104: There Was No Ceasefire
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Hello and welcome to the April 4th edition of Ukraine Without Hype. I am Anthony Bardaway. This will be a news-dense episode, considering that our last two episodes have been fairly specialized talking about Trump, unfortunately. And while we will be talking about actions taken by the Trump administration...

and its proxies. We'll be trying to de-center him personally as much as possible to make sure that we can get to the actual events and not just to the discussions around events. So a summary of what we'll be talking about this week, of course, we'll be having the combat update. We have not had one of those in a couple of weeks, as well as the huge, huge

wave of Russian drone and missile attacks across Ukraine that have affected even my own neighborhood, but we'll get into some of the details about that. Next, we'll be talking about the various peace talks, I say with a sigh and quotation marks and every form of sarcasm that I can deliver in podcast format because these peace talks have been complete bunk.

They've all been lies, a performance, they don't exist. The news needs to stop talking about a Ukrainian peace process that is completely illusory. Next we'll be talking about some of the changes made to the Russian governance of the occupied territories. Then the many, well, a selection, we'll say. It's not going to be a complete selection, but a important selection of programs that the United States has been funding.

that have now been cut and the massive amount of damage that will do to Ukraine, Eastern Europe, and broadly the world. And finally, in our international section, first we'll be talking about some of the changes to defense policy

that some of Ukraine's neighbors are undergoing in order to prepare for a Russian attack, as well as the huge string of protest movements that have sprung up throughout southeastern Europe and into Turkey. I saw a Wikipedia page for it calling it the Balkan Spring. I don't know if I'd go that far, but it is definitely a phenomenon that is currently...

currently occurring that we've been talking about, but it's time to start talking about it seriously as some kind of unified moment that is happening, if not anything stronger than that. Though, before we get into everything, forgot for a second, there's some announcements.

Regarding our other appearances, I would like to direct you to New Voice of Ukraine, the outlet that Romeo and I both work for. We just put out what I thought was a very excellent interview regarding the status of Ukrainian refugees in the United States and the legal limbo that they're being put in by the Trump administration. So,

I will include the link in the description here, but please go to that interview. I found it extremely enlightening. And also a few weeks back, I appeared on a podcast called

the habituation room with Francesca Forentini trying to reach out to parts of the left that I feel have been neglecting the topic of Ukraine. And I would very much like to thank Francesca for reaching out to me regarding having the ability to speak on Ukraine to an audience that does not always hear about it as much. So yes, to our next

News. So the combat update and some big events have happened. Certainly some big events have happened. The most important, of course, is that the occupation of much of the Kursk Oblast in the Russian Federation by Ukrainian forces has largely but not entirely come to an

This occupation of Russian territory had been centered upon the city of Sudja in the Kursk Oblast, and thus far, most of that has been fully withdrawn from. So the Ukrainian occupation of Russian territory is not fully over. Ukraine still controls a strip of territory on the other side of the Russian border that is mostly there to hold a more advantageous strategic defensive position.

It does not go too deep into Russian territory, just really a couple of kilometers that would not be very easily threatened. But within that territory, there's only a couple of rather small villages, unlike the somewhat more substantial settlements of Suja itself.

Now, there is a lot of discussion about how this came to pass. Well, the most immediate thing that we can look at, though I will challenge that after describing, is that this coincided with the end of American military aid to Ukraine as well as intelligence sharing. Within just a few days of the end of American aid, the Russians were able to capitalize on Ukrainian weaknesses in that area and make a major push

to cut Ukrainian positions in half. This was partially done using an underground gas line that was used to bypass Ukrainian positions.

And while the unit that made it through that pipeline was liquidated before they could get too far, it did cause enough of a disruption in order to challenge Ukrainian supplies and making a further occupation of Suja somewhere between difficult and impossible. And while this description makes sense, one thing happened in a very shortly before the other, it seems to match up quite well, and it certainly contributed to

to the change. Like, obviously, this was a major change that came about followed by the collapse in the line. You can't discount that.

However, if you've been really following granularly the changes in Suja as the months have gone on, the Russians have been able to make gradual process for the last half year. We've described some of the larger chapters in this story, but it has been a gradual process. And for the last three months or so, the supply lines into Suja had been

increasingly more difficult to maintain, and reportedly from some contacts in the area, the withdrawal from Suja had already begun before this cutoff had ever happened. Now, this military cutoff of aid that we've touched on before had been restored in short order, having to do with the various issues around negotiations that we'll soon get to, and also as Ukraine was withdrawing from

From the Kursk Oblast, they continued various raids into the Belgorod Oblast. Now, I don't believe that these were meant as... Sorry, air raid alarm. Got distracted for a second. I don't believe that these raids were meant to hold any serious territory in the Belgorod region, and indeed they really didn't, but they're able to prevent Russia from regrouping too heavily in order to capitalize on the withdrawal of Ukrainian forces, not be able to chase them too attentively

because they had to be busy with other things at the same time. Which gets to, can we consider Suja and the Kursk Offensive to have accomplished the goals that it set out to accomplish? And that's something that will be very heavily debated. I guess I can allude to some of them without taking any firm stances on them. But prior to this invasion of Suja, one of the things that a lot of intelligence services were reporting on

was that Russia was building up to attack the city of Sumy or the various towns and villages surrounding Sumy and the Sumy region. Apparently, that attack had been imminent. It would have been similar to the attack on Vovchansk in the Kharkiv region by Russia, and seemingly it had been avoided by instead taking the initiative into the Russian Federation itself, making sure the fight was on Russian soil

instead of Ukrainian soil. And if that was the ultimate goal, then it seems to have succeeded. Was it supposed to be meant as a negotiating tool? Well, we are, I think we're deep enough into the negotiation process right now. And again, next segment for details to say that any kind of negotiation was kind of pointless and holding on in for any, you know,

poker chips for that negotiation itself would be, I don't know, misguided. I don't think that this withdrawal from Kursk Oblast was seen as a giveaway to the Russians or anything like that. The Russians claimed it as a great liberation, and the Trump administration team also seemed to treat it as a Russian advance. At one point, the Trump team was talking about how

The Russians had surrounded like tens of thousands of Ukrainian soldiers in Kursk and they're about to be destroyed. But Trump was able to step in and

save all these lives by telling Russia to back off. That was all a complete and total lie. There was no mass encirclement of Ukrainian troops. As always in these kind of situations, there could be smaller units that got surrounded on the outskirts of the withdrawal. And of course, Russia took prisoners. But ultimately, this penetration into Russian territory wasn't that deep. There

And as much as the Ukrainian military was trying to demonstrate that this myth of an encirclement was in fact a

a lie, it didn't seem to get very far with the Trump administration. So its role in negotiations, I don't see it as being as important as some others were hoping for. And did it pull troops away from other Russian fields? That's one thing that especially now the Ukrainians have been saying has been

The most important part of this operation is that by forcing Russia to fight in Kursk Oblast, it meant that they did not have soldiers available for Donbass, Zaporizhia, etc. And I think that is more of a credible situation, because as I'll get into in a second, this Russian advance, especially in the Donetsk

Donetsk Obelisk and even to Luhansk Obelisk has now fully ground down and certainly their ability to attack anywhere else was degraded by their need to defend

That gets us into our other big story from the front, is that we can now fully, pretty much officially say that the Russian offensive of last year that continued for a very long time, and as you've been listening to me, get rather pessimistic about Ukraine's chances in the southern Donbass especially, as well as around Ukraine.

