Russian Historian Explains Putin's Perspective on Ukraine War

William Prigge [00:00:00] And you know, a lot of people say when they notice that huge distance between Putin and whoever it is that he's talking to at these meetings that we see on television, that he's paranoid about COVID, I think that's too far of a distance for COVID. I think that's about the distance of a blast hidden in a, in a briefcase. And he's thinking back to Hitler's Generals in the Bunker in 1944 and wants to make sure that doesn't happen to him.

Vance Crowe [00:00:30] I'm Ashley McFarlane, a nonprofit executive living in Duluth, Minnesota, and you are listening to the Bands Crow podcast. Welcome back to the

William Prigge [00:00:40] Podcast.

Vance Crowe [00:00:41] I'm glad you're here today. We're doing a special edition because I wanna continue on with the multiple perspectives of what's going on between Russia and the Ukraine. And I've struggled to get a Russian speaker. In fact, if anybody out there knows a Russian speaker or maybe knows somebody that has a grandma or an aunt or an uncle that would wanna talk with me, know that I would be very, very open. And I have no opinion on this issue. I am trying my best to say the best value that I can bring to this conversation is as many different perspectives as I can find. But I can tell you right now that is very, very difficult to do. There are very few people from the Russian side of the border that I can get ahold of that are willing to sit down and talk about their perspective. So I did the next best thing. I contacted my college professor, Dr. Will Pge, who has been studying the Cold War and the US and Eastern relations. He spent time in Moldova, he speaks Russian, even some Ukrainian. And I thought he would be the next best thing. And he did a great job of showing up and talking about what Russian media was saying in the lead up to the war and kind of what their, what he believes Putin's intentions are. So you are in for a very interesting interview. And if these kinds of interviews are things that you enjoy, know that there is a community called the Articulate Ventures Network, where we host different discussions where we get together and practice getting better at public speaking, at thinking about challenges, but also debating issues like this where you can take any side that you want just to be able to explore and try out ideas.

Vance Crowe [00:02:14] We live in a world where we are kind of fed a certain set of ideas and it is really good to make sure you get out there, you stretch, you exercise, you try out different ways of thinking, and maybe you arrive at the same conclusions you had before, but it's really good to know that you arrived at them rather than just having them received. So without further ado, we are gonna go hear an opinion from one of my good friends and former teacher Dr. Will p Prey. Prey.

William Prigge [00:02:39] It's good to be here, Vance. How are you?

Vance Crowe [00:02:42] Man, it has been a, a wild few days, not just personally, but all over the world and I'm really excited to just jump in right here. So to begin with, what is the lay of the land right now with the Russia and the Ukraine crisis as far as you know, from your academic po position?

William Prigge [00:03:00] It is, it is very unpredictable right now. And we could speculate about what the options might be in the, in the future, but we could never really know for sure, because I think with this kind of government and society and leadership, that it really comes down to the mind of a single individual and, and only he knows what the, what, at least the future from his side holes. Although clearly he thought he knew the future for all sides and, and 5, 6, 7 days into this. And I'm sure he's going to have to readjust his his plans because things are clearly not going the way he would've intended.

Vance Crowe [00:03:56] So during the buildup as they were building up troops on, on the border, what was he telling his people? Was, was the reason that they needed to do this? What are they believing as as they go through the, you know, the fact that their country invaded another country?

William Prigge [00:04:12] It really, I suppose there would be two narratives that you would hear as he's trying to, to prepare his people. One would be sort of the line that he would've given us, that they're not down there to do anything, that these are just simply military exercises, paid no attention to the 150,000 people on your border. But I think the other thing is that he would need to lay the groundwork on is if, if there were to be a war, why that war would be to kind of psychologically I think prepare the, the population and what the population actually believed. 'cause they're aware of, of that troop buildup like we all were. But they would've thought, and I think the Ukrainians were probably of the same opinion. The Ukrainians that I know is that this is just Putin and Putin is a negotiator. And so sometimes in that old KGB style, if you really want to get the deal that you want, you've gotta take it right up to the edge. And so yes, it looks scary, but that is Putin being Putin. And one thing I can know for sure is that there's not going to be an invasion because it would be catastrophic for both sides.

William Prigge [00:05:46] And I would say this was very much the opinion of the Ukrainians that I knew as well, it's not going to happen. And there was almost a disbelief, I think, coming from both sides when it, when it ultimately did happen. But maybe to go further with how he would prepare his people is that I think the Russian perspective would be that we're talking about the long arc of history here and that, and that what is historic Russian lands and historic Russian lands. First they look at it by ethnicity. And so they would see this really as being Russia, but also Belo Russia and Ukraine and that these are all sort of fellow Slavic brothers. And, and, and so the natural unit is this sort of fraternal brotherhood of, of sls. And that when you look, and again I'm saying this from him, his perspective, not necessarily mine, but when you look at say linguistically, there's not such a great difference between Belarusian and Russian. Maybe there's more with Ukrainian and Russian, but they're, they're close. I don't know. I wouldn't say that they're mutually intelligible.

