WBD544 Audio Transcription

What’s Happened Between Ukraine and Russia with Matthew Mežinskis

Release date: Monday 22nd August

Note: the following is a transcription of my interview with Matthew Mežinskis. I have reviewed the transcription but if you find any mistakes, please feel free to email me. You can listen to the original recording here.

Matthew Mežinskis is the creator of the Crypto Voices podcast and Porkopolis Economics website. In this interview, we discuss Russia’s invasion of Ukraine and the refutation of justifications for the war on the basis of Russia’s security needs and threats from Ukrainian Nazis.

“We’ve lived with this, we’re done with this. Look, you are now invading Ukraine, we’re not going to stand for it, and we’re certainly not going to side with people who say that Russia’s security interests are the problem here.”

— Matthew Mežinskis

Interview Transcription

Peter McCormack: Matthew, how are you, man?

Matthew Mežinskis: Peter, good morning.  You look well, my friend.

Peter McCormack: Good to see you and good to see you in person, because last time we spoke, it was a remote one.

Matthew Mežinskis: Yeah, after one of the HoneyBadgers.

Peter McCormack: Yeah, but now we're able to do these shows in person, so I appreciate you coming to sunny Bedford and spending some time with us.

Matthew Mežinskis: Hey, man, congrats to you guys on the growth of the show, and it's just lovely, a lovely place you've got here.

Peter McCormack: Thank you, yeah, I appreciate that, man.  We're very lucky, we're lucky we get to speak to smart people like you, and I just get to ask the dumb questions and learn a bit from you.

Matthew Mežinskis: Go on, go on.

Peter McCormack: Come on, man, your show's much better than mine; smart as shit!  There's a lot to talk about, but one topic that's gone a little bit off radar recently, but really shouldn't, is war between Ukraine and Russia, which I know you've got some strong thoughts on.  I did an interview with Scott Horton as you know, a tough interview for me to do, because he has a massive recall of history of which it's very difficult for me to challenge, because I'm not an anti-war advocate like he is, and I haven't spent years studying the history of war like he has, so I felt very passive in that interview.

At the same time, I did feel like he gave quite a bit of a pass to Russia, and to me that's very reflective of the kind of debates that are in public at the moment, whereby there is certainly a, I don't want to call it pro-Russia but it comes across as pro-Russia, but kind of anti-West attitude, whereby if you show any kind of support for Ukraine in this situation, you're considered, "I support the latest thing" meme.  But it doesn't sit comfortably with me, because they're a sovereign nation that's been invaded.

At the same time, there's lots of questions around the actions of NATO and western nations and the provocation, and I don't always know where to sit between these two arguments, but I know you have strong opinions, so I'm just going to let you tell me your thoughts on all of this.

Matthew Mežinskis: Well, yeah, I do have very strong opinions on this one.  For listeners or viewers as well that might not know, I am American, as you might tell by my accent, but I'm also Latvian, of Latvian heritage.  My father's entire side of my father's family is from Latvia originally, so I've also been living there since 2006.  I'm a dual-national citizen, so I grew up American, grew up in the Midwest, very nice, positive childhood, from some of those aspects, I guess.  But in Eastern Europe in the 1990s when I was growing up, it was a totally different thing, and a lot of the problems that happened in the 1990s are coming home to roost right now; so we have a lot of very, very strong feelings about it, I'm absolutely biased, I wouldn't dispute that.

Also, as I said, I'm from the Midwest though, so we like to start with a few disclaimers, so I'm going to do that, I always do that.  Like I said, definitely I don't want to go too far off the reservation as far as history, etc, so definitely as me if you have questions, we can make it more of a back and forth.  But I would say, I actually reached out to you guys regarding Scott Horton's interview as well, because I think that though I probably have way more in common, and you and I probably both have way more in common with someone like Scott Horton, Chairman, Director of Libertarian Institute, Editor of Antiwar.com, than say someone like, I don't know, Joe Biden or Trump, any of these very far-off political figures, we can still have very, very different views when it comes to something like personal sovereignty of your nation, sovereignty of your land, your liberty; and surprisingly, like you said, there's this pass that's given to the other side, strangely.

Anyway, I want to say, even though it's probably going to come off that I'm quite anti this libertarian view, or this classical liberal view in the US that Scott Horton espouses, I'm definitely not; I mean, I enjoy the philosophy, I love it.

Peter McCormack: Do you think, sorry to jump in, but do you think Scott is presented with quite a conflict in something like this, because he's obviously very anti-US imperialism; I listened to his interviews with Tom Woods, he obviously would be very critical of US foreign policy with regards to what's happened in the Middle East; and therefore, when this situation's arisen, he has perhaps been so anti-US for a good couple of decades now, that he finds it difficult to defend the US in this situation?

Matthew Mežinskis: Yeah, and that was exactly the next thing I was going to say.  I mean, I've said this, my listeners have heard me say this so often they're probably sick of it, but you have to catch yourself if you realise that the only thing you're talking about all day, every day, is your hatred for the US Empire.  The US Empire's done a lot of bad things, and I would continue what I said before about agreeing with him; I absolutely did not support the Baby Bush invasion of Iraq and Afghanistan, Cheney, Bush, Rumsfeld, all the bunch of them finishing up his daddy's war.  All of those things very controversial, and very much put the United States in a bad moral footing as it goes to what Russia is doing with Ukraine here.

We were the ones that invaded those countries.  We don't have to go into the rest about 9/11 and the fact they're all Saudis, etc, but those are the pretexts of us going into those countries, and that was very unfortunate for a United States moral leadership in the world today.  But there comes a point where you have to catch yourself and realise how disillusioned you are with the US Government.  I've lived abroad; it's Eastern Europe, it's not Africa or East Asia, but I've lived abroad and I can see that the world is a very, very different place than the views of the Texas Libertarians, I like to call them.  Texas Libertarians is a term I also use; Scott happens to be from Texas; he also is a libertarian, Chairman of the Libertarian Institute, so it pretty much fits him, but I promise you this is not solely directed at my views on Scott here, that's not my point either.

I guess the last main disclaimer that I was thinking about is, we're talking about national defence here, we're talking about the hard problem.  As David Friedman said, "This is the hard problem".  He said that for a reason.  This is the pretext that any government throughout history has used to invade another government, and Russia has always used this as well, because all you have to do is say, "Our citizens are suffering some human rights abuses [or] our citizens are suffering persecution", and then you can go in and take that land that you want that you say some of your citizens or people, in this case Russians living in Ukraine, or ethnic Russians living in Ukraine, they're being persecuted against, "so, we need to go in and protect them".  That's absolutely the view that Putin has taken with Ukraine.

Peter McCormack: I think it would be useful to just give a little bit of the historical context for people who don't understand perhaps what happened after the fall of the USSR and what's happened to these countries in Eastern Europe.  I've spent a bit of time, I've been to obviously Latvia, Riga, but I've also been to Lithuania, I've been to Estonia.  I've been to Ukraine itself; I went to an England football game there once, and similar-ish countries, but all also very independent with their own cultures.

I think if you're going to take a view on this region and you haven't been there, you've got certain challenges.  But even myself, I don't understand the historical context of the relationship between them and the USSR.  I understand they were part of it and there was a breakup of the USSR, but I don't understand what that meant for, say, border regions.

Matthew Mežinskis: So, it is challenging for again the average American to understand the differences there in Eastern Europe.  Basically, after the fall of the USSR, you had three countries that were the start, the impetus, of the breakup, which was Latvia, Lithuania, Estonia; they were the first ones to proclaim independence.  Georgia and Azerbaijan did very much at the same time as well.  They had a little bit of a different history than the Baltic people, which were always on the western forefront of the USSR, as well for us.

If you're following this on Ukraine Twitter at all, which I must admit I'm much more on Ukraine Twitter these days than I am on Bitcoin Twitter, just because it means so much to us here, but you're going to see that the Balts are the most outspoken against what's happening in Ukraine, because it happened to us.  So again, not to go too much deep into the history of it, but after World War II, we were annexed by the USSR.  That was an illegal vote, 100%, voted for by the Communist Party.  Everybody in the West said it was illegal.  There's something called the Welles Declaration, which the Secretary of State at the time, he made a declaration basically that the Baltic countries had been illegally annexed by the Soviet Union.

Just a couple of weeks ago, Latvia and probably Estonia and Lithuania celebrated 100 years of unbroken diplomatic relations with the United States.  You might ask yourself if we were part of the Soviet Union for 50 years, 40 years, how did that happen?  It's because they never recognised the annexation of the Baltic countries in the Soviet Union, which is very important.  It's very important that liberal democracy's western free people continue to do this, it's very important what's happening in Taiwan right now, in South Korea, wherever.  I mean, we have to protect the idea of liberal democracy, and that's a very hard thing for again a Texas Libertarian to think about, where you just want to chill out.

If you want to take the non-interventionist view of the world, take the non-interventionist view, remove yourself from NATO and all that stuff, from a libertarian standpoint, I wouldn't have a problem with that.  But then you're going to have to start talking about, okay, what's the role of the US Government there; how are you going to do it; are you going to have succession, and all of these things?  I like those ideas, those are great philosophical -- another disclaimer, right; I love talking about these philosophical ideas. 

But in the year 2022, who knows, are we 1,000 years from where all of us are going to have private personal property, private money, private defence agencies, private insurance?  Are we 500 years from that?  I don't know.  But I'm not going to stand to see Ukrainian babies, little girls -- I have a daughter now -- it's sickening little girls being raped in Bucha, people being shot with their hands tied behind their back, mutilations.  Millions have been forced to flee Ukraine and millions have been deported to Russia.

So, whether you're talking about the tens of thousands of deaths, hundreds of thousands of lives ruined, physically from the bombings, the shellings, or the millions of displaced persons, we are not going to let that happen again.  The Balts have been through it, and the western world left us.  The United States didn't ignore that.  I mean, my father, being an American Latvian, his grandparents fled right during, after World War II.  There were displaced persons in Germany, as many were; some went to the UK, some went to Australia, some went to the US.  But you had millions of Eastern Europeans fleeing precisely the area we're talking about with Ukraine, because after the horrid atrocities of the Nazis, people just forgot about the horrid atrocities of the Soviets.

