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Scott Horton Show - Just the Interviews
1/30/26 Gordon Hahn on the Impediments to Peace in Ukraine
00:45:34
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A
You ladies and gentlemen of the press have been less than honest, according to the American people. What's going on in this country?
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B
We're dealing with Hitler revisited.
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A
This is the Scott Horton Show. Libertarian foreign policy, mostly.
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B
When the president does it, that means
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A
that it is not a liberal. We're gonna take out seven countries.
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B
They don't know what the they're doing.
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A
Negotiate now. End this war. And now, here's your host, Scott Horton. All right, you guys. Introducing Gordon Hahn, and he is the author of this really important book, Ukraine over the Edge, Russia, the West and the New Cold War, which I heavily plagiarized for provoked, or I guess I should say I was inspired by, by so many of the facts and all the great research that Professor Hahn put into that great book. And I learned so much and therefore cited it over and over again and provoked, as many of you may have noticed. Welcome to the show. How are you doing, sir?
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B
Thank you very much for inviting me. Thank you for the kind words about my book. Very happy to be.
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A
Oh, yeah, it's really, really good stuff and I highly recommend it to everybody who's interested in. In Ukraine issues. So there's so much going on and, and there's so much that you've written about Gordon Hahn. That's H A H n Gordon hahn.substack.com is your great website and I've been reading it lately. And so I guess let's start with the latest, which is the ongoing talks and what exactly it is at issue and whether they're really going anywhere. Obviously the major issues are who controls what territory and the future status of Ukraine in terms of its relationship with NATO and the other European countries as far as security guarantees, NATO membership and the rest of all that. So what is the latest?
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B
The latest is. Well, we haven't heard much in recent weeks, even much about membership, Ukrainian membership in NATO. Maybe that's a sign that the issue has been resolved. So no one's making statements about it. If we go back to the, you know, Abu Dhabi one last weekend, the atmospherics were, you know, excellent. I mean, the parties all said it was a very good meeting, constructive, productive. One official said, you know, it was, it was a. Watching the, the parties get along fairly well. A real hope emerged with, in his view. In fact, another official said everything went better, that better than we could have ever expected. The parties actually dined together and there was, you know, a good atmosphere, sitting down and eating together. So all that's very positive. And even more recently in a the New York Times Cited a Ukraine official saying, is saying that in discussions over the truth, the energy truce, which we'll talk about, the Russian side expressed its apologies for the fact that the Russians had bombed Odessa and a civilian train and five civilians had been killed. And the officials, the negotiators expressed their apologies for that, saying that the. Not all the Russian troops have been informed about laying off anything. Energy infrastructure, it's not clear to me how that's connected to hitting a train. But anyway, these people did express their apologies for that. So that's, you know, that's unusual between two parties that are so bitterly opposed to each other. And the level of hate on both sides, especially on the extremes, is, you know, through the ceiling in terms of concrete issues. You know, we have these, you have the energy truce, which is something new, but that's temporary. It's going to last until February 1st, and after February 1st, there's going to be a big freeze in Ukraine again. So the one question is, how do we explain this, this energy, energy truce? And a couple, you know, one clear explanation is that the, according to the New York Times, the Ukrainians proposed it. That's. But this is actually, you know, it's not a clear wording. Did they. Did they propose the actual. Did they. They initiated is, I think, is the terminology. Which leaves open the idea that the Ukrainians first said that they would stop attacking Russian energy infrastructure, which is not true. The Ukrainians probably issued a request, an idea, let's have a freeze on attacking each other's energy simply because the Russians were on the verge of really shutting down the entire Ukrainian energy infrastructure to the point where the whole country would have had no electricity already. There were many cities that were 80% out of electricity. Many cities were out days at a time, no electricity whatsoever. One official said, I forget what city he was from, that, you know, one more attack and we'll, we'll be out of, out of business. The electric, electricity grid will be out of business for at least a year. So they were on the ropes. So it makes sense that the Ukrainians would propose that. Trump claims that he, he is the one who. He was, he stood behind it. So it may have been the Ukrainians proposed it. Trump backed the idea and he talked Putin into it. And by the way, this is not unusual. The Russians have several times initiated