William Prigge [00:07:19] Putin doesn't, when he has met with Ukrainians, he would need a translator for that. But, but he would say it's, it's pretty close and that we have a shared history. And that if you look at the origins of Russia, it's never been in Moscow, it's always been down in Kiev. And so the giant statue that they have on the NEPA there to of Vladimir the great is that is seen as the origins of Russia, not just Ukraine. And that he would be a Russian founder, not just somehow Ukrainian. And that what is this Ukrainian? And he would, he's, he's said this in the past that it's in a sense an invention of the post World War era. And so, and of course the Ukrainians would say, well, if you look at anything in central and Eastern Europe, they're all products of this time after the first World War, either the Civil War in Russia or the, the, the peace treaties at, at Paris in 1919. So, and then there's lots of other historic lands that we could add to that if we wanted to, such as the Baltic states were always part of the, of the Russian Empire as, as well. And now they're a part of, of nato.

William Prigge [00:08:51] And so he would say, and he, I think he plays on a certain grievance and hurt feelings that the Russians had, that 1991 was painful for them. And the only thing more painful than the collapse of the Soviet Union for Russians is the decade that followed and the decade that followed was marked by sort of this

Vance Crowe [00:09:21] Cowboy

William Prigge [00:09:21] Capitalism, American advisors suggesting to the Russians as to how it is that they can restructure their economy and become wealthy and prosperous like us in the United States. You just have to be willing to endure a little pain, this so-called shock therapy. And that if you go through this shock therapy and you almost brutally privatize the lands and the property within from the Soviet Union, it's going to be hard, but we'll get through it and you'll be better as a result of that. And unfortunately at the end of the 1990s, yeah, you have to crack eggs in order to make an omelet, but where's your omelet? And there was no omelet. And this is the tide and the sentiment that Putin came to power on. And it in many ways moved to rectify some of those issues of the, of, of the past. But he would say then that Russia was in a

Vance Crowe [00:10:32] Very

William Prigge [00:10:33] Weak position in 1990 or 1991, and the Western powers came in and they do this with a smile and some soothing words, but they were there basically he would say to imperialize us economically. And, and we were not in a position, we were desperate for loans from the West to say no. So we had to sign on to some

Vance Crowe [00:11:08] Pretty

William Prigge [00:11:09] Bad agreements. And that just because we signed on to give away so many of our historic Russian lands because we're in a weak position, he would say, I'm sort of a strong leader and I'm coming back and now it's time to renegotiate that bad deal. So that would be sort of that from the Russian perspective.

Vance Crowe [00:11:31] You know, I'm so glad you brought it up because there's been very little explanation of what is going on in the, in the minds of the Russians. And for

William Prigge [00:11:40] Me it's

Vance Crowe [00:11:40] Very uncomfortable when you start saying, our adversaries are crazy people. Right. They're they're totally out of their mind. Yeah. Because I find one it very rarely ever helps you to underestimate your, your opponent by just saying, saying very irrational. That's

William Prigge [00:11:54] Right.

Vance Crowe [00:11:54] And then two, like there are millions and millions of people on the other side of the border that, you know, the, the Western news is telling me that there are protesting and that there are oligarchs that are saying that they don't like it. But I have to imagine that Putin maybe doesn't care about internal polling results for his, you know, for his upcoming election, but he does need the support of at least some group of people in order to stay in town. Yeah. So, so to me, being able to understand what the motivations are is really important here because we went from people being really outraged about all the things going on with COVID to taking I think all of that energy and having like a firm belief that they know and understand everything that's going on in the Ukraine.

William Prigge [00:12:40] Yeah.

Vance Crowe [00:12:41] And so I think it's hard to figure out where do you find another perspective on this? Well,

William Prigge [00:12:45] And I would really echo what you said about whether he's just simply crazy because that is such a shortcut to, it's just such poor analysis because as you said, it, it doesn't really tell us anything. And so there's no understanding. And then just to assume that somebody is making all sorts of decisions and choices without having sort of goals and ideas in mind as to what it is that they see and how it is that they see there. It's just intellectual laziness for sure. And, and, and, and I guess I want to put a slight caveat on that in that we've probably now all become armchair psychologists trying to read the tea leaves as to what's going on. And I could imagine a situation where a person who is somewhat isolated, so they don't have all of the information at hand and maybe under extraordinary pressure because of perhaps how things are going if that doesn't affect you mentally and how it is that you make your choices. But at the, at the core of this, Putin has broad support and he has broad support because he's run out his opponents jailed them and shut down opposition media, but he also has broad support because people feel the same way he does.