Kupyansk, that offensive has largely stalled out. We can say, I think it's safe to say that it's over. I think that we've been able to say that it's been over for at least the last month. Some changes are, of course, still being made, but no major strategic points are currently under threat. And indeed, Ukraine has been able to take back small amounts of territory in multiple different directions, most importantly around Pokrovsk.

The Russians had been trying to surround Pokrovsk, flank it from the west, and were very close to cutting off the main highway that goes into Pokrovsk, this last of the major defensive points in the south of the Donetsk region. But not only has Russia not made any advances...

But Ukraine has since recaptured numerous villages in the ring around Pokrovsk and has been continually taking bites out of Russian positions for really weeks now. So I'd say the situation

Right now, Pokrovsk is still, of course, very dangerous. The city of Pokrovsk is largely destroyed, as is the case with most places that Russia gets too close to. But the line is certainly holding, and because that line is holding, it gives more time for more defenses to be built, for the area to be more fortified.

for the future. And the other field to pay very close attention to with Kupyansk, I had described in previous episodes, I was more concerned about Kupyansk than really any other position because the Russians were able to make such rapid advances towards the area by bypassing the long held lines that had been holding there by strangling a lot of the villages to the east of Kupyansk and trapping a lot of that area

between the Russian Pinsir and the Oskol River. I had really been panicking about this sector, but again, the Russian advance there has not only stalled out, but been pushed back in several key defensive positions, including around the town of Sienkiewka. That is what scared me the most, is that the Russians were able to bypass Sienkiewka, this one village to the north of Kupyansk,

and use that to get very, very close to the city. However, that advance has since been turned away, and the river crossing that they had made north of Sienkiewka has been contained to a large extent and again pushed back in several areas. So this river crossing, which had been expanding, seems, I hate to say, good, but not as bad as it had been. The only concern is in the kind of border areas

between

the Kharkiv and Luhansk regions to the south of Kupyansk around Kremena. The Russians were able to make some advances within the forest lines around a series of reservoirs. There's not a whole lot beyond that they've been able to capture, but that's still, you know, a significant advance that they were able to make beyond Ivanovka. So that is the situation on the ground right now. We kind of really need to do one of those. Big news happened that had been a

gradually neglected by our coverage of other topics. But now, as we often follow up with our discussion of the combat with the war in the air, and this has been what has really been affecting Kiev quite heavily for the last few weeks. And though there have not been attacks for the last couple of days now, this week has been more

more quiet in Kiev anyway, though not in the rest of the country. For about the two weeks before that, it had been an almost unending, every single night, attacks by Russia. Every single night, I was watching drones get shot out of the air,

listening to the explosions, seeing the fires until last weekend was really the worst of it when in two different places in Kyiv there were fatalities. The Russians did kill some people. One of them

There was a family, a mother, a father, and a child who were already refugees from Orihiv, a frontline town in the Zaporizhia region who came to Kyiv for safety. Their home was struck by a Russian drone. The father and the child were killed. The mother survived, but in serious condition in the hospital. So the death of a child always makes things even sadder. So that caused a

A lot, a great deal of mourning in the city in the, in the weeks that followed. And the other that was even closer to home in a very literal sense of the word is that as I was listening to these explosions shake my apartment four different times on that night of the 22nd, something clearly blew up. And a few hours later, when I was able to learn what that was, it turned out that a drone, a Russian drone had crashed.

I had crashed through the top floor of one of my neighbors about a 10 minute walk away, engulfed the top floor in flame. An 80 year old woman who was living in the apartment that was hit directly, she ultimately didn't stand a chance. She was burned, burned alive, incinerated as people were watching and couldn't really do anything because the whole top floor was on fire. When I went the next day, there was a...

humanitarian point set up in the school immediately across the street from this apartment so that the people living there could get, you know, food, warmth. Their building was just

severely heavily damaged. They obviously could not stay there until repairs could be made. And my local community really came together to make sure that these people could get back on their feet. When I was there, there was one elderly woman who was in a wheelchair who clearly had no idea what to even do. Her building was just struck by a Russian drone. Her neighbor, who she probably knew, was now dead.

And she herself could not exactly move very well on her own under normal conditions now dealing with this. Since then, the repairs have been made. The local community announced that completely sufficient aid was collected for the affected families. But of course, we still end in a...

counterattack against Russia in the same kind of timeframe. Ukraine was able to cause serious damage to the Ingalls Air Base, which is the air base that most of the missile attacks are launched from, or at least

The planes that carry the missiles to do the attacks take off from destroying a warehouse with many missiles. And every missile that is destroyed is lives that are saved. And by destroying a whole warehouse of these Russian missiles, who knows how many people are going to be alive because of that. So thank you very much to the Ukrainian Air Force for taking care of that. And of course, this attack was done with domestically produced Ukrainian weaponry, something that is, as we've been talking about again and again and again, is unresolved.

ultra important to deal with the unreliability of Ukraine's allies. This domestic production is more important with every passing day. Now, when I initially wrote this script, I decided not to make it like a full catalog of every missile and drone strike that took place within the last few weeks and simply leave it at there being a lot. There's a school in Sumy, for example, that was hit.

But also thinking that if I left something out, that would make that strike feel less important. And it was just a complicated bit that I wanted to avoid entirely. However, as I am writing or as I'm recording and editing this episode, there was an attack on the city of Kriviri. It is the home city of President Zelensky. And this missile strike happened.

which was apparently an airburst even, targeted a playground in a residential area. This missile attack and the numbers are coming in by the time you listen to this, they may be different. We're looking at 18 dead, at least nine of them are children and dozens wounded, though the counts on that are less precise. Last I see is 50. In addition to the playground, it also hit some of the 10-story

apartment blocks that were surrounding it. And the videos of this are gruesome and is often the case with these videos. What strikes me emotionally the most is the ringing phones. When something like this happens and you know that your loved ones are in the area of an attack, you would want to call them and make sure that they're okay, that they're safe, and

These ringing phone calls, these ringing phones coming from corpses are the last attempts that someone is making to speak to their loved one. They're wanting to know that their loved one's okay and the answer they receive is silence. Also of mothers holding their dying children, crying out why this had to happen.