truces around Orthodox Christmas. They've offered one, and I think they offered two or three, I think, and they carried out at least one, even without the Ukrainians participating, as I recall. And so this is not outside the realm. As far as Putin is concerned, the one reason why we might expect some movement on the energy truce and then the alleged progress on the territorial issue, which I'll get to, is that the Ukrainians again are in bad position because of electricity collapse. The front lines are collapsing. The economy is collapsing because the electricity is collapsing. There's a pre coup like infighting inside Kiev with the major corruption scandal and Zelensky's purge in response of top officials in response to the corruption scandal. And all this may be concentrating the minds in Kiev to come to some make some kind of concession. So one issue that was claimed in Abu Dhabi one last weekend that they had some progress on was a territorial issue. The claim was that there was movement towards having some kind of a demilitarized zone in Donetsk Oblast. Oblast is Russian for a region, One of four oblasts that the Russians claim is Russian are Russian besides Crimea. And the idea here is that there would be some kind of a demilitarized zone only in the areas where the, in the, in the Donetsk oblast which the Russians claim and that there would be neutral peacekeepers to oversee the demilitarized zone. And one reason why Zelensky is pushing this issue is for example, he made the point in one, I think comment after Abu Dhabi one is that we will not give up any territory. So a compromise has to be found on this issue. So one way for him to fudge the issue in front of the Ukrainian population, especially in front of Ukrainian ultra nationalists and neo fascists, is to say, well, we didn't give up all Ukraine. The Russians didn't get all of it. There's a demilitarized zone. The problem here is that this is really just sort of peanuts because you would also have a situation where the Russians have already taken all of Lugansk, which is one of the other four regions that they're claiming. And then they have about half of Zaporizhzhia and Kherson oblast, which they haven't taken yet. So that would be the area where you'd think, you know, if the Ukrainians were really capable of forcing some kind of a compromise or Trump was able forcing a compromise that, you know, we have a, that would be a major gain for them, right, preventing the Russians from taking half of Zaporozha and Kherson oblasts. But the fighting there is really in the Russians favor. The Russians are gaining ground there faster than in any other area right now. So there are a series of problems, right, coming with this kind of, to coming to a territorial agreement. You know, the Russians are very inflexible on this for various reasons. The balance of forces at the front is in their favor. They're gaining ground rather, rather rapidly. And in addition to that, they have territory that they control outside the four regions that they claim they have taken territory. Small part, very small parts of pieces of territory in Dnipro oblast, in Sumy oblast, and in Kharkov or Kharkiv is, as Ukrainians say, oblast. So what we're dealing with here is the Ukrainians are holding out, not wanting to give back, not wanting to give the Russians this terror. But the Russians are gradually taking the territory. In addition, they have territory that they can trade for that territory. So really, Zelensky's cards are disappearing. And, you know, within three or four or five months, the Russians will have taken all of Donetsk, and then they'll be very close to the city of Zaporizhzhia, which will put them in a position to take all of Zaporizhzhia oblast. And same. Same progress will be made in Kherson Oblast. So by the end of the year, basically, we could be talking about a fait accompli. The Russians will have taken all these. All these. The four oblasts that they want. So, you know, Zelensky sort of spiting his. What's the expression? Spidey's face to cut off his face. Right, right. Because really, this is when. This is when he has some. Some trading cards. Right. He could trade, say, okay, I'm pulling out of Donetsk oblast, and. But let me. Let us keep a part of Zaporizhzhia, the parts of Zaporozha that you haven't taken in the parts of Kherson, or you could trade part of Donetsk on another issue. For example, the Zaporizhzhia nuclear power plant, either gaining control over it, which the Russians are unlikely to give him, but the Russians might be there. There was talk that the Russians would be willing to share 50% of the energy that the Zaporizhzhia nuclear power plant has. So the balance of forces doesn't really encourage the Russians to negotiate. The other issue is the Russians would have to change, amend the constitution, because they introduced those four regions into the list of regions that the constitution mentions are constituent members of the Russian Federation. So they have to change the constitution. That's not a problem for Putin. He can push that through without a much of a problem. But again, the big issue is the collapsing front. You know, there's an article published in the New York Times, I think it was today or Yesterday in which they mentioned that the front lines, that they're basically plugging holes, they're moving groups from one. And this is something that people have been objectively looking at this for well over a year, have seen, but the New York Times is finally getting around to reporting it, is that, you know, they have to take groups from troops from one area and send them to plug a big hole there and then the hole appears someone else somewhere else, and they have to