William Prigge [00:14:41] And so that, so what he says resonates with him. And I would say that that is, is particularly true with the, with the older generation.

Vance Crowe [00:14:53] Yeah. I have a friend that was sending me media from China, which you know, is, is an interesting thing. But I was trying to say, Hey, where is there somebody that is kind of presenting what the Russians thought? And there was a woman on French TV that's saying, look, I know the US and the Western countries are trying to support the, you know, the, the Ukrainians while they're going through this. But you should be aware that just as Putin has gotten rid of or disappeared journalists, we also see this occurring in the Ukraine. This is not as full and robust of a democracy as it is being presented. And the, there's a real danger in holding up the, the current leadership, which maybe has some, some dictatorial tendencies as well because then you take the people that really were suffering and she was saying it was in the, in the 2 million range that, that those people would be then left out by the community, the, the entire world would kind of just leave them and, and really would only have Putin to turn to.

William Prigge [00:15:53] Yeah, it's worth remembering that Ukraine today is still, remains not quite as corrupt in the indexes that measure this as Russia, but it's not far behind. And so it, it definitely has its issues and, and at least ostensibly that's one of the reasons why it is that they haven't been able to join NATO at this point is that that issue of, of corruption hasn't been fully resolved yet. And, and I don't know to the degree that Zelensky has been successful, I think there's a lot of hope and optimism that he would be able to curb some of that corruption. But it's still continues and I think it's probably one of these deep seated things that it's very difficult to, to, to remove. And I mean we think about maybe our own country too, how, how difficult it is to cope with corruption within our own system. And so, but it's, again, it's not to the degree that the Ukraine and Russia is,

Vance Crowe [00:17:03] I studied in graduate school, one of my large projects was on how much does press freedom impact corruption? And it's an interesting thing because you could find out if you had low levels of press freedom, then you almost automatically had high levels of corruption.

William Prigge [00:17:22] But just

Vance Crowe [00:17:22] Because you start opening up to a free press doesn't bring the corruption down. In fact, it was really very difficult to find any circumstances at all where if corruption is endemic in the culture that they ever get rid of it, unless there's some giant revolution that that changes something is very, very rare. And, and this goes throughout Asia, central, central America, I'm sure in Europe. It's just once it's in there yeah. Getting it out's nearly impossible

William Prigge [00:17:52] Because those people then that benefit from that are also in a position to perpetuate the system. And so yeah, it's, that's that's absolutely true. So what

Vance Crowe [00:18:03] Is the, as as a historian that was, you know, reading a lot about the Cold War, right? Your experience of the world was, I saw this happen as a kid and now I'm going to go study it deeply, but it appears as though history is happening right in front of our faces. Yeah. Somebody like you do to watch this and make sure you're tracking it so you get it right somewhere down the line.

William Prigge [00:18:25] Yeah. And you know, and it's, it's definitely something that I've, I've thought about because I've had research assistants and conversational tutors from Russia, many people and, and, and, and it's weird because I sort of have separated them from the history that is conceivably going on in their own country in that I thought, okay, as I work with these people, I don't wanna get into that old cold wear war tit for tat you know, we have this, you don't and, and this kind of thing. So knowing that it was always kind of a sensitive issue, I tended to avoid it. And, and, and then as the troops began to gather on the border, I didn't

Vance Crowe [00:19:25] Even

William Prigge [00:19:26] Ask, what are your thoughts on Putin? Because I thought this stuff is so raw right now from from all sides

Vance Crowe [00:19:35] That,

William Prigge [00:19:36] That I didn't cross it. And I think about how many in a sense, great primary sources that I haven't fully tapped into that, that you can get a very interesting perspective from. And, and it's something that I may just come back to maybe as things settle just a little bit to kinda see what is that, that perspective. And unfortunately, I, I even have stopped using them for right now to do my, help me with my research. 'cause I just, I personally can't justify sending money over there right now. And so I've, I've kind of turned to Ukrainians and so I'm kind of getting some of this Ukrainian perspective and there, I'm, I'm more willing to talk openly about it, at least as of the, the past three or four weeks here. But yeah,

Vance Crowe [00:20:29] It's fascinating to think about primary sources, right? Like when, when the Ukraine was actually invaded, when after everything had gone, I was like, I'm gonna go read or watch Putin's press conference that he's expecting all this stuff. And it took me like more than 45 minutes to find it because at this point, once they invaded Facebook took Russia today off. So all of the translations that were there were gone. Yeah. You couldn't just go to the Kremlins website 'cause they had been shut down. I'm not sure if it was they shut it down or the US Yeah. And you start looking around and you start saying, I remember when everybody was telling us that the internet would bring us together during time.

