SCOTT RITTER: Russia Will NEVER Allow Ukraine to Govern Donbas Again

Yeah, uh, first of all, we've mostly heard that Russia is committing this total war, almost uh, without cause, like they're invading Ukraine, there's no reason behind it, it's just pure, total brutality, there's no nuance. , there are no details. Not everything you said is basically left out of the narrative and then you mentioned NATO. I thought it was a really interesting point about the NATO defeat because even though not a month ago there were attempts to have Nate run for Finland and Sweden. and then being admitted to NATO and then Turkey immediately said: no, we're not going to tolerate that and it seems like he's fallen, he's gone at least out of the public discourse for now, but you know.

I wanted to ask you more about the situation in eastern Ukraine, because this has been going on for a while. I mean, Ukraine was fighting a Civil War in the Don Bass region. You've mentioned this many times with all the casualties he's suffered. that have been suffered because of that war is the situation now because one of the great demands that Ukraine has, which I consider absolutely unreasonable, is that Crimea has to be returned to Ukraine, as if that were one of the demands that seems to be a huge barrier to any kind of negotiated agreement like Russia is

never

going to do that that happened that happened there was a referendum Crimea overwhelmingly decided to be in the Russian Federation that happened what is 2022 that happened over seven years ago So what's going on?

What is happening in eastern Ukraine? What is the situation in the Lower Don? Because it seems like, as you said, Russia is making huge profits there and a lot of those profits are probably going directly to Russia, although that's not the case. Possibly it

will

remain just Ukraine, well, let's start with some basic principles. You use the term negotiation. There

will

be no negotiation. None. It's not going to happen. Because negotiating implies that you have two parties, each of which contributes something. to the table and that there will be some exchanges there will be some compromises maybe they will come up with a mutually acceptable solution um no, there will be an unconditional surrender uh Russia is fed up Russia is done with this game, it's over you know Zielinski had the chance to stop this war before it began and then, even after, it began to mitigate the damage by simply exceeding Russia's demands.

Now people say, well, it's not reasonable for Russia to ask for denotification. Do Nazis really exist? Is that really important? uh, it's not reasonable for Russia to say that you have to dismantle your army. I mean, Ukraine should be

allow

ed to join NATO. That is not a problem, it is not reasonable to say that Ukraine has to be neutral. Well, let's do some quick history. The Ukrainian nationalists under Bandera, emerged in the 1920s, can be considered a kind of, you know, master race, they aligned themselves with Nazi Germany in 1944, when Germany was defeated, the CIA began to back them 45, and we backed the Bandera movement because they were killing communists and for almost a decade they waged a guerrilla war that ended up killing 150,000 people. 200,000 Russians whom these Ukrainians see as subhuman.

They were eventually defeated militarily, but the CIA continued. to finance them from 1954 to 1990 finance their political movement uh you know, there is a Bandera Camp right down the street here there are Bandera camps um in Canada um Western Ukrainians have a large diaspora in the United States and Ukraine, they are very involved In politics, many of the names in the Russiagate scandal are Ukrainian Americans who date back to this Western Ukrainian diaspora and also helped in the resurrection of the Bandera movement, the legitimization and integration of It was in 2014, during the night of a revolution, of a violent coup

again

st a duly elected pro-Russian president of Ukraine, who was overthrown, but what is important here and that is why it is relevant when we talk about eastern Ukraine.

The Ukrainian nationalists, although they are a distinct minority in Ukraine, became the heart of this movement, especially in terms of their violence, it's anti-Russian violence, they insisted that, you know, new laws be passed that would not only elevate Flag to a national hero. status um but they also banned the Russian language out loud Russian culture uh they practically banned ethnic Russians and then they enacted this violently in May 2014 they went to Odessa they put 150 Russians in a building they set it on fire almost 50 of them burned to death or died due to smoke inhalation and this was part of the purge of Russians from Odessa, a majority Russian city, then they tried to attack Crimea, but the little green men, the Russian soldiers, stood in the way and we know what happened in Crimea and here is where it becomes important about eastern Ukraine, then they moved to the city of mariopore which is a Russian dominated city on the coast of the Azov sea.

