of this story, right? I mean, what's going to happen as a consequence of Putin's attempt to cover up his own domestic feelings may still have yet to play out because it seems like the story, as you mentioned, is still developing as we speak. So I i am very concerned watching it. um How do you feel about going to another one go to one? Let's go to the next one on the list. Sure. OK, I want to go to the one that I hear that I've heard a lot actually this one's getting a little bit more dated now because he he passed away but Gonzalo Lira the narrative I hear on so Twitter all the time is that this American journalist was in Ukraine doing legitimate journalistic work and was murdered by the Ukrainian government because he published content that made them work bad
00:18:43
Speaker
Obviously there's a lot of stories there, or a lot of a lot of to unpack with his story. But I'm curious as to how you navigate that that specific anecdote, um and we can obviously talk through some of the nuance in the story, because I'm pretty familiar with it as well. So let me be blunt. ah He didn't like me, and I didn't like him. We were blocked. We only blocked each other. So I'm not the most unbiased person in the world.
00:19:09
Speaker
So I'll try to straight shoot it as much as possible and not let my bias show too much. But it will show because I i never really respected him as like a journalist. I would call him a blogger more than a journalist. So Coach Red Pill is what he used to go by before and he was a pickup artist basically, to put it bluntly. He would tell you how to master women.
00:19:32
Speaker
and like figure out like this is you know women are like dogs and he he was a really more I would say of a chauvinistic style now I'm not a pickup artist I don't know the the sweet science of love I guess so you gotta have to listen to him to figure out if he understands it better than I whatever it is, ah he eventually moves on and starts doing more politics news and eventually moves over to Ukraine ah right before the invasion. I was told it
Debunking the Euromaidan Coup Myth
00:20:00
Speaker
was a day before you the the invasion happened. here I don't remember if it was a day, but it was right before. it was it was right I don't remember the specific day, but it was right before the invasion. He's flying from the US at this time to basically say he wants to do ah journalistic work in Kiev when Yeah, he's he's he's going to be a professional journalistic man. He's going to do journalism. So he goes to Ukraine and he lives in Harkiv, which is in eastern Ukraine. And it was a city that was bombed quite a lot. And to be quite frank, his journalistic work completely comprised was comprised of staying in his apartment and going on Western al media programs and talking about stuff that he read from press releases. Now, that...
00:20:43
Speaker
I'm not saying that that's even necessarily bad because I work with people whose entire job it is, is to repackage like content from like, like they work for like, like wire services and that is can be really backbreaking work. That's not what he's doing. He's not working for a wire service. He is taking press statements from the Russian government, reading them verbatim on his stream, and then reporting it as fat.
00:21:09
Speaker
And in some cases, Dale, I mean, wasn't he also going on Russian state TV and state media to do some of this reporting? I mean, you mentioned that all publications in the United States, but I also recall he had a couple appearances on Russian state TV. Yes, he did have appearances on Russian state TV. yeah um I'm sorry. I've been talking to him for so long. I just kind of assumed that was a given um but no yeah yeah i on yeah ru just framed it yeah yeah Russian state TV and such um and I looked at his content and it was just full of lies and on holes and I didn't like it I didn't like it cuz I remember he said that the high Mars was destroyed now There are high Mars that have been destroyed since I think two or three in the last two months
00:21:53
Speaker
as in the first ones that were destroyed. He was saying in the first year of the war, there are multiple destroyed. And when you go and look at the evidence of it, some of it was quite literally video game footage. This is not journalism. this was He was accepting this at face value, then taking it, and then reposting it on his content.
00:22:14
Speaker
Now, a lot of people read articles and then call it like, look, I'm doing a journalism. You're not, you're just reading somebody else's work. You can say you're a commentator, you're a blogger, you can say all these things. That man was not a journalist. If he went out to the front, took pictures, and was like, look, I took this original photograph of somebody fighting, that's journalism. I did this interview. This interview could be, journal it might be instances he could find one or two interviews on his podcast that might actually amount to something resembling journalism if you could ask a good question on occasion. But he did not do journalism. He did commentary and blogging. To be clear, that's still protected by freedom of expression. That's still freedom of expression, but that's not journalism. There are people in Ukraine that are doing real journalistic work exposing mistreatment of soldiers or volunteers or exposing government pressuring of certain journalists or exposing certain corruption stories. And these are people who legitimately
00:23:12
Speaker
are risking their professional reputation, risking their financial reputation. I mean, there have been journalists that have been assassinated by Ukrainian political elites if we go back like 20 years. And while that's 20 years ago, 20 years ago isn't a lifetime. That's just like 20 years. And so there are people legitimately risking their lives as doing real journalism. And so I just don't want to amount this to the same thing because it wasn't. Now,
00:23:37
Speaker
Eventually, he keeps doing this commentary and his commentary takes a more and more pro-Russian angle to the point where he's basically egging on the Russians, cheering for him to take cities. He's putting up maps on Twitter that are like like a split up map of Ukraine of how the country is going to be divided once it's conquered by the Russians. And he's cheering them on and denying war crimes. Denying Buca, for example.
00:24:02
Speaker
which he never was able to back up why he believed it was done by the Ukrainians. He was never able to back it up substantially. he did The longer it went on, he just ignored it. He used to stop talking about it because the evidence became too overwhelming. That's true for a lot of the people who said that about Bucher. Jackson Hinkle is another person who just doesn't talk about it anymore because the evidence now is just way too overwhelming. Eventually,
00:24:24
Speaker
ah This noise that he's making gets the attention of Ukrainian authorities. And so they send people out to him to tell him, hey, you are not allowed to deny atrocities that happened and to root on the Russians while you're in this country. You're not allowed to do it. Stop it. you're If you're going to keep doing it, leave the country or stop it.
