we need a new system we need a new Society we need to demand that which may have sounded impossible even a few weeks ago but is not only realizable but an imperative [Music] necessity new documents reveal that Russia and Ukraine were close to a deal that would have ended the war back in April 2022 at the last minute those negotiations were torpedoed today we're talking about why the US and NATO want endless war in Ukraine welcome to the Socialist program I'm your host Brian Becker today we're talking once again with Eugene per year Eugene is an author a political organizer and activist he is also the co-host of the freedom side live which you can watch every Thursday from 3 to 5:00 P p.m. Eastern at breakthrough news Eugene welcome back thank you so much for having me Eugene we had uh many discussions about the Ukraine war back in you know before 2022 before the invasion in 2022 during the early days of the invasion in the weeks and in the months after the invasion we had many shows about it we were assessing the war every day while we were doing that and something we perhaps did not yet know about was that Russia the Russian government and the Ukrainian government were negotiating very intense complicated complex negotiations and they were almost ready to sign a deal that would have ended this horrible War here we are two years later uh hundreds of thousands of people are dead or wounded the US is pumping billions of dollars of weapons into Ukraine and we only learn now that there was almost a peace deal big question what happened to the peace deal who torpedoed it and what were the sticking points anyway let's get your take this was all revealed by the way recently in the New York Times no I think it's a good point and you know just to reinforce the point you just made I mean the New York Times you know article saying that we're further away from peace than we've ever been which is you know somewhat amazing in the context of of revealing how close they were but I you know I think there's a number of points on this and I I think that what is important is these documents reveal when you look at the sort of issue of sticking points um throughout the process but especially towards the end of how the the conflict could potentially be uh uh ended that it really actually undermines a huge amount of the discourse that we have in the the quote unquote west in the United States and Europe and Canada uh as it regards you know what are are things that should never be considered relevant and I think to me the most important one is the overall issue of the Eastern parts of Ukraine that are now a part of Russia in some of the former oblast of Ukraine you know danet luhansk uh Crimea other places like that because in the context of what we have heard consistently including from the Ukrainian government but certainly from the United States certainly from the European countries is Ukraine must win and winning being defined as Russian troops must uh you know be removed from all this territory and it must be sort of sovereign for Ukraine but what we learned from the documents from 2022 is that Ukraine was actually willing to seed that territory to Russia and I think it's also worth noting here Brian parenthetically that in 2019 zalinsky also agreed by the way uh to have a A pleite in that part of of what was then you know sort of separated from Ukraine kind of its own two countries the people's republics as they called themselves of donk and luhansk uh but you know I think most people thought at that time and in the couple years prior to that when this was discussed that of course that referendum would lead almost certainly to separation from Ukraine either as independent countries or as part of Russia or independent countries leading to part of Russia and part of the reason why I think that's really important on the land issue is that it's not specifically uh just the issue of well Russia was in there and they were occupying it as the way that it's been discussed but when you chain it together with one of the other major sticking points uh that was there at the end which is the issue of language and the changing of the language laws of Ukraine that were changed in 2014 it really helps us f focus in on what this conflict is ultimately I mean it's about many things but at the root of it one of the biggest misunderstandings the idea that this is a National Liberation struggle of ukrainians versus Russians I would say this is something more akin to sort of a civil war between ukrainians that concerns Russia that Russia has intervened in but in these republics starting post 2014 the first law passed by this you know post 2014 post maidon government was to make Ukrainian the only official language and this is after a long issue that has existed in Russia for for in Ukraine rather excuse me for some time you know starting in 2012 they were recognizing Russian as a language you know 46% roughly of ukrainians are native Russian speakers one of those people by the way is Vladimir zalinski uh but that's a whole other story uh but that being said you have this law that's passed around language you have the burning of the Odessa Trade union house where a number of people are killed you have the imposition of a political narrative that to many people especially in eastern Ukraine is deeply offensive and tied with Nazism and these areas in the eastern part of Ukraine then break off to defend themselves from a political Vision that had been contested in Ukraine since the fall of the Soviet Union but now the resolution was being imposed from above by Force of Arms they set up these you know sort of autonomous republics and now they've ended up as a part of Russia and so on and so forth but I say all that just to say that it's interesting to note that Ukraine was willing to seed this just as they were in 2019 in 2022 as well not just because there was a Russian occupation but because they recognized that the people who lived in this area did not want to live under a Ukrainian government where this very specific vision of what it meant to be Ukrainian what the relationship between ukrainians and Russians was what the historical memory in the battle against Nazism during the Soviet Union was and what are the different rights and and and you know freedoms that different people wanted to have based on those different conceptions the professor in the UK Richard Saka has called it two visions a monis vision and a pluralist vision of Ukraine and the monus vision single sort of uh you know what we know now as Ukrainian politics being imposed on a whole huge subset of the country one of the most po I think the most populous region of the country was never really going to work so so much of what we're told that this war can only in when Russian troops leave because it's a Russian invasion and all ukrainians hate it is is 100% false as we can see and if we're talking about what the path to P is we have to be more serious about that so I think that these documents help us reset the understanding of what the conflict is is really about in many ways at least amongst ukrainians themselves uh the political forces on either side of the equation the role of Russia in that and how this conflict could easily be resolved by just recognizing these basic realities about the differences inside of Ukraine itself about a number of these crucial questions yeah Eugene I think that many people in the United States uh certainly in the United States won't really understand the Dynamics inside of Ukraine uh they're complex and there are many of them one is as you said uh Ukraine isn't just one people it's not just one ethnicity there are there's a Russian population uh a Russian speaking population