Does it look like Russia needs to grab more land?
Amongst the condemnations that were hurled at Tucker Carlson and Vladimir Putin even before their interview was aired, was this gem from an unnamed European foreign affairs spokesman to The Guardian:
“A spokesperson for the European Commission said it anticipated that the interview would provide a platform for Putin’s ‘twisted desire to reinstate’ the Russian empire.
‘We can all assume what Putin might say. I mean he is a chronic liar,’ said the EU’s spokesperson for foreign affairs. …
‘[Putin] is trying to kill as many Ukrainians as he can for no reason. There is only one reason for his twisted desire to reinstate the now imperialistic Russian empire where he controls everything in his neighbourhood and imposes his will. But this is not something we are able to tolerate or are willing to tolerate in Europe or the world in the 21st century.’” [Emphasis added.]
The article warned that Carlson’s interview could actually be deemed “illegal” under last year’s European Digital Services Act. The Guardian says:
“The law is aimed at stamping out illegal content or harmful content that incites violence or hate speech from social media. All the large platforms, bar X, have signed up to a code of conduct to help them accelerate and build their internal procedures in order to comply with the law. …
The onus is on platforms to ensure content is lawful, said a spokesperson for the digital tsar, Thierry Breton. … If a social media platform does not comply with the new EU law it can be sanctioned with a hefty fine, or banned from operating in the EU.”
The Russians Are Coming … Again
Military parade on Moscow’s Red Square, May 2017. (kremlin.ru, Wikimedia Commons, CC BY 4.0)
After the interview, the Western media predictably dismissed it for a variety of reasons, including that it promoted Russian “imperialism.” The Economist wrote that Putin’s
“obsession — Russia’s historical claim to Ukraine — is backed by a nuclear arsenal. … He denied any interest in invading Poland or Latvia (though he previously said the same about Ukraine).”
Western rhetoric about a resurgent “Russian imperialism” dates back to 2014, when Russia assisted Donbass in resisting the U.S.-backed unconstitutional change of government in Kiev. Western officials sought to characterize Russia’s action as an “invasion” that was part of a grand scheme by Putin to reconstitute the Soviet Empire and even threaten Western Europe.
In March 2014, a month after the coup without making any reference to it to explain Russian actions, Hillary Clinton compared Putin to Adolf Hitler. The Washington Post reported:
“‘Now if this sounds familiar, it’s what Hitler did back in the ’30s,’ Clinton said Tuesday, according to the Long Beach Press-Telegram. ‘All the Germans that were … the ethnic Germans, the Germans by ancestry who were in places like Czechoslovakia and Romania and other places, Hitler kept saying they’re not being treated right. I must go and protect my people, and that’s what’s gotten everybody so nervous.’”
March 19, 2010: U.S. Secretary of State Clinton, Ambassador Beyrle and Under Secretary Burns with Russian Prime Minister Putin during a meeting at the Novo-Ogaryovo just outside Moscow. (State Department, Public Domain)
Clinton later tried to talk down any comparison to Hitler beginning his conquest of Europe by saying Putin was not that irrational. But the notion that the Russian president is trying to reconstruct the Soviet Empire — and then threaten Western Europe — is often repeated in the West.
forefront of keeping this idea afloat.
Reconstituting the Soviet Empire would involve bringing the Central Asian Republics, Azerbaijan and Armenia, let alone the Baltics and the former Warsaw States, now part of NATO, under Moscow’s control.
The Inevitable Fall of Putin’s New Russian Empire;” and Salon: “How Russian Colonialism Took the Western Anti-Imperialist Left for a Ride.”
The absurdity of the notion of a threat to the West by Russian “imperialism” is underscored every time many of these same Western leaders and media ridicule how disastrously Russia has performed on the Ukrainian battlefield and how, in the words of Ursula von der Leyen, the EU Commission president, Russia must resort to washing machine parts to keep its military going.
How can Russia be so weak and incompetent and yet be such an imminent and menacing threat at the same time?
The late Russia specialist Stephen F. Cohen dismissed these fears as a dangerous demonization of Russia and Putin. Cohen repeatedly explained that Russia had neither the capacity nor the desire to start a war against NATO and was acting defensively against the alliance.
“How can Russia be so weak and incompetent and yet be such an imminent and menacing threat at the same time?”
This is clear from the decades-long Russian objection to NATO expansion (which Putin raised with Carlson), coming in the 1990s when Wall Street and the U.S. dominated Russia, asset-stripping the formerly state-owned industries and impoverishing the Russian people, while enriching themselves.
It is clear from Russia backing the Minsk Accords, which would have left Donbass as an autonomous part of Ukraine, and not rejoined to Russia.
And it is clear from the treaty proposals to NATO and the United States offered by Russia in December 2021 intended to avert Russian military intervention. The West rebuffed Russia on all three diplomatic initiatives.
Dec. 7, 2021: U.S. President Joe Biden, on screen during video call with Putin. (Kremlin.ru, CC BY 4.0, Wikimedia Commons)
While realists in Washington and Europe increasingly admit Ukraine is losing the war, neocon fantasists, desperate to keep it going, have revived the theme of the Russian threat to the West to counter congressional reluctance to throw away more money and more lives.