William Prigge [00:21:07] Yeah.

Vance Crowe [00:21:08] And now I feel like it's a, a blind quadrant, it's very difficult to know what's going on on the eastern part of the world.

William Prigge [00:21:16] Oh, I know. And you know, and some of this is, again, it's almost, I find myself self-selecting. So I've often used sort of channel one, one of these Russian state medias as a, you know, just, it was always good practice for me to sit and listen to the news and, and you kinda get their perspective and you work on your language at the same time. But some of that stuff, it became difficult for me to listen to because it was so hostile to America and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and so often not true. Like when they, I remember an instance when the Repels, they are this father daughter former spy, but went to hide out in Britain and then they, there was this sort of highly intensive poison that was sort of placed on doorknobs and things and, and that how homeless people were dying from this because they had accidentally got into that and how it was that the Russian news was making light of that and kind of making jokes and that they're making fun of their last name, which means like fiddle and Russian and making puns off of that. And it, and it just became very hard for me to sit and, and to listen to this. But I, I feel like with all this I need to force myself to, because it is history happening before our eyes and I'm missing portions of it when I'm not going right to the source to hearing what that other side is.

Vance Crowe [00:22:58] So when you think about the, the buildup to a war, typically my understanding is you either as a, as a regular citizen, you either need to feel like I am threatened and therefore we're gonna go out, or I am horribly aggrieved and we're out or we're protecting somebody over there and that Yep. You know, we are, we are righteous.

William Prigge [00:23:20] Yep. It

Vance Crowe [00:23:21] Seems to me that there's kind of a, we are under threat, so we need to help ourselves and oh, we're also going to help those people.

William Prigge [00:23:28] Yeah. Is

Vance Crowe [00:23:29] That your understanding of what the Russians kind of think going into this?

William Prigge [00:23:32] Yeah, and I think to, to look at this a little bit, that there are things that are very, very popular with the Russian people and then it doesn't have to be ginned up at all. It's just felt that way. So with the annexation of, of Crimea, they were extraordinarily sympathetic to that because they would say, well 58% of that region is ethnically Russian. And then you kinda link it back to we were on our knees in the 1990s when they extracted from us all of these concessions that sort of, that old fool Yeltsin went ahead, drunken Yeltsin went ahead and signed so that the west could take advantage of us. They saw this as really sort of correcting wrongs from the past and, and these are very popular wars. And even with the decision, as much as you can tell anything about public opinion in a authoritarian society, that even the decision for luhansk and donates to become independent was popular with the Russian people because they thought, well ethically they are close to majority or majority Russian speakers in that area, so why is it that they are in Ukraine?

William Prigge [00:25:13] So that made real sense, I think, to the Russian people. And these were, these were real ratings boosts for Putin. And even I think authoritarians need to monitor what their, what their popular ratings are. And Putin was really at the highest right in 2014, just after the annexation of Crimea, that's when he was writing the highest. And then I think a lot of these sanctions and the price of oil plummeting and things like that dropped his approval rating sort of into the doldrums, maybe into the sixties or something. And I'm not sure if this was part of his calculus is to give myself a ratings boost by one of these quick easy wars that are going to rectify the injustices of the, the past. But, and I can go into a lot more detail if you like, as to maybe what his reasoning was for even placing the 150,000 troops down there. Oh means. Yeah, of course. And I think he probably had lots going on in his mind. One would be a ratings boost and I think he had no concept that it would be sort of the struggle that it's become.

William Prigge [00:26:47] But I, I think that you, it it, it's not sort of the final move by a chess grand as we might imagine. And we kind of imagine that with Hitler as well, that I do this and then I do this and I methodically, I've got this all charted out and everybody just sort of haplessly falls into my web. But I think, and this would be true of Hitler back in the late 1930s as well, is that there's a little bit of flying by the seat of your pants and that you don't perfectly know what's going to happen and that the option that you ultimately chose is not the option that you would have wanted, but it seems like perhaps it's the only option that was left to you. And so if I could imagine Putin, he's, he's better, I think at machinations behind the scenes rather than brutal frontal assault warfare, this is not his cup of tea. And so, and the problem begins I think back with 2014 and, and again, if we want to look at this from his perspective, he would say that the 2014 madon protests that eventually led to the expelling of of his person was illegitimate.