move troops over there. So they're constantly plugging holes. And one commander in, the Ukrainian commander in the article said that, you know, a battalion should have 500 people at best. We get 100 people in battalions and usually about half of them are completely untrained people. So the battalions are manned at 10%. So it's a complete, complete disaster as far as Ukraine is concerned. The other big problem is just as the Russians have little incentive to make a compromise here, Zelensky, despite the bad position he's in, is also in a hard place because between Iraq and a hard place because many people in Ukraine don't want to give up any territory. For most, most notably the ultra nationalists and neo fascists. And the head of the Azov movement is now becoming more powerful. He's the sixth most popular politician in Ukraine, where before he was never on the radar screen. He now heads a Azov corps which has at least 20,000 soldiers. And they have a whole sort of infrastructure of training and propaganda schools almost like universities that are training the soldiers in neo Nazi propaganda before they join the core. He's deadly opposed to any kind of territorial compromises. The same goes for right sector, probably sector, they're opposed to that. That's the other major ultranationalist neo fascist group. But not only the ultra nationalists and neo fascists, I mean centrists, more centrist groups, moderate nationalists, you might call them. People like quasi oligarchic, like former President Petro Poroshenko's Euro Solidarity Party is opposed to it. Former commander of the armed forces, now ambassador to UK Delusion as opposed to giving away any territorial concessions. And those who are in favor of territorial concessions can't really talk about it because there's a law saying that this is a, this amounts to treason. So you have to basically keep your mouth shut about this issue. So there's very little, you know, incentive for Zelensky to make this, this concession. Then the other issue I guess we could talk about is the security guarantees. And this is kind of, in my view, this is a trap. Zelensky has been trying through various machinations, the alleged butcher massacre, the alleged bombing of a maternity ward, a children's theater, and all these things have turned out to be complete fakes, have been trying to draw NATO into the war. And so by providing Western security guarantees, for example, if it's just a U.S. ukraine security guarantee, or if it's a U.S. european Ukrainian security guarantee, in which the U.S. guarantees the security of European troops that are stationed on Ukrainian territory, either way, this is a trap. It's the creation of a tripwire in which if there's any kind of a conflict violation, regardless of which side violates the eventual agreement, either a ceasefire or a full fledged treaty, this could become cause to bring NATO countries into the war. So basically this is a huge trap. But the Europeans are of course very high on this. Allegedly, seemingly, I should say. And so it's very. Now Zelensky claims, of course, that there is an agreement already. There's already a US Ukrainian agreement, but the US has not confirmed this. The Russians will not accept that. The bottom line here is that the Russians will not accept any Western troops on Ukrainian territory or Western equipment. That was the whole reason that the special military operation was begun, because they didn't want NATO expanded to Ukraine, because that would create a vessel, a vehicle by which Western troops could put equipment and troops in on Ukrainian territory and threaten Russian national security. Other issues we're not hearing too much about are the demilitarization issue. Earlier there was talk about the Ukrainians wanting and the Europeans claiming that the Ukraine would have an 800,000 man army after the war. After the agreement, the Russians are unlikely to tolerate even 300,000, probably 200,000 they might accept. The other big issue is denial. The Zaporizhzhia nuclear power plant, which I mentioned a little bit earlier, and there's a new demand that Zelensky's put on the table and that is Ukraine entering the EU in 2027. And many European leaders are opposed to this. Not just the usual suspects like Orban of Hungary and FICO of Slovakia. Many others are opposed to it. And I'm seeing this as sort of a way for Zelensky to keep the whole process, to drag out the entire process. Right, because that means you're going to have to bring in the EU into the talks, have to come some kind of agreement with the Russians and the Americans about this. And that can drag things out. And the Europeans have been very obstructionist, so they very well might want to drag things out. So those talks would get dragged out. The other thing is that Zelenskyy has put forward the idea of holding a referendum. Right. So if he holds a referendum, then you need some kind of an atmosphere in which an election votes can be cast in some more or less orderly fashion. That means you can't have a lot of firing. That means a ceasefire, which the Russians have always opposed. Plus the process of carrying out a referendum drags out the entire process even further. Referendum would either be on a treaty, draft treaty, or perhaps on whether the issue of territorial concessions made to the Russians. So that can drag things out, too. So there's a bit of a process here, I think, on Zelensky's part of trying to drag things out, hoping that sooner or later. Well, obviously, in about two and a half years, Trump's term ends and a new president comes to power in the United States, and he's more Ukraine friendly. So that's basically the situation where we stand, where we stand it at this point.
