Salinsky's a desperate individual in a desperate regime.

And so he says lots of things that are not so simple to parse.

But I think what the public should understand is that Russia's aim all along for

basically since the 1990s was to keep NATO out of its next door, to keep NATO out of Ukraine.

And that was true for basically the 25 years of Project Ukraine.

And when Russia launched its military operation on February 24, 2022, the aim was to push Ukraine to declare neutrality.

This has been the basic Russian purpose for the whole period and immediately Zelensky said within a few days even by

before the end of February 2022, well neutrality might be possible.

And what happened was in March as people have come to know, and again,

this is one of those things where I knew it firsthand.

The Ukrainians and the... And this is one of those things where I knew it firsthand.

The Ukrainians and the Russians

started to exchange documents for ending all of the conflict.

This is two and a half years ago, for ending this war based on neutrality,

and it would have worked.

And the Turkish foreign ministry, which is very skilled, you know, they've been doing foreign affairs in the Black Sea region for 500 years since the Ottoman control Constantinople, the Ottoman conquest, 1453, the Turks are very good

in it, they became mediators.

And the two sides reached an agreement, in essence, still some fine points but the US and UK told them no

keep fighting you'll win that we're gonna crush Russia with our economic sanctions. We're going to crush

Russia with our super weapons, with our hymars and our Patriot missiles.

You're going to defeat Russia,

you're going to get everything.

...