00:24:47
Speaker
And then he didn't really change his behavior anymore. And then that is when ah Ukrainian authorities, and i and I heard, and I can tell you from personal experience, put put whatever amount of credibility into this, from people who knew him directly, that this period he became very, very paranoid, peeking out his window, very scared about what was gonna happen, but he didn't change his behavior. That's when the government then raided again, and then they actually booked him. And then after a period in a stint in Ukrainian prison, he was released on bail,
00:25:16
Speaker
And while on rest on bail, because he was going to go on trial for the spreading of misinformation, there was stuff about taking pictures. But I haven't been able to find anything that substantiates that he was taking pictures and selling it to the Russians. People say that a lot. I haven't seen anything to that. um There is stuff about him taking pictures, but that that could mean necessarily anything. And until he was on trial, we probably weren weren't weren're going to know the details of that. Sure. and Now he's never going to go on trial.
00:25:41
Speaker
um He gets released on bail and then he decides that he's going to do a type of, you know, I guess, ah you know, escape from LA type escape out of Ukraine and try to cross the border into Hungary and claim political asylum. Problem is, is he's on bail. Right. So immediately when he tried to cross the border, they found him and it was like, you're on bail. And then he just went straight back in the prison.
00:26:07
Speaker
Now, there's a few interesting things. You can go back and you can watch his stream. um and I think this is the last time he's on camera as he's fleeing to the border. He live streams his attempt to flee the country and live tweets it. I have to say, not particularly intelligent if you're trying to flee the country to live tweet and live stream your fleet. Whatever, he does that. And he says that he was tortured in Ukrainian prison.
00:26:33
Speaker
he didn't say he said specifically didn't have any evidence but he said he was tortured he said that they took pins and that they put
NATO Expansion and Russian Aggression
00:26:40
Speaker
them in the whites of his eyes Now, he didn't have any evidence of that. but he where where did he Where did he say this? Did he say this on- He said this when he was making his escape from- His escape? Yeah, his great escape. yeah um The great escape failed. um He was put back in prison. And then the last letter from him seemed to indicate that he had pneumonia or something of that sort.
00:27:05
Speaker
Now this is where the speculation comes in. And so there's like two ways that people think of it. The first way is that the Ukrainian government killed him in prison. They tortured him, murdered him, ah or, and this is the most watered down version of it, ah that they created conditions that led to his death. Therefore they mistreated him in some way and therefore he died. Not because they directly like hit him over the head with a hammer, but because, you know, he had not good conditions and it piled up. They didn't take care of him. Yeah. Yeah, ah the other angle of it, and this is what a lot more pro-Ukraine people say, or it just depends on how much you don't like them or not, really, I've seen, um is that instead, is that this pet person going into his 60s, who's a chain smoker and unvaccinated and a little obese onion broariously and and bragged about his vaccines making a sperm like more potent and powerful, um maybe he, I mean, I hope he, like maybe that,
00:28:00
Speaker
you know is not healthy and maybe that contributed to him catching pneumonia and then dying and so it depends on what you believe or not it's like with Navalny if the Russians didn't kill Navalny no one's gonna believe him anyway because even if they didn't kill him or didn't purposely kill him or didn't create conditions that led to his death and it It literally was an accident, which they do allege, which we don't know. I don't believe, but I mean, it's possible because of the circumstances of his death and the fact that he's against the government and the government's record, no one's going to believe him. Now, the Ukrainian government doesn't have the same record of just like murdering prisoners or or the same record that Putin does, um but that doesn't mean that it's impossible for there to be ma betray mistreatment in Ukrainian custody. But as of right now, we have yet to have been provided any evidence of mistreatment.
00:28:48
Speaker
And so that is the full Gonzalo Lero story as I know it. Understood. Understood. um Makes sense. And the context, I do appreciate you playing devil's advocate on the on the the yeah let's say the pro Ukraine position because that's extremely important. um All makes sense to me. um Do you want to go to another one?
00:29:09
Speaker
Sure. Let's go to another one. Let's let's let's move through it. um All right. This is one that just happened recently. Russia just recently had their elections in which Vladimir Putin won by a landslide. Did he? Yeah. Surprise. I was as surprised as you were. What a plucky underdog.
00:29:27
Speaker
And um the narrative I saw almost a week of was you know Zelensky. And I think the Ukrainian elections would be happening around this time. um um you know check We'd be gearing up for them. OK, yeah. So wed yeah, definitely check my work on that one. But the narrative that you that Russia is a more democratic country because Ukraine is suspended elections. Obviously, there's a state of martial law, and there's a lot of new ones to unpack there. But again, how do you ah how do you address that that whole anecdote?
00:29:55
Speaker
So, I can talk about Russian elections first. Now, I'm not going to get into all the nuances of how exactly the Russians rigged the system. Because, like, a lot of it's kind of what you would expect. Ballot stuffing is pretty notorious. Keeping candidates off the ballot even after they've gotten the amount of signatures necessary. A great example of this would be Boris Nepsov, which was an anti-war candidate from the Communist Party that was running this. Now,
00:30:19
Speaker
Some people believe he's he's controlled opposition because he's from the Communist Party, which is typically aligned with the Russian state. Other people who the Russian liberals or other Russians that back him more ah see him as somebody who was taking a principled stance ah against the war and for political change to try to move Russia towards future and he trying to like pick up the flag and keep going. ah But he got the amount of signatures necessary. And when I looked at the lines, the lines were long for him to get signatures.
