for the death and destruction this attack will bring, and the united states and its allies and partners will respond in a united and decisive way the world will hold russia accountable of the nato secretary general yen stalsen. burke has also added his voice to a growing chorus internationally condemning the russian military operation in ukraine. he said that there will be a response. russia has attacked ukraine. this is a brutal, actual war. ne dollar's condemn russia's invasion of ukraine in the strongest possible terms. it is a blatant violation of international law. we can expect mold voices to join those, condemning the russian military operation in ukraine as, as more information comes out and we hear more and more statements from the west, in particular, happy to as you say, the reaction is coming fast and furious from all around the world, actually we are getting a lot of comments as you were referring to

a gen stilton book just a moment ago, peter, that to the nato chief he was, he's basically calling on to russia to immediately stop the military action to withdraw from ukraine and choose diplomacy peter oliver, policy of both of you thank you. little bit earlier in the program. we did discuss this whole crisis with a conwell sybil, a former foreign secretary of india. and i'll sort of demco, a political scientist at the moscow state university. i think we see this as a failure of europe to settle is security affairs, despite the can for the soviet union and communism. and at the ology. and it has been a continuation of the cold war mindset in, in europe and the united states and russian weakness has been exploited to isolated as much as possible from europe. but the russia has to be part of the european security architecture for centuries. either positively or negatively. all this would have, frankly not point of view have been avoided because your greens in the membership is not, is not at the,

should not be at the cost of russia security and it is not centrally. and you do your up to a, you will be in balance, indivisible, security architecture after all, sweden from lynch. and that i mean outside needles. who came to me in outside the neutral has been waiting for constructive response from natal to the proposal about an agreement on mutual security guarantees. but there is no response and no. busy implementation of means can bring unfortunately, the leadership of ukraine and not tonight or did not use this opportunity to resolve those differences diplomatically and taking into consideration rational concerns about growing threats and he's borders. and also we can refer to the past history 3030 block years of history after the dissolution of their also fact are going to zation western countries. ro billy promise not to extend not to nato bought, since ne documents were signed, this promise was not kept. and received as a deception. and so nader has been expanding for 30 years, approaching russia,

borders and the draft has been destroyed. or appreciate you joining us here for our special coverage on the international, the continued ukrainian crisis. i'm what is essentially that of a military escalation of lot of my food is facing a barrage of criticism for, for what many a calling an invasion of ukraine put in does call it a peacekeeping mission to protect the lives of those. and the break for republics of don't yet. and lu, guns, you officials, the quality with a barbaric and heinous act above bars. johnson from downing street in the u. k. calling vladimir putin, that of a dictator. now there's more information for you any time at arthur dot com. also, the latest video is up on our team youtube channel, but our special coverage returns at the top of the out ah ah

hello and welcome to cross talk where all things are considered. i'm peter lavelle . moscow repeatedly warned. it would not tolerate ukraine being used by nato to threaten russia's natural security. those warnings were not taken seriously. even dismissed out of hand. what we are witnessing is the cuban missile crisis in reverse, and this could have easily been avoided, ah, cross hocking events in ukraine. i'm joined by my guest, alexandro bruno in toronto. he's an analyst at gulf state analytics, and in osler, we have down to bar. he's an anti war activists and a radio show host or a gentleman cross ok, rules and effect. that means he can jump in any time you want. i always appreciated alexander, let me go to you. first in toronto, we have big our changes. so when i woke up this morning and started reading the news in my heart, sunk for everybody involved,

this could have been very much avoided. i all through the day, thinking about our, our, our recording here. i was thinking of the munich conference in 2017, when potent warned nato about it's expansion, about it's the stabilizing effect in pan european security. and here we are today, go back to december 17th of last year, asking nato, asking the united states to reconsider the architecture for european security. because was because it would be had become inherently unstable and against russia's interests. and here we are today, and i think i just said, no one is a winner. ear thoughts on sad day. go ahead in toronto. yes, it was shocking for me. i for me, it was evening. and i opened the news and i saw what was happening. and while i was hoping until the last moment, in fact, i was surprised, but at the same time,

not surprised. i wrote a piece that titled it's a trap. and i think perhaps the calculation and the crumbling was, will take the trap because the alternative is worse, which means this would have ukraine live inevitably fall into those lap. and then the situation would have been worse. i think it has played out as a cuban missile crisis in reverse. in fact, this is exactly the same situation. if we, if you don't take out the missiles, we will. and that's what seems to have done overnight. i'm not sure what the situation is like later how the things are progressing. what i've seen, the focus has been on military bases for the time being but

