In this episode of The Source, we debate the war in Ukraine with award-winning documentary filmmaker, journalist, and editor-in-chief of theAnalysis.news Paul Jay. The interview was conducted by Zain Raza for acTVism Munich.

• Transcript

Thank you, guys, for tuning in today, and welcome to another episode of The Source. I’m your host, Zain Raza, and today we’ll be talking to award-winning documentary filmmaker, journalist, and the founder of theAnalysis.news, Paul Jay. Paul, welcome back to the show.

Thanks very much, Zain.

Let us begin this segment with Ukraine. When the war started, the initial goals of Russia were the denazification and demilitarization of Ukraine so that it poses no existential threat to the state of Russia. What do you think about this justification? Are you convinced? Let’s just start there.

Okay, well, let me just say clearly, I think the objective of denazification was nonsense. If you want to denazify, start with your own country. There are lots of nazis, racists, and horrible Russian nationalists, including the Russian orthodox church, even the Russian communist party, and of course, [Vladimir] Putin’s party. There was no existential threat to Russia. The whole thing was a concoction. Ukraine was never going to be a member of NATO [North Atlantic Treaty Organization]. It was very clear there was no consensus in NATO to allow it into NATO. There’s already Estonia, which is on Russia’s border and is a member of NATO. If being in NATO makes a country an existential threat, then there already is one.

There was no one about to invade Russia. The fundamental principle is you do not have a right to invade another country unless you are under imminent threat, and your invasion will prevent the imminent threat. There was no imminent threat to Russia, period. That’s international law. If it is an invasion that isn’t based on imminent threat, then it’s a war of aggression, which is, by the Nuremberg Trials and international law, considered one of the highest crimes a state can commit.

It’s why states always concoct threats, as the United States did in Iraq. They concocted weapons of mass destruction to create an argument about an imminent threat, even though everyone on earth knew it was bullshit– every state, including [Adolf] Hitler. Hitler created excuses for invasions. Nobody invades without an excuse. There was no existential threat. If anything, the invasion of Ukraine has created a threat. If the objective was to stop NATO, the invasion simply strengthened NATO. It added Finland, another long border with Russia.

Instead of now having just Estonia, now Finland is going to be in NATO with an enormous border with Russia. It’s a ridiculous notion that this was a war of self-defense, but let’s step back a bit.

Let me just ask and play devil’s advocate on the denazification part before we take a step back. We do know that Congress, U.S. Congress, passed a law that listed the Azov Battalion, and thousands of soldiers or armed personnel were part of the Azov Battalion, which is part of the Ukraine Armed Forces. The law that they passed banned any armed sales to them. We do know that Stepan Bandera– there were a lot of people that joined around him. How can you not see that Ukraine had a Nazi problem? Especially, also given–

I never said that.

Okay, let me rephrase that. How could you not see that the Russian justification had some premise at least to address that?

They have no right to go denazify anybody. They only have a right to defend if they are under imminent threat, full stop. Of course, there’s a significant Nazi presence in Ukraine. The Ukrainian oligarchy is rotten to the core. The only issue with the Ukrainian oligarchy is some of them want to be pro-west. Some of the Ukrainian oligarchies, although they were greatly weakened, wanted to be part of the Russian sphere. They’re corrupt from beginning to end, but so is the Russian oligarchy. So is the American oligarchy. So is the Canadian oligarchy.

We’re dealing with a system of global capitalism, a system of global imperialism. It has many faces. The most dominant face, without any question, is the American face and its allies. No form of imperialism has more blood on its hands than the Americans do.

Look at the situation in the lead-up to World War II. Up until the late ’30s, right up until the beginning of Hitler’s invasions in Poland and such, the greatest war criminal on the planet was not Hitler; it was the British Empire. No one on earth, I think, maybe ever, has killed as many people as the British Empire.

I know one Indian historian estimated over the 300-plus years of the British Empire, they may have killed directly or indirectly– indirectly, meaning deliberately created famines, maybe 1.5 billion people. Hitler’s worst crimes don’t rise to the level of the British Empire.