00:30:48
Speaker
and looked longer than any of the Putin lines that I saw personally. um I mean, not that I personally saw, but the, you know, the lines I saw online, but they just kept them off the ballot, they just invalidated the signatures and just said no. And um whether it was because, you know, ah he was too anti war, and they didn't want that message getting out there, whether it was because they knew that If they had an opposition candidate that was actually semi-opposition and not just two or three other guys that say, we support everything that Putin support, but are not Putin, ah then he might actually be able to get 10 or 15 or 20 percent of the vote or something, even if it's heavily ah rigged and controlled. And so they kept they keep people off the ballot, they stuff the ballots. ah The Russian elections, even by its own people when you ask them,
00:31:35
Speaker
many of them will come to the ultimate, relay not realization, but will openly say, like
US Financial Aid to Ukraine: Myths and Realities
00:31:40
Speaker
yeah, we understand that it's not completely free or fair at the very least. Now, I would say that to me, that's what I would classify as a rigged election. If you can't run, if you can't get a candidate on the ballot that's against the established norm, and the only other candidates that are allowed on the ballots are ones that support the established agenda, and then you stuff the ballots,
00:32:02
Speaker
and just make it whatever result you want it to be, then I would call that a rigged election. Now, the last election that happened in Ukraine created an actual transfer of power, and I mean transfer of power of political rivals, Petro Poroshenko over to Vladimir Zelensky. This election was monitored by international monitors and they said, and these are respected international monitors, not just some like And this is how the Russians actually will bring election monitors. They'll get, like, people from, like, neo-Nazi parties, crazy, far-right people. They'll bring them over, call them, like, the Election Foundation or whatever, and have the monitor elections in Crimea. But, uh... And I'm... And I swear to God, people go look it up if they don't believe me.
00:32:40
Speaker
But ah in Ukraine, that was a real transfer of power between one democratically elected leader to the other that had real political differences. They handed over that power. That to me shows that it's at least in some capacity a democracy. That doesn't mean that it is a perfect democracy. I would talk about ah harassment of certain Ukrainian journalists. ah There was a scandal recently of cameras being placed in the hotel rooms of journalists, and then when they smoked pot and you know they had a party, then that was leaked out to make them look bad and uncredible, and to make their anti-corruption stories look less credible. And the office and the accounts that were posted that were associated with the Zelensky administration, whether that was type of Zelensky directly or somebody else, who knows? These are like real political scandals, but there is a free press that is allowed to function.
00:33:30
Speaker
I am allowed to talk about that that and if I wanted to, I could call zelinns Zelensky a pat a pap smear or whatever I wanted to. I could call him those disgusting things in the world and I can and I can do that freely. And so that type of environment allows political opposition to form. The fact that Klitschko was it called Zelensky out directly and was saying that he was used ah he's kind of, in some ways, I think he's being too up-down, too authoritarian.
00:33:57
Speaker
and his running as a political opposition figure, as the mayor of Kiev, I think shows that that type of political critique is allowed during wartime. And I think that shows the health of the political system with that political critique being allowed during wartime. um But when it comes to the election specifically, ah even though I could go and I could talk about like corruption issues and ah the hostile military administration and different things like that,
00:34:23
Speaker
ah When it comes to the elections, they have this thing in the constitution where own elections are not held during national emergency wartime scenarios and that they wait until there's a period where the violence to stop the national emergency has passed for them to resume elections. This is in the Constitution. This was put in the Constitution when the country was a got its independence from the Soviet Union in the 90s. I don't think this is a power grab by Zelensky. That doesn't mean that something like this could not be abused, but I do want to point something out. Ukraine was invaded in 2014. They had elections in 2019.
00:35:03
Speaker
So if the government administration wanted to use this to stop all elections and tighten their grip on power, that would have been a moment where they could do it, but they didn't because they probably knew it wouldn't be accepted by, if they were brought into power by the Euromaidan pro-democracy movement, it's going to be pretty hard to say we got to counsel democracy permanently to that movement if they're the movement that helped bring you to power.
00:35:27
Speaker
And whether it's just because of public pressure, the Ukrainian people not accepting it, ah they went through the transfer of power. They had an election even after the Russians annexed Crimea and i took over one third of Donetsk and Luhansk. And I think that we have good reason to believe that if the war was to end tomorrow, that they would return to elections ah probably momentarily. um And i have't I have no other reason to believe otherwise. i i It's not to say that something like this could never be abused. The people always need to keep an eye out, but this is something that was set up in the 90s. This isn't new. Yeah. but and and And as you mentioned, Ukraine is not a perfect democracy, but there there are face there is no perfect democracy. Let's be honest in that situation. There's more perfect democracies, but yeah.
00:36:13
Speaker
um Did you see some of those videos coming out of Russian polling booths with with with with military, I guess they were Russian police just intimidating voters? I mean, that how widespread is that do you think of Russia?
00:36:25
Speaker
Um, in Russia proper, I know less about it, but in occupied Ukraine, that is the standard as in if you're voting, there's a soldier. Um, and the way it's done in occupied territory is they go to your house. And so they have like two or four soldiers holding rifles, come up to your house, knock on the door and in between them is ah some collaborator, some person who's working with the occupied administration and saying,
00:36:49
Speaker
We're here to help you vote. We're here to give you democracy. in yada and And there have been ads played in Occupy territory. that And it's it makes my blood boil a little bit. And they're like, oh, we're here to bring the Ukrainian people democracy. And now you'll have a choice. There was this video where they captured some POW and then they brought him to the book booth and made him vote in this like beautiful political ad as if they're bringing democracy but the way it works is they have four soldiers come to your house with one of the collaboration officials and then they stand in front of you as you fill it out. I saw photos of that. In an area where where there is executive power in Moscow for the government to seize your property at whim and occupy territories if you do not accept Russian citizenship. um If that's the standard that they're plying by and and they get anything during this election season and to indicate that you might be a problem
00:37:41
Speaker
whether it be how you vote or how you interact in that voter interaction, that that's something they're gonna be thinking about. What's gonna happen if I vote wrong here? What's gonna happen if I tell them to fuck off? What's gonna happen here? And so a lot of people just end up filling it out, writing Putin, handing them back, and just letting them walk off. Understood.
