Scott Ritter; Ukraine, Finland & Nato, A Warning to the People of Finland

Video link and KGRaS transcript

here at KGRaS, we believe in the truth. The crucial Scott Ritter talk above is critical and timely, such that we wanted to save YOUR time if you are pressed, and provide a transcribe to eyeball, as well as the video above to earball and watch. Thanks to Scott Ritter and the “ta kloka beslut” channel for posting. This is one of the most important hours of speaking one can hear, ever. This is especially so of the portion from up to the end, from about half way thru, so if you are short on time you can skip the first part of the transcript. Thanks for reading and considering what the esteemed Scott Ritter speaks for himself.

{if it is cut off in emailer, click the title to access actual Substack , with full transcript}

As i have linked the video above, you are welcome to leave notes of errors for corrections in the comments, if i transcribe incorrectly the mistakes are entirely my own, i shall endevaor to get it correct.

Regards.

Transcript of the Scott Ritter talk, Ukraine, Finland & Nato, A warning…

Scott Ritter:

Yeah i joined the Marine corp outta college, ummm, you know the United States Marine Corp., commissioned in 1984 as a umm, intelligence officer. I specialized in , aahh,, in combat intelligence, ummm. The reason why i became an intelligence officer of course , was the cold war was very active at that time.

Ah, i was a Russian history major, ummm, I was the child of a career military officer, and i grew up overseas, ah, in Turkey and in West Germany, ah, the front lines of the cold war, and i was very familiar with the umm, with the threat posed by the Soviet Union to ah, to the West, and indeed one of the reasons why i joined the military was, ah, i firmly believed that, umm, there was going to be a conflict between The ah United States, Nato, and The Soviet Union, and if there was, ummm, i needed to be on the front line to ah, to defend my , ah, my country and our Allies from the (sic) the Threat posed by the Soviet Union.

Ummm., i spent , ah, over two and a half years training to kill Russians, umm, and i’m not being joy, i’m not joking about that, we spent over 250 days a year in the field training with live fire ammunition under the most realistic ah , conditions possible , ah, to close with and destroy the Russian enemy thru firepower and manuveure. Ummm . And i was ready to do that. And then ah,

Fortunately, for me and the world, in ah December of 1987, Michael Gorbachev and Ronald Reagan signed the intermediate nuclear forces treaty, umm, eliminating the two categories of nuclear weapons in Europe , that were … pushing Europe, Nato and the Soviet Union, ah, to the brink of war.

i mean, i don’t think people realize how close we were to … war in the nineteen-eighties . Umm, There’s echoes of that today, ah, which we’ll, we’ll talk about.

But ,umm, because of my Russian background, ah, i was tasked with becoming one of the first weapons inspectors sent to the Soviet Union , ah, to implement this treaty. Umm

So i went from training to kill Russians to cooperating with them to make the world a safer place.

So i went from training to kill Russians to, ah, cooperating with them to… ah, make the world a safer place. We ah, we got rid of intermediate and short range nuclear missiles, ; We made Europeans for the first time (laughs) in decades able to go to bed at night - not worrying about the immenent demise of their civilization , ah, through inadvertent nuclear war.

Ah, So we were on friendly relations with the Soviet Union, on friendly relations with Russians. Ah, I lived next to a missile factory for two years., Working with Soviet citizens, with Russians, umm, cooperating on the disarmament of these nuclear weapons.

And ah, it was a glorious thing.

and then, you know in the military all jobs end and you move onto the next job, and i went on to get my captains level professional education, but that was interrupted by Sadam Husein invading Irag. I spent the fall of 1990 preparing for conflict with Irag, and i deployed to the middle East, and during the Gulf War i was…served on the staff with General Norman Scharzkopf , i was given the counter SCUD portfolio, SCUD being SCUD missiles, and my job was to try and find ways to interdict these missiles before they could be launched against both Israel and the Gulf Arab states,

Needless to say , i and everybody else failed, the Iragi’s proved to be , ah, very resolute in their, ah efforts, but the war ended, we won, . I had what they call a “good war,” meaning i didn’t get killed and i came out with a good professional reputation. But by the time the war ended i was confronted with a couple of things.

