How can we best understand the Ukraine-Russia-West Triangular relationship?

I would say it's important not to deny agency to actors such as Ukraine,

yet at the same time we cannot deny the tendency of the United States as well

to manipulate and using proxies.

So to discuss this and other topics, we're joined by the excellent Gordon Hahn,

which is a very renowned author and research on Russia, Ukraine, Eurasia, and the North Coxus.

Welcome, Gordon.

Thank you. Thank you for inviting me, Glenn and Alexander.

And yeah, welcome, Alexandra as well. Sorry.

So I thought before we address the issue of Ukraine, we could start with the topic of jihadism in Chechnya and the wider North Caucasus, because with a great frequency,

at least recently, Putin brings up the claim that the United States

supported jihadi movements in Chechnya in the 1990s, in 2000s to destabilize, weaken,

fragment, even break up Russia. And we'll remember after the Bezlan attacks in 2004,

in which more than 300 Russians were killed, most of them schoolchildren.

Putin was also very vocal about the involvement of NATO powers.

Now, the reason this is interesting bringing to the current conflict is that Putin seems to link this to the conflict in Ukraine in terms of the tendency to fight Russia through proxies. So again, as a leading researcher on the North Caucasus, I was,

I thought we can not fact check, but they discussed the allegations of Putin. So how much of this terrorism is homegrown and how much of it has been supported or financed or instigated by Washington?

Well, first we should mention that, you know, the jihadi terrorism has largely disappeared from the North Caucasus because

most of the jihadists fled to Syria and Iraq, beginning around 20, 2013, 2014, or even late

2012. I can't remember now. I haven't been doing research on the North Caucasus for a while.

I have two books on the subject. So if anybody wants to be more precise, they can refer to the books.

I think it was around 2013. They began to head to Syria and Iraq. In terms of U.S. involvement,

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