00:38:02
Speaker
Okay, well you you touched on Year of My Dawn. You'll move to one more here. I think you and I discussed this one a bit when we were on our the podcast last year, but I hear this one over and over and over again, and I always think it's an important thing to discuss. The Year of My Dawn in 2014, obviously massive,
Global Security and Nuclear Non-Proliferation
00:38:20
Speaker
mostly young young person-led uprisings.
00:38:24
Speaker
at the time in Ukraine. I hear from Russia, from from people that actually it's not even Russian apologists. I mean, I hear these from mainstream political candidates. I think I heard ah RFK say this the other day, that the Euromite Johnson said this too on the zero hedge debate with Joe Walsh. Who did?
00:38:42
Speaker
ah Ron Johnson, Senator Ron Johnson. Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah, exactly. That's my point. I mean, we're hearing this from, it's basically a mainstream talking point, the Republican Party now, that it was a c i- led CIA-led coup in Ukraine to basically install a pro-Western leader. um Curious how you how you react to that. Again, there's a big story there.
00:39:00
Speaker
man i've been talking about this since i mean like since the other start i mean there's just no substantial evidence i just did a piece with uh loaner box on john mearsheimer and we were talking about this and people can go in there if they want to look at the money trail because i followed the money trail as in national endowment of democracy as in the money that we've given the money that is supposed to be the smoking gun i followed it And you'll be surprised that it wasn't bags of guns and tanks. It was, hey, this is how you train an election judge. Hey, this is how you train a voter monitor. Hey, this is like media literacy training. Hey, this is, on some of it was border patrol. Some was anti-trafficking, like anti-trafficking funding for anti-trafficking of drugs and human trafficking, which is a massive massive issue in Eastern Europe.
00:39:55
Speaker
um definitely after the collapse of the soviet union and then i find out it wasn't just us it was also the japanese and all these other countries you can go check that out on that video if people want to find follow the money trail but the gist of it is is what happened in euromaidan is that ah the ruling leader yanukovych won his previous election on the idea that he he was going to enter the association agreement with the European Union. The association agreement was this deal that they had been negotiating with the European Union for a while, for years, that would allow them to do a bunch of things, would allow some free travel of certain merchandise, but very importantly for Ukrainians, work visas and visa free travel. Visa free travel would be very useful for a lot of Ukrainians as they try to integrate themselves more with Europe. ah The work visas would be useful.
00:40:41
Speaker
And it was supposed to be seen as a really big economic help to Ukraine as it has been a nation that going into the collapse of the Soviet Union, Deutsche Bank was projecting it to be probably one of the most prosperous upcoming Soviet economies to have setting the record for inflation of I think 10,200% during the peak, ah during the collapse of the Soviet Union. And so they wanted to get out of this stagnation. There's no reason they can't have the same economic success Poland has. There's no reason.
00:41:10
Speaker
ah Definitely when you look at the demographics and the and the size of the populations, they should be able to. And so they wanted to enter it, and Yanukovych, even seen as the more pro-Russian candidate, um and somebody who has a background in an organized crime, he would literally, back in the day, steal hats off the hat rack and run away when he was younger before getting into politics and moving his way up.
00:41:33
Speaker
That's also true about the person who heads the Crimean occupation and the occupation in Donetsk. And a lot of the occupation organized crime is everywhere in the occupation. ah But Yanukovych agreed that he would do it because it was overwhelmingly popular and he wanted to win the election. but So then he won the election. But then it became time to actually sign the paper. And then the Russians out of nowhere started blocking trade with the Ukrainians on the border.
00:41:58
Speaker
And like 50% of all trade with a country that you're that economically intertwined with is a massive issue. And what do the Russians want? They want the Ukrainians to not agree to the association agreement. He wants them to not only pull out of it, but agree to a separate deal with the Russians. to integrate them into their economic system, which the Ukrainians didn't want and is the exact opposite of what Yanukovych promised and goes against the Budapest Memorandum, which stated that Russia would not only not infringe upon the territorial integrity of Ukraine due to it giving up its nuclear arsenal to them, but also would not use tools i.e. such as economic coercion, which is stated explicitly in the treaty, but was now being used at this moment
00:42:42
Speaker
The Budapest Memorandum, which the nukes had been given up for, in my view, had been solidly violated. There's some other moments you can go beforehand to find things where it's getting pushed and stuff, that like in 2002 and other moments, but this is when it was completely, in my moment, pouring up.
00:42:58
Speaker
And that's when Yanukovych backed down, but he chose to back down in the middle of the night to suppress dissent and to suppress people coming out. it's You announce bad things on a rainy day, so protesters protesters don't come out and protest against you. Problem was, protesters came out anyway, and they came out in the middle of the night, mostly young protesters. So they responded by sending in the Berkut riot police, which beat them with metal pipes, um tied um nails and screws to flashbangs and threw them into the crowd. to basically function as like almost like semi shrapnel grenades. ah And they even ended up eventually as a protest went on killing people. um ah Deeper into the protest, it would even be the heavily hunted over 100 people would die. But once the country saw these images, they were horrified. And so they came out and the year oh my don wasn't just in Kiev, which blew up.