there's a Ukrainian population in the west there are people who came from Romania or from po this is a consequence of earlier European Wars and also a consequence of the fact that there were multi-national or multiethnic uh empires in Europe I mean you had the Russian Empire which included Ukraine and bellarus and Poland you had the Austrian Empire and then later the Austrian Hungarian Empire that included big parts of other people and ethnicities in Europe there was you know the there are the Ottoman Empire of course the British Empire was a little bit different because it was the island and the British were basically focused on colonizing the rest of the world uh although they did have a big role in what happened in dynastic conflict in Europe but people don't really in the United States won't get the fact that what happened in 2014 the coupet that the US sponsored that Victoria nand and John McCain and all of the representatives of us imperialism sponsored that broke up in equilibrium or what you call the pluralistic Ukraine where the Russians speaking population didn't feel that they had become not just second class citizens but actually targets of sort of a supreme extreme nationalism or fascism I have a clip from Jeffrey Sachs Professor Jeffrey saaks who I would say you know played a big and somewhat miserable role in the transformation of Russia following uh the collapse of the Soviet Union uh with shock economics and all of that but he's a realist about uh politics and he talked about what's prompting the current war between Russia and Ukraine and he goes back to the two 2014 couet that the US sponsored I want to play this clip from him and then I want to show people a little bit of some of the video from the uprising that took place around the maidan the center of Kev the center of the capital of Ukraine and how that was misrepresented in the western media as some sort of Freedom loving Enterprise anyway let's first uh listen to Jeffrey sex and I want to get your comments uh and then what it did in Kiev in February 2014 I happen to see some of that with my own eyes the US overthrew yanukovich together with right-wing Ukraine Ian military forces we overthrew a president and what's interesting by the way is we overthrew yanukovich the day after the European Union Representatives had reached an agreement with yanukovich to have early elections a government of national unity and a standown of both sides that was agreed the next thing that happens is the opposition quote unquote says we don't agree they stormed the government buildings and they deposed yanukovich and within hours the United States says yes we support the new government it didn't say oh we had an agreement that's unconstitutional what you did uh so we overthrew a government contrary to a promise that the European Union had made and by the way uh Russia the United United States and the EU were parties to that agreement and the United States an hour afterwards backed the coup uh Eugene he's not wrong there uh that's almost exactly what happened on February 21st 2014 there was an agreement the yanukovich government sat down with the opposition the United States Russia and several EU countries were present in the room as observers as International Observers and yanukovich signed an agreement he's the president of Ukraine he's the one who says uh look we're we're we want to be with Europe we want to be in the EU but we're not going to be in NATO that's why he was basically targeted by NATO countries so he agrees to early elections decentralized power meaning basically going along with the um the demands of the opposition and the very next day as Jeffrey saak points out a fascist L coup uh storms the Parliament and the president flees for his life and then you have Victoria nuland and John McCain saying great day for Ukrainian democracy I mean he's not wrong about the actual sequence of events there no he's definitely not wrong about the sequence of events and I think one thing that we have to add here is you know through both research that has been done uh very diligent research but also now from the Ukrainian court system itself it is very clear that the famous sniper incident at maidon Square which which really enraged a lot of the people who were there uh to to you know back some of these more uh you know militant poses that were being pushed forward by the far right in terms of deposing yanukovich and something like a coup uh that that was in fact a false flag by farri forces who themselves were the snipers who deliberately posed in such a way that it would create the perception that the government police officers or some sort of government forces were the snipers in order to help direct the crowd's anger which was you know at that time still not necessarily going to go in the direction that the these these sort of farri pro-western forces would want them to go because there's a lot of issues that are caught up in this most notably the you know deep Corruption of yanukovich which is of course not unique to other Ukrainian officials but has been a big undercurrent of protest going back to the color Revolution days of the 2000s and this is part of what the US has been manipulating but to drive at that final level they create this false flag sniper attack to enrage people at the highest level to bring it to a fever pitch in order to carry out uh uh this coup d'etat type scenario so I think that uh you know Mr saxs is is 100% correct in terms of the scenario and we can remember the handing out of cookies and McCain traveling there and all these other pieces that were designed to put this to the the Forefront and again this also goes back to the color Revolution days when you uh had you know in the mid 2000s uh the issue of people protesting corruption and as we know from Wikileaks US government officials flying there immediately and meeting with people and saying you know uh meeting with the opposition political parties you know will back you we'll support you uh so on and so forth in order to put their thumb on the scale so we can really see that the role of the United States in particular in determining the direction of where Ukraine uh was going to go let's say from 2014 on has been quite significant and of course is related to their own geopolitical desires as it concerns the issue of Ukraine which is of course you know in the most specific sense you know to encircle Russia as it were but what's the sort of deeper question that's existing here and you know I talked about this uh at length in an article people can find at Liberation news.org called uh you know is NATO really to blame that from the actually before the Soviet Union was dissolved so from like 1989 you know into the early 1991 1992 period the huge concern that the US ruling class had at that time was and as it was stated once by one of the top officials in the George HW Bush Administration uh when he was making a note to one of his AIDS he says how do we get in between Germany and Russia and the point being is that in the context of the collapse of and dissolution of the Soviet Union which of course America wanted the biggest fear they had was that the natural economic ties between Western Europe especially countries like Germany Central Europe uh and Russia would create a new sort of European Russian block that could actually challenge the United States of America and its sole gmany after the collapse of the Soviet Union and of course their entire political strategy has laid out in a number of you know National defense strategy defense policy documents was to control the entire world and in some of these early documents they say the only role for Russia is if Russia is essentially demilitarized so that