You have heard of the Azov regiment or the Azov battalion. These are Ukrainian neo-Nazis who took over Mario Po and created a headquarters for his movement to begin the ethnic cleansing of the Russian population in the dombas. You call it civil war, it's not civil war, it's ethnic cleansing, it's genocide, that's exactly what they were doing. The trials that will come out will expose this. I don't need to go into the gory details except to say that the Russians have the flash drives because one thing we know about rapists and murderers is that they like to film their crimes and then brag to each other, they share them, so the Russians captured the USB sticks with all the crimes perpetrated, the rapes, the murders

again

st men, women, children, um, this will come to light in the trial when they put these thousands of captured Nazis on trial, but these Nazis were there, they started a conflict, you know, led the Russian population to declare independence and here is an important fact when the Russian population of the nitz declared independence.

Russia would not recognize it. Russia said no, you are part of it. of Ukraine, so anyone who says that an avalanche is a land grab by Russia no, Crimea was not a land grab Crimea was self-defense The Bank of Crimea is Russian an action from history that had once become in part of Ukraine, but the Donbas is the Russian

govern

ment said no, that is part of Ukraine and will remain part of Ukraine we will defend the Russians we will defend their rights but we are not going to

allow

them to leave Ukraine so a conflict of eight years 14,000 people Between 14,000 and 16,000 people were killed, many of them children.

Maybe you remember the speech given by a guy named Poroshenko, who was president of Ukraine, where he bragged on national television that while the Ukrainian children went to school and the park and he plays the Russian children that the head of the Don will take in their basements because we will bomb them every day, that's a great man, porchenko, um, but the other thing that's important about him is that you know Russia tried to have peace. In the process, they actually sat down with France and Germany, in something called the Normandy format, and in a piece of the Court called the Minsk Agreements in 2015 they agreed and all the Ukrainians had to do was implement it, which meant by simply providing special autonomous status for Russians in the dombas to speak their language, their culture will be preserved, but they are still part of Ukraine for seven years.

Ukraine did not sign it, they always said: well, we have problems, we have. Because of this we were forced to sign this treaty, we didn't want to do it and the Germans and the French

never

pressured them to do it right, Poroshenko, there's that name again, came out and just admitted that Minsk was the Minsky court. It was a farce, we signed it knowing that we were never going to implement it and this is the important thing: we signed it to buy time and be able to strengthen our army to be able to recover Dombash and Crimea now, why is this? important because in 2015, the same year the Minsky tribunals were signed, the United States, NATO began training Ukrainian military, the United States was training five battalions of Ukrainian forces a year according to NATO standards and then there is a small and wonderful saw slide where they boast.

They say we trained them here in this Western Ukraine training seat and then they have an arrow so they can go here and kill the Russians. This is America bragging about it. We are printing five battalions of Ukrainian troops to NATO standards so they can go into Eastern Ukraine and kill the Russians, so that's 40 battalions that we train, that's a lot of Italians, by the way, and this puts into perspective why Russia she's so angry at NATO because she's in the defensive Alliance that NATO is using, you know, it's empowering. The Ukrainians lie diplomatically about the Minsk agreements knowing they will never implement them even though we say we want them to to buy time so NATO can train Ukraine to build an army to kill the Russians and so when Putin crossed the border orders troops.

Across the border on February 24, everyone said, "Well, this is an irrational land grab by a power-hungry madman." No, this was an act of self-defense by the leader of the Russian people who was fed up with lies, murder, duplicity. not just from Ukraine and its Nazi militants, you know, but from NATO, which was actively training and arming the Nazis, so that's the situation in eastern Ukraine and I think what's going to happen now is that we're going to to find that Russia will never allow it. that the Ukrainian

govern

ment, what is left of it, can once again exert influence over important Russian populations, that will not happen, so Ukraine is going to lose a lot of territory and they are going to lose it forever, it will never return to Ukraine, eh, that It is the reality of the situation on the ground in eastern Ukraine right now.