Okay. We are live. Alexander, how you doing? I'm doing very well and very, very honored and delighted that we have Jacques Bourg with us today on this program. This is an absolutely critical moment in the Wall, and explaining to us… many important things. Many thanks to both of you because I'm very honored to be with you today. I'm following you every day so very happy to... To be in the show with you today. Thank you. - It is an honor and a pleasure to have with us Jacques Baud. You are a political analyst, a geopolitical analyst, as well as a very accomplished author. I have the links to your books in the description box down below. I will also add that link as a pin... Amit, is there anywhere else that, any other links that you would like to? - What?

tell our viewers about to follow you, or are the links to the books? - No, I'm not really on social networks. I spend my time writing rather than playing with social networks, and therefore there is no real links to contact me other than, Probably LinkedIn and the YouTube videos. Fantastic. So I will add the links to Abazad, I believe is the best place for your work as a PID company. Comment down below. One of the books, The Russian Art of War. That is... We're going to talk about Alexander and Jean-Pierre. Get into it. Let me just say a quick hello to everyone that's watching us on Rock Fin, Odyssey, Rumble, the Duran, .locals.com and on YouTube. And.

Quick hello to our amazing, awesome moderators. Thank you for everything you do. Alexander Jacques, let's get to it. Absolutely, and we are coming to a topic, the Russian art of wool, which could not be more topical, and there's no one better to discuss it with us than… Jack Bull. Now I am currently about three quarters through his book. I have found it absolutely compelling. Reading. It is one of the most insightful discussions of what one might have supposed would be a subject that, given that we are seeing the Russian military in action, lots

commentators, reporters, military analysts would actually have been working on for years, and intelligence officers in the West as well. And I have to say it is eye-opening to me and fascinating because it's… Been increasingly clear that the Russians do war differently from the way in which it is done in the West. And Jatwall explains this. And discusses this thoroughly and, if I may say so, with extraordinary methodical clarity.

Good as this. Be his job, and I can remember right from the outset of the Special Military Operation – Jacques Roul making commentary after commentary, discussion after discussion, explaining to people, explaining to people like myself, who does not have or pretended to have deep knowledge of military matters, what would happen. At

So let's just get onto that topic now. Let's start with the question of the Russian military. And one of the things that I had not appreciated previously is the depth of intellectual thinking in Russia that there is about war. Extent to which the Russians see war both as a science and an art, a topic, if you like, for academic study, and this is done at the very highest levels of the Russian military. So perhaps that's a point to start with, but you know… can take us from there because I do not know and I think you said this right at the start of your book.

There is no analogous body of study of war that goes to the depths and approaches it with the same kind of rigour as the Russians do. So can you just enlarge on that a little, and then we can perhaps talk a bit about the under pinnings and then look at the war that we're seeing now. Yes, thank you. As you said before, my previous job as I was in Strategic Intelligence was precisely, especially... Cold War was precisely trying to understand how the Soviets would think. And you may remember that at that time we were planning or let's say... How the words are missing. But--

We were fearing a war every three days, basically. And so we tried to understand how the Soviets figure out. War, how they wage war, how they would wage war, how they think war. I was in charge at the time of the Warsaw Pact and all the Warsaw Pact countries had the same, more or less, thinking system. I studied that I was not the only one by the way, I was in touch with other intelligence services who were concerned with the same kind of questions. And we We developed also on the Western side, quite a deep knowledge of how the.

The Soviet think war. Today, I noticed, because I continued to study a little bit the issue of war and how the Soviet would consider war, and I noticed that there were not real changes. If you remove the Marxist's crust, basically you have the same way of thinking and approach to the question of war. And as you rightly said, and probably comes a little bit also from a Marxist's perspective, Everything has to be scientifically studied. And war was a scientific study in the... The Soviet Union and not even scientific, but also academic in the sense. And that's very interesting for them. Very little people understand that. But during the Afghan war, and I was also responsible for following the war in Afghanistan at that time,

I noticed there were a lot of exchanges within military reviews or papers, exchange between people in the field. And the people in Moscow about war, how war should be understood, how war in Afghanistan differs from the war that was anticipated in Europe and things like that. And you have very vivid exchanges in the military press, so meaning that they considered the A tree, not just as a matter of, of course, it was a matter of security, but it was also considered as a matter of... Intellectual challenge to understand, understand the enemy, understand how the enemy works. And in fact, I noticed that the Soviets at the time knew better how the Mujahideen work than we.

Tried to understand how to do Mujahideen work as NATO was in Afghanistan. So the understanding of the enemy was much deeper in the Soviet Union than it was in NATO later. And that's very much this whole approach of war that consider not just your own capacities, but also the capacities of. Enemy or the adversary. And that is exactly when we were I mean, as I said, I was in NATO from 2012 to 2017, which is quite strange form for a sweetheart. This guy, but that was the result of discussion between the Swiss government and NATO in the framework of the Partnership for Peace. And I was given a position in NATO on our

The only Swiss officer working in NATO. But that was a critical time of 2014. And then I... I realized that the NATO, the... The thinking in NATO was not deep enough to understand what was going on in the Donbas and basically in the southern part of Ukraine. It was a very ethnocentric approach to war, basically. They assumed that the Soviet or the Russians or the enemies, basically, would think like NATO. That really strikes me and that's the reason why when the special operation started in February 2022.

I decided to write a book, books because this is the, The Art of War is the fourth book that I wrote about this conflict. And I wanted to make clear that the Russians... Understand us better than we understand them. And as you know, if you read the Art of War or Sun Tzu, When you know the enemy less good than you know yourself, then you are almost certain to lose. And that's exactly the situation which we are. We didn't try to understand the Russians because everything they say is propaganda, everything they are incapable, and so on and so forth. And we rely only on what we understand from them.

But we, in fact, we went into this conflict with a total incomplete view of the issue. But that's... The purpose of this last book is very much to show what are... The holes in our understanding. And I say understanding, not just knowledge. I mean, I remember or remind you that intelligence comes from the word intelligere in Latin, which To understand. So intelligence is about understanding, not simply about knowing. And that's very important because we tend to know things, but we don't tend to-- Understand things. We don't really want to understand things actually, because probably that would lead us too far. So.

The idea was very much to come back to the very basic of the Russian thinking. And you have, I made several charts that show how the architecture of Soviet or Russian, I said Soviet or Russian because in that case, very similar. There are not many changes in the way of thinking war. As I said, the political orientation is totally different, but the way of thinking is the same. And then from the strategic level down to the tactical level, trying to understand how this thinking develops into action, basically. And that's exactly what we are seeing today. That means what we see in the field is basically a tactical translation of what--

Happens at higher level. And that's very uncommon for the Western mind. Because we used to have a strategic thinking probably in the '50s as we started to consider. Either a nuclear war and and big war in in in Europe and think like that. But especially in the last 30 years, when Western armies tried to confront other type of armies or even Rebels in Iraq, Afghanistan and so on. Thank you. We tend to forget the strategic and the operational level to concentrate on the tactical level. And

As a matter of fact, I have been several times in North Africa, I worked a little bit in Mali, and I was surprised to see that the French operating in the Sahel region had no real strategy to fight the so-called terrorism or ISIS or whoever you can call it. They had only tactical approach, so you just kill people, that's it. And it's an aim in itself. And for that precise reason that at the end, the authorities in Mali, Niger, Burkina Faso, they decided the French were actually part of the problem. They were not solving the problem, they were part of the problem because there was no strategy, no aim. You should have people, but you don't know where to.

Where are we going to? Nobody knew that. And even the French military, that's very surprising. But that's a symptom of what happened also in Afghanistan. I was, I... I have been shortly in Afghanistan for my country. That there was absolutely no understanding of what do we want to achieve there. We achieved nothing. And I remember my driver in Kabul, he was a Pashtun and I asked him, because Pashtun is the same origin basically as the Taliban, I asked him, What do you feel about the Taliban? I said, Well, you know, we don't like the Taliban, but if we have to choose between the Taliban and the Westerners, we will choose the Taliban.

That shows exactly that we were fighting a war without understanding even how people think. And we were just firing at people, period. And that's, in fact, when we, the West, engaged the war in Ukraine, it came in Ukraine with exactly the same approach. So it's a... Tactical approach. You just fire at people. You just try to have a better Better weaponry, but that's it. There is no real strategy. And we see that I noticed that when I studied, as I said, I was in NATO at the time, but when I followed the combat operations in the Donbas in

2014, those combats that led eventually to the Minsk agreements. But I was studying the battles that were... we noticed that Ukraine had actually... Ukraine was advised by Western officers, by the way. But there was no really operational thinking behind those. They were just faring at at the rebels. Whereas... The rebels in Donbals, many of them had a Russian military background, and they were fighting even with very little resources because at the very beginning they had almost nothing. Time you had Ukrainian units defecting to the rebels.

Because the Ukrainian army was basically a territorial army. So you had both Russian and Ukrainian-speaking people in the army. And those Russian-speaking, they defected to the Russian-speaking population, including with weapon, artillery, ammunition, and all that. The rebels could develop quite rapidly a kind of an armored force and then developed also some kind of operational art based on their... Their education, the military education that had that some of those guys had from the former Soviet Union. And I noticed here a total difference in the approach of war. And this was confirmed after the beginning of the Special Military Operation that you had. A Ukrainian army that, by the way, was in between two different, I would say,

thinking systems. A lot of people were used to, I mean, probably they were very young, but they were probably, they started their military career being trained. In the Soviet system. But then came the end of the Cold War. And these guys tried to-- into a new thinking system or new concepts, mostly NATO oriented. And that's exactly what you see today in the Ukrainian army. They are between two systems. And that's deadly because you don't have, let's say, doctrinal references. Point. You don't have a doctrinal baseline to make your operation. And that's a fundamental weakness that's the

the Ukrainians have, while on the Russian side, as I said, there's a total continuity in the military thinking between the Soviet time and today. They adjust a few things because obviously technology developed and evolved and you had to adjust some. For instance, command and control assets and command and control systems and all that. But basically, we are on the same doctrinal baseline as before. As a result, you don't have any discrepancy between generals and junior officers. And that's something you don't find in the Ukrainian army. It's really even stronger today with people like Siersky and who are quite--

Old generation people and young people who have only NATO training. So you find this discrepancy within the Ukraine. It's a fundamental weakness. Beyond everything that you guys mentioned several times, like weapons, ammunition, and all these issues, which are absolutely a part of the problem. But there is also a fundamental problem at thinking level, at the way you approach war. And that affects also-- The way, for instance, the equipment that was delivered to the Ukrainians. Because, as I said, Western armies have developed armies for colonial wars, basically. Means you have to be very light and you have also very... um you you

Work at tactical level, so to say. You don't plan big operations because when you are fighting against rebels, basically the tactical level probably might be sufficient, or I mean, is considered as being sufficient. You can see that, for instance, when you have the M777 howitzer, for instance, or the scissor gun that was provided. To Ukrainians by the US and the French. These are two things that I think are very important. We have a lot of different types of artillery pieces are designed for sniping artillery meaning that you have. Shot should have a decisive effect, so to say. You have withdrawn and extensive reconnaissance. You can pinpoint your target, and so on. And--

That might work if you have, for instance, an isolated rebel strong point or things like that, or just a small machine gun position. Then you can, with a very little amount of ammunition, you can destroy these guys. And a little amount of ammunition was required because when you wage wars far away from your country, you don't want to come with billions of tons of ammunition. You try to keep your logistics at the minimum. And that's the reason why sniping artillery was a good answer for a specific situation that you may find probably in Afghanistan or in Iraq. But-- When you are in Ukraine and the Russians, they never had this concept. They are still in the...