1. Umm, the cold war was over, that which i thought i was going to do, kill Russians, no longer applied, umm, and i had just fought my war, ah, i had served my country, and i felt that maybe, uh. , its time to get out of the military and move on with civilian life and see what that could offer me.

But as Michael Corleyone (?) says, in the Godfather, “everytime i tried to get out, they dragged’ me back in…”

and ah, my phone rang in August of 1991, ah, it was a Colonel i worked with in the, in the Soviet Union, and he was now the Chief of staff of the United Nations organization called the United Nations special commission in Irag, which was formed in the aftermath of the Gulf War to disarm Irag of its weapons of mass destruction capability., including the SCUD missiles that i hunted.

Umm, and because of my arms control experience, my intelligence experience, and my experience with the SCUDs umm, i was asked to come to the United Nations and form an intelligence capability , ah, that would enable the inspectors to uncover the lies , and deceit, and concealment that Irag was using to, ah, hide significant aspects of its weapons program from the weapons inspectors.

Long story short i did that job for seven years, and umm, very difficult job, under very trying circumstances,i led, i participated in over 40 missions inside Irag, i led 14 of them as a Chief Inspector, and, ummm, by the time i uh, resigned in protest in umm, in 1998 we could account for 95% of Irag’s WMD capability, but the problem was that the security council said that the uh, standard was 100% so we weren’t allowed to finish our job until we could find that last 5% which meant digging deeper, harder , working more strenuously, ah, in a confrontational manner, and, umm, the United states decided that ah, that was inconvenient, ah, that rather than seeking the disarmament of Irag they wanted the perception of Iragi non-compliance to be continued so that they could continue economic sanctions as part of their overall program of regime change, getting rid of Sadaam Husein.

My job as an inspector wasn’t to get rid of Sadaam Husein but to get rid of Sadaam Husein’s weapons, so i resigned in 1998, and uh since that time, i’ve been umm, very critical of umm, foreign policy decisions when i’ve view them to be , umm, you know Not supportive of the ideals, values and standards of the United States ummm, (unfortunately you’ve recorded me in my home environment so we get all of the wonderful sound effects that include 3 dogs barking at the neighbors when they walk by with their own animals, and there’s nothing i can do to stop this…) But …

You know i resigned, and i ‘ve been speaking out against bad policy ever since. I love my country, i think…ah, i think America is a nation (muffled, barking dogs) great again (?), i think we have, you know, the finest document in modern civilized history in the form of the Constituion, but i think that the values and ideals enshrined in that document are imperfectly implemented, and i think that the role we play around the world often contravenes what we stand for as a people here at home.

So i think a lot of people get confused, they say, “Well, You’re very critical of your country.” I’m critical of my country because i love my country, and i understand what my country stands for , and i want my country to be the country that it CAN be, not the country that it is.

(8 minutes into video)

The war in Ukraine background

Nato, Russia, & Finland

So i think i need to touch on 3 things before we get to the actual war.

One is Nato,what is Nato? Nato of course is a defensive Alliance, …Ostensibly defensive Alliance, whose origins date back to the end of the second world war, and the fear among many in Europe, that they needed some sort of collective security structure, to ah, umm, to hold back any potential westward expansion of the Soviet Union.

This was purely fictional . The Soviets weren’t planning on expanding west. Anybody who studies World War 2 will understand that the Soviet Union was exhausted by that conflict- even though they were victorious they were in no mood to continue a conflict {with the} West, they were more interested in consolidating their gains and ensuring that never again would they be threatened by a European power such as Germany who would invade them again. So that was their focus.

