[FOREIGN]
>> A day after there were some promising
signs of a peace deal, a ceasefire between the Russians and Ukrainians,
unfortunately, Vladimir Putin, decided to put out a pretty chilling
speech where he referred to Russians fleeing the country or siding with
the West as scum and even accused the West of trying to destroy Russia.
Now, here's more of what he had to say.
After we come back, I'll give you some more excerpts from his speech and
it's not a good sign.
>> And I have a conclusion about how the war is going.
>> [FOREIGN]
>> So there he is going after the West.
There was one tiny kernel of truth in that statement which is, in America,
everything can be bought.
[LAUGH] It's an unfortunate part of our political system, but
to point fingers at us while completely avoiding the fact that there oligarchs and
an authoritarian regime in charge of Russia's is a little ridiculous.
But nonetheless, what he had to say, they're about Russians and
essentially calling them scum.
Talking about,
spitting them out like insects gives you a sense of where his head is at,
especially in regard to some of those Russian protesters who courageously take
to the streets and protest the invasion that Vladimir Putin ordered into Ukraine.
He later says this, quote, I do not in the least condemn those
who have villas in Miami or the French Riviera who cannot make do
without foie gras, oysters or gender freedom as they call it.
That is not the problem, not at all.
The problem again is that many of these people are, essentially,
over there in their minds and not here with our people and with Russia.
In their opinion, in their opinion,
it is a sign of belonging to the superior caste, the superior race.
People like this would sell their own mothers just to be allowed to sit
on the entry bench of the superior caste.
And then finally, one more quote from the speech, he says,
they want to be just like them and imitate them in everything.
But they forget or
just completely failed to see that even if this so-called superior caste needs them,
it needs them as expendable raw material to inflict maximum damage on our people.
>> Damn, okay.
>> He's hurt.
>> Yeah, so there's so many conclusions coming out of that, that was that
clarifying because, look, first, let me step back to explain context and
then we can get you to the conclusion here about how the war is going.
So the context is that when he first starts the war,
it's unclear to everybody how it's gonna go, including us.
And so, some people say that it was a genius innovation,
that was Donald Trump, he said it before and after.
And a lot of people that are not Donald Trump that irrational human
beings thought, boy, he might just roll over Ukrainian,
might take Ukraine in a couple of days.
Just nobody had any idea partly cuz we didn't know how ready
the Russian military was.
We didn't know how much the Ukrainians would fight.
And here's a devastating fact.
Apparently, Putin thought that 30 to 50% of
Ukrainian troops would flip over to the Russian side.
>> Yes, can I actually give you that quote?
Cuz this quote is telling, and this isn't a quote from an anti-Putin individual.
This is Sergei Markov who is often times featured on Russian state media,
he is a pro-Kremlin commentator, Graphic six, this is what he says.
The military operation is no question tougher going than had been expected.
It was expected that 30 to 50% of
the Ukrainian armed forces would switch over to Russia side.
No one is switching over.
>> No one is switching over, no one in Ukraine is switching over.
Russian warship, you know what to do with yourself.
So they did not expect that.
So now one part of the jury's coming, this idea that Vladimir Putin
is some sorta unassailable genius, not the case at all caught by surprise,
arrogant, didn't see it coming and now he's hurt dog.
Don't ask him if he's all right.
Now, how is he hurt?
You can tell it in this speech.
So when he's talking about the people that are in Miami and in all these fancy places
eating for guac or whatever they're eating, he's talking about the oligarchs.
Now if the oligarchs have turned on him, which it looks like they have,
he's in a lot of trouble cuz they got a lot of money and they're also Russian and
they don't mind using their money and they don't mind using force.
So, look, the huge sign was early on, all of a sudden,
Putin went to one of his palaces and got removed from everyone else and
was not even going into government structures, that meant he realizes,
uh-oh, I'm in trouble, like I'm in trouble, like physically, personally.
So he then got himself a security perimeter.
But how much can a security perimeter hold when the guys on the other
side have hundreds of billions of dollars?
He has cost too many people too much money.
>> In fact, I mean, this speech, which was very lengthy,
even goes into acknowledging the impact of the economic sanctions on Russia.
So to me, look,
ordinary people of Russia shouldn't suffer the consequences of these sanctions.
At the same time though,
his acknowledgment of these economic sanctions and
the impact on the economy in Russia shows you how he is backed into a corner, right?
So I do think that even though the rhetoric of this speech really does go
against the positive news that we got yesterday about a potential peace deal,
and remember both sides, both Volodymyr Zelenskyy and Russian officials came
out with some positive comments after the third consecutive day of peace talks.
And it seemed like Russia was getting close to conceding and
they were trying to make it seem as though, well, look,
this is what we're gonna get out of the deal, Ukraine has agreed to not join NATO,
even though they announced that before Russia had invaded.
But nonetheless, if they wanna frame it as, this is how we want, good,
as long as that gets the Russian troops to pull out and just end the bloodshed and
the madness.
But let me just read you the parts about the sanctions real quick, Cenk, and
then I wanna get your thoughts on it because you could tell he's hurt.
So he says, importantly, the obsession of the United States and
his proponents with the sanctions is not shared by the countries that are home to
more than half of the global population.
These states represent the fastest growing and
most promising portion of the global economy.
I'm sure he's referring to China there along with other countries, maybe,
that includes Russia.
Indeed, it is difficult for us at the moment.