And the answer by the Russians of why this had to happen is the one that they have used time and time again. Apparently, this playground was actually a meeting of dozens of Western military commanders where they liquidated 85 of them.

Every time the Russians blow up an apartment building, that apartment building was apparently barracks for Polish soldiers or something. Although it is odd because they've mostly given up on that kind of lie, but I guess the attention that it got from world media prompted them to fall back into their old habits rather than just gloating over killing kids, which has been the more recent thing they have done.

Which brings us to our titular topic of this episode,

the peace talks. And the first and most important thing to know about these peace talks is that there are no peace talks. Russia has no intention of holding peace talks. Every single thing they have said and done throughout these series of negotiations, this shuttle diplomacy between the United States, Ukraine, and Russia, often taking place in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia, every single step that Russia has been taking has been in bad faith.

With every supposed agreement that has been announced, Russia then follows it up with increased demands and making the possibility of following through on any kind of ceasefire or anything like that completely pointless. Russia has continuously and explicitly said that any ceasefire has to be done to further their own goals. They have reiterated that their goal has been

the complete subjugation of Ukraine, that any ceasefire has to take place within their own demands. It cannot be an unconditional ceasefire, but essentially Russia will only have a ceasefire if Ukraine surrenders. It is all a farce. It is all a show. It is done to the benefit of a low-information media environment.

where all they have to say is that peace talks are taking place and that's all people need to hear to assume that things are moving forward when they very much are not. We do have to keep in mind the

various so-called negotiations that took place in the first Trump administration. I'm of course thinking mostly of those regarding North Korea, where there's supposedly some big agreement that was going to eventually lead to peace between North and South Korea. There was a big display, a huge show in like a stadium or something where the North and South Korean dignitaries signed the agreement and everything was going great. Trump's

Trump said that he made peace on the Korean peninsula, then swiftly stopped paying attention and the terms of that peace agreement fell apart within months. And there wasn't even a follow-up in the scheduled series of talks that were supposed to happen. That is what Trump means by...

peace agreements. He wants there to be a show that he was able to bring people to the table, and he never actually cares what happens at that table. So the first of these agreements that we can talk about is the 30-day ceasefire. There had been talks of this being a 30-day full-on ceasefire, no shooting going on whatsoever, but that died immediately without much fanfare.

and becoming a talk of a 30-day ceasefire regarding energy infrastructure where Russia would not attack Ukrainian energy infrastructure and in return Ukraine would not attack Russian energy

infrastructure. That lasted about two hours. As soon as we heard that this ceasefire had supposedly taken place, there had already been a Russian drone and missile attack on various locations, especially within Donbass. And by destroying some energy infrastructure that would have supplied Kramatorsk, Russia just immediately broke anything that could have been a ceasefire. Now, the excuse from the Trump administration,

the Russians had given the order to attack before the ceasefire was supposed to go into play, and that the missiles and drones were already in the air and could not be recalled. One, that's nonsense, that's not how these work, and two, it does not take two hours for a glide bomb to land on its target. They are a bit faster than that. Obviously, this attack happened after the ceasefire was supposed to happen, and unfortunately,

Under normal terms, that is supposed to mean that when Russia breaks the ceasefire, the ceasefire is no longer in effect. However, the Americans still pretended that the ceasefire was on for days. They're talking about how there's now the ceasefire in place as Russia was continuously attacking every single night under the terms of a ceasefire until eventually when Ukraine struck back by hitting a

a fossil fuel transit terminal in the Kursk Oblast, that's when Russia said, oh, Ukraine broke this ceasefire that we agreed to, that we've been holding to apparently, and they said the ceasefire was off. The ceasefire never took place. It was all a lie. It never happened. The only place where it existed was in the delusional minds of the

the media. This ceasefire did not exist. This ceasefire did not exist. The other ceasefire that was supposed to have been talked about was regarding the Black Sea. Supposedly there was supposed to be a naval ceasefire that so anything on the Black Sea, just anything involved in the Black Sea in any way would be cleared up. Russia would not attack Ukrainian shipping in the Black Sea and in

Ukraine would not attack Russian targets in the same. This, of course, was also broken by Russia attacking Odessa port, though, because the terms of this agreement were already complete. All these agreements are just kind of vibes and no one actually knows what the terms of them are supposed to be because they never are actually committed to any writing that can be signed and stamped and all that. It's all just people making announcements of what a ceasefire agreement is.

is and often these conflict with what other announcements are which is always frustrating and a reason why these fusiliers don't exist because there has to be unified agreement and there is no unified agreement for any of this and as you may notice about the black sea as we've been talking about time and time again

Ukraine already won the battle on the Black Sea. The Russian Black Sea fleet, a third of it is destroyed and the rest of it is confined to its ports in mostly Novorossiysk. Ukrainian shipping is able to go freely to the point where exports from Odessa Harbor are largely unsold.

the same as they were prior to the full-scale invasion. There is no substantial threat to that shipping anymore, though again, Russia does attack the actual ports that they leave from. And so Ukraine had really nothing to gain from this agreement whatsoever.

But they still kind of agreed to it anyway. However, the basis of making this so-called Black Ceasefire was completely messed up. There was a rather short meeting that the Americans had with the Ukrainian team to get their input for what it's worth, while the meeting with the Russian delegation continued for hours and hours and hours and an end where the Russians kept

adding demands, the biggest demand being that they wanted the banks that handled the payments for Russian agricultural exports to regain access to the SWIFT system. Now, we haven't talked to SWIFT in a long time because it had been turned off on Russia pretty much from the beginning of the invasion and

has not been up for discussion since then. The SWIFT system, based out of Belgium, is essentially how banks move money from one country to another. So if you were to purchase something from a Russian company, it would go through SWIFT.

but Russia does not have access to SWIFT and has therefore had to find other arrangements to find payment processing so their companies can work overseas. It was possible, but did severely hurt Russian business, the lack of access to international payment processing. And the Russian demand was that because this was a ceasefire on the Black Sea and the Black Sea was supposed to be completely normalized,

That meant that the companies and the banks that handled exports on the Black Sea would come under the terms of this ceasefire, essentially meaning that they wanted financial sanctions on Russia to be canceled, or at least in this small segment of the economy. Not small. I mean, agricultural shipping through the Black Sea is quite a big deal. But through this one sector of their economy, they wanted financial sanctions to

to poof away. And this is absurd because this is, again, them basically demanding surrender on one point. They want to get rid of their sanctions and they would not have a ceasefire until all their sanctions are gone. Obviously, Ukraine rejected this idea. And thankfully, the Europeans also rejected this idea. This very much angered Donald Trump and the Trump team.

but they did not have control over what other parties are doing, something they do not seem to understand very well. However, because Russia kept adding these numerous demands and SWIFT was the largest but not the only one among them,