William Prigge [00:28:26] Another one of these color revolutions, say his person, you mean the, the president that kind of the west views as Yu Kashko? Yes. Chenko, yes. Kko. Yeah. And so, and so Jankovich, I'm sorry, but the, the, the color revolutions, he hates those because first off he imagines that they not true opposition to Russia, but they are somehow machinations on the side of the west. And that there they are through all of their soft power and NGOs and the rest embedded in these countries sort of pitting one side against the other where they should have been just happy being together with us, closely aligned with with Russia. And so then, and they're pitting against forcing Ukraine into these false choices. Do you want to all align yourself with your sort of natural side, which would be Russia or do you want to join NATO and the European Union? And he would think that of course it's true that that Ukraine would want to join the free trade union with, with Russia. And that if there are people that are saying we want to go into nato, this idea was put into their head by the west.

William Prigge [00:30:02] And so then when this thing turns into a full on revolution, he again doesn't see that as the popular sentiment of the people that is now the, the West doing what they do. So we need to do what we need to do and bring them back into the fold. And they got away from us. The west sort of won at that moment. And then I think he's become increasingly frustrated since 2014 because Ukraine has continued to drift closer and closer to the, to the west. And that it's hasn't been simply it, it's no longer a puppet of of Russia. And that I think worst of all in Putin's position, in his opinion, is that they were buying Javelins and stinger missiles and drones hand over fist so that they from the Ukrainian perspective could protect themselves. But then Putin sees this as Western encirclement and that I think his calculus was that if we don't stop this soon, I'll never be able to stop this because they're becoming militarily stronger and stronger. But again, he never wanted the military option, he never wanted a full out military confrontation with Ukraine.

William Prigge [00:31:35] Instead what he wanted to do was have luhansk and donates come back into Ukraine, become sort of return to the Ukrainian fold with special status that it has greater autonomy to sort of choose its own special path. And this would have required a full change to the Ukrainian constitution. And those in the, particularly in the west of Ukraine, were not going to have any of that. They were not about to change their constitution, which has more centralized authority to make it more decentralized and carve out exceptions for certain states because then you could see that beginning to spin over to other regions of Ukraine where they get sort of special status and that this then, so the fear was is that Ukraine or Russia could use the, that that sort of divisions within the Ukrainian state itself to sort of play favorites with some states and pit them against others. But always with the goal of taking authority from the center and sort of moving it to these individual regions and in decentralizing Ukraine, it would be then easier to sort of manipulate Ukraine and to to sort of bring it back into the fold.

William Prigge [00:33:10] And the fact that Danskin luhansk were never able in these four years, five years to get this sort of special status. And this is I think part of the Minsk accord as well, continually frustrated Putin because it continued to be a centralized state and that it was now becoming militarily more self-sufficient, economically more prosperous maybe as a alternative model to putinism that others might see all of these would be sort of threats to him. So this declaration of donk and Luhansk as their own independent state was almost the the end of plan A for Putin. And so, and that with that you can really tell that the die had been cast because now that option of decentralizing Ukraine was off the table. I did

Vance Crowe [00:34:08] Not. So that is a, a whole new thing that I did not realize that that them declaring independence was like, oh, okay,

William Prigge [00:34:15] They've

Vance Crowe [00:34:16] Gone past the line, they're not gonna be reintegrated in this way that they had hoped.

William Prigge [00:34:20] So yeah.

Vance Crowe [00:34:21] Ah,

William Prigge [00:34:21] This, because from Putin's perspective, now you've lost, it would be so much better to have them in Ukraine and controlling sort of Ukraine within, and if you declare them independent now all of a sudden they weren't, wouldn't be a part of Ukraine. So you no longer have that option of controlling Ukraine from within. So there's only one other way that you can do it and it's a less good option is the front on military option.

Vance Crowe [00:34:51] So it's an interesting way that it's played out is that so much gas is needed by the rest of Europe.

William Prigge [00:34:58] Ironic, you

Vance Crowe [00:35:00] Know, in particular, I'm, I was reading

William Prigge [00:35:02] That's what they do, right? Germany

Vance Crowe [00:35:05] Had shut down a bunch of their nuclear reactors because they'd had a whole bunch of pressure. There's like a, a green movement there that says, hey, we wanna go to wind and solar, but you have to have mass production of oil to be able to create in the heat. And so it looks to me like the biggest players in Europe, they don't have an interest in in going in lest they be cut off from oil because that, that would literally throw chaos into Europe. Like we, it'd be, I think it'd be difficult to even imagine.

