 We are here with the former Chief of Naval Staff, Vishnu Bhagwat, to discuss the Russia-Ukraine War. The news of this war has certainly thrown the world into chaos. But if we think NATO's eastward movement goes back 20 years, and its presence in Ukraine is visible post-2014, or the Maidan coup. So why did Russia start military operations now? It's a very good question for the start, but may I take a few minutes, just two or three minutes, to go into the background, an historical background. Ukraine has existed as a state only after 1775, though it was and has been and remains the heart of Russia. The culture, the spirit, the religion, the language, in what was then loosely described as Kiv Rus and Russia is Rus, actually. So that's where it started off from. Before that it was under the Ottoman Empire, and when the Ottoman Empire started weakening, Zarina Catherine made Ukraine into a state as a part of Rus or Russia. So Ukraine is roughly the same age as a state as the United States of America, roughly, almost a few years apart. Secondly, at that point of time, and this is now 250 years, at that point of time, the nation state was more loosely defined than it is. But over these years, last 250 years, it became a nation state with the characteristics over what we define as a modern nation state. After 1917, October Revolution in Russia, while there was a civil war, etc., Ukraine was constituted as a Ukraine Soviet Socialist Republic. Now it's interesting to know that at the same time almost, Crimea was also what are known as the autonomous Oblast. Oblast is region, a region usually smaller than the state, and therefore it was never a part of Ukraine as is claimed by latter, by today, by people, by few people. And I must explain here that in the context of the claims of Crimea, as well as the position of Russia today, that Crimea being an Oblast in 1954, Khrushchev was the General Secretary of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union. And for administrative reasons as well as certain sentimental reasons, I would say cultural and otherwise, the Oblast, the Crimean Oblast was integrated into the Ukraine Republic, Soviet Socialist Republic. However, it must be noted that Russian language is common to Ukrainians and Crimeans, as well as to Russia of course, and Ukrainians in any case are intermarried and culturally together, and their intercourse is so diverse and so widespread that it is a bit of a paradox that Ukraine should claim itself to separate from. And not only separate as we will see in the course of this interview discussions, that they have decided to find a commonality with NATO, which is the military arm of the US and Europe against the fundamental core and security interests of Russia. It is, I don't want to bring in any other country in this kind, there is a historical precedence for this kind of conduct, but I don't want to be that. So, we've got that situation and it is in 2014, that is eight years ago, that the US intelligence and US State Department, in fact, the US administration worked for, organized a coup, it's nothing short of a coup because there was no democratic process, and we know it is called as the Maidan coup, and openly factions of forces which are related to Stipan Bandera, who was a deviant in World War II, and sided with, always a compledo, basically joined Germany in its Nazi offensive on the Soviet Union. But it's not simply that, it is that these forces of the Maidan coup, on which Reims and Reims has been written, were so highly organized that the successor president to Yanukovych, who was actually driven out, have, you can say on an everyday basis, transformed, tried to transform the character of Ukraine, and basically they are now guided and advised, not only in situ in Kiev and Ukraine, parts of Ukraine, but actually have got, one can say they are, they've acted as a puppet regime and nothing is done in Kiev, without the advice, consent of the United States administration. So, that is the recent background, but that could have been left about, we will come to a wider question, which I will return to later, as to why is it that Russia has acted in this manner, in the manner of a intervention, which is loosely described as a war, because this is, as yet, Israeli not a war, it's a intervention, and it's a intervention for which so many precedences have been quoted, like for example, they break up, breaking up of Yugoslavia in Europe, without United Nations Security Council approval or resolution, and what they did with that country, united as it was, strong as it was, it broke it up in through, by very similar methodologies, or both financial as well as subversion in full swing. So, you have asked, I will come return to your main question, and that is, how is it that, whether Russians sleeping, the same fact is that in 2000, as you know, there was another kind of capture of the so, erstwhile Soviet Union, by what I described as a political capitulation of the Soviet Union, by just two main actors, Gorbachev and Yeltsin, acting in concert, yet to the world, they appeared to be contending forces, now why is that, because subversion is a milder word for reason, but that can happen to any state, and at that time the Soviet Union, contrary to