But Winston Churchill of course gave a very brillian speech in Fulltown Missouri (?) i think in 1946 or 1948, you know the Iron Curtain speech, and his rhetoric is wonderful, i mean, even though the substance is fictional , the rhetoric is wonderful, and Americans, like everybody else, love a good speaker with a British accent and we fell for it, and Europe fell for it too, … they took what was supposed to be this small collective defense Alliance between the Benelux nations, Belgium, the Netherlands, Luxemborg, and maybe Great Britian was involved, and they expanded it into Nato to bring the United States in, as Lord Ismay, the first secretary general of Nato famously said, “what Nato was, was designed to keep the Russians out, keep the Americans in, and to keep the Germans down.”

Now we forget about that third part, and i’ll talk about that in a minute because its very controversial today to speak about that . “To keep the Germans down.” Never forget, that Nato was formed only less than a decade after Nazi Germany was defeated, and when Nazi Germany was defeated the world was struggling {to figure out} what to do with the Germans, would we allow them to become an industrial nation, would we allow them to unify? Would we allow them to exist? Germany {had} lost their right to have a vote on that, they had endorsed the most odious idealogy that the world has seen in modern times, especially let’s say the Western world has seen in modern times.

Nazi. National Socialism, as defined by Adolph Hitler, and implemented by his henchmen. Its mindboggling that people forget about this , but No, we created Nato, and then a few years later we allowed Germany to enter Nato.

So this defeated Nazi state , which had never been thouroughly deNazified, was now militarized, and their industry was brought to bear back into the business of making weapons, now ostensibly in defense of Europe. Nato was a defensive Alliance, ummm, and pretty much you can say that Nato lived up to its Vision, during the Cold War, … defensive Alliance.

It was very effective i have to tell you i lived in Germany in the 1970’s and 1980’s, and i saw first hand the reality of Nato’s front line posture, you know. In the village, the German village where we lived, twice a year , the American tanks came rolling out in the farmers fields as they practiced for war. Hey, we’re talking about war on a scale that Europeans today can’t imagine, even those in Ukraine, you know millions of people ready to fight with the most modern weaponry possible , including nuclear weapons.

Fortunately the Cold War ended and we didn’t have to have a conflict, but the question now is, What was Nato’s purpose? when the Soviet Union collapsed. What was the purpose of Nato, ? , especially given the fact that ummm, assurance has been given to Michael Gorbachev, by the United States and other Nato members, that if Germany was allowed to reunify after the fall of the Berlin wall, that Nato would not expand one inch Eastward, that there would be no movement not only into Germany , but by extension, East , into any other nations that might leave the Soviet orbit. Ummm, That’s in keeping with the defensive Alliance.

But it became clear that Europe has an identity problem. And what i mean by that is, for the decades of the Cold War, Europe was completely and utterly under the umbrella of the United States defense capabilities. Yes, Briton had a nice military , the British army on the Rhine, very professional, the Germans had their own wonderful military, the French had their military , the Dutch had their military, everybody had their military, none of it worked without the United States, none of it worked without the United States.

So now the question is, now that the Soviet threat is gone, what does Europe do? And Europe had a problem. Almost immediately after the Soviet Union collapsed you had the Warsaw pact, i mean you had the Warsaw pact collapsed, you had Eastern Europe open up with great unknowns, what’s gonna happen?

You saw potential for great unrest in Romania where Nicholas Chiechesciue and his wife were gunned down in a back yard, Yugslavia was destructing in front of your eyes with horrible , horrible civil conflict, and Nato was the only military, unified military structure available to Europe to deal with this, so Nato’s mission changed.

It became not a defensive Alliance, but it became an offensively oriented security Alliance , where Nato was now deployed into Yugoslavia, Umm, Nato forces, and then later on, this Nato was involved in an offensive regime change oriented action against Serbia, where Nato did something that, or Nato participated in something that Europeans said they would never again do, the redrawing of the European map.