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A
Hey, guys. Scott here. You know, you've probably noticed when I'm interviewing somebody or somebody's interviewing me, I've got this great bust of Dr. Ron Paul in the background on my bookshelf here. Well, you can get one like that, too. They're available again from the great artist Rick Casale. Just go to my website, scothorton.org and look in the right hand margin. Click the link through there and use promo code Horton. You'll save 25 bucks and get free shipping, at least in the lower 48 states. And he does custom work as well. All right. Well, first of all, it's nice to hear that everybody's getting along and having dinner together, which is such a huge improvement over the Biden and. And Blinken years, where they refuse to even talk with the Russians at all here. So that there's any kind of spirit of cooperation, and especially including the Ukrainians as well. That is huge for something. Yeah, I'm not exactly sure what, but.
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B
No, it's actually absolutely.
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Points go.
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B
Yeah. It means people, we are able to talk to each other, at least in a calm way. So that's important. Yeah,
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A
yeah, yeah. But so, like, when it comes to these security guarantees, first of all, the Russian position has not changed that. Anything like that. That even sounds like that is equivalent to de facto NATO membership and intolerable. And. And they're still insisting on permanent neutrality ensconced in the Constitution of Ukraine going forward. And at the same time, this is something I talked with Danny Davis about last week. Nobody believes that the Europeans or the Americans are going to come and fight for Ukraine next time when they're obviously not willing to go and fight for them now, hell, you could give them NATO membership and do a big ceremony celebrating their big article 5. And everybody knows if Russia goes to war with them next year, we're not coming for them. If we were coming for him, we'd be coming for him right now. We'd be dropping the 82nd Airborne in there to defend them right now. The French and the Germans and the Poles and, and the Brits would be sending their guys in right now, and they're not. So how stupid is this that they're still even talking about that? Seems like at one of these nights dinners, the Russians could say we're not bending on the security guarantee thing on the de facto NATO membership. And besides, they're not coming for you anyway, so just drop it.
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B
Well, they want to be able to sell weapons to Ukraine, right? I mean, that's, that's the, the big driver. And also you have a foot, a foot inside Ukraine for leveraging other things like getting it, you know, various mineral resources and so forth and so on and general trade. So, I mean, that's one issue. But the other thing, I think we shouldn't poo poo too much. The idea that someday, you know, say 20 years down the road, depending on how politics develop in the west, that they would not be willing at some point to engage Russia. You know, as the world is going through a lot of serious changes and we don't know where Russia is going to be in 20 years, and we don't know where the west is going to be in 20 years. They're talking about, you know, building up, of course, they have a long way to go, but they're talking about spending a lot of money on building up, on producing weapons and so forth in Europe. And Trump's proposing a one and a half trillion dollar defense budget, which is massive. So, I mean, you know, the, the idea, for example, I, I wrote, I don't know, about two years ago, I wrote an article about the idea. You know, the west always says, well, the Russians have nothing to worry about with NATO expansion because, you know, we're all democracies and democracies are peaceful and they, and they, they engage in trade and that creates good relations with other countries. And they didn't go, they didn't go too specific and talk about democratic peace theory, which stipulates that democracies don't go to war against each other. And so if you don't consider Russia a democracy, well, then in theory, you might go to war against them. But I wrote at the time that, you know, democracy is not a permanent state. I don't like to use the word democracy. It's better to say a republican republic is not a permanent state. You know, over time, republics come, republics go. So this argument that somehow the peaceful, and of course, we look back to history, we see that Western republics haven't been that peaceful at all. And they certainly had a lot of wars in areas that are not where they're in non western territory. So even this argument, you know, doesn't work. But what I'm saying here is that, you know, democracies don't last forever. And the same thing here is true, you know, the weakness and the apparent lack of will to engage Russia on the battlefield on the part of the West. That may be true now, but maybe not 20 years from now. And that's how the Russians, that's why the Russians oppose NATO expansion, because they look, they don't look two years down the road, four years down the road, even 10 years down the road. They look 10, 20, 30, 40 years down the road because they have a fairly long history and they have a lot of problem, they've had a lot of problems with invasions from the west and, and so forth. And so, you know, even, even here, I don't, I, I, even on this issue, I think there's a reason for concern on the Russian part. Yeah.