It really just showed their complete disinterest in any form of peace negotiations whatsoever. Because as I described, this agreement that Ukraine had announced that it had agreed to was completely in Russia's favor. They had lost the battle on the Black Sea and therefore a ceasefire meant that their loss would turn into a draw.

that they would be able to redeploy their naval assets through half of the Black Sea at least, including around Crimea. It would mean that their port in Sevastopol and occupied Crimea and the

other naval infrastructure on Crimea would be safe from Ukrainian attack. It would mean that they would be more free to ship weaponry and other goods into Crimea without worrying about the ships carrying those things being destroyed. And it would allow them to position themselves to begin an attack very quickly because it would allow them to move their ships much, much closer to

unoccupied Ukrainian shoreline when right now they have to stay pretty far away. And in return, Ukraine got basically nothing. So yeah, this agreement was completely in Russia's favor. They had every reason to accept it on Ukraine's terms. They had every reason to go along with this and they still added more and more demands in order to break down the negotiations. And if this is how they act in

in a negotiation that was completely in their favor than the idea of them negotiating in any form of good faith and not trying to sabotage any kind of peace talk that occurs on more equal footing. It's a useless pipe dream. Yeah, I'm finally getting around to creating this description, this...

episode solely dedicated to the process of negotiations and peace talks and all that getting to somewhere the theory behind it but that's kind of where we stand well throughout all of this russia keeps adding demands one of the demands for the ceasefire for example has been that ukraine could not receive any arms or training meaning that if there was a ceasefire and the ceasefire never happened then

then Ukraine, by handing a new recruit a gun and sending him to the range to even zero in his sights, would be considered a breach of the ceasefire. Completely ridiculous. In the other big demand now that Russia is putting on throughout all this process of being handed an inch and grabbing a mile of

is that they're demanding that Ukraine be put under UN supervision. So just the terms of even going to negotiations, they're demanding regime change, like a complete change in Ukrainian government that they have more control over. To begin negotiation, Ukraine must surrender first. This is

All we're hearing again and again. So what is the messaging that we're hearing from within the Trump administration during all of this? And it is ultimately two-faced and coming from different people. We hear different things. This is always the case. But the thing that I find most important was the interview that Woodcoff, the diplomatic envoy that is put in charge of negotiations with Russia, he went on to Tucker Carlson's show. Tucker Carlson, we've done a few episodes, one of them at least dedicated wholly to Tucker

Tucker Carlson and his interview with Vladimir Putin and the many failings of that interview. But anyway, he went on Tucker Carlson and just gave a fire hose of Russian propaganda talking points. It was long as a whole thing. But the one I'll focus on is that he was really zeroing in on this idea of how within Ukraine, there's all these Russian speakers who are loyal to Russia and anti

had a referenda within Ukraine in order to join Russia, and that those referenda were valid and legal and must be respected. Meaning that Witkoff, this person in charge of American negotiations, is already spreading these lies and propaganda that show that the American position is to essentially cede the so-called new territories, so Kherson region, Zaporizhia region, Donetsk, Luhansk, and Crimea, that they would all just...

be sent over to Russia, including the parts that the Russians do not, and in some cases, have never occupied. So the starting position of the Americans, at least Witkow, one of the most important of the Americans, is, again, surrender, Ukrainian surrender. When talking to the Americans, Ukraine is basically just talking to the Russians again. The American positions on many, many things have been completely in line with Russian demands. If the American team of diplomats is not cooperating

consciously and knowingly taking direction from Russia, then they're certainly acting like it to the point where there's no difference between if they are

and are not. The only break in this idea has come from Marco Rubio. Marco Rubio, who had already been the most outside Trumper and the person we talked about as being possible hope in the Trump administration, as imperfect and spineless as little Marco may be, he is kind of as best as we got.

scary thought, has been talking about that if Russia launches another offensive, then America would have to take that into consideration, and that the way he describes it is that he is getting frustrated with Russia's obvious stonewalling on

what should have been this big Trump win to get his fancy signing ceremony, because again, Russia really is denying Trump what he wants of that signing ceremony. In the aftermath of all this, Ukrainian diplomats have been calling for Witkow's removal from his position. They do not trust him. There's no reason to trust him. I don't think he can be worked with in any capacity, but the Americans have shown no signs of complying with those requests. And another deal that...

was never to happen and was never meant to happen was the so-called rare earth minerals deal where Ukraine was supposed to sign over half of its rare earth minerals to the control of the United States in repayment for American aid. The deal that Zelensky was meant to have signed at the White House when that whole nonsense went down. And like every other one of these deals, nothing came of it. We have versions of versions.

of what the agreement was supposed to be. But in our latest version, we see that the United States actually wanted everything, wanted complete control of everything that Ukraine had, including the infrastructure and just 100% economic colony of the United States that Ukraine rejected. And now various Trump proxies are going on about how Ukraine backed out of the deal and

Ukraine is lying and all that other stuff. Complete nonsense. The most recent one I saw was from Besant where he's talking about how Zelensky has repeatedly lied about the deal to get out of it. But what we're left with was much like with Russia demanding more and more and more in order to try and make Ukraine be the one to have to eventually say no.

That is what America did, just adding more and more and more ridiculousness so that when a offer is presented that no country could ever agree to is put forward and Ukraine does the obvious and unavoidable action in that scenario...

Now America can just blame Ukraine for being the intransigent one. So all this diplomacy of Ukraine trying desperately to show itself to be the one in every direction willing to accept some kind of deal and its negotiating partners, either Russia or the United States, spoiling everything.

Next, we can talk about how Russia is changing what it is doing in the occupied territories. And this change in policy is functionally a mass expulsion of Ukrainians from occupied Ukraine. How things work right now is that a Ukrainian in the occupied territories, if they do not accept Ukraine,

Russian citizenship, Russian nationality, Russian passport. Then they're cut off from essential services. They cannot go to the hospital during the Khovka flood that was caused by Russians blowing up the dam there. Ukrainians who do not accept Russian nationality were not allowed to evacuate, leading to many of them dying.

to die in the flood, did not have access to essentially the various things that a government is supposed to provide to its people and an occupying force is supposed to provide to its occupied population. Because of this, and I...

can't really cast judgment on this decision, many of Ukrainians have accepted Russian citizenship because of that, because otherwise they can't get their medicine and they'll die. Kind of a big push factor. But many have also not done this. Many have refused to accept

Russian nationality. They have refused to accept that Russia has any legitimate presence in their homes. And the decision made by Russia now is that these people will be expelled. Officially, what it is, is that any Ukrainian who does not have either citizenship or valid work

permissions within the borders of the Russian Federation and keep in mind that according to Russia, the borders of the Russian Federation include Occupy Ukraine, then they would be deported from Russia. That's how it is officially. How it is functionally is that this would be an expulsion of Ukrainians from Occupied Ukraine. That's just