Russia in and of itself could not challenge us of jimy and that the natural economic cultural political ties whatever you want to call them between especially Germany and Russia but really Western Europe and Russia and even some parts of Central and Southeastern Russia uh Southeastern Europe would of course uh create a new kind of hegemonic force on the world stage that could also challenge the United States so the key factor of that strategy was to make sure that they did in fact get in between Germany and Russia and they were able to create an alliance with these extraordinarily reactionary post-soviet governments in Central Europe that for their own reasons many of which date back to the history uh uh that's related to World War II and prior to World War II that you mentioned of of State Building and Empire Building in this region that they were willing to Ally with the United States because they hated Russia to try to create a ever Eastward moving presence of NATO as a check against Russia even knowing that it could lead right up to the possibility of war and of course has led to war and that's what's behind the meddling of the United States in the in Ukraine it's this long-term strategy that goes back to 1989 to make sure that the sort of Russian border to German border area of Central Europe is a zone of total Us control and influence to prevent there from being any sort of force that can naturally emerge from that natural economic social political historical space of Europe that could actually challenge the United States no matter what the consequences for ukrainians no matter what the consequences for anyone else that's the nature of their policy and that's why they pushed this so aggressively in 2014 because they figured this is our time up to that up to that point there is significant disagreement in Ukraine should we join the EU should we join NATO some people saying yes some people saying no but this was the moment where they were able to seize on mass popular anger in some areas against yanukovich for his own issues uh the role of the far right in the streets that became significant and dominant uh and the possibility uh of using public opinion worldwide uh around this idea of freedom and democracy to seize the time in order to complete the encirclement of Russia and the uh creation of this buffer zone basically in Central Europe to make sure us uh interests remain uh uh whole yeah we have video Eugene that shows how violent the fascist wing of the maidan protests were and again as you said not everybody in maidan was a fascist uh that would be a a stereotype a caricature many were there because one they were protesting against yanukovich's corruption two uh they don't identify with an Eastward oriented Ukraine meaning oriented towards Russia because they they are and their people and ethnically are more oriented towards Europe I mean Ukraine is a very multiethnic Society but the fascist element was very present very present um as a matter of fact we we and I showed you a clip at one time where some of the fascists got together and said yeah of course we were just 10% uh but we were the decisive 10% of maidan and what made them decisive was their their use of violence you mentioned the sniper attacks they were killing now we know they were killing people on their own side in their own protests I mean by the way they're viant anti-gay so some of the protesters Were Gay they might have shot them who knows but they don't care about that they wanted to create an incident that would allow them to have a pretext to overthrow the government they have their own agenda their agenda is to basically have a Ukrainian supremacist State against Russians and against other non Ukrainian peoples who live in Ukraine uh the US has a different agenda which is to make Ukraine uh basically a vassel of the United States vassel of NATO or actually in NATO so that it could be a staging ground for or the placement of us weapon systems targeting Russia right on Russia's border uh I want to come back back when we think about this complexity that there's different agendas the US agenda is one thing they don't actually care about the conflict between ethnicities within Ukraine except to manipulate them but the fascists actually do care because they hate Russians they're Ukrainian supremacists they are fascists um and then that goes back to where zalinski when zalinski was actually allowing agreen in in uh April 2022 in those negotiations to make Ukraine a permanent neutral State like he was they were making those kind of you know gestures I want to get to this because I want to figure out who torpedoed it was it the fascists who torpedoed those negotiations was it the US was it the US you know working with the fascists because zalinski seemed to be ready to make a deal but just to show the audience how violent the fascists were I want to play this short there's two clips I want to run them consecutively this is from maidon if this happened Eugene in Washington DC the capital of the United States the US government the Pentagon and all the intelligence Services would come out and mow people down because these people were not only killing other demonstrators they were killing police let's watch this [Music] don't you see them blowing up a tank or a police vehicle another police vehicle in Flames I mean Eugene they would never the US would never ever tolerate this this was their allies in maidan yeah I mean they we know for a fact they wouldn't tolerate it all we have to do is look at the response of Donald Trump to the uprising Against Racism and not just Donald Trump all the politicians at the time who were denouncing the protesters uh you know who were rising up uh during the Ferguson Uprising during Baltimore I mean you know obviously the far right the trumps of the world people like that are just like crush them kill them all but even the Democrats who want to say that they do something about RAC ISM are like oh but you should never never burn anything down I think it was Obama who said you never got anything by burning anything down so you know ultimately uh it shows the hypocrisy you know on so many different different levels uh of these individuals and I think it speaks to you know I mean you look at the sort of role of the far right and the point you already made about the decisive 10% I mean this is why the United States has prettified the asof Battalion the right sector these other you know Nazi and Nazi adjacent groups in terms of their own political uh uh IDE ology because these are really the shock troops for a pro-western agenda in Ukraine without them they could not actually push forward their agenda and I think that's been abundantly clear I mean you already raised it in the leadup to this I mean when you look at the pre-war 2019 you know because people should remember when Z zalinsky was elected he was elected on a mandate of resolving the war of resolving the partition of the country um you know between east and west of resolving the conflict that was happening on which many people were dying and finding some way to to to end it you know whether it was some sort of reunification some sort of federalism some sort of Separation whatever it is to end the the war and the conflict and when you look at as I talked about earlier in the show the negotiations happening in 2019 where zalinski did agree to uh negotiate with the the people's republics as they called themselves over the issue of this pleite uh that had been discussed and was to some degree part of the Minsk to sort of Peace the people who were opposing him were in fact these far-right forces the right sector the aof Battalion type individuals who were doing everything they possibly