Russian financial companies, major enterprises, small and
medium-sized businesses are facing unprecedented pressure.
Clearly, in the new realities, we will have to make deep structural
changes in our economy and I will not pretend that they will be easy or
that they will not lead to a temporary increase in inflation and unemployment.
>> He's on borrowed time.
So now let me explain.
So he had a plan A, we go in, we show him a 40 mile long quarter of tanks,
we've got 190,000 troops, we have nukes, we have air superiority,
plus half these guys are actually Russian and they're gonna come to our side,
we take it over, we do whatever we need to do.
The West always looks the other way when we crush Chechnya and
we bombed the Syrians, no one cared, we'll do the same play playbook.
But normally, smart guys have plan B and plan C.
He obviously did not.
So he is human and he is now vulnerable.
Okay, so now what the oligarchs, first of all,
our hearts go out to the Russian people.
In this speech, he's threatening to crush the Russian people,
not the Ukrainian people.
He's saying, you criticize me at all and
I'm gonna put you away into a Russian Gulag.
>> Speak you out like an insect.
>> Yes, and he's now talking about self-purification.
He's going full Nazi.
Hold on, I'll explain.
So plan B is what the powerful need from him.
He doesn't care about the Russian people.
The Russian people can ask for a plan B.
He's not gonna answer that, but those oligarchs are calling in and
going, hey, Vlad, what's your backup plan?
Cuz plan A clearly didn't work because even if we take Ukraine,
even if we kill everybody inside, they're not gonna lift the sanctions.
In fact, if we take Ukraine and kill everyone inside,
they're never gonna lift the sanctions.
So then we're all screwed, we're gonna lose our soccer clubs.
We already lost our yachts.
We can't we're persona non grata throughout the world.
We can't go anywhere.
We don't have any more freedom.
You want it just to come back to a Russian cave and do what?
What's your goddamn plan, Vlad?
And he doesn't have an answer because you can't get rid of those sanctions unless
you get out of Ukraine.
So his plan B now is self-purification.
He's saying like textbook fascist 101.
Okay, we do purification.
There's a fifth column inside the country, we must attack and
destroy the fifth column.
They are bugs to be spit out.
So he is now turning the war inward.
Now he's attacking the Russian civilians and other Russian allies.
Well, maybe he's stronger than the rest of the country combined, but
that's where we're at.
So probably the oligarchs will unite against them, and
he's got security, I'm sure, covered in 18 different ways, but
you're sure that security can't be bought by all that money.
>> And, look, I just think the Ukrainian resistance has been unexpectedly powerful.
You can tell that Putin is flailing, which is why the calls for
a no fly zone from US officials, from US politicians is absolutely insane.
Why would we engage in a direct war?
Send members of our air force to Ukraine to personally shoot down Russian planes,
which means we are engaging in war with a nuclear power.
Why would we do that when it appears that Putin's already backed up into a corner?
That would escalate the situation.
>> Okay, and the final thing about that, Ana is, I agree 100% talking no
fly zones when our economic sanctions are not only devastating them,
Putin is admitting that they are devastating them.
I mean, throughout that speech, not just the quotes that Ana read, you guys,
he kept talking about and I was shocked at how much he was admitting it.
Like, the sanctions have crippled us and broken are back and
they're about to drink our spinal fluid.
But, hey, why would you go and start a military incursion against him,
which would give him an excuse to rally more Russians to his side and
risk World War III for no reason?
So the adjunct to that, that you've got to acknowledge here and
the degree to which I'm furious with Biden on domestic policy is immeasurable.
I think they've done a terrible, disastrous job on domestic policy.
But on this issue, Biden has been brilliant.
Perfect balance.
>> What I'd like to see from Biden, to be honest, his response to all of this could
be a lot more robust because we don't want Russian citizens to suffer,
innocent people who did not choose to invade Ukraine, right?
We need to have a goal, a plan to accept Russian and
Ukrainian refugees into the country.
>> Yeah, I hear you.
And that's very important.
And our hearts go out to the Ukrainians obviously and
they should definitely move on to that next.
But for now, the most important part is and
guys, don't celebrate at all because now there's a couple of ways this ends.
The most important thing is to resolve the war itself in Ukraine.
So number one, Putin backs them cuz he realized oligarchs, etc.,
have him circled and he maintains his power and says, I didn't want it anyway,
he keeps probably the couple of breakaway Republics and maybe that's a compromise.
And great, well, I mean, I don't want him to keep that area, but
I'm saying some sorta compromise.
Face saving maneuver itself, that's the best case scenario.
Unfortunately, it's the least likely.
The other possibility is somebody in Russia finds a way to deal with
Putin keeping it real.
I got nothing to do with it.
But is that how Russia sometimes handles things?
Yes, that's the second possibility.
Third possibilities, they just dig in and
when they dig in and they say, okay, we're digging in in Ukraine and
in Russia, we're gonna bear the pain and it's gonna be miserable in Russia.
And this is gonna last for a long, long time.
That is disastrous.
Again, not just for Ukraine, but for the Russian people,
that is gonna be brutal, okay?
And then the fourth scenario, of course, is the worst of all,
which is he's a mad man, not at all a genius, gets mad and they have nukes.
>> Yeah, I know.
That's terrifying.
It's absolutely terrifying.
And the fact that that's even on the table at this point is insanity but
that's where we're at.
So we'll see how this all plays out.