Again, that's a challenge for libertarians to think about, like what might you have done or what could you have done?  Don't forget, Churchill wanted to go all the way to Moscow, he wanted to go, because he saw how bad that they were.  Okay, the average libertarian in the US would say, "No, hell no, we're not going to spend more American lives on that, we're not going to do it", but you lost a huge faction and generations of people behind the Iron Curtain; wealth and everything just fell behind.  So, that's what the Soviet Union was, that's what it was all about, that's why it was so amazing to have the Berlin Wall fall, and we were all a part of that. 

The Balts led the way, the Balts peacefully led to the breakup of the Soviet Union; there were only a few murders.  Gorbachev was generally pretty good, but he also did send tanks into Vilnius in 1989 -- actually, sorry, 1991.  1989, we started the protest; 1991, the same year the Soviet Union was dissolved, he sent tanks in, a bunch of people were killed in Lithuania, etc, but you're talking a drop in the bucket compared to what it could have been, a supernational country of 180 million people or something; it dissolved peacefully.

Peter McCormack: I've been to Vilnius.

Matthew Mežinskis: Yeah, so I'm married to a Lithuanian, she's actually of Belarussian origin.  I've worked in Estonia many times.

Peter McCormack: Labas!

Matthew Mežinskis: Yeah, Labas, Labas!  So, I've got a lot of connections all around the Baltics, and I've got a lot of friends in Ukraine.  I have Jewish friends that are married to Ukrainians, we can talk about all this; and by the way, I think we should just go from zero to sixty, because we should just attack some of these issues that are, in my opinion, complete strawman.

So, one is the Nazi one.  Again, I'm from the US, you're not going to gaslight me on the Nazi thing.  And by the way, I thought as libertarians, we were not supposed to be part of this woke establishment, we were just going to call people Nazis; adlib it and just say, "Okay, I don't like this person, they're a Nazi"?

Peter McCormack: Right, let's tee this up though.

Matthew Mežinskis: Let's tee it up!

Peter McCormack: Firstly, you're very fired up, which is good to see.  I'll tell you why I'm glad to see it, because for me it was very clear as Russia invaded Ukraine, this was an invasion of a sovereign country, an unwarranted invasion of a sovereign country, for the second time within a decade; it was very clear what was happening.  And if I ever tried to make public comments on it, it was like, "You support the latest thing", meme, etc, all that shit was coming out.  I almost got tired of trying to say, "But hold on, Putin is a psychopathic dictator".

Matthew Mežinskis: Also, a sad atmosphere of post-COVID interventions, post-Canadian truckers, Dutch farmers; all these things, people get tired of it.  It's like Ukraine was just another one of those.

Peter McCormack: But for me, it was very clear what has happened here.  You must defend a sovereign nation when they're being invaded by an aggressor.

Matthew Mežinskis: I agree.

Peter McCormack: So, zero to sixty, you want to start with the Nazi thing.  Let's just tee it up and explain that.  One of the excuses given for the war was the Azov Battalions and the problem with the existence of Nazis, or Nazi groups, within Eastern Ukraine, a country with a Jewish President.

Matthew Mežinskis: Exactly, it cannot be more understated there.  But that's the scenario, that's the storyline.  And unfortunately, people like Scott Horton got on your show and saying basically the same thing.  Another interesting one though was when he was debating Bill Kristol, the neocon.  I'm not a fan of Bill Kristol.  When you're talking about the US invasions of Iraq and Afghanistan, again I agree with all of the arguments that he's putting forward there, I agree with his arguments against Bill Kristol; but we're now talking about a Russian invasion of Ukraine.

Here's an interesting thing I noticed.  Sorry to single out Scott, but here it is.  During the debate that he had with Bill Kristol, he'd say something like this, he'd say, "You have to either acknowledge that someone like Hitler was an exception to the rule, or he was the rule.  I claim he's the exception".  So, as Scott would -- I would agree with this, rightly pose, I'm not going to call of my political foes Hitler, which he would always. 

I've followed Scott for a long time, he would always have a problem with any sort of politician, regardless of who it was, some Speaker of the House, or whoever, getting up there, we could be talking about Saddam, Ahmadinejad, Gaddafi, anybody in the Middle East, you're going to find some American politicians who are going to call them Hitler-like, or even Stalin-like.  But Hitler-like is obviously the one that's going to trigger; that's the Nazi comparison.

So, he said in his debate with Bill Kristol, "That's either the exception or it's not.  I think it's the exception, we should not just go along --", and this is following the libertarian line, which is supposed to be anti-woke, not calling people Nazis, "we shouldn't just call people Hitler, we shouldn't just call people Nazis".  It's a tremendous lack of self-awareness, I don't think he realised that later on in the debate, there was a question about Ukraine; he proceeded to call a huge faction of Ukrainians Nazis, because of the Azov Battalion, because of what he thought happened in Maidan, which we can talk about. 

He's done that multiple, multiple times, not just in that debate, which was just so stark, because in the same debate he can say, "We're not supposed to call people Hitler.  By the way, Ukrainians are Nazis", and on your show, he's calling Ukrainians Nazis.  The Azov Battalion, we don't have to go through this, but let's just again, let's strawman it, or steelman it, in this example.

Peter McCormack: Steelman it.

Matthew Mežinskis: Yeah, I guess it's a steelman.  Let's say that the entire country of Ukraine is actually Nazis, all 40 million of them, even Zelenskyy, the Jewish President.  Okay, let's not say that it's a 1,000-strong regiment in the far east of Ukraine, which is around the Sea of Azov, which for whatever reason, I know they had some Nazi-like affinities there.  Let's not assume that it's the one person that was elected to Parliament post-Maidan in 2014; there hasn't been any political faction represented by Azov, or any of these fringe groups at all in Ukraine since then.  Let's not assume it was only those small things, let's assume it was the whole country of Ukraine that was Nazis; card-carrying Nazis.

By the way, sorry to do these little sidebars, but I thought it was so funny on that show that he's sitting there saying, "These Nazis in Charlottesville with the tattoos, sitting in prison, they're not real Nazis.  I know what real Nazis are, these are the ones in Ukraine".

Peter McCormack: What is a real Nazi now in the modern context?

Matthew Mežinskis: I don't know, you'd have to ask him that.

Peter McCormack: Well, that's actually an interesting point.  Is it a Nazi-sympathiser; is it somebody who hates the Jewish; is it somebody who's trying to, I don't know, wants to kill people; what is it?  When you say someone's a Nazi now --

Matthew Mežinskis: Let's just say, I mean, Ahmadinejad said he wanted to, what --

Peter McCormack: Is it just fascist beliefs?

Matthew Mežinskis: I think this was a bad translation of Ahmadinejad, I would by no means try to defend him in any means, but I believe he said, "Let's wipe Israel off the face of the map".  That might have been a bad translation, but let's just say someone who wants to wipe Israel off the face of the map, hates Jews, wants to kill Jews, whatever.  Let's presume that Ukraine, a country of 40 million people, which has much stronger and longer Catholic, from the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth which we're going to get into, Catholic roots than they do even eastern orthodox roots, which is more of an antisemitic branch of the Christian Church, the eastern orthodox of Christianity, which basically just lives on in Russia now.

Let's presume that the whole country is Nazis.  Do we still justify Vladimir Putin moving the tanks in on 24 February, raping, killing, mutilating girls, families?  I mean, these pictures, I mean, I just can't.  Just the absolute lack of self-awareness, the hypocrisy.  And again, we're supposed to be the anti-woke, don't get too carried up in a little bit of the craziness that was happening in the US in 2020/21; but you just forget all of that for Eastern Europe, you forgot it.  It's a different place to you, it's something that only exists in your mind, they're just a bunch of Nazis.

So, I don't know if I explained the complete hypocrisy and lack of self-awareness that I see there, but that's what I see.  I see everything we've been saying.  You need to defend a country that is being invaded.

Peter McCormack: Is it not important though at that point to separate the groups of people who are supporting Ukraine, or who are against supporting Ukraine?  It feels to me, again, it seems to have just become part of the US culture war, because it seems to me if you're a Democrat, you might have a Ukraine flag in your profile, a bit of a virtue signal.  But at the same time, the Democrats do want to send money out to support Zelenskyy and want to support their military efforts.  And it seems to be more from the Republican Libertarian side that's critical of this, saying we shouldn't be interfering, we don't want to get involved.  They want to bring up history of corruption in Ukraine, they want to bring up reasons to not align with the decisions that the Democrat Party is maybe making.  Is it just down to a culture war?

Matthew Mežinskis: I reject the premise.

Peter McCormack: Okay.

Matthew Mežinskis: It's down to moving more boldly ever against evil in the world, as Mises said.  I mean, we're talking about western liberal democracies, and we're talking about a kleptocratic dictator, who was never democratic, Vladimir Putin, and we'll get to him in a second.  But it is about going ever more boldly against evil in the world; that's what it's about.

So, 20 years ago, it was the Baby Bush and the neocons that were supporting these types of things, like arming nations that are suffering from dictatorial regimes.  It's a tough one when -- it's just a tough one to go back and forth on that, because I do absolutely believe political football is always being played by not only countries that the United States might want influence over, or even resources over; I mean, let's not forget about what's happening with the petrodollar over the last 50 years, and we talk about money and inflation, we can get into those things; but this is the world that we live in in 2022. 

There is absolutely political football; there are things that one year it might seem like the Republicans are in favour for.  It's pretty sad that 20 years later, it's only the Democrats that are in favour for.  I can't give you an answer for that, but I can tell you, we're not 1,000 years from now where we're in our utopian, libertarian, classic liberal, anarcho-capitalist paradise, where we all have private property, sufficient ammunition to defend our own private property, private insurance, private money, all the rest; we are just not there.

So again, the choice is crystal clear for us.  You're going to forget Ukraine, just like the Balts were forgotten in the post-World War II era, or we don't.  I absolutely am in favour of not doing that, we can talk about ways to do that, Bitcoin donations, all the rest, but that's a little bit later.

Peter McCormack: But there is a lot of support.  So, the lens people see it may be very different where they are.  There may be, say, out in America, different factions, groups of people, again it might be a political football, but have different opinions about Ukraine, whether it should be supported.  Here in the UK, it's universal support.  There is no half of the country saying we shouldn't be involved; it's universal support, the government have been very supportive of it, the opposition party have been very supportive of our government supporting Ukraine.  We've been very supportive of bringing people in from Ukraine.

That's another sad thing.  You mentioned everything that's happened, you didn't actually mention the separation of families.  So, a lot of families have come to live here, but it's the mum, the grandma, the children.  There's no dads coming, there's no brothers, there's no uncles.  I mean, we put a family up in Birmingham, somebody I was with yesterday has got a family they've put up here; there's a lot of people coming over.  It's almost universal support here.  Have you got that feeling?