{14:35}

You know one of the key aspects at the end of the Second World War is , “We don’t mess with the maps, man.” We drew the lines. We gave a chunk of Poland to Ukraine, and we gave a chunk of Germany to Poland ,and now the lines are solid, we don’t renegotiote because the second you start erasing the lines, the Germans are gonna start saying , remember those Germans I told you about, that Silesia is Germany, and Prussia …is Germany, maybe we need to march East again and take them over.

That’s the last thought you want to enter any German’s mind. Ummm. But. That’s the last thought you want to enter into…. but we did it. Nato did it. In Kosovo. And since then , Nato’s expanded Eastward in violation of every assurance they gave, to the former Soviet leaders, and also to the new Russian leaders, Boris Yeltsin.

The conversations between Clinton and Yeltsin are stunning to listen to. How dismissive The United States is about Russia’s concerns about Nato expansion. That this is purely, don’t worry about it, its benevolent, we’re here to do good things, really? Ask the Serbs about that . And then, you…

You have a situation where a new Russian leader comes in, Vladimir Putin. And almost immediately he reiterates, “hey, we’re not happy about this Nato expansion. This is a threat to Russia. We have to ask you, why are you expanding? If its about European security then Let us in, Let us join, because if we join, then we’re not gonna be afraid of what your real intent is, but right now it looks like you’re coming right up to our borders with an aggressive, militarized alliance that has carried out regime change not only in Serbia…where they got rid of Slobidan Milosevich, but in Libya, where they got rid of Mohmar Ghadafi. I mean this is not a defensive Alliance anymore, this is an offensive oriented Alliance, and i’m a little worried,” Putin was thinking, “ about the rhetoric coming out of Washington DC and Europe about how maybe you don’t like the fact that i’m president, and you want somebody like Boris Yelstin to be president again, a weak president, and you want to put pressure on Russia to have my system collapse , remove me and replace me.” A little worrisome.

A little worrisome. One of the best speeches ever given in the last three decades was in 2007 speech given by Putin at the Munich security conference. Read it. Not just the speech, but the questions, the answers that he gives to the questions afterwards. He put it right on the line. This is unacceptable, this expansion of Nato, ; unacceptable to Russia; we view it as a threat.

and Yet what did Nato do? In 2008 in Bucharest, {Nato} they offered a membership application to Ukraine and Georgia, two former Soviet republics. How did Russia feel about that ? We don’t even have to ask the Russians , although we know, why don’t we ask William Burns, the US ambassador to Moscow, who wrote a memorandum “Nyet means Nyet, No means No.” Uhhh, in February of 2009 who said This is a red line for Russia, and that if the United States continues to insist on Nato expansion to include Ukraine, Russia will have no choice but to go to war.

this 2009. So people need to understand, that what’s happening today is not something new. This isn’t Vladimir Putin waking up one morning and going, “Ah, man, i’m a little irritated today , i’m going to invade Ukraine.”(Muffled)

No, its worse. In 2014, the United States and the European Union orchestrated a regime change operation in Ukraine to get rid of the duly elected president Yanukovich, and replace him with OUR BOYS, i’m not making this up, this is Victoria Nuland who’s at the time a senior state department person, who got on the phone and said,

Yats, Yatsenko

future prime minister of Ukraine, he’s our boy,

and was this something that the United States was working in concert with the European Union?

No No No, remember what Victoria Nuland infamously said ?

“F… the EU.” i won’t use the, the real word , but , “ Eff …. the EU.” You guys know what i’ m talking about.

That was her dismissive attitudes towards Europe. This was an American orchestrated regime change operation in Ukraine, for the sole purpose of undermining the authority , and the legitimacy, and the sustainability of Vladimir Putin’s regime in Moscow. That’s how the Russians saw it, ‘cause that’s how it was.

Russia’s got the receipts,Man, they’ve got the intercepted conversations , they got everything, they know everything. but the West is ignorant. Oh no no, this is just sort of a , expressure of Democracy in Ukraine, just the people’s will.