Does that mean the people of the world didn’t need to fight against Hitler? Because the Hitler form of imperialism at that time of history was the greatest danger certainly to the European peoples, to the Soviets, and to the British. The issue is the people. The elites are the ones responsible for the British Empire. The elites are the ones responsible for global– they’re the ones that benefit from global imperialism. There are no good guys in the Ukrainian conflict except for one, and that’s the Ukrainian people who have been invaded and are getting killed by the hundreds of thousands. Other victims include Russian soldiers who are being marched to war to benefit the Russian oligarchy, not the Russian people. The Russian people don’t gain anything from this war.

I just want to say, just to really drive home this point, our enemy is global imperialism and global capitalism. At different points in time, one is more aggressive, and we do need to stand up for international law, even though, of course, there’s no one on earth that can make the Americans come under international law, but at least there’s some pretense. If we, as progressives, don’t fight against wars of aggression, no matter who it is, then who the hell is going to stand up for any kind of principles?

I wanted to touch upon the second point about demilitarization. Moscow has been voicing concerns since, at least, when Putin came into power. Even William Burns, who is the current CIA director who was stationed in Moscow, a WikiLeaks document reveals that– I’m paraphrasing here– that Ukraine is a very sensitive issue and if we keep on peddling this line of NATO, then a civil war will break out, and Russia will be forced to intervene. The planners of Washington apparently recognized that.

We saw that NATO offered Ukraine in April 2008– John Mearsheimer talked about this, that NATO offered Ukraine to become part of NATO. Then we saw the U.S. getting involved in 2014 with its CIA-backed coup and supporting right-wing forces. Even as late as of December 2, 2021, Russia was asking for reassurances about [Joe] Biden rejecting NATO, but no response was given by Washington. At what point does it become justifiable that, poking NATO in the nose– and we know NATO has not had a defensive history. It’s been anything, according to Noam Chomsky, an offensive force led by a rogue state, the United States.

Don’t you think there’s any sort of justification or any sort of legitimization when Ukraine openly invites NATO and asks it to station military equipment and starts to become part of that alliance? Don’t you think it poses any sort of existential threat to the Russians?

No. None. There’s not a single piece of evidence of it. As I said, there are already NATO states on the border of Russia. NATO has no plans to invade Russia. There’s no imminent threat to Russia. Most of the arming of Ukraine prior to the Russian invasion was domestic Ukrainian-produced arms. The big shipments of U.S. arms didn’t come until just before and mostly after the Russian invasion.

Ukraine was one of the largest arms exporters in the world. They were in the top ten, nine or ten, of the biggest arms exporters up until about 2018. After 2018, they dropped out of the top ten. Why? Because they were building arms for their own army. They were doing domestic military production. They have a right to do that. They were not going to invade Russia. They have a right to build up their arms. I hate the Ukrainian oligarchy every bit as much as I hate the Russian oligarchy and all the other oligarchies, including the Canadian, where I happen to be right now. They’re all part of the same global monopoly, capitalist, and imperialist system. They are all rotten to the core, and none of them care how many tens of thousands or hundreds of thousands of people die.

Yes, the Americans tried to provoke this, no doubt. Even entertaining the idea of Ukraine in NATO when they knew it couldn’t be done, when the Americans knew that there was no way they would get consensus to have Ukraine in NATO, they kept talking about it anyway.

The same thing goes through the Ukrainian oligarchy. There were Ukrainians, prior to the invasion screaming at Zelenskyy, “take NATO off the table, declare the obvious, withdraw any application to NATO,” and he wouldn’t do it. Why? Because he represents sections of the Ukrainian oligarchy that knew they were going to make money out of all these arms coming into Ukraine. Zelenskyy could have maybe– I can’t guarantee this because it’s not the only factor– but if Zelenskyy had simply declared Ukraine would never join NATO, at least in terms of Russian public opinion, it would have made a big difference.

Now, I don’t even think that’s why Putin invaded. I don’t think there’s any real threat from NATO. I think it’s more of a propaganda exercise. But it’s an important piece of the Russian nationalist narrative domestically that NATO is a threat. It’s the same way for the Americans.

For decades and decades, the Americans were talking about the Soviet threat. “They’re going to come bomb us. The Russians are coming.” It was all bullshit. The Soviets were never a threat to the United States, not for a single day. But it was a critical piece of the American nationalist narrative, the same way it is in Russia. How does Putin justify it? Outside of the major cities of Russia, poverty is terrible. Education, health care, everything is terrible. It is at the worst standards. Now, Moscow itself is, I think, was one of the third or fourth wealthiest cities in the world, but not in the countryside.

