The Chris Hedges Report: The truth about Ukraine with Medea Benjamin

now you talk about Terror what about for me [Music] I've been terrorized all my days having all my day [Music] no one including the most bullish supporters of Ukraine expect the Nations war with Russia to end soon the fighting has been reduced to artillery duels across hundreds of miles of front lines and creeping advances and Retreats Ukraine like Afghanistan will bleed for a very long time and this is by Design the militarists who have waged permanent War costing trillions of dollars over the past two decades have invested heavily in controlling the public narrative the enemy whether Saddam Hussein or Vladimir Putin is always the epitome of evil the new Hitler those we support are always heroic Defenders of Liberty and democracy anyone who questions the righteousness of the cause is accused of being an agent of a foreign power and a traitor the mass media cravenly disseminates these binary absurdities in 24-hour news Cycles It's News celebrities and experts universally drawn from the intelligence community and the military rarely deviate from the approved script day and night the drums of war never stop beating its goal to keep billions of dollars flowing into the hands of the War Industry and prevent the public from asking inconvenient questions Medea Benjamin who along with Nicholas Davies authored war in Ukraine making sense of a senseless conflict placed the war in Ukraine in its proper historical and cultural context warning that a protracted war in Ukraine threatens open Warfare between the United States and Russia a nuclear Armageddon joining me to discuss her book is Medea Benjamin co-founder of code pink and author of drone Warfare Kingdom of the unjust behind the U.S Saudi connection and inside Iran so in the book Medea you begin first by setting uh the Ukraine and historical context and in particular the russian-speaking regions just just lay out for us uh because I think there is this kind of perception that uh Ukraine or Russia's interest or claims over Ukraine are somehow new I think people don't understand how close Ukraine and Russia have been for centuries how many Russian speakers there are in Ukraine how the connection between Ukraine and Russia has gone back and forth for a long time but uh Ukraine was part of the Soviet Union and uh places like Crimea people in Russia have told me that the Americans might think of uh the the state of Alaska that's how people in Russia see Ukraine as a part of their country for a long time and it's really recently that there has been this discrimination against Russian speakers against Russian Publications against using Russian language in the schools and of course that is part of the conflict that we have seen raging in the last decade well with this caveat that the Crimea was part of Russia a century before we got Alaska wasn't it that's right and the uh I think just the idea that anyone would say that Crimea is not part of Russia um for the people in Ukraine now calling for all of Crimea to be taken back and the way the U.S media is portraying it as part of this fight right now is to get Crimea back into Russia I think people should think of how it would feel if a hostile power in Canada for example decided that Alaska would no longer be part of the United States let's talk a little bit about the antecedents to the conflict I was in Eastern Europe in 1989 I covered the Revolutions in East Germany Czechoslovakia and Romania I was there when promises were made to Gorbachev who by the way wanted to build a security and economic alliance with Europe and the United States but promises were made not to expand NATO beyond the border of a unified Germany this is a historical fact it's one I reported and yet to even bring this up uh is an anathema among the media so before we talk about what happened in 2014 let's talk a little bit about what happened between 1989 and 2014. well in terms of the NATO expansion as you said people are today are trying to act like that promise was never made because it wasn't written down in some kind of treaty but we do have evidence from all kinds of U.S politicians academics diplomats saying that this was just common knowledge that it was part of a deal brokered between Secretary of State James Baker and Gorbachev and how this was part of the agreement around the reunification of Germany it's also important to note that the Warsaw Pact was dissolved after the downfall of the Soviet Union and it was at that time that many thought that that would be the end of NATO that NATO had done its job protecting the west from the Soviet Union and yet these promises were violated by democratic presidents like Clinton uh Republican presidents like George Bush in fact it was at that 2008 meeting of NATO in uh Budapest where uh George Bush Twisted the arms of other leaders in NATO to say that we would promise membership to Georgia and to Ukraine against the uh the best interests of the region and against many of the other NATO members that knew that that would be tremendously problematic which is why they agreed to make the announcement but not to set a date and then as uh Progressive from there The Continuous ux expansions that not only went Eastward but went right to Russia's border are somehow disregarded today but it is important