Hello, welcome to another episode of Realpolitik.

I am your host, Firas Maudad, and I think this is the last episode that we will do on the Ukraine series.

As you know, this is live, so please leave any comments, any suggestions, as you will during the show,

and I will try to address them as soon as I can.

In the previous episode, we started with a bit of a summary of the 1990s in Russia,

explaining the rise of Putin.

We saw how the Russians were incredibly cooperative with the United States when it came to the invasion of Afghanistan, allowing the

U.S. to go through their territory, to resupply their forces in Afghanistan. We went through

the invasion of Iraq and how that showed a big humiliation for Soviet-made military equipment.

And then we explained the expansion of NATO.

First, they expanded into Central Europe, and then they expanded on the Baltic Sea and on the Black Sea, basically trapping Russia's Navy and taking away Russia's ability to reach

safe waters that would be operational throughout the winter. We mentioned the missile defense

issue, how that really scared the daylight out of the Russians, the idea of placing missile

defense systems in the Czech Republic and Poland that would basically alter the strategic

balance of power and remove Russia's nuclear deterrence or weaken Russia's nuclear deterrence.

We mentioned Putin's speech in 2007, where he said that continuing expansionism of NATO is going to have consequences.

This was followed by the Georgia War of 2008, where essentially Belisi became in a militarily untenable position.

We mentioned the 2011 betrayal in Libya, where the Russians

supported intervention in Libya to protect civilians, but then that was used as a pretext for

full regime change and the murder of Gaddafi. So now it's time to talk about Ukraine itself.

It's the most important state for Russia.

For a couple of reasons, one of them as I had mentioned before is because of Crimea, the peninsula that you see here, which is where the Russian Black Sea fleet is based.

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