It's a genocide, ethnic cleansing, forced displacement. This has been part of Russia's greater scheme of Russification of the occupied territories. I've already described the issue of passportification where Ukrainians are forced to take passports. But also this is

bound in with just straight up normal settler colonialism where people are brought in, especially from the poorer regions of the Russian Federation and settled into the occupied territories. The Russian occupation authorities in Melitopol, for example, have claimed that much of the population within Melitopol were these settler colonialists.

from Russia and that they had gotten rid of all these Ukrainians. We got this brag from him last year, I think it was. And while you can never fully trust Russian officials, it's probably directionally correct. It's probably very likely that Melitopol, as one of the most important localities within the occupied territories, it's really one of the biggest cities that Russians were able to capture in

in the full scale, I could definitely see why they would want to remove any disloyal elements from it and replace them with good loyal Russians who are now not only Russian and therefore more loyal to the state, but also very grateful that they are being taken out of some Russian backwater and given a nice home in Zaporizhia Oblast, which

with, you know, cherry trees and farming and all that. And there are many reasons for why Russia would want to do this. The first of them is just this issue of loyalty. There is a very active insurgent underground within the occupied territories, and

And by getting rid of the population of Ukrainians that could possibly support it, they are undermining the ability of the insurgency to harm them. This is unfortunately very normal counterinsurgency tactics. If you want to get rid of the insurgency, you destroy the population that supports the insurgency. Horrifying, but repeated many times over. And next is just trying to set the stage for the future.

Because when and if a negotiation finally does take place, they'll be able to say that the people within these areas are good, loyal Russians. They would vote in a referendum in order to remain part of Russia. And therefore, maybe we can say that when part of our peace agreement, we can have these referenda with throughout the Akai territories and we'll ask the people if they want to stay in Russia or go back to Ukraine. And surprise, surprise,

All the voters had only been living in that area for about two years, and they all vote in favor of Russia. So it's setting the ground for that as well. And in the case that Ukraine is able to take back these territories, they now inherit a large Russian population, a Russian population that...

will be hostile to them, and that if any actions are taken against the settler colonialists, Russia can point at Ukraine in front of the UN and say, look, they're expelling the Russian people from Ukraine. Look at the genocide that they are doing. That's another trap that they're setting up as well. Yeah, this is just one very, very large step towards that eventual goal of eliminating Ukrainians from Ukraine.

Our next topic, the many things that the American government is cutting that have been critical to Ukraine. We have talked about humanitarian aid in the past, about how a lot of the support for refugees, the support for emergency services, the support for keeping the electricity going has come through Ukraine.

programs like USAID, the U.S. Agency for International Development, and how that no longer exists. Or at least it, you know, technically still exists, but doesn't have a budget, so it doesn't exist. We've talked about the end of military aid. Military support for Ukraine was turned off and then turned on again.

Though we will not see how that turns out in future appropriations bills that will pass, will have to be passed to the House of Representatives when so many Republican legislators have said that they want an end to all military aid to Ukraine. But we'll have to cross that bridge when we come to it. But as these eliminations have been happening, we have seen some very direct proclamations

programs being destroyed and we'll go through some of them. First of them, RFURL, some war crimes investigation units, as well as a grant supporting Ukrainian literature that I'd like to focus on at the end. But RFURL will be the main one that we talk about. Radio Free Europe,

Radio Liberty, as well as Voice of America. These are all overseen by the U.S. Agency for Global Media, an independent agency by the U.S. government that uses congressionally approved funds to support a large number of newsrooms throughout the world. So first, we'll talk about some of the history of RFURL and

Voice of America. The first of these, Voice of America, was created during World War II to broadcast over radio into Nazi-occupied Europe to give news of what was really going on in the world that the Nazis could not control. All throughout occupied Europe, Voice of America was played in the underground in order to let people know that, for example, D-Day happened.

and that their liberation was underway. During the Cold War, there was Radio Liberty, which was meant for broadcast in the Soviet Union, and Radio Free Europe, meant to be broadcast in the Soviet satellite states of Eastern Europe. This was broadcast in many languages, Russian, of course, but also the various languages of the Soviet Union and Eastern Europe, Polish, Hungarian, etc. But to highlight the importance of Radio Liberty,

I'll give one story about why people were listening to it. So a friend's family was separated by the Holocaust. Most of the family was killed, but there are a few cousins who were able to either make it to Central Asia or elsewhere in the world.

in order to avoid the Nazi death machine. My friend's grandmother and great-grandparents would listen to Radio Liberty on their radio, hiding beneath the covers. Because if the Bolsheviks heard of you listening to Radio Liberty, that could get you a trip to the Gulag.

You could die for listening to Radio Liberty. But the main thing they were listening for was word from their family. They wanted to know that somebody, somebody from their family was able to survive all those years of Nazi occupation who was maybe able to make it out West. One of them did. They're never able to track this person down, but they were able to know that somewhere out there, their family was still alive. Information they would not know without Radio Liberty.

And to have your entire world destroyed, their home village was wiped out, almost 100% killed. Everything you knew, everything you loved was destroyed. Something still existed out there that was so important. And that's just one microcosm of what Radio Free Europe and Radio Liberty did.

In this world of Soviet censorship and being walled off from the world, these radio broadcasts were something. The world outside still existed.

and he had family out there maybe. So that's how it operated during the Cold War. Following the end of the Cold War, it still maintained an extremely important position in the world of journalism throughout Eastern Europe, Central Asia, the Caucasus, and a lot of it does come down to money. Maybe part of my position as the

Guy who's supposed to find ways to make money for envy makes me think about this a lot. But really, in order to have a newsroom, funding has to come from somewhere. And these are all quite poor countries. So by having a newsroom that is funded by this outside government program that until now was pretty safe, that didn't rely so much on the idea of having to make a profit

in these places where normal funding mechanisms for media do not exist. Good luck selling ad plays in Kyrgyzstan or something. Like, it's hard to keep it going. So what RFURL did was that it had kind of a go-to news outlet you could have in all kinds of various languages, including minority languages that are very underserved within Russia, such as

Tatar, Bashkir service existed, Kazakh, Uzbek, Kyrgyz, Ukrainian, Belarusian, Russian, Azeri, Georgian, Armenian. There's all these language services that you can go to, and there'll be some very quality reporting. And importantly, it's often not Americans, even though this is officially American.

media. There's very little about these newsrooms that are American. Maybe some Americans will work there, maybe. But for the most part, this is local reporting. It is a place of very experienced. I've had almost exclusively positive experiences alongside journalists for Radio Free Europe, Radio Liberty. And in Ukraine, I'll highlight some of the specific projects that they were working on. So first was Krimreality. Krimreality, which operated in the Crimean Tatar language,

was really one of the main outlets for Crimean Tatar language media. The other is ATR, which is more local. But in all actuality, the journalists that work for CrimReality are usually alumni of ATR and back and forth. It's kind of one media environment that mutually supports each other. So the local ATR and the American-funded CrimReality in

interconnected services. And one journalist at Crimea Reality, Artem Lysak, spent a

a long time undercover in Crimea reporting on forced disappearances, on murders and assaults on Crimeans, of the various repressions that the Russian state was doing in Crimea. And he did this under severe threat to himself. He could have been captured and arrested and tortured and killed. Like the bravest kind of journalism that I can think of is going undercover in an authoritarian regime. And if you get caught, you could die. That's...

