Political angles which are forever changing. But on the human level, as you know, if you visit troops, frontline troops, you have that admiration for people defending their country, defending their homes, defending their families. I'm struck by the way in which that is at a remove from the sort of political noise and the media noise and much more. It's very easy to get caught up in the to's and fro's of today's news, but that, to my mind, is the single thing that struck me most in my visits there. It's just the people I've met who are fighting for a cause which at that level is unavoidable, undeniable.
So the thing that struck you that's different from the media turmoil is just the reality of war.
Yeah, of course. I mean, you know, people who have either lived under Russian occupation from invading armies and then come back out into the world having been liberated, as in late 2022, or the people now organized most recently there in recent weeks who were just getting on with their job as soldiers whilst the world was talking about them.
When were you there, early on in this escalated war of '22?
Yes, first time was in — I was with the Ukrainian armed forces when they retook Kherson, and I was back in recent weeks and was there when the Trump-Zelensky blow-up happened. In fact, I was in a Ukrainian dugout at the front lines when I was watching it.
How's the morale? How's the content of the conversations you've heard different on the two visits separated by, I guess, two years?
On one level, I mean, nothing has changed much, you know. It's a sort of — it's not a total standoff because intermittently each side gains territory from the others, but it's not — I mean, there have been no very significant military gains by either side in the interim period. I think my experience of the soldiers, the people of Ukraine early on in the war, there's an intense optimism about the outcomes of the war. There's a sense that they're going to win.
And the definition of what win means was like all the territory is going to be won back.
Yeah, I certainly on the front lines facing Crimea became quite familiar with people who thought that the Ukrainians in late 2022 would even be able to get Crimea back. And that struck me even at the time, and I said I thought that that was an overreach. And now I think the people, the soldiers at least in my experience when I visited the second time, are more exhausted. The morale, the dreams, the certainty of victory has maybe faded from the forefront of their minds.
Well, three years of war will tire out anyone. What did you think of the blow-up between Zelensky and Trump as you're sitting there in the dugout?
Well, it was a very disturbing place to watch it from. Perhaps anywhere would have been. And I mean, obviously, it was a meeting that shouldn't have happened. It was far too early.
Why do you think so? There's not enough actual pathways to peace on the table.
Well, I think the mineral deal — I mean, I love the fact that everyone's now an expert in Eastern Ukrainian mineral deposits, but...
I think, as I've learned, and we'll talk about Israel and Palestine, I'm learning that everybody's an expert on geopolitics and the history of war on the internet, and now mineral deposits, obviously.
Yes, I'm really speaking at the edge of my mineral deposit knowledge here. But no, I mean, what I could see, the deal that the American administration was trying to get the Ukrainian government to sign was sort of too early, too forced. The Ukrainians weren't ready to sign a deal but were obviously under intense pressure. And I think certainly Zelensky wasn't expecting to go until pretty much the day before. He was obviously visibly tired and exhausted, again, as you are after that amount of pressure for that long a time. And no, I mean, the thing that struck me, and I said this in my column in the New York Post from there, that the thing that struck me was I said to some of the soldiers I was with, you know, what do you make of this? And one of them just said to me, well, you know, we're advised not to follow too closely the ins and outs of the politics of this, you know, and but of course everyone has Instagram or scrolls, and among dog pictures and the, you know, the hot women or whatever is, you know, what happened in the Oval. But what struck me was this same guy saying, 'I've got a job to do.'
Right. And there's a clarity and a wisdom to that. But your job is bigger than that, right? It's to understand the politics as well. And what do you think about the politics of that moment? Because that was a real opportunity to come together and make progress on peace, right? And it, by all accounts, was not a successful step forward. I don't think by any account it was a successful step forward, unless to some extent it was a play from DC to say to Putin, look, we duffed off Zelensky, and now give us something.
That's the only remedial idea I have about what might have been behind it. But I think it was just one of those extremely — I mean, just awful political moments. Zelensky was obviously deeply irritated by the interpretation of the war that he was hearing from Washington. It was only a week after the Trump comments about Zelensky being a dictator, and people in the administration implying that Ukraine had started the war. And I think that must be for Zelensky a pretty Alice in Wonderland situation to be in. And I had significant sympathy for him in finding it bewildering, because it would be bewildering. I think the sad thing to me also on the mundane details of that meeting and just the unfortunate way that meetings happen, I think it's true that he was also exhausted.