So how do you justify such a massive military-industrial complex in Russia without a serious external threat? And, of course, the same game is played by the Americans. Russia is no threat to NATO countries. It’s no threat to Western Europe. It’s total nonsense that Russia forms some kind of existential enemy, but it justifies an even more massive military expenditure by the Americans. It’s a morbid dance of death. Both powers have military-industrial complexes. Both profit from all this. Of course, stepping back a bit, yes, the Americans want to be the global hegemon. That means you got to be the hegemon in every region. You can’t be a global hegemon in the abstract. You got to be a hegemon in Europe. You got to be a hegemon in Asia. You got to be a hegemon everywhere, or you ain’t the global hegemon.

The real question comes down to why didn’t they allow, after the fall of the Soviet Union, why didn’t they seriously incorporate Russia into Western capitalism? Some attempts and some moves, but two things. One, they couldn’t seize the Russian banking system. The Russian oligarchy, a lot came out of the Russian Communist Party, they grabbed the assets, and the Americans couldn’t just come and scoop everything for themselves. Second thing, once you have an independent, rising, capitalist Russia, if it was in Europe, because of the size of the population, the education, the history of sophisticated manufacturing, and the productive military base, Russia in a Europe would contend with Germany for what would be the leading power of Europe. 

Imagine if there’d been a German-Russian alliance of some kind within that Europe. Where would the Americans be? So, of course, from very early on, because they wanted to be the global imperialist, the global hegemon, they did everything they could to make sure Russia didn’t integrate into Europe, certainly not into NATO, even though there was talk about that, although it’s so ridiculous. What the hell’s the point of NATO with a Russia in it?

Although let’s put that aside because your reference to Chomsky is correct. NATO’s– I don’t know if I would call NATO so much an aggressive alliance as it is an alliance to maintain the American hegemony in Europe and suppress socialism. That is maybe even the most important part. The history of NATO and the American coordination in Western Europe is to make sure that post-war Europe, the socialist and communist parties didn’t come to power because there was enormous enthusiasm for socialism in Europe after World War II. They support the dictators in Greece, and they support [Gen. Francisco, former Caudillo of Spain] Franco in Spain. All this bullshit of NATO as a defense of democracy, it’s quite the opposite. NATO was a defense of various forms of fascism in Europe. The NATO alliance now, perhaps its most important part, is to make sure Europe stays within the Western American sphere of arms sales.

What is the Ukraine war really about? Let’s jump to that now. One, keep Russia weak so it can’t contend in Europe. Two, keep Ukraine within a Western sphere of capitalism rather than a Russian sphere of capitalism. That’s the fight. Russia has no right to invade Ukraine, to keep Ukraine in a Russian sphere of capitalism any more than America, the United States, has a right to invade somewhere, which they do all the time, of course. But the bottom line here is the Ukrainian people are getting slaughtered, and we should defend their right to defend themselves.

No, you make a good point about when we look at the people suffering. I think this is the first and foremost thing as progressives is to support the people that are suffering, whether it’s the Russian soldiers or whether it’s the Ukrainian people. These are young people. They are not some intellectuals fighting on the ground of politicians. We’re talking about young as up to 18 to 23 years old. But we have to also analyze and find out the reasons of why certain states act in a certain way.

Trying to compare the Iraq war, I think, where the U.S. lied about weapons of mass destruction, which was an open lie. Even George Bush had a recent Freudian slip where he was trying to talk about Putin starting an illegal war in Ukraine. By mistake, he said Iraq. I’ll try to play that clip in right after this.

And the decision of one man to launch a wholly unjustified and brutal invasion of Iraq, I mean of Ukraine– Iraq, anyway. [Laughter] 

When we look at the history of the United States since the ’90s, the beginning of the 2000s, we saw them throwing out important arms control treaties. Look at the ABM [Anti-Ballistic Missile] Treaty, ICBM [Intercontinental Ballistic Missile] Treaty in 2003, Open Skies Treaty, and INF [Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces] Treaty. The START Treaty is now being put in question, and one has to ask themselves if it locates itself in Ukraine then throwing out all these treaties gives Ukraine and NATO a military advantage. For example, missiles can be–

No, that’s nonsense. You can throw a missile from Poland just as easily as Ukraine. It makes no difference.