what has been propagandized, was a very strong state, militarily, politically it was, it had factions in the Politburo, in the party, and its topmost leadership seemed to have eaten the forbidden fruit. So, what happened at that time, what happened, is it that, it was merely a change of regime change, no it was much more than that, because it was being controlled from the United States, and this has been documented in books like, in the highest places by Beschloss, and Stobt-Ralbic, but it was a complete plunder, a plunder with no other scene, a loot with no other scene, a loot of all the wealth of Russia in enterprises, factories, that was built over the period of many years, since the revolution in particular, all looted and stashed away abroad, both oligarch through the banking system, and through physical presence in the, in Russia, the new Russia, at that time there was a, before just before this there was a referendum, and in that referendum most of the constituent republics voted to stay on in the Union, but again a different picture has been projected as far as the media and the world is concerned. Now what happened then, they was, if one can use the word atta chaos, atta anarchy, the institutions of the state had been dismembered, damaged, subverted, and they were nothing to hold the Russia, except one Yeltsin and his, then the people around him, again advised by the American, the Americans are actually present, surprising people what accepted, were there in the Ministry of Defense, the Americans were there in all major state enterprises including defense enterprises, now how do you call it a regime case, how do you say that there was a change, because this was being run, the Russian state was being run again on the advice and consent of its US advisors, when I say US, I am not again going to repeat the word CIA, because that's oft repeated word, but it's common sense that it was, so it became a weaker and weaker and weaker state, maybe there were elements in the security apparatus who knew the entire background, and they decided that we have to wait for a suitable time, and it was only in 1998 and 1999 that Yeltsin by the grace of God, if one can say was chosen or selected to be the prime minister first, even though he very reluctant as he's gone on record to say, and then became the president of the, president of Russia, but then he was not the elected president of Russia, and he had the background, because he's got a legal background, and a very fine understanding of the political system of the world, he had to wait for actual election as the president of Russia, in the meanwhile he had to tackle the oligarchs, who had more or less captured all the levers apart, they had captured all the finances, even the central bank was under the guidance of World Bank, not very different from what happened in India in May 1991, and the World Bank and IMF compelled us, and we willingly signed the structural adjustment program, and the structural adjustment, which is virtually hand over the entire character, constitution, aims and objectives as given in the constitution of India, to a foreign organization, but it's happened in a slow motion in India, and continuing of course, that's another story, but the extent of the loop, the extent of the deprivation of the people, the extent of degradation of women, children and elderly people of Russia is unprecedented, though China of course, came that they also had gone through their century of humiliation or period of humiliation, so here was a person virtually catapulted into position, and the first challenge that he had to face was the very existence of Russia, because Chechnya became a hotbed of intrigue, of insurgency, of violence, of foreign mercenaries, from all over the place, from Middle East, that is Central Asia, Saudi Arabia, et cetera, and he had to battle that, he had to win it, because these were terrorists, but they were actually let loose, it's like letting loose, which is happening again in Ukraine. Well, he was, I would say his judgment was good, he selected local leaders, who had had long association with the Soviet Union, where they fought for their country, I've been to Dagestan, so I know better about that, and finally the Chechen insurgency or violence was defeated, and he became more stable, even then you will say that okay, then after that why didn't he take care of Ukraine, knowing that what was happening in Ukraine, also politically, militarily, and anti-Russian activity, if I may say, were being coordinated, well Russia was simply not strong enough, and if we can draw an example, you see Afghanistan was occupied, invaded occupied, and remained occupied for 20 years, but neither China nor Russia, China of course, was having its own honeymoon with the United States, at that point of time, and Russia was too weak to intervene in Afghanistan, it was too weak to intervene in Iraq, even though again Iraq was outside the Security Council, and on made up reasons, on fake reasons of what is known as the dossier, the chemical weapons dossier, which is a complete fake, has been proved, but they could not intervene, they saw the injustice, because Russia knew Iraq like the palm of its hand, they had been working with Iraq for many years in