could to prevent anything going forward that would allow that sort of of of agreement that would allow any sort of vote that would allow any sort of uh element that could move Beyond this and so ultimately we can see that many of the forces that are the most supported by the Western uh uh uh uh world as it were the governments of the western world are exactly those who have been the most intransigent around the issue of resolving the conflict and I think that that in and of itself is an important factor when you see how closely the two things are interlined the goals and the the of of the imperialist are not the exact same as the goals of the far right which are you know in their own world and in terms of the the region and the country more specifically but they actually work together and reinforce each other and cannot exist outside of each other the West would not have the shock troops to push its agenda without these far-right bully fascistic type forces and those forces would not be able to move forward with without the cover given to them by uh the the sort of broader imperialist world that has done everything possible to prettyy them and of course and I think we could talk more about this you know we can see the role that has been discussed of Boris Johnson uh who at that time is the prime minister of the United Kingdom pushing the ukrainians not to make any sort of deal uh and I think we've seen that throughout the war that you know many at least the public statements I'm not privy to the private statements that many of these Western leaders have you know essentially done everything possible to not go in the direction of negotiations and in fact to try to influence in I think this is my personal view influence the internal politics of Ukraine by using these public statements about Ukraine should never have to surrender we'll back them until they win we'll back them until all Russian troops are off their territory which can only stiffen the backbone of the people who would prefer not to negotiate in the broader Ukrainian uh political space before World War I and before World War II but especially before World War I and World War one which was a war unlike any other War up until that time a war that took 18 million lives in four years A lot of it happens right there right in the neighborhood that we're talking about and there's a lot of big bad decisions that are made by dynastic rulers their assumptions are wrong their tactical thinking is wrong their strategic overview is wrong they make big bad decisions and 20 million people die the reason I'm raising this is I see a similar sequence uh of really bad decisions and you you think about Biden for instance Biden is worried about the rise of trump or the rise of right-wing political parties in Europe well why are they Rising why are they Rising it's because uh the the torpedoing of negotiations in Ukraine means the war in Ukraine goes on and on well who's suffering first and foremost it's ukrainians but it's not just ukrainians Europeans are being hit hard in the pocket book certainly um a lot of people just because they know the history of their own country and history of Europe they don't want to go down uh you know with Serendipity towards uh Another World War a global conflict so they think this is madness so who's they're going to the left or they're going especially to the right right-wing parties well who created all of this this again I would say is US imperialism the Biden Administration the so-called political Center the social Democrats and Christian democrats in Germany macrone and France in other words the so-called Center political Center has made this project a priority and then we go back to these documents that have just been revealed here what were the sticking points Russia demanded that Ukraine never join NATO or other alliances that it never hosts foreign military power uh bases or weapons that it never conduct military exercises with other countries without Russia's consent and what does Ukraine say in response we agree we'll be permanently a neutral State this is zalinski we will be permanently a neutral State we will terminate International treaties and agreements that are incompatible with permanent neutrality uh okay that that means zinsky was ready to to move forward it appears but then when you look at the sticking points which the New York Times also reveals they have to do with the demands of the fascists the F there's a demand that Russia be reinstituted as a an official language which again if 46% of the people in Ukraine are speaking Russian uh an official language means that you can function as a normal citizen in Ukraine speaking your language uh well who wanted to get rid of the language issue I don't think it was zalinski as you said at that time zalinski was a a native Russian speaker himself these are the political pressures of the rightwing the fascists wanted to torpedo this they didn't want r r pront they want a an ethnically pure Ukraine meaning Fascism and who are their allies the other people who wanted to keep the war going which was the political Center in Washington in Paris uh in Germany anyway that's how I see this no I think it's a good point and and you know I just excuse me for a second you know also want to note sort of just parenthetically here uh in terms of how some of these things play and some of the I'm just looking down here so I can actually get this exactly right when you made the point about the fascist and one of the sticking points about uh you know Banning uh propaganda and organizational ideas and theories uh around fascism Nazism neo-Nazi ISM and aggressive nationalism and you think well how is it possible you couldn't agree on that but I think it's an important parenthetical fact here uh to go back again to the point I'm making about the relationship between the farri and the imperialist in terms of the strategy inside of Central Europe you know this is actually a long running issue not just in Ukraine but also in Poland and many other places and these far-right parties that were like Law And Justice that are ruling Poland and so on and so forth H have had and continue to inject into the political discussion in the EU and you know because of the acquiescence of many liberals far before Ukraine have been able to actually pass you know laws like this in the European Parliament to equate Nazism and communism as the exact same thing and part of the reason why they want to do that is because the political lineage of many of these forces who are the most anti-russia and in some cases the ruling parties uh of these countries like Poland is really with the pro-nazi side during World War II and the sort of roots of that uh those those politics in those countries that predate World War II these sort of far-right anti-Semitic fascistic nationalistic forces that were you know at play in this space but since fascism of course is so you know terribly uh rightfully terribly demonized they have to create this political equivalence with Communism so then they can say okay well you're saying 60 years ago these people were our political lineage well we're saying 60 years ago these other people were your political lineage and they're both bad so you can't say anything about what we're doing today in terms of the far right as you know being reminiscent of Nazism or whatever they're trying to create confusion around the historical memory of World War II the rise of fascism the defeat of fascism by the progressive forces the core of them of course being the Soviet Union in Europe to try to push forward a political agenda today that is extremely farri and heavily anti-semitic But ultimately this is also an extraordinarily pro-western