Almost say old-fashioned, although it's not very polite because it's probably, it's not so old-fashioned. It's probably more conventional war against a massive, massive attack, and therefore you need massive firepower. And since you operate on your own territory, because that's basically what the Russians had always in mind, fighting on their own territory, they don't have to care about logistics, basically. I mean, I'm not saying that this is not important. It is important. But you have less concern when you operate on your own territory than if you operate-- thousands of miles away from your country, obviously. And that's the reason why the Russians could stick to a very conventional type of artillery with mass fire.

Can really crush the enemy instead of pinpointing individuals. And that's exactly the kind of confrontation the Ukrainians face. In Ukraine. So they have a weapon system. Actual elements, if you want, that are incompatible with the type of war they are waging against the Russians. And that, I think, is important to understand. I feel sometimes that the Western Western military staffs have not got that. At least the politicians have certainly not understood that. Probably in the military, a little bit, they start to understand that there's a total inadequate between The war they had in mind and the war which is waged in Ukraine. By the way, even Ukrainian soldiers, after having --

attended training in the UK or in Germany, they said, those guys, NATO trains us for the long war. These people don't know the type of war in which we are because obviously those young Trainers, officers, they may have battle experience, but the battle experience that you may have in Iraq or in Afghanistan has nothing to do with the battle experience people have in Ukraine. And that's exactly the problem they have. So we, in fact, the support we provided to Ukraine-- beyond the fact that it was insufficient quantitatively, inadequate qualitatively. It's also inadequate in terms of thinking, in the approach. So we led Ukraine in the totally wrong way.

Everything that we hear in the last couple of weeks that the West finally... Start to understand that the way was totally wrong. Instead of, as you very often say, Alexander, when you're in the hole, stop digging. But instead of doing so, they continue digging. That's the very, very strange way. So there's, but that's. There is some explanation of that because the fact that the military is not really a subject of discussion in the West, much less that it was in the Russian, then Soviet and Russian army. The discussion within the military system is much more active in the...

In Russia than it is in the West. In the West, probably because most military or professional military-- so there are some kind of a bubble within the society. So they are not really integrated. Nobody really cares about who dies, who fights, and all that, in fact. And-- But you see that very much in France, for instance, nobody cares about what happens with... French army, I mean, they were fighting in the Sahel. Nobody really cared about whether it was effective or not, because the army at the end is a small society within the society. And that's very interesting, because I used to be trained in the British army.

The British intelligence, military intelligence in the 80s. And the British military were very conscious of that. They told me, well, because in Switzerland, as I said before, we are citizen soldiers. So the Machiavelli used to say, Switzerland has no army, it is an army. And That means that in Switzerland we have this idea that the army is very much embedded into the society. And I was surprised in the UK that it was not exactly the same. And even the military officer told me, no, in fact we are a society within the society. And sometimes even the society is not so...

Positive about the military very often. So, meaning that the discussion within the society about the military is not as vivid as it may be, for instance, in Russia. And that probably has consequences in the way the West approach war. It's a small country of individuals that think war, that wage war, and the rest of society is not really involved and doesn't really care about what's going on, which is very different in Russia. And as a result, you have probably more concern in Russia about what happens in Ukraine than you may have in the West, basically.

And therefore, that explains probably why we are so keen to provide weapons to Ukraine. Nobody really cares about what happens in Ukraine. I mean, you know better than me that this is a fundamental issue of the casualties in Ukraine. If you read the papers in France or so, nobody really cares about the casualties in Ukraine. This is an inexistent problem. And therefore, we don't really question the way we help Ukraine, the way we support Ukraine. We don't even question the purpose of helping Ukraine. Helping Ukraine. And this is something that has to do at the end of the way the political leadership understand

Or approach to this conflict. And as I said before, I was in strategic intelligence, my job was to advise the government. So when you make an assessment, it is with the idea that this will be Of a political decision. And therefore I felt almost compelled to write books. Trying to understand what we misunderstand in this conflict and how we should understand it to have the right approach to it. If we had some understanding of the situation, we would even... Not even have entered the conflict. We would really have supported the Minsk agreement and done everything that was possible then.

To avoid war. But surprisingly, we don't have this wisdom at political level in Europe and the West at large. So in a nutshell, that's the reason why I wanted to write this book. I don't know if you have… that was extremely enlightening. It also explained an awful lot of things, by the way. I mean, I have been to Russia a couple of times. I have visited factories in Russia. I've discussed this in various programs. I've often... Said that Russian factories are on an enormous scale. They have enormous surge capacity. They are prepared to keep machine tools and workshops idle and keep workers at a lower level.

They'll all cool so under work and I've said you know that this isn't what we do in the West now when I saw That when I saw those factories I didn't really understand why that was happening. If you go to your book you see that the Russians think of the war in a complete… holistic way. They absolutely take into account the importance of manufacturing. the manufacturing. Base, the ability of the manufacturing system to expand, the science base, the technology base as well. Again, if we talk about weapons, a couple of weeks... To be. With the Iran-Iraq war, and he had the…he was maintaining tanks. He was there, he was both maintaining the Iranian tanks and examined…

the Iraqi ones, and he was put in a position of having to examine a Iraqi T-72, and he By it. Despite the fact this was an early version of the T-72, there were many things that he found very difficult to grasp conceptually about it because he was western trained, he was actually American trained engineer. And he was surprised at how uncomfortable it was, but he also said this is a completely practical machine for war. Very conceptually thought through in order to do the job that it does. And he was comparing it to the British chief-dent tank, which he thought otherwise.

And you were just mentioning now how you went to North Africa, to Afghanistan, following the wars there, and you saw the French doing things that didn't seem to have any real purpose behind them. I can remember, if I've written about it, watching a British… Channel 4 dispatches television program about a British army unit in Afghanistan and I remember watching that programme, feeling deeply depressed. Village to another village to another village. And I couldn't understand what they were doing. But the sense that the soldiers themselves didn't really understand what they were doing, because they weren't advancing forward to any particular... The next.

Are designed for war. The industrial system is prepared for war to an extent that we just don't think of in the West. Civilian societies. In Russia, they take war much more seriously than we do. And when you meet Russians, when you spend time in Russia, you discover that this is a society where the depth of understanding of war… You know, every day level is much deeper than it is with us, and of course if you know anything about Russian history it's not difficult to understand why. So these are just points to illustrate some of the points that you've made. I mean, there were other things. I mean, I understood finally why Russian industry is structured in the way that it is after reading your book. I was absolutely…

astonished at the fact that at every single level of the Russian military, intellectual and academic discussion takes place so that a major can discuss things with… General, which I absolutely know for a fact does not happen in the British army. I mean, that is inconceivable, and that there is this constant intellectual activity and discussion going on, which we certainly don't do. But let's turn to Ukraine, because again, I think a lot of things, reading your book, began to become clear to me, because you make it an early point in the book, again, the

Western war is both very territorial-oriented and also, as you said, very tactical-oriented. And that starts to explain many of the things about the war that I just have not understood from the Ukrainian side, why they attack all the time. Why they spend so much time on it. Time trying to win minor battles at an extravagant cost to themselves, why there was this offensive launched last summer, which overall made very, very little sense. But it's the product of disjointed thinking, whereas with the Russians they have an overall strategy. It's more than just a plan. sort of con...

Except of what they want to do, which is to get to that end point, which is victory. And that's why they have to retreat. They will retreat. If they have to advance, they will advance. But everything is focused on that realm. And you said right at the beginning, again at the book, very interesting, a metaphor that the Russians think of things as a film, like a film, which progresses to… a Thing that I found incredibly enlightening. Absolutely, and I think you've pointed out the real essence of this book, basically, because... The problem what I see and not just in the military way of conducting this war but also in the in the political activities.

At large, basically what we see in Europe right now, is the absence of strategies. Absence of objectives. We do things, but we don't really know why. Important is that we do them, more or less, and doing things has become sometimes an objective in itself. That's very clear with the, for instance, deliveries that we made to Ukraine, for instance. Nobody really questions, questioned the opportunity or the adequate it's a... Quality of the equipment we sent you. We just sent equipment, period. And this is typical, I think, of our current leadership to

drive things without an objective, without strategic objectives. And that's a first aspect of things. The second aspect is that, as you said, The The Russians have a holistic sense of war. That means that everything plays a role in the way you wage a war. Economy... The military, everything, the society, everything. And when you just explained the issue of military, for instance, or the arms production. The Soviet Union had I mean, obviously state-owned enterprise. As Soviet Union changed to Russia, they kept that system. I mean, the military production capabilities remained at state level, meaning--

that they are not profit-oriented, they are objective-oriented. Which is a fundamental difference with the Western way of understanding the armaments production. Because... I think it's privatized, meaning that basically producing weapons is the same as producing shoes. You try to make a profit of them. And that's the reason why it's so hard now to have this acceleration or to speed up production of ammunition for Ukraine, for instance, because you don't create a company just for a few months production. You know So you cannot double your production just for a few months, simply because it's not--

Profitable. So, and on the other side, the Russians don't have this problem because they have the capacities, even if their capacity is, let's say... Sleeping for a couple of years. Today, they can waken these capacities and produce things. So because it's not profit oriented, and that's what we had during the Cold War, basically. I mean, you had factories that were basically state-owned. And so there were no question of profit. In that sense, in the commercial sense of the word. As a result, we could develop... Armies that were substantial, that were big armies, big capacities, and so on. So.

This is one aspect. Now, coming back to the objectives, I think it's important to understand. We didn't listen to what Vladimir Putin said at the very beginning of the special operation. It's always the same thing. What Putin says is just propaganda, so we don't listen, which is stupid. Putin said he stated two fundamental objectives on the 24th February 2022. Namely, that was a denazification of the threat. Against the population of Donbas and the demilitarization of the threat against the population of Donbas. Period. They were, these were the two objectives. And that's what the Russians do very... Consistently, that's what they do. We decided.

That they were trying to gain territories, that they were trying to occupy Ukraine, that they were trying to go to Kiev and all that. That was not the idea. Basically what the... What Putin said, he wanted to destroy capabilities, not take territory. By the way, in March 2022, Zelensky made his proposal to the Russians in the Istanbul process. It was this idea of having all the Russian troops withdrawing from Ukraine. And Russia was apparently ready to go into that. So the territory is not an issue for the Russians. But... If they think in a close-eviction system, that means that you...