to try to imagine what it would be like in the United States if a hostile Force let's say in Mexico or in Canada we're building bases right on our borders and the NATO expansion was also accompanied by the redesign of NATO not to be a defensive Alliance but to be an offensive one we saw that in Yugoslavia and then we saw it far from the North Atlantic countries when NATO got involved in the invasion of Afghanistan in the invasion of Libya and not in the beginning but later on in the U.S occupation of Iraq as well so Russia was seeing not only the movement of NATO towards its borders but it also saw the increasingly aggressive nature of NATO itself and it's despite this uh Putin in the beginning cooperated with in the so-called war on terror of course they had had problems with the Islamic extremism after the wars in chechnya Russia provided resupply routes for U.S troops in Afghanistan there was a real effort on the part of the Russian government to reach out well yes and that has been the case even in more recent times when Russia worked with the United States for example to get an agreement on the Iran nuclear deal when Russia worked with the United States around Syria to try to solve this crisis around Syrian uh biological weapons um I think there are many examples that we can point to today of Russia working with the United States which is one of the reasons why it's so um ridiculous to hear this common phrase that you can't negotiate with Putin you can't negotiate with Russia the U.S has been doing it for quite a long time what do you think is driving the hostility towards or what drove it I'm not defending of course the war in Ukraine is you don't either preemptive war is a war crime uh uh but what drove that hostility uh Andrew basovich argues that it was just the hubris of a broken Soviet Empire and a weakened Russia I've got to believe that the billions in profits that were made are being made by the War Industry uh by refitting or so packed countries with NATO equipment was also a factor but what what do you uh believe drove this uh hostility well I think there are many factors behind it and you name some of it we also have within the Democratic party uh the last years of the demonization of Russia around russiagate instead of admitting that Hillary Clinton was a bad candidate blaming the Russians on the victory of Donald Trump uh the um War both we know that we have two war parties I think the Republicans are more focused on China as the adversary and the Democrats more focused on Russia but in any case we have this growing militarization that has taken over uh NATO but a militarization of Ukraine by the U.S and even under Obama we see that right after after the Minsk agreement was signed and there was supposed to be some uh peaceful solution to the conflict in the dunbas you see him sending weapons to Ukraine supposedly defensive weapons and now of course all of that charade of Defense aversive offensive have been lifted but it has been both Democrats and Republicans who have really uh pushed for uh increased hostility towards Russia increased militarization of Europe and this is also a way to get Europe totally behind the United States whereas I think with the Europeans like the Germans and many other European countries becoming so dependent on Russia for their energy supplies the U.S was trying to find a way to sever the ties between Western Europe and Russia and make sure that Western Europe was solidly behind the the United States and this terrible Invasion by Putin has given them exactly what the U.S wanted let's talk about the Minx agreement this was an agreement that the Ukraine never honored uh explained what it was and what it was meant to do when the maidan protest began and they were overtaken by violent protests and a government that was corrupt but an elected government was overthrown there was the protest that happened in the dunbas and the a civil war broke out between the supporters of Russia inside the dambas and the opponents many of them hard write elements that had Neo-Nazi Origins like the Assaf Brigade and the European security organization sent in monitors after an agreement was reached that there would be greater autonomy given to dunbas that there would be elections there that there would be talks between the leaders of the Breakaway republics and the heads of state in Ukraine uh that political part never happened what happened was that the monitors did indeed come in come in and many of the explosions of the conflict of The The Killing that happened in the first year was calmed down by the presence of these monitors but the political agreement was never implemented uh there was never an election that was held there were never the talks with the leaders of the Breakaway republics and every time one of the leaders in Ukraine tried to go ahead and implement the process they were threatened by the extreme right and this is true when zelinski came in having come to power on a popular agenda of creating peace in the Ukraine of implementing these Minsk Accords then he was threatened his life was threatened uh by the extreme right saying that they would hang him from a tree if indeed he went ahead with this so the political elements of links to were never implemented but they actually did form the basis of what could have been and