Danny Knowles: Yeah.  I mean "universal" might be too strong, but it's the vast, vast majority.

Peter McCormack: Yeah, it isn't part of a culture war; it is, a sovereign nation's been invaded, cities have been destroyed, people are being murdered, how do we help them?

Matthew Mežinskis: That's I think as well an interesting illustrative aspect of the difference between Americans and Brits.

Peter McCormack: Let's say Europe.

Matthew Mežinskis: Yeah, let's say Europe actually.  And if we want to take it further with the culture war, etc, if we want to talk about the philosophy that I like reading, Austrian libertarian anarcho-capitalist philosophy, whatever, it's just interesting that a lot of those people are centred in Texas.  So, you've got the Texas Libertarians who really, really care about these things, and they're just like, "Okay, non-intervention, let's build up our own war chest", again things that I understand, but not to labour the point, we are talking about the sovereignty of an independent nation in a society where we said, "Never again", after World War II; so, that's an important point there.

As well, I think another reason why Britain is so forceful on this is because you have a historical precedence of trying to keep the peace in Europe.  I mean, the UK declared war on Nazi Germany on 1 September 1939, when the Nazis rolled in the tanks.  It was a bright, beautiful, sunny day in Berlin, no German had a clue what was happening in Poland, which fell in a month from Nazi Germany, after it was carved up between the Soviet Union and Nazi Germany; Balts followed in 1940.

Britain was the only country, from the beginning of World War II until the end to stay with Poland.  They had their alliances, they said, "Look, we're not going to declare war on you", and unfortunately for Poland and all of the Iron Curtain, the Czechs, Slovaks, Hungarians, Bulgarians, Romanians, we all fell behind this Iron Curtain, which was the piece that was made unfortunately after World War II, the big powers, just making the agreements to, "This is going to be the post-World War order", and that's a bit sad.

Again, I don't want to rewrite history, and Scott was trying to do that with World War I, which again I thought was very inappropriate, because I just can't see how, let's say, Woodrow Wilson, his existence as a man is going to stop Adolf Hitler, it's going to stop Joseph Stalin, it's going to stop Lenin, all of these just boorish idiots in Moscow from taking on these horrible ideas of Marx; you're going to say all of that was from Woodrow Wilson?  I mean, that didn't stop the building of the Kiel Canal before World War I; that didn't stop all sorts of just horrible things that were happening, also the nationalist movements from countries that were trying to become independent after World War I, which the Balts were a part of that.

But anyway, I'm getting sidebar, which I said I would not do.  But yeah, I don't know, any more points on that, I guess?

Peter McCormack: Well, there's a lot of questions I'd like to ask you.  One thing, what is the relationship between the Baltic Nations?

Matthew Mežinskis: Very good, very harmonious.  There's a tweet I saw last month.  There's a border town, it's Valga in Estonia, Valka in Latvia, Valga/Valka, and it's always shared a border, well before Soviet times, whatever, it's always shared a border.  Now, they have built a skateboarding jump across the border, and it's just hilarious!  Can you imagine between countries, just this skateboarder going over, jumping; they've got Latvian flags on the one side, Estonian flags on the other side, so it's fantastic!

Peter McCormack: And how much, both political support, but military support, is Ukraine getting from the other nations?

Matthew Mežinskis: 100%.  You saw the visa bans that started, which is another thing we can talk about.  Maybe I want to hold that off though, because they still some of the solutions…  I still have some receipts here that I still want to talk about --

Peter McCormack: Let's go through it.

Matthew Mežinskis: -- regarding saying why this is so different that we can't defend a place like Ukraine in 2022, when it's trying to defend their sovereignty.  So, here's another one.  So, I don't know if I hit the bullseye or the mark on the Nazi thing?

Peter McCormack: Is the reality of it that there are factions of people who consider themselves Nazis, or some form of right-wing nationalist, as you get in pretty much every country?  We have it, there are people in Germany, there are people in Russia, there are people in the US.

Matthew Mežinskis: Oh, my Jewish friends always say, "Look at Russia".  I mean, you think Ukraine has Nazis, look at Russia.  You can talk about Azov; Russia had these parties, "Russia for Russians", these parties, these factions, these neo-Nazi groups, tens of thousands of people.  If you want a Nazi problem, the epicentre is in Russia. The Pale of Settlement, I'm going to talk about a little bit of history, the Pale of Settlement.  This was a Russian Tsarist idea, where all Jews in the Empire were going to be deported to a certain part of Eastern Europe.  Unfortunately, there's parts like Ukraine, Belarus, and they're just going to stay there, they can't leave, they can't vote, and that's where they live, but they're still servants.

The Russian Empire was way different than the Austrian Empire, the German Empire.  You had kind of a middle class in those empires.  The Russian Empire, these people were dirt poor, peasants, just dirt poor.  So, when you mix in poverty and a state-sponsored Pale of Settlement regime, which is the product of the Russian Empire, which I'm going to get back to, because Scott Horton seemed to fondly look back at the Russian Empire, or at least not belittle Putin for looking back fondly at the Russian Empire; lot to say about that.  But this is what is going on in Eastern Europe, that's the historical context there.

One more thing, actually, about that.  Small sidebar, but again, I'm all for being non-anti-woke, as far as the US stuff goes.  We know that there are Marxist beginnings of the Black Lives Matter movement, there are, that's a fact; that's even acknowledged, I believe, by the founders.

Peter McCormack: Who own big houses!

Matthew Mežinskis: It's unreal, and we're supposed to be against the stuff, anti-woke, or whatever, non-woke, or whatever way you want to say it.  The skeleton key for unlocking all of the bullshit with all of this movement is Eastern Europe.  Eastern Europe is 99.999% white.  The only black people I've seen since 2006 in Latvia were the three that came from the US to play on the basketball teams, and there was a limit; you could only have three, the EuroLeague limit, three per team from the US.  I'm not joking there, I'm not making light of it, or whatever; the Soviet Union was a closed country, just like the Pale of Settlement.  You could not leave, you could not travel in the Soviet Union.  They were all white; no Africans wanted to even go there.  They'd much rather go to France, where they have historical ties, colonial ties unfortunately, but that's where they're going.

This is the situation of Eastern Europe, 99.999% white.  Generations fell behind, the entire United States during the Cold War, generations.  They said the Soviet Union was the second biggest economy in the world; it was a mirage, it was really Japan from the 1970s and the 1980s, it was just killing it, absolutely killing it.  The Soviet Union couldn't do anything.  It remained the same state that it is today, the petrostate, the state that has natural resources, iron ore, but they couldn't build anything because they were founded on a horrible Marxist, communist, dictatorial ideology that was the Bolshevik Revolution; supposed to be all for the good, but as we know, all of these things always just destroy people in society and civilisation.

So, in my view, literally the thing that unlocks the bullshit of this woke, racism behind the economic problems of certain people in the United States, I'm sorry to say, look at Eastern Europe.  And look at Eastern Europe then and look at Eastern Europe now.  In places like the Baltics, it's thriving.  We ran as fast as we could from the Soviet Union in 1991, as fast as we could.  And now we're middle of the pack in Europe as far as all of the metrics go, and growing and thriving, and people want to come there, people want to come there, all the rest.

Peter McCormack: I've just been out to Estonia, it's unbelievable.

Matthew Mežinskis: Absolutely.

Peter McCormack: Unbelievable, the progress.  I felt like I was just in -- you know, because you have these pictures.  I think it was probably because as a kid when I went to Yugoslavia, long time ago, it was a less -- I was 5 years old.  We drove from the UK to Yugoslavia and went to Belgrade, and then went down to the coast, but it was before the breakup.  But it was a much less developed nation.  And the reason we went, we had a family move to Bedford where we live, two doors down from us, who were Yugoslavian, and they came for work.  My mum taught them English, so they invited us out there, but it was a less developed nation.  So, when I started going out to Eastern Europe, I kind of expected the same.  I went to Estonia, it's as good as any major city in Europe.

Matthew Mežinskis: 100%.

Peter McCormack: Unbelievable.

Matthew Mežinskis: I want to talk about Estonia a little bit as well, I've got some more receipts on that.  Toomas Ilves, if you want to follow Ukraine Twitter, you want to get a raw to the bone, just straight on bullseye of every point as far as Eastern Europe should be looking and the world should be looking at helping Ukrainians, follow Toomas Ilves; he's the former President of Estonia.  We can put some things up on the screen in a second.  He's just as pissed as I am, just as pissed as all of us in Eastern Europe, and he's not holding back.  His tweets are just something to behold. 

So, again I'm biased, but I would strongly -- and he was a coder.  He was one of the guys who was very much -- he went to Columbia by the way, and when the Baltics were suffering during the Financial Crisis, Paul Krugman said that all of us should devalue our currencies, we weren't part of the euro then, we did not do that, which was a good move.  We didn't have the IMF come in, as they always do, and devalue the currency.  We had this thing called an "internal devaluation".  We don't have to get into it, but he was basically calling out Paul Krugman on Twitter, and that kind of took him to fame, Ilves, as well on this.

Anyway, there's all sorts of interesting things there.  I still have some receipts, I want to go on.

Peter McCormack: Keep going, man.

Matthew Mežinskis: The comparisons that I here make, again unfortunately Scott Horton has made on your show, the one that seems to be made between the United States and Canada, you might remember, again this idea that Russia deserves to have this security apparatus, it deserves to have these legitimate concerns about its security valued by the world.  And the example he gave on your show was, let's suppose that the people of Canada all of a sudden just want to become communist, and let's say they want to align forces with the Chinese.  Scott said, "What do you think the CIA would do?  They'll be in there in a second, they'll take over Canada in a second, they'll agitate and stop that in a second".

That sounds like a nice example, except that's first of all, besides being absurdly unrealistic and unfair to every single Canadian and acting like they don't have agency or have a brain, that's not the example that he has used in prior years.  Now, I did track this down, but I remember him saying this, so I have a quote.  This is how he used to talk about the Canadian example, "America's back yard is the entire Pacific Ocean, and yet Russia can't even be the dominant neighbouring influence in Ukraine, which is their little Canada, their Russia junior, which the Americans made clear that's why they wanted to take it away from them, because it was so important to them".