... tactical objectives to achieve operational goals. Achieve operational objectives to achieve strategic goals. So it's everything you do at a level should be useful at the upper level. And that's why demilitarizing Ukraine had... Probably in the mind of Putin, the aim of achieving the demonetization or neutralization, let's say, of Ukraine. And in fact, That's exactly what Zelensky understood because again. In March 2022, in his proposal to Russia, it was not the withdrawal of all troops from Ukraine, but in exchange for that, it was the neutralization of Ukraine. Meaning that Zelensky has probably intuitively understood the way

The problem is that we tend to. Ignore that and we make as if Russia was just interested in expanding its territory or remaking the Soviet Union or the terrorist empire and all that. You know, it's easy to say that the enemy has not achieved the objective when you define the objective. So that's exactly what the West has done. Oh, we have to listen to the enemy. And that's part exactly. This is basically an application of Sun Tzu, by the way. Just listen, understand what the enemy wants, and then you fight consequently. And that's explained exactly why the Russians, since they want to destroy an enemy, they don't care about withdrawing troops.

In Kharkov or in Kharson in September or in October 2022. They withdrew their troops because they saw there was no point fighting at this point. So it's better... To withdraw behind a safe line and to counter-attack when necessary. This is exactly what Zaluzny was suggesting about Mahmoud, for instance. That's... Instead of destroying your resources or letting your resources being destroyed in Baghma, it would be better to withdraw, regroup, or... Up an operational concept and counter-attack, but that's not what they did. And in fact, they were driven by... This idea that the West is has...

Always decided that the Russian wants to gain territory. But Zelensky tries to take advantage of this thinking because, you know. Well, the issue is that I published that in my first book, by the way, in about Ukraine. In December 2021, the Kiev International Institute for Sociology made a poll about the willingness of defending the territory, In Ukraine. And at this point, it's very interesting to see that only 17% of the... The Ukrainian population was ready to resist with arms against the Russians. 50% were ready to resist without arms, I mean, kind of civil resistance.

Resistance or something like that without unarmed resistance. And 50% didn't want to resist. So there is this, this Ukraine is not exactly the country that is so willing to resist what the perception we have in the West is, in fact, the perception that we may have in the. The western part of Ukraine, which is extremely anti-Russian. And in fact, if you see the results of this poll of December 2021, you could see that, of course, there was huge differences between the west of Ukraine and the east of Ukraine, obviously. But... In the average, there were the figures that were, and you can see it's probably still online. It's a very interesting poll, by the way. So meaning that Zelensky knows that his population is not

100% willing to resist the Russians. And there is a huge risk of switching side for a lot of people. By the way, for instance, if I go back to 2014, temple of Crimea, for instance, in Crimea, you had 22,000 Ukrainian soldiers stationed in Crimea. And as the problem of the language emerged after the change of the law on... The 23rd of February, 2015 of 14, you started to have unrest in all the south of Ukraine, not just Donbas and Crimea, but in Crimea, you These troops, these 22,000 Ukrainian soldiers, out of these 22,000, 20,000 20,000 change side.

Just removed their insignias and they became the little green men. Because they had no insignias. This was not an invasion from... Russian soldiers, I mean, there were also Russian soldiers stationed there according to the status of force agreement between Russia and... Ukraine so you had troops also stationed there but don't Those little green men that emerged suddenly on the scene were in fact Ukrainian soldiers because Ukrainians basically were not so keen to fight against the Russians. And Zelensky knows that perfectly. That's why he has to say

Till today to demonstrate that the Ukrainian army has-- defends every square centimeter of the country. Because otherwise, the West would not support the war anymore. So it's almost-- the way Ukrainian which reads, in fact, a political way of waging war, in the sense that the idea is to convince the Western countries that they are ready to fight, although the population is not ready to fight. By the way, you can also make interesting thinking because. You can now see the discrepancy between the reality and the facts because When you have Macron saying that they want to defend Ukraine. So it's... It's kind of absurd because you would send French soldiers to defend a country that even Ukrainians don't want to defend. - Thanks.

It's a very interesting... It's a little bit exaggerated, I agree, because it's not as simple as that. But when you see how many Ukrainians try to evade a conscription...

Corruption and recruitment and all that, and try to make every effort to avoid going on the front to fight. And I live here in Brussels. I've met, by the way, recently a young Ukrainian. He was congratulating me for my books, by the way, which is quite interesting, because he said we need to have people who tell the truth about the situation in Ukraine. But this guy, this guy was probably in the early '30s, 30 years old. So these guys, instead of going in Ukraine fighting, they prefer to stay here. So meaning that Europeans are now ready to send soldiers to fight for a country that doesn't want to defend itself, which is very strange. So we need to understand these countries, and we don't want to make this effort. and the Russians have...

Perfectly understood that. I think they perfectly understand where their limits are. And I'm, I don't know, I'm not in the Russian General Staff, and I don't know what's in the mind of Gerasimov, Mr. Putin and the of defense. But my feeling is that as long as we continue to do the war, the The Russians will continue this war to deplete completely. All the Ukrainian resources so that Ukraine will no longer be Ukraine, will no longer be a threat That means that probably even the economy will suffer of that.

Basically the... the... uh... Whatever the Europeans make, this will not... The Ukraine will not recover and be considered as a threat anymore. So that's what the Russian thinking will... That's so far that the Russian thinking will go. And in fact, it's still consistent with this objective to-- to rise Ukraine. But again, in the Russian mind, delimiterizing means a lot of things. It's not. Not just the soldiers, but it's also the military production, probably economic production. So it can be extremely a very vast area that may affect the Ukrainian capabilities. And since we didn't understand that in Europe, we are leading Ukraine into disaster.

I should say that one of the most enlightening facts that came to me from the book is one that you only touch with indirectly, but I think it is indispensable reading for anybody who wants to understand Vladimir Putin. Because what is absolutely clear to me is that Putin himself is fully anchored in the system that you... To be. How he arrives at those decisions, you need to read Shat

It is fully consistent with the whole pattern of Russian thinking and of Russian decision-making. Clearly it is not just Putin by himself. He clearly works and functions within an overall system of decision-making which is extremely structured and also which is very broad-based and in its own own way very, very rigour. Us in arriving at particular decisions and conclusions. So I just wanted to make that point, because no biography – I've read pretty much every biography that's been written about Putin, or at least dipped into them. No biography of Putin that I have seen, even the so-called academic ones, really seem to

Agent, whatever, but they don't actually look at the structure within which he functions and of which he is absolutely, absolutely apart. Coming back to the many, many again interesting and important things that you've been saying here, I'd like to focus on that last part, which is the decision, the question of what the West now does. Because it's absolutely clear to me that Macron, who has met Putin many times, doesn't understand at all what he is going to be taking on. If we start sending troops, Western troops, to Ukraine, French troops, German troops, British troops, God help us, even American troops, we don't have…it's clear to me…we don't have a plan. I mean, you know, helping the Ukrainians avoid…

The mental difference. I mean, the Russians are thinking all the time. We are not. And again, that is something that came out very obviously from your book. The worst way to make decisions is the way in which we made those decisions with respect to the Russians before the war began, and if we're going to make the same mistakes

again in the way that we make decisions now, then frankly, God help us. That is my own sense, especially again from coming back and reading your book. I think that Macron clearly doesn't understand your point about Western militaries being structured for colonial wars and not remotely competent to fight. Clearly doesn't understand the intellectual underpinnings, the way in which the adversary not only thinks but, as I say, is thinking constantly. All the structures and institutions through which he does that. Now, I spoke about Putin working… in a structured system. Can you discuss that a little? We did a program with Andrei Markianov, whom I think you know, in which previously we asked him about the Russian generals.

Staff. Can you say a bit about this? Because it's clear to me that the general staff in Russia is completely different from what we have in Russia. The West. We have nothing analogous to it. And can you also explain this absolutely fascinating difference between tactics, operations, and tactics? And strategy. In military thinking in the West? Yes, no, thank you. No, you're absolutely right and it's very important to underline the fact that in Russia people tend... Is to think in a very more, in a much more structured way, as in the

as in the West. And this has probably also to do with, I would... I dare to say with the intellectual capabilities of our leaders in Europe, I mean, we have seen in the recent years, I mean Macron, Anna-Lena Bierbach, Liz Truss, I mean, you name them, it's just incredible to see the level of these guys. I mean, these are tweeters, they are not thinkers, they are not strategists, they are just reacting to tweets. And that's something that really strikes me as you had this hijacking in Belarus two or three years ago. You may remember that you had this... this sale...

Ryanair flight that was derived and went to Minsk instead of going to Vilnius, I remember, I think. Anyway, the thing is that within minutes after the announcement of that, you had already leaders in Europe that were tweeting that it had been hijacked by Lukashenko. Although nobody knew what was going on. But they knew already within seconds that it was hijacking, led by the regime in Minsk, meaning that we are people who really act without thinking. It's almost brainless thinking.

In Europe, basically. But that raises another point, and that we are going to the structures in a moment. Because-- Basically, we can assume that in a democracy you can elect as president or whoever an idiot as president. But you will also assume that the structures, the institution, will then help this Egypt to lead and-- to make decisions. And that's where also we have a system that fails because you see that Reports or this decision that we see, because that's the output basically is the decision. And we see that those decisions seem not to be enlightened by some.

Understanding of the situation. So that means that the system doesn't compensate with the. Doesn't compensate the insufficient capabilities of the leaders. And that's what makes me... That concerns me because... Amen. You can assume, I mean, you had example in the history, like people like Ronald Reagan was not another reputation of a brilliant, intelligent man, but he had Probably the intelligence of having good advisors around him. And so the system continued to work because you had The institutions were helping this guy to lead. And at the end, that was quite a successful in basically a successful presidency. But,

We don't see that currently in the West. This is missing. The work of the intelligence services... To be missing. And in fact, in the last 30 years, our intelligence capabilities, so those capabilities that should help... Us to understand the situation in the world, basically. Those capabilities have melted. Completely melted because we tried to basically they were adapted. Adjusted to the situation of fighting terrorism. And to fight terrorism, you don't need to have big, A big academic thinking on that, probably. And we focused on

collecting information rather than understanding things. And since the terrorists, especially Jihadists, have a different logic in approaching things, we didn't make that effort. We just tried to collect information, collect data. And we focused on data collection rather than data interpretation. And therefore, our analytical system, and I see that in all countries, that was already pointed out by George Tenet, the former... DCI, so the director of CIA, already late 90s, he said already that at this moment, he said, well, we are losing our analytical capabilities. And in fact, I see that in Switzerland exactly the same thing, in France exactly the same thing. And Everywhere we have the same problem. We focused on data collection and we forget.