But you know, in the Ukraine–

I interviewed Daniel Ellsberg, who’s a real expert on these issues. He says it’s complete nonsense that there’s some strategic advantage of being in Ukraine versus Estonia, which is closer to Moscow or Poland. There’s no attack coming on Russia anyway. The whole thing is nonsense. Do you think they’re going to start a nuclear war?

I don’t think it was about attacking Russia from there, but I think it was expanding even further despite all the promises made. At some point, for example, you and I know what happened in the Cuban Missile Crisis when Russia wasn’t even thinking about stationing there. I mean, obviously, Cuba was not going to invade the United States; we both know that. But it was from the perspective of the planners of Washington, it was just to have that as leverage in diplomatic talks on the international level. It was something that the U.S. couldn’t fathom. What my point–

Watch my interview with Ellsberg on this point.

We’ll link that in the thing. My point is just having that perception or having that thing is what Russian elites probably got scared of. This is the limit to where you encroach into our hemisphere, and therefore, we need to now intervene. I’m not trying to justify them. Don’t you think the way we’ve seen nation-states act– I’m not saying they’ve acted rightly, but realpolitik is conducted this way. You can’t go into Canada, station, and make a military alliance with them when the United States is across the borders. Don’t you think for the United States, NATO, and Ukraine to go that far and even entertain talks– Zelenskyy was saying, I think, a week before the invasion he was saying that we are now going to throw away the agreement that we have with Russia about our neutrality. Don’t you think that there’s at some point a line that one crosses that justifies in the eyes of the Russian elite, “that’s about it, we are going in now.”

Obviously, there was a line because they did it. But that doesn’t mean it isn’t a complete violation of international law. It’s not a war of aggression. The American blockade of Cuba was illegal and unjustified. There was no threat to the United States by even nuclear weapons in Cuba. It was all BS, and they knew it. There’s a quote from [Robert] McNamara where he says– and he said it later publicly, but at the time, he said it privately, but it’s been recorded in both ways– “that there was no threat from the nuclear weapons in Cuba to the United States.” It was a political threat to the [John F.] Kennedy administration to look weak because the Republicans were hammering Kennedy and so were the Joint Chiefs of Staff. They wanted an invasion of Cuba, and they were furious that Kennedy wasn’t, quote-unquote, “standing up to the Russians enough.” The Kennedys certainly played with the idea of invading Cuba and had full-scale plans for the invasion of Cuba. There was no strategic military threat from Cuba to the United States. Why? Because nothing changed. There were already Russian submarines that had nuclear weapons that could have taken out Washington, New York, anytime they wanted to. Having these weapons in Cuba changed nothing.

So, as McNamara says, “this isn’t a strategic military threat to the United States; this is a political threat to the Kennedy administration,” meaning a domestic political problem. The blockade was to deal with that. In other words, “to avoid the look of humiliation,” I’m quoting Ellsberg now, “for Kennedy not to look humiliated,” because these things went into Cuba even after [Nikita] Khrushchev said he wasn’t going to, “they were willing to risk nuclear war with the blockade.” It’s beyond insanity. For domestic politics, they were willing to risk nuclear war. So it’s the same story going on here in Ukraine. There was no imminent threat to Russia, but because of Russian domestic politics–

Putin’s party did very badly in the last election. As I said, outside of some of the major, two or three of the major cities, the situation for people is terrible. The disillusionment and disenchantment with the Russian oligarchy are very profound. The way the Americans fight this in the United States and the way the Russians fight it, and you can add many, many countries, is nationalism. You distract people with a good war. You make money out of the war. Certainly, Putin and the Russians never expected this to go on this long. I think he’s even admitted it now. They thought it’d be another Crimea.

Do you think if NATO was off the table, according to what I’ve heard from you, Russia would have still invaded Ukraine?

