gas station masquerading as a country in the west an understanding of russia according to the russians themselves has long been the boito for understanding can the current crisis in relations between russia and the west be put on these knowledge gap or is it perhaps triggered by that you sides knowing each other all too well to discuss that i'm now in joined by huntsville how the same folks in a region journalist and a veteran foreign correspondent in moscow has a sense of it's pleasure talking to you thank you very much for receiving us in your house. now you've been stationed to moscow for almost twenty years you had four stints as a foreign correspondent there the first one beginning in one thousand eight hundred the last one and ending in two thousand and fourteen i'm sure a lot of things changed during that time but what are some of the notable things that stayed the same. no as a gas station well i meant the russia that was actually a really big suggest ation in this country however. before i became

a journalist i took a couple into a ph d. in soviet history and let me remind you norway is the neighbor state to russia we are only in. the first house without ever being at war with norway the russians such are quite popular in norway among the lay people seriously that is a surprising thing to hear i say especially knowing that there are so many military exercises right off your butt you know with the russians became close to us during the second world war they liberate the north east of mark. north most county. in the sun by next year we are celebrating seventy five years of liberation among those who advocate the necessity to invite law they may have put in because the owner of rights bravery belongs to russia it cost you two

thousand soldiers life and we cannot make a symbolic act like thoughts or contemporary. you mentioned the russian or have quite an extensive history but as somebody who's spent a lot of time both in to the soviet union and to russia i want to get your perspective on how different these two geopolitical how similar these two geopolitical and it is are because i interview a lot of people in the west and they relate russian the soviet they think of russian the soviet union as one of the same and i think tosses it as russians that is that this is a totally different periods absolutely i must confess that domestic policies in russia or the soviet union always fascinated me more. then to foreign policy however russian today is not the soviet union. arguments against the soviet union that was on. it was the absence of the

liberty of fates. and the speech freedom those three rights have been restored there has disappeared from russia there are partly censorship it on that is that not believe me so it's unfair to say that putin has restored the soviet union there are so many publications i have been my bookshelves. fifteen volumes of the weekly reports from k.g.b. to stalin from twenty six to thirty four about everything that happened in the service society it's so much has been published in communist russia that only. idiots can believe that as a way back in the one once you mention put his name in the e.u. had your introduction to that man long before many other people did because i read

somewhere that you were served coffee by him when he was still deputy mayor or perhaps even an assistant to the mayor of st petersburg administration what was so memorable about that event that made you remember why would you. deny his boss the man who introduced both vladimir putin. and did meet him it did if the politics was. he was my friend. and people have to remember after the putsch the coup d'etat. in nineteen ninety one mountain. became the second most popular leader of the but his hilson and that's when i meet putin the first time i had been publishing a book it was called return to europe about russia and i gave it to some shock in small may well lenin was in charge of the job

a revolution. and we were sitting bickering a bit about freedom in russia and toward alexandrovitch you have to remove lenin in front of the small small the palace and is a no no that's our history he will say when we were seven like up the chief of ministration ten men pouring coffee that was by the mid-point and different during the conversation. and in the front office who will serve into. the front of the force his assistants they need to the minute they get under my point as the one of the leading democrats in persia communist russia he was the mensa of the mit put in and the method in the video and putin delivered his commission as a measure of k.g.b. in the middle of the coup in ninety one put them at the most crucial points of russian post communist history it sided with democracy nineteenth of august month in ninety one when western journalists write about contemporary russia they never

fail to mention putin had a k.g.b. experience but they almost never mention his experience at the st petersburg administration the phrase democratic city administration that country or that he was for example a personal friend of the thousand it's a fairly family why do you think those connections the connections that he had and the associations that he had after k.g.b. don't matter to western know russia poorly as some mentioned to you don't mistake relationships in russia fascinate me to distaste much more than foreign policy and putin he was right publishing a very interesting book in the spring or month in two thousand appeared from the first mammal the states. and then he is describing his period a sick age of the major in the east germany in the autumn of eighty nine we speak

for the downfall of the berlin wall and he writes in the book that we were sitting and they take a dissident tool in the burning secret documents until the oval one two zero and is said we didn't quite understand what happened in germany but we did have a feeling that the soviet union was mortally it was called the power lies of governments one of the most quoted and misquoted sayings of putin is that because of the soviet union it was one of the greatest tragedies of the twentieth century you saw that in real time when you were stationed in russia back then what was it like for you and that experience of the whole universe i suppose collapsing came very abruptly but i understood that. finished because of the church it was as close as people who committed this i was

inside the white house with borders hilson. covering this from the elson side. so we did understand already in august that something was going very very wrong from the shore and yet was there when the and this was the proper elected president of the russian republic. but we knew des would comparable and speak or say economy the soviet economy was more integrated than in the european union and of course these problems ten and the nineteen thirties i will not repeat but i would prefer the part that they are killed the second who said the ninety ninety s. of russian history is among the worst episodes in contemporary russian history you had a loss of population and the nine to nine this bordering to ten million men

according to the president of the medical union of russia in two thousand and one ten million men vanished by the day one of boom or they died primitive prematurely so what happened in the ninety and ninety nine to ninety's to a large degree discredited the top history of modern democracy and you have a nice way of saying it in russian you called the. diplomat decision you call it pretty much i have translated that into english it wasn't the privatization but the pirate or the euro a razor very traumatic time and i was a very young teenager the time and if things that i remember most vividly are not the lines not the shortages but the collapse of coordinates for good and evil you know the role models that we had before were discredited and the new role models

were not that clear do you think russia has. overcome that collapse no corballis in our no there's no to russia to soviet union collapses outward lenin in with the church but you get to vacuum effects in russia after a month you want the vacuum of last. fifteen years to restore contemporary long. all the code was from month in fifty seven there was no paragraph defending private property for instance but more important you get a value and mock value. you have to find new i don't do it deals and it took. us before put in the restored the codex of the sutton for offices for instance so this vacuum effect in the philosophical way

became a huge endurance and after all russia has house the political history you had a democracy more or less for twenty six. and everything connected to decode temporary world. and you think for russians you had to develop a state without institutions from ninety nine to two i always think about it as a as a person who had a stroke or had to relearn how to walk how to talk how to think how to function and the way we have to take a very short break now but we'll be back in just a few moments and.

join me every thursday on the alex simon show and i'll be speaking to guest of the world of politics sports business i'm showbusiness i'll see you then. you know i work with potential school shooters for a period of twelve years and none of the students. who we work with in our facility the syllabi ever went on to commit a school shooting so that gives me hope that if you catch the students early enough and provide the kind of support and mental health treatment that they need that they can come out of the crisis. welcome back to worlds apart with

a prominent their region journalist huntsville him saying he felt i missed it central before the break we were talking about this collapse of the world view of. the russians experienced in the early ninety's and there are some people in russia who argue that the west is now going through a milder version of that when a familiar world things that you used to believe or used to take for granted now being questioned and i would some would suggest that it comes as a result of the west's own policy is pretty much like it happened to the soviet union because the soviet union wasn't destroyed by the west it collapsed under its own contradictions do gridded that. let me wrap up the soviet experience because and ninety and ninety one richard nixon came to borders hilson was present and nixon said an important thing emphasizing the thing of the opportunity by the west and nineteen months in one thousand nine hundred ninety two nixon was an

american president we spent trillions of american dollars on contentment against the aggressive soviet communism we were not willing to insure their young and frail russian democracy with a few tens billions of dollars it was eighty billion dollars which was the foreign debt of the soviet union how the west's when russia was on its knees paid away those debts instead of this paris club then we would have been a catalyst of economic growth and the ninety's might have been happy but at the end the russians did pay that doubt all by themselves. that certainly didn't make the ninety's easier but i think russia has been progressing as vast as it can towards something towards a more stable system you've been very critical of the russian democratic

institutions you suggested that perhaps the russians a tip return a list of their to submissive to the authority is that still your view and do you think russians are still failing when it comes to building the institutions. i'm not been secreted call against a constitution that was written by on the tories of chuck. i remind you that when vladimir putin returned for the third time he made the speaker this be the speech state of the union a travel talk that wealth the sum by two thousand and twelve in the kremlin and he said if we do not soon do something for those between twenty and forty five that means building lodging facilities houses. russia as a federal state may fall apart in fifteen to twenty years as did the soviet union what in russia's economic policies is distribution of

wealth you have nots this feature in your economy distribution of wealth that is why the privatization of the ninety's became a big big tragedy for russia can i still take you back to my first question about the west reconsidering its values because their argument is that the cold war didn't actually end in one thousand and one it is only an ending now and not with collapse of want system but also in the crumbling over of another system that's an extreme message for some in the west do you agree with that a no no i do don't think the west is about to collapse i definitely agree that in western europe you have the biggest political leadership crisis since nineteen thirty nine and we have not in the white house we have putin in the kremlin it's not the best of situations very good friend of mine whom you know well

a moscow leg of montfort he resigned as moscow and bustle of the five yes. in september and he says we went to school together that not relationships have been so ruined via the bureaucracies will not be able to restore the relationship on the east west this if the politicians do not sit down start talking and agree to agree that is exactly what ronald reagan i'm sure they have but you know that's never going to happen and i'm serving some persistent because as a former workers bundy i know that you also covered. many conflicts. the war in afghanistan was start to. bring the end to the soviet union it. made many people within the soviet union to question its moral foreign foundations didn't the war in libya play exactly the same role for the west because it did and it did produce the

migration crisis that definitely energized. the opposition to the liberal world order and there it may have not have collapsed but it has been undermined i don't see it quite as a pearl because the afghani war within seventy nine and eighty nine was much more traumatic for the soviet union than the middle east has been for the west but i do agree i do agree that the facets the. two the treatment of iraq and syria you can observe in something is turkey three million refugees definitely but it doesn't show the western system the western system and the european union is that finitely pressed by the migration but they have bigger problems like the brics for one thing they have nationalism in poland and hungary so the test on the european union now is

a very very sinister one dimension many differences that russia and the west have but i think the biggest one is ukraine and you said on a number of occasions that the west including norway khant failure crane what do you mean by that. let me take you back to on to the saturday eight december ninth in nine ninety ninety one in the village of bell obvious push and that's where the soviet union formally is closed down by but is. stanislav give each. kravchuk that had been elected a week earlier as the ukrainian president waiting for brazil's and. russians want to take with us the crimea peninsula. close. of course. but in the afternoon yeltsin got sick and forgot about the

whole crimea in january of ninety two i was in sevastopol cripple as you say in russia if they were a religiously mad at the else and because he forgot it this is an important point about sebastopol you said that in one of your interviews that russia's actions in crimea were triggered by the fears that nato ships would be one has said so himself i mean seeing the the kind of politics that ukraine has right now do you think those fears were justified you know i think we have to understand one important thing and that is they. threw the sanctions stemming from down exceptional to crimea in ninety nine to two russia's president asked for an enlargement of the helsinki treaty of seventy five it was the treaty got on seeing

the post-war borders in europe yet some asked that this monday be enlarged also to be valid for the buddhists between the formally soviet republics fifteen countries this was done it was ratified also by russia so by going in and. taking over the crimea in two thousand and fourteen russia broke international law russia could have got to crimea without weapons because seventy percent of the population on the crimea the russians no one but all due respect i mean. there are people who investor who agree that russia broke international law but indisputable but in this world everybody breaks international law so you cannot demand one single country to a pal that when everybody else including russia main rival sending the same.

book optimist i remain an optimist he writes that the only solution to the conflict with ukraine is the fulfilling of the two diplomatic process russia has been failing to do not because the pro russian. separatists in southeast your present should be. cooled down down send thousand lives lost my point is that. and in doing what putin did in two thousand and fourteen many people and notably all the western countries think that he really how police say the debris doctrine defending the invasion of czechoslovakia twenty first of august one isn't at once and that was why he did. i think that putin felt an infringement the nato enlargement again towards the east infringed russia however yes i do think that the russians panicked because i was in

kiev i broke all of my coverage should go limp again since or she going to key of the bloodbath ninety people were killed by the. don't know at this point who actually was there i saw where the snipers one day while on the roof of the government and on on. the february two thousand and fourteen i counted fifty people killed in front of the non-o. there on the highway was i'm in love with and i was also there. did you count fifty people dead in front of your camera i did then the mood changed and your crane. pretty a prior to this the majority of the your training in stay were against nato membership after this killing ninety people killed in one way it switched really don't know who send those snipers there and who orders they were well i think

even in ukraine the investigation is still ongoing it's not conclusive it's been five years after ukraine you've been there i've been there i think we can agree that most of the aspirations that people had on their mind and square at that time haven't been fulfilled except for cutting ties with russia but that was russian was one that was russian failure. because the russian state claimed i hate the us it's not about the russians i mean whatever russians do did not influence the. potence of precious miss today and your friend. of the alleged. russia's most profit for the right this day got zero point sixty one percentages during the president show elections in the ukraine in two thousand if there is a lot of nationalist. ultranationalists in ukraine you would not argue that doesn't russia however you cannot say to see two aspects of the conflicts between russia and ukraine first it's

a tragedy imagine all these millions when mommy is ukrainian and daddy is russian from a lot like me and just the other day ukrainian president not just the right sector but the ukrainian presidency banned all russians from visiting their relatives in the ukraine that don't get earlier through it as that order was still in force you've been critical of russia you noted there russia's missteps do you think that a country that wants to be part of the european union should respond to a never naval arctic altercation by banning the entire population of another country is that democratic is that in line with western values first place you have to understand that the skin and the sound where russia took three naval vessels is a military and military at it must be brought to a class. and then done the standing. point point is that that is

a war of war by proxy a mob between ukraine and russia in the southeast in. banning the entire population of another country is a proportionate action to that no it's not. how. these things happen when there's no dialogue that's why i support got a bunch of who says that the only solution is to get back to the conference table and negotiate a controlled. media in south east your friend if not this with content there any appetite for that in kiev. here's a journalist do you think if i think it's a i thing openside think by his policies put an alienated forty million your presence in this is not what i asked you you said that we need to go back to this existence when it means the dreams are assigned and then with the long gaze shun of the nation i do not think it is

a big up it side however that is as much to criticize on domestic affairs in the ukraine as of this and russia useless on there is similar and you are exposed from quarrelling and your core of the well my however it is a situation that this unpredictable and that is why it's dangerous i think both russia and ukraine need to understand that they need assistance now in order to reestablish a dialogue done a lot of things to talk about and that is why i reminded you that at the peak of the cold wall ronald reagan and go but you'll suck down and got much of he even said a first sentence of b. of a strike out reconstruction. we term a continue to live like this while i repeat his words today we can all it continue to live like this while missing going on our social media pages and hope to syria

again same place same time here and worlds apart. you.

know. your good fortune. may survive no confidence vote but now is a lame duck our. political retirement and. as president of france is in the balance the three pillars of the e.u. are on shaky ground is the euro project suffering a crisis competent. people

. fifty. the predatory practices pursued by china and russia pose a significant threat to u.s. national security interests washington unveils a new strategy and africa to counter russia and china's influence on the continent and the u.s. national security adviser thing about.