 This is Sandy Barrett, and this is commentary. Vladimir Putin is a Russian. Like all national leaders, Putin thinks he is acting in the best interest of his nation, Russia. And rather than dismissing him as the devilish former leader of the Communist Soviet Union, Western nations should reframe their thoughts and take him seriously as a Russian. And we should ask about Putin, what is he doing, and how do his actions fit into Russian history and its future. Russia has been the other to the West for centuries, to the West meaning Western Europe and the United States. A huge nation which spreads from Eastern Europe in the West to the Pacific in the East, the Russian regions of the Empire consist mainly of Russian speakers who are Christians and who belong mainly to the Russian or Eastern Orthodox Christian Church. But many of the other republics and regions of the Empire are people by Muslims, Buddhists, Agnostics, Atheists, non-Russian speakers who did not identify with Moscow and at times the resentment of these minorities boil over with violent uprisings and terrorism as in Chechnya, a region within Russia, but not happy about that inclusion. Russia has also not been influenced by the major historical transformation and movements of the West. Little democratic tradition exists in Russia. Capitalism also and the Industrial Revolution arrive late in Russia until the 19th century, Russia was a largely feudal society where serfs labored on the lands owned by the nobility in conditions more like slaves than as peasants. In 1917, Russia began its march toward industrialism but that march was led by the Bolsheviks or the Communists under Vladimir Lenin and Joseph Stalin and that accomplishment of industrialism was often done by the force of an armed, often dictatorial and ruthless state power of the communist government of the Soviet Union. Russia suffered repeated incursions and military invasions by the Western powers. In the 19th century, Napoleon almost reached Moscow. In World War I, while Russia was on the side of the English, the French and the United States, the Russians took on the Germans on the Eastern Front but they suffered massive casualties and under the Bolsheviks with Lenin had to withdraw from the war. In the Treaty of Reslatovsk, vast territories of the Russian Empire were surrendered to the Germans an act that was an ongoing source of hostility between Germany and the Soviet Union. Between 1918 and 1921, the armies of France, Britain and the United States in an anti-communist peak invaded Russia taking part in its civil war between the Whites and the Reds. This was the first regime change operation of the West which hoped to derail the Socialists. In 1941 and round two of World War I, the Germans swept into the Soviet Union and caused massive casualties. In the end of 1945, the Soviets had lost 22 million people. At Stalingrad, the Soviets beat back the Nazi armies. In 1945, the Soviets entered Berlin and were joined from the West by the Allied forces. The British and the Americans joined celebrations were held by the victorious powers who treated each other as victorious comrades beating the Germans in 1945. But that amity between the victorious powers broke down with the divisions between the superpowers in Berlin and Germany came a new hostility called the Cold War between the United States and Russia. And the combination of that Cold War to the eyes of the Soviets was the formation of the North American Treaty Organization or NATO a new alliance of all of the victors of World War II except one the Soviet Union who was excluded from that alliance. To Russians, this agreement of the West was against them and was one more sign of the perpetual enmity of the capitalist nations against the Russians. In the 90s an agreement was reached between the United States and Russia that NATO would not extend its members to include nations on Russia's borders. The Soviet Union gave up its alliance called the Warsaw Pact and as the Soviet Union dissolved in 1991 peace was in the air. However, even as Russia joined the capitalist countries that agreement was quickly scrapped and nations like Poland, the Baltics and Bulgaria joined the alliance and encircled the new Russia. And this is the crux of the current hostility between Biden's United States and Putin's Russia. Ukraine, a neutral nation on Russia's border, is Putin's red line. He will not have an armed Ukraine in his backyard. Biden on the other hand says Ukraine has the right to join NATO and that the United States will support that membership. Putin knows his nation's history. He also knows the history of the often aggressive behavior of the West toward Russia. He is no fool. Will our president poke that Russian bear? And unlike Putin who appears to be acting in the best interest of his nation we have to ask the question of our president. Is President Biden acting in our self-interest? Before we close I'd like to show a little bit of this map of Ukraine. This is the second largest country in Europe at this time. And it is, this is the map of Ukraine. I want to just show the borders and how close it is to Russia. Here is Russia on the border of Ukraine. Over here are the other NATO countries here. Poland, Slovakia, Romania is also now in NATO. So if this is included Ukraine as the United States appears to want to include within NATO you will see that NATO then is right on Russia's border. And that really is what Putin's red line is. We're not asking the question is Putin or Biden good or bad? We're acting, we are attempting to ask today in this commentary is arming Ukraine and making it a part of NATO and putting troops and weapons into Ukraine is that really in anyone's self-interest? And this is Sandy Bear and this is commentary. Thank you.