Trumped-up fear of Russia has served U.S. ruling circles well for more than 70 years. The first three National Intelligence Estimates of the C.I.A., from 1947 t0 1949, reported no evidence of a Soviet threat, no infrastructure to support a sustained threat, and no evidence of a desire for confrontation with the United States.
“Trumped-up fear of Russia has served U.S. ruling circles well for more than 70 years.”
war scare was drummed up to save the U.S. aircraft industry, which had nearly collapsed with the end of the Second World War.
Then came the 1954 bomber gap and 1957 missile gap with the Soviet Union, now accepted as deliberate fictions. In 1976 then C.IA. Director George H.W. Bush approved a Team B, whose purpose was again to inflate Soviet military strength.
George Kennan, the former U.S. ambassador to Moscow and America’s foremost expert on the Soviet Union tried to counter such exaggerations, including late in life when he opposed NATO expansion in the 1990s.
Now we are being asked again to believe another fictional story of a Russian threat to the West in order to save U.S. and European face — and Joe Biden’s presidency.
It is instead a projection to cover up its own authentic imperialism and the West’s perceived threat to Russia, a big part of what Putin was trying to get across in the Carlson interview.
The Donbas status referendums in May 2014. (Andrew Butko, CC BY-SA 3.0, Wikimedia Commons)
If you allow, a short summary of President Putin’s claims that led to smo. And this is a set of problems that have been growing like a snowball since the collapse of the union. I would like to note that everything that was said is truthful and easy to verify, however, of course, Vladimir Vladimirovich is somewhat disingenuous or does not say enough at some points. And this is quite normal, because he is a politician. These are the reasons: 1) the constant expansion of NATO to the east (which should not have happened according to verbal agreements) 2) the announcement of readiness to accept Ukraine into NATO 3) the nurturing, legitimization and glorification of neo-nationalist movements and even military units 4) the oppression of the Russian language and Russian-speaking population due to growing nationalism (taking into account the fact that the overwhelming number of citizens are Russian-speaking) 5) signing of European integration, which threatened to open free access to our market for the flow of goods from Europe, because at that time there was a single customs zone 6) a bloody coup d’etat and the beginning of preparations and implementation of a military operation to suppress those who disagreed with this coup (Odessa, Crimea, Eastern regions) 7) flooding of the territory of Ukraine (especially border zones) with military bases with foreign instructors and military equipment, essentially a threat to Russia’s national security 8) refusal to implement the signed Minsk 2 peace agreement 9) continuous shelling of civilians in Donbass. The goals are clear and do not change – demilitarization and denazification. And these are absolutely truthful attitudes. There are others, and thinking people, especially in the field of macroeconomics, know where they stand. If you ask the question why Germany suffers such humiliation from its main strategic partner (meaning the blow of the northern streams and liquefied gas in the sky high prices), the answer cannot be found on the surface. And I think it can be formulated this way: we don’t want cheap (gas and oil), we want free. It’s no secret that behind the most beautiful thoughts, ideas and events there will always be money. And even if money is not the goal itself, the need for economic security and sovereignty determines almost any foreign policy steps of the state. And the complete capture of Ukraine into the orbit of influence of the United States and the European Union is precisely a threat to Russia’s economic security. I don’t agree with everything, however, a general understanding of the economic background can be found here: https://youtu.be/If61baWF4GE?si=nxfajObBKVwLhpFl
I enjoyed the history part and found the bit about Poland prior to WW2 particularly interesting. I knew they and the Romanians had prevented the Soviet attempts to build a coalition to defend Czechoslovakia in 1938 and that they had taken a chunk of territory near Cieszyn, mainly inhabited by Poles, but I was not aware of the way Poland used Chamberlain’s promise of support to escalate things with Germany.
I did a course on the religions of Russia a few years ago and, even coming from a Russian Studies background, I was surprised at the extent to which the Roman Catholic church’s negative, crusading, attitude to Orthodoxy found a willing partner in Polish policy and national feeling to cause no end of problems for Russia across the centuries. Growing up in the UK, Poland was always portrayed as the victim, but it is interesting to see the Polish state through Putin’s eyes as, at the very least, eternal troublemakers. But given what has transpired, he’s probably thinking the same about the UK.
I’m working on a blog covering Russian history (https://ratemytsar.wordpress.com) and I’ve only got a century and a bit in from Rurik in a couple of months, so I’m impressed with Putin’s succinctness in fitting everything in 25 minutes. He missed a lot of interesting stuff out, though.
I wonder, though, if any normies will be listening. I get the impression Tucker Carlson has a particular, fairly partisan audience in the USA, who would be sympathetic to the idea that Obama and Biden have messed everything up. I’m not sure people who listen to the mainstream in the west will even have the capability to appreciate the substance of the interview, as they are coming from an environment where everything both Putin and Carlson say is immediately condemned as misinformation and lies. Why listen to two liars lie for two hours, when you can read a brief pro-NATO “debunking” and condemnation in two minutes?