oil, in the field of energy, in the field of military defense supplies, et cetera, but they could not intervene, that was followed again by Libya, the attack on Libya, a very, very progressive welfare state led by Khan Gaddafi, who founded the African banking system, who founded the African welfare scheme, joined up, became a leader, but insisted that, like President Saddam, insisted that he shall deal only with the golden dinar, and not with the dollar. The whole thing turned on the dollar, because dollar is the centipede, and continues to be the centipede now, we might come to the conclusion, this is the dollar issue, which is triggered of many years, the defense of the dollar, which is petro dollar, which is so important, so it could not do anything, then this followed it up with Syria, of course the Syrians, by that time Russia was becoming stronger, and by about 2012, 2013, 14, they came to the aid of Syria, with whom they had enjoyed very, very strong relations for a long time, and the Syrian people and the Russian people have certain affinities of being a civilizational force. Now, they followed with the Yemen, they followed it in Sudan, they followed it in Somalia, everywhere around the world, I am not talking about Latin America, I am not talking about Asia, even in this area, the Americans had their way, the hegemony of the Americans, and it is not that the Americans do everything on the spur of the moment. So, again we come back and I will go back a little, in 2018, in spite of tremendous amount of dialogue, communication with Ukraine, certain complementarities in their economy, the Rand report of 2019, which is a seminal document, it is a seminal document, said that they are over, they will do everything in multiple strategies, to over extend and imbalance Russia, not only in the Ukrainian sense, overall in the world, in this way they were, they were determined, because they had, I am sorry I missed a point, they are very lucky thing occurred for Russia, very lucky thing, while the Americans insisted that due to denuclearization of Ukraine, they thought Russia is in our pockets, and therefore, we can, we can postpone it little by little, we get busy and sort out Iraq, Afghanistan, Syria, Libya, the whole world, they, it is something which is not explained in any American document, so far available in the public domain, but they went easy on the issue of denuclearization of Russia, they had set a date earlier of 2010, by which Russia was to be denuclearized, that means all its nuclear capabilities, whether of uranium enrichment, or the assembly of weapons, or the missile program, ICBM program, etcetera, they went in, they went in for number of treaties, which they have renegade on only in recent months, but that is another issue, so Putin, coming back to President Putin, if I may say, I do not want to over emphasize, Putin is the President of Russia, so therefore, one has to name him, because he has got all the executive authority in Russia, he went actually on a charm offensive, what I call a charm offensive, very nice to the US President, he was very nice to everybody in the West, of course he did form a kind of a friendship, but friendship did not come above the state with Angela Merkel, but that is another story, Macron with the predecessor, he was playing game, it is only in 2007, that he shocked the western ladies and gentlemen, at Munich Security Conference, and that is the time, if I am committed to quote his words, amongst his lecture speech at Munich, he said, however, what is a unipolar world, one might embellish this term, the unipolar world, but at the end of the day, it refers to one type of situation, namely one center of authority, one center of decision making, it is a world in which there is one master and one sovereign, and at the end of the day, this is pernicious, not only for all those within the system, but also for the sovereign himself, because it destroys itself from within, when the audience which consists of the President, Prime Minister, Foreign Minister, the whole decision making of the West, what West had arrogated itself, by Munich Security Conference, the conference is a polite word for discussing security of Europe, but it is at that time that this whole evolving picture, that Afghanistan is our responsibility, it was said by Tony Blair's advisor, saying that Afghanistan is our responsibility, remains our responsibility, it is not a state, it is not, Afghan people do not exist for all practical purposes, the same kind of evolution of NATO was taking place, and in fact NATO has already arrived in Afghanistan, what was NATO doing in Afghanistan, it is only 300 miles from Delhi, how is it the great country like India which is non-aligned, never spoke one word about the, in fact was ready to contribute divisions and air bases during Vajpayee's time as Prime Minister, if you recall, and the chiefs of staff of the Indian military were all in competition to give those people the shit or actual use facility in Adampur, in Ambala, in Kashmir to these people, the American forces, in Vietnam to support when they got very untidy with Pakistan, and they said, we will reduce you to a stonage, Pakistan was acting a little too tough with them, and Pakistan has