Well No, it was actually the people’s will being hijacked by a very virulent , aggressive Neo Nazi Ukrainian Nationalist identity coming out of Lvov, operating under the memory of a guy named Stephan Bandera.

Stephan Bandera

Stephan Bandera is a Ukranian Nationalist who is operating in the 1930’s, 40’s and 50’s, this is a guy who believes in the purity of the Ukranian people, he cooperated with Nazi Germany during World War 2, his , you know, people talk about for instance Bobby Yar, infamous murderer of 30, thousand plus Jews, ordered by the Germans, the triggermen were Ukranians working for Stephan Bandera, people need to remember this.

These aren’t good people, these Ukranian Nationalists. They’re Nazies.

80,000 of them joined up to join the German forces, immediately after the Germans entered; over a quarter of a million of them ended up fighting for Germany in World War 2. A quarter of a million Ukrainians fighting for Nazi Germany, during World War 2, motivated by the Nationalism of Stephan Bandera.

Now when Germany lost the war, Stephan Bandera being the Ukrainian Nationalist that he is, jumped ship and went rogue, fought his own operation against now the Soviet occupiers. Who supported this?

well, when during World War 2, Bandera was supported by an organization i think it was called the 12th Directorate, basically the intelligence, a German intelligence on the Eastern front, run by a general named Gaelin. When the war ended the Gaelin organization was taken over completely by the United States and incorporated into the CIA structure to continue anti Soviet resistance.

Nazi Germany was defeated by American troops and Soviet troops. But we took the Nazi intelligence organization in the East , made it part of our intelligence organization, so we could continue to fight the Russians and they did for 10 years, and with CIA funding, over 300,000 people lost their lives in that conflict. 100, 000 Poles. A lot of Russians, and a lot of Ukrainians. You say ,”why Poles?, why Russians?”

Because Ukrainians are racist . Stephan Bandera is a Ukrainian Nationalist who views the Poles and the Russians as subhumans, and they needed to purify Ukrainian soil from these subhuman elements.

i’m not making this up , its all documented fact. Documented fact. The atrocities that they committed are mindboggling. But this is the idealogy that moved in on the Maidan. You see, because even though they were defeated militarily around 1954 the CIA continued to fund them from 1954 to 1990. Fund their political activities, including not just the activities inside Ukraine , but also the activities of the emmigrant populations that came to the United States and in Canada, where you have a very strong Banderist organizations in the United States and Canada, which are promoting this notion of Ukrainian Nationalism, trying to clean it up, cause nobody likes to admit, i mean, you want to make a Ukrainian Nationalist, make a Ukrainian uncomfortable, ask them what Grandpa was doing between 1936 and 1954, they’ll start shruggin’, and getting nervous, cause they don’t want to admit it,

Grandpa was killing Jews. Grandpa was killing Poles. Grandpa was killing Russians, Grandpa was a murderer, cause that’s what he was. But now they cleaned it up , its purely Ukrainian Nationalism, you could…they got away with it from 1990 when the Soviet Union started to move on, Ukrainian independence came up, until 2014. And in 2014, then Ukrainian Nationalism raised its ugly head.

It came to the Maidan, took over a peaceful demonstration, turned it violent, evicted Yanukovich, and then used the threat of force, even though they’re a political minority , these Nationilists, they were able to expand their influence through the threat of force, and they bullied their way into power. They took over the interior ministry. They took over the police force. They created these volunteer units of thugs, who went down to Odessa , for instance, and burned to death 46 Russians, burned or { died of }smoke inhalation, that they crowded into the Union of Trade Building; they went to Mariupol where they carried out brutal street fighting against the Russian majority population there, seizing control of that city, establishing their headquarters there, that’s why this Nazi movement in Germany ‘s called the Azov regiment.

Sea of Azov is the body of water next to Mariupol. Mariupol is a Russian city but the Azov movement, these Nazies, came down and put their headquarters in Azov, basically saying We’re in control.