That's like the pinnacle of journalism in my mind. And now they're defunded. Donbass reality. Same thing, but with the occupied Donbass. And largely working in Russian language as well. There is the Schemes program. And Schemes is one of the best investigative news outlets within Ukraine. They have broke so many stories regarding corruption and various malfeasances of Ukrainian officials.

This isn't like, you know, government loyal media getting to, they could, they really ruffle some feathers in the Ukrainian government because they are so aggressive and so effective. So many of the big investigative stories that have come out of Ukraine have come through this team's program. They are truly some of the best there is. Which brings me to my next point, which is that

Much like with criminality and ATR, not only does RFURL function by having its own reporting, the output itself creates, but RFURL becomes a serious hub for training and disseminating good journalism. I think of a lot of the investigative outlets within Ukraine, a lot of them, the people that work there,

are alumni of schemes at Kyiv Independent. I work with one of the investigative teams at Kyiv Independent to deal. I voice the documentaries over there. I've pointed to them a few times. I'm not one of the investigators, not that good, but I'm still proud of those documentaries. I think they're good. They're pretty good. Go watch them. Kyiv Independent War Crimes Investigations Unit, head over there. But also at Kyiv Independent, some of the investigative reporters over there are

our alumni of schemes. Journalism is kind of a closed loop. A lot of the time people shift between working for different places. You gain new experiences, you gain new training, you gain new connections. And RFRL has been one of the best conduits for that. And in their absence, it's a, I don't know what happens in their absence, but it's a very different kind of world out there. Not only in Ukraine, but like

The headquarters is in Prague, for example, and so many journalists go through Prague and become a part of that system. Very, very good journalists. And another is Current Time, which mostly is meant to broadcast in Russia, in Russian language.

but also in the occupied territories and just around Ukraine for people who speak Russian. And because so many super important writers have gone through the kind of RFE/RL system, every Ukrainian journalist has had something to say about this. And the one that really struck me the most was by Stanislav Izaev. Stanislav was captured by the Russians in the early stages of the Donbas War.

And he was tortured and wrote books about his experience. The name Stanislav Izeyev holds a lot of weight within Ukrainian journalism. So to quote him, his statement on this, I once was electrocuted only for writing for Radio Liberty. I was told that it was a CIA structure and an enemy of Russia. And for that reason alone, I was already guilty. Now, the enemy of Russia is

is being destroyed by America itself, and my torture seems in vain." Stanislav was tortured

by the Russians because they said he was an American agent of the CIA. And it wasn't Russia that dealt a blow to RFURL. It was America itself. America is itself trying to destroy pretty much everything good that it has to do around the world. Now, what's in the future for RFURL? This is very, very important as I've been trying to impress upon you. It is so critical. And actually, before I get to that, I'll get to my last point here of the other people who are quite happy

With RFE RL and especially schemes being destroyed

In Ukraine, are the Ukrainian oligarchs? We kind of talked about this before, referring to the Georgian civil society and how, yeah, the Georgian civil society often does take foreign funding, but it is the alternative to the oligarchic criminal system that exists in that country. You know who really doesn't want there to be investigative journalists? Corrupt officials without schemes, without good reason.

solid journalism that does not rely on funding and control by Ukrainian oligarchs, they are free to do a lot more crimes. So they are more than happy for these things to go away. And so there has been some obviously astroturfed messaging

within Ukrainian social media to kind of celebrate, oh, those Americans are gone anyway. That's all to the benefit of corruptioneers within this country and the corruptioneers within America. Learn the word corruptioneer, Americans. A person who does corruption, it's a great word for it. This is who America is working to benefit, not only within America, but also in Ukraine.

But yeah, on to the point I was starting to get to is what happens now with RFE RL and Voice of America. This is all very important. There's obviously a major part of the kind of Euro Atlantic European journalist world or infrastructure, how everything works, how our connections work. If it goes away, the...

There's much more impoverishment of information because of it. And it seems as though the Czech government especially is trying to seek additional funding to keep it going. It would not be a major expense if the Europeans can agree to keep it going, as is the case with, you know, Ukraine aid and so many other things. The gap left behind by the withdrawal of America from the world, the Europeans kind of have to pick up the slack.

And personally, I do think this will work. I do think the EU will find a way to keep RFE-RL going, obviously no longer under American auspices, but maybe under...

European Union auspices or a private company that is floated by public funds, some kind of, I don't know what kind of structure they're going to put together for it, but I do think it will continue to survive. This check attempt looks like it is making gains. And again, the headquarters of RFURL is in Prague, so if the checks take over, nothing even has to move. But

Next thing that the Americans are getting rid of is I don't see as as big of a deal as some others, which is the war crimes investigation teams within especially the Department of Justice. Now, yeah, it is a it is very bad that America is no longer supporting the investigation of Russian war crimes. But this is one thing that I knew was number one on the list of things are going to go away. So I had already kind of made peace later.

with the fact that the Americans did not care about Russian war crimes anymore, partially because one time at a press conference, speaking to the Ukrainian team that was investigating Russian war crimes, particularly the crime of aggression, one of the people who was not immediately a government employee and therefore felt more freedom to speak, had already described that the Americans were not

to be trusted when it came to the continuous support of using international law. Americans don't like international law very much. They're not party to the International Criminal Court and its support for Ukrainian investigations heading to the ICC and the ICJ, the International Court of Justice, was always going to be unreliable because of that. Like, technically speaking, if an American is being put on trial at the Hague, there

There is a law in place that says America should invade the Hague with weapons.

the military and guns and shoot people in order to get them out. So not a reliable partner when it comes to the respect for international rule of law. So that's, like I said, it's already been shaking ground. This is always going to be cut. And especially with the fact that the ICC and ICJ have been going after Israel, the Trump administration, which had already been hostile to international law, had decided that the ICC and ICJ were