Yes, there was a reporter that was asked a question about outfits in a way that — listen, Zelensky, everybody has their strengths and weaknesses. He's an emotional being for better or for worse, and there's a dumb reporter, Taylor Greene's boyfriend.
Yeah. See, you're a real journalist.
He's from one of the new — I'm all for opening up the White House press pool and all that sort of thing, but it means that you get some people in who are sort of, yeah, from blogland. There's nothing wrong with that, but it means that you get somebody who will do something like that. The problem with that interaction, as I saw it, was that that guy asked that disrespectful question, and I think it was disrespectful, and I'll very quickly say why. I think that when a man comes from the realm of war into the realm of peace, the people in the realm of peace should have some respect or at least concession that the other man has come from the realm of war. And that if you're sitting in a political environment where you talk about people being destroyed and decimated and defenestrated and much more, to a man for whom none of that is metaphorical, I think that's extremely hard to accept. And I think that probably also at that moment there was a sort of sense of, you know, Zelensky is being disrespected by being asked about what he's wearing when, as everyone knows, Churchill during World War II used to wear his fatigues on foreign visits, just that is to remind people you're coming from the realm of war. And I think that probably in that moment one of the things that would have been going through his head would be...
But I mean, if this was Putin sitting here being assaulted by a journalist, you'd hope your host stepped in and defended you. I mean, let me try this one out. If a journalist in the Oval Office, if Putin was sitting there, or a putative journalist said to Putin, you know, everyone knows you've had a lot of facial work done, and word is you've used the same guy that Berlusconi used to use. Can you comment on that? You'd say, well, that's a kind of disrespectful question for journalists to ask, and it's a little bit off what needs to be gone over.
And the same thing with Zelensky with the outfit. I think it was just petty and threw things off in a bad way.
Yeah. And it was poorly researched because I think Zelensky was explaining this like three years ago at the beginning of the war why he wears what he wears, and he's been consistent wearing the same.
It's also, by the way, an example of the frivolity of a lot of the attempts to understand what's going on. I mean, my view is that since actually most people, in fact everybody, cannot be an expert on everything, one of the things that we always do is to seize on minor and really quite unimportant things. I mean, every side does it. Look at the way in which the American right for years talked about the Churchill bust leaving the White House Oval Office in the Obama years. I didn't want to hear another darn thing about the Churchill bust after eight years because it was in lieu of trying to understand and actually critique Obama's foreign policy. It was just an easy shorthand. I think it's the same. We're always tempted to that. But the thing is, I think you mentioned Putin. I think Putin would have been able to respond himself to that journalist effectively, and he would have done it in Russian.
Oh yeah, the language thing.
Yeah. So I wanted to sort of lay out several just unfortunate things that happen in these situations, and I think it happens in all peace negotiations, and it's funny how history can turn in moments like this. I do think there was a reporter combined with the fact that, you know, with all due respect, but Zelensky's English sometimes is not very good.
Yes. And apart from anything else, if he had agreed to not do it in English, he would have bought himself the extra seconds in some of his replies that he needed.
Yeah. And have the wit. The guy is funny, witty, intelligent, you know, he could do that in the native language, whether it's Ukrainian or Russian, to be able to respond and get the interpreter. So all of that is really unfortunate because I think on those little moments it's a dance and there's an opportunity there. You know, the Republicans, the right-wing in the United States have a general kind of skepticism of Zelensky, but that doesn't mean it has to be that way. It can turn, it can change, it can evolve.
It's very interesting why it has happened. Why do you think it's happened? I think politics in the United States is so dumb that at the very beginning it could just be reduced to, well, the left went Putin bad, Zelensky good, rah-rah Ukrainian flags. Therefore, the right must go the opposite. It sometimes is literally as dumb as that. Let's each pick a side and call the others dumb. I had a line I used recently, the necessity of people who live too long online to try to wade their way out of the memes.
It is sort of like that, isn't it? Because yes, I mean, I can understand the people who find it very irritating that so many people who would put BLM flags or pride flags or, you know, trans flags in their bio then put Ukrainian flags in their bio despite almost certainly not knowing where Ukraine was. And if that happens, the inevitable instinct of a lot of people who aren't really thinking is to say, that's really annoying. These people are really annoying. I'll sock it to them. But that's where you've got to try to rise above that and say, actually, funnily enough, the fate of a country doesn't depend on my tolerance for memes online today.