We forget about analyzing things. And that has an impact, of course, in the quality of the decision making. And we see that the decision making basically is more hip shooting as-- As anything else. And while in Russia they have kept this institution, they were not spoiled by the war on terror, so to say. They kept a decision-making instrument which was tailored for a... Strategic confrontation on the European continent somehow. And you see that perfectly. You see the general staff in-- and that's probably the reason, for instance, why the Russians were so quick in--

in answering to the provocation in February 2022. I just want to remind the people who see us that the... The... In March 2021, the 24th of March 2021, actually, Zelensky issued a decree to recon... To conquer Crimea and the south of the country. And from that point, he started to build up the Ukrainian army to attack the Donbas. And that's the reason why also the Russians on this side started also to build up their forces at the Ukrainian border. Early February 2022. You had the Ukrainians starting to shell the Donbas massively. Then you had things happening extremely quickly within the

A Russian leadership that was recognition of the two republics of the Donbas. And the purpose of that recognition was to to help another country, namely Russia. So Russia could intervene by invoking the article 51 of the. A UN charter and so have a legitimate approach to the conflict. It's an egalistic approach, but okay, that's the way they did it. But everything happened between the 16. At 16th of February, 2022, and the 24th of February. So within eight days, this happened. Why did that happen so quickly? Because the Russian General Staff works...

Daily on contingency planning, daily. It established contingency plans for possible scenarios of war. And they adjust constantly those plans so that if... Things start to heat up a little bit. They are ready to launch the... A process. And that's exactly what happened in the in the you in the Donbas or in Ukraine. The idea-- so some interpreted that in the West that-- Vladimir Putin planned to attack Ukraine for a long time and so on. It was not exactly that. March 2021, the Russians were in fact making contingency plans.

In case things happen, we just press one button and the machine restarts. That's exactly what they started to do. That's the reason why they were ready. And in fact, the Americans knew that. Because you had, that was in early February. You may remember that Joe Biden said that he knew, he knew. He knew, he knew. That the Russians would attack on the 16th of February. And why did he know that? Because he knew that the Ukrainians will... Start the offensive on that day by shelling the Donbas. And if you see the reports of OSCE, You can see the increase, the drastic increase of shedding the dumbbells starts precisely on the...

16th of February. And apparently, the Americans had an idea of that. And that's why they advised Biden that the Russians, from that point, could attack. At any moment because they know that the Russian General Staff has... This contingency plans and they are ready by pressing a button to start something. Meaning that if There is, let's say today, if France decides to send a contingent in Odessa or wherever, then... I'm convinced that the Russians have already planned a possible answer to that. So there's absolutely no doubt about this. And therefore, if such...

Contingent would intervene. It's probably doomed to fail in any case because the Russian, if they start to do something, they will put everything... All the necessary resources to crush a possible intervention. And that's it. That leads to another question. That's the, what would the French do in that case? Because the French are not able to do anything be assuming you send a regiment there, assuming that this regiment is destroyed by a couple of-- King John missiles or whatever. What can the French do? send another contingent which would be destroyed the same way send a third one i mean And I think this is what you said is exactly right. I feel that the... They...

Europeans and the West at large basically has no plan at all. They think... That sending troops in Ukraine would just discourage the Russians to move ahead. I think the Russians are not impressed. And by the way, they have said already, if you send troops, they're considered an enemy. That's logic because in the Russian thinking, Ukraine is a... Victor of military operation. That's why it's not a war, by the way, because other war would be Europe, basically, in in the in the Russian intellectual construct. So Ukraine is a theater of military operations, a TVD. Te atr vayenikt esvi So meaning that when you enter

this area, you become a party of the war. So that's That's absolutely clear. I think Macron has not, but Macron has not understood anything from the very beginning of this conflict. Even when he started, there was a conversation that was leaked in the Figaro, the French paper, the Figaro, about the conversation he had with Vladimir Putin. In that conversation, you could see that Macron had not understood what was in the Minsk agreement, basically, he had absolutely no idea of what the what the The Russians were aiming at this stage and it was early February 2020. Before the war, and we see that the French had absolutely no understanding, which again

showed a point of Macron being misinformed or misguided by his own intelligence services. But in any way... Macron didn't understand what happened. He doesn't understand better now. Now, the thinking for the French president is a domestic politics problem, basically. As he wants to regain some kind of national unity. National Unity. Before the Olympic Games. And that's why, by the way, he declared military law, more or less, on the in France the other day because of possible terrorist attack, but that with a law to avoid any. Protest in this country. But back to Ukraine, we see that the idea of fighting in Ukraine has only a purpose to...

Put the French people together in a situation which is economically very unfavourable in France. Us and that's it. But he has no plan for Ukraine. He has just a plan for trying to. Salvage his own situation domestically, but no plan for Ukraine. But sending a regiment or two regiments or whatever in Ukraine has no aim, basically. It can probably help a little bit superficially to the Ukrainians, but that will not be decisive. And that has no value in terms of NATO involvement, because the Bilateral agreement under which the French troops would be sent to Ukraine are this bilateral agreement which has been signed outside NATO by the

These kind of bilateral agreements that were signed by some countries, I think, Czechia, Italy, France have signed an agreement or Germany sent an agreement with Ukraine, but That shows that NATO will not be involved. That shows the failure of NATO, basically, because you are obliged to go bilateral to address this issue, because collectively, nobody will-- do that. So meaning that we are in a situation where you have in Russia a system that is better suited for strategic decision making that works. Constantly in elaborating plans, contingency planning for whatever situation. Including a situation that would probably unexpectedly close the Baltic.

For instance. Think like that. I'm convinced the Russians are thinking about this kind of contingencies regularly. So many... That we would have. I mean the West would have a hard time to create a surprise against the Russians now. Probably you also addressed this question of tactical strategic operational, operational strategic. It's important as We have said before that the West tends to think statically. Tactically means that you think about the movement of troops on the ground, basically. Basically, it's about destroying people, destroying things on the ground, period. But it's the nitty-gritty of military warfare. It's the art of moving soldiers around.

The operational art is something different. Then you start to be on a-- chess game somehow. Because then you play with moving... I think. Large units around in order to influence the decision making of the others. So operational art is and by the way in the - Yeah. The Russian terminology, they talk about tactics, tactica. When we talk to operational art, it's an art. It's customer. That's the art in Russian, meaning that it's not a technical thing you think. It's something that involves more creativity. In effect, this is something where fantasy is...

Required to imagine how you can shape the battlefield, how you can address the enemy by Bye. Its weakest point by losing by using the less possible assets And that explains exactly, I think, the first phase of the... The Russian military operation in Ukraine is a very good example of what Operational art is. If we... If we analyze the troops involved in this First days of the military operation. We see that the bulk of...

Of the Russian army was directed towards Donbas. Why? For a simple reason. Again, we have to go back to the objectives of-- stated by Vladimir Putin. Objectives were to demilitarize and denazify the threat against the population of Donbas. This is the main direction of action of operation, basically. So. That means that everything that happens around that is just a way to support this main operation. That's exactly the purpose of having this huge movement in direction of kief.

We know and we knew perfectly, even if some people still claim the opposite, we knew that the forces involved in the northern part of Ukraine would never be sufficient to take Kiev or to provoke a regime change in Kiev. By the way... The Russians never suggested an alternative to Zelensky, by the way. So, you know, when we say regime change, that means that you have an alternative. The... The US, when they talk about regime change in Russia, they had in mind Navalny. But it's very childish, by the way. But, you know, when you talk about regime change... What is the alternative that you suggest? What are you coming with? And--

The Russians had never had any alternative because they didn't want a regime change. They were happy with Zelensky, basically. Remember that Zelensky was elected with the mandate of making peace with the Russians. So basically. The problem is that the power in Ukraine has been hijacked by other forces than The party of Zelensky, and that's probably the problem. But it was not an idea of regime change. And for that reason, today the things might be slightly different, I admit that. But at that time it was certainly not an objective of the Russians. But why did they go... In the area of Kiev, because if Kiev would be attacked... There's no way that the Ukrainian army would let that happen. As a result, all the strategic reserves of the

The Ukrainian army, which was stationed in the center and the western part of the country down around Kiev by this threat. And therefore, for that reason, the main... The direction of Operation Dombas could not expect to have a reinforcement on Ukraine inside. That's operational art basically. So basically it's like playing chess, but you think a cup of... You think five or eight around. eight around. Count in advance, and that's exactly the thing. And that's very much the operational art.

By the way, this is the same kind of thing that we had in the very late and in the general staff in the Russian journalists that they study very much the late phases of the World War because these are the faces in which the operational art of the then Soviet army was at its best. That how this operation was really developed and really implemented. It has been theorized since the '30s, the mid '30s, roughly. But then in the late '40s-- I mean, the mid '50s, in 1944, 1945, it was really implemented. And this operation, I remember when I visited the General Staff Academy in Moscow, the Voroshilov

I was surprised to see that the students were studying these operations because these are still in the And that shows also this intellectual continuity between the... Second World War up to today. They understand that war. Is something that goes beyond politics as such. And that's the principle that you establish, that you can develop in. To improve. This goes together with thinking. That's why all these lessons of Second World War are still taught in... In the military academies in Russia. And that's operational. And then strategy, this is strategy is basically where-- The art and politics meet somehow. So what do you want to achieve?

That's where when Vladimir Putin said demilitarization and-- Denotification. In fact, somehow he stated an operational objective probably was it had a flavor of of strategic but the strategic objective was probably to After the militarization and denazification, and that was the neutralization of Ukraine. That's probably what the Russians are still pursuing now, is this aspect. And the idea that that. The war in Ukraine could end without reaching that point. Is a little bit an illusion because the Russians see that neutralization as existential.

Existential for many reasons. First of all, because of the Because the neutralization of Ukraine is not a self-sufficient objective, if you want. Even the proximity of NATO, very often I mentioned this example of Turkey. Entering NATO in 1952. The Soviets at that time were bothered, but that... They could live with that. The problem came 10 years later as the Americans started to station the nuclear weapon, the Jupiter weapon. Missiles in Turkey. And that's triggered. Than the reaction of the Soviets to deploy missiles in Cuba.

And that started the Cuban crisis. But the starting point was, in fact-- the stationing of nuclear weapons at the border of Soviet Union. And why that? Because The Soviets know that the Americans have nuclear weapons. So that's no doubt about that. But if a nuclear weapon, a nuclear missile, let's say, to put it very simply, starts from somewhere in the Atlantic and go make its way or tries to make its way to Moscow or wherever in... In Russia. You still have the time to react to this. You still have the time to activate your own defenses. You may probably even the time to talk to, let's say,

a US president, for instance, just to make sure if it's not an accident or if it if it's a declaration of war, whatever. That's exactly the problem that happened during the Cuban missile. Crisis that you had at the end of the day, you had the two presidents to I mean, the security of the Soviet Communist Party in the Soviet Union. But you had to have this communication to make sure that, okay. We can settle the thing. Now everything must calm down and we solve the issue. And-- You can do that if you have enough distance between the two. If the missiles are right at your border, that means they can strike your own territory within seconds. Time to react. There's absolutely no time to react. And for that reason, the risk

Of going into a world nuclear war is bigger if those weapons are very close to the border. And that's the very concern of the of the Russian more than NATO itself. The problem, the very problem that Russia has, in fact, with NATO or... The US to be more precise is in fact the key date is 2002 when the Americans started to... Draw from all the arms control agreements, meaning that they opened the door for stationing nuclear weapons at at the Russian border, as they started to do in Poland and Romania and all that. That's the real concern. And if you had the same scenario happening in Ukraine, meaning...