agenda that of course then will be uh uh celebrated and brought to the Forefront and that's why many of these Western European Social Democratic liberals went along with it um because even though these are ridiculous historical allegations it was actually helping them in terms of the sort of broader political agenda uh of of of the broader subset of of the the the continent as it were so I I just think that's an important factor that we understand in terms of how this thing is playing out in terms of these so-called sticking points because as you said it really speaks to how the agenda of the far right is driving so much of why you have been unable to have an agreement in Ukraine but only with the cover of the imperialist who give them cover because these are their shock troops to push through their agenda so there really is a long running certainly in Ukraine and other parts of Central Europe predating this conflict political struggle over the historical memory of World War II that's designed to muddy the waters in a way that open the door in a bigger sense for this extremely pro-imperialist extremely anti-russian NATO encirclement campaign that is also being pushed forward by these central European countries whose entire political lineage uh is really based on the opposition in these countries during the the Soviet era and the the Warsaw Pact era and before that the oppositions existing in these countries um that were more friendly to you know the the Nazi power and the Nazi vision for what was going to be happening uh in Europe so it's serving two roles but it's serving as the wedge as it were to push this geopolitical agenda which drives the whole thing because without it you know it would probably collapse under its own weight because of how uh you know ridiculous it is in fact yeah I want to go back I want to go back I want to actually stay with this topic I think it's extremely important for people to understand exactly what we're saying that us imperialism NATO which is a tool of us imperialism uh is using and manipulating fascist forces for its own geostrategic goals to weaken Russia to weaken China eventually etc etc and this has a long history to it this has a very long history to it Bandera the leader of the Ukrainian nationalists who is the idol of the azof uh Brigade Battalion the right sector the fascist forces that we're talking about in Ukraine Bandera led a holocaust against leftist and against Jews and against poles in Ukraine when this when the Nazis invaded the Soviet Union in 1941 7 million ukrainians died the Jewish population which was very significant very large in Ukraine was basically exterminated by these people now they at that time were fighting on behalf of or with the Germans I mean they had some conflicts with the Germans but basically as an arm of the Nazi invasion they were anti-communist fascists and they killed their own people especially Jewish people in Ukraine and they're now they're building monuments to Bandera and that team in in Ukraine they're taking down the statues of Lenin when Ukraine was in the Soviet Union they were constructed now they're being replaced with Bandera but at the end of World War II Eugene the us then having had Germany as its enemy decided to basically Embrace Germany as a new ally against the Soviet Union and against the left and against Communists in Europe who were ascending at that time and even though there was the nurburg trials and a few of the Nazis were executed a great number of them were immediately given new identities uh passports US citizenship and integrated into the US military like Warner Von Bron the head of you know NASA the man on the Moon project led by a Nazi the leadership of NATO uh many you know during the next 20 years many former high chief of staff of the of of Hitler's military High command was became the NATO Chief I mean again the US is including the so-called liberals or the center political forces not the farri not the proud boys not the 3centers but the Democratic party perfectly willing to work with fascists in the uh sort of aim of securing American geostrategic goals They Don't Really Care that they're fascists as long as they're working with the United States and so there's this kind of symbiotic relationship between the Ukrainian fascist and American imperialism and ultimately the war that the US pushes and promotes and demands continue then gives rise to right-wing forces in Western Europe that eventually may turn against the United States uh because because the masses of people in Europe don't want the war and for the right-wingers in Europe the right-wing political parties even to demagogic win the support of parts of the working class and the poor and the middle class they'll say look that's an American war let's Europe should be European we shouldn't be following uh the tale we shouldn't be the tale to America again this is the dialectical element of what's going on in geostrategic politics but the bottom line and this is why I want to keep repeating it for people when you look at what's happening in Europe including the rise of the right or what's happening in the United States blame the Democratic party establishment blame the center political forces in imperialism because they're pursuing their own agenda which then ultimately blows back against them go ahead yeah no I think it's it's a very well taken point I mean for the United States and as I mentioned before they have to control Europe at the end of the day because for the United States to be the sole hegemon they can't have the other developed countries have the their own you know agenda but the natural sort of development sort of path for those countries is to work very closely with Russia these Western European countries in which they do economically at prior to this did work very closely uh with Russia and there are many who wanted to work even more closely but of course that combination then starts to upset the apple cart of having the United States be the creator of the rules-based international order and the point you're making about post World War II is is 100% correct I mean the US spent in ordinance amount of an inordinate amount of money and I think the payoff is coming now by the way in the Ukraine war in shaping the politics of Western Europe creating both on the right and the left uh you know these sort of captured entities that would become the political Elites of the rebuilt Europe and I think now you're seeing in the context of Ukraine where all these European leaders are just cutting their own throats economically uh in order to back this us agenda I mean the US making plenty of money uh in terms of selling gas now to Europe Europe is now destroying its own Industries uh on behalf of this you can see that this long attempt to create this sort of captured tamed European ruling class that was at all cost including sacrificing its own people going to be tied to this atlanticist vision of the world was absolutely critical for the United States to carry out its attempt to control Europe to prevent a hamon from emerging now for most of the 20th century that did not work because the Soviet Union existed as a counterweight but as the collapse of the Soviet Union happened then it was able to come into its own in a real way and again as we keep saying of course the US was able to mobilize the anti-russian political forces in Central Central Europe um some parts of it we consider Eastern Europe but sort of Central and Eastern Europe in order to push this agenda so that symbiotic relationship uh has been there you know since the dissolution of the Soviet Union and it's all behind this key geostrategic goal which is to make sure again to get between Germany