William Prigge [00:35:34] Yeah, yeah. And I think, well we see evidence of that with, of course Germany being the weakest link in all of that. And I forget what the situation was, maybe that Kiev was requesting a hundred thousand helmets, which is not exactly heavy ordinance from Germany. And Germany went and countered with, we can give you 5,000 helmets and we can't even go into Ukraine to give them to us. If you wanna send somebody to the border, we can drop 'em off at the border with Poland or whatever. And, and I think, I can't remember if it was with that instance or another one, but the mayor of Kiev, which is kind of a colorful guy, said, you refuse the offer and said, what else do you wanna send us pillows? And so, and so that really sort of revealed the weakness of Germany in particular. Italy is another big importer of this gas and natural gas, but boy Germany in in particular. But it's interesting to see how that's kind of played out because as this thing has really devolved, I think we've seen at some point Germany's sort of coming to the recognition that this is now beyond the pale, there's no salvaging this relationship anymore.

William Prigge [00:37:09] I hope that Putin doesn't turn off the spigot on the gas flow to Germany. But I think they also understand that that could be a very real possibility and that somehow they seem to be okay with that now because they're sending over, I forget how many, it was maybe a, a couple thousand, I dunno, a hundred thousand anti-tank handheld rocket launchers and things like that. So the swift, so they, they've come to the recognition that this, this is not going to work. And, and what I didn't realize is that those nuclear reactors that were sort of shut down after Fukushima have not totally been dismantled. And so that they are firing those, at least some of those back up again to sort of close the, close the gap. And so, but there's not enough closing that that gap is way too big. And, and, and, and so maybe to be sympathetic a little bit to the Germans, they're doing all of this with the understanding that we could be really harmed economically by what Russia can do to us by how dependent we are on the soil. And, and that particularly natural gas, it's hard to imagine like a full scale war

Vance Crowe [00:38:36] That that would bleed outside of, of Ukraine. Is that just me being naive here or is, is it, is that really kind of unthinkable?

William Prigge [00:38:46] Oh, it could definitely go beyond Ukraine. Would it go on to NATO countries? I think that's maybe the bigger question, but there are three countries that are sort of what I might say, not under the umbrella, which is Moldova where I was earlier this fall, Ukraine and Georgia. And the one thing that all three of those countries have in common with each other is they have this disputed, they each have a disputed territory and what we also call a frozen conflict within their territory where you have maybe a, a sizable number, maybe even a majority in these regions of Russian speakers. And that they see themselves as sort of separate and different from kind of the, the, the mother country for all sorts of reasons that I could give. But that, but that this Putin would see this as his opportunity to, in a sense settle those frozen conflicts to incorporate all of those people into Russia. And what I was originally imagining is there is something known as sort of this Nova CIA project, new Russian project, and these are all the lands at the south of Ukraine, which are, you know, historically Russian. They Russian lands brought in under Catherine the Great, they have, I wouldn't say a majority of Russian speakers, but they have a sizable population of Russians.

William Prigge [00:40:24] And in some areas like Lu Danskin, certainly Crimea, you're getting close to a majority and a majority in Crimea. And that his hope was to sort of bring those people into the fold. And at the same time that Crimea happened, there was a push to get those people sort of through popular uprising to throw off the shackles of Ukraine and join Russia in this sort of Nova project. And it never really took off because, and it's interesting, just because somebody is a Russian speaker doesn't automatically mean that they want to live under an authoritarian kleptocrat. And so it's, it's funny how that works, but sometimes that's so and so, so that really didn't take up, but with that sort of Nova vision, he was imagined sort of solving at least the Ukrainian and Moldovan frozen conflict. And then if we wanted to take this, oh, go ahead Vince.

Vance Crowe [00:41:31] Well, I no, I keep going. I I didn't know you had more to go.

William Prigge [00:41:35] Yeah. Now, and, and I'll take just my sort of little country of Moldova, which is just to the sandwiched in between Ukraine and Romania. These countries are, can be quite complex ethnically and they have another population to the south, the Gazi, and they are Turkish Christians that migrated to the south of Moldova from Bulgaria. And so they are Turkish, but I had to ask when I, but they all speak Russian and they're all sort of pro Putin and pro-Russia. And I had to ask when I was there, 'cause Erdogan had actually visited the city of Comrad. Well, and I asked if there were ever a war between Turkey and Russia, who would they go for? And, and they said they would go for Russia, not Turkey, even though they are ethnically Turkish. So that kind of becomes complex. But let me just throw even one more kind of fly into the ointment is that during sort of the Soviet period, a lot of the Soviet leaders were Ukrainian actually Brezhnev and Khrushchev and others. And the Ukrainians had some benefits, they got Crimea and they got quite a bit of Moldovan territory where Romanian speakers were. And this is something that sort of has stuck in the craw of Moldovans.