Yeah. So I think the memes can be broken through in meetings like the one that happened between Zelensky and Trump. There has been real camaraderie. I've seen the skill of that just recently, having researched deeply and interacted with Narendra Modi. Here's somebody who has the skill of, you know, for his country, for his situation, being able to somehow be friends with Putin and friends with Zelensky and friends with Trump and friends with Biden and friends with Obama. It's very skillful. And that while still being strong for his country and like fundamentally a nationalist figure who's like, you know, very not globalist, not anything but pro-India, India first, nation first, in fact, nation first with a very specific idea of what that nation represents. Cool. And that, you know, Zelensky could do all of those things, but have the skill of navigating the Trump room because every single leader has their own peculiar quirks that need to be navigated.
Yes. The obvious one — I mean, I don't want to make it sound like it was all Zelensky's fault, but the obvious one was at the beginning of the meeting to say yet again, as he has done for three years, thank you to America and the American people and American politicians from across the aisle for your support for my country in its hour of need. We're deeply grateful. And because he for once forgot to say that...
I think it's not that simple. I think saying thank you — he didn't need to say thank you. That was what Vance leapt in on. He's just picking a thing to leap on. There's a whole energy. You have to acknowledge in your way of being that you have been very Biden buddy-buddy with the left for the last four years. There's ways to fix that. Listen, these people are complicated narcissists. All of them. Biden, Trump. You have to navigate the complexity of that. And you basically have to say a kind word to Trump, which is like showing — there's many ways of doing that, but one of them is feeding the ego by acknowledging that he is one of the world's greatest negotiators, right? I'm glad we're able to come to the table and negotiate together because I believe you are the great negotiator, mediator that can actually bring a successful resolution to — as opposed to have an energy of like, it should be obvious to everybody that Ukrainians are the good guys and Russia is the bad guys. There's this whole energy of entitlement that he brought. He forgot that there's a new guy. You got to convince the new guy that this global mission that this nation is on, this war that is in many ways the West versus the East, that there's ideals, there's whole histories here, that this is a war worth winning. You have to convince them, right?
Yeah. No, sure. And they obviously failed on that occasion. But as I say, it must be bewildering to have landed in a place where people were seriously talking about Ukraine starting the war, right? And Zelensky, not Putin, being the dictator. I did the front page of the New York Post the day after the president's comments on that, saying that the big picture of Putin just saying, 'Right, this is a dictator.' And, you know, I think people can be live enough to be able to recognize that, you know, you can make criticisms of Zelensky or the Ukrainians, but it doesn't mean you have to fall full Putin. And again, unfortunately, a lot of people in our time don't have that capability.
Can we go right into it? What is your strongest criticism of Putin?
He's a dictator who's very bloody, as repressive as you can be of political opposition, internal opposition. He's a kleptomaniac of his country's resources. Has enriched himself as much as he could, as he has with the cronies around him. He's not just acted to destroy internal opposition in Russia, but has gone to other countries, including my own country of birth, and killed people on their soil using, as it happens, weapons of mass destruction. The use of polonium in the center of London, not good. The use of incredibly dangerous nerve agents that could kill tens of thousands of people in a charming cathedral city like Salisbury, not good. If the sort of apologists of Putin say, well, he's just a sort of tough man who's looking after his house business, well, I don't think even if you think he has the right to do that, that he should be doing it in third countries, deliberately using weapons that are meant to show that you could take out tens of thousands of British citizens. Yeah. I mean, that's just for starters.
What do you make of — do you think he's actually popularly elected?
Do you think the results of the elections are fraudulent?
I mean, do you think it's possible that it's just that the opposition has been eliminated and he's legitimately popularly elected?
It definitely helps the chap if he's killed all of his opponents.
Something about using the term 'chap' in that context is just marvelous. But, you know, I know — I mean, seriously, if people are worried about — this is another of the sort of slightly Alice in Wonderland things recently about Zelensky, is people are saying, why hasn't — he's a dictator because he hasn't held elections during a total war of self-defense. And it's like, well, you know, if you're really, really passionate about free and fair elections in that neck of the woods, you'd at least notice that Russian elections are not free and fair in any meaningful sense. But this doesn't mean that you have to say that therefore they should have Western-style elections and freedom, that Russia is ready to go and become a Western liberal democracy. Doesn't mean any of that at all. It's just at least note that this is what Putin is.
What do you think is the motivation for his invasion of Ukraine in '22?
It's what he's said for years, which is basically the reconstitution of the Soviet Union.
Do you think there is empire-building components to that motivation?
