Salut and greetings from Bucharest this is Gare de Nord just bought my train ticket to leave
Bucharest been here for three weeks it is day 22 of Russia's invasion of Ukraine when I am filming
this just for reference if it takes me it takes us a day or two to get it up onto the channel
now today's video I want to address a point two points first point is obviously the title of the video
the West has been cynical in Ukraine and why do I say cynical you've heard a lot about no-fly zones
close this guy the Ukrainian government has been pleading for this for basically the last
three weeks since the new invasion started and so far NATO leaders were are the US or UK
or other European leaders in the alliance have ruled that out because they say that it's
a risk of escalation with Russia to enforce the new fly zone or to you know get involved military
or send boots on the ground then they would risk direct confrontation with Russian troops and that could
escalate up to a nuclear war so for the moment they're just going to arm Ukraine increasingly
to the teeth as Ukraine has lasted 22 days already in this war which wasn't the expectation that I
saw from almost any analyst whether they were pro-Western or pro-Ukrainian or pro-Russian
before the war so they're arming Ukraine so effectively what they're doing is fighting by
proxy as opposed to sending their own troops because that carries the risk of escalatory spiral
and they also have to justify to their own populations why their soldiers are dying in
Ukraine and what strategic interest is there for the West so the easier option and maybe the
more cynical option is to just supply arms to Ukraine let them do the fighting instead now
a lot of people have sent me a series of lectures by John Mearsheimer who is an offensive
neo-realist and he has a series of lectures that have been certainly widely especially by
those who are apologetic to Russia's position and saying that it's all the West's fault and
apparently Russia has no agency because the quickest way to end this war
is Russia to get out of Ukraine then there'd be no war it's really like that simple but he did
make an interesting point in his lectures that I might review in a future video
that a very good cynical strategy by the West might would be to lure or to bait Russia into
attacking Ukraine because there they would get bogged down and weaken themselves and actually
not be such a big strategic threat to NATO to the countries that are already in NATO and that's
actually said he would I think kind of recommend almost if he were to advise you know the West
about a strategy so that is super cynical if you look at it from that point of view and on day 22
Russia has still only seized or in control of some parts of the south of Ukraine that have in
terms of being a big population center which is basically Kherson and there's the water supply
from Nova Kakhovka that goes down to Crimea and yeah some nuclear power plants is rather
disconcerting but it's day 22 and they don't control Kharkiv they still don't control Mariupol
and Cherhiniv, Kyiv obviously Sumy so they are at this point in an
impasse the British ministry of defense this morning has said that they've
stalled in terms of their military advance so that is looking increasingly like it might turn
into a quagmire for Russia which would be the very cynical point of view of a strategy that
you know it's a successful cynical strategy by the West I get a lot of messages from similar
people some of them claim to be in favor of peace and they blame Zelensky because he just doesn't
give in to Russia's demands oh, they had those demands beforehand that Russia wanted basically
a dictat and it's all his fault because he doesn't want to agree to them and he's risking that
Ukraine turns into Afghanistan in effect because everything will get destroyed because the Russians
will just destroy everything now it's true that in Afghanistan the West also fought by
proxy they armed the Mujahideen against the Soviet Union Soviet Union lost about 15,000
troops over 10 years and it's considered one of the contributing factors to the implosion of
the Soviet Union in you know from 1989 to 1991 when it dissolved and yeah that's definitely a
possibility that Russia just keeps blowing up so we've seen them wreck so many of the cities that
are actually ironically Russian-speaking who they claim to be protecting with this invasion
like Mariupol a lot of it is wrecked Kharkiv the center where I used to go with my clients
they blew up so much of the center some of the bars, cafes, restaurants and I can see all the
footage on telegram I mean I don't see anything military there that why they're doing that other
than the fact they're just trying to turn into rubble and punish the people there in the center
of Kharkiv which is a city they still haven't taken as well so that is a risk for sure that if you
know the Ukrainians don't win or there is no peace agreement truce and the Russian forces leave
then they're going to keep fighting and just wreck the place and that would be terrible
again the cynical strategy might be in the West yeah and Russia is just going to weaken
itself and actually not be a big threat to the rest of Europe because in effect Ukraine is
defending Europe from that point of view and Putin made it very clear in his speech declaration of
war speech before this invasion that he doesn't consider Ukraine's entitled to
independence as borders are legitimate so and once you open pandora's box and you start in that that
mindset and why you're gonna stop you're just gonna look at all the other places that where
the Russian empire was and logically you're just going to keep going through Moldova
and the other countries I have some other videos about where Russia will invade next if they
are successful in Ukraine so if Zelensky were to ... the Ukrainian president were to agree to
Russia's terms now the ones that they have been offering in the last couple of days in these
negotiations like demilitarization of Ukraine they don't they give up joining NATO or the
European Union they recognize Crimea has been part of Russia so rewarding previous invasions
and aggression that's illegal under international law that they then recognize the independence of
Luhansk and Donetsk think about it this war has been a fiasco for Russia they've lost a lot of ...