actually been a vessel state of the United States for long, long years, so you can see how NATO, and then after Afghanistan, there was no end to this, because people accepted the project for the new American century, it meant that everybody will fall in line, we will create a war on terror, but actually it is a war of terror, because the greater terrorists, the greatest state terrorism was the sovereign himself, so we have to understand, we have to appreciate what was happening in the correlation of forces in the world, what Russian language in the Soviets or the Russians have translated that term from Sir Atnashenye seal, seal is force, Sir Atnashenye is relative, the relative relation of forces in the world, or the relative balance supper, there was no balance supper, it was just one sided, because that is the project for the new American century, and everybody here, all academics here, in fact even people like, this is off the topic a little bit, K. Subramaniam, who is regarded as a great strategist, who I know, who I knew very well, said that when you buy arms from the US, you not only buy arms, you buy a relationship, a security relationship, and he gave the example of Saudi Arabia, because he was charged by the VJP government at that point of time to produce a strategic, strategy paper 2020, and in that you can see Subramaniam, who was a respected person, and as earlier years, he was for independent India, was openly encouraging and saying, in the official document, that we have to have a similar relationship to the US as Saudi Arabia, I mean it is beyond my understanding, that is not the point. So, you can see Putin, and at that end, Hu Jintao, who is the chairman of China, the Chinese party, playing for time, they had realized the folly of aligning themselves by the most favored nation treaty, becoming kind of a NATO of the East, all kinds of things happened in those from 1971 onwards, but there was a realization, that China is too big to be catching the little finger of the United States, and China's strength was increasing by the kind of diverse strategies of socialism, as well as outright capitalism, with the adopted Chinese socialism, with the socialism with Chinese characteristics, we off the mark. So, it was only around 2012, also I forgot a big part, that in 2004, Russia or Russia and China concluded their very acrimonious past, political as well as border, boundaries, border of the country, in an agreement with China. So, that was the starting point of the Russia-China, what shall I say, reconciliation, and coming to the realization together for different reasons, that they had a person, they had a, they had an adversary, who was not only out to compete with them, competition is a very polite word, out to make sure that they stayed where they were, and did not come up to challenge the hegemony of the United States. So, it is that time about 2012, the say changing situation in Syria, where the Russians and the Syrians cooperated as a very, very, very, in a very close relationship, to drive the terrorists, ISIS and all kinds of, of tasks of the ISS, out of Syria, finally about in 2017, 2017. So, here was a realization, that they cannot allow this world to be run by this one sovereign, both the countries realized, that both the countries had a complementary, complementary economy, they need for energy, they need for high military technology, they need for different alignment against, against the oppressor, against the person who was trying to stop them, there and then, and that is the time Russia had also organized itself into rebuilding, regenerating, redoing the state apparatus, and its defense in machinery and defense effort in a particular way, that they came across, they saw a clear lead in Russia's developing a variety of hypersonic missile systems, which are unparalleled, which are unmatched, which cannot be defended against, that realization took a little time and some people thought that Russia is adopting an aggressive stand, but actually not, it is the American military apparatus, the Pentagon which realized, that they have been left without defenses, and it is either now or never, it is either now or never and that too, also through proxy state, in a slow kind of subversion and military attack and, and I said over extending and unbalancing Russia, that this whole thing had started coming to a head, they had walked out of the ABM treaty, anti-balancing missile treaty, they walked out of the INF, they walked out of the Star Wars space treaty, the Russia, America had never signed the space treaty, but they did walk out of it, then the NATO had been extending itself eastwards right through Poland, Hungary, Romania, whatever all the Eastern European states, all over the place, when they, when they realized that they were, they had no defenses against hypersonic missiles and, because they wanted to threaten Russia with placements of missile systems like the Tomahawk, which has got two variants, conventional as well as nuclear warheads, and the flight time of Tomahawks placed around the borders of Belarusia and Russia, is only three to five minutes to Moscow, while the flight time of normal US intercontinental ballistic missile is 30 minutes, which gives you enough time to evaluate