I would trust most my friends in Eastern and Central Europe, who certainly do think that. There's a reason why the Baltic countries are the countries that are spending the highest percentage of GDP on defense, and it's because they're very worried. I don't think they're faking it. I don't think they're faking it for me or for anyone else. I think the Lithuanians, Latvians, the Estonians and others are genuinely worried for the first time in some decades.
Do you think there's a possibility that the war continues indefinitely? Even if there's a ceasefire and the peace reached, the war will resume, that he will seek expansion even beyond Ukraine?
Yes. And the most obvious thing is that if Trump manages to negotiate a ceasefire, it'll be a temporary pause, and whoever comes in as president after Trump, Putin will use the opportunity to advance again. Yes, again, one of the things that I have heard from parts of the American right and others is that all he wants is Ukraine. That that's all he wants, and that he has no history of rhetoric or actions that suggest anything else. And again, it's one of the reasons why it's useful traveling to places and seeing things with your own eyes, because I very much remember being in the country of Georgia after Putin tried to invade in 2008. So I just — again, people don't have to be the greatest supporters of the Ukrainian cause just to recognize that it doesn't seem to be the case that Ukraine is the only thing in Putin's vision.
Do you see value and maybe depth and power to the realist perspective of all this? You know, somebody like John Mearsheimer's formulation of all this, that in these invasions of Georgia, of Ukraine, it's using military power to expand the sphere of influence in the region in a cold calculation of geopolitics.
It's interesting. One of the fascinating things over the last few years is there's been an act of sort of necromancy of certain figures who were totally, totally debunked in the area of Ukraine, Mearsheimer, and in the case of Israel, people like Finkelstein. And it's been interesting because these are people that one hadn't heard of for some years because they were not listened to, usually for good reason. But by the way, first of all, I'm very skeptical of the term 'realist' in foreign policy because most people to some extent will say that they are a realist in foreign policy. Very few people are surrealists in foreign policy. Very few people are unrealists. I would like to meet them. A surrealist foreign policy analyst.
We did mention Alice in Wonderland.
Yeah, I mean, maybe we should introduce the term. But I mean, if you want to say — if you want to look gimlet-eyed out across the world, you're a realist. I think the steelman of their argument would be Russia has or believes it has a sphere of influence, and it's regrettable, but there's very little we can do about that. That would be about the best version of that argument that you can make.
Well, to expand on that steelman, isn't this how superpowers operate in the dark realist/surrealist way? Meaning the United States uses military power to have a sphere of influence over the whole globe, really. China appears to be willing to use military power to expand its sphere of influence and political power. More importantly, in the case of China, political power, non-kinetic warfare to take over areas, Hong Kong being the obvious one. Behind that, isn't there always a kinetic threat?
Oh, yeah. Of course. Yeah. I mean, you disappear some booksellers and students are protesting. Of course. I just — but to go back to this, yeah, of course, okay, countries believe they have or would like to have spheres of influence. I do think at some point that the so-called realists on that have to try to decide how much leeway that allows you to give to a fairly rapacious regime. And it's not — I mean, it's not the easiest calculation always to make. You have to work out whether or not, for instance, it is true that if Russia had — if Putin had managed to go all the way to Kiev in the first weeks of the war in '22, he would have gone straight on to other places. And, you know, maybe he would have done, maybe he would have taken his time, maybe he wouldn't have done. And this is a very fine calculation that changes every week, let alone every year. You know, my friends in Georgia, I thought were wildly off the mark when they were believing that after 2008 they could get, for instance, either NATO membership or EU membership. And I thought that was completely unlikely, and I still think it's unlikely and almost certainly undesirable for Europe and for NATO, because you've got to be very careful. And obviously this is one of the issues with Ukraine and has been since the '90s, is, you know, are you going to set up a tripwire to start World War III? And that's not a small thing to consider.
So, what do you think the peace deal might look like? And what does the path to peace look like in Ukraine in the coming weeks and months?
I just thought it would be, regrettably, the Ukrainians ceding some territory in the east and then making sure they rearm during whatever peace period comes afterwards. And probably all four territories of Donbas separation, personally.