still could be a solution to the conflict in the dumb bus oh we should be clear when zielinski ran he made quite a fact of the fact that they are he brought up the fact that he was a Russian speaker which was seen as an asset let's go back 2014 Victoria Newland uh I think the U.S put what five million dollars explain what happened many uh you know Russians Russian speakers in Ukraine argue that this was a coup and I think there's much validity of that but but explain and and also the intrusion of the United States into the domestic politics of Ukraine something the Soviet experts like George Cannon even Burns argued was dangerous absolutely when you saw the protests that broke out against an unpopular and corrupt government that was uh talking to both the Europeans about joining the European Union as well as joining a an economic pact with the uh with Russia uh the there were segments of the population that rose up and said uh we want to be pro-western uh we don't want these ties with Russia and they started a peaceful protest and that gathered Steam and gathered Steam and was overtaken by uh violent uh extreme right elements now they uh there was there were talks going on between the Ukrainian leadership the government in power and the European countries to say how can we come up with a solution to this and they uh planned on having new elections uh this was not good enough for those right-wing elements and they decided that they were going to continue to escalate and they took over the building in Parliament they Forest uh uh the government in power out and they started this violent the violent actions in in reaction to the Breakaway republics in the dunbas so Victoria Newland was the assistant Secretary of State at the time and she was directly involved in trying to engineer what would be the outcome of these protests who would be in charge it's quite astounding that we have that audio tape of her talking to the U.S ambassador in Ukraine about how they were going to disregard although she didn't use that nice word she used another word um the uh the European Union and the person that they wanted to put in power and instead put in who the U.S had wanted to put we have a video that we did to accompany our book Chris in which we show her out in the maidan giving out sweets to the protesters but her role in this was not very sweet and I think in years to come just as we've seen the National Security archives and other groups get documents long after the fact about U.S involvement in coups and other countries around the world we have yet to see the extent of the U.S involvement but we know that the National Endowment for democracy we know that the U.S state Department was heavily involved in promoting the protests and heavily involved in deciding who exactly would come to power I want to go back to the azov Battalion and these neo-fascist elements uh because there's a strong fascist tradition in Ukraine going back to World War II this was also true of course when I lived in Croatia with the eustachia but explain that and then after the fall of Communism you saw the resurrection of these uh fascistic or fascist Allied uh movements they kind of sprouted back up out of the soil well that's right and there were several different uh branches of them and they also had their political party uh which at one point in 2016 I think they got about 10 percent of the electorate and then uh in the elections after that got a much smaller amount and so people say Well they're not important because they have no significant power when it comes to the elected government but that's not where their power lies their power lies in the paramilitary groups and the armed elements and the ones who refused to allow the Minsk Accords to be implemented and the ones that have been fighting and killing many people in the dunbas they are the ones who have the power they are the ones right now that are stopping zielinski from negotiating as he tried to do early on because as he has gotten threatened when he talked about a compromise that would include the uh the uh some autonomy for those Breakaway republics and they pushed back and said no we want every inch of dunbas to go back to Ukraine so their power has been in the military and that's why uh there were years ago there were elements in the U.S government like rokana who tried to stop U.S weapons from getting into the hands of the Assad Battalion because of their human rights abuses because of their Nazi ties and yet after the invasion of Russia that has all been swept away and the weapons are just pouring in and we have no idea who is getting those weapons we have no idea how much this is empowering not only the uh Neo-Nazi elements in Ukraine but a similar right-wing fascists who have come in to join in the fight from many places around the world and just like we see the pouring in of U.S weapons in places like Iraq and Afghanistan what it led to the creation of groups like Isis I fear that in the future and let's hope we don't go towards nuclear war but in the future we will see the tremendous empowerment of these groups with so many of the weapons that the U.S has sent in and I think I'm right when I say the estimate is there are hundreds of Internationals who have uh joined the Asaf Battalion is that correct well that's right and when we talk