Hey everybody, this is Darryl Cooper. You listen to the Martyrmade podcast. So I thought

that after the recent thoughts on Ukraine episode that I put out, a few of you, first

of all, most of you, virtually all of you, heard me out and when you had criticisms,

I, the vast majority of them were solid good faith criticisms. And one of the most common

ones that I got was that the account I was providing was overly focused on the role

that the United States and NATO had played in my interpretation in leading to the current

crisis. Now that was kind of the purpose of the episode. You know, I saw it as kind of

providing information that wasn't necessarily making it into the mainstream discourse when

you turn on CNN or Fox News or listen to some of our politicians. But I heard you guys.

And so I thought it would be a good idea to bring someone on the show who has a very

different perspective from mine and from the one that I put out in that podcast.

Kristaps Anderson is his name. He's a Latvian journalist, a writer and the host of the

Eastern border podcast, which is for a long time been one of my go to podcasts for Russian

and Soviet and Eastern European history. He's also a fluent Russian speaker. He's very

plugged into Russian media and what Russian leaders are saying in their own language to their

own people. So he provides insight that you're you're just not going to get from mainstream

sources in the West for the most part. Now that said, again, he and I have very different

interpretations of the recent history between the West and Russia. And this discussion was

a great start because we will be speaking again soon. A great start at getting to the

bottom of our disagreements. So those of you who heard the thoughts on Ukraine episode

and have been pining to see me get my ass handed to me by someone who's a real expert

on this issue. Maybe I'm not making any promises, but maybe not as your chance. So this is a

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