He quoted Gideon Rose, he said that, "Ukraine is Robin to their Batman".  He also again mocked the US politician establishment case about Russia, that it's basically a gas station with a border, which is true.  I think we can talk about the Yale report, their economy's being cratered as it should, because free and independent logical companies are taking their capital away.  A thousand companies have left Russia, because it is a gas station with a border, it has nothing that you should defend or want your capital to be in.  But anyway, that's actually his view of Canada, is that Canada basically exists because the United States lets them, it's America's little brother, it has nothing.  Let's be honest, I don't believe that I'm misinterpreting him at all.  He believes that Canada basically exists, security-wise, because the United States lets them. 

The more appropriate example you can say, the only appropriate example you can say with the United States and Canada would be if the United States today, in 2022, invaded Canada.  That would be the appropriate comparison between what's happening between Russia and Ukraine.  It has nothing to do with Russia's security interests, "Russia's worried about NATO", which we'll get to NATO in a second, "Russia's worried about NATO, they're so scared, they can't handle themselves, they're peeing their pants, Ukraine is just such a dangerous place for them, it's got Nazis, it has to be demilitarised", all the rest.  Do you see the absurdity of that statement?

So, he's changed his rhetoric.  His rhetoric used to be, "Canada exists because we let them".  That's what he thinks of Canadians, that's what he thinks of Canada, and again, that's absolutely packed around his disillusionment with the government and the empire.  I get it, I get it, I'm not saying that the United States doesn't have problems with its imperialistic means.  Do I have to do my disclaimers again?  All right, Iraq, Afghanistan, I don't agree; those were invasions.  But this is an invasion too.  Why do you defend this man; why do you defend?

All right, so let's do the next one.  Basically, here he's now steelmanning the establishment case.  This is from the Tom Wood show, episode 1689 in July 2020.  He is steelmanning as he thinks the political establishment of the United States, which is always wrong, says about Russia.  He says, "They think this is revanchist, Russia, the return of the Russian Empire, not the USSR, Putin is the Tsar", and he essentially wants to reconsider all of Eastern Europe if we don't stop him.  Everything that Russia does is "Russian aggression".  Everything that America does is defence of democracy and purity and freedom and loveliness and probably Jesus and other things that you like.  "Of course, it's nonsense".  That's what he said.

He goes on, "Putin does stand for election from time to time".  He says, "Hindenburg is actually the best comparison for you.  We'll be sad when he's gone, we don't know how good we've got it.  We've got essentially a very stern, right-wing Republican in charge.  He's not a complete anti-Democrat.  He is a strong man, but he has a parliament and regular elections and he's not naming himself Tsar, and this kind of thing, like in the fantasies".  That was from 2020.  You can superimpose these words, it doesn't matter if they come from Scott Horton on Tom Woods, or any sort of American Empire-loathing classical liberal; just all they do every day on this show, all day, is talk about how bad the US Government is.  You can superimpose those words on any of them.

But I would just ask you, do you think that he was correct in that assessment; or, is the more correct assessment, God forbid, the mainstream establishment view of Russia at the time in 2020?

Peter McCormack: I think some people are so disenfranchised and disillusioned with central government and mainstream news and media, that whenever there is a commonly held view, they have to look for an alternative, there has to be something wrong with it.  It doesn't matter whether it's Ukraine, whether it's COVID, whatever it is.  It's like the alternate meme, "I oppose the current thing".  And I think the most credible people are never in one camp or the other, they have opinions which are case by case.

But I think we've got to this point that people are so disillusioned now, and they've built an identity around being counterculture, whatever the counter-political-party view is, and counter the media opinion.  So, if the media is supporting Ukraine and the governments are supporting Ukraine, well there must be something wrong here, there must be some corruption, Zelenskyy must be corrupt.  There must be Nazis, there must a reason, other than Putin is a psychopathic dictator invading a sovereign country, and it's become a real problem, because I think people have become almost, I don't know how to put it, but it's kind of irrational in their views on what's going on in the world.

Matthew Mežinskis: I 100% agree with you.

Peter McCormack: I'm stuck in this place where, in the cohort of people that my show goes out to, there is a large group of people where I try to have these conversations with them, and I get laughed at and memed at and I'm like, "How are you not seeing what I'm seeing?"  My assumption is, I'm in Europe, I'm a European.  We get on pretty well, we're quite civil out here, it's a different culture, a different way of life. 

I think America's built on friction, and that's okay, it's a different way of doing things, it's built on that friction.  I think we're just built on a different culture, where we try and figure out how to get along, we're in the scars of World War II.  I wasn't a fan of the EU, but we built a way to live in harmony and work together.  I can go to almost any part of Europe, and everyone just gets on.  Europe's quite nice!

Matthew Mežinskis: And you have to generalise, right, these are big topics.  We're talking Russians, Ukrainians, Americans, I like to say Texas Libertarians, it gets the point across a bit more.  But yeah, I agree with you, and I think that as you said before, correcting me when I said just Britain, I think it is Europe by and large that absolutely is united in this, and I'm super-confident in that.  I would further say, look, if the Texas Libertarians had their way, we've got Dave Smith, the Mises Caucus, they're doing quite well in the US, "Have at it, man, I would support you 100%.  You would have my vote if you can actually starve the beast, whatever you want to do, whatever your strategy is.  If you want to get them out of NATO, go ahead and try, and we'll see what the rest of the people have to say".

Again, this goes back to America's so huge; it's different.  We talk about Estonia where it's very, very small.

Peter McCormack: Is it 1.2 million people?

Matthew Mežinskis: Yeah, and Latvia had 2.3 million, now it's about 2 million; Lithuania about 3 million, so very, very small countries.  You can get a better sense of the people and the feeling and the leadership.  You just don't have that in America.  So again, I understand their frustration, I understand it.  But even Michael Malice says he might not be alive to see -- I think he says he probably won't be alive to see a pure anarcho-capitalist society.  I think that's a pretty reasonable thing to say.

So, where are you going to go from here, what do you want?  Do you want to just turn your back on everything, all the good values that America has?  Even if you want to do it in the most rosy terms, like born and bred throughout the world, it's only America; or, do you want to just try and be a little bit more reasonable about it and support people that are having their sovereignty, their soil, their land invaded by an aggressor?  So, that's I think a big part of it.

Peter McCormack: Do you think part of the reason that other people are also nervous about offering support is that I think there are two major nations people will be pretty scared to go to war with, one's China and one's Russia, and for obvious reasons, because the escalation --

Matthew Mežinskis: Yeah, it's bullshit from me from this side.  We're not talking about invading Moscow.

Peter McCormack: No, I know.

Matthew Mežinskis: No, but it's a real point.  Who is talking about invading Moscow?  We never were, it's a shithole, we never want to go there.  St Petersburg and Moscow, they're the only places there's any sort of semblance of a civilisation.  We're going to get to all this!  Let's talk about Putin just for a second, okay.  This is the idea.  As you can see, Scott Horton is perfectly fine saying in 2020, many people as well, "They have a democracy, it's a vibrant economy, growing economy in Moscow, it's very nice".

Peter McCormack: They do not have a democracy.

Matthew Mežinskis: Thank you.  I mean, it's pretty obvious to say, but these are the things that are said; he's just said that quote that I said.  He's at least not anti-Democrat; I said that there!  The most rosy terms they might say, not even the most rosy terms, he's calling it a democracy, he stands for election from time to time, a strong man.

Peter McCormack: I think when you're murdering your political oppositions, or trying to poison them, or putting them in jail consistently for bullshit corruption charges, when you are rumoured to be potentially the richest person in the world --

Matthew Mežinskis: And he is, as Bill Browder said.  I think the take is probably 50%, and all that stuff.  There's a lot of good books; we can link them as well in the show notes, I would recommend.

Peter McCormack: There is no democracy in Russia.

Matthew Mežinskis: There is no democracy at all in Russia.  Russians are fucked, and as far as the visa issue, that's another issue which we'll talk about in a second, which is going to screw them more; and I think as long as Russians can see that there's no other way, at some level you are going to get the government that you deserve.  And it's only going to be them to stop what's happening, it's only going to be them.  It's the Russians that are mining the Zaporizhzhia powerplant right now in Ukraine, weaponising that, which is very, very bad.

Anyway, quickly on Putin, because people still don't understand who Putin is; Lex Fridman is a good example.  This guy grew up in the Soviet Union.  For the very early part of his podcast, I would listen to every comment he had about Russia.  He thought that Putin was just this naïve, wannabe diplomat, who was trying to gain self-respect in the West, but he was a little bit naïve about the way western politicians would treat him.  He was a good guy; yeah, he had his connections to the intelligence agencies, but he was just a little bit naïve.  It took him a long time of being scarred and rejected by the Bush Administration, a lot of rejections by the Obama Administration, a lot of things like that; it took him a long time to get to where he is now 22 years later.

Not true in the slightest.  Russia's never had a democratic election.  Yeltsin, just complete madness in the 1990s.  The oligarchs re-elected Yeltsin in 1996, the oligarchs: Boris Berezovsky, Gusinsky, Chubais, all these guys, they got him re-elected in 1996.  In 1999, Putin is appointed Prime Minister, and then he is appointed President immediately at the end of 1999; Boris Yeltsin resigns.  He has one election, which is still disputed by most international organisations that it wasn't ballot stuffing.  And then, every election since has always been disputed by international organisations that it's not legitimate.

Again, we're not talking about blockchain stuff here, this is meatspace, you are going to have to use multiple frames of reference, multiple pieces of proof to prove something.  You can't just run a hash and make sure this is what happened, it's just not how it works in the real world today in 2022.  And all organisations have said that Russia has never had a legitimate election, at least since 2004, but basically 1996 wasn't legitimate, nor 2000, in my view, and there are other organisations that said the same about 2000 as well.  And in 1996, the oligarchs elected him.

In 2000, Vladimir Putin stole, he took, he privatised, actually he nationalised; he took for himself, but he nationalised by the government, the most critical private news network, it's called NTV, it was owned by an oligarch, Gusinsky.  In the year 2000, he took it back from him.  Gusinsky was one of the oligarchs that got him elected.  In 2001, Boris Berezovsky, he was another of the oligarchs that got him elected, he took his news channel, the entire network, the entire television network, he took in 2001. 

In 2002, 2003, he starts taking aim at Mikhail Khodorkovsky, who is now in exile in Switzerland.  He was in jail for nine years, ten years, was freed just before the Sochi Olympics.  He took his ill-gotten gain -- we can talk about the oligarchs in a second, let's just leave them aside -- his ill-gotten gained business for sure.  I mean, he was not innocent in the way that he got the business, but he was the largest, most successful oligarch in Russia, had the largest oil business by far in Russia, privately held oil business in the world.  Putin took it by 2003.