Stationing of nuclear weapons or nuclear missiles within kilometers from Moscow. You open the door for the World War, World War Three and probably nuclear war, the all over nuclear war. And that's exactly by the way, what Um. What Vladimir Putin said, as Macron visited him in... They had a meeting with, I think it was Macron, I think. In Moscow early February 2022. And in the press conference, Putin explained exactly what I'm explaining now. The problem is nobody wanted to listen to that, because everybody will tell you that it's the right of Ukraine to join NATO.

I think the Russians basically, although now I think the question will be excluded by, In essence, the Russians are less concerned by NATO as such than the way the US could use that membership to... Station troops. That's the real problem for, because once the country belongs to NATO, so to say. Then there is no limit in sessioning nuclear weapons and all that. And for the Russians... Regarding the issue of tactical, strategic, operational weapons, they don't make that distinction at the doctrinal level. They just say a nuclear weapon because they perfectly know that if you start using a nuclear weapon, regardless of the yield of that weapon, it is a nuclear weapon.

And basically could be used, could trigger retaliation and things like that. And that's also why, by the way, coming back to France at Macron in New York, Macron thinks that he's protected because he's a nuclear power. But if it's in Ukraine, will they really use nuclear weapons? Certainly not. Basically, the French doctrine to use nuclear weapons is to protect the national territory. That means the of France itself, which the goal and the French strategy used to say, to define as sanctuaries, sanctuaries, it's a

Characterized territory and every any threat against this very territory could be answered by nuclear threat. But are the units-- Deployed in Ukraine is not France, is not the French territory. So meaning that Macron regardless of how many nuclear missiles he has, he will not be able to use them. And the Russians could even, they will certainly not do that because the Russians have also as doctrine that the nuclear weapons will be used only if there is an existential threat against... The institutions or the territory, but I think they insist on institutions basically.

Leadership and all the what makes the Russia functioning. So meaning that even if the French or the even. NATO units would be deployed on Ukraine. This would probably not consist as Such as a threat to existential threat. But anyway... Assuming the Russians would consider that as existential threat and they would launch Tactical nuclear weapon or a small nuclear weapon on these French troops. What can French your friends to retaliate with a nuclear strike and Moscow? Not because that would be the end of Paris. The élysée would probably look like Gaza today.

So this is exactly the point here, that the Russians are really... Making war as we play chess, I mean, a professional play chess. And that's something the... The French have not understood. I mean, Macron has not understood, probably. But again, when I say Macron, I also involved to some extent his staff and his advisors and all that because it seems that nobody wants to understand the realities of war and what means being involved in a war against Russia. Well, I think we've just learned a huge amount. I just wanted to tell off with two points that you've just made. Firstly, about the advice of the people who are interested in the future.

On To be. Who is still, by the way, the chief of operations of the Russian general staff. He explained that exactly at the end of March 2022. A whole commentary, which you can still find on the Russian Defense Ministry website, in which he explained that that had been all along the exact…

And for some reason, well, maybe unsurprisingly, of course nobody ever talks about that. What the actual Russians said about that operation, it's just disappeared into a memory hole. So that is one thing that I wanted to say. The second about Russian concern about nuclear weapons, and specifically nuclear missiles Close to their territory, and in Ukraine specifically. Again, a very little known fact is that in the run-up to the start of the conflict in January or February 2022… Putin and Biden had a virtual summit meeting and over the course of that summit meeting Biden told Putin that he was prepared to promise that the United States would not deploy nuclear

To Ukraine. Was already starting to evaporate. They then contacted the Americans to see whether that would be confirmed in the various agreements, and of course the Russians at that point had Proposed draft treaties, and of course what happened was immediately the US walked it back. I think Biden said something in this virtual meeting with Putin, but in fact subsequently the Americans…within days…

Americans have walked it back. Ray McGovern, by the way, who has also made exactly the same points as Jacques Bourne has made about the collapse of analytical thinking within the Western intelligence agencies. Anyway, he's discussed this point about what Biden said to Putin about nuclear weapons in Ukraine and the walk back by the United States shortly after. He's discussed that in detail. Several programs and pieces that he has written. Well, Jacques-Bor, we have now been talking for an hour and 35 minutes. I knew that it would be a fascinating and prolonged discussion. I think that we're going to be returning to these topics many times if you are willing in future to give us more.

Of your very valuable time. We are very grateful to you for coming on this program. I think at this point I'm going to stop and hand over to Alex. He's probably lots of questions coming to us, some undoubtedly addressed. - Can you stay with us for maybe just 10, 15 minutes to answer a couple of questions? No problem. I have time to talk. Okay, great. Great. Sanjeva wants to know, Jack, do you think Russia underestimated Ukraine at the start? Even now they appear not prepared at times, or is it just incompetence at junior level officers?

Well, I'm not sure that Russia underestimated Ukraine. And in fact, if we look at the facts, we can see that the Ukrainian potential was de facto destroyed in May/June 2022. And I-- At that point, Zelensky himself said that Ukraine was depending on the West for trade. Continuing the war because the potential was destroyed. Meaning that again. If we look at the war just at the territory gained by Russia also... We may have a wrong impression of the conflict because as we said before the conflict was not about territory but about the...

Destroying a potential. And this potential was destroyed for the very first time. In May/June 2022. From that point on... You started to have equipment flowing from Europe, especially from the eastern part of Europe, they started to provide all Soviet type equipment to the Ukrainians you had refitted or read. - Thank you. Modernized T-72s and all equipment delivered. Poland, Czechia, Slovakia and so on to Ukraine. That's almost, I would say, the second Ukrainian army. And the second Ukrainian army, so to say, was destroyed by the end of 2022.

At this point, then the Western countries came and that was then the issue of providing challengers, Abrams tank, Leopold's two and so on, Bradleys and so on. And. What we have now, up to mid-2022, is this third-type Ukrainian army with a mix of former Ukrainian equipment, a part of East European equipment, and a part of... Obsolete Western equipment. And this kind of patchwork-- of army started this so-called counter offensive could not make it and today we are in a situation where the West As to acknowledge that it's not able to provide any less

substantive or substantial best of said best a substantial support to Ukraine. And that's exactly the meeting in Ramstein in January, February just confirmed that the West is not able to It's not the willingness that is missing. It's the capacity. That are missing. So in fact, Russia, if you just considered the objective, Polarization, denazification, in fact, they achieved those objectives. So in that sense, I cannot say that they underestimated the Ukrainian army. What they probably underestimated is the willingness of the West to prolong that war. Probably what they underestimated because in fact

We have to remember that. This special operations started on the 24th of February, right? On the 25th of February, that means one day later, Zelensky called the Swiss Minister of Foreign Affairs to organize a peace conference. That means that-- But one day after the beginning of the operation, the Ukrainians, I mean, the leadership, Zelensky, obviously. Understood that the situation was getting complicated for Ukraine. And... The European Union stepped in and said no, there is no discussion. Here is a first package of 450 million euros for weapons and you continue fighting.

This first round of discussion or negotiation that happened in Gomel at the Belarus border collapsed and then we... Continue war. And soon after that, the third round started in Istanbul. Where Zelensky made his second attempt to negotiate with the Russians. And this was then cancelled. By Boris Johnson, but apparently also by the Germans and the French, who... Actually were also in the background. Boris Johnson appeared almost officially there to ask Zelensky to withdraw his...

Proposal, his peace proposal, and we mentioned that the Russians were ready to go into the discussion. but... Okay. How Boris Johnson came and that this proposal was withdrawn. And... It's interesting because at that time, and we are talking about beginning April, Until 2022, the Ukrainian press reported that... reported that the major obstacle to the peace was the West. That's why I'm going to show you how to use the app. That appeared in Ukrainian, in Ukrainian Pravda. So meaning that there was... The Ukrainians were conscious that things were going bad.

And they had to negotiate and they had to talk to the to the UK. In fact, it's a pressure of the West that altered our understanding of the conflict. Again, we tend to... To assess the conflict based on what we see on the map. But one more time. Problem is not territory. It's a qualitative objective is a destruction of a potential not to gain territories. And for that, the Russians, in fact, achieved Objectives. Now the problem is that they will achieve this objective. On the worst way in the sense that instead of destroying just the military potential as anybody would understand, they will destroy this potential in depth. That means...

Is that you will have a vast part of the population that will... Probably be lost in that process, a vast part of the economy will be lost by Ukraine in this process and probably most, if not all, the... Armaments production capabilities will be destroyed in that process. Act by not acknowledging the fact that Russia has achieved this objective. Ukraine into the disaster. By the way, it's interesting to see the rhetoric. One year ago, or even more, the West had, as I did, Uh, uh... Russia has lost the war and Russia will lose the war.

And today, what Macron says is that we cannot allow Russia to win the war. The change of rhetoric says exactly what's the nature of the problem. So Russia. America is winning this war because we tried to... To push, in fact, what we did was to fight up to the last Ukrainian. And that's exactly what we are doing. This is exactly what Lindsey Graham was saying. Exactly that. And again, it's always easier to make war with the blood of others. Exactly what the West is doing. And another comment thanking you, Mr.

Jacques Spade. Bonjour Jacques. And the rest is in French. My French is not very good. Um, let's see here. A question from Serbyu. WOAH! War with West is existential to Russia, but is war with Russia existential to the West? Why have France and Germany been conquered many times over yet always remain on the map? Is Russia's fate abnormal? Well, the problem here with Russia is that... Talked about this balance of forces in terms of nuclear weapons. But there is something a little bit more perverse behind the whole thing. And namely that. The US State Department has a project to disband Russia.

To dismantle Russia, to break Russia down in something between, there are different models between 18... And 32 countries based on the nationalities that are within Russia. So meaning that in the mind of certain people... In the West. This is not just the problem of having a weak or a very It's also about dismantling Russia as we know on the map and having... Something which becomes strategically meaningless. The problem is here that the... US still contemplates the idea of confronting in some way China.

And there are two models to approach in this perspective. - Yeah. One is that Russia could be weakened. Enough not to be allied to China or it means that it could not reinforce or not be a support to China. and The other one is that we could make Russia, to integrate Russia into the Western Hemisphere, I mean politically, integrated to the Western Hemisphere, so that it is not willing to... To reinforce China. These two models, it's a little bit roughly the... Described here, there's a more refined way to understand these two concepts. But these...