and Russia to prevent a European state that could challenge America emerging and to make sure that the military power of Russia is essentially declawed because they're surrounded by nato in all these various little countries and that ultimately as it was said in one of the early uh National defense strategies the early 1990s the goal is really to push Russia to be essentially a neutered demilitarized country so that it cannot uh play any sort of significant role on the world stage Russia of course has resisted that and that's why we are today really quite frankly all right I want to talk about one other I think extremely important element in this story so we've covered the fact that the US actually toppled yanukovich a corrupt but democratically elected government that wanted to be neutral the US I think with the fascist torpedo the negotiations that would have ended the war two years ago two years and two months ago which would have save the lives of a half a million people or people who have either been killed or horribly wounded uh the US just wants war war war more war it's very good for American Business by the way but there's another element which is Ukraine is a big country Ukraine was the second biggest Republic in the USSR Ukraine was the Bread Basket of the USSR you know Ukraine might have gotten its oil and petroleum products from the Soviet Socialist Republic of azerbajan in the caspan sea it might have gotten its cotton from Kazakhstan but it gave those other repu Republic's wheat and other grains because it's a very significant agricultural country MH it has a lot else going for it because it became especially in the dbas a heavily industrialized area uh during the 1930s but now it's a an impoverished country the people in Ukraine yeah the maybe the middle class is doing fine the workers The Peasants the smaller Farmers they're not doing fine at all and here's an article the headline Eugene from The New York Times to pay for the war Ukraine Andra privatization and then the first line the government hopes to sell off a range of companies to fund the military and stabilize the economy as the grueling conflict with Russia drains its coffers again think about this everybody this war could have ended two years and two months ago they were near to an agreement the US and NATO didn't want an agreement so now Ukraine is additionally poor because they have to fund the economy meaning also fund the arms that are coming from other places it's a grueling conflict it's almost like it's inevitable now that Ukraine must do something to pay its bills under a capitalist Ukraine Ukrainian government so how will it pay for the war bill it will Embrace privatization this is the New York Times BS kind of of weird not weird but carefully crafted language in Bat journalism to hide the underlying reality that Ukraine has become an economic colony of Wall Street and of Paris and of London and of Germany anyway I know you've done a lot of research on this yeah well this has been the plan all along going back to the EU Ukraine Association agreement in 2013 2014 that sort of started this whole thing off or at least the about it um and it's not inconsistent with what the EU has done as it's expanded into other you know former Warsaw PCT uh nations in sort of Central and Eastern Europe which is to push an extreme Market agenda that ultimately results in sort of a smash and grab raid uh on the economies of these countries by Western capital from the United States and from Western Europe in order to really make a Bonanza and then also by integrating them into the freedom of movement uh issues as it concerns uh the EU it also allows you to do a brain drain of the people who actually live in these countries who then move into more fluent Western Europe uh and work for very low wages uh on a number of different fronts so this was what was happening in Ukraine but you know the immediate aftermath of what took place in the maidan you have this exact issue and you have almost the way to look at it is from sort of 2014 to now part of the increasing support for the West uh by the West for the Ukrainian government is pred dedicated on deepening this project of opening up the country to being looted by Major Western economic interest and it started from the very beginning and it often operates from a blackmail type perspective because as you pointed Ukraine is poor in 2019 um you know it's the poorest country in Europe in 2019 41% of people were living in poverty um there's a lot of needs that are there and so the IMF and the World Bank the European Union and others sort of hold this bailout money that they over the head of Ukraine as like a sort of dam CU they don't have a lot of money and say well we'll give you this money but each time you want the money you have to do more and more to make sure the countries uh the companies from the countries in Western Europe and America can come in and take over do whatever they want and exploit workers in a major way I mean even in 2014 right away to get a 17 about a 17 billion doll bailout from the IMF and about uh$ and a half billion dollar from the World Bank they said that the Ukrainian government was going to have to slash pensions cut wages uh you know start selling off companies so on and so forth privatize Banks so even in 2014 the agenda was set but it took some time for this to really play out for a lot of different reasons that I think are you know not necessarily Germaine right now but it really in 2018 starts to uh uh push forward in a major major way because in 2017 this issue of getting more money from the IMF towards the end of the year becomes a bigger thing so in 2018 Ukraine passes a law that was a law they were required to pass pass in order to be able to get this money from the IMF that they wanted to unlock in this deal where that they would be willing to privatize over 3,000 companies that were owned by the government and that they would move towards the uh uh creation of what's called an agricultural land market but basically letting foreign companies come in and buy land and I'll come back and talk about that but that they had to open up agriculture to Big Agra business coming from the US in a big way and also Western Europe and that they would have to privatize 3,00 companies uh at least and that these would be key companies you know some of them are small companies and whatever things that are owned by the government in Ukraine but the banking sector would have to be totally privatized as one of the issues you know major corporations in titanium and other sort of big Industries those would have to be privatized and pushed out and that this was going to be the agenda and that's March of 2018 that they passed this law at the behest of the IMF to secure uh this loan to get this money to fund the government operations worth voting at that time there was a survey done by the pro privatization people by the way uh in early 2018 in January of 2018 that 49% of the country opposed the privatization of these s soes these state owned Enterprises but nonetheless the parliament went forward at the behest of the IMF and open things up in a major way and that same month March of 2018 the Atlantic Council which is the think tank for NATO had an article that said Ukraine is serious about privatization this time and the whole article is saying like now we finally done it we put him into a corner we're going to be able to have this Smash and grab raid and take over their economy and then it goes on and on you know moving from uh uh that point moving forward in July of 2022 there was a Ukraine recovery conference uh URS vandan was there it was a big thing about how we're going to rebuild Ukraine after the war Liz