I don’t know the answer. I know there were strong domestic things driving this. Donbas is a very wealthy industrialized area. At least, it was before the war. It’s a prize. The Ukrainian oligarchy, as I said, was split. Part of the oligarchy that really was rooted in the industrial areas of Donbas and very much depended on cheap energy from Russia, they wanted to maintain this kind of Russian alliance. Of course, the Russian oligarchy wanted this within the sphere of Russian capitalism more so than Western. The vulnerability disenchantment, as I say, with the Putin administration– I interviewed Boris Kagarlitsky, I’m not sure if you have yet, but he’s very clear, and so are others. The Russian people were very furious at the Russian oligarchy for the incredible gap between the rich and the poor. Russian people saw the Russian oligarchs with their ridiculous yachts, lifestyle, and investments. The wealth was in the hands of this little circle of oligarchs, and people were furious at that.

Yeah, Putin did step on some of the oligarchs, but any oligarchs that were loyal to the Russian state and didn’t get involved in politics continued making ridiculous amounts of money.

So there are a lot of domestic reasons why this war took place. Yes, they thought it would be an easy cakewalk. I don’t know why. I guess because of Crimea. They never expected this long, drawn-out thing. But if NATO had been taken off the table, in terms of Russian public opinion, it would have looked like a win for Putin. It would have gotten rid of any excuse for NATO. While I say it wasn’t objectively a threat, subjectively, it felt like one.

The way you framed it earlier, I think it’s true in a sense. In terms of perception, you already screwed with us in 2014 in Ukraine. We had a pro– we had a president there who tried to make a deal with the EU and didn’t like the deal. Ukraine was gravitating more to our Russian sphere. This was a popular revolt in 2014, hijacked by the far-right and backed by the U.S. Embassy. It’s not as simple as just some American-organized coup, but it’s a factor there for sure. Yeah, that pissed the Russians off. You’re playing in our backyard, and you’re manipulating Ukrainian politics. Our next-door neighbors, many of whom are Russian speaking– in fact, what is it? I think the majority of the Ukrainian army speaks Russian. I mean, the whole ethnic situation is very complicated in Ukraine. It’s not like you’ve got all Ukrainian speakers fighting Russian speakers. It’s all mixed up.

When the 2014 coup took place in Donbas, when they created these independent, autonomous areas, they weren’t looking to join Russia. They wanted some kind of– I’m in Canada right now. They wanted some kind of Quebec-style federalism where there was autonomy and they had the right to defend their language and culture. It had quite a progressive leadership, as I’ve been told, in the early stages. But that’s all a Ukrainian domestic affair, first of all, and none of that complicated the Ukrainian situation, including the Nazis, who are there and have undue influence. They certainly did, but I’m not so sure they still do, actually, but they certainly did. None of that justifies the killing of hundreds of thousands of people. We got to keep putting at the center of this conversation the slaughter of hundreds of thousands of people because this conversation gets into the realm of being a sociopath. The number of people that are talking about this as if they’re playing a board game. They’re back to [Zbigniew] Brzezinski’s chessboard. No, this isn’t a goddamn board game. This is hundreds of thousands of people being slaughtered for bullshit.

So let us talk about solutions. What do you think would be the approach to get out of this crisis? We saw that the NATO countries like the UK under Boris Johnson derailed certain talks that were going to take place just before the summer was beginning. I think there were talks in Istanbul that were set to take place, and Boris Johnson, and I’m paraphrasing here, said, “the West is not ready for peace.” We’ve seen German Foreign Minister Annalena Baerbock say, “Russia has to be ruined,” I’m quoting her here. It has to be completely–

The last Ukrainian, right.

A lot of hawkish talk over these times. On the other side, we also see the political pressure boiling under Putin to make sure that they’ve come out victorious, and now we’re here. There have been some rumors that the U.S. military, the Pentagon, is split on this issue and that since the Poland crisis came where a missile was mistakenly launched or purposely launched, we don’t know, launched by the Ukrainians into Poland, that kind of awakens certain military figures in the United States to now start diplomatic initiatives. So if the West pursues diplomatic initiatives, what do you think should be the most important factors? And if we don’t pursue peace, what is at stake here?

What should we, as progressive people, demand? First of all, we barely get listened to by the people that actually have power. The level of mass movements in all of our countries is rather low in every respect. It’s a whole other conversation why, but it is. We need a broad international mass anti-war movement. We need a movement against nuclear weapons to mitigate and reduce the threat of nuclear war, which is the number one point of analysis here. How do we avoid nuclear war? We need to start from there.