about all of the weapons that are going into their hands uh let's remember that there have uh the the CBS report uh that talked about perhaps only 30 percent of the weapons that the US is sending uh getting into the hands of the uh Ukrainian Fighters and that so many of them were on the black market and imagine who is getting so many of those weapons it's going to be right-wing extremists that have come in to Ukraine to take advantage of the situation so in after What's called the coup of 2014 but certainly the installation of an anti-russian government uh you also saw NATO become very heavily involved uh in Ukraine although Ukraine is not a NATO country in many ways it became a de facto NATO country I wondered if you could discuss that well it's interesting that zielinski himself when he recently made his Fast Track application for NATO said as much he said we are a de facto member of NATO and we'd like to be a de jure I.E a legal member of NATO and when you look at how starting in 2015 the U.S the West NATO poured in weapons and trainers and trained ten thousand Ukrainian troops every single year Chris when the Russians invaded and the Western press said that they were going to to crush the ukrainians many people did not realize that about a hundred thousand Ukrainian Ukrainian troops had already been trained and equipped by NATO so certainly there was a lot of preparation that led up to the kind of resistance that we're seeing today and the fact that the U.S has is using its intelligence to help the ukrainians with their targets so it's weapons it's training its intelligence I mean how much more do you need to say that the U.S is involved and that NATO is involved in in this war it's kind of a charade to say that we don't have troops on the ground so this is not a proxy war this is not a direct involvement but you have a lot of CIA agents on the ground you have trainers and I think very much for uh Russia it is definitely a war with the U.S with NATO and with Ukraine why such staggering sums of money over 50 billion dollars the state department budget is I think about 60 billion dollars or the requests for 2023 uh I mean it is just uh uh uh eye-popping sum of money with and the spigot's been turned on there's kind of no end in sight can you talk about the the cost of the war to the U.S taxpayer well it is absolutely staggering Chris and I think the U.S taxpayer has no inkling uh that this is happening on the one hand uh you have the justification for increasing the Pentagon budget itself now to over 800 billion dollars when there should have been a quote peace dividend now that the U.S is no longer in Afghanistan but the war in Ukraine was used to justify this tremendous increase in the Pentagon budget but the Ukraine money and it including the military a budget for Ukraine is separate from the Pentagon budget so it's on top of that and yes we saw that astounding vote for 40 billion dollars I mean we could all imagine all kinds of things that we could be doing in this country with 40 billion dollars and there was not a peep from a Democrat when that vote happened more recently there's been another 13 billion dollars and the year isn't even over yet you compare this to the budget of the state department I've heard many people in the environmental movement particularly in other countries comparing it to what they see as the existential crisis for the planet of the environment and saying that there was this Global Climate fund that was supposed to be funded a decade ago for 100 billion dollars they never got more than 10 billion and if you count all the money that all the Western countries and the US have put into Ukraine it's about a hundred billion dollars right now so yes these are astounding sums of money the spigot is still on and we are having a hard time even getting Progressive Democrats to start questioning this you might remember that Senator Rand Paul did question the money and saying there is no setup for any accountability of how this money is going to be used and that was pushed aside by people in his own party as well as the Democrats saying oh come on you know don't rain on our parade and the Democrats are in Republican leadership have been falling over themselves to say it's not enough money we have to increase it and meanwhile the American public when it comes to the elections their greatest concern is around inflation and yet the mainstream media has not made the connection between this war in Ukraine the inflation that the American people are facing and who is responsible for this in the White House and in the Congress well I think the the head of uh NATO uh head of the IMF have all warned of social unrest this winner as fuel prices Skyrocket uh Saudi Arabia which you know well is just proven which side they're on um uh but the the feeling is you have to we have to endure the cost uh I can't remember who you quote in the book but somebody said well that's the price of Liberty and freedom or but but there's a kind of uh blindness to the social cost of what's Happening can you can you address that yes absolutely I feel that the entire world is being affected by this war in so many different ways one is by the difficulties of getting the grain out from both Ukraine and Russia and the fertilizers from Russia that have affected the global hunger crisis