the threat, to respond, to bring your system to the highest state of readiness, and to respond as deemed appropriate by the defending military, that is the Russian military, when this happened that Putin has described this as building missiles, bases on his doorstep at his porch, you tell me a nation which has lost 30 million, to be precise 20 million, 8 million and deads, 28 to 30 million in, in injury in main people, which are sometimes worse than people who died there past the way, destruction of 3,000 towns, destruction of almost the entire countryside, destruction right up to the gates of Urals, west of Urals, and to Leningrad, to Stalingrad, you know all that, a nation which has lost that, no nation lost, it took the brunt of the 80 percent of the military strength of the Nazi, of Nazi Germany, 80 percent of the air force, 80 percent of the tanks, 80 percent of other military hardware, and they are the ones who liberated Europe, most of Europe was liberated right up to Berlin, which is more than half of Germany, old Germany, in addition the west in document form now, this is not known because they had kept this away, in document form signed saying that the NATO will not be extended eastward in exchange for the reunification of Germany, by thanks to Garbachev, in that they have gone back on, they claim that they don't know, they don't reply these questions, they don't allow them to bring it to the public domain, that is also emerge, but the crucial months that emerged were the months of December, January, and February, prior to this intervention on 24th of February, which is announced by President Putin, now what happened these two documents, the treaties the draft treaties or agreements were forwarded at the highest levels to both Europe, NATO, actually NATO headquarters, Stalin Berg is there and Washington DC to the president of the United States, you know such a serious attempt at peace, at cooperative relations in accordance with the charter of the United Nations, such a serious effort to bring about peace, so that everybody can you know there is a peace dividend, such a serious attempt to define that security is indivisible that it is mutual security that counts, even that has been treated like a piece of paper and they have not bothered to reply till to date, they made some perfectly non-substantive responses at the level of the Secretary of State and so on, so forth have been, while even a person like William Burns, who was ambassador he is very well associated with the Indo-American civilian nuclear treaty or agreement, he had marked as a younger officer in the embassy in Russia, in Moscow that this is a red line for Russia, you cannot cross, you cannot allow NATO to keep on pushing, keep on pushing till it come to their nose, the water comes to their nose, so this is the background what happened in December, even then the Russians held their peace, they thought somewhere there something will happen, but they did not know that Zelensky is not an independent player, everything that he says, everything that he does, everything that is from there is, cannot be contrary to the advice from his patrons, you know that 2014 coup itself was supervised, monitored finance and controlled by Victoria Newland, who was then working for the state and she funded the whole thing and she admitted it on video and tape on face that this, yes we did that, so we have come to this situation and there was obviously though the Chinese have stated that correctly that we do stand for the sovereignty of all nations, we do stand for the respect of all nations we stand for peace, we stand for you, but there is a certain tacit understanding in my understanding that China will stand with Russia, in spite of all the efforts at trying to separate them, because separate they do not stand, they will they won't live, together they will stand, so then what happened, then three or four very crucial intelligence matters came somewhere near the public domain as articulated by President Putin in his address to the nation and to the military separately on 24th of February last, that is just 20 days ago, 21 days ago and he said one which has not been, which has been wiped out completely that the President Zelensky had actually articulated the aspirations of Ukraine to be a nuclear weapons state, now this is not no way as it mentioned in the Indian media, no way as it mentioned in any public discourse, because it is uncomfortable for them to understand can you imagine it doesn't mean as aspiration mean that they will build a nuclear technology to be a weapons there is no time for that, they will either allow, which of course they would allow in NATO, they have no option or taken most of the almost what you call one screw driver turned away from the nuclear weapons and put them at pre-position sites on the borders of Belarus as well as Russia that is the state, can anybody allow that, nobody can allow it, pointing a gun at your soldiers, so that is the, there are many straws that broke the cameras back in this case, the second straw or the second critical point were these people had built a chain of bio warfare labs which are completely controlled, in fact the President had no choice, he could not make a statement, he could