 Let's talk about Ukraine. As you know, Russia is now engaged in military exercises with Belarus, right next to the Ukrainian border. Biden is flipping out. He's panicking. You'd think they were invading Washington D.C. He's on the phone with Putin constantly. I think Putin is now like silencing his phone to avoid Biden phone calls because it's nonstop. Macron who not only visited and sat at the big table together with Putin. And if you don't know what I'm referring to, look at my short videos where Putin and Macron are sitting at the big table. Macron keeps calling Putin. And one of the things that is just stunning to me is don't people understand how you deal with bullies and thugs? I mean, if Vladimir Putin is nothing but a bully and a thug, and he's a weak bully and thug, whoa, almost knocked me down. Ashton, thank you. Wow. That got us to 600 bucks pretty quickly. Ashton just put down $599.99. All right. I'm copying down the question. We'll get to it. Don't people know how to deal with bullies and thugs? I mean, you ignore them or you stare them down. But the one thing you don't do is you don't. You do not under any circumstances. Give them attention. Putin wants attention. Just as the little maniac, the brutal dictator of North Korea, just wanted attention, which Donald Trump gave him in spades. And now Biden is giving attention to Putin, constant. I don't think a U.S. president has ever spoken to another foreign leader as many times as Biden has in the last few weeks. He's got Putin a speed dot. Indeed, every time somebody like Macron sits down at a table with Putin, and Putin gets to diminish him, as he did on that big table, that plays right into Putin's hands with his primary audience. And who is Putin's primary audience? Putin's primary audience is the Russians, the Russian people. It's not us. It's not Biden. It's not even Ukrainians, although he doesn't mind them being afraid. And that's, by the way, why the president of Ukraine keeps coming out and saying, calm down, everybody. Stop panicking. There's nothing to panic here. We'll deal with it because he realizes that Putin is emboldened by the panic, the attention. It's what he wants and what he craves. Indeed, Putin's problem is that he's becoming less popular within Russia. Putin's problem is that he is authoritarian over a declining economy. Putin's problem is, is Russia. And like all thugs, like all authoritarians, when you have a domestic problem, what do you do? You create an external enemy and you strike at it, diverting their attention. But the Russians don't seem to be that excited about this. The Russians don't war in Ukraine is not popular in Russia. So Putin is not going to war, I don't think. I might be wrong, but I don't think he's going to war. I've said this from the beginning. But the more, thank you, Ian. God, why do I have the head force? But the more attention he gets, the more important leaders when they outside give him, the more he's going to continue rattling, saber rattling. He can tell the French people, I'm not the French people, the Russian people. He can tell the Russian people, look how important I am. Look how important Russia is. Every leader in the Western world is groveling before us. Look what a wonderful leader I am to you. He's weak. He's weak. I wonder if he says he's a troll. Yes, he's a troll. Today, or maybe it was yesterday, yeah, yesterday, a retired Russian colonel general, Leonid Ivashov, who is the head of the all Russian officers assembly, which is an assembly of retired senior military officers in Russia. This is a guy, this Colonel General, Leonid Ivashov. He was like the number two in the Soviet military before the breakup of the Soviet Union. He's been a, he was at the top of the military hierarchy until he was forced out in, I think, 2001 or something like that. So this is a, yeah, 2001. This is a serious guy, a nationalist, a Russian nationalist, very suspicious of the West, very suspicious of NATO. So not, you know, not a compromiser, not a sellout, not somebody who thinks Russia should be weak. But he came out yesterday, he's 78 years old. It could retire quietly in obscurity, but he came out and he made a public statement yesterday in a small media outlet, a liberal media outlet in Russia, one of the few kind of opposition media outlet, basically lambasting Putin, arguing that Putin is crazy to go to war in Ukraine, that the Russian people don't support a war in Ukraine. The war in Ukraine will result in body bags. It's an unpopular war. It's a stupid war. It's a war that gains Russia nothing. If anything, the downside is that it'll show how weak Russia's military forces are. So instead of giving him all this attention, we should draw a red line and say what's not acceptable, what we would do if it happens, and leave him alone. Let him stew. Now it's true what I think will ultimately happen. Here's a annex, as Adam says, annex Dantisek and Luzanesk or whatever it's called, the Eastern provinces of Ukraine into Russia just like he did with Crimea and be done with it. But he's not going to war. Everybody says he's waiting for deep freeze so that the ground