and have increased food prices everywhere we have the issue of the climate where this war and the sanctions on Russia has actually led to the use of more dirty energy whether it's more exploration for oil and gas more use of coal thus stopping the decommissioning of nuclear plants it's been disastrous for the environment and the the the increase in militarization we talked about the increased budget in the United States but this is happening in all of the NATO countries it's happening in Russia it's happening in China and this has has a terrible effect on people around the world as well because it's money that should be used for other causes it strengthens the hardliners in all of our countries it strengthens NATO so there are so many negative effects of this war and that's why I think it's so important that we the public get involved get the kind of information we really need to see how our government has actually been thwarting efforts at negotiations how the Secretary of State Anthony blinken refuses to talk to his counterpart in Russia how Biden refuses to talk to Putin and how this is just leading us into an endless crisis That Couldn't lead to nuclear war and even if it doesn't lead to nuclear war has all these other consequences that I just mentioned that are disastrous for the world well during the Cuban Missile Crisis I think Kennedy spoke to Khrushchev almost daily uh which presented prevented a kind of nuclear uh incident uh how worried are you about where we're headed I mean the rhetoric has been ramped up you have The Pimps of war the elite Abrams and the Robert kagans and others assuring us that Russia will never use nuclear weapons including tactical nuclear weapons I've covered War long enough to tell you that once you open that Pandora's Box you don't control it no one controls it if this conflict continues what do you see happening well I certainly see the real possibility of nuclear war and it terrifies me which is why I'm going on a 50 City Tour organizing getting people active but I find Chris that while older people understand the threat of a nuclear war and are terrified about it uh it's something that younger people really don't understand it doesn't resonate with them they don't have the history that some of us have of hiding under our desks but what they resonates with them is the climate crisis and uh so I've been talking more about the connections of this war and the climate issues but I think that um both of them and the fact that the President Biden just talked at one of his uh fundraisers at the home of the Murdoch family about the possibility of a nuclear Armageddon is just the first time that he's really uh mentioned this as a real possibility and I don't think that those in the U.S leadership are taking it seriously enough many of them say he's only bluffing but you know Chris it's odd because the some of them say well Putin's a Madman well if he's a Madman wouldn't you really want to make sure that you have some negotiations going on so he doesn't use nuclear weapons and when you bring up the Cuban Missile Crisis I think we have to go back and recognize what John F Kennedy said which is you don't push a powerful nation into a position where they have to choose between a humiliating defeat and the use of nuclear weapons and that is exactly what Biden is doing today cornering Putin trying to humiliate him into a defeat that would uh hopefully according to the U.S government mean his demise uh And yet when you Corner the leader of a powerful nuclear Nation uh you are according just uh Armageddon well Henry Kissinger gave the same warning it pains me to be on the same side as Kissinger uh but he he said exactly the same thing that's right and he asked where is this headed and I think that is a question we have never heard Biden answer where do they hope this is going to go is it really realistic to think that Ukraine can quote win this war by taking back every inch of territory absolutely not what does it mean to weaken Russia do they want to see Putin leave well who do they think is going to take over somebody perhaps more extreme so I would like a more questioning publicly of Biden about where he thinks this is going to end because we have never heard any rational discourse about what the US government thinks can be the end game of this that was Medea Benjamin co-author of war in Ukraine making sense of a senseless conflict I want to thank the real news network and its production team Cameron grenadino Adam Coley Dwayne Gladden and Kayla Rivera you can find me at chrisedges.substack.com [Music]

Channel: The Real News Network

Views: 997,901

Keywords: real news, the real news, real news network, realnews, the real news network, therealnews, trnn, Chris hedges, Medea benjamin, codepink, ukraine, russia, NATO

Id: 4fTxHIVUjRc

Length: 34min 28sec (2068 seconds)

Published: Fri Nov 04 2022

Reddit Comments

[u/AnaKaspariansThong]

LOL The dirty lying filthy US Empire gave 50+ BILLION of their last DOLLARS to what the EU Media in 2015-2106 called "The Most Corrupt Nation in Europe" !!! ROFL

This video should be shoved up each one of "The Squads" rear end. Hard.

PS: FUCK VICTORIA NULAND

And if you don't know who she is you haven't been paying attention, just like the other 329 million dupes in the most spoiled nation that ever existed.