Vladimir Putin has officially launched a full scale attack on Ukraine.
The invasion involves attacks by land, sea and air and
he has already killed dozens of Ukrainian soldiers and civilians.
The official death toll of course is constantly changing, but
as it stands right now, it is in the dozens if not hundreds.
Now, Putin announced the invasion in a speech, and
then went on to issue a threat to any country that would dare intervene,
so let's take a quick look at that video.
>> [FOREIGN].
>> So as you can see at the end there, he threatens to retaliate against any country
that dare intervene in this invasion.
He of course doesn't refer to it as an invasion,
even though it is a full scale invasion.
And in the beginning there of course he's gaslighting,
everyone by indicating that he's doing this to protect people.
He's not protecting anyone, as I mentioned earlier, there's already,
they're already lives lost as a result of this.
This is not something that's contained in the breakaway portions of Ukraine.
This isn't just about the annex portions he has launched a full
scale attack in several different cities across Ukraine.
And obviously I wanna take a quick moment to note,
I personally underestimated what Putin was willing to do.
And I didn't rely on what Putin was saying, I relied on the intelligence
community within Ukraine that was really downplaying the threat.
And also you can't really blame me for
being skeptical of our pentagon and state department.
But I miscalculated here and
what Putin is doing is obviously something that we're 100% against.
And this is a terrible update and terrible news,
which I have more details of in just a second.
>> Yeah, so real quick on those fronts, so every aggressive dictator,
totalitor leader etc says I have to protect the homeland.
They never say, I'm starting the war, they never say we're the guilty ones.
I'd like more territory because of my shortcomings, I wanna make up for
cuz I'm insecure, they never say the truth.
>> Of course they never say that.
>> Okay, he's not gonna get out there and say that, no.
>> Can you imagine the humility?
>> Yeah.
>> I am feeling insecure, so I'm gonna invade [LAUGH] US.
>> Yes, I have shortcomings have physical shortcomings and I try to make up for
it by invading more countries.
Taking more land and getting a lot of other people killed, so
they're not gonna tell you the truth.
They always say I'm protecting the homeland, I had to
protect these people that were in that territory, they were asking for my help.
That's exactly what the Germans did when they took sedating land etc exactly
what they did.
So now, second of all, Putin is threatening everyone else and
we're gonna talk a lot more about that because he has some real threats.
First of all, obviously he's got nukes that's a hell of a threat,
and he's beginning to wink in that direction, which is super scary times.
And then he's got 40% of the energy going into, the European Union, so
that is a massive threat.
And we have not really responded, that well to it, in my opinion,
were not strongly enough.
Now in terms of who's at fault, let's just cover that one
last time here at least, we told them, for my part.
I thought that America was needlessly antagonizing by constantly saying
that we could put Ukraine into NATO and pushing up against Russia's border.
I thought that was a mistake in the beginning and
I thought that Putin was trying to basically push back against them, right?
Well, he was, that is a mistake, we were too aggressive, but he went further.
>> Yeah.
>> And the actual invasion, means that even if we had said,
we're not gonna put NATO in Ukraine, he would have invaded anyway.
>> Yeah, exactly, that was another miscalculation,
I felt that there was some credibility to his security concerns.
But I'm now understanding more and more that there likely wasn't any level
of diplomacy that would have prevented this from happening.
>> Yeah. >> And the other thing is,
even when it comes to authoritarians and horrible people like Putin.
You always, well, at least I always assume that at the end of the day
they're motivated by incentives and disincentives.
And there are so many disincentives involved in invading Ukraine and
I know that you have a theory on this junk which we'll get to in just a second.
But let me give a few more details if you don't mind in regard to this invasion,
because it might inform.
What you think about what's going on or why Putin has decided to do this.
For instance, he has decided to take over Chernobyl
as is reported, it was reported earlier today.
The Ukrainian advisor to the Ukrainian president said it is impossible to say
the Chernobyl nuclear power plant is safe after a totally pointless attack by
the Russians.
This is one of the most serious threats in Europe today and some Russian military.
Masked in the Chernobyl exclusion zone before crossing into Ukraine early on
Thursday.
A Russian security source said Russia wants to control the Chernobyl
nuclear reactor to signal NATO not to interfere militarily the same source said.
So that's relevant because as you guys can recall from the video,
we showed you Putin issues this threat.
And having control over Chernobyl means that,
he could use that too essentially threaten all of Europe.
If he manages to break like the concrete containment that's been built
around the nuclear reactor which is,
meant to protect people from radiation and all of that.
Well, he could cause actual damage and harm to people like that is a serious
threat, and he's doing this to kind of a mass some leverage.
>> Yes, so look, I think that it's fair to say at this point that American
intelligence was right, so I think we were very right to question it.
It has earned questioning besides which you should always question the government,
that's the job of reporters.
And we're in the whole world is right to be skeptical of it after Iraq and
so many other failures of US intelligence which are largely on purpose.