Then they set their eyes on the Donbass. Started make a move on Donestk and Lugansk, and the Russian populations there, who stood up and finally said Enough is Enough and they started fighting ; that led to 8 years of incessant warfare…between The Russian, what we call Separatists, because we don’t want to be part of the Ukraine that seeks to murder us {Russians} , and Ukrainian Nationalists.

now the interesting thing is , People say these were volunteer units, we brought them into the military so they’re not as bad as people think.

Imagine in the United States the Ku Klux Klan-you know, those White guys that wear the sheets, run around and burn crosses, Good People- stand up Americans. Imagine if all the Ku Klux Klan thugs in the South got together and formed a militia batallion and then the US army went, Oh, we’re just gonna invite you in. We’re gonna bring you into the US Army , INTACT. its okay you can do whatever you want to do, burn crosses…but now we control you… {25 minutes} the US Army just became a Racist institution cause it allows a racist unit inside.

The Ukranian military by allowing the Nazi military organizations to be incorporated intact became a Nazi unit.. its impossible to say otherwise.

And now these officers are , permeate throughout the Ukrainian military, Remember these are the front line troops, these are the heroes, you know, They’re fighting the Russians, the “Orcs,” that’s what the Ukrainians call the Russians, the “Orcs,” you know , they’re subhumans.

so this is the conflict that’s going on , and now they control everything. They put pressure on Ukranian political leaders. They put pressure on Pedro Potroeshenko(sic), the president before Zelensky, saying , “you know, if you implement policies that we disagree with we will “maidan” you…remember that term, Maidan, ….Kiev..that means they’re gonna ransack his office, which they did. They means they’re gonna threaten to kill him, which they did, then when he was voted out and Zelensky came in, they did the same thing to Zelensky.

There’s a videotape out there of a senior Azov regiment official saying that if Zelensky signs the Minsk agreements which is a peace agreement negotiated under the Normandy format with Germany France and other countries participating…If he signs it we will hang him by the neck, kill him in the streets of Kiev.

Now normally when someone says that about a sitting president, security services sweep in and …remove them. {26:48} Cause they committed a crime, threatening a president. No No No. Because the security service IS the Azov movement, is the Neo Nazies. And today we have a situation where Zelensky is totally under control of this odious Nazi idealogy, all of Ukraine is.

{27:05} They Saran Wrap citizens to poles, pull down their pants, beat them, paint their faces green, call them “Orcs;” They interrogate anybody who has a Russian background. They murder many of them. They terrorize their own people. And this is who we’re defending. And we’re defending them because we claim that they have a right to join Nato.

Really.

{27:30}So Nato’s now going to allow a military and a nation that is embued with Nazi idealogy to join. This is insane. This is literally the definition of insanity.

and yet, Nato hung out the promise of membership to Ukraine, from 1914{sic} to 2022 they trained the Ukrainian military to be a de facto proxy of Nato, provide them some of the finest military training, they had great leaders, they had great equipment, they were well organized, they were Big, we’re talking 160,000 active duty with up to 600, {or} 700,000 trained reservists, this was the Ukrainian military, and what’s happened to it?

Its being destroyed on the battlefield as we speak. Their losing a battalion’s worth of men a day. They’re going to lose this war to the Russians. {28:21} And yet, and the reason why, is because Ukraine bought into the premise, that it could join Nato, that this was a good move. That Russia wasn’t serious when Russia said that Eastward expansion of Nato represents an existential threat to us.

So now in the midst of this where Russia said, and has been saying since 2009, that if you continue to push for Ukrainian membership , that we will go to war, and that war will result in the dismemberment of the Ukraine, with the destruction of Ukraine as a modern nation-state, nobody believed Russia. Until now.