Do you remember when Navalny was taken in in January 2021, I guess it was?

Peter McCormack: Put in jail.

Matthew Mežinskis: Yeah, put in jail, went back from Germany.  He was poisoned by Novichok, which Russia loves to do to its dissidents, never says them by name.  He just called Navalny "the German Patient".  He couldn't say him by name, because why give any credibility to people that are going to stop you.  Never would say him by name, he was scared of him, tried to poison him with Novichok in Russia, got better in Germany, went back to Germany, was arrested.  The day that Navalny was arrested in Russia, his team released a massive, important video, which I could recommend.

Peter McCormack: I've seen it.

Matthew Mežinskis: The Putin's Palace.  This is not a surprise to --

Peter McCormack: Have you seen this?

Danny Knowles: No, I've not seen it.

Peter McCormack: You've got to see this building.  It's like a Russian Bond lair, like the baddie in the Bond movies.  Search it up. 

Danny Knowles: What's it called?

Matthew Mežinskis: Putin's Palace should be the English translation.  The video was released in Russian, later they released an English version.  There's subs on the Russian version, it's definitely watchable.

Peter McCormack: We'll put it in the show notes, it's incredible.

Matthew Mežinskis: Yeah.  And so, this was no surprise to me.  Anybody who follows Russia, we know that he's been building this for years.  But what I did not know, and they showed in that video, do you know when they started collecting the lands?  The FSB owns the land, it's like the size of 20 Monacos, and Russia does not have a big Black Sea Coast, it's the main cape on the coast; everybody knows it's there, but it's the open secret.

The FSB owns the land, former KGB, they own the land; there's a no-fly zone over it.  Do you know when he started to work on this project?

Peter McCormack: I've no idea.

Matthew Mežinskis: 2003.

Peter McCormack: What?  You'll know, because it's got the two big spines that go up.

Danny Knowles: I'm just struggling with the internet at the moment.

Peter McCormack: Okay.

Matthew Mežinskis: I mean, I'm trying to find the right word to describe Vladimir Putin, my insults change every time.  But I mean, a devil honky cunt.  I mean, I don't know how to explain this guy.  There's nothing redeemable about this guy.  He's not a democrat, he's not a republican, he's not for democracy, he's a thief and he's a bad one at that, because everybody -- well, good in the sense that he's succeeded for now, good on him, congratulations.  Putin, you've only fucked your entire country and the whole world hates you and your economy's cratering, finally, as it should have been.  But we have been warning about this for decades.

All right, I don't want to go off, but one more on NATO, just one more quickly on NATO.  Have you got something?

Peter McCormack: Just when I watched that documentary, what was the connection with the judo instructor or something, do you remember that?

Matthew Mežinskis: One of his friends that takes his fortune?

Peter McCormack: Yeah, who's he?

Matthew Mežinskis: Honestly, I don't remember the judo instructor, but there's this cellist, Roldugin, who is a cellist in the Moscow Symphony, or whatever, from St Petersburg originally childhood, maybe he's in St Petersburg Symphony, sorry.  You've got to fact-check me on that one.  But he is a cellist and he's richer than Jay Z!

Peter McCormack: So he's a billionaire!

Matthew Mežinskis: I mean, it's comically bad, if you would just push the veneer a little bit.  And yet, I cannot fathom the lack of self-awareness, the lack of understanding, the hypocrisy.  If you're going to get on the Tom Wood show, you're going to talk about liberty and freedom and economics and self-sovereignty and you're going to defend this guy, you're going to say, "He has a right to his security"…

Peter McCormack: Have you found it?

Danny Knowles: Yeah, I think so.  Is it this?

Matthew Mežinskis: Indeed it is.

Peter McCormack: Yeah, but that's not the bit I was thinking of.  It is that, but there is that one building, do you know the one, the one that's up into the --

Matthew Mežinskis: Yeah, there's a winery there, there's a helipad.  There was going to be a hockey rink.  The thing is, they had to rebuild it three times, because it's all Russian style, it's secret, you have to sign NDAs, which don't mean anything in Russia, or it's just the fear of death means something in Russia; so, they had to keep it secret.  It just started to mould.  He's never actually used it, best we can tell, he's never actually been there, but it's mouldy, they had to redo it.  It's just an absolute -- this is taxpayer money.

Peter McCormack: It's like a Bond villain lair.

Matthew Mežinskis: It's just insane, it's absolutely insane.  So, yeah, like you see here, renovations on a brand-new palace!  It's just been moulded over.

Peter McCormack: It's not the bit I was thinking of though.

Matthew Mežinskis: I don't know, there's wineries there, there's all sorts of things that are going to be horribly managed, mismanaged, and whatever.  It's a no-fly zone, the FSB owns the land.

Peter McCormack: Look at that, that's unbelievable.  What is that?  Is that a church?  There's got to be a lot of underground bunkers there as well.  What are those weird little houses?  Fucking hell, this is weird.  Yeah, okay.  So, what drives him; is he just a power-hungry thief, gangster?

Matthew Mežinskis: Yeah, it's a gangster state, it's always been this way.  And just to be clear, why is Russia so fucked up; why is Russia always causing problems?  Why are they murdering their ex-spies, their ex-agents with Plutonium and Novochok on British soil?  By the way, the reason they do that, it was a former aide, I can't remember, it was in one of the books I read; it was a former aide, like Obama or even Trump, that said that the idea is basically the KGB is telling western governments, the FSB, KGB, doesn't matter what you call them, "We don't give a fuck about you.  We don't respect you, we don't respect your rules, we don't believe in your rules, we're different people", that's why they do it.  It's specifically geared towards traitors, but it's also of course to instil fear in free societies. 

So again, why would we let this stand, which finally, finally in 2022, now we have the Baltics, Finland, the Czechs did it, it's coming more, we've banned now tourist visas for Russians, which is very, very important and we need to continue that.  I feel for every Russian dissident that lives in Europe, and there are a lot of them.  I can again send some links if people want to follow the good people on Twitter that are actually posting lots of sources, lots of good stuff about why you should not be supporting this regime.  They can't go back, they'll be killed.  I feel very much for them, I feel very much for their people, but how many chances are we going to give them?

Danny, if you can go now to the link that I sent you?

Peter McCormack: And, is it because, as you said, you can't invade Russia, we have to drive a revolution from within; and so, what do you think --

Matthew Mežinskis: Nor do we want to.

Peter McCormack: Of course.  But what do you think when, say, tennis players are excluded from tournaments, or the Russian driver was excluded from Formula 1, what do you think about that?

Matthew Mežinskis: I don't know, I don't have a strong opinion.  I know that there are a lot of people on the tour that support them not being banned, maybe some that support them being banned.  I would say things like that, which in my view are relatively inconsequential but I guess it's interesting, because a lot of eyeballs on the sport, you've got to look at it case by case.  If it's something like, this is an arsehole who's been a propogandist for Putin, maybe you'd want to ban him; if not, then maybe don't.  I don't know, I don't have a strong -- I'm not triggered by it one way or another, but I do think if we're talking about tourist visas, that might ban them, unless they get a professional visa where they could stay; that would ban them regardless.

I actually have to say, I am more in favour of these bans than I have ever been, and look, my child, my daughter, has Slavic blood.  I don't have any hatred to the Russian people, none whatsoever.  Again, I hate even having to make those disclaimers, they're so juvenile, disclaimers, in the context of this argument, where Ukrainians are being raped, pillaged, murdered, sending washing machines home back to Siberia via Belarus post offices.  This is the kind of machine you are supporting, tacitly or not, when you're saying all the things that unfortunately Scott said on your interview, and many Texas Libertarians say in many other places.

Okay, here's a good one on visa bans.  Number one, so this guy's a very -- "I left Russia in 1995 as an exchange student".  This guy, Sergey Radchenko, very smart, well-versed Russian dissident, lives in Europe now, "It was a deeply transformative experience that made me who I have become.  So I will always be strongly opposed to measures aimed at blocking student exchange.  Unmitigated folly". 

Okay, now this is Toomas Ilves, former President of Estonia.  He's an American Estonian like I'm an American Latvian.  To me, this hits the bullseye; he's replying to this tweet, "Estonia is not a social welfare agency for solving Russia's problems.  We have no obligations to help a country that for 31 years, has threatened us and now commits genocide in Ukraine.  It's been 31 years.  We fixed our country.  We owe the country that ruined ours nothing".

Peter McCormack: That's a fucking brilliant tweet.  I've got to follow this guy.

Matthew Mežinskis: He is unrepentant, nor should he be.  I mean, just straight to the bone, every tweet that he does, and he's the former President of Estonia.  He coded, he helped turn Estonia into the digital residency country that it is today for many businesses.

Peter McCormack: I'll follow up.  Danny, read that one underneath.

Danny Knowles: "I should add that while we are a rather small country and small universities, we have allotted 250 places and scholarships for Ukrainians at the National University in Tartu.  Who needs it more?  Russians or the Ukrainian students they are intent on killing, castrating or raping?"

Matthew Mežinskis: Yeah, I didn't even mention mutilating that's been going on.

Peter McCormack: Yeah, I mean it's blunt, it's full on, but it's fucking good.

Matthew Mežinskis: I mean, you really don't need to follow up to those words.  It explains the way that we feel about it, the way that we've lived with this.  We're done with this.  Look, you are now invading Ukraine, we're not going to stand for it, and we're certainly not going to side with people who say that Russia's security interests are the problem here.

Okay, next one, Ilves on Russian's giving up Estonian -- this one is fucking brilliant.  All right, now, "Russia for years has had a program --"

Peter McCormack: Is the tweet he's quoting first; is that important?

Matthew Mežinskis: No.  Okay, so this again, there is an insane video.  I can't tell if it was -- there's parody on this video.  I can't tell if it was parody on parody, or if this was actual parody, but it's the most insane video that was circulated on Russian Telegram saying, "Russia is great, we have no cancel culture, cheap electricity and water, beautiful women", meanwhile they just show two girls, little girls, running through the field when they say that.  I can't tell if it's parody or not.

Then they say, "We have Christianity, no cancel culture".  And then at the end they say, "Winter is coming.  Move to Russia"!  It was circulated on Russian Telegram groups.

Peter McCormack: They've got Vodka!

Matthew Mežinskis: "We've got Vodka"!

Peter McCormack: Always got to have Vodka in it!