different estimates the Ukrainians are claiming almost 15,000 soldiers probably an exaggeration but the
Americans are saying 7,000 and the Brits are somewhere in between and the Russians basically
don't want to publish it so that could be the low ball about half of the losses that they
got in Afghanistan in 10 years it's only three weeks so imagine if and they've only taken Kherson
so far captured now that can change I know on the battlefield going forward I'm not a military
expert I'm just seeing what I can see online but imagine if you reward Putin in this situation
where it's basically a fiasco militarily and you sign a piece of paper with them and you give in to
those words of those demands what you think is going to do next you think he's going to honor it
already before this war there were plenty of agreements in place like the Budapest
Memorandum in 1994 about Ukraine's sovereignty and it was never a debate about there was never
territorial dispute beforehand between Russia and Ukraine about the borders or about Crimea it's
simply he doesn't respect any of the agreements already and he doesn't respect International Law
he very clearly doesn't think that Ukraine is entitled independence what why would you believe
that he's going to respect some sort of peace agreement it's more likely he's just going to
learn the mistakes from this military campaign re-arm and either it's two weeks, two months, two
years down the road simply going to come back and try and take Ukraine again and the countries
afterwards that he can get to if he stopped now or if they make an agreement now so I think
signing a piece of paper with a leader obviously doesn't respect any of the previous agreements
is a bit like Neville Chamberlain coming back from Munich in 1938 having signed
an agreement with Hitler the Munich Agreement peace in our time he said he waved this infamous
piece of white paper it's basically like a white flag for surrender and yeah they just invaded
Poland obviously the Second World War came along so Churchill has a nice quip about appeasement
appeasement is like feeding a crocodile and hoping to be eaten last and so that's the argument
in favor of not surrendering or agreeing to Russia's terms at the moment we're on day 22
when I'm filming this of the war but of course the flip side is that you risk that the war goes
on for a long time or that and or Russia just wrecks the entire place that we've got you know
million I don't hope I'm not saying millions of people are gonna die but definitely
people have been affected they got over I think there's almost three million
refugees already or Ukrainians have left to go to other countries probably the death toll
everything combined it's all it's probably in the tens of thousands hopefully low in the tens of
thousands you know well over ten thousand I guess we could guess already and it looks like being the
biggest war in Europe maybe exceeding the Balkans War pretty soon now we're not at that point yet
thankfully and that's the risk you take that there's just going to be more bloodshed
destruction in Ukraine if you don't concede and you know if you look back in the Second
World War you had the Winter War between the Soviet Union and Finland where they didn't
agree to the Soviet Union's diktat beforehand actually remaining here they did they given the
territory and Finland fought and lost but it basically was a pyrrhic victory for
the Soviet Union and then obviously the Second World War went on and both Romania and Finland
grabbed territory of the soviet union before they were beaten again so it's a little bit
hard to foresee which is going to be the best strategy at the end of the day but back to the
original point of the video is the West cynical pretty much so they're letting the Ukrainians do
the fighting instead of doing it directly themselves by and large at least officially
and yeah that's just the way it is and that's unfortunate for Ukraine and for Ukrainians that
they're not in they're not in NATO already and then or that Russia decided not to invade them
and we got this tragic situation anyways that's my video I'm gonna go back inside and get ready
to leave go to a new city so see you in the next video la revedere
До побачення! До свидания! Слава Україні!