William Prigge [00:43:07] And so to think of this area as Homogenously pro Putin or Poro anti Putin, it's becomes very difficult. So then the EU sort of has a project there where we're going to throw lots of money at you guys, Ukraine, Moldovan, Romania, if you forget about these little border disputes down sort of where you three all meet on the Danube. And that was sort of the bandaid solution that the EU came up with. And then of course in comes Putin sort of stirring the pot as he does. And so then the final scenario that I imagined in my li in this scenario is now let's think about the next democratic election in Moldova currently, you know, they have a lot of pro-Russian, pro EU sentiment in Moldova and they happen for the first time to have a pro EU president and pro EU parliament. But what if now in the next election that came up now all of a sudden on the table was we're going to, do you want Putin's plan, the Russian plan of bringing all those lost Moldovan territories taken by Ukraine during the 1940s and fifties? Do you wanna get on with Putin's plan of bringing that back into Moldova or do you want to go with sort of the MBI Pam b EU option where forget about all those past border disputes, just play nice and things will all be better.

William Prigge [00:44:42] And just imagine how that would play with the population in Moldova. And the first to go for the exit would definitely be the Gazi just past the transgress, which are sort of a, that disputed territory, which is a thin strip along the eastern edge of Moldova. And that these sort of entities which were created in 1991 and 92, you could imagine how easily those things could fall apart even from just within. It's,

Vance Crowe [00:45:15] When you think of, from the American perspective, we've always lived in the United States, it's very clear there's Canadians to the north, there's Mexicans to the south that it, it was, it wasn't until I went to diplomacy school that I even realized there was a time before countries and like, like this seems like a silly thing to say, like, oh of course there was times where we didn't have countries. But it wasn't until like the 1650 or so when you got the Treaty of West failure where they said, ah, this is what it is to be a country. You have border

William Prigge [00:45:45] That's right. Established borders and you are here there rights and responsibilities. That's right.

Vance Crowe [00:45:50] Which is one of those things that makes me like take pause when I hear about these border disputes or who views themselves as Russian or Ukrainian because it's very easy for me to be like, ah, this is a black and white issue and is very clear. But where you sit on a, on a border probably determined a lot about where you stand on that issue.

William Prigge [00:46:11] Yeah.

Vance Crowe [00:46:12] It's not as cut and dry as, as anybody that's pushing a narrative, whether it's Russia, Eastern or western. Everybody's got a view on this.

William Prigge [00:46:21] Yeah, and and maybe to take that Westphalian example up, I mean Westphalia really determines a lot of things for Western Europe, but it says nothing about Eastern Europe or Eurasia or anything like that. And so then one could imagine that this sort of idea of a nation state for those areas is even more modern, such as the Paris Peace conferences in 1919 or even really 1991. And I see a lot of parallels between 1919 and 1991 because it's in those years, those are the treaties, or not treaties, but those are the years in which you sort of had something before and now you're creating something new and and how well is that done? How well can it be done? And oftentimes it's on these in a situation where there are winners and losers and the losers are losers oftentimes because they are in a weak position. And then if we take that 1919 analogy up to 1938, if the, the country in question is Germany, it was weak in 1919, but it took about 20 years for it to strengthen itself.

William Prigge [00:47:59] And then when it's in a position to perhaps do something, then all of a sudden sort of that aggrieved party says, we got a bad deal at the original negotiation and it's time to renegotiate that. And we're not going to ask you for your opinion on that. We're just going to simply do it and if you don't like it, try to stop us. And so now kind of think about that with the Soviet Union as well, 1991, sort of the heels of losing your empire, losing that sort of struggle and then having to negotiate from a position of weakness. And that in a sense, Putin then is he had the plan at least of renegotiating that that bad deal. And so this has real echoes I think of October, 1938 and the s Dayton Germans living in Czechoslovakia and, and Hitler in a sense wanting to be the gatherer of the, of the German people. And then, then what is interesting is, and I think almost maybe more about Moldova then Ukraine, but how that then created this chain reaction, which led to, in a sense the Czechoslovakian experiment imploding and then only into this vacuum sort of sweeps Hitler, but six months after the Munich conference does Hitler go into Prague.

William Prigge [00:49:40] But in many ways we can't say whether this was something that he was planning all along or that he was just simply taking advantage of this implosion, which he began the process, but maybe had no intention of that going all the way to that, but just simply taking advantage of that. And I think that's part of what Putin wants to do is perhaps destabilize Ukraine as, as the next best option, or at least his original plan.