Matthew Mežinskis: "An economy that can withstand thousands of sanctions.  Time to move to Russia.  Don't delay.  Winter is coming"!  That's actually how the narrator says it in the video.  It's fucking odd.

Peter McCormack: That's an odd way to end it.

Matthew Mežinskis: I can't tell if that's parody, but there's definitely a parody of that one.  Look, "Beautiful women", okay there's a woman.

Peter McCormack: She is beautiful.

Matthew Mežinskis: No, but before, did you see the children running while they're saying -- all right, now Russia --

Peter McCormack: Who's this for?

Matthew Mežinskis: This was on Russia Telegram.  Apparently, this is for Europeans.  Because Russia's so fucked, they want to say, "Oh, we're actually not so bad, move to Russia, help our economy get back on its feet".

Danny Knowles: No cancel culture, but we'll murder journalists.

Matthew Mežinskis: Yeah.  State-controlled Telegram channels won't stop bragging about this video.  Anyway, it's not really actually the point, but yeah, to tee this one up for the audio listeners of the show here, again -- actually, here's an interesting thing.  When the Soviet Union ended, some Russians -- so, Estonia and Russia are unlike Lithuania.  Lithuania's fairly homogenous.  Again, this is another reason why they're a fierce critic of everything Russia, always have been.

Estonia and Lithuania have always been a little bit more balanced on a state level, because we have a significant Russian ethnic minority population, about 27%, and they were all transplanted in during the Soviet Union, which again was an illegal occupation; all these things need to be taken into account.  In post-Soviet Baltic countries, Latvia, Lithuania, Latvia and Estonia in particular, Lithuania to a minor extent, and the rest of Eastern Europe as well, Russians that were transplanted in, it was now a free Russia.  You could travel, we had now a Russian state.  Yeltsin was supposed to be turning it around, all the rest. 

So, there were programmes by Russians to get native Russians in these other countries, the supernational state that was completely fictitious and transplanted all these people in, to get them to move back.  Not many people wanted to go; that's something to take in mind.  Also, Russia at the time also admitted that they were not prepared to do much for them.  Now here, Ilves describes exactly the programme I'm talking about, "Russia for years has had a program paying Russians abroad to move home.  In some 20 years, a stunning five moved back from Estonia.  Five.  Unless I am mistaken, after some months/years, three wanted to come back to Estonia".

Now, I don't know the stats on Latvia, but I know that the phenomenon is exactly the same.  So, look, this is the bullshit, the naivety.  Why was Lew Rockwell, ten years ago, saying Russia was such a vibrant beautiful place, democracy full of hope and peace and everything, because it's absolute bullshit and not true? 

This is the reality.  In Latvia, there's a small town, it's called Daugavpils, it's about 100,000 mostly ethnic Russians.  That's just where they've lived and congregated, whatever.  You couldn't sell them a Russian passport.  They are Russians, some of them are old believers, which means they came back before the Soviet Union, but anyway you could not sell them a Russian passport.  If Vladimir Putin came to one of these Russians with a passport and said, "Please take our Russian passport in exchange from your Latvian passport", they would tell him to fuck right off.  These are Russians in Latvia, Russians in Estonia; the proof is right there.  This is the reality of Russia and how Russia's "near-abroad", which is a Putin term, about how he needs to protect his near-abroad, this is how they look at him in reality.

Peter McCormack: So, why is there so much division around the border regions then, and why was there so much conflict?  I watched a documentary recently, there was a lot of hostility between Ukrainians and Russian Ukrainians around the Donbas region.  Was that division that was being stoked; is it historical division?

Matthew Mežinskis: So, now we can get into Ukraine a little bit.  Ukraine proper, even its pre-2014 invasion, it's going on for eight years, its pre-2014 invasion borders in Ukraine, not counting Crimea, was always ethnically Ukrainian, it was always.  Even in the Donbas, it would be like 56%, I think was the last census that was ever done.  It was never a below majority Russian.  It is true though that in the Donbas area, they had more trade with Russia, they were coalmining towns they just had in the Soviet Union, you're always speaking Russian anyway.  They didn't have really a Ukrainian identity the way that Western Ukraine has.  Just to be clear, they are ethnically Ukrainian primarily in that region, but not by much.

How these things came about, they came about post-Maidan, which we can talk about as well, because Scott Horton thought that was all started by Nazis and by the CIA; post-Maidan the Donbas had to --

Peter McCormack: You should probably explain what Maidan is.

Matthew Mežinskis: So, Maidan was the Euromaidan Revolution that happened in 2014.  I was there, many of my friends were there.  It started in November 2013, it moved into February 2014 and eventually culminated in a few things.  It was the ousting of former President Yanukovych of Ukraine, who -- where did he flee?  Did he flee to Syria, Italy, New York?  No.  He now lives in a multimillion-dollar penthouse in Moscow.

Peter McCormack: Was this when they had the snipers and they were shooting down --

Matthew Mežinskis: Yeah, the Heavenly Hundred.  Those were his people, his security services that shot them, was the conclusion of that event.  I was there, it was the most -- I'm not an investigative journalist or whatnot, I just have a humble podcast, I have friends in Ukraine, but I can tell you that being there, it was in February 2014, it was the most that I've ever felt I was close to a war front.  It was extremely tense.

Basically what happened, it was like an Occupy Wall Street, but it was Occupy Maidan.  Maidan is the Freedom Square in Ukraine.  It was basically occupied and it was a real thing.  About a million Ukrainians came to Maidan and all around Ukraine during that time.  And why did they come?  Because Yanukovych reneged on one of the first agreements that would have helped for EU accession, moving towards the EU, which Ukraine, a country of 40 million people strong, not at all a country of 40 million Nazis, a country of 40 million people strong was ready to move towards the EU.  They'd been agitating for it, they wanted it, and so the revolution was actually started by students in November 2013.  I was there, many people were there; it was an unbelievable thing.

I'm trying to think about how deep I want to go here on that issue.  Basically, Maidan ended with the ousting of Yanukovych.  The people got him out, which was a wonderful thing.  It was actually the second time.  The first time he was out was in the Orange Revolution in 2004.  Again, Scott Horton liked to just throw in there that it was all the responsibility of the CIA.

Peter McCormack: Yeah, I was going to say, a CIA plot.

Matthew Mežinskis: These people have no agency; they must just be dumb Ukrainians, because they have no agency, they can't think for themselves, they take absolutely no agency.  It's all got to be the CIA.  It's just remarkable to think that!

Now, I want to address one of the things.  So, Scott always likes to bring up the Victoria Nuland call, which was a leaked call, that after the Maidan had occurred, there were four factions actually.  There was Klitschko, the former boxer, his faction; there was Yatsenyuk; and there was Tymoshenko.  She was failed, a political prisoner basically under the prior regime, it was her faction.  And then, it was the Maidan.  Maidan itself kind of became a faction, it was a live part of what was going to happen next with the government, because Yanukovych fled, he had the most corrupt mansion ever.  They turned it into a museum, it was insane; I mean, gold-plated toilets, whatever.  I'm exaggerating a little bit there, but it was just insane.  The stuff that he stole, everything was insane.

He also had a black book, by the way, which his party, the Party of Regions, had.  It had billions of dollars of bribes.  Paul Manafort was in that book, many people were in that book.  These signatures were verified.  The remarkable thing is this black book was signed by some of the Party of Regions, which is his party, this Donbas region, which was more corrupt, more Putin-friendly, more favourable towards Russia, they signed these bribes like, "I agree with you on this one, I'll take the money".  It had signatures of the people that were basically -- you know how corruption works, right?  Everybody's got to be a part of it.  If someone wants to get out, you can't get out because you're guilty too.  That's how corruption works.  So, they actually had it on paper and the signatures were verified after the fact.  This was found in his residence, his presidential residence.

Anyway, these were all the different factions.  It was absolutely not a CIA coup, or whatnot, and it was a phone call that was leaked.  Victoria Nuland who, this woman, I mean she's like the Undersecretary of State I think at the time.  She was handing out cookies in Maidan in good US leadership style, not really putting on a good face for the US, just it's a bit cheeky going around handing out cookies during this revolution.  And, yeah, they were trying to say who they wanted to get into the new regime, and they said they think it's Yatsenyuk.  She said, "Fuck the EU", and all this, and it looked bad.

But again, can you point to that as being that the CIA is something that was running this?  Yatsenyuk was the interim Prime Minister; now he's out.  And even before that, this Yanukovych, this corrupt Yanukovych, who now lives not in Italy or Syria, or wherever, he lives in Moscow, it was like a $30 million penthouse he lived in.  It's probably well down now at least in valuation.  He was ousted twice.  So, in 2004, that Orange Revolution was again a CIA plot, of course.  If you remember, Team America, you remember the puppet, Yushchenko was his name who beat him, came back because it was a rigged election.  He had the pockmarked face.  He got poisoned; of course, Russian-influenced election there.

The Ukrainians threw him out then.  They got back in because there was a lot of Russian influence in that Donbas region, and then the Ukrainians threw him out again in 2014.  Look, is it perfect; is it an ideal society?  No, absolutely not, I can't tell you that.  But there was a clear movement from Ukraine, a country of 40 million people, who had agency, who wanted to move towards the West, wanted to move towards Europe; there was a clear agitation for that from everyone, from students, from everyone for 30 years.  And look, in 2014, they almost made it happen, and that's what sparked the revolution.  Since then, it's basically over for Ukraine; now, it's officially over.  And when I say it's over for Ukraine, I mean they're never looking back as far as Big Brother Russia.

Another thing, I'm jumping with topics here now, the Kremlin always deflects and projects.  They say they want to de-Nazify or demilitarise.  That's exactly what should be happening to them, but Putin is not…  You need to understand that when Putin speaks, he's just trolling, he's a good troll, and he learned it over 22 years.  I would be a good troll as well if I had a whole petrostate at my fingertips, and I had all of these advisors basically just watching the western press, running an internet research agency, telling me the things that Donald Trump supporters might want to hear, or some anti-Obama faction might want to hear.  That's all that he's doing, he's just putting this stuff out to the West all the time, every day, just his little statements.  That's just what they are doing, they're just trolling the West to say, "We're a really level-headed, normal society too.  I haven't stolen all the wealth in my country".