freezes over so that the army can march through it. And that might be a possibility. But the fact is that ice melts. And April, May, June is not going to be pleasant for an army trying to occupy large pieces of territory in Ukraine. And in the meantime, while it might be frozen, it's cold. And fighting in the cold, as Napoleon's soldiers, as Hitler's soldiers, no fun. Somebody in the chat is claiming they're arguing that we should go to war with Russia. If you know anything about the show, if you've listened to any of the show you know that I have never, indeed I have argued against the United States being even evolved. And I'd say it shouldn't be part of NATO. It should leave NATO. But it certainly should not. Thank you, Richard. And thank you, Brad. Thanks for the support. Really appreciate it. I guess we're going for a $1,200 goal today. Everybody's pushing. I don't want, never argued that we should go to war with Russia. Never argued we should war with China. Never argued we should go to war with Taiwan. Never argued that we should go to war for Israel. I've never argued for any of those wars. And yet, Richard, who constantly distorts and perverts what I say on the chat, is arguing that I've said these things when I've never said I've said the exact opposite. Exact opposite. Doesn't mean we should just roll over when Putin does it. Doesn't mean we shouldn't take the bully pulpit. It doesn't mean we should recognize the sovereignty of Ukraine and the Russia has no right to invade it. It doesn't mean we shouldn't pull our ambassador from Moscow for it, as I've argued many, many times. It doesn't mean we can't say, and if anybody is going to fight over Ukraine, it could and should be the Europeans. They've got everything to lose. The United States have very little to lose. All right. Yeah, I know he's a troll, but he's a troll that I don't know, some people actually pay attention to. So it seems like, seems like you have to at least, you have to at least call his bullshit when you see it. And it's problem is it's long streams of it. All right. So as I said, I don't think Putin would invade. I think Putin is going to, again, annex what he can annex, play tough. And again, all this attention he's getting for world leaders is just playing right into his hand to strengthen him among the Russian people. But pretty sad, pretty sad. All right, let's see. Why should we care at all about Ukrainian territories that are populated by Russians, borders for sake of borders? Because what does it mean populated by Russians? They're populated by Ukrainians. They're populated by people who live in Ukraine. They are recognized borders. The reason we should care is because the initiation of force is evil. The reason we should care is because when people initiate force, nobody stands up to them. Then they learn that using force works, and they take more and more and more and more. The reason we should care is because we care about justice and we care about freedom. And Ukraine is a free country. Russia is not. Russia's are the bad guys in this. At least Putin is the bad guy. And Ukrainians are the good guys. They're a relatively free country. Putin has no business annexing Crimea or annexing any eastern provinces in Ukraine. And we should identify him as a thug. Justice demands that we declare him for what he is, recognize him for what he is. It doesn't mean you go to war with him. It doesn't mean we go to war with him. We don't have to. It's amazing how powerful the bully pulpit is. Just ask anybody who lived in Eastern Europe before the war came down. And if Putin is weak domestically, then us standing up to him from the boy pulpit would cause his regime to flounder. And given that NATO has no ambitions of conquering Russia, what difference does it make if NATO is bordering Russia? It already does. It borders it in Lithuania, Latvia, Estonia, and Poland, Romania. So what difference does it mean make if there's one more country? NATO is not an aggressor. NATO does not have territorial ambitions. It is Putin who has the territorial ambitions. And he said so. It is Putin who is the aggressor and has me. Same thing happened in Georgia. Remember that he took a whole province in Georgia, still holds it. It makes a difference in Putin because he's a thug, because he's a dictator, because he's an authoritarian who should be opposed. All right. Thank you for listening or watching The Iran Book Show. If you'd like to support the show, we make it as easy as possible for you to trade with me. You get value from listening. You get value from watching. Show your appreciation. You can do that by going to iranbrookshow.com slash support. By going to Patreon, subscribe star locals, and just making a appropriate contribution on any one of those channels. Also, if you'd like to see The Iran Book Show grow, please consider sharing our content. And of course, subscribe. Press that little bell button right down there on YouTube so that you get an announcement when we go live. And for those of you who are already subscribers and those of you who are already supporters of the show, thank you. I very much appreciate it.