it's a shock, and unfortunately, i think russia will pay, will be made to pay a high price as, and i think europe will pay a huge price as well. it's a, it's everyone's shooting on the wrong feet here, and they could have been completely avoided not once, but several times or 8 years to change, to consider even open to the idea of changing the architecture, which is completely it's not even useless. it's completely inappropriate. because the nato was designed to protect europe from soviet russia. soviet union, the soviet union has long finished. it's no longer in existence. so it's nato should have been. the architecture should have been changed already in 1992. this is already, we are 30 years to late don, you know, the, you know,

and i was this morning when i was watching events on hold and checking around various news outlets trying to get my head around what was going on. the thought entered my head, the me post, cold war era is finally over. we're in the new epoch right now. i don't know what to call it, but the, the, the europe, the pannier a p in security architecture came into existence. after the end of the soviet union, at the end of the cold war, now it's, it's completely collapsed because it is security is indivisible. if one country is threatened all are, and this is the situation that we've come to know. and ukraine is paying a very heavy price for not making a choice. we had the men's got accords wanting to, it was a way out. there was a guarantor, russia, france, germany, france, and germany did nothing. they sat on their hands for 8 years. and they were supposed to be guarantors to this. they did not push kev to commit to itself. and

this is where we are starting monday with the, with russia, recognizing the don as republics. and now what we have now disarming ukraine, the name of this program, don, your thoughts that you have a real complex puzzle of, you know, different pieces interacting, the geopolitical considerations of these, you know, economic, political. ready blocks are the one that, you know, is more or less comprised of much of the world. up until recently, the hagaman really are the rising eurasian global competitors, how it's viewed in washington anyway, the in other words, eurasia, on building and standing on its own and charting at its own future, which is a threat, of course, to those who have designs on the future of eurasia for themselves. the goal of the united states looking at russia in particular of what china to hasn't changed

really from the goal of france in the 19th century and of germany in the 20th century. they see seberio, in essence, asian, russia, and china. as the africa of the 21st century, where they're going to go in and capture all the mineral wealth on rather than of dragging laborer, thus slaves off, you have highly skilled a technical workers. they want to extract value from them. working from megan for the corporations in the west, at the direction of people in the west. and the foreign policy, the united states in the ear was directed towards that. you cannot really have any other interpretation for the placement of military forces along russia's borders from the baltics to the korean peninsula, including those things that would negate roches ability to respond in the event of

an attack. this is a 1st strike contraption that's been installed around russia. oh, great. oh no, john don, not what we're told over and over again. nato is a defensive ally and it's a defense of alliance. you know, it's delta burke. he has that on speed dial. it's all he can say here. i mean, this is what we keep hearing and speaking of now to let nato, let me quote here. nato claims that it is made every effort to pursue diplomacy and dialogue with russia and has repeatedly invited it for talks to in the nato, russia. council. let me go back to toronto, how do you respond to that? you know, we've been asking for talk, but yeah, that's all it is, is talks. that's what so frustrating when every opportunity is put on the table for a negotiated resolution to this, that was always pushed off the table. this is what so infuriating. go ahead and toronto indeed, and in fact, it seemed to me that you are p and remembered. not to mention nato. remember,

the men's chords only, maybe a couple of hours after the, after the attacks began. that's when all of a sudden they started calling out minsk and, and the rushes failure to abide by those agreements. so it's, it's a one way situation. but also natal has become stifling because it prevents the various countries which are already bound by rules. for example, in germany, france, italy have to abide by the u rules and then there's the nato once and the individual foreign policy and the pursuit of individual interests is completely cancelled out . there is france, italy, germany has 0 interest in going along with the nato attitude, one loses they all lose, lose gas. and then there are the other problems that i found out. of

course, we will probably go up and my favorite pasta will cost a lot more because of this. so this is the, i can't believe the nato has actually interfered with the individual interests of the various powers that it represents. it's become utterly useless. not to mention it. i don't have words. in fact it's re angering i've i've, i've never quite understood that it's point any more after 1992 door so pack was dismantled. it should have been dismantled. fair and square. then. yeah, i mean we are, we hear this a lot from earth. it, everything must have reciprocity, but the worst pack collapse, but nato didn't. so where is the reciprocity there? i don't, i don't cedar link don, let me quote the, my ursula underline of the

e u. am we condemn this barbaric attack and the cynical arguments used to justify it? how do you respond to that after all of this shuttle diplomacy that we had for actually, you know, 6 weeks, 2 months before prior to these events? i find it very hard to take that seriously. go had done well start with the previous architecture for security in europe. you have a germany divided in 4 parts. mostly that a concession by the way, by the soviet union, because the soviet union really defeated germany. and perhaps you could make a case also that the u. s. in the u. k. had a hand in it, france collaborated with germany. they should have divided france also to be honest . but you had this division and you had buffer countries, in essence, the warsaw pact, countries for all of the ideological stuff that he side used against it. there.