The second point of analysis. How do we get to some effective policy on the climate crisis? Then you start looking at everything else. So I say when I’ve interviewed, I talk to Ukrainian friends, and I interview Ukrainian Left who are as nationalist and furious with the Russians as almost anybody in Ukraine– some of the leftists are even talking about the necessity of liberating even Crimea, which to me is nuts, but anyway. I’ve said to them I’m worried about nuclear war because there won’t be a Ukraine if there’s nuclear war. I’m worried about the climate crisis because there won’t be a Ukraine if we don’t– there won’t be anybody. We’re looking at the end of organized human society, and we’ve got maybe a decade or less not to cross the 1.5-degree mark, which is kind of already– I shouldn’t even say that because the way life is going, we are crossing 1.5° and we are getting to 2°. Are we going to do anything serious or transformative, so we don’t head to 3° and 4°?

Imagine by 2050-2060, if we’re already into 3-4 degree warming, say 3°, even say 2°, two-plus, most, much, most of the Southern hemisphere becomes unlivable. So where are those tens, hundreds of millions of people going? North. What are you, Europeans, what are us, North Americans, what are we going to do when hundreds of millions of people are heading north, and they have no choice but to fight for their survival? We’re not even talking about that.

So when I say to Ukrainians, yes, you damn well better make a deal, because even if it offends your national identity, your national sovereignty, yeah, maybe it looks like you’re having some gains on the field, a battle. One, the sacrifices you’re making are for what? I said this to one of them directly in an interview. Let’s say you liberate Donbas. Let’s say. For what? So the Ukrainian oligarchs can take power in Donbas again? You’re fighting with all your lives, everything you have, and you’re just going to hand it all back to the Ukrainian oligarchy. How about you get organized and, at some point, turn your guns on the Ukrainian oligarchy? Use this moment the way the Soviets did, even though maybe, in the end, it didn’t work out, but still. Use this moment and overthrow the Ukrainian oligarchy. Declare no NATO.

Now, it’s easy for me to say, sitting here in the comfort of and safety of Toronto. I have no idea if the conditions exist for this in Ukraine, but ideally, as a progressive, I would love to see this turn into a Ukrainian revolution. Tell the Russians, “get the hell out. You want denazification? Great. We want it, too, and we’ll do it, not you.” Ukrainian people will denazify. We’ll get rid of the Ukrainian oligarchs. We’ll declare no NATO. We’ll declare neutrality. I mean, as a progressive, that’s what I want to see. But none of that happens with the Russians continuing to slaughter people.

So the Russians need to get the hell out, go back to the borders as they were– what is it, February 23, if I got the date right. Yes, Ukrainians should declare no NATO. The goddamn Americans should declare no NATO, but that’s never going to happen, especially with the Republicans controlling the House. That doesn’t matter; the hawks around Biden are just as bad. But at least the Ukrainians should say, okay– Zelenskyy actually even said this once. He said, “look, we’re never getting in anyway, so we might as well just say so.” And then the Americans and whoever else told him to shut up.

Zelenskyy and his crowd, as an individual, he’s played a pretty interesting role. You got to give the guy some credit for the way he’s acted both as an actor and as a leader. He represents the Ukrainian oligarchy that are making out like thieves as they are bandits. The tons of money that are paying for weapons, most of it, of course, goes to American arms companies who love this and would like it to go on forever. But I’m sure the Ukrainian oligarchy is getting their taste of all this money.

But what should happen? Yeah, immediate ceasefire, an absolute declaration that Ukraine never joins NATO, and back to the 23rd border. Then UN supervised referendums in Donbas and in Crimea. Although I have to say, I do think Russia might win the Crimea referendum because the polling I saw, at least prior to the invasion, western polling firms said a majority of people of Crimea wanted to be in Russia. I’ve seen no evidence of that anywhere else. It may be maybe they haven’t done the polling, but even in Crimea, let’s legitimatize it. If the people of Crimea, even after the invasion, if they want to be part of Russia, then great, have a proper referendum, let it be so, and then let it be done. There needs to be democratic– the will of the Ukrainian people, including, I have to say, just to emphasize it, I think the people of Donbas, especially those areas that declared autonomy and independence, they have a right to self-determination, and so does Crimea. It has a right to self-determination, which the Ukrainian state must recognize. But there needs to be a referendum on how they want to exercise that.