So but in this case now, looking back at it, it looks like they were right.
The Russians did a mass 190,000 troops, they were intending to invade all along,
and I'm now absolutely convinced based on the facts.
And so if people say, hey wait a minute, are you pro Russia or anti Russia and
pro America or anti American, that's nonsense talk.
The question is who's right and wrong based on the actual facts on the ground.
And so the American intelligence said that they were,
the Russia was going to invade almost no matter what.
And basically that's what happened, and that guys, why do I say that?
Because if they were just worried about Ukraine being in NATO,
they could have taken so much less severe drastic actions.
And then you could have continued to negotiations and
he could have gotten the result that he was looking for,
the French were already headed in that direction.
They likely we're gonna give him the result that he was looking for
if that was his real aim, but he did not go down that path.
He purposely chose a path that was far more belligerent.
And it made it obvious in hindsight that all of us talk about,
I'm just worried about my own security.
Ghali G was always a front and
a lie he had intended to invade all along cuz you do not take this kind of massive.
Drastic action unless you've game planted all the way out right now.
Some people are clowns and they act with it before doing an endgame, but
Putin is not among those people, Putin is very smart.
>> Yeah, and let me also add that in recent days, Vladimir Zelensky made it
clear that he was gonna drop any intentions of joining NATO.
He referred to it as a dream, like it's probably best that we don't do this,
I'm paraphrasing joining NATO is a dream.
And so it didn't, that made it clear to me in retrospect that this wasn't
really about Ukraine joining NATO.
And so what is the real intention here, so one more graphic and
then I wanna go to your theory, Jenk.
Now the New York times reported this, while the ultimate goal
of President Vladimir Putin and his generals remained unclear.
American officials assessed that the end game was likely the decapitation
of Ukraine's government.
And the replacement of its president Vladimir Zelensky with a Russian
controlled puppet regime.
And so it's kind of being thought of as Russia's way of trying
to rebuild like that soviet block.
And I just felt like, again,
the economic interests that Russia may have really run counter to that.
But Jenk you have a theory that kind of goes against my thoughts, so what is it?
>> Yeah, so Putin's playing chess and he's playing a very dangerous game,
not just for the whole world, obviously, specifically for Ukraine.
But he's playing a dangerous game for himself,
because he's pushing all in here, so how does it play out and why is he doing this?
So he has a couple of great hole cards, if you will,
in the poker analogy, he's got the nukes.
So you can't attack back against Russia too aggressively cuz you're
taking a certain percentage chance with total human annihilation.
That's a hell of a card to have in your deck.
Okay, now, secondly, he has 40% of the energy that goes into European Union.
So if you cut off the gas and the pipeline that goes in there to show
the Russians that you mean business with real tough sanctions.
Well, Europe is gonna be in a world of trouble.
In fact prices from today based on what they were a year
ago in Europe for that energy, has gone up tenfold.
So already Europe is suffering significantly because of this conflict.
So Putin's gamble was, the other side is weak,
they don't have unified leadership and they're obsessed with money.
They're not gonna wanna cut off their own money cuz a lot of people in
the west make money from Russia.
Whether it's bankers who and some of our top finance people here in America,
that launder Putin's billions.
I mean billions on top of billions, you think they don't care about that,
they care a lot about that.
The oil companies that are now making money hand over fist,
and of course economic impact like inflation.
So he thinks the west is too sensitive, they're gonna be too worried
about the stock market and their inflation and the money that they're making.
They're very, very rich people in America and Europe are making off of Russia and so
they're not gonna wanna be too aggressive.
So now, if he pushes them around, takes Ukraine now,
he knows his own country is gonna get hurt.
But he's figuring that the sanctions are gonna be weak and so far, he's been right,
the sanctions have been relatively weak for all the reasons that I just explained.
So he thinks I can withstand those sanctions and then once I have Ukraine.
Well, it's already over, what are you gonna do, invade back to take Ukraine,
what are you gonna do?
Cut off the Europe's oil supply for how many years, you're not gonna do that.
I'm gonna take Ukraine then things are gonna normalize, and
then we're gonna go back to business as usual.
And then once I've taken Ukraine, I know I can take whatever I want and
you're not gonna do anything about it.
Now, if it goes south on him, what would happen is his economy is hurt so badly.
If we did really tough sanctions, the oligarchs get their money cut off,
then they're mad.
And if that lasts long enough and they're in enough pain, not the Russian people,
he doesn't care about them at all.
But his power base, which is the oligarchs in Russia, and
they turn around and go blood, it's enough.
This is too much pain and it's not worth taking,
especially if he gets bogged down in Ukraine militarily, so that's the gamble.
But as I laid out for you,
you begin to realize it's not that bad a gamble for Putin.
If he loses, he could lose everything cuz he can get pushed out in his own country
by the other power centers the other wealthy people in Russia.
But he figures he's got his bases covered and I'm starting to worry that he's right.