You couldn't lay any of that out because it has to be negotiated on. But I mean, I think that — and I think the ease with which non-Ukrainians are currently speaking about Ukrainian ceding territory is concerning because these territories include hundreds of thousands of Ukrainian citizens who do not want to live under Putin's rule and people who have families in the rest of Ukraine and much more. And, you know, I recently interviewed children who had managed to get out of the Russian-occupied areas. And it's brutal for a Ukrainian to be growing up in that territory. So when people say, well, obviously, you know, Donetsk has to be given to Putin, I think that that is not as easy a thing if you're in Ukraine as it is if you're sitting in New York, say. And by the way, I think that on the issue of — there is a school of thought that obviously President Trump to some extent was floating in recent weeks, which is that if a deal is done, a business deal in relation to minerals or anything else, you get this great — you get a kind of buffer zone of American businesses and investment and therefore American business people in the region, which would effectively warn Putin not to invade. I don't follow that idea because, not least, there were Americans in the regions that were invaded in '22 and they left fast. And we know from Hong Kong and other places, just because there are international financial interests in the region does not mean that a dictatorship will not either militarily or covertly take over. I don't see American miners as being an effective buffer zone against Putin.
By the way, what did you learn from talking to the children, Ukrainian children from those regions?
Well, I mean, it's heartbreaking because the only schooling is Russian schooling. Obviously teaching the Russian language, Putin's view of history, and effectively indoctrination. And people can quibble with that term, but it's Putin indoctrination schools. And any children or families that do not want that effectively have to hide and not go out. And there were — I spoke to children and parents who'd had school friends who, for instance, the Russians set up in '22 and '23 summer camps for the children of some of the areas that have been occupied, and the children went off to the camps and then they didn't come back, but they were just stolen. I think that around 20,000 Ukrainian children have been stolen in this fashion. That's not a small thing. It's not got very much attention, but yes, I mean, children who would hide whenever the Russian troops came to the door. One teenage boy who described to me how when his mother was out, a woman came around to the house, knocked on the door and gave him his papers and said that he had to attend the next week to sign up for the Russian army. This is — I mean, this is not good. And that's obviously what life is like for thousands of people behind the Russian lines in Ukraine. I just have it in mind when people say things like, you know, well, obviously these regions have to be handed over. It's very, very hard if you're Ukrainian to concede to that.
Yeah. And even if they are as part of the negotiation and handed over, I think it'll probably be generations or never that that could be accepted by Ukrainian people.
Absolutely. And I would have thought never.
What do we know about this kidnapping of children, the stories of the thousands of children that the Russian forces kidnapped?
Some of them were in orphanages in Eastern Ukraine. Not all by any means, but some were. And it's a very complicated story actually because many children were taken from their families. Many the Russians said, well, look at these Ukrainians, they don't even look after their children. Therefore we will look after them. And I was recently when I was there looking into this story because it's a very interesting question as to why it hasn't had more attention. You know, one thinks of, for instance, the abduction of the Chibok schoolgirls some 12 years ago now in northern Nigeria and that appalling abduction of 300 girls by Boko Haram completely gained the world's attention. And I was very interested into why the Ukrainian children who'd been taken by the Russians had not gained similar attention. There's a slight similarity with the war in Israel, which I'm sure we'll come on to. But I do think that one reason is that they were effectively hostages, and the Ukrainians knew — this is my estimation of the terrain — is that the Ukrainians knew that if they made a great deal about this, more than they did, that the children would effectively be the most effective bargaining chip. And I do think there's considerable truth in that because if you look at, for instance, the way in which pressure has been put on the Israeli government by the Israeli population about the kidnapped Israelis, you'll see that it's a pretty effective tactic for any authoritarian regime or terrorist group to operate in a way that means that the population of the country you're attacking pressure their government to do something in terms of concession. It's a very effective tool, and I think that story was partly played down, not just outside of Ukraine but also within Ukraine, partly for that reason.
As a truth seeker, as a journalist, how do you operate in that world where, at least to me, it's obvious that there's just a flood of propaganda on both sides? Now, of course, when you go there and directly experience it and talk to people, but those people are still also swimming in the propaganda. So unless you witness stuff directly, sometimes it's hard to know. Like, I speak to people on the Russian side, and they're clearly — first of all, hilariously enough, they almost always say there that there's no propaganda in Russia.
Which makes me realize, I mean, you can be completely lied to. Maybe I am in the United States as well and just be unaware. Maybe Earth is run by aliens. Maybe the Earth is flat. So, I don't know.
Maybe you've taken mushrooms.
I have before this, and I finally see the truth. And it's you that are deluded, Douglas. Okay, but back to our rounder discussion, round Earth shields that we are. How do you know what is true?
