Russian State Television aired horrifying aerial
footage of the remains of Mariupol in Ukraine,
a port city that was shelled and bombed to oblivion.
And unfortunately, what you will see in the state reporting,
Russian State reporting on this is that it wasn't the Russians who did it.
It's all Ukraine's fault.
Now let's take a look at the video.
This was during one of their against Russian State Television broadcasts and
they show the aerial footage, you can see how devastating it is.
It has been completely destroyed.
And what you hear the reporters say there are the anchor.
She says, sad scenes, of course,
the Ukrainian nationalists withdrew trying not to leave a stone unturned.
So they're trying to make a point, obviously it's a lie,
that the damage done, the destruction that you're seeing in that footage,
was carried out by Ukrainian nationalists.
Because nothing would make you a better nationalist than to
destroy your own country, to bomb and shell your own country.
I mean, it's absolute ridiculous propaganda, but
the reason why I'm showing you is because it is aerial footage of Mariupol.
And this is what Russia has done.
Now, Mariupol has been so thoroughly bombarded that it seems that no
Western journalists still are reporting from there.
Most have left.
Two AP reporters were the last two to stay and cover the bombing of a maternity
hospital, which they did by disguising themselves in hospital scrubs.
There have been as many as five journalists who
have died during this war in Ukraine while attempting to cover the war in Ukraine and
it's really devastating news.
Now, the two nuclear powers though,
who are involved in this, the United States and Russia,
have now experienced a complete breakdown in talks, in conversation.
It appears that the Russians are refusing to have any conversation
with their US counterparts.
And there's a lot of concern about that because there's a lot of room for
error when it comes to what's taking place on the ground in Ukraine.
There is a lot of room for miscommunication and
any type of miscommunication could lead to an escalation of war.
If Russia does something that is misinterpreted by the United States or
its NATO allies, that could lead to an escalation of war.
So since Russia's invasion of Ukraine, Defense Secretary, Lloyd Austin,
and General Mark Milley, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff,
have tried to set up phone calls with Defense Minister Sergei Shoigu and
General Valery Gerasimov.
But the Russians have so far declined to engage,
said the Pentagon spokesperson, John Kirby.
Now again, this is really bad news mostly because of the room for error here, right?
Russia is currently conducting military operations near its borders
with Poland and Romania.
These are two NATO countries.
And if there's any misinterpretation of what they're doing, again,
that could lead to an escalation of war.
Also, the United States and its Western allies are air policing, but
any type of miscommunication could lead to some pretty dire consequences and,
again, an escalation of war which we're trying to prevent.
Moscow and Washington maintain a deconfliction channel.
So this is basically a form of communication specifically to ensure
that they can avoid any unnecessary escalation or confusion.
But it's not the same as having an open dialogue.
So each side really understands the intentions of the other, right?
That form of communication has been completely shut down by Moscow.
Also, the former Supreme Allied commander of NATO says this,
very young people are flying in jets, operating warships and
conducting combat operations in the Ukrainian war.
They are not seasoned diplomats and
their actions in the heat of operations can be misunderstood.
We must avoid a scenario of NATO and Russia sleepwalking into war because
senior leaders can't pick up a phone and explain to each other what is happening.
And right now, both sides are gonna assume the worst of each other,
if they're not having a conversation.
And if you assume the worst of the other side,
you're likely to behave in a way that's far more combative, far more dangerous.
For instance, a nightmare scenario would be a Russian missile or attack aircraft
that destroys the US command post across the Polish-Ukrainian border.
A local commander might respond immediately thinking the event was
a precursor to a wider attack.
This could lead to rapid and
irreversible escalation to include potential use of nuclear weapons.
So, again, more communication is better than cutting off forms of communication.
And in this case it's clear that a very important channel of
communication has been shut down.
Now, high level talks between two sides, again,
are more about understanding the intentions.
So why would Russia want to avoid these types of conversations?
What's fueling that decision?
Well, some acknowledge that it might be because they refuse to acknowledge
the fact that they have invaded Ukraine and they're engaged in a war.
They keep referring to it as a military operation.
And there's this thought that maybe opening up these channels of communication
acknowledges the fact that they have invaded Ukraine and
they're engaging in war.
I don't know if that's really the reason for doing it, but regardless of what
the reason is, this is, it's disastrous to move forward in this way.
Now, things can get super complicated though,
in regard to some of the sanctions that have been implemented toward Russia.
Vladimir Putin is looking for ways to dilute those sanctions,
trying to find ways to weaken them.
And remember, we're still not in a world where major countries,
whether it's the European Union and all the countries within it,
whether it's the United States, are reliant on renewable energy.
They're still reliant on Russian oil, Russian gas.
And that's a huge problem because Europe, of course,
is still reliant on fossil fuels.
40% of their fossil fuels come from Russia.
They can't just cut that off, it would be a disaster for
the people living in these European countries.
So what is Vladimir Putin trying to do to essentially weaken the sanctions that have
been implemented against him?
Well, if you wanna buy Russian gas, he wants you to buy them in roubles.
So I wanna give you the details on that.
Courts reports that Vladimir Putin is insisting that 48 hostile nations,
as he refers to them, the United States, the UK and
the EUs members among them, pay for Russian gas in roubles.
The demand is more than provocation.
It's a strategy to force the West to dilute the effects of its own sanctions
in Moscow.
Now in 2021, I want you guys to kinda understand the gravity of this,
these hostile nations paid roughly $69 billion for
gas from Gazprom, the Russian state owned company.
To make a similar scale of payments this year,
countries would have to procure around six to seven trillion roubles.
In a meeting with officials on March 23, Putin told the Central Bank of Russia
to figure out how these rouble payments can be made.
And so this is an effort to increase the value of the rouble, which, of course,
rapidly declined in value following Russia's invasion into Ukraine, following
the sanctions that were implemented against Russia and some of its banks.
If the demand for roubles steadily increases as a result,
the drastic fall in the currency's value will halt and even reverse.
After Putin made his announcement, the rouble gained 7% against the US dollar.
So that's where we stand, as we speak, regarding this war.
So far, several European allies have come out in response to what Putin is
doing with the roubles and argued, well, listen, when we signed these
contractual agreements, it stipulated that when we buy your fossil fuels,
we do so either through US dollars or through the Euro.
And if you want to re-open those contractual agreements and you want to
re-negotiate it, it's not going to be so friendly towards you, Vladimir Putin.
I really don't think that these countries have that much leverage in
this specific area, especially because they're so
dependent on the fossil fuels coming from Russia.
But it goes back to the point that I've been making on the show and
I wanna reiterate, this is why it's so important to no longer be as reliant or
as dependent as we've been on fossil fuels.
It is important to develop renewable energy.
I mean for many different reasons, the climate emergency being the top reason.
But clearly when it comes to foreign relations,
when it comes to various geo-political issues, that should also be top of mind,
you don't wanna be reliant on countries that engage in particular actions or
particular wars that we disagree with.
We're talking about Russia right now.
But I've had a problem with the fact that we are so friendly with Saudi Arabia and
economic interests clearly play a huge role in that relationship as well.
And so it is the most important thing to take a story like this,
not allow the right wing and
those funded by the fossil fuel companies to deviate and
take us to a direction where we do more drilling and more fracking.
That's not the answer.
The real answer is developing renewable energy,
finding alternative forms of energy that will be both good for the planet,
climate wise, but also good for geo-political reasons as well.