00:43:49
Speaker
But then also, there was the automaidan, and then also expanded to Harkiv. I know my friend, Anastasia, was a Euromaidan protestor in Harkiv. It spread to Dronipro. It spread to Zaporizhia. I knew another Euromaidan protestor from Zaporizhia. It spread to all these cities, and after months of attempts to beat it down and quite literally shooting them, mowing some of the protesters out, and even an attempt near the end to outlaw groups of larger than three people,
00:44:15
Speaker
So it would have been an attempt to outlaw the act of protesting. The government felt the force on it was too much to bear. And after some attempts to make a deal fell apart, Yanukovych fled the country.
00:44:28
Speaker
Now, something that's brought up in this timeline is a conversation between Victoria Newland, who is the former undersecretary of state, and I think she just permanently retired from, I think, the diplomatic service, actually. Yeah, I believe that was last month or in the last couple months. Yeah.
00:44:45
Speaker
ah Happy retirement. But she had a call with other American officials, and in this call, they discussed, and this is supposed to be the smoking gun that it was actually a CIA coup, they discussed the future makeup of the Ukrainian government, which included people ah that did end up being in the Ukrainian government. ah The problem is, is it would be like, let me let me say you and me were Australian, and we're talking about who's gonna be next president of America. Oh, I hope it's that Donald Trump guy.
00:45:15
Speaker
And then it's Donald Trump. Well, there was only like two likely options anyway, even if I was completely wrong or missed the mark or whatever. Like if you, if there's a short list of the likely options, if you say one of them and they end up being it, you're not a fortune teller. It's just you had two options. You could have flipped a coin, not necessarily, but you get the idea. yeah And didn't at some point in that conversation too, Newland even pushed to include Yanukovych in the negotiations and This is the thing, this is the this is the real kicker, is if you listen to that and you listen to the whole thing and not just the clips that people put in their documentaries, yeah they're talking about, hey, oh if if we ah do we got to make this deal with with the regime, we need to make a deal with Yanukovych because they were scared of Russian intervention.
00:46:01
Speaker
They were scaled that if a dare wasn't made, then maybe the Russians would invade, which I mean, ye you know, they wanted to make a deal. And then the protesters didn't make a deal. They didn't make a deal which they wanted. they want they The West wanted them to negotiate with the Russians and make a deal, and they didn't. So in my mind, if it was a CIA coup, then that would have meant that they at some point just completely started ignoring the ah ah Langley's orders, if that was the case, because it doesn't seem to be in line with what this leaked phone call says. And that's a leaked phone call. So this isn't like diplomatic posturing. This was said in private, in confidence, under the understanding that would never get out. So that leads me to believe that this was not a CIA operation. I think that all things considered with the diplomatic, I would say the escalation management that both Obama and Biden engaged in, I think they'd be too scared to actually just do a full overthrow of the Ukrainian government, um but I just haven't found any evidence and I think the evidence points to the contrary. That's not to say that we didn't have any influence in Ukraine, but there's a big difference between funding an NGO that helps with, you know, helps like Ukrainian blogs or helps train election judges or helps fund some Ukrainian media outlets and
00:47:12
Speaker
overthrowing the government in a CIA coup. There's a very, there's very different there. If that's the case, then Trump's election was a Russian coup because they spread misinformation in the United States during election. That would be hyperbolic. That would be silly for me to say that. People who say that he wasn't a legitimate president for those reasons, I think are silly. But like that, you can't reduce this to that. And that's what this is an attempt to do in my mind. Yeah. And then on top of that, too, I mean, it's not like this stuff operated in a vacuum. It's not like the West had influence in Ukraine before you're on my side. I mean, Russia was doing the same thing on the other side. I mean, not only from ah trying to influence sentiment, but obviously we saw what happened after 2014 with militants and, you know, basically going in and doing a soft invasion of the country. um Yeah. So I prefer election judges over bombs. Yeah, that's me.
00:48:02
Speaker
Yeah, yeah, I am. I think I'm in the same boat with you there, brother. um Okay, well, let's do two more before we run it run up to the hour. um NATO expansion is one I have spent a ton of time talking about, because as you know, Dylan, I come from the libertarian space. The libertarians are very reflexively anti-NATO. I'm personally um in pro-defensive alliances. I think they're very compliant with what would be ah considered a non-aggression principle framework for foreign policy. But one of the things I hear all the time is ah you know Putin would have never done anything in Ukraine in 2014 or in 2022 if it wasn't for the fact that NATO was expanding.
00:48:42
Speaker
and that he thought NATO was going to or eventually allow Ukraine in. Take it off. i mean any Any thoughts on that and how you how you assess that that talking point? so i don't We don't have too much time left, so I don't want to go into the whole um principles of like Putin's history with NATO or NATO expansion specifically. I just want to talk about, as a motivator for this invasion,
00:49:08
Speaker
um I think there was so much more at play. I don't think it's impossible for this to have played some sort of a role. But when you listen to Vladimir Putin write his essays, or you read his essays, or you listen to his speech at the start of the war, he spends so much time talking about history. If you go listen to his speech with Tucker Carlson,
00:49:27
Speaker
And you when Tucker Carlson gave him a blank canvas, he spent like an hour rambling and rambling about how history says Ukraine belongs to Russia. He writes an article before the invasion, history says that Ukraine belongs to Russia, that either Ukraine has to exist as an extension of Russia, or it has to exist as literally part of Russia and therefore annexed. So it has to either be a direct Russia ally like a Belarus type state, or it has to be Russian. That's his ideological position.