Models were discussed several times in Foreign Affairs, Foreign Policy and other such magazines in the, between. 2017 to 2020. And probably... What we are seeing here is the worst case for Russia. That means that instead of making a friend of Russia, we try to destroy it. When Vladimir Putin said that this conflict is existential, it's a reality because this idea of dismantling Russia has been the subject of... I may be wrong, but I think it's about seven different international conferences in the Two years within Europe, including one that was held in the building of the European Parliament.

Meaning that we are not just talking about the view of some fancy intellectual somewhere, but it's a real policy that the West has to dismantle, to balkanize, or to, I mean, to, in fact, to have Russia having the same fate as ex-Yugoslavia, basically. And And that's for that reason, the Russians consider this fight as existential. Now on the other side, Russia. Is a country that's probably even during the Cold War, by the way. Has never really had the intention to attack the West. In fact, I mentioned in one of my books a report of the CIA that was published or made

Unclassified in the early 90s. But the policy of the Soviet Union and the risk of war during the Cold War, and the CIA assessed that probably the West exaggerated the idea that Soviet Union would attack The Western Europe. And OK, we were not remaking history. But I mean, today is probably the same thing. This idea of Russian expansionism and so on, I think it's more a little bit like a myth. Russia has always been very keen to have a buffer zone. Around itself to avoid all these...

Intervention that we have, Russia has suffered in the last couple of centuries. But a buffer zone doesn't mean that they would own that territory. Buffer zone could be meant by having good alliance with other countries. That it is in good relationship with other countries. That's the reason why after the fall of the-- or the disbandment of the Warsaw Pact, and the-- Soviet Union, Russia started to have treaties with all these countries. It was not to reconstruct the Soviet Union, but to have this kind of buffer zone of friendly countries around him. That's something we don't really try to understand in the West. We always see that in a confrontational way. The Russians, after the...

The Cold War were in fact, not demanding, but they were... And in fact, they adopted the Western type of society, in fact. It has been adjusted to the Russian context, but they adopted, for instance, the the... An open society with open trade and things like that, and this kind of things. And they-- I sincerely wanted, I remember having visited Russia just after the fall of... The wall when that was the early 90s. And incidentally, I was part of the delegation were discussing different matters, including NATO, by the way, with the Russian high command. And I think that's a good point.

We were noting that these guys had absolutely no intent to... Retrieve the big Soviet Union and all that. They realized that the Soviet Union was probably something probably too big. That was something that in the long run could not function. And I think they realized that. And they were... Happy with having Russia, which is Russia and other countries, but they were very keen to keep very good relation with these countries. The problem is that these countries, typically the Baltic states, or Ukraine as example. Belarus is an exception, but the other countries considered that in order to have the support of the West, they had to be totally...

The pro-American. And they were even more royalists than the king in some way. And that's exactly what happened with the Baltic states that became probably-- and I've been five years in NATO. And when I was talking to my fellow colleagues from the Soviet Union-- called Old Europe, meaning France, Italy, Germany. Germany. Always surprised by the disproportionate influence that those small countries like the Baltic state had in NATO, because they were the most fervent supporter to the US. And in fact, the US is using these guys in order to survive.

Port its own. And you have several NATO structures that have been built into these countries, by the way, like the Strategic Communication Excellence Center, things like that, which are based in the Baltic. So this is... The Baltics have gained a huge importance in NATO, a disproportionate importance. And the US is very happy with that because they have... And that's exactly what Rumsfeld used to say. There's the old Europe and the new Europe. The old Europe that opposed the intervention in Iraq and the new Europe that was supportive to the intervention in Iraq. And in fact, you still have this division within NATO with an increasing importance of the history.

Part of Europe, of the new Europe, Eastern Europe. And of course, since those countries are at the border with Russia, these are the countries where you can deploy weapons that you can deploy your... Groups that you can have base and including deploy like anti so called anti ballistic missile but that have a ballistic missile capability, like in Poland and Romania. So these countries will accept anything from the US. In that sense, they are the most servile. Allies of the US in NATO and therefore they have a lot of importance. But in reality Russia was... Probably underestimated that aspect. But the idea that Russia...

Contemplates having a conquest of Europe. And all the ideas that are circulating today that Russia could be a threat to Europe just because Putin wants to expand this territory has absolutely no sense in the military doctrine, has no sense also on the political landscape. I mean, the Russians have never said that. Something that came in the brains of our elites, but you don't see that in Russia. So therefore, Russia is no existential threat to Europe. I think... Russia is well has good. Intention towards Europe. And basically it has never shown that he had bad intentions toward Europe.

Again, we are now witnessing the problem having, in fact, uh Russia as an enemy so far because I mean I'm talking about the sanctions and all that. We see that it doesn't make sense. We don't even see ourselves the benefit of having Russia as an enemy. Or probably it's just the purpose of having an enemy. One of the concerns in NATO is that NATO is a defensive alliance. Fair enough. But when you are defensive alliance, you need an enemy. And that's a real concern in NATO. I was surprised because we have this similar discussion in Switzerland. But parts of NATO, therefore we have the concern of why do we have an army?

because we don't expect an attack from Germany, from France, or from Liechtenstein, or from Austria. So the question was asked within Switzerland, why do we need an enemy? And when I was in the NATO, I noticed that the NATO has in fact exactly the same type of question. Why do we exist? Because if we are in good terms with Russia, What is our enemy? By the way, that's a reason why the intervention in Afghanistan came at the right point. In the early 2000s, because then you had the German minister saying that the security of Europe starts at the Indukush. So, which is quite odd if you think about it, but that was a justification to send troops to Afghanistan.

Today we see that the security of Europe starts with having good relationships with our neighbors, in fact. Fuck. And interestingly enough, this is also the way the Russians understood the new security architecture of Europe after the Cold War. Because... They had in mind, and by the way, the OSCE, which was before the CSC, Conference for Security and Cooperation in Europe. The CSE was an idea coming from the Soviet Union, the origin. It was then hijacked by the West and became the OSCE. But the idea of OSCE was to have a platform. For cooperating on the European continent. and the...

After the Cold War, the Russians had exactly the same idea. I mean, they were not against NATO. Because they realize that it's probably necessary to have a structure in which you organize and coordinate your Defense systems. I think there is nothing wrong with that. But that This could be extended in a way where of developing security, not based on confrontation, but On cooperation. And I think this idea that basically the idea of Gorbachev when he was talking about with the common house or something like that. And he was taking an idea of Charles de Gaulle, that de Gaulle developed even during the Cold War, to have a European sense of self-confidence.

Security based on cooperation rather than confrontation. And the Russians were with very interested by this kind of proposal. And when I went to Moscow to discuss with very, very high level of the highest level of the command of the Soviet military, and we talked also with the Minister of Defense, and also with the member of the parliament at that time, we could see that this idea was. Was very much present at that time. This idea that now that the Warsaw Pact had been disbanded, there was... An empty room and this empty room could be filled with a system that links everybody together instead of recreate confrontation. In the NATO...

It's interesting because one of my friends in NATO is a guy that I knew when I was working. I worked for six months. Also as a researcher at the International Institute for Strategic Studies in London. One of the guys who is in charge of the development of NATO today used to work with me in in the IISS in London at that time. He told me that in fact this is a problem in NATO to... What's next, what's what, how NATO should develop. And the current NATO that does exist is in fact, just an updated version of the NATO that existed in 1949. Basically, it's

It's not really intellectually evolved. But there were a lot of thinking within NATO to develop a NATO which is based more on cooperation and try to solve the issue of having, let's say, security based on other aspects. And that takes on reports. Or studies that have been made in the '60s. Already, I may remind you the rapport Armel. It's a report that was published in 1967 that anticipated the end of NATO and a new NATO based on cooperation and other security issues, interestingly, like terrorism, like environment.

It's fascinating to read this report that was written more than 50 years ago. It had anticipated the end of the current NATO. And there are people thinking about this report in NATO now, but so far we are still in the old fashion type of NATO. And NATO has not understood, in fact, the... Reality and NATO by its own existence creates the problem in fact. -Elaine, eye-opening comparison. Does Jacques feel that our ignorant politicians and military will ever learn from their present terrible delusions? This is a philosophical question. And I my experience is that we don't learn we don't learn things we we are not unable to learn. And

We have a very short memory and that relates very much to the type Of leaders we have. I mean, you may remember that we had this pretty a prime minister in Finland that was caught into some kind of scandal with... I don't know where he was. - Santa Maria, Santa Maria, yes. - Exactly, and I don't remember what she was smoking, but in any case, that was a problem. But interestingly enough, recently... Now she is no longer in this capacity. Paper made an interview of her and asked her why, what motivated her to be Prime Minister. And interestingly enough, she said, Well, I just wanted to have an experience.

And that shows exactly, I think, the mentality of our leaders today. They are not deeply-- concerned by the reality of the people on the ground, of the people that are in the countries. They are just interested by their own agenda. By their own network probably, and probably to open new opportunities and things like that. But they are not really committed to the task. They were elected for. And in that sense, these guys, we don't know. Not dedicated to improve things. Now just they just want to solve their own, not even solve their own concerns, but they are just...

I don't know. They are just concerned by what... Concern them individually, personally, but not collectively. So I'm afraid that we are not going in the right direction on that way. We don't have people like like we had in the 60s. I mentioned De Gaulle, Konrad Adenauer, Vili Bront, all these guys who had not only a personality, but also a vision for the future that had a sense of the state of the importance of international relations. And not just the... The perspective of reacting to a tweet. So decision making was thoroughly thought through and then we tried to make a

active decisions. They were probably not always good. I'm not able to judge that. But at least we tried to take time. To make decisions. Today we decide instantly. So I'm afraid that... Unfortunately, we are not going in the direction of learning from the past. - You have time for one more question? Let's do one more. From. Mila, what are the chances Russia will focus on Poltava, Chernigov, Dnipro, Petrovskyev and Dnipro shoreline by simulating Russia?

going around, Sumi and Harkov? Well, that's a good question. I know probably Alexander is better placed to answer that question than me because he makes a careful daily assessment of the situation and he knows much better than me. But... Since I still want to give an answer, I would say that in fact what we are doing now is to push the options to go further. And probably to go much further as they initially wanted to go. Because they realized that since the West wants to prolong the war, They will have to destroy even more of Ukrainian potential. That means they have to advance more. I mean, two years ago...