truss who was the British prime minister was there uh at the time but the way that they were going to rebuild Ukraine was an even further deep ing uh of these different reforms including privatizing even more Enterprises including non-critical Enterprises finalizing the corporatization of uh s soes which basically means handing them over to private Consultants like McKenzie to run privatizing all the rest of the state owned Banks so it's a total free market piece and then also urging them to cut taxes on corporations and Wealthy capitalists and to slash labor protections and what's important about that I'm talking about July 2022 in August 2022 they approve a law signed by zalinsky doing just that removing rights for workers and over 7 over 70% of Ukrainian workers were stripped of many of their most important labor protections collective bargaining agreements were totally destroyed uh things around salaries and holidays that's off the board uh trade unions at that point could actually challenge uh dismissals as being against the law they get rid of that so that's one month after this this Western backed conference saying Slasher your labor laws Ukraine is slashing their labor laws open up and sell your companies they're doing even more uh of that September of that year zalinsky comes goes to the New York Stock Exchange says we want to bring $400 billion doll into the country we've got 55 projects so there's a direct relationship as you can can see here between these Western back pushes and the imposition on Ukraine of this deep privatization that again was opposed by many people and in one of the areas where it's become the most notable has been agriculture you know the top five agricultural firms in Ukraine two of them are now us companies and the top firm in Ukraine is technically a Ukrainian company but 58% of the company is owned by Foreign investors eight of the top 10 of those investors are from the US or the European Union and the other two that are not from there are from the Cayman Islands uh and Cypress which means that they're probably from the US and the European Union uh just through various passrs as you can see so you know the overall issue and that law by the way that opened this up that was passed in 20 20 I want to say March of 2020 64% of ukrainians opposed opening up the land like this but they did it anyway so you can see that the impact of this and moving on with the war and the point you made about the New York Times which came out relatively recently in 2024 from 2014 to 2024 the predicate for being closer integrated into the European Union and into the the West Was that they allow Western companies to lead a smash and grab raid on the most valuable assets of Ukraine and turn them into valuable assets for Western corporations so that's Western Freedom that is being offered to Ukraine is make sure your economy is completely controlled by Europe by the United States that is going to put into place not only taking the profits but put into place big Plantation agriculture that drives people uh you know off of the land that they're going to get rid of all the labor laws which means more people are going to be leaving Ukraine because they're going to be getting fired they're going to be downsizing rightsizing bringing in technology people are get paid so low they're not going to be able to survive where are they going to go they're going to go to Western Europe they're going to become low Wade uh low wage workers in those economies so it's the complete and total economic colonization and exploitation of Ukraine presented as some form of Freedom that was the prerequisite the predicate for them to be allowed into the Western Club if they wouldn't have done any of this they would not have been able to get the military support uh they would not been able to get the political support that they've gotten and it only gets deeper and deeper day by day also you mentioned the New York Times article I don't know if this was mentioned in there or not I can't remember the article but recently here in 2024 a central bank president uh of Ukraine was in a conference in Western Europe and stated we're going to move forward we're going to try to privatize this year hopefully soon after this year three of the top 10 uh banks in the country that are not privatized so we're moving forward on that front to quote unquote reinsure reass sure investors so I mean it's an amazing issue uh to to to really see it's totally undercut but let's just summarize it again they have passed laws that have made it so that all of the most important and many non-important businesses that are state-owned can be bought by Foreign companies almost certainly Western companies they've opened up the land uh in a way that has been totally dominated Now by Western multinationals and big aggra business they are cutting pensions cutting wages they are eliminating labor protections for 70% of workers inside of Ukraine and they're doing all of this over the opposition of the people 50% who didn't want to privatize any s soes and the 64% who didn't want to privatize the land that doesn't matter whatsoever it's the quidd proquo between the pro-western Ukrainian Elites and the imperialist forces that are backing them that if you want to be in our club you have to destroy your economy and you have to turn it into an economic colony of the West and you have to parenthetically then agree to the brain drain of your own people to be sent to be low wage workers in our company in our countries lennin Lenin said that the basic the most important freedom in a Bourgeois democracy is the the freedom to exploit Labor uh since the breakup of the Soviet Union and in spite of the determination the will the feelings the sentiments of the working class none of that matters because under a capitalist government whether it was leaning towards Russia or leaning towards the West basically the masses of people are being viewed as a source of of profit as a source of exploitation including the countryside and I thought it was so important what you said Eugene that the masses of people didn't want this they didn't want to privatize they didn't want to have the state-owned Enterprises privatized they don't want obviously to give up uh regulations that protect workers and the job they don't want to be in a a state of endless in economic insecurity or poverty and it it made me think when you were talking about the the referendum that was organized by the capitalist counterrevolutionaries who toppled the Soviet Union in December 1991 including Boris jelson who had taken over the government in Russia and made the Communist Party of the Soviet Union or the Communist Party of Russia illegal uh just as the Communist Party in Ukraine now is illegal um they broke up the Soviet Union but in March of 1991 March 17th 1991 they organized a referendum so that all the different republics and there were 15 of them again Ukraine was the second biggest after Russia they got to vote on one simple question do you support the maintenance of the Soviet Union or should it be dissolved I mean I'm I'm paraphrasing but in essence that was the one question and the capitalist counterrevolutionaries thought they would have big uh vote uh for breaking up the Soviet Union especially by people in the non-russian republics and then they could say see we we listen to a democratic Mandate of the people they no longer want communism they no longer want socialism they no longer want the USSR so we have to listen to them and to their shock 70% of the people in the Soviet Union voted no they no they don't want to dissolve the Soviet Union they want to maintain it that was March 1991 in Ukraine and in other places where Collective