Hello and welcome. It is Eric Erickson here. The Eric Erickson Show. The phone number is 87797997 Eric. 877973. 745. I want to go out of the gate to Frank, calling about the Ukrainian situation. Frank, welcome.

Hey, Eric, how are you? Good. How are you?

Doing well. I'd just like to say that I think the Western media narrative about a potential

invasion of Ukraine by Russia is a little disingenuous because they don't mention that

we're trying to admit the Ukraine into NATO.

And how is that any different than if Russia had they won the Cold War?

We're trying to admit Mexico or Canada into the Warsaw Pact, if it still existed.

And that's not to defend Putin.

It's just to say that this is a dangerous guy and we have to treat him the right way and not act too aggressively and certainly not report on the reality of what's taking place.

Yeah, I'm glad you said that. I mentioned that yesterday in passing that there was, in fact, a little bit of Western arrogance involved in the situation and that they decided they could add a country like Ukraine.

Not only that, Ukraine amended its constitution in 2019 so that its preamble reflects that it wishes

to embrace the values of the European Union and the North Atlantic Treaty Organization.

So clearly, adding that language had a lot to do with the Russian

saber rattling as well. At some point, you know, you can have working relationships with

countries without bringing them into the fold to avoid antagonizing Putin. And a lot of this

is Putin feels very antagonized, but also

historically, in fairness to the NATO people, the reason they wanted to do this is because

Putin has made it very clear that he wants to restore Russia to what he believes are the

natural Russian borders, which means bringing back in Belarus, where he already has a strong

man there, bringing back in Ukraine, where he already has a strong man there,

bringing back in Ukraine, which has historically been not just the Soviet Union's bread

basket, but part of the Russian Empire, a periphery of the Russian Empire, and Georgia,

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