Russia's the third largest exporter of oil in the world.  Do you know how much of GDP they represent?  3%.  The third largest oil exporter in the world, 3% of global GDP.  It's an absolute banana republic, absolutely.  All right, so all of these things, it's corruption.  All I can say is the reason that Ukraine blew up in the -- so, after this Maidan Revolution, Ukraine had these two, Donetsk and Luhansk People's Republics.  The only reason that they signed over was because of the FSB.  It wasn't Russian peacekeepers coming in, these were FSB agents.  This guy, Igor Girkin, absolutely scumbag, he cut out the stomach of one of the local councilmen in 2014. 

Everything was at gunpoint, all right, and that includes Crimea as well, Crimea was at gunpoint, Luhansk, Donetsk, was all at gunpoint in 2014 by the FSB, and they shot down MH17 months later, in July 2014; we just forgot about that as the West, we forgot out it.  The Dutch were pissed, but the Dutch, as they do, they just kind of went on, stiff upper lip!

Peter McCormack: Well, I think, what's his name; Eliot, the guy that did the research?

Danny Knowles: From Bellingcat?

Peter McCormack: Yeah, Bellingcat.  Eliot Higgins?  Yeah, Eliot Higgins.  I mean, they did the work on MH17.

Matthew Mežinskis: Yeah, it's been proven.  It's like the 53rd Regiment, I think, is the number, just across the border, brought that surface-to-air missile that took down the plane.  Igor Girkin was in charge of that as well as an FSB agent.  He's an absolute scumbag imperialist; there's so many of them.  They were all agitated in doing all of this stuff, and look where it got them, to be closer to Mother Russia, to be closer to the security.

Peter McCormack: What do you think's driving it all though; why?  I think a lot of people want to know why, or does he just not care, he doesn't give a fuck, just he is a gangster, fuck them?

Matthew Mežinskis: No, I think he wants resources.  Ukraine is the breadbasket of Europe.  They have huge oil and gas resources, even more have been discovered since the initial invasion, my understanding.

Peter McCormack: Why does he want more resources though?

Matthew Mežinskis: Because he's a corrupt criminal and he just takes them all, as Bill Browder says, who is probably the westerner that Vladimir Putin hates the most, because Vladimir Putin usually speaks in this KGB speak.  Like I said, he never says the name of the people that oppose him, like Navalny; he never says the name, he calls him the German Patient.  He doesn’t think that Americans can pick up on that, so he actually said, "This private US citizen", he used to be a hedge fund manager in Russia.  He started this thing called The Magnitsky Act, which was taking away visas, and was freezing orders on oligarchs and stuff, which was their Achilles Heel, because again they just steal this stuff and they say they hate Europe, they hate woke culture in Europe.  But where do all the oligarchs go in the summer or the winter?  They're in Cannes, they're in Antibes, they're in Nice, all the rest.

So again, we're on a lot of different topics here now, but I feel like I could wrap this up.  Oh, no, what does he want?  He obviously wants to go all through the Northern Coast of the Black Sea.  He took Crimea, we didn't do anything.  It's their land, is Crimea; I'm going to talk about Crimea as well in a sec.  He took all their land, all the way on the north part of the Black Sea.  He wants to take Moldova, which doesn't have any Black Sea coast, but he wants to take that, and then move on.

Peter McCormack: Is it for the ports; is it strategic?

Matthew Mežinskis: Absolutely.  Crimea is a historical freeport.  And another thing, this was another thing Scott unfortunately said on your show, it was like, "There were only five people --", this just enraging faux effect care that he was putting towards the people of Crimea.  He was like, "You know what, five people died, I'm really sad for those people that died, but that's all that happened, it was a very successful takeover of Crimea".  It's not their land; it's the Ukrainians' land.  The Russians took it. 

Again, the only Canadian/US example that makes sense that Scott Horton should say is if the United States tried to go and take Canada.  We're not going to do that.  You can talk all you want about the empire that you hate, or the deep state, or the CIA, or whatever; it's not their land, they have some agency.

Okay, so Crimea.  Russia has about 130 years of Tsarist rule over Crimea, but before that it was ruled by the Ottomans for 600 years.  And after the Tsars, it was an autonomous region of the Soviet Union, for the first half of the Soviet Union, before World War II.  After World War II, then it was part of Ukraine.  So, you break up the independent Ukraine; the only time that Russia owned Crimea, or had any claim on Crimea, was about 130 years -- was late-1700s to the start of the 20th century, 130 years.  And just to say that that's okay, that they can take it, because at those times that was the claim of the Russian Empire, you've got to again push on that veneer.

There were Jews there, there were Genoans there, it was a freeport.  And regardless, it was not Russia's at the time, it was Ukraine's.  Russia, as well as Germany as well as everybody, signed agreements of the dissolution of the Soviet Union.  By the way, Russia signed an agreement and Germany signed an agreement that gave up Kaliningrad.  So again, Scott Horton wants to think that there's some statute of limitations, but it only goes back to the people that tried to prove his point, like Tsarist Russia.

Tsarist Russia had the Pale of Settlement.  The most antisemitic group of people in Europe was under Tsarist Russia.  And you're trying to make all of these examples to prove your point about the most despicable people of any part of Europe, when in reality let's talk about the statute of limitations.  Lithuania and Poland had the biggest state in Europe for 500 years.  Latvia and Estonia did not, they were more like tribal states, they were more, I don't know, they were tribes that kind of honoured more of the German Empire more of the time.  But Lithuania absolutely was not.  Lithuania had the biggest state for 300 years in Europe from about 1300 to 1600.  And from 1600 to 1800, it was the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth; it was the biggest state in Europe before, or since, other than the European Union.

So, what do you want to talk about, like a statute of limitations?  Those are the people that were governing Ukraine.  And by the way, when you talk about who's governing at that time, it was just to pay your taxes, not like the Tsar was running around and just mutilating people and doing things that we've started to do in the 20th century.  People could do their business.  The Tsarist ideas are very -- there's a light tough, let's say. 

But regardless, Tsarist Russia gave you the Pale of Settlement.  The Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth, if you want to go there, was much older, had more of a dominance of Ukraine than Russia ever did, and they were free.  The Jews were free there, the Catholics were free there.  This was Lviv, Lemberg in Germany, and Kyiv as well; all of that was for 500 years part of the Lithuanian Grand Duchy, then the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth.  And Scott Horton thinks that we need to focus on 130 years of Tsarist Russia, the Crimea.

Peter McCormack: Have you reached out to Scott?

Matthew Mežinskis: I've been tagged by listeners of mine to debate him.  I have said that I would; no response.  I'd be happy to.

Peter McCormack: You'd maybe have to go to Texas to do it.  I don't think it could be done remotely.

Matthew Mežinskis: I'd be happy to.

Peter McCormack: Okay.

Matthew Mežinskis: It's a lot!

Peter McCormack: It is a lot, and you're fired up in the most impressive way.  I mean, me and Danny have just -- it's a terrible subject; but at the same time, we've been just looking at each other and then just in agreement that this is the right show to make, and I'm glad that you've reached out to me, I'm glad you came and did it, I'm glad you've corrected, or brought in this alternative viewpoint to Scott's, which clarifies some things which I was having my own doubts about.  The war's kind of been forgotten now.

Matthew Mežinskis: Not by us, not by anybody in Eastern Europe.

Peter McCormack: No, of course not, but in the West it's not on the news as much as it was.  We're not hearing or seeing as much.  What's the current status; what's happening?

Matthew Mežinskis: Not a lot, it's in a lull.  On the front, there's sort of a summer lull, I guess.  They're regrouping on the front of the west.  Most of the fighting's in the south, in the Kherson city, which is right bordering this bridge, which has basically been destroyed by these HIMARS systems that Ukraine got from the West, which is very good.  So, Russia's now in danger of going any further if they can't resupply; they have to make pontoons and stuff over the Dnipro.

Peter McCormack: But these reports that we've seen of the numbers of troop deaths of Russians and planes which are -- are they accurate, or is that a little bit of propaganda?  It's like 30,000 troops have been killed.

Matthew Mežinskis: It's been 30,000 for a while.  The numbers were higher at the beginning, I thought, and then they slowly ebbed; they've ebbed slow, more slowly now.  There's absolutely propaganda from the Ukraine side.  I mean, the fog of war, absolutely.  I would also encourage your listeners to listen to my show.  I interviewed Peter Todd in April.  I respect Peter a lot.  Peter has Ukrainian friends, and I noticed Peter was liking everything that I liked, and I was like, "Wow!" because there's a "don't trust, verify" guy; I need to talk to him about what's going on here.

I think that's a very important thing as well.  You have to use multiple sources, you have to use photos, you have to talk to people and everything.  There was this interesting exchange he had with Bruce Fenton, who was again taking, whatever, the Texas Libertarian view where it's like --

Peter McCormack: He's more New Hampshire Libertarian.

Matthew Mežinskis: No, he's not, but there's a view.

Peter McCormack: Yeah, I know.  I like Bruce though.

Matthew Mežinskis: I like Bruce a lot too, but I'm not -- again, everything I said about Scott's views are specific to this issue.  It doesn't mean on other issues, we don't agree.  When you're talking about people's lives, you're going to be fired up about some of those things.  Bruce was arguing with Peter saying, "I have no idea what's going on, I have no idea where to look, I don't understand any of the pictures, I don't know anything about this, people, I don't trust the news".  So, Peter was explaining, "Look, if you are interested to learn, go to some of these sources, these are places I've found trustworthy".  And again, this is a "don't trust, verify" person, and he talked about this on our show as well.  I was very happy with the interview.  He actually said it was one of the more important interviews he did.  I agree, based on the subject matter.

But the horribly ironic thing about that discussion that they had was, that was the morning of the Bucha massacre being unveiled to the world, that was just before.  So again, you can sit by and say that you don't know anything, you don't know anything about it; there are plenty of resources there.  Bellingcat is a wonderful resource, wonderful people there at Bellingcat, absolutely wonderful.  You can donate, a great organisation I think, it's Lithuanian, it's called Blue/Yellow.  They've actually been there since 2014 as this war in Ukraine started in 2014, and they have a good organisation.  But there are plenty of Telegram chats, people that are willing to help.

If you want information, you can absolutely get it, and I think that's an important thing to keep in mind, as far as how to go about this stuff.  It just doesn't work with "don't trust, verify", nor should it, right?  What's the Bitcoin ethos?  It's like great little things are going to go on the blockchain; this stuff certainly isn't one, and nor can it be.

Peter McCormack: When the US Administration talks about sending $40 billion of funding, of which I don't know how much of that is actually funding for Ukraine, there is a lot of rejection of that.  It's like, "We've got our own domestic issues, why are we sending so much money?"  Part of me was thinking, at times of war, you should help the people who deserve help.  If my government was going to be sending weapons or money to help people defend themselves against an aggressor, I'm not opposed to that, but I understand certain people are.  What opinion do you hold on that?

Matthew Mežinskis: It's a hard problem; war is the hard problem, and I think that if we are going to talk about -- one of my friends is a great European libertarian, let's say.  He doesn't like to use the words "the West".  He's just like, "Call it liberal democracies, call it what it is.  We know the values that we stand for.  And if your nation is under attack, that's all we can do is to try to help you defend it".  You can stretch this very far, like Taiwan, what's happening with the Uyghurs.  I mean Chamath Palihapitiya, remember that one?

Peter McCormack: No, tell me that.

Matthew Mežinskis: "No one cares about the Uyghurs"?

Peter McCormack: Oh, the Uyghurs, yeah, I know about the Uyghurs.

Matthew Mežinskis: "No one cares about the Uyghurs".

Peter McCormack: Oh, Chamath, sorry.

Matthew Mežinskis: Chamath Palihapitiya.

Peter McCormack: Yeah, "It's below my level of --"

Matthew Mežinskis: "It's below my line".

Peter McCormack: Yeah, fuck that guy.

Matthew Mežinskis: "No one cares about the Uyghurs".  What an absolute --

Peter McCormack: No, but he's a fucking arsehole.

Matthew Mežinskis: He's absolutely an arsehole, no one likes him.

Peter McCormack: He is a rich, privileged, VC --

Matthew Mežinskis: Loathe, yeah.

Peter McCormack: Fuck that guy.

Matthew Mežinskis: I can't even start with this, "Below my line" or, "Above my line" stuff.  Everything, you need to be moving more boldly ever day against evil in the world.  So, whether it's Taiwan, the Uyghurs.  Dave Smith said something interesting on some pod, I can't remember, he's like, "When you're talking about shoring up your defence as America and talking about, what are you going to do when, say, China takes Taiwan, or whatever" he's like, "look, we've got to stand by and watch".  I'm like, I don't think that's the right answer.  I mean, there's a lot more that needs to be done.

Unfortunately, it doesn't mean that I'm allied with plastic Nancy Pelosi, who just goes there and her son is on the board of some semiconductor company, or whatever, which by the way Chamath said, "I care about much more what happens with Taiwan, because of the semiconductors, than I do about the Uyghurs", he said that.

Peter McCormack: Yeah, because that's probably to do with where his investments are.

Matthew Mežinskis: Unbelievable; unbelievable.  And look, I mean Dave said, "What, are we going to go into Seoul if China helps North Korea take that?"  Maybe.  I mean, what are we talking about here?  We're talking about saving and standing up for democratic, classic liberal values around the world, liberalism.  No one is talking about invading Moscow; how many times do I have to say it?  No one is talking about invading Moscow.

Peter McCormack: Yeah, Taiwan does feel like a particularly difficult problem, and I dread to think what's going to happen there, but it's an escalating situation and it worries me.  I don't see a scenario where the US or Europe goes to war with China.  I think we probably will stand by and it will happen, like it did with Hong Kong; I think it just will happen.  What are the alternatives?  Are we going to send warships there?  I don't know.

Look, I want to be part of something that does defend Taiwan.  I've been there, the people are amazing, it's a great place.  But when you play it out, what's the scenario where do defend someone; do you make compromises?  You're like, "Well, this is one you let go, but they invaded Seoul".  I don't know, I'm just a guy who asks simple questions to smart people.  What do you think?

Matthew Mežinskis: I think that we cannot stand by, and it pains me to say that I actually appreciate something that plastic Nancy Pelosi would have done.  I mean, this woman, insider trading galore, all this stuff; I'm not a fan of these leaders that we have.  But there is so much that we can do.

Peter McCormack: Are you talking about economic pressures, or are you talking about --

Matthew Mežinskis: Yeah, I'm not talking about military, first, of course.  But would it become a situation where you try to help, as we're doing sending weapons to Ukraine, would that matter for Taiwan; would it not?  I don't know, but I absolutely would not say that we should stand by.

Peter McCormack: No, of course.

Matthew Mežinskis: Nor should we stand by what's happening with the Uyghurs.  I mean, this is just not acceptable as far as if you want to be a modern liberal in the world.

Peter McCormack: But some people don't want to be a modern liberal, they want to be a self-sovereign --

Matthew Mežinskis: That's why we're talking about it, and people have different views about what that means.  And I would say, just stop the lack of self-awareness, stop the lack of hypocrisy, let's just say it again.  You can be against Iraq invasion; you can be against Afghanistan invasion; you can be against Ukrainian invasion, it all works out pretty nicely.  If that's our view, if our view is to be anti-war, you can be against these things.  You don't just let it happen, you don't just let them take it, because Vladimir Putin tells you he's worried about his security interests.

And by the way, he was wrong; he also said that the Baltics joined NATO in 2008.  They did not, they joined in 2004.  2004; think about how long ago that was.  18 years.  A lower-level infantryman, or maybe even a higher rank, was barely a twinkle in his daddy's eye at that point.  Do you think after 18 years, the NATO argument holds, that NATO is why -- remember the NATO argument?  That was the big thing a couple of months ago.

Peter McCormack: Yeah, I know, yeah.  That was the agreement that they weren't going to expand NATO into --

Matthew Mežinskis: It was never an agreement, it was never agreed, "Not one inch" that Baker said.  There's a great book called Not One Inch.  Gorby actually said, in 2014, it was never agreed and we all new this as well, anyone who knew anything about the history, it was never, ever agreed.  The, "Not one inch" was referring to US nuclear weapons in West Germany going into East Germany, that's it.  It was a passing comment, it was about nuclear weapons in the west of Europe and West Germany going into East Germany once Germany was reunified, because that's all Germany cared about, was being unified.  That was the big thing of 1989, was Germany reunifying, and then the Soviet Union fell.  But that had nothing to do with NATO expansion, absolutely zero.

But more importantly, that was 18 years ago.  What was he doing?  Just sitting on his arse, and all of a sudden he was surprised that NATO was where it was.  And by the way, we know what he was doing, I just told you what he was doing.  In 2000, 2001, 2002, 2003, he was stealing.  He's a corrupt arsehole cunt motherfucker honky, and this is what he was doing.  He's not anyone to be championed or feeling that we should really think deeply about what this guy means.  It's a falsity.  And the NATO thing as well.  So, that was 18 years ago.

Just one more thing about that point.  Nothing happened other than Croatia, North Macedonia; nothing else happened on Russia's border in between then and now.  And, our countries, like the Visegrád Countries, Poland, Hungary, the Czechs, Slovaks, the Balts, we were closer to the end of the Soviet Union, the fall of the Berlin Wall then, than now we are to when they joined NATO.  I mean, it's been 18 years, you just can't overstate that.  It's just complete, made-up fabrication by the -- it's not the classical libertarians that are saying that, but they're definitely jumping onboard with that.

Then, what further just blew a crater into this argument was who just joined in the last month.

Peter McCormack: Finland, Sweden.

Matthew Mežinskis: Finland and Sweden.

Peter McCormack: Finland's got a border.

Matthew Mežinskis: Finland has a border of thousands of kilometres with Russia, and what did Putin say?  "We don't really care, we don't have any disputes with them right now".  So, was it ever about NATO, or was it just about him dominating Ukraine and dominating the Black Sea, and taking shit that he never owned in the first place, which is a no.

Peter McCormack: There's a lot in here.  My brother, who's a researcher on the show, will be doing the show notes and he'll be diligent on them.  But are there any specific resources you would recommend people to go to?

Matthew Mežinskis: Yeah, so as I mentioned, Blue/Yellow, Lithuanian charity supporting Ukraine, have been since 2014.  That is just the closest to me.  Lithuanians are just Herculean in what they're doing.  They're some of the fiercest critics of Putin's invasion, Putin's war, all the rest.  So, I would support that organisation, just because I know for a fact, talking about what you can know and verify, I know for a fact through friends, etc, that resources are getting where they need to go.

There are plenty of resources, and pages, I should say, where you can donate Bitcoin to Ukraine, it's fantastic.  Absolutely do it; I would encourage everybody to donate.  You can donate anonymously or not, or however you want to do it.  Telegram groups and things like that, we can put them in the show notes if you want some more info.

Peter McCormack: Okay, and just any closing comments for anyone who -- because when I did the Scott Horton show, there were a lot of positive comments, a lot of people saying, "I'm glad you finally got Scott on, finally got somebody talking about the truth from this side".  There are a lot of people who maybe blindly or ignorantly follow Scott; and conversely, when they listen to this, they might be critical of you and say, "No, you're wrong".  Have you got any final comments for these people?

Matthew Mežinskis: Yeah, I mean none of this is a surprise to me.  I'm well aware of, if you were a Republican in the 2000s, you would be much more supportive of NATO than if you were a Democrat in 2022.  It seems like political football, it's very sad, I'm not happy with it.  I'm not happy with US Empires; we don't have to go through all of my disclaimers again.  I'm well aware of it, I'm a fan of the philosophy, I'm a fan of all of it.  I consider myself an Austrian, but as Mises said, "We need to move ever more boldly in the face of this evil".

Again, his big evil was Nazism, and we need to understand when people are gaslighting, when people are absolutely exaggerating the situation and they have no concept of really what is happening on the ground; there is a veneer that is just very, very shallow, that if you have just a semblance, as those Ilves quotes were showing, five Russians that really wanted to go back to Russia.  This is what they really think about their country.

We could go on and on about these topics, but just to say, I'm intimately familiar with the region, I'm intimately familiar with Ukraine, and it's absolutely, in my opinion, paramount that we support something like this today, as much as you can.  Donate, support, retweet, do things like that, and just try to get good information out there that can help people learn and understand more about what the real evil here is.  And again, no one is talking about invading Russia, we never have ever been talking about invading Russia.  Russia is the one that's doing the invading.

The deflection and projection again, it's always the case with Russia and Putin.  It's like, "You're not the victims, we're the victims.  You're not the one that should be worried about your security, we're worried about security".  That's a standard KGB type of discourse that Russia has been practising for as long as he's been in office.

Peter McCormack: Well, I'm hugely appreciative of you coming in and doing this and sharing your thoughts, and educating me and the listeners on things that we might not know about.  We will share everything in the show notes.  Incredible, thank you.

Matthew Mežinskis: Thank you.