00:49:57
Speaker
Putin's also 70 years old now. He's getting up there at age, and and also at the same time, the Ukrainian government is getting more competent. His military has obviously gotten a lot more confidence in 2014. I think that a lot of these, I think the ideological factor isn't taken into consideration as much. um I think Putin wanting to establish his legacy isn't taken to us taken into consideration as much. And I think that there was other also, I think, economic factors. this whole war started this whole crisis started again at the start not because of NATO membership but because of the EU. It had to do with EU economic integration that this whole war originally started and so I think that that's also a major factor as well. That's not to say that
00:50:37
Speaker
NATO expanding isn't no factor whatsoever. um It's just that if that was the case, I feel like we should have gotten a more vitriolic response to Finland joining when they doubled NATO's border with Russia, or when Sweden joining when sweden joined turning the Baltic Sea into NATO Lake.
00:50:54
Speaker
um i think that there's just other factors that people don't want to take into consideration either because they come from a neorealist framework and therefore these type of domestic factors um like government types they're not going to take into consideration as much or because it's just simpler it's just simpler to look at it all like a big chess board and they see these chess pieces moving forward and the Russians staying there scared of these chess pieces but it's not that simple um that again it's not to say they didn't play any role but Ukraine was no closer to joining NATO in 2022 than they were in 2014. There had been no massive change on that front. The Russians by annexing Crimea and holding one-third of Donetsk and Luhansk had gotten themselves hard power that they could leverage to make really what any deal they wanted with the Ukrainians if they were to concede to giving part some of that land back.
00:51:47
Speaker
Like, fine, you have to guarantee no NATO membership and we'll give you back Donetsk and Luhansk. Like, there's deals that they could have tried to pursue. They instead tried to pursue a full call ah full frontal push and take the capital and that did not work. And that's where we are today. Yeah, noted. And I mean, it is worth noting, too, this this quote gets flown around all the time. But Gorbachev himself had referenced that NATO expansion was not a point of discussion in the early 90s.
00:52:13
Speaker
And I think you're right. I think the reason why this point sticks is so poignant is because it can really simplify everything to just one really quick anecdote. It's like, oh, it's at West bad, right? I mean, the West spread too far, and it's an obvious reaction, when in reality the situation is far more nuanced than that. So no, I think that's good commentary.
00:52:33
Speaker
Yeah, it's it's again it's not that NATO cannot at all look threatening from the Russian perspective, but I just want to throw out there that the Russians right now are the biggest advertisement for NATO yeah that I've ever seen in my life. And a defensive alliance is really only concerning if you have imperialist ambitions when you really boil it down. I mean, if you're if the idea that an independent sovereign nation is going to join NATO bothers you, then I think it speaks to the fact that you probably have ambitions to aggress on that country at some point. the The thing is I think there are countries that can have grievances with NATO. Sure. um I think that's I think the idea of one country attacking another country and then using NATO as a shield to defend itself. sure Like the Turks or some but as a country that really worries me because they have I think they're very jingoistic
00:53:19
Speaker
at the moment, and I think they're being very aggressive with their foreign policy. yeah There is real problems with NATO, but the Russian problem with NATO is that it's in the way of taking over Ukraine, Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania, in my mind, at least from ideologically. Now, that isn't to say that everyone in the Russian elite wants that goal, but when you talk about what Putin believes on an ideological level in his writings, in his speeches,
00:53:45
Speaker
There is nothing dividing Ukraine, Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania, these countries that are both these three countries, which are in NATO and Ukraine, which isn't, from belonging to Russia, using the same foundation that he ah used to justify his attack on Ukraine. And that is something that is concerning to me. Understood. OK, well, let's in the last five minutes, let's finish this off with the last one. This one is also very timely.
00:54:07
Speaker
um you know The narrative I hear all the time online with this one is is the U can't the us.S. is effectively bankrupting itself by bankrolling Ukraine. And obviously, there's a lot of nuance to unpack as it pertains to the amount of funding that we've given Ukraine and the type of funding. But military aid in general, and that when you hear that anecdote, the U.S. is basically going broke because we're we're funding the war in Ukraine. um Your response to that?
00:54:35
Speaker
i just don't I just don't see the math. um And what really annoys me is it's the people who also have been doing the worst economic math forever. um It's really annoying to see people who were very energetic to bankroll 20 years in Afghanistan, which cost us Going on like a trillion dollars, right? ah To see them flip not because of I think of any deep genuine ideological devotion anything but because the political wins and the Republican Party has shifted and so now they're part of the populist isolationist rise and so 800 billion to 1 trillion on this war which we just
00:55:14
Speaker
you know, left and the country collapsed. That was worth it. 60 billion for this with none of our soldiers dying and with large amounts of it being old military equipment that my grandfather used in Vietnam. I'm not kidding you. I've seen Vietnam era troop carriers on the front. I've seen World War Two machine guns on the front. There are World War Two artillery guns from our stockpiles that are in service in the Ukrainian army. Though we were never going to send Navy SEALs They're going to go take out ISIS with World War II, artillery. We're never going to use these weapons again. And so the first thing I want to say is a decent chunk of the weapons we've already sent were weapons we were never going to put into service anyway. Some of it on the edge of decommissioning. In fact, there are helicopters in Australia and I think Canada that they're going to decommission. And so the Ukrainians came up and said, hey, don't get decommission them. Give them to us.
00:56:04
Speaker
And that's how the Ukrainians are actually pursuing a lot of these weapons. When you go throughout a lot of Eastern Europe, the BMP ones, the BMP twos, these are older equipment that a lot of these countries are giving up under the expectations that they're going to replace them with new equipment. In fact, much of the money in the $60 billion dollars that is located in the Senate compromise bill ah for Ukraine is replenishing of our own stockpiles. It's not even a sending of weapons over to Ukraine. It is the replenishing of our own stocks within many cases, better, more updated equipment. um And this is all ah come together to come to 60 to 75 billion dollars being sent to Ukraine and a lot of it of equipment that we could never use anyway.