Hamas members and therefore are to be attacked. So of course, they were going to cancel this. One particular investigation team did catch a lot of attention. And this is called the Conflict Observatory, which works out of Yale. And the purpose of the Conflict Observatory is to find

children who were kidnapped by Russia. Now, during the Russian occupation, they have stolen many kids. And there's no real way to know what those numbers are because the numbers that the Russians give for how many children they have taken are higher even than what Ukraine accuses them of doing. Now, the most vulnerable children to being kidnapped have been orphans. Kids living in orphanages in Ukraine, people living in orphanages are not necessarily there because their parents are dead. Their parents might just be

poor or their family can't take care of them for one reason or another, addiction issues, that kind of thing, but often very much with still living families. And so Russia went into these orphanages and just snatched up all the kids and sent them back to Russia to be raised as good little Russian children. This is the crime that Vladimir Putin is wanted by

by the ICC for as well as Maria Lvova-Balova, the ombudsman for children's rights or something like that, who has stolen children herself. And the kid that she stole from Ukraine, she brags about how he is now a Russian ultra-nationalist who has like a picture of Dugan

And going back to our segment there about Russian administration of the occupied territories, this is probably the largest effort that they are making to eliminate Ukrainians as a nation from the world.

from Ukraine by stealing their children and raising them as Russians, by raising them to hate Ukraine, to hate their former family, telling them that their family abandoned them. And I said that many of these kids were in orphanages, but also they're just taken a lot of the time. I know of, I was speaking to one person in Kherson who said that their neighbor, the neighbor kid,

The Russians said that they would take this kid away from the front line to a camp in Crimea. And understand, in Ukraine, the idea of going to summer camp in Crimea is quite culturally important. It is really a memory that a lot of Ukrainians have that is positive. And some of these camps are also considered pretty high status. To go to the Artec camp specifically is like initiation into...

the ruling class in a way, or at least like the intelligentsia or something. So when these families were offered that their kids could go to these camps in Crimea, many of them took the offer because they were told that this would only be temporary, that the kids would come back home, that everything would be fine. And really, they'd only be going not a very far distance away. Kherson to Crimea is not that far away.

They can be visited at any time, but they'd be further away from the fighting. So of course, many of them said yes, and then never heard from their children again. Or in some cases, as Russia is taking a town, they'll just straight up kill a family, leave the children, take the children, adopt them out to a Russian family. Now, in many cases, finding these children is very difficult. Often, Russia will change their names, change their birth certificates. And so there's no longer Mikhaila from Kherson who...

whose family is from Poltava or something, legally speaking, that child no longer exists. There's now a Vladimir from Ufa or something in his place, the physical person having their legal personage replaced so that the physical person can no longer be found. And because of complications like that, and just because, you know, dealing with the Russian legal system is not an easy process, even if you know exactly where that kid is. Some have been returned to

to their families. Recently, one kid was dropped off in Belarus on the Ukrainian border and told to just walk into Ukraine, an area that's mined, by the way, so if he had veered off that road for any reason, he could have died. But some of these families have been reunited, and

And this has been because of efforts by people like this conflict observatory that has run out of Yale University to find these kids and bring them home. The Trump administration decided that no longer needed to happen, that these kids can stay in Russia forever.

be brainwashed, turned into child soldiers, and in a few years sent with the Russian army to kill more Ukrainians and kidnap more Ukrainian children. Kind of like Ottoman Janissaries, except Ottoman Janissaries were treated far better. Now, the concern when this conflict observatory was cancelled was that all their information would be gone. There was one report that a lot of people believed that the database of the conflict observatory was deleted.

when they were defunded. This does not seem to have been true, and ultimately after heavy lobbying, including from evangelical groups in the US, there was a kind of stay of execution of the conflict observatory of six weeks, where they had to transfer their information to Europol, the European law enforcement coordination body, so that Europol could continue the investigation's work

that had been previously done by Yale. And...

I hope that all this data is still intact. I hope that none of it was compromised. And really, I don't trust any data that exists in government database right now after Elon sent his little Nazis in to take over various government IT services. Hopefully, Europol has the resources available to follow through on this investigation units. And once again, the Europeans are being asked to take up important duties that America is abandoning

including, I can't repeat this enough, returning stolen children. And the third thing that was cut I need to talk about is a grant by the Ukrainian Research Institute. This was announced recently by Ola Katsuova, the director of print and digital publications at

the Harvard Ukrainian Research Institute. The Harvard Ukrainian Research Institute really is the premier academic research institute in the United States for Ukrainian studies. They put out so many good books. If you want to learn about Ukraine from a very serious scholarly perspective,

look to Harvard. I have researched a lot of stuff using materials that they have prepared and conferences and things that they have put out. It's really number one in the world, probably, but certainly in the United States. And they had a grant that would allow them to print Ukrainian literature. This

This had been going on for three and a half years, and one aspect of this war is that Russia is trying to destroy Ukrainian culture. So efforts to preserve and spread Ukrainian culture are super important, though also not super lucrative. So those government grants are...

are quite necessary. So that's gone. They are no longer able to do this. They were very reliant on this funding. And so this effort to preserve Ukrainian culture also gone. So that is a sampling of some of the many, many things that Trump wants to get rid of.

And I'm sure that you have heard many, many stories of the other important things that the government is cutting that are ultimately not super expensive. The team that makes sure that people don't get lead poisoning in the U.S. is cut.

The FDA is pretty much gone. I would not trust food in America right now because they're getting rid of the people who inspect the food to make sure you don't get sick and die. And the CDC is no longer existent in large extent, at least as it should be. Everything is getting cut. But here are some things regarding Ukraine that had been cut.

Moving on to our last segment here regarding international topics. The first of these is efforts by Europe to prepare for a future war with Russia, considering the fact that Russia is constantly threatening to invade Europe and has already invaded a part of it.

in Ukraine. That is, the countries of Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania, and Poland have left the Ottawa Treaty. The Ottawa Treaty being the thing that says you can't use landmines or anti-personnel landmines mainly. And they will now be mining their country's borders with Russia and Belarus. Mines are scary. There are still mines from World War I that kill people sometimes. Cambodia

Vietnam, many countries throughout the world are still densely polluted by anti-personnel mines. And all it takes is a kid to pick up a shiny object on the ground and now they don't have arms if they're lucky.

if they survive. They're terrifying. However, as with many ugly truths in the world, we must come to accept that mines play an important role in defense. Russia has used extremely dense minefields to prevent Ukrainian advances. It's the main thing that has prevented Ukrainian advances is these minefields. If Ukraine

had mined its border with Belarus before the full-scale invasion, which was unthinkable to do at the time to put so many mines down on what was a heavily civilian-used border. But if that was mined, many people would be alive right now. That Russian push...

to Kyiv from the north would have been even more of a boondoggle, the battle for Kyiv would have gone much more smoothly, and people would be alive. And I fully understand why anti-mine activists would see the reintroduction of anti-personnel mines as a problem. I acknowledge these problems. But the alternative is Russia putting down a minefield in that territory instead.