not he could not oppose, he he he it was not true, it was all this work was to be done secretly and had been done secretly to develop pathogens and deadly bio warfare agents both for use against their own population that is in Donbass, that is in eastern Ukraine for which they were bound to do the otherwise under the Minsk agreement and if I may divert President Zelensky has said that he does not agree with a single point in the Minsk agreement then how do you negotiate, how do you sit, how do what how does one deal with Ukraine, the Americans do not want to deal with Russia on this, the Ukrainian president who is lawfully he is the legal president of the Ukraine, he does not want to deal with the Minsk agreement, that means he nullifies the Minsk agreement that is a great provocation because it was agreed after and signed on by all the leaders of Europe and America and everywhere and Ukraine itself, so there is a third one, so here were pathogens to be released into Russia into the cities, into the into fighting formation and you can see the chaos that would be executed because apart from all the Wuhan virus Wuhan virus which has been shouted around the world, the fact is that the mother of all laboratories in the world is the Fort Detrick Library and it is 50, 60 years old, it had people from Nazi Germany to assist America in developing the bio warfare, there is nothing there is no other word except Fort Detrick on that, they have got a chain of laboratory but they want to now have laboratory all over the world so that the blame does not come to them, so there was the second one, third was the NATO, if NATO if Ukraine was to become a member of the NATO, then the large amount of military obligations fall on it, legal military avenues or roads which would allow NATO to come right up to the borders of Russia, which Russia has already said for 20 years, 25 years that these are red lines, you cannot come here, we will not celebrate it and again reiterated in there negotiating documents with they forward in December to Europe and to the United States so we have got this provocation, apart from that they are lesser ones, they are lesser ones and that is the use of mercenaries, there are mercenaries of the same type that have been visiting Syria, they are visiting of the same type which were there in Chechnya and how do you expect any state forget Russia to allow such a development take place, when you know yourself that India has been taking a very tough time irrespective of political parties with respect to Pakistan based terrorists outfits, whether in JNK or elsewhere, so this is not a this is a very serious matter other minors, I would say relatively minor issues were the release of all weapons in the arsenals to the people of and that means including the crooks, including the azaw battalion, thirdly fourthly the the distribution of short range shoulder back shoulder pack mounted anti aircraft weapons civilian aircraft weapons military aircraft weapons to people at large, now what does it mean it means there is a chaos in the airspace not only in Ukraine but in the neighboring areas also and the final, final straw even though I said that was the first straw that broke the lines back here is the Donetsk is the Donbas which was they had the Ukraine government had assembled 40,000 of their troops out of they don't have very large army on with tanks guns every conceivable weapon to carry out a full-scale large offensive that's the time previous to that the families had been moved out of Donbas to execute it at each hour on 25th of February and this address of the then Putin is on 24th of February so here was something of eminence and what the Americans have been always talking about pre-emptive defense as their you know Iraq is pre-emptive defense today Iraq is 7000 kilometers from there but they have the right to defend pre-emptive but Russia has no right at all to defend itself I am not saying I am not for people like me are not for legally for sort of moderating or looking over the shoulders on this issue of doctrine of pre-emptive defense but please tell me when you have intelligence documents which have got the operational orders to the Yazov battalions who are nothing but Nazis and integrated into the National Guard to say that on 25th at HR they will carry out that full-scale offensive they had been carrying out as you know from United Nations report which officially states that the number of people civilians, children women, elderly people is 14000 from 2014 then are you going to allow that offensive to take place so he gives the order for special military operations I think that is I may not possible for me to cover everything but I have tried to give you a background of for people to understand why is it that Russia had to wait for 20 years as you said or for even 8 years if you are charitable for this action to be initiated it is not a declaration of war the people of the civilian people will be protected only military targets military assets will be attacked there could be one or two cases either self-instricted wounds or otherwise of certain civilian deaths but that is not the aim, objective, unstated or stated of the Russian military as far as President Putin's directive is concerned