Russia and Ukraine Entangled Histories, Diverging States

I'm reading Scott Horton's pre-release of his new book It's like 500 pages on the history between Russia and Ukraine It's incredible He breaks down all of the color revolutions That happened through the eastern block nations That were CIA backed And I can't tell you how Reminiscent it was Of living through 2020 And it just strikes me as a color revolution I'm not saying it was one But it felt a hell of a lot like one When you read about them, it's crazy It's uncanny honestly

I didn't know anything about this until i read scott's book but after the fall of the ussr the the west broadly but obviously america being the the leader of the west had such an incredible opportunity to look at their fallen foe and say we are going to welcome you into the capitalist west because most people don't know this but the russian people after the fall of communism were extraordinarily open to the idea of capitalism because they were like well that sucked let's give this ago and instead of walking welcoming them with open arms they were just kicked in the teeth repeatedly by the west and george bush's administration bill clinton's administration george bush's juniors administration year after year you had both yeltsin as well as putin that requested if they could be added to the u n or excuse me to nato they were laughed off never even given a consideration and the only requirement that putin put on it was that he wanted to not have to wait in the normal line which obviously as a nation with over six thousand nuclear weapons you might want to go like all right yeah we won't make you wait is in the in the reason five thousand no six out as far as i know it's six thousand but the reason he didn't want to wait is because the hardliners in russia that were super anti-west probably would have toppled him in that interim so he's just like look slap us in the nato he didn't have the time to wait yeah he's like i can't wait if you want me in there put me in there let's let's just accept the fact that we are european and what do they do instead they alienate and they drive them into back-to-back depressions over a three-year period that greatly diminishes the the life expectancy of the russian people i'm talking late 90s i was a kid at the time i had no idea any of this was transpiring and then as a as a as a byproduct of this you now have driven russia not only into war that could have been avoided if our lunatic state department hadn't been involved but also into the arms of the ccp the communists who also have nuclear weapons and oh might i add over a billion people and we risk world war three now when we none of this had to happen none of it so you're correct they have five thousand nine hundred seventy seven it was at their peak the soviet union had 45 000 yes and and that was the other thing that they were doing they were cutting back on their nuclear arsenal they ended the war saw pack they were doing all of these like signs of good faith and instead of treating them with any sort of respect as a nuclear power they were just laughed off and abused and like this is not to justify or write off pudin's responsibility in the death of countless ukrainians and it's absolutely tragic but to write off the west responsibility in this and the u.s specifically the bill clinton administration which gets a total clean bill of health no one even pays attention to what the clinton administration did to them during that period but they along with the imf and the world bank absolutely destroyed russia and they they laid the groundwork for a nationalistic rise of a strong man like vatem vatem rputin he probably would have never even been the leader of russia had been not for clinton it does seem like he's trying to hold on to save the country that's why he won't let go and it's like when he feels comfortable letting go it'll just be like