{28:52}

& Yet now in the midst of this, we have Finland and Sweden saying, “Maybe we should join Nato…”

I don’t know how you define Eastward expansion of Nato other than saying Finland joining Nato. It’s to the East, it brings it right up to the Russian border, but there’s a more important thing here, the history of Finland.

i mean, The Fins, you know… i’m an American. seems to me i have a better recollection of Finnish history, than maybe the Fins do.

You know, Finland used to be part of Russia. Then the Russian revolution came, Finland fought a civil war to free itself from Russia, but there was always this tennuous relationship, that Russia didn’t , couldn’t trust the Fins.

And in 1939 Russia said you know, we can’t trust you enough, that you’re too close to Lenningrad, we need you to back up a little bit…so we’re gonna take over some of theViborg peninsula, but we’re gonna trade you some land up here, some valuable land that has some nickel , stuff that you can mine and make money, but we need you push you back from Leningrad because you’re too close.

so the Fins said No.

So it started a war. its the winter war of 1939-1940. The Fins have glorified this, “We won the winter war…” . No you didn’t. You won the first couple of months of the winter war, Russians came in ill prepared, you ambushed them, winter came, when the winter ended Russia reorganized, and kicked Finland’s butt.

Finland had to sue for peace, because otherwise they were going to be destroyed, literally they were on the cusp of losing everything, so they surrendered. Do Fins remember that? They didn’t win that war. They lost that war. They had to surrender because they were about to be destroyed. And one of the things that Russia said is we’re taking the Viborg peninsula, it’s ours, because we can’t trust you. You’re too close to Leningrad.

What did the Fins do? In 1941 , they allied themselves with Nazi Germany. And they allowed Nazi Germany to use Finish soil as a springboard to attack Leningrad, surround Leningrad, subject more than a million Soviet citizens to death by starvation.

They allowed Finish soil to be used as a springboard to allow German troops to attack into northern Russia to try to seize a strategic ports facilities in Archangels and vermonsk, the Kola peninsula {?} and they did this for 3 years.

And then here’s the other lesson from them.: You lost . The Russians beat you. The Soviets -… They crushed you. They were on the verge of swampin thru ya, taking you down , absorbing you, making you disappear as a nation-state , but you sued for peace, and the Soviets said, “ok.”

“if you evict the Germans we’ll come up with a negotiated treaty.”

So the Fins turned on their German allies, kicked them out, and then in 1949 the Soviets signed a treaty . Here’s an important part of that treaty. {31:58}

but, In exchange for allowing Finland to exist as a nation-state, because it should never be allowed to exist as a nation-state, because you fought alongside the Nazies and you killed a millions Soviet citizens, but in exchange for letting you survive as a nation-state you have to promise to be neutral in perpetuity.

I don’t know what the Finish word for in perpetuity is, but in English, it means forever. Neutral forever. Now people say, “you can’t hold Finland to that.”

Oh- yes you can. And Russia will. Its not as though Russia’s been dictating unreasonable terms. When the Soviet Union collapsed and Russia re-upped this treaty, Russia had no problem with Finland joining the European Union if they want to, if they want to join the European commission, if they want to be part of Europe economically , go, Do it.

But you can never allow your soil, You can never allow your soil to be used as a potential basing point for foreign troops to threaten Russia. That ‘s sort of a given. And if you decide you’re going to do that , you lose the right to exist. Instantly.

{32:59/33:00} Its going to happen., Finland needs to understand that Russia means what it says when Russia says NO Eastward expansion of Nato, that it represents an existential threat to Russia, they mean it. Especially when we’re talking about Finish soil so close to Russia’s number two city, St Petersburg.

Finish soil so close to the Kola peninsula, which has strategic value to the Russians. They’re not gonna let Nato operate on Finish soil . They’re not gonna let Finland become part of Nato. Is this not clear? Did Ukraine not educate anybody about anything?

Zeweait a minute, the Russians are weak right now. They mobilized, they got their army down their in Ukraine, they can’t really pull a threat, the 6th army got pulled out of the Northