now ukraine gate that is these charges against trump that he has some nefarious ties to the kremlin in russia itself in the and i'm speaking now the people me very the people in russia who study the united states they're my counterparts russia they study the united states they interpret these charges against trump as being logged because trump ran and he was elected on a program of quote cooperating with russia in fact i recall vividly you and i doing an interview together and we were both struck by trump's promise that he would cooperate with russia at that time i guess it was $216.00 the cold war was heating up and that was unusual and i took the position with you know i was not a trump person that that was a good thing but in russia today and i follow this de lay on the on the television

and in the newspapers there is this belief among the people who care about american russian relations that all this grief and all these charges against trump originated because he wanted to cooperate with russia in other words that these it originated with the enemies of what our generation larry used to call detente there is substantial truth in that i don't think it's the whole truth but that's the way it's viewed in russia there's one other thing i'll mention to you and then i'll stop among young people. i mean people let's say 18 to 35 from my point of view that's young. there's a disillusionment because these people many of them were very pro-american and they wanted russia to become more like america but now they read every day about allegations that our intelligence agencies have been off the reservation have been manipulating american politics have been doing bad things well they grew up in

a system where that's what the russian intelligence agencies do so they had thought unlike in russia intelligence agencies don't do that in america now they're being told not by russia but by american news reports which are broadcast in russia that that's happening here so the reaction in russia is i would say very profound. steven cohen feel about the debate that was held in congress when john murtha veteran republican told his colleagues that somewhere and rest your right now president putin is laughing at us you do that no it's an absolute profound misunderstanding of who putin is and what he wants and i can speak with some authority on this because for quite a long time i've made putin and his leadership a special topic of my study putin came to power in 2000.

in a country that had been ruined by the worst peacetime depression in history russia was in an economic ruin nation and putin's mission and he spoke about this often was to preside over russia's recovery at home. a men were dying at 57 years old at that time larry you and i would be pushing the daisies by now to the store to russia at home a lifestyle a a stability that had been lost in the 1990 s. and thereby reposition russia its true as a great power which has always been on the world stage that is been pollutants mission to achieve that mission he has said repeatedly he wants and i use his words modernizing partnerships with the west he wants a stable west that is trading with russia 1st and foremost he has in mind europe

because putin is a european man in europe particularly germany has enormous trade with russia but he also had in mind the united states therefore instability in american russian relations the accusations that putin is attacking america which is utter nonsense this is an authentic old it's the opposite of how putin sees his own mission and it's been a serious setback for him as he tries to formulate policy at home and abroad so he doesn't like any of this is stephen cohen and d. trump are. boy that's a hard question i can remember it must have been in 216 that you and i did this interview where trump and said he wanted to cooperate with russia and i said gosh that's interesting nobody else is saying that that's a good thing but he's got to bring trump a lot of grief and of course he has. i didn't vote for president trump

and i would have to see the democratic candidate is to know who i vote for in 2020 but i 100 percent support trumps ongoing continuing 3 year policy of cooperating with russia which for some reason because there's nothing to these russia gay charges i mean nothing's been there was all fiction from the beginning i support trump's persistence and you got to get you got to admit that he's taken a lot of blows he's been caught it's been called treasonous but he persists i mean he had lover off the soviet foreign minister in the white house in the oval office who i was a week ago i think and the press was horrible called it treason but trump is just determined to have this cooperative relationship with russia and that in that regard i support president trump and other regards probably not how to washington

is the question is here's the problem for people such as you and me we grew up knowing we should be one issue political voters right don't just take one issue but i am fixated on the dangers in american russian relations i think are very dangerous so that to the extent that appears to be determined to reduce those dangers i support him in that regard how do you explain that from putin the relationship. well you know this is very funny because last night i read in a newspaper that trump has said all these remarkably affectionate i think they use those words affectionate words about putin and i have a file at home which is called trump on putin putin on trumped you know things they said about each other the only thing that i can find that trump ever sad in a really positive way about putin was and i remember when he said it he said

putin is a strong leader well that's true what is he supposed to say putin's a weak leader that would be untrue i don't find that pandering or subversive or treasonous i mean what do we want i mean it's almost as though we're no longer grown up do we want the president of the united states to curse at the occupant of the kremlin the other superpower i mean ever since the advent of atomic weapons and president eisenhower every american president has attempted to do diplomacy with whoever sits in the kremlin to keep us safe from war conceivably nuclear war and we applauded that and by the way larry here's an interesting thing the biggest episodes of what we call detente that is cooperating with the kremlin were presided over by republican presidents right eisenhower correct nixon and finally

ronald reagan who had the biggest cooperation detente of all so you could argue though i'm not sure trump's aware of this but he ought to say something about it he is squarely in the republican tradition of cooperating with what has what is food and said publicly about from. not very much meaning he gets a kind of smirk and wicked grin on his face when reporters ask him questions about whether he and trump have some secret relationship based on collusion i mean i think putin thinks it's preposterous because the he knows there's no secret diplomacy or i should say secret diplomacy because there has to be secret diplomacy let me give you an example that happened just just this week so there is this demand that trump print publish make known the notes of his conversation with putin the last time they met correct i think it was in helsinki

you know this scandal they're now demanding in on television in congress that they publish these notes but this is impossible private diplomacy between the leaders of the united states and russia have kept us safe since the advent of nuclear weapons they have to be able to have private conversations why because always always there are the enemies of detente in moscow and washington who will attack will leader for doing cooperation so i find it preposterous i find it not in america's national interest i find it childish this notion that everything putin trump say to each other should be published we don't demand that when when the president talked to the president of france mccraw on and mccraw on is are you are pushing now for a soft policy will you. were you appalled at russia's invasion of the ukraine. you know that the problem with this being that i wasn't appalled no i think that

they had choices that they decided not to take but b we got to remember good we have to remember back what is it 5 almost 6 years now . 2014. the elected const he may have been a bad guy janak overage what he was constitutionally legally elected president of ukraine and he was overthrown by a mob i don't care what democratic slogans were on their banners it was a mob he fled they were storming his residence he fled to russia. it appeared at that point that ukraine would renege on it on russia's lease of its most important naval base of a stop all that was a dire threat the russian national security so russia's reaction to that did not

surprise me now i know from people who know because they have friends who work in the kremlin that putin had options and he debated them but he thought it was an accidental decision he had to protect the russian naval bases sever stoppel and i think i mean it's not a question of whether i approve of it question is do i understand and i do understand it and i think any russian leader even the ones we like and think are democrats would have had no chose choice but to do it putin would tell you as stephen says she and her his support of ticks at princeton were discussing russia the united states the ukraine will be right back after this break.

tariff along russian an alliance. you know world big partisan lot and conspiracy it's time. to wake up to dig deeper to hit the stories that mainstream media refuses to tell more than ever we need to be smarter we need to stop slamming the door on the back and shouting past each other it's time for critical thinking it's time to fight for the middle for the truth the time is now for watching closely watching the hawks.

aeroflot russian and lights. the washington consensus led by the united states says the liberal world order must be defended at almost all costs said differently the foreign policy blog demands the post cold war you know polar moment be preserved but alas it would seem a multiple of world has already arrived. join me every thursday on the alex salmond show and i'll be speaking to guests of the world of politics sports business i'm show business i'll see you then.

that was stephen toland russians scholar whose latest book war with russia from putin and ukraine to trump the new gate he is in new york city. ok you sound to me as is. strong maybe a strong. supporter of putin i've been with putin twice you've never met him correct what attracts you to him. it's not i mean it's not my job i mean i bad ben at this larry almost 50 years as a scholar who studies russia it's not never been my job to support one

russian leader over another it's been my job to study him comment on him try to understand him i will admit there is one exception i came to know me heigho gorbachev and i became very fond of him and he was very kind to me and our families became friends so much so that my then 13 year old daughter thought that gorbachev was his her godfather it wasn't but she got it in her head that this was her godfather because we saw so much of gorbachev and he was so affectionate but apart from the relationship of corba trough i don't support one russian leader or another i have many friends in the russian political class and if i was a russian i might vote for one of them not putin. but it it it's what i do to try to understand russian politics and i have to say that that once venerable profession of studying russian politics has been lost in this country in fact i

would submit to you larry think about this then all in all this nonsense about russia gate russia itself has been lost i mean we have very few news stories about what's going on in russia itself you know an enormously important country it's all about the russia gate and the secret ties to trump or somebody else but what's going on in russia do you believe that putin wants trump reelected. you know. i don't know it's in a in a perfect world trumps cooperate with russia as i said before is the american policy that putin wants on the other hand putin and his advisors on america are absolutely astonished and demoralized by all these scandals that have dragged russia into american politics i guess putin would have

to see what the alternative is to see if he preferred somebody else do you that i don't think he feels personally wedded to trump do you think he interfered with lection what is interfering metal using. unorthodox unwarranted criminal means to affect how they voted in iowa or no i was living in moscow i'm going to take you back larry because i think we actually did an interview when i was in moscow and talked about it i was living in moscow in 1996 boris yeltsin in the president of russia was up for reelection he was at about 3 percent and positive approval polls he appeared to have no chance of winning whatsoever that the american government under bill clinton launched a massive financial an on site campaign to get russia reelected to

get yeltsin reelected i witnessed that i didn't like it but i was fascinated by this this legion of american advisors in american money that descended on moscow compared to that what russia did in the in the 216 election was jaywalking. oh run of the mill stuff i mean we've meddled in each other's politics since the russian revolution i mean after our president woodrow wilson center american troops to fight the russians civil war in 190-1901 thing is that metal and of course it is we've tried to be involved in iraq and russian and in soviet politics for decades usually unsuccessfully it's something both sides do they meddle i don't think what happened in 216 was anything out of the ordinary. oh you characterize the current state of u.s.

ukraine relations. the problem here is which ukraine i mean you've got powerful political forces in ukraine trying to deal both with russia and the united states and it's become an unholy mess what strikes me and it's kind of it's not yet tragic it may become tragic but it's sad that this rather vaguely new and relatively young president of ukraine zelinsky wright who everybody points out had once been a t.v. comedian becomes elected a pump elected president of ukraine now he ran larry on a program with ending the war with russia he ran on a peace program he was kind of a george mcgovern candidate except that he won. it is his mission it's his

political mandate it's what his anyone with about 71 percent of the vote it's what his supporters wanted was an end to the war with russia and end of the fighting in done boss and elsewhere but he has been thwarted primarily because he's been dragged into american politics this is the bad thing so my view is is that all of us including trump including those people who are against trump really should withdraw from ukraine and let zelinsky make his peace with russia he has cards to play he can negotiate putin is ready and waiting we now have this big fight over shipping military more military about 400000000000 i think $380000000000.00 worth of military equipment to ukraine why why 'd barack obama was pressured do that and he refuse one of the wise decisions obama made as president 1st of all you don't know whose hands those weapons are going to

end up with and it's ukraine's one big black market secondly why risk an escalation of the fighting what we should want is alinsky to do is to continue this peace process sometimes known as the minsk accord with russia to settle this dispute what's the point of sending more weapons to ukraine which by the way and it's warehouses has plenty of weapons. do you support the sutra no no no no i don't support your preacher in trouble for a whole lot of reasons but i think that at the end particularly with elections what 910 months away this is not something that i don't see the crime for which. you know it's compelling to make an impeachment case i've looked at all this stuff and russian here i mean it may have been bad form he had a couple phone calls with selenski which could have been better i don't think he's got great advisors in the white house some of the people he brought in the white

house he didn't like but he brought him in to get the russia gate accusations he brought in hard liners like fiona and john bolton to make it look like he was tough i don't think it's good advice but you know i don't i don't you think putin is the most of all men in the world. i mean that would take us to what we mean by powerful. let's change the words influential ok in world politics i was certain to say that he's one of and here's what's interesting. partly because of trump's but hey if you're but partly because putin has been an advocate of negotiating conflicts all the way from syria to ukraine and beyond putin has emerged for european leaders i'm not talking about american as one of the preeminent european statesman. now when putin came to power

that's what he wanted as i mentioned before so putin's reputation his role in europe is very different from what it is here i mean for example i mentioned that trump had the the russian foreign minister sergei lavrov in the white house a perfectly normal playing and there was a big scandal how dare he have the russian foreign minister in the white house or what should we do with the russian foreign minister snub him shoot him the poor name i mean foreign ministers are supposed to negotiate diplomacy in peace so there's now seen as a mainstay of european security that is something new we haven't seen that maybe not the 20th century. that role being played by russia a lot of it has to do with russia's back on its feet but it a lot of it has to do with putin and love rauf who is probably the number one foreign minister in the world i mean they're pretty good at what they do diplomacy

wise personally and stephen in all the years i've known you to what what what draws you to who. you are fascinated with and what draws you to him that well i don't like the word draw but i am fascinated by him and again it comes back to what happened in russia in the 1990 s. the collapse of the country and when i see the country i mean the lives the professions of my personal friends so many people i know lost their professions so many people had to sell their household belongings because they weren't being paid . the reason and i'm going to turn your question around a little bit here. putin remains remarkably popular in russia even though inflation even though pensions have been reformed in a way not to the benefit of people even though putin's ratings have dropped he

remains remarkably popular people see him why is he so popular one is people don't see an alternative so you understand if they don't have a plausible alternative in front of him then they say yeah i'm proposing but i think it's just lasting gratitude that putin presided over russia's rise from the disaster of the 1990 s. because almost every family in russia including young kids and their grandparents lived through a catastrophe in the 1990 s. and it wasn't putin personally and alone but he built a team of economist and of. people who knew what they were doing and he got russia stabilized back on its feet at home for that every russian i know including ones who don't like putin remain grateful to him thanks so much for your time to their oars in jail talking with thank you very good in the book is war with russia

a question mark from putin in ukraine to trump and russia gates. and that concludes this edition of politicking well number you can join the conversation on my facebook page or tweet me kings things and don't forget to use the politicking hash tag and that's all for this edition of fallen sick game. teraflops russian airlines. you know world of big partisan movies a lot and conspiracy it's time to wake up to dig deeper to hit the stories that

made stream media refuses to tell more than ever we need to be smarter we need to stop slamming the door on the bath shouting past each other it's time for critical thinking it's time to fight for the middle for the truth the time is now for watching closely watching the hawks. teraflops russian deadlines.

my name is succubus seat on the road mr jackson but i don't see it's a. good border you know if you. will let me know we've got to get it out. because. the movement still will not see skids and i use down 6 to make it a day easier i know suits me school on drugs used to people. who. know. who cooks who falls who comes because who comes here and he's trying to fit

a music that. i didn't see it does because the makes me copy books i love he dies because he makes me unhappy playing moved. and when you go to say it's really nice in. the back yard i think because it's backed up my ass a lot of the darn things. that i doubt. you know world of big partisan mocks and conspiracy it's time to wake up to dig deeper to hit the stories that mainstream media refuses to tell more than ever we need to be smarter we need to stop slamming the door. and shouting past each other it's time for critical thinking it's time to fight for the

middle for the troops the time is now for. watching closely watching. the russian military state. god missile system and. 12 people are killed as a passenger plane crashes. moments after takeoff dozens more are being treated in hospital. in strategic partners iran and russia china hold joint territorials in the gulf and a show of strength and unity. on the right morning on the new kate ministry to compensate sophos personnel who were expelled from the military because of their sexuality we hear we. need to recognize.