Vance Crowe [00:50:10] Yeah, I I only vaguely remember the, if the, if it was the Paris Treaty where they decided, hey, there's been this thing where, where people have signed treaties with one another, but they haven't told anybody else about it. I always thought like, why, why would you ever go tell your treaties to other people? This doesn't make any sense. And this is why you have this very ornate ceremony of I sign it with a pen and then I actually have to give you that pen because you have to have like certification of a, of a, of an object from that. But you look at a situation like we're in right now

William Prigge [00:50:43] And

Vance Crowe [00:50:43] You say what happens

William Prigge [00:50:44] If

Vance Crowe [00:50:45] There are agreements from, you know, whether it's in the west, which like NATO is very clear, you know, we've made all the US agreements with Europe is like attack one, attack 'em all. There's a lot of scenarios where you've made agreements with other countries, maybe you're in the east or or something where this kicks off a level of other people's involvement where once it's open, you know, the fire can spread in many ways because you can't control all the things that are happening.

William Prigge [00:51:12] Well the thing I guess that worries me the most is that Putin really doesn't have many limits on him right now. Who's going to stop him either from his inner circle And you know, a lot of people say when they notice that huge distance between Putin and whoever it is that he's talking to at these meetings that we see on television that he's paranoid about C-O-V-I-D-I think that's too far of a distance for COVID. I think that's about the distance of a blast hidden in a, in a briefcase. And he's thinking back to Hitler's generals in the bunker in 1944 and wants to make sure that doesn't happen to him. But he has very little and he sort of knows, 'cause I think Biden has made it very clear we're not coming into Ukraine and having Americans fighting against Russians because of the possibility of a third World war nuclear powers. But it then is going to challenge the world that if he has no limits and we've in a sense done everything short of going face-to-face with him that we can do, and that as things go very poorly for him, he begins to go after no holds barr against civilians as well as military targets. And as this gets really bloody on the ground, that to what degree will we be able to sit and just simply watch it happen And, and, and that that's where it could get really dangerous.

William Prigge [00:52:52] So

Vance Crowe [00:52:53] You had brought up the, you know, his fears of assassination, which if you look at Twitter, I mean there are people out there saying they're ready to go assassinate him themselves. To me, assassination in this scenario is a huge black box that's saying like, well, you know, we've got this person that we can't control right now, but whoever would come and take the reins in the, in the scenario after that Yeah, they do something right away. It just seems like, man, there are all, there are millions of ways where this can spin out of control.

William Prigge [00:53:23] Yeah.

Vance Crowe [00:53:24] And

William Prigge [00:53:24] It's, it's a gamble right now that I personally would take if somebody could get 'em, they by all means, should. But, but yeah, it's, you've, you've gotta wonder who is it that would take his, his position. But, and he's part of this larger system in which he is sort of the chairman of the board, but everybody that sits on the board is a beneficiary of this kleptocracy. So they're not just going to say, now we want to follow the American path and here we're gonna do our constitution and everything is going to be clean and tidy. Like you said, once corruption is embedded in, it's, it's like getting mold out of your basement. It's, it's all but impossible. And so that's, that's tricky.

Vance Crowe [00:54:17] I, this, that reminds me of this thing called, it's, there's a YouTube video called Rules for Rule, rules for Rulers, and it's off this book called The Dictator's Handbook. And it is a fascinating read because it shows how does somebody amass power and then why are there people around them that you can give them power like you give them yeah, you know, gold or you give them soldiers and there's kind of an exchange there. But to the American mind, this is not something we've had to really grapple with. And so it's a very good, good exercise to think about one per, you know, Putin's not out there driving the tanks, he's not out there flying the planes, right. People

William Prigge [00:54:52] Are

Vance Crowe [00:54:53] Listening to him. And it's really interesting to, to think about this as we finish up. 'cause I know you gotta go, I'm really appreciative of you making this work so we could get so fast. But before you go, if somebody wanted to do the best that they could to listen to what the Russians are hearing or listen to what the Ukrainians are hearing, any ideas on, on how a completely English speaking person would, would go about that?

William Prigge [00:55:19] Oh, to, to get their perspective. I would say just go to the source if it's still there and run it through Google Translate. I mean, I don't speak Ukrainian, but I follow the government's feed every night to see just everything that's going on. And in fact, you, there's an option as you're say in that particular feed, do you want a Ukrainian or English? And you just click on it and it'll automatically barriers. If you wanna get out there and see what they're saying, it's all right there.

Vance Crowe [00:55:52] Well that's, that is great and I will definitely do that. So Dr. Wilgie, thank you so much for coming on today. I really appreciate you taking the time.

William Prigge [00:56:02] It's my pleasure, Vance. Good to see you again.

Vance Crowe [00:56:04] Good to see you.

William Prigge [00:56:05] Bye-Bye.