there were indigenous communist parties or indigenous capitalists parties. there was like, well this is close to us. we don't want to be invaded from here. again. let us have paul. one is the buffer czechoslovakia is a buffer, romania, bulgaria, et cetera. that was the agreement and western europe was handed to the united states. in essence, the united states occupied and still occupies that the soviet union withdrew from germany on an agreement. that's now been rat, 4 or 5 different people who were involved have confirmed that with documents that the agreement was there would not be any further movements of nato beyond the elm. and yet, there has been, after the collapse of the soviet union, the alleged res, on for the creation of nato. it moved all the way to the borders of russia. how else can you interpret that? ok, gentlemen, are we will interpreted or we're going to go to a hard break here now to that hard break. we'll continue our discussion on what's happening in ukraine state with our key. ah

ah ah ah.

ah, welcome back across stock, were all things are considered on peter level to remind you we're discussing events in ukraine. ah. okay gentlemen, i want to talk about 2 related topics here. first of all, let's talk about energy. let's talk about the nord stream to and of course the gambit too. in my opinion, this is all about trying to neutralize russia from europe to, for the west to focus has tensions on china, which i think is a stupid fever dream. but i think it's in the cards here. first of all, i let it go to toronto, let's talk about energy. let's look at the history of nord stream, too hot. well, it's its origins. ah, i remember germany requested russia to build a 2nd pipeline. it was a german idea, and the russians built it at

a very hefty some. okay, of course, when you look at western media, particularly american media, they talk about it is a bit to the american pipeline. you know, i don't know why joe biden or donald trump or anyone else in any american administration feels they have ownership of something that they don't own, but that's exactly how they talk about it in media. so europe now is set of experiencing a severe energy crunch, and there is a pipeline that could be full of gas, but they don't want to fill it up because somehow this benefits rush. it actually benefits consumers and producers, but i don't want to get too technical here. i was sandra. i mean, you know, it's almost out to the point of absurd, the way they're talking about energy because it's the u. s. that wants to capture the european market at a huge premium. it's a good power play for the americans and for their, their control over europe as we will talk about later as they looked at china. am i over the target? go ahead. no, nope, here i think this is exactly right. in fact,

i think ultimately the reason for or the lack of understanding from the west and particularly from the united states is north stream to the north stream. 2 stood in the way of american l. n. g ship pig. busy delivered by shift, you know, very expand, expensive and very dangerous because the u. s. has been increasing its production of l n g. it needs the market. so the nor string to was a huge obstacle. the other problem, of course, is of europe's actually the world on making this, the climate change story has increased to such an extent, making unreasonable and, you know, dream like solar and wind energy as if, you know, there's enough space for all that. the only solution in europe, germany shut down,

it's nuclear reactors. there's perfectly cheaper many cheaper sources available. but no, they, in the name of this literally ideology they, they need natural gas to fuel the. the green revolution is made the natural gas much more important, and they go and shoot their own foot by interfering with making it now impossible. perhaps in a couple of months we may have some talks again to reopen, but certainly the target i think for this entire thing was nor string to from the beginning. yeah, let's go back to don don. i think that's absolute. i mean, i think that's one of the most important layers here. i mean, essentially would, and energy is the means to, to do this is to, you know, what they want to do is they want to shut russia out of europe. ok. that has been the entire thinking since the end of the cold war is that quote, unquote, russia,

the soviet union is defeated. now we push it out of europe. american hegemony, a maintain, and germany was always the wild card there because it's the power house of europe. it's the economic powerhouse of europe. and you have to make sure the germans cannot make amends. make a work with the russians. this is what the atlantis is. we hate the most and they're winning their winning right now. and the 2nd caveat that i have here, china, how does this play into it? go ahead, done by. well, and i said before, you've got, you know, multiple dimensions to this one is the geopolitical, obviously, the commercial, the, you know, the mercantile this is a very important driver of, of these policies. and you've got a market in europe. first of all, where for 3540 years you've had, you know, broader and deeper austerity imposed on workers and even the middle class or what remains from it. an energy cost soaring before this crisis. so to

cold and anticipating that there would be this natural gas supply through north north stream to now that dries up, what you're going to do is substitute something like cars. you may be looking at 2530 percent of germany's energy going by by in the middle of these are still at east cars rushes. it's going to cut him off perhaps. well, if that happens, you're going to make it up. was more expensive to produce tract gas from the u. s. the event have to ship across the atlantic there, who's going to pay for it? no $1.00 in, in europe could they can of their choosing now between food and heat. and so you're going to jack up the baby double the price of it. again, you may see some re rebellions even revolutions in europe over this. well, it's got back to toronto. i mean, the, the issue of the price of grain has been brought up here too. i mean, if you and it's, it's one of them, it for a lot of people to really mundane, but the price of grain. i can tell you about social, on stability,

