And now, thanks to Zelensky, who’s an extraordinary leader, it’s NATO joining Ukraine in a fight for freedom. Standing up for what matters. It’s like Zelensky jolted Western democracies out of a post-Cold War slumber, and here they are, taking on a brutal dictator who is an anathema to everything that we believe in. That’s the story for me.
I can tell you, the No. 1 recurring question that President Biden is asking the intelligence community is, “Give me the leadership profile on Vladimir Putin. No, no, no, no, no. Not the one from February ’22. I need the one from today.” Because he’s not the same guy. There are all kinds of rumors about whatever might be wrong with him medically. Sen. Marco Rubio said that he had neuropsychological issues. Rubio sits on a Senate intel committee, wouldn’t go into detail about sources and methods, wouldn’t go into further detail about exactly what that means. But that’s a very important statement that he made. … And so what we might see are the Russian elites changing their assessment of Vladimir Putin. Those elites who are watching him and thinking, “Holy shit, we thought this was brinkmanship. And he’s taken us to a war that is destroying our economy.”
So you have a good long list there. I’ll add a few more. Downing a Malaysian airliner. Interfering in our elections. And European elections. He has gotten away with a lot. And it’s telling that after — I remember this extremely well — after Russia invaded Georgia, and what’s the policy of the Obama administration? Reset. Excuse me, but at the time, I was thinking, like, “What the f***, reset? Are you kidding me? With this guy, after what he just did?”
And what this administration is trying to do is thread the needle. … So we’re going to try to provide Ukraine with the military and humanitarian assistance that they need. We’re going to use lots of economic pressure on Russia. But direct, kinetic conflict? No. … And so I think, if it were me, I would have suggested that President Biden not rule anything out. I don’t know why he said we aren’t going to put troops there. You don’t need to tell the enemy what we’re doing or what we’re thinking about. He should have said, “Look, everything’s on the table.”
And the other thing I would just say is, in contrast to 1990-1991, the guy who’s built the coalition? It’s Zelensky. … What has brought us all together has been this Ukrainian freedom fighter, a Jewish comedian is kicking the shit out of Vladimir Putin. He is a 21st century leader who understands social media and understands how to get the message out to his own people and to get the kind of support that he needs internationally. If you listen to his speech today to the European Parliament, I mean, just extraordinary ability that he has to communicate. He is the great 21st century communicator. … He’s got the world — at least those of us in the West who believe in freedom, liberty and democracy — rising up in support of those sacred principles, enshrined in our Constitution’s Bill of Rights, on the Ukrainian battlefield.
Vladimir Putin is superclose to not having an off-ramp. Could he have one today? He might. But he’s also got to know that even if he goes and chooses the diplomatic off-ramp, his own inner circle is going to say, “What the f*** did you just do to our economy and our standing in the world? And you made us look pretty bad too.” And then the knives come out and he gets stabbed in the back and the face, and he’s done.
Look, I think that would have been part of the plan, to send in mercenaries to conduct a “non-attributable decapitation strike” against Ukrainian government leadership. They would have sent them in weeks, months before the attack in order to be there to conduct surveillance and mount these attacks. The fact that Zelensky is still alive means they haven’t been successful. But I don’t doubt that they’re there. I don’t doubt that the FSB is there. … I also think Ukraine knows their neighbor. And so they’ve taken countermeasures, and good on ’em for doing it.
https://ca.yahoo.com/news/putin-is-determined-to-burn-down-ukraines-house-former-cia-operative-says-141203665.html