And the other issue with rearming Europe in preparation for a war with Russia, if Russia decides to expand its war aims into other parts of Europe, is

is that Germany, Germany being a country that is almost fetishistic about its following of balanced budgets and putting government funding in all areas, even when it harms the European economy, which has been a problem. Austerity has been one of the main things that has damaged the European economy since the global financial crisis, but that's a separate topic. But because of that, Germany had a rule of the required balanced budgets to simplify it because budgeting is always complicated. Budgeting in other countries is complicated. How

I'm not going to risk messing up talking about how that works too much. But they had this rule that effectively would prevent them from raising their military spending. And this rule has since been scrapped. And even the even D-Link party, the left party in Germany, agreed to get rid of that rule.

rule, partially because some of the more extreme elements of that party had broken away, but whatever German politics. Point being, Germany is getting more ready for conflict with Russia, including a rapid expansion of its military-industrial complex. And the last thing to talk about internationally is the massive series of protests that are tearing through

So Serbia, we've been talking about that for a few episodes of how after there was a collapse of a concrete awning that killed a couple of people at a transit station in Serbia, there was investigation that determined that this was in large part due to corruption.

corruption in the construction sphere and after that there has been mass protests throughout serbia not only in belgrade but throughout the country demanding an end to corruption in the country and calling for the resignation of the government this is an anti-corruption protest

People have tried to present it as geopolitical, talking about how one of Russia's proxies, Serbia, is losing control of its population. That's not really the case. In fact, I have seen Serbian soldiers who are veterans of the Yugoslav wars and almost certainly did horrendous war crimes were also protesting against the government because they also don't like being crushed to death under concrete because of the construction company cheaping out on a government contract.

They also don't enjoy that. And these were like some of the largest protests in Serbian history, just really filling the streets. I think it just jammed to this capital of Belgrade with people. It seemed like the entire country was out on the streets for a few of those days. And because of that, some of the government resigned, though I think that the

The Serbian government, much like the Georgian government, is under the impression that if there were any further elections, they have enough control over the electorate to kind of scrape things together due to sufficiently undermining any opposition. So I don't think the Serbian government is as afraid of elections as the protesters are hoping for. But speaking of Georgia, there have been horrible updates regarding Georgia. The Georgia Dream government has

controlled by the Russian, really, oligarch, Ivana Shvili, has outlawed some of the opposition parties. The United National Movement, the UNM, which was the main opposition, Georgia Dream is moving to outlaw them entirely.

as well as any quote-unquote successor parties that would develop to take its place. And because the term successor party is quite loose, ultimately this can be used to ban anything. And this was then followed up by another rule that banned election monitors. So even if those opposition parties could still legally exist,

and they're not, then there's no way for any international body or opposition body to make sure that the elections are clean and legal and free and fair. Put these two rules together, Georgia Dream just set up a one-party dictatorship. There is no longer an electoral way out of the problem in Georgia. That's all been cut off. What the Georgians do from here, I don't know.

I don't see this resolving peacefully. Horrifying stuff. Horrifying stuff. Moving on to Turkey. Turkey also decided to ban its opposition. It's all happening at once while the world is forced to look the other way. And in Turkey's case, because America is withdrawing from Europe, that means Europe is more and more reliant on Turkey. Turkey is one of the strongest member states of NATO. They have one of the strongest militaries.

And their positioning not only makes them essential for any conflict with Russia, but also dealing with the Middle East. Turkey is also really celebrating the fact that the side that they backed in the Syrian civil war eventually won. And this is something that, of course, I like.

When we talked about the Assad regime being overthrown, very much in favor of the Assad regime being overthrown, but looking at it from this geopolitical angle, this is a victory from Turkey. Turkey is ascendant in so many different directions, the exception of its economy, which is terrible, but

We're about to see a global recession from these American tariff regime that's being put in place. I mean, who isn't going to have a terrible economy this time next year or this time next month, even? The world is moving fast. So because Turkey is in a bit of an unassailable position right now, geopolitically, they, the leader of Turkey, Erdogan, must have seen now is the time to strike, arrested,

the CHP, the main opposition party in Turkey, a kind of secular Kamalist party in Turkey. They had the mayorship of Istanbul, Imamoglu, along with many other members of this party. This has been a years-long process of Erdogan consolidating power and attacking and

arresting and in some cases killing his opposition. And just as the CHP was showing signs of gaining on him electorally, especially in the more urbanized, more cosmopolitan, more secular areas along the Aegean coast in particular, he saw his opportunity to take down a growing political threat and did it.

And so now there are massive protests in Turkey against this government crackdown. Keep an eye on that. And finally, Hungary. There had already been protests in Hungary by the kind of emerging leader of the opposition. Peter Magyar has been calling for the stepping down of the Hungarian government under Viktor Orban due to not only their massive corruption and malfeasance, but also their connections to Russia. Magyar has been

quite friendly to Ukraine. His party has sent delegations to Ukraine to reach out diplomatically to deal with the Ukrainian government, kind of reassure them that

Hungary is not just Orban, that a significant part of the country has opposite opinions about the Russian invasion that Orban does, and that if the opposition is able to win in the elections, I want to say next year, maybe the year after, not checking right now, just going ahead, then the diplomatic position of Hungary would turn much more pro-Ukrainian. And so good

Good for him. We like that. But this round of protests on corruption and governance issues and not being a Russian puppet issues has since been followed up by...

By pro-LGBT protests, Orban decided to ban pride marches, much like his Russian masters have done, as part of his pitch that Hungary is the protector of good Christian conservative values, while using that as a smokescreen to rob the country blind and put it into the hands of his personal retinue, while serving as a Russian fifth column. But what he presents is we are the home of conservatism.

And so as a part of that decided to ban LGBT pride parades. And of course, the way that this law was written could ban all protest as well. So of course not. It's never just going after one minority group or another. It is always a part of a broader attempt to destroy dissent and consolidate autocratic political power. There's all these things ever are. America take note of that as well.

So now there's massive protests in order to reverse this huge attack on First Amendment. This huge attack on free speech rights, on assembly rights in Hungary, couched in this attack on...

on queer people so that is all the news for this week it was a lot going forward this month we are trying to snap our schedule into place in order to have both the ukraine without hype podcast as well as the radio free america podcast going simultaneously with unified branding unified everything looking forward this month to hopefully have that sorted out

Though I'll also have to make it a trip later in the month for residency reasons. I'll have to take a little vacation somewhere I haven't decided yet. So who knows, maybe special edition from Budapest or something. Maybe I'll take it as an opportunity to check out some of these protests that I just talked about. So keep an eye. Our Patreon will likely be rebranded at some point in the next few weeks. Everything's going to stay the same. Support for us is going to stay the same, but we're

doing more. Again, check out New Voice of Ukraine, patreon.com slash nvua. I will again be sharing the most recent interview I did over there in the description. I think it's quite important. If you would like to support Ukraine Without Hype, you can go to patreon.com slash ukrainewithouthype and join our

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