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A
Also even more to the point, right. That they should be driving that home to the Ukrainians that, listen, the war's not going to end as long as you insist on getting these security guarantees from these foreign countries. That's what got you into this mess in the first place. And just seems like, well, almost, you know, like you brought up the massacre in Bucha and Arbuca or whatever, all those different excuses that they brought up over the time. Yeah, it seems like it's just meant to be a poison pill. As long as we're screwing around talking about these security guarantees, then that's essentially enough to keep the Russians in the war and keep the Europeans, you know, money and American weapons flown.
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B
Right. And Zelensky may be calculating that, you know, since the Russians aren't going to go for it, then there'll be no agreement. And since the Russians aren't going for it, the Russians like, they look like the ones who are being intransigent. And that again plays into his strategy, my theoretical strategy of Zelensky's, that is to drag things out until more friend, Ukraine friendly president enters the Oval Office. So he has an incentive to sort of create, make demands that the Russians can't agree to. You know, and this puts the onus on the Russians and drags out the process because it has to be talked about at the next meeting. And maybe there's some ideas exchanged at the next meeting. We'll talk about those ideas. We'll take those ideas back to our respective presidents and see how they react. And, you know, it just drags down the whole. Out the whole process. That's what I think he's. He's partially about here.
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A
All right, this episode of Scott Horton show, brought to you by the books I wrote. You can see them behind me there. Enough already. Fool's errand. And then enough already. And provoked. And then of course, one might have fallen down there. But I got Ron Paul, the great Ron Paul. Scott Horton show interviews and Hotter than the Sun. You see that one back there over there? That way hotter than the sun. Time to abolish nuclear weapons. That's all interviews I did, all about nukes and really great stuff. And I busted my ass on these things. And, you know, I've gotten a really great reception on all of them. They all been endorsed by Ron Paul. And Daniel Ellsberg endorsed two of the three I wrote. He would have endorsed the third one. I know, but he died too soon, unfortunately. Tucker Carlson says that Provoked is the definitive account. In fact, that's what Glenn Greenwald and Aaron Mate said about it, too. The definitive account of the new Cold War with Russia and the war in Ukraine. So maybe check that out. Yeah. All right. So now let me ask you about General Andrey Blitzky. You have an article here at your substack. Again, Gordon Han, substack.com the rise of AOVs General Andre Beletsky. So this is the guy that organized the Azov battalion and then it became the Azov regimen when they were integrated into the national guard later in 2014. That really helped to start the Civil War then. And then it became that third separate Infantry Division, and now they're just calling it the third Army Corps and he's been promoted to general. And this is the guy, you know, for people you know, who are only somewhat familiar with this, maybe he is the most heavily quoted, although they usually don't use his name. But he is one of the most heavily quoted when people write about Nazism in Ukraine because he has this very catchy phrase that he used in a speech that he gave in 2007 about leading the white race in the final crusade against the Semite led unter mention. And so people like to quote that because it's such a kind of sketchy, sort of crazy thing to say. But anyway, so I've reprinted that whole speech. It's called racial social nationalism. And it's from the AOV site, which you can get it from the weight machine. And I printed that and with the link, it's on the blog@antiwar.com if anybody wants to read the whole thing. But it's your sort of standard, completely psychopathic, you know, Nazi lunacy about the state is one great organism and every sperm and every egg belongs to the furor to lead the people to create the new Superman. And just in all the Aryan values of the future, alliance with Iran and domination of Eastern Europe under our new Ukrainian superstate. It's completely bananas. But so when you say, hey, these guys are Nazis, they're not just nationalists and you're not like some commie type like in America now, of course, anyone to the right of center is called a fascist. Like, yeah, no, this guy's really a fascist. And him and his guys are, you know, avowedly, you know, from that background, stolen always the virtues of the original National Socialist parties in Ukraine from the era of the Second World War and all that. So let me ask you then, sir, just how likely is it, do you think in the next 10 years or so that Andrew Beleski himself could become the dictator of the new rump Ukrainian state, whatever's left after the Russians are done taking the east?