00:56:48
Speaker
um So if somebody if somebody comes to me and says, like, what about homelessness? And i um I want to tackle homelessness, too. I think we probably have a different model of how we both want to tackle this issue. But I think we both agree that you're not going to house the homeless with Bradley's. yeah You're not going to house the homeless with Vietnam troop troop carriers or these old mortars or cluster bombs that we're trying to decommission. um So I think that's that's the first thing. The second thing is,
00:57:15
Speaker
We're talking about 0.3 to 0.5% of American GDP. We're talking about 5% of Pentagon spending and the amount of I don't know how people are going to measure the value of how this money is being used, but when it comes to the destroyed capacity of the enemy, that is happening. this weapon These weapons are being put to use to defend Ukrainian cities. They were put to use to help liberate parts of Harkiv, liberate parts of Yersan, and have been used to sustain Ukrainian defense.
00:57:47
Speaker
and riek devastating casualties on the Russian enemy. And I don't say that as like, get be all these people that I say that as a weapons job is to defend your country against, yes you know, whatever threat it is. And the threat right now is invasion and it has done destructive things to that invasion.
00:58:04
Speaker
And so if you're we're talking about 40% of the Soviet tank arsenal obliterated. like We're talking about ah the Russian ah government going to Stalin era tanks, tanks that were designed and put into release during the Stalin era, not in back... backroom support or indirect artillery roles, but I've even seen a few of them being used in assault roles. That shows that I think compared to what we thought a war like this would cost us and be like, this is nothing compared to what we thought a war like this would cost us or be like compared to what before the invasion.
00:58:43
Speaker
um And so I would also put forward that if the worst was to come about with this war, I am not of the opinion that we would just stick our tail between our legs and run because our interests with Europe are so intertwined. They're our main export market. We're deeply, culturally, economically, diplomatically entwined with them. And when we were attacked on 9-11, they came to our assistance. They're going to expect the same if they were attacked by either terrorists or they were attacked by a larger nation state.
00:59:12
Speaker
And if the Russians do take over Ukraine and they keep pushing, are we just going to say, okay, instead of sending the Ukrainians weapons, now we got to send more American troops to Europe to defend more pieces of borderland with the Russians in case they possibly cross the border and to increase deterrence to make up for the lack of credibility that could have been established after we abandoned an ally we said we weren't going to abandon. yeah if we were to abandon them and that was to be the outcome. So I think cost-effectiveness wise, it's quite well. And also, I would say that there's no price in my mind and establish in keeping up the nuclear non-proliferation goal, which is something I care a lot about. yeah Making sure that not every country in the world feels like they have to race to get nukes to make themselves feel safe. If ukraine if the lesson is sent that Ukraine gives up its nuclear arsenal,
01:00:00
Speaker
then gets invaded and conquered, and that was the one-to-one. In in the treaty that they said, okay, we're giving up these nukes, we won't get invaded and conquered, the countries that signed it, invade and conquer them, I think that'd be a horrible, horrible message to send. And let me just say, the South Koreans, 70% of them,
01:00:17
Speaker
are in favor of making their own nuclear weapon. 70% of South Koreans, there's real political support for this stuff. People think of these far off fantasies. It was a far off fantasy for the Indians to get a nuke, then they got a nuke. It was a far off fantasy for the Pakistanis to get a nuke, then they got a nuke. When Harry Truman ah probably didn't did not think the Russians were gonna get a nuke as fast as they did.
01:00:36
Speaker
if North Korea can make a nuke do we really think the Ukrainians after a bitter war where they had all these death pits wouldn't with their old Soviet scientists many of them from you know the nuclear age of the Soviet Union wouldn't be able to finagle some sort of dirty bomb or nuclear weapon that they feel like could assert themselves or other countries wouldn't this is something that I feel like is Is not a cost that should be solely borne by the United States, but if there's a cost that needs to be borne to keep up that standard, I think it's worth bearing that cost. that's actually ah That's actually an angle I haven't heard before, but I really do think the nuclear non-proliferation one is ah is an important one. I mean, it's not only relevant towards countries like Ukraine after the conflict that could theoretically develop their own nuclear weapons or countries far off, but it's also relevant in Europe, right? Because if they don't, as you mentioned, if they don't feel like they can rely on US
01:01:24
Speaker
um U.S. support, then they're, I mean, France is already doing this, right? And they're already thinking about what they need to do to step up. And you can bet that- And there's a real break in Washington-French relations over this, because they're not happy with what Macron's doing. Right, right, absolutely. But I think that he's, it's a natural consequence of this idea, and especially if the U.S. ends up fully abandoning their allies in Europe, that it will absolutely escalate that, because they're going to have to be more self-reliant.
01:01:49
Speaker
That could create more situations. I just want to say, if you could beat Russia and Ukraine, then you create an environment where peace is more likely in the long term. If Russia – I know you and I agree on this, but if Russia is able to just barrel over Ukraine and exit country, then we're looking at another 20, 25 years of real problems.
01:02:08
Speaker
um If not more, so yeah, no, Dylan, we've got through my list. um I appreciate it. I'm gonna be able to cut this into a bunch of great segments for our audience, and I know that these are gonna probably get widely shared, so um unless you've got anything for me that you want to discuss, I was gonna give you some time to maybe do your plugs, at least for the sake of our audience, and then I'll i'll close us out, so.