Like in Canada, Quebec has a right to self-determination. Even the Canadian Supreme Court recognized it, and there are at least, what is it, three referendums that were very close, but they decided to stay in Canada with very specific rights. So whatever the people want in that region should have. And then Putin better deal with his own domestic problems.

Now, here’s the grave danger. The grave danger is that the hawks in the American foreign policy elite, in both parties, as I said earlier, they do not want Russia to take up its place as a powerful capitalist entity in Europe and towards Asia. They see there may be a possibility here not just of some kind of defeat in Ukraine but a fracturing of the whole Russian state. It’s called a Russian federation. Well, in that federation are many ethnicities, many, many languages, and many places that might want independence from Moscow. Many of these areas are doing terribly within the Russian Federation.

You know, Siberia, the poverty in Siberia apparently is terrible, and the climate crisis hit is hitting Siberia in serious ways. Methane is leaking from the ground as the permafrost thaws, and pipelines are starting to crack. There’s a lot of very serious problems, and the Americans, some of these hawks see this as, “oh, let’s take advantage of this, and maybe we can break this whole bloody Russian Federation up.” That’s where you really start looking at the possibility of nuclear war.

If Putin’s government, if the Russian state, which does seem very centralized around Putin, according to everyone I talk to. If they start seeing the Americans really fishing in domestic Russian troubled waters and really trying to encourage a breakup of the Russian Federation, that starts becoming an existential threat to the Russian state itself. That is where even the Chinese have said, “you better be careful what you wish for,” because if the Russian state, Putin starts seeing their own existence, meaning their own lives at threat, because if the Russian Federation looks like it’s starting to come apart, then Putin’s life might be on the line. 

Then two, and I read this. This is a very interesting quote from a Chinese publication. Global Times did a commentary, and one of their chief people wrote, “if the Russian people start to see that their own country might be starting to come apart, they may see the Ukraine war as a great patriotic war, as was the last World War II.” This no longer becomes, quote-unquote, “Putin’s special military operation and now becomes a threat to the whole Russian society, then Putin might actually have full-scale Russian support for a massive, much more massive involvement in Ukraine.” That’s where I don’t think deliberate use of nuclear weapons happens, but the tension gets so high that that missile that landed in Poland, that turned out to be Ukrainian, but what happens the next time some missile goes astray and is on its way into the Russian Federation and they don’t know what kind of missile it is?

Let’s close this segment here and talk about other issues, such as Iran and the case of Julian Assange in another segment. Thank you so much for your time in this segment.

Okay, thanks for inviting me.

Thank you, guys, for tuning in today. Don’t forget to subscribe to our YouTube, Rumble, and Telegram channels so you can watch part two of our discussion with Paul Jay. Also, don’t forget to take part in our current crowdfunding campaign. We need your support in order to continue for 2023. I’m your host Zain Raza, see you guys next time.

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Zain Raza

Gracias a todos por estar con nosotros hoy y bienvenidos a otro episodio de The Source. 

Soy su anfitrión, Zain Raza, y hoy hablaremos con el galardonado documentalista, periodista, y fundador de theAnalysis.news, Paul Jay. 

Paul, bienvenido de nuevo al programa. 

Paul Jay

Muchas gracias, Zain. 

Zain Raza

Comencemos este segmento con Ucrania. Cuando empezó la guerra, los objetivos iniciales de Rusia eran la desnazificación y desmilitarización de Ucrania para que no represente una amenaza existencial para el Estado ruso. ¿Qué opinas sobre esta justificación? ¿Estás convencido? Empecemos por ahí. 

Paul Jay

Bien, bueno. Permíteme decir claramente que creo que el objetivo de la desnazificación no tenía sentido. Si quieres desnazificar, comienza con tu propio país. Hay muchos nazis, racistas, y horribles nacionalistas rusos, incluida la iglesia ortodoxa rusa, incluso el partido comunista ruso y, por supuesto, el partido de [Vladimir] Putin. 