You can tell it when the bare facts become not true. Like, you can tell it when somebody is willing to claim that everything caused the invasion of 2022 except for Vladimir Putin invading Ukraine.
Yeah. There's a hilarious thing that happens, and I think you actually speak about this, that people are generally just much more willing to criticize the democratically elected leader.
So the interesting thing that happens is these wise sages that do the narratives of like, NATO started the war, right? Which there is some interesting geopolitical depth and truth to that, like that NATO expansion created complicated geopolitical context, whatever. But they forget to say like other parts of that story.
Well, yes, of course. I mean, and I mean, of course, to some extent it's rather, you know, there's the very most irritating type of question asker at any event is the person who says, I was disappointed that in your 30-minute talk you didn't address X. And I tend to say, looking forward to coming to your next talk where in 30 minutes you'll cover everything that could possibly be covered. There's always stuff that's going to be left on the sides. There's always going to be stuff that's left unaddressed. There's always going to be other angles. There's always going to be somebody else who has this interesting perspective and you can't cover it. Nevertheless, if you cover everything other than the central things, then it's suspicious. Many years ago, I was at a debate in London and there was a debate about the origins of World War II and Pat Buchanan, talking of necromancy, was one of the speakers and Andrew Roberts, historian, was one of the people on the other side. And at one point, you know, they got so completely stuck into issues of iron ore mining in Poland in the mid, you know, something like this. And the moderator, I remember, it was just a melee. And the moderator turns to Andrew Roberts and says, 'Andrew Roberts, why did World War II begin?' And he says, 'World War II began because Hitler invaded Poland.' And it was a magnificent moment because everything had been a marsh. They were just so lost in all the intricate and clever and interesting things that you can talk about about the origins of a war that you forget to mention the thing that's most important. And certainly my experience as a journalist and writer is that one of the reasons why you need to go and see things with your own eyes is because people are certain to tell you that what you've seen with your own eyes didn't happen or hasn't happened, and it helps to steel you.
Yes. For that moment. It's a gradual thing that happens where the obvious thing starts being taken for granted and people stop saying it because it's like the boring thing to say at a party. And then all of a sudden over time you just almost start questioning whether the obvious thing is even true. I don't know how that happens in psychology.
Yeah, I think it does. I've observed it in a lot of different places, which is the important thing is the only thing you do forget. Everything else is what you remember. And some of us have for some reason wired in a way where we try not to forget the important thing.
Remember the obvious thing. Yeah.
Yes. And as you say, not wanting to be the boring guy at the party who reiterates what is true, because what a douchebag you'd be if you were that guy. Nobody likes Captain Obvious at a party.
Okay. Is it possible that Donald Trump is a mediator, a successful negotiator that brings a stable peace to Ukraine?
It's possible. We'll have to see. I think it's just too early and complicated to tell. That he wants to bring a peace seems to me to be obvious. He stated it a lot of times. Whether he can, we're just going to have to see. It's extremely hard to see some of the parameters of the peace deal, and I would suggest that the most — not the most difficult, but one of the most difficult is that there is no peace guarantee on paper that the Ukrainians can possibly believe. It doesn't matter because we in the West, some of the countries in the West, have said it before that we'd secure their peace and we haven't. And so what other than NATO membership, which is not possible in my view, what other than NATO membership would reassure the Ukrainians that they are going to have their borders secured and the peace of Ukraine secured? I can't see. I think there's not going to be ever a guarantee that you can trust.
I think the way you have an implicit guarantee is by having military and economic partnerships with as many partners as possible. So you have partnerships with the Middle East, you have partnerships with India, perhaps even with China, with the United States, with many nations in Europe. All of which still suggests that if there's enough financial interests in Ukraine, they would prevent another Russian invasion. There would be financial pressure. Yeah, there would be, you know, Russia needs to be friends with somebody, either China or the West. I think a world that's flourishing, it would have Russia trading and being friends with the West and the East. Thought it would be ideal.
It would be ideal if the regime in Moscow wanted it. But that's not — I mean, there again you get into the thing of, you know, people accused of Russophobia, but I mean, I do believe that after the fall of the wall, Russia was ill-treated by the West, not treated with some of the courtesy that it required. I do think that. And at the same time, that doesn't justify the actions of Russia in the last 20 years.
Right. But let's descend from the surrealist to the realist. It's very possible for Russia to be on the verge of military invasion of these nations and that being wrong, while also not doing it because they're afraid to hurt the partnerships with the West and with China.