Farms were very the center of Agriculture those Collective Farmers did not want to break up the Soviet Union they did not want to break up the collective farms in a collective Farm whether it rained or whether it was the Sun was shining you knew you were going to be taken care of your fate wasn't Left To Nature or whether the the market would collapse or not under a capitalist system and in spite of all of that Democratic aspirations and yearning showing that people want to retain the existing system I'm sure they wanted to make reforms in it but they wanted to retain it they broke it up anyway the capitalist counterrevolutionaries didn't care at all about the people and when the people said we don't want this they just ignored them that's the history Eugene in Ukraine all the way since 1991 yeah masses of people they don't what they want doesn't matter and I think it's so important for people and I've been asked this well what do you what do you don't you show that you're not caring about ukrainians when you say that the war in Russia the war in Ukraine should come to an end that the US should cut funds uh for war for more military equipment to Ukraine doesn't that mean you're turning your back on the Ukrainian people and I think the only answer really is the war itself is an indication that the people the the plight of the people the needs of the people the well-being of the people has been completely neglected it's not the masses of people in Ukraine who want endless war with Russia a a country that they've been were at peace with ever since the creation of the USSR in 1922 they don't want that this is Western and capitalist forces in Ukraine in Western Europe and on Wall Street and of course the military-industrial complex if you care about ukrainians you should want this war to end and the only way to end is to have a negotiated settlement and we can see from these documents that both sides were seemingly ready to do it two years ago and obviously the fascist and American imperialism the Biden Administration said no anyway I'm going to give you the final word no I think that's right and I'll just say quickly here I would be remiss if I didn't mention the kovich brothers from the Ukrainian Communist Party who had been arrested and essentially disappeared at this point um you know for a number of reasons but one of the things those two brothers are most known for was leading protest against the privatization of land uh against the privatization of state owned Enterprises that were significant you look at 2019 2020 a lot of farmers and others who were demonstrating so there was a lot of resistance um inside of Ukraine to these sorts of policies there is a rising tide of feeling that they should try to find a way to heal the riffs that's why zalinsky was elected and I think we can't allow that to be sort of memory hold even though of course A lot has changed in the context of the war but I think you're entirely correct that it can be ended it can be ended right away and it can be ended right away by addressing the core root cause issues I mean this is often referred to as you know sort of quote unquote Russian security concerns of which there are quote unquote Russian security concerns but I think it's important to recognize inside of Ukraine that the issue of the settlement speaks to the Deep divisions that have been in the country you know for many many years but have been you know main points of contention since the first election in 1994 up until 2014 over what kind of country it should be and over how the different contested sort of social cultural political and historical elements as well as economic when we talk about policies should be played out the whole reason zalinsky in 2019 was willing to acques to a vote inside of donet and luhansk and other places and also to you know allow crimeia to remain the same is because there is is a cultural historical political economic aspect to that that it was highly unlikely that people in that area after what had taken place that the imposition of this government that had come in in 2014 was saying you can't have your language recognized in any serious way uh and that we're willing to fight and murder anybody who has a totally different view that these people likely would not want to come back into a Ukraine like that and if you gave them a vote they would probably vote for some sort of either deep federalism autonomy or some form of of of Rel ship with Russia so this whole idea that the Russian troops have to be removed or whatever and the votes that took place there have to be reversed actually has no real relationship to the developing political Dynamic since 2014 that exist in deeply rooted facets of the country and if we abandon that complete fiction that is pushed by these Western governments that that can't be recognized that the actual differences in Ukraine can't be recognized we would get even closer the same thing can be said about the issues of historical memory and language in terms of the laws that are there uh inside of Ukraine in terms of what they would have to agree to in terms of banning different Nazi propaganda uh again speaks these core issues for ukrainians you know not just the issue of where Russia is at but of course Russia also is relevant to this question and somewhat a party to this discussion because of many of these sort of both Divergent and shared issues on a his historical political social economic and cultural level uh that also have to be considered including of course the history of invasions from Napoleon from Hitler uh and you know exactly through these areas and the context of what the NATO imposition uh further and further east has sparked amongst Russian people themselves who lost 27 million or the Soviet Union lost 27 million they lost many tens of millions uh in World War II who also have different concerns so if we take seriously the history of Ukraine the divisions inside of Ukraine the history of Central and Eastern Europe the history of the Soviet Union and its disolution the history of Russia and its relationship to Western Europe and different anti-russian movements we can resolve this conflict right away now it doesn't necessarily mean that everyone will be 100% happy with how it's resolved but we have to have this thing that is rooted in realism and right now the whole political debate is not rooted in realism it's or at least put it to you like this the debate as we're given in the United States is not rooted in realism it's based on a fake historical narrative that does not actually take into account any of these complex issues and is opposed to incredibly simplistic one-sided view pushed by one narrow set of interest in Ukraine and adopted by the imperialists to push forward their sort of broader agenda of again controlling Europe to prevent the emergence of a new hegemon that could potentially challenge the United States on the world stage you don't have to believe me read every single National defense strategy since 1992 and you will see that is exactly what they're trying to do it is 100% the plan that they've put forward it's extraordinarily dangerous and it's led us to a space where even the idea of nuclear war is being discussed so let's start from the real issues in Ukraine and work outwards and we can certainly resolve this that's why they were so close to making an agreement because both sides know the issues very well they are their issues and it was broken apart by those who want a war because it will push forward their agenda in Ukraine and those who want a war because it'll push forward their agenda geopolitically all right we'll leave it right there Eugene perier thank you so much thanks so much for having me [Music]