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B
Yeah, he could become the leader of a rump Ukrainian state or one of several rumps of the Ukrainian state should start to completely break up and various warlords take. Take over various areas, which is not outside the realm of possibility over the next few years because you have the collapse of the, the army, which could break up into factions. You could have the. You have a. Basically a, you know, atomizing of society as a result of various things. Just a lack of contact because of the end of electricity, the lack of social relations because of the collapse of the economy and so forth and so on. So that's certainly possible. Another issue is that he's sort of at the forefront of what is an idea that's beginning to spread a little bit through the rest of Ukrainian society. And that could be exacerbated depending on how this whole peace process ends up. And that is sort of an anti Western attitude which could be greatly aggravated by the idea that depending on again, how the truce, the peace process ends out or doesn't pan out that the west somehow abandoned us, abandoned us. And they even set us up, right? Promising us all. If you go back to the actual prehistory of the war, I mean, basically it's a true account, right? I mean, we pushed them and kept telling everybody that Putin is a monster. And at the same time we were pushing Ukraine out in front, saying, oh, you'll become a member of NATO and the eu. All you have to do is be very anti Russian and follow all our guidelines and then we'll be putting weapons and troops in Ukraine once you become a NATO member. And of course the Russians didn't like that, so we basically pushed them onto the altar as a sacrifice to NATO expansion. And then we bailed out, right? They even had a chance to sign a peace treaty in April 2022, and we scuttled that. So, you know, a reasonable person or an unreasonable, even unreasonable neo fascist could look at that and say, well, they set us up. And in fact, there's a very popular idea amongst Ukrainian nationalist circles, moderate nationalists, ultra nationalists and neo fascists alike, this idea of an intermarium in which from the Black Sea to the Baltic Sea, there's this sort of little NATO created and Ukraine would be the leader of this little NATO or some rump of Ukraine. Perhaps this is a fantasy of the ultra nationalists and neo fascists. And of course that could also come with the sort of anti Western stance. Problem is, I don't see how you, how Ukraine survives. Much of it's at the same time anti Russian and anti Western. You know, where do they, where do they go for trade and other kinds of relations. So it's problematic. But getting back to Bilecki, you know, he's now the sixth most popular politician in the country, excuse me, according to this one poll and the other leaders, you know, people like Zelensky and Budano, their popularity, depending on the, how the peace process pans out, could rapidly decline. And the fact he's the only one who has at his, you know, direct command an army corps, and these are very extremist, very committed elements who might be willing to turn their bayonets on Kiev depending on the situation. You know, a bad treaty, a lot of territorial concessions, collapse, infighting in Ukraine, some kind of a coup inside Kiev, which they're not happy about, and they come in and they try to seize power on the back of some kind of a coup or an alliance with one of the parties that's opposed to Zelenskyy, who overthrows Zelensky. There are all sorts of variations that are Possible in this extremely fluid and extremely uncertain and unstable situation.
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A
Yeah, well, and he ain't the only one either. Tany Bach and his son are still part of the National Guard. You have Yevan Karas from C14 and Dimitri Yarosh and his friends at right sector. And all these guys are still out there leading these militias and, and building up that credibility as war heroes.