No había ninguna amenaza existencial para Rusia. Todo fue una invención. Ucrania nunca iba a ser miembro de la OTAN [Organización del Tratado del Atlántico Norte]. Estaba muy claro que no había consenso en la OTAN para permitirle entrar en la OTAN. Ya está Estonia, que está en la frontera con Rusia y es miembro de la OTAN. Si estar en la OTAN convierte a un país en una amenaza existencial, ya existe. No había nadie que estuviera a punto de invadir Rusia. 

El principio fundamental es que no tienes derecho a invadir otro país a menos que esté bajo una amenaza inminente y tu invasión evite la amenaza inminente. No había una amenaza inminente para Rusia, punto. Eso es derecho internacional. Si es una invasión que no se basa en una amenaza inminente, entonces, es una guerra de agresión, que es, según los Juicios de Nuremberg y el derecho internacional, considerada uno de los crímenes más altos que un Estado puede cometer. 

Es por eso que los Estados siempre inventan amenazas, como lo hizo Estados Unidos en Irak. Ellos inventaron armas de destrucción masiva para crear un argumento sobre una amenaza inminente, a pesar de que todo el mundo sabía que era mentira. Todos los Estados… Incluido [Adolf] Hitler. Hitler creó excusas para las invasiones. Nadie invade sin una excusa. No había ninguna amenaza existencial. En todo caso, la invasión de Ucrania ha creado una amenaza. Si el objetivo era detener a la OTAN, la invasión simplemente fortaleció a la OTAN. Agregó Finlandia, otra larga frontera con Rusia. En lugar de tener solo Estonia, ahora Finlandia va a estar en la OTAN, con una enorme frontera con Rusia. 

Es una idea ridícula que esto fuera una guerra de autodefensa, pero retrocedamos un poco. 

Zain Raza

Déjame preguntar y hacer de abogado del diablo. En la parte de desnazificación, antes de dar un paso atrás. 

Sabemos que el Congreso, el Congreso de los Estados Unidos, aprobó una ley que incluía al Batallón Azov, y miles de soldados o personal armado formaban parte del Batallón Azov, que es parte de las Fuerzas Armadas de Ucrania… La ley que aprobaron les prohibía cualquier venta de armas. Sabemos que Stepan Bandera… Hay mucha gente que lo apoya. ¿Cómo no puedes ver que Ucrania tenía un problema nazi? Especialmente, también dado… 

Paul Jay

No he dicho eso. 

Zain Raza

Bueno, lo reformularé. ¿Cómo no ver que la justificación rusa tenía alguna base al menos para abordar eso? 

Paul Jay

No tienen derecho a ir a desnazificar a nadie. Solo tienen derecho a defenderse si están bajo una amenaza inminente, punto final. Por supuesto, hay una importante presencia nazi en Ucrania. La oligarquía ucraniana está podrida hasta la médula. El único problema con la oligarquía ucraniana es que algunos de ellos quieren ser prooccidentales. Algunas de las oligarquías ucranianas, aunque estaban muy debilitadas, querían ser parte de la esfera rusa. Son corruptos de principio a fin, pero también lo es la oligarquía rusa. También lo es la oligarquía estadounidense. También lo es la oligarquía canadiense. 

Nos enfrentamos a un sistema de capitalismo global, un sistema de imperialismo global. Tiene muchas caras. El rostro más dominante, sin duda, es el rostro estadounidense y sus aliados. Ninguna forma de imperialismo tiene más sangre en las manos que los estadounidenses. Considera la situación en el periodo previo a la Segunda Guerra Mundial. Hasta finales de los años 30, hasta el comienzo de las invasiones de Hitler en Polonia y todo lo demás, el mayor criminal de guerra del planeta no fue Hitler, sino el Imperio Británico. Nadie en la tierra, seguramente nunca, ha matado a tantas personas como el Imperio Británico. Sé que un historiador indio estimó que, durante los más de 300 años del Imperio Británico, mataron directa o indirectamente, con “indirectamente” me refiero a hambrunas creadas deliberadamente, quizá 1500 millones de personas. 

Los peores crímenes de Hitler no alcanzan el nivel de los del Imperio Británico. ¿Significa eso que la gente de todo el mundo no debía luchar contra Hitler? Porque la forma hitleriana de imperialismo en ese momento de la historia era el mayor peligro, ciertamente para los pueblos europeos, los soviéticos y los británicos. 

El tema son los pueblos. Las élites son las responsables del Imperio Británico. Las élites son las r