When it was the question of providing Ukraine with long-range missiles, I mean missiles with 300 kilometers range. Sergei Lavrov said, well, if you give missiles that are 300 that have for... An autonomy of 300 kilometers, you're just forcing us to move forward 300. Kilometers. And that's exactly how the Russians will think. So that means if we press them to... To push, they will push. And that's why, in fact, what we are doing now is just pressing. The Russians to crush even more the Russian army. That means basically that--

Ideally, what they would do is to wait for the Ukrainians to come and crush them on the spot. That's what they have done in Bahrut, for instance. But the problem is that you can do that up to a certain point. But if you are in a city, for instance, you can crush people in one building. But then you may want to go to the next building to crush them and so on. And that's exactly what we are seeing now. And that's why probably the Russians will be forced to. Move ahead to move to proceed to destroy the forces that we Be armed permanently. So I cannot anticipate exactly how they will act and in which direction they will go, if they will go to--

they will go into Kharkov or just bypass Kharkov. I have no idea. And as I said, probably others are better places than me to answer that question. But. The thing is that if they have the... Resources and the will to move ahead if we force them to go ahead. And they will probably go to Odessa, they will probably go to Dnipropetrovsk if we force them to do so. That's it. To think and probably even truly to Kiev, I don't know. But I'm sure that it was not the primary intent. I think the situation that the Russians had in mind from the very beginning was the situation that emerged at mid-March 2022 as Zelensky made the proposal. That's in

the situation the Russians were expecting. In fact, that we find a solution that forced a settlement and that we settle the situation on both sides and that the Ukrainians acknowledge that there is a need for the Russians in Ukraine to have a proper... Life in this country and that was it. The Russians never claimed that... The Donbas republics should be part of Russia. They never claimed that. It was, I remember that at the beginning, even in the Minsk agreement, these republics were supposed to remain within Ukraine, and that's absolutely what the Russians want. So they never aimed... Gaining territory. They wanted to settle a situation and...

Since we are forcing them to advance and destroy the Ukrainian potential, they will continue to do so. So it's a little bit up to us, but as we said, probably we have a leadership that is not able to understand these kinds of things. Yes. Well said. Jacques, thank you very much for joining us on this live stream. I have your information for your books in the description box down below. We appreciate your insight and your time. It was a fantastic show. - That was. It was my pleasure, very much. I mean, as I said, I follow you every day. I think you are, you show. Those are brilliant, really, and absolutely necessary. And I'm very happy to having been part of one of them today.

Well, we are immensely grateful for the time that you have given us, and we look forward hopefully that we'll be able to do this. Again soon, because I'm sure that we are…well, I'm sure that we're going to have a lot more happening in Ukraine and in the confrontation between the West and Russia, and who better to discuss these matters with than your son. Alexey Makhurik It's my pleasure. Thank you. Yannick Mihaly Thank you. Thank you. Take care. Alexey Makhurik Take care. Wow, great show. Amazing show actually. I really would, I really would, I mean I strongly recommend this book on the Russian art of war. It is different from most other books that you read about war. It is... It actually looks inside the mind of the other side. It explains to you how decision-making is taken, how they think about war, and what war is for the Russians, which is…

which is different from what it is in the West. And by the way, going back to that last question, I mean, I think that... It's important always to remember that the Russians – and this is a point that Jacques Bourne makes very forcefully in his book. Bye. About particular cities in Ukraine, the Russians will attack them or not in terms of... Whether or not they think it will work towards achieving their objective. And that's the way to look at this. If it helps them to capture Chernigov, if it achieves the objective to capture a place like Chernigov, maybe they will do it. But if they think they can achieve their objective…

more economically in some other way, they will take that other way, which makes it very difficult for us, who are looking at outsiders, to second-guess what they're going to do at any particular point on the battlefront. - Yeah. Well said. Let's get through the rest of the questions, Alexander. Fleet Lord Atavar says, Good, good. From Rumble. That from another Alex. So appreciate Jocks being on with a phenomenal discussion. Thanks, gentlemen. Hey Man0123 says the survival of the Russian economy has effectively maneuvered us into a military conflict with Russia and an economic conflict with China. The Empire's European successors will render any pivot unsuccessful.

Well, by the way, I think that's exactly correct. Can I just say that, of course, we didn't discuss economics in this programme, but… This was also, I absolutely am convinced of this, and there's no doubt about this at all, that this was what the West thought was going to be their key to victory. The sanctions war was what was going to defeat the Russians, stop them in their tracks, and bring them… Bring them down and force regime change in Moscow, do all of those things. And the moment that fails, we see how all of the things that we started, that we've been talking about in this live stream, have been playing through, and the West really what to, how to respond to them. - Yeah, we always said in our shows that once the economic war... One by Russia. Once they got through that period of the hundreds and thousands of sanctions. That they were throwing o I remember it was a coupl never ending every day.

Sanctions on businesses, on individuals, on everything. Russia got through that, the war was over. - Yeah. - It was a done deal. Russia has won. - Absolutely. - All right, all Daniel said. The drag community. Sanjeva says, My heartfelt condolences and deepest sympathies to all Russian viewers in regards to the recent tragedy, and may God bless all victims of the attack. Bless you Sanjiva thank you for that I'm sure I speak for a lot of people here and who would add to what you've just said Of the world. Will be released.

Britain getting into a battle with China that really it can't... I mean it's absurd... It is ridiculous, and reading what the British are saying about this, reading what people like Ian Duncan Smith say about this, again, one gets a sense of such disconnection from reality. You know, the British doing a few sanctions here, a few sanctions there. All it's going to do is annoy the Chinese, and in every other respect it will achieve nothing. Thank you. Russia again don't even leave a patch called Ukraine lest it remains a NATO playground, carpet bagger, money laundering and becomes a BlackRock property. Well, you may very well achieve that, which…we see what you mentioned there.

Happened. Medvedev has been talking like that for a long time and I think that... More and more Russians, including Putin himself, are slowly edging to that, that this is the a logical outcome whereby their objectives can now be achieved. We made that happen, by the way. - And in Calrissian 1345, think of that super sticker. Ellen says. The Germans never defeated the Ukrainian front. Now Russia have done it for NATO is a win in Ukraine, a Pyrrhic victory. Thank you. For watching. So that's all for now.

Of That should Berlin. Now the point is that they were strategic directions, that they were created in 1944. In order initially for the Red Army to regain control of Belarus and Ukraine. And that was where the designations came from. The Red Army was successful, obviously, in capturing, recapturing Belarus and Ukraine.

All the way to Berlin. But this is a constant misrepresentation or misunderstanding of what these Red Army designations were. They were purely labels intended to define the geographical scope of the areas of operations of specific armies during the Second World War. Soviet, principally Russian. Armies during the Second World War. Question is, why wasn't Gorbachev charged with high treason after the collapse of the Soviet Union? I mean, I think that…

You must always remember something about the end of the Soviet Union. An awful lot of people in Russia wanted the Soviet Union to end. The governments that succeeded Gorbachev, they welcomed Yeltsin. Well, that's all for now. Of himself did. So, you know, this is a much more complicated story. Gorbachev wanted to reform the Soviet Union. And others in Russia at that time wanted to end it. under his rule, was desired and to a great extent enjoyed.

Been engineered by so many others. For Color Revolution and a strategic leader of anti-Trump operations. Victoria Nuland was of course right at the heart of the State Department. Brookings is very influential, I mean, no question about this. But it is ultimately Nuland who went to Maidan Square, spoke for the US government, telephoned Jeffrey Pyatt, picked the ministers in Ukraine's government. And has played similar roles in all kinds of other things around the world.

Don't know what they're looking at. Over simplified. They see drones but report them as a flock of birds. Same happens with intelligence. - Absolutely correct. But again, this is a point going back to what Jacques was just saying of these programs, about the fact that data collection has become the absolute end of… Intelligence assessment and analysis has just basically been lost. And a number of people, including… for watching. The analysts' people get swamped. It's impossible to actually assess and weigh it up properly anymore.

And then Karyshin says it's a long time to take the gloves off after the horrible tragedy in Moscow. Alexander M: Well, I think that, again, we go back to what Jacques-Boulle was saying, that for the Russians it's a film. To be. Overwhelmingly on it. And I don't want to downplay its significance, but for the Russians, it's a massive, enormously important event, but it's not going to interfere with their pursuit of victory in the achievement of the objectives that they have in…

Ukraine and in geopolitical terms. And that will shape their responses. La Queva says, All the best. And on coloristy, thank you for that super sticker. Pahati, thank you for that super. - Chat, Sean, and welcome to the direct community. Gluskin News says very interesting guests, explains a lot. He says this brings to mind an American saying do something even if it's wrong That's it. Zizi Kalihiannis, thank you for that super sticker. Adam Kalerissian says, Russia must win, period. Jamila Aspou says, Thank you guys. We need to say no to war, no to NATO. Sanjeva, thank you for that super sticker. Tim Gibson, thank you for that super sticker. Igor, thank you for that super sticker. Elza, thank you for that super sticker. Thomas, welcome to the drag community.

Anand, welcome to the DRAN community. Nico says, You should make a video with Levon about Russia. I saw him and he was almost in tears. Also call McGregor Adema instead of Davies. He's a hypocrite. . Harry C. Smith says, Maybe Kremlin will now have to upgrade SMO to counter-terrorism op if Kiev involved, instead of all the way to legally- cleared war. I think CTO is in between them but permits way more than an SMO. Wait and see. We'll see where all this goes. I mean, there's been a lot of statements coming from Russian officials, even as we've been making this program. Petrushchev, Putin's national security advisor, he's made comments which appear to link Ukraine to this event. All right.

I think over time the Russians will assess this. They'll come to a conclusion, they'll decide what to do. But, you know, going back to that previous point about the Russians taking their time, the Russians think before they act. Very calculated in their responses, and they will think through what they do before they do it. Says to me, it seems the more reasonable a government in the EU is, the more the bureaucrats in the MSM attacks them or Bonn. Are they afraid of reason?

After him. It's really obvious about this just the other day that apparently he's now he's now absolutely more than a orphan now he's in this science. Yes. Nico says also happy Independence Day for Greece. I am 24. Greece doesn't... Want its children. I am not proud of Greece, but I'm always be proud of being Greek. Yeah, that twin sister. Thank you for that super chat. Z12IT. Thank you. @BrianLivins says, Fantastic information. Thanks guys. >> Okay. This video. That they're doing that because had they been giving advice based on what the Germans actually…

Silly encounter in 1943-44, they would have told the Ukrainians, for heaven's sake, make peace. I don't know what exactly is the advice that they've been giving to Ukraine. My overall impression of American and European military leaders at the very top level, I got to say frankly I have been very disillusioned over the course of the last two years. I mean, the counter-offensive was a piece of complete idiocy. The Germans would not have... On

ever. Find it. - Lorna Dodd, welcome to the Durant community. Great discussion. Please have Baad back again to talk about the conflict in Palestine. Thanks. Thank you for that super sticker. Lordna says, Great work, thanks. 437-THX-1138. Says Duran Duran hungry like the wolf you do a great service for society thank you Ian Perkins welcome to the Duran community Kennedy 437 THX 1138 says, Would trade Biden for Putin articulate intelligence? and maybe a touch of brutality. He is Russia versus a guy that can barely walk or talk. West is done. Thank you.