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B
Right.
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A
For later. Something that, you know, Poroshenko can't claim. You know what I mean? Or so. Yeah, there's a real danger there. And especially what you say about the stab in the back theory. Nazis love a good stab in the back theory. Right. I mean, that's kind of. I learned from, from James Powell that in all of Hitler's early speeches, he began every speech denouncing the traitors of 1918 who signed that damn treaty. And if they hadn't assigned that treaty, then everything would be so much better. And I'm gonna make everything right now. And so, you know, as you say, it's just the fact that Joe Biden promised these people the moon and then he delivered Jack and, and obviously they never intended to Ukraine whatever it would take to drive the Russians out that would take the American military to intervene directly to do that. They were never going to do that, but they sure promised that we will do whatever it takes for as long as it takes to help you reclaim every last inch of Ukrainian territory and including Crimea too. And, and we swear to Jesus we'll never let you down. Right. And then now get out there and get killed. And, and yeah, that is some low down dirty machinations on the part of the democrats here. They never meant that, you know, but they sure did make those promises. So how does that look five years from now after they've lost the. And Curson two and, and, and maybe everything east of the river. And then every time they look west, they've got nothing but resentment over being, you know, hung out to high and dry like that one big giant Bay of Pigs type disaster for them. You know, I'd be worried about it. Hell, even Zielinski at one point threatened, hey, I can't really vouch for the behavior of Ukrainian exiles in Western European countries if you guys stab us in the back dry here. He essentially threatened terrorist attacks in Western countries from Ukrainian expats.
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B
So. Right. Yeah, he's willing. Yeah.
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A
Are willing to do it, I think.
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B
Yeah. And the other thing is that these neo fascist groups in Ukraine have a lot of ties with the international fascist movement in general. And in fact, they're becoming one of the main hubs, they hold these big conferences back. I think there's one coming up on February 7th in Kiev where they're inviting all these neo fascists and ultra nationalists from around Europe and the west and probably the world to Kiev for a big conference. And then this happens actually every year. So they're networking with these groups and because they're, you know, they're high profile now because of the war that's playing into, into their hands. So it's, yeah, it's a very potentially explosive situation and you have these large Ukrainian immigrant groups in all these European countries and you know, who knows what it could end up leading to. Remember during, on the, the run up to World War II, you know, the UK, the, the Banderas Organization of Ukrainian Nationalists, and they assassinated, I believe, several Polish ministers, if I'm not mistaken. So maybe just one, but maybe been several. So, you know, it's a, yeah, it's a, it's a very dangerous, dangerous situation. And you know, anytime you have. And the other issue is, you know, you mentioned the loss of territory.
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A
Let me ask you finally here.
- [38:21]
B
Yeah, you mentioned loss of territory and then the defeat in the war. And then you have to look at the disastrous social dislocation that's occurring in the country and that's just going to get much worse with the lack of electricity. The economy is going to collapse as a result of the lack of electricity. All sorts of hundreds of thousands of amputees, broken families, people, refugees who've left either Ukraine or they've left to another party of Ukraine and they may or may not be able to get back home and they have a very unstable future and the country itself has a very unstable future. So it's, it's even much, it's even worse than just the territorial or the military loss. It's a, it's a, it's social. It's a complete social. On the verge of really a complete social collapse. And then you add on top of that the regime infighting and which could come very, very soon in a more violent fashion. And it's just a recipe for a kind of like, you know, Russia 1917.
