Zelensky is a desperate individual in a desperate regime.

And so he says lots of things that are not so simple to parse.

But I think what the public should understand is that Russia's aim all along for basically since the 1990s was to keep NATO out of its next door, to keep

NATO out of Ukraine. And that was true for basically the 25 years of project Ukraine. And when Russia launched its military operation on February 24th,

2022, the aim was to push Ukraine to declare neutrality. This has been the basic Russian

purpose for the whole period. And immediately Zelensky said within a few days,

even before the end of February 2022, well, neutrality might be possible. And what happened was

in March, as people have come to know, and again, this is one of those things where I knew it

firsthand. The Ukrainians and the Russians started to exchange documents for ending all of the

conflict. This is two and a half years ago for ending this war based on neutrality, and it would have worked. And the Turkish foreign

ministry, which is very skilled, you know, they've been doing foreign affairs in the Black Sea region

for 500 years since the Ottoman control Constantinople, the Ottoman conquest, 1453, the Turks are very good

in it. They became mediators. And the two sides reached an agreement, in essence, still some fine

points. But the U.S. and UK told them, no, keep fighting. You'll win. We're going to crush Russia with our economic sanctions.

We're going to crush Russia with our superweapons, with our Haimars and our Patriot missiles.

You're going to defeat Russia. You're going to get everything. Boris Johnson famously went to

talk to Zelensky in early April 2022,

telling him, no, no, we'll never back you if you go for neutrality. This is Project Ukraine,

and it's been two and a half years, about 500,000 deaths of Ukrainian since then for nothing.

Now, I told them very explicitly my Ukrainian former friends.

They stopped listening to me.

They didn't like anything I was saying.

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