Rafik Adams says, What is the calculation of Russia in deciding whether to annex the rest of Western Ukraine rather than risking coming into NATO's orbit occupation? I simply don't know what the Russians are thinking and working out there. I think that the gradual calculation that the Russians are coming to is that the survival of the Ukrainian state, as currently constituted, is now becoming… Becoming impossible for them. I mean, there was this statement that was made a few days ago by Peskov, who was Putin's spokesman, in which he said that Russia cannot coexist with a state on its border that plans constantly military attacks on places like Crimea and Donbas.

You know, this is Putin's spokesman. I actually think that was a more important statement in some way than the one he made about Russia being at war. So you are seeing this evolution in Russian thinking. They need I think this is motivated by defense and security issues, and they're starting increasingly to come round to the view that people like Sparky have been expressing for a long time. That the very existence of a Ukrainian state, as it exists now, is incompatible with Russian security. That the West will always try to use that state against them, and that within Ukraine itself there will always be political factions that will be prepared to work with the West So, I don't know whether the Russians have formulated some…

on the ground. Thank you. Natural resources which the EU doesn't have. Remember, Nazi Germany moved towards the USSR with similar goals to get their hands on resources. I'd just say in support of a bit of what you've said that one of the things that I... Of

In Russia itself. Like Shell works in Nigeria, Shell would be able to work directly in Russia. Not working with a Russian partner company, but just directly going there and exploiting Russian oil and gas fields right from the start. So they got Yeltsin to sign the Third Energy Package. Putin came along and he said absolutely not we're not doing this we're not ratifying this agreement we've put Yeltsin signed it we're not ratifying it it's not going to work for Us. And that, in my opinion, was the start, the real start. Of the whole massive deterioration in relations between Europe, the EU, and the West.

And the Russians, rather, because they realized that the Russians were… reasserting control over their natural resources. Raphael says, U.S. panicked after the shooting and Putin knows it. Yeah, well, I've said this before. Another very important person has been writing to us, somebody we'll be interviewing very shortly, about me thinks they do protest too much about all of these, you know, furious deniers, ISIS, only ISIS. No one else but ISIS. How can they possibly be so sure about that? But they are protesting too much, and it does show nervousness.

Thank you for that super chat. Gab says, Hi gentlemen, great show. Thanks for your time. Thank you, Gab. Formerly GEC812. Merrick Hatchet, thank you for that super chat. Sahir, thank you for that super chat. Sparky says, Build a better world with bricks. - Morton, welcome to the Drag Community. Gav, formerly GEC812 says, Since we're at the end of the show, have you seen the video of that tanker destroyed, that tanker that destroyed the Baltimore Bridge? Hours ago using Alexander's engineering knowledge how hitting a pile collapsed the hole. I'm not in any kind of any any sort of engineer let me make that very clear I have no no understanding or knowledge of engineering but you know one shouldn't smile this is a horrible tragedy The bridge. People have died. Cars have fallen into the water.

So, you know, let's not take a flippant view. This is a terrible business and I hope that, you know, people are saved and we'll know a lot more about it very soon. For all those involved. Dead since the 19th century. Raphael says the USA, Britain and Ukraine are behind the terrorist attack and Crocus City Hill FSB director Alexander. But yeah, that was said a few minutes ago, or at least it's been reported a few minutes ago, we need to sit back and analyse what he's saying. Well, it's all getting very very delicious at the same thing he said. Ukraine, yes, I think we understand where everything is is moving heading towards yeah sparked.

He says, Make Israel Syria again. In those Ottoman Empire days, Lavant Jews got along fine with their neighbors, whether Muslim, Christian, or otherwise. And we've got a long way to go before anything like that happens and maybe it never will. And Sparky says Fun fact, in 1492, the Ottoman Empire sent ships to rescue Jews from the Spanish Inquisition. True, actually. It's absolutely true. That's, wait, that's not everything. At the bar says Francis Scott Key Bridge collapsed after cargo ship crashed and took and took out support column. You know, as I said, it's a horrible tragedy and what's to find out a bit more. - And Fleet Lord at the... Says FYI guys, Francis Scott Key Bridge in Baltimore, Maryland carries. I 695.

Over the Patapsco River south of Baltimore Harbor. It is not enormous. There are some claims that it is, but of course even if it's not enormous it is a tragedy for anyone caught up with that, and one thinks about those people and their families at a moment like that. - All right, Alexander Sparky says, That said, happy Greek independence. In the US, we love Greeks, Greek culture and Greek philosophy. Thank you Sparky. Take a pick. Three one three says Victoria Newland is selling her used car cheap over $60 billion with no reverse Gear navigation only points east, loaded with maps of What the world should look like. Great show, guys. - A great comment.

Tabardak says, Will the Chinese sanctions escalator be enforceable? Alexander M: Not in the end. I actually have seen some data about the trade between China and the United States. And what is so surprising is that up to this moment in time, it hasn't affected the... Overall balance of trade very much. It's not going to before the election. Biden, or rather his team... Do not want to escalate trade war against China to the level that it will affect the US economy and damage its prospects of re-election. Now, what happens after the election is another matter. Says did you see the trade in Greece that was stopped with NATO equipment? Yes. Yes. Yep.

Uh... mitzvah says is it possible that the russians say it was the i_s_ to make the propaganda shouting it was the i_s_ to go away in regards to terror attack I think this is getting more and more complicated. I do want to see what Petrushev… I mean, bear in mind, these are both intelligence people. But as I said, you know, there's the...Bortikov has said a lot more, and of course he's... The person who, along with Bastrykhin, who heads the investigative committee, is in over

Will charge of the investigation. So we are going to find out an awful lot more in the next couple of hours. I mean, these are general statements up to this time. They're not actual, you know, confirmed allegations based…founded on disclosed facts, but there's clearly still an investigation going on. And I don't know what the basis of what Bartikov says, or what is his basis for what the For Ukraine. But it may be that he meant more, until I actually see his comments properly. I'm not going to say. Yeah. Those are all the questions. Things are moving very fast, Alexander. For an investigation, things are moving very, very fast.

This is not what anybody, the people who planned this, expected. Yeah, let me say this. We had lots of comments, including from some very informed... People. But I've never known a situation where an entire group of terrorists, because that's what... It were, have been rounded up so fast. There is some explanation here as to how that happened, but the fact that the Russians caught all of these people and are able to assess and put all the information... The world. Everything is coming together, exactly as you said, incredibly fast. Within the next few days we will have an awful lot more. We will know an awful lot more. In Turkey, 40 ISIS arrested in Turkey and also Alexander yesterday, I don't know if you heard this or if this is connected, I'm sure it is. The arrest war

in absentia issued from a Moscow court to one of these SBU chiefs. Yes. Maliuk, I believe is... I forgot his name, but yeah, that has to have some connection to all of this. I just said it is maybe very interesting it was the interesting if it It's all connected, but I'm sure you're right. It is the SPU rather than the Budanov's organization, which is military intelligence. Who knows? But anyway, one way or the other, lots going on, and I've never known an investigation of one of these incidents move so fast. And this is something that, as I said, has everybody blindsided in the West. They didn't expect this, and I suspect…

This is partly what is making them so nervous. What does arresting absentia, what does that give Russia the right to do? Yeah, well if he goes, if he's, you know, traveling around the world, you know, the Russian SWAT team might come after him. Okay. Sparky says go Yemen fight the power. Thank you to Jacques Baud for an amazing show. Thank you to everyone that watched us on rock fin. Odyssey rumble YouTube vidarad.locals.com. Thank you to everyone that sent us questions and to your comments and thank you. Go to our moderators. Let's see, Peter. Thank you Peter, Zariel, Gab, formerly known as GEC812 and... EEC812 and...

This abandoned as well. And did I miss anybody in the chat at all? I think so. Any of our moderators Alexander, any final thoughts as I do one final check? Altogether and as I said it has a an intellectual approach an intellectual commentary about what the Russians do which as I said I think he's I think is unique. If you want to find a complimentary book to Jacques Vos, I would suggest David Glantz's On the Red Army during the Second World War, when Titans clash. It seems to me that the two books have…they complement each other in some ways, but Jacques Jacques Vaux is the person who is...

Really looked at the academic subject in Russia which is war. And I want to repeat again… What the West doesn't understand is that when they take on the Russians, they are taking on an adversary who is thinking all the time. All the time. Whereas the West doesn't. And that is a fundamental difference in the way that the two sides approach it. Matters of war as we see. Elza says, once again, Russia was miscalculated. And Sparky, one more, says attack was likely prompted by Newland. I just lost it. By Newland and her Nazi minions after security was too tight to disrupt Russian elections, she told them to wait until things cooled off then go for it.

I mean, there's an awful lot to say about this affair which, as I said, is coming out. By the way, just on a quick topic… finally unearthed the American warning of the 7th of March. And it's kind of the view that it is a complete red herring. In fact, it's a piece of misdirection because it refers to an attack happening over the next 48 hours. So. The attack didn't happen within the 48 hours, and the Americans didn't then come back and issue a further warning that the situation in... Moscow remained dangerous. So even American and British citizens, for example. Had no reason beyond about 48 hours or so they might have been led to think to avoid public gatherings. Well, there are some reports, not confirmed.

Speculation that the shaman concert, the Russian singer shaman was actually set to perform at Crocus City on the ninth, I believe. And so this was on the 7th and he was supposed to perform on the 9th or 10th. It was going to be a big show, but the security was just. Was just locked down yes, and then everything got delayed till picnic. Yes, absolutely. But again, to come back to this, if the Americans had come out and said there's another... With more reason for concern. They didn't. So that was a warning, which apparently all they did was they conveyed the same warning to the Russians. The same very general warning to the Russians, which they published. I mean, there's no difference between what they said in private.

I'm not saying that. But apparently giving no more than the same information. But the point is, even that information was only relevant according to the statement itself, the warning itself that was given. For 48 hours. So if you let 48 hours pass, you've no reason to think anything's different, and the Americans are not telling you there is. One final thought, they're really focusing on this warning a lot in the mainstream media in the US, but the one thing that they're not focusing on. All is they're not they're not focusing on why they were making a run to the border with you.

Train. There's no evidence connecting Ukraine to this incident at all. I mean, it begs many, many questions. No, you're absolutely correct. In fact, many, most commentaries that I've seen about this, at least in the past, have Britain haven't even mentioned that. They don't even mention it. They keep their readers in the dark about what I consider to be perhaps one of the most important, if not the most important point. Yeah. In this entire narrative. Yeah. It's something that people understand as well, when you read something like that. And you say, well, why did they get into a car and drive to the borders of Ukraine? That's when you start to say, OK, something's going on here. Anyway. All right.

We'll leave it there. Alexander M: We'll leave it there. Alex : Yeah. Take care, everybody. Alexander M : Take care, everybody. We'll see you again very soon, and thanks again to Jacques Bourg for joining us on this amazing program today. Bye. Thank you.