01:02:27
Speaker
I appreciate your time. Okay, Chad. I want to ask Joshua one good question. So give me a good question, Chad, while I do my plugs. My name's Dylan Burns. I'm a war journalist and streamer. You can catch my streams at Dylan Burns Live on YouTube or Dylan Burns TV on Twitch. You can catch my journalistic content either with articles on offbeat research, which I release stuff with them sometimes, ah or with my documentary, my films, which is where the majority of my work can be found, on Dylan Burns TV, my YouTube channel. I released a documentary a month ago covering the artillery war in Ukraine. We embedded with artillery crews in Donetsk and donette ski with the counter offensive down south, ah talking them about their lives, what it's like living underground, psychological issues, recovering after the war, all sorts of things. I'm also going to be releasing a documentary the next two months covering an embed that I did with an aid worker by the name of Dima, who helped save my ah friend John Jones when he was getting shelled by the Russians during an aid run. And he's a very interesting guy. He as a freelance aid evacuation guy, completely working on his own.
01:03:26
Speaker
Evacuated people from Mary Opal just taking trucks just taking cars Sometimes I keep it so in one video where he takes his phone out and he records. There's no tire on it It's just scraping sparks flying brings it back. He's all smiles. He's a really wild guy and I'm a very interesting guy And I'm really excited to release a documentary on him That's gonna be the next two months on my main channel if people want to keep an eye out for that awesome awesome um And you know I don't know if your chat's got anything for me, but I can also do a quick plug for the sake of our audience to close us out. So for those that are interested in learning more about Project Liberal, we're a super PAC. and And without spending too much time on this, we were created because we saw an environment in the United States where
01:04:07
Speaker
Extremism was basically on the rise on the far right and the far left. We see that ah most liberal Republicans – and by liberal, I mean people that are fans of what traditionally liberal values that America was founded on – find themselves kind of isolated and and left out of their own party.
01:04:22
Speaker
We saw the same thing increasingly, especially on the far left after what we saw with October 7th, and it seems like there's a growing fracture between the far left and the liberal left, yeah the center left. And so what we wanted to do was create a nonpartisan political pack where we could unite people around one shared goal, which is promoting liberal ideas and American politics. and so Yeah, we started projectliberal dot.org um for the sole purpose of doing that. We're about four or five months in, and we're always seeing a lot of growth. So if you want to learn more about Project Liberal, you can check us out at projectliberal dot.org and join there. Become a member, join our Discord. We have a lot of fun conversations in there, and I think we just hit 500 members, so it's growing real fast. um Anything from your audience, Dylan, before we close this out?
01:05:06
Speaker
um uh... yeah i've got one question will you have you seen the movie or heard of the movie hundreds of beavers no should i check it out it's going to be uh... i saw it it's an indie film i just saw it it was fantastic and and baltimore in the charles the other theater in baltimore uh... it's an old slapstick it's like uh... it's it's a slapstick film released in the modern era and it was fantastic it ironically was going to be released on amazon in fifteen days i heavily recommend it okay um... It's like Blazing Saddles meets Tom and Jerry. It was very good. That sounds very interesting. and i'm looking at the I'm looking at the website right now. Very unique. in the Okay. Yeah, dude, I'll check it out. i Check it out.
01:05:48
Speaker
There you go. I'm going to bombard you with my weird movie. I will follow up with you when I see you again and let you know how i hell it was. but' i'm not really i'm I am a big fan of indie film and it seems like we're reaching a golden era with a lot of independent creators where you where there's just a lot of unique stuff coming out.
01:06:07
Speaker
i you know Not to spend too much time on it, Dylan, but dude, i am I'm excited to see what happens in the next couple months when AI video hits. right And you start seeing ah creators, like real independent creators empowered with studio like global studio-level technology. It's going to be horrifying for democracy, but very good for independent film and very good for content creators.
01:06:29
Speaker
AI translation is can be so helpful It'd be I mean once I get once AI translate it's getting better and better and better But just having an slight translated words that like somebody who has a decent understanding language and just quickly go through That makes the process so much easier for me um um mean I mean just telling like an AI to cut out all the dead air and stuff out of videos beforehand just like tough like that like I mean it could make all the The perfect thing for AI in my mind is just the AI takes out all the grunt work yeah and leaves all the enjoyable creative work to the artist. And and going back to geopolitics, I can tell you that there it hits different when you watch a foreign leader or somebody talking in your own language and it's dubbed with a mouth that looks like they're speaking English in their own accent. There's something about that that I think is a psychologically different experience than watching a video and reading a translation.
01:07:17
Speaker
And I've seen this with, I think there was a video floating around with Macron when he did the, when he was talking about some of the stuff. Yeah, I watched it. Yeah, and it's just- You know the one I saw really going around? I saw it on the Rogan podcast. They were getting this one of Hitler. They translated, he made him speak English. Disturbing. And they were like, yeah, it was disturbing. But then it was weird just seeing all the podcasts be like, whoa, okay, I get it now. I get why they all fell for him. It was weird. That is interesting.
01:07:43
Speaker
It is weird to listen to him speak in English, though. It is kind of haunting, honestly. I believe it. I saw a couple with Miele. I saw the one with Macron. But I haven't checked out the Hitler one yet. I should probably do that. That's an interesting. That'll be an interesting experience. ah Educational experience, too. Somebody clip that chat. Somebody clip that. Dangerous. OK, well, Dylan, thank you again. We're past the hour. So I'll let you get back to your evening. Thank you to your audience and to your chat for for listening into this. And yeah, projectliberal dot.org, dylanbirds.tv. Have a wonderful evening, sir. I'm sure we'll our paths will cross soon.