Eastern Ukraine

You gotta cut about 20% of it out 'cause you talk too much in this book.

There's too many stories." But I also moved, near the ending, a, a, a section to the beginning, to the prologue so that it literally starts with a bang, and it is when I am volunteering in Kharkiv, Ukraine, in Eastern Ukraine.

Uh, this was four years ago plus a bit.

So during the war, there's Russian thunder, as we call it, going on all day around us, so bombings and whatnot, in the clinic I'm working at.

[laughs]

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Eastern Ukraine and, uh, gets himself into trouble.

I'm fascinated with the fact that during the war, that, uh, folks are still thinking about animals and-

Critics pointed out that while domestic emissions decreased, we are such great climate changers, we understand it, we got Barack's message, the United States continued exporting significant amounts of fossil fuels abroad, and that was reported by the Chicago Sun-Times.

Now, Obama sharply criticized Russia's annexation of Crimea and military actions in Eastern Ukraine.

So how can that happen? Well, he criticized them.

Um, he didn't really give any message as to what he thought we should do about it.

They're actually out there providing food and comfort out there.

To do that, you've got to go to, there was this one story that Eastern Ukraine, active war zone right now.

Yeah.

But there's this crazy story that no one's heard of about a group of churches that have gotten together as the police and the emergency systems have all ran off to the west.

They were-- When the guards didn't pay attention, they even drew their little tryzub, which is the Ukrainian symbol.

They drew that symbol inside the garment, inside the fabric, sealed it, sewed it, and they were, like, laughing about a Russian soldier running around somewhere in Eastern Ukraine with the Ukrainian symbol above his heart.

Those guys were eventually exchanged.

They returned to Kyiv.

Massive.

These ports were the economic lungs of Eastern Ukraine, exporting millions of tons of metallurgical products, steel, and agricultural grain to global markets.

So by taking the coast, you don't just win the dirt, you suffocate the enemy's economy.

Precisely.

The only reason why we have dual of all of this is because it's an imperial legacy of the Russians, you know, this Asiatic Hordes being here.

If you're in eastern Ukraine, you always, you say, no, no, we have a dual culture, we have dual language, dual ethnicity, you know, this is what Ukraine is.

And then your main threat is those people in western Ukraine who insist on this ethno-nationalism.

So the country's always been Yeah, profoundly divided along these lines.

And we told the Ukrainians, either you have to be with us, otherwise they might drift towards the Russians.

And the West, we backed all the worst Nazi elements we could find, which are anti-Russian.

And the Russians, they backed all the people in Eastern Ukraine who would see them as essentially being all Eastern Slavs.

So I think that's kind of how the internal divisions were taken advantage of by these external actors.