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00:00I mean, President Putin himself literally wrote the book, or at least the monograph
00:04on the topic, when he said, essentially, that Ukraine has no reason to exist as an independent
00:11country.
00:12It's false.
00:13There's not a Ukrainian language.
00:15Ukraine is really just Russia, or little Russia.
00:17So what Russia is getting at in terms of the irritants beyond Ukraine is something that's
00:23been on their proposal since 2008, when then President Dmitry Medvedev said there needs
00:28to be a new European architecture of security based on the concept of equal security, meaning
00:34that no country or no member of the transatlantic space or the Euro-Atlantic community can take
00:40any action that would be perceived as threatening the security of any other European country,
00:47which of course includes military-political alliances or any sort of collaboration between
00:54some Europeans and or Americans that, in this case, Russia would not like.
00:59Putin made that request or demand more specific in the lead-up to his invasion of Ukraine
01:05in 2022, and he said that NATO must withdraw all of its forces that were deployed after
01:11Russia invaded Donbass and Crimea, and must even reduce its overall commitment to the
01:17Eastern European members of NATO, which is an absolute non-starter for those members
01:21of NATO who feel that throughout their history they've been threatened by an aggressive Russia.