- [39:32]
A
Hey guys, Scott here for Mundo's Artisan Coffees. It's the Scott Horton show flavored coffee breakfast blend. It's part Ethiopian, part Sumatra. It's really good. All you do is go to scotthorton.org/coffee and they'll forward you on there to Moondo's Artisan Coffees. Get it? They hate Starbucks because they represent the war party. Of course, and so they're moon dose and they support peace. And guess what? Scott Horton Show Coffee is the number one best selling coffee at Mundo's Artisan Coffees right now. Just go again to Scott Horton.org coffee. Yeah, especially with, you know, their gross domestic product is just nothing but American welfare now. I mean, they're, they're just producing nothing. All their wealthiest regions were in the Far east. And so that, that's been kicked out of their, kicked out of their economy really since 2014, but especially since 2022. So. Yeah. And then with all the demographic collapse that they were already facing and the war on top of that, I mean, who knows what will even be left of Ukraine west of the river. So let me ask you last thing here then is about those potential land swaps. Because there are these regions east of the river that if the war keeps going and going, the Russians could obviously just expand their appetite and go ahead and say, well, we got to protect everybody east of the river now. So everybody in Sumy and everybody in Kharkiv and everybody in Dnipro Prabhas, we're just going to go ahead and keep taking all that. And as you mentioned, they already do occupy some territory in those oblasts as it stands right now. So I guess all of the things being equal, if we forget about the security guarantees and demilitarization and denazification and whatever. But just on the, on the, the land swap compromise, does that sound like something that, or from, from your knowledge, does that sound like something that the Russians would actually be interested in is some kind of land swap where okay, fine, we'll pull out of Dnipro Pravas and Sumi and Kharkiv, but you pull out of what's left of Donetsk. We'll take. Done. Yes. And then this is something that's been floated a few different times, which is the potential that the Russians would draw the lines more or less where they are now in Zapr and Kon. And I know that Putin has said forget it. What I said in 2022, that's what I said in 2022. But there have been reports of like people close to Kremlin say they might be willing to compromise on an issue like that. So what's your measure of that?
- [42:04]
B
I think they absolutely would be willing. The problem now, right now is the balance is not correct. The trade would be unequal because the Russians, the territory in Zaporizhzhia and Kherson and then the small part in Donetsk that the Russians want is significantly larger, probably I'm just a general guess, but it could be, you know, could be 20, 30 times larger than the territory that the Russians have taken outside the regions that they're claiming. But, you know, over the course of this year, that balance could change. And one, because the Russians are advancing both in the regions that they claim and in those regions they're not claiming. So the territory that the Ukrainians would be giving up is shrinking while the territory that the Russians would be giving up is growing. And at some point they may become largely equal. And so you would have a reasonable swap. And then the Russians would get all the territory that they wanted to and the Ukrainians will get back territory that they potentially could lose if the war continues. Because if the Russians take all four oblasts they want and then start gaining territory in other regions, they're going to be loath to give back that territory. Because one problem is once the Russians go into a territory, if the Ukrainians get it back either by fighting or in a deal, there's very likely going to be retribution unless it's secured in a treaty that there's going to be monitoring to make sure that the Ukrainians do not carry out retribution against ethnic Russians and, or those they suspect who are cooperating with the Russians in any way. So, yeah, it's. But I think a deal like that is possible and, you know, by the end of this year, I think it's going to be very feasible, you know, by full.
- [44:02]
A
All right. Well, with that, I will let you go, but thank you so much for coming on the show, Gordon. It's been great to talk to you.
- [44:07]
B
Thank you very much for the invitation. Hope to see you again. Take care.
- [44:14]
A
All right, you guys, that is Gordon Hahn, and here's his book Ukraine over the Edge, Russia, the West and the New Cold War, which is absolutely fantastic. And thanks everybody for tuning in. Also, oh, check out his great substack, Gordon Hahn. That's H A H N gordon hahn.substack.com and we'll see you next time. The SCOTT HORTON SHOW is brought to you by the Scott Horton Academy of Foreign Policy and Freedom, Robertson Roberts Brokerage, Inc. Mundo's Artisan Coffee, Tom Woods, Liberty Classroom and Apart, CBS Radio News. Subscribe in all the usual places and check out my books, Fool's Errand. Enough already. And my latest, Provoked How Washington Started the New Cold War With Russia and the Catastrophe in Ukraine. Find all of the above@scotthorton.org and I'm serializing the audiobook of Provoked at scotthortonshow.com and patreon.com Scott HortonShow Bumpers by Josh Length of music intro n Outro videos by Dissident Media Audio mastering by Podsworth Media. See y' all next time.