around the world, not just in europe here. but let's, let's stay with the what the, the gambit is here. it seems to me that the way events are being played out right now, is that again, right, they, they want to keep russia out of europe. well, i think that said europe's expense. i mean, if you're it becomes very stagnant, it's not very dynamic. it's supposed to get on board with the washington's anti china crusade, which, you know, a lot of people in the us, particularly wall street, are not particularly interested a lot of people who made money in china. very few, those wall street people have made money in russia. okay. so i think again, this is kind of a fever dream here, but it's, it's, it's certainly the united states demonstrating it. so hold, it's had gemini over its allies and i don't see that it goes in anywhere parts deposit positive and certainly trying to knock russia out. will russia, obviously, is everyone's worried about will turn east, go ahead in toronto. well, i mean, the russian turning east and i think this must come into the calculus at the

beginning of the operation because it's clear pulled and understand what, how and when you're europe will react and they will, but it'll perhaps, in a few months we'll see europe reversing because they're going to feel the pain and the, the green revolution in europe is truly and their threat. now because the, this idea of having the conversion to electric cars has been pushed in a much faster way than anybody ever expected. with the european rules banning thermal fuel power. the engines by 2030 or 2035. i forgot the actual date, but it's ridiculous. so they want to bring an electric car who's going to produce all this electricity. certainly not wind farms or solar panels. you need that

whole pipe dream work on natural gas that masked the, the fact that these sources were insufficient. and then they went along and shut down nuclear reactors, germany in ports, nuclear energy from france. because france still has the sense to keep its nuclear reactors going. china is building hundreds of new reactors. so, and of the new type they, they're much smaller, much more efficient and much cleaner. and perhaps that's the only solution if, if you're wants to survive, but they don't have the time. luckily, i think for europeans, i've actually one of the 1st things i did when at the beginning of this military operation was check the weather forecast for europe. european capitals for the next 2 weeks. it's going to be some warm and as a sprinkler because i think her, it had, they had

a toronto weather minus 10 minus 15 and so on. the a the, they're. ready putting would have had an extra card to play with a yeah, i mean, when i think of germany at the sun, this is what in wind isn't when i think of when i think of germany, i think a good cars in beer. i don, let me go to you. i were all told this is in the name of democracy, one of the problems i have a problem. and one of the things i have with this issue here is that ukraine had a democracy in 2014, but the west over through they a democratically elected governments. i mean, what is this democracy thing if they over through a government go ahead. one of the say is that it's really useful for people to do if you go to wikipedia as bad as it is as bad as it is. look at the 2010 a ukrainian election. there's a map there that shows you the, the route relative support for young cove ich, and to mishenko were the, to the 2 final round candidates and to verify that election by the way,

there's also a chart if it's still up of the cia doesn't take them of like 7 or 8 exit polls from all over the world that confirmed that you know, that he won the election. then you can see that, you know, everything, it's and blow in essence on that map, you're going to have strong support for what's going on with russia right now. cuz those are the people that elected him and where it's read, you're going to have support for what's going on in kiev because they voted against the, you know, the candidate, the of the party of regions, piano cove edge. and that is not by the way entirely of with the school because the co was illegal, the governments that have flown float from it or illegal they've banished the party, is that existed from about a 3rd to a half of the population at politicians in jail. this is the broadest and they've got nazi actual, you know, people call neil artist, these are not me or not is,

are old school. they still have the same uniforms and shields. and same hero that they had in the 1940s when they welcomed the germans and showed them where the jews and russians were to kill. and so, you know, just on the china question very quickly, i, you know, if this plays out the way it appears to, and china keeping you know, and, and even bouts. but, you know, supporting russia against us sanctions like has happened since 2014 and one way or another. you could be looking at some kind of sanctions war with china with, with the united states, which they really can't do. i mean, at the end of that day, we end up with china's 1000000000 of and a half people have to absorb another 5 or 10000000 cars. computers and tv sets every year. and we and absorb another couple 100000 lawyers, accountants and b. s artisans because that's what we export. well well i, well i least, you know, down the arms export business is always good. okay. i mean there are 2 types of

countries in the world. people, countries that are sanctioned by the u. s. and countries by american arms, that's the only 2 differences. there are a gentlemen that's all the time we have here many. thanks my guess. and i'll sing and in toronto and thanks. so our view is for watching us here are key. see you next time to remember cross talk roles. ah, ah, in with bring you the very latest every out the day. this is our national fun, everyone here with

with the top headlines right now here were naughty international unrolling. breaking news coverage is russia defense minister audit safe exit routes for ukrainian soldiers willing to surrender, made an ongoing military incursion. it's after the russian president ordered a special military operation, saying the aim is to defend the people of the don boss from what he calls, genocide by the ukrainian military. vladimir putin has stressed russia has no plans for occupation. meantime, key f as cuddled diplomatic ties with russia and urges the west to build an antique hootin coalition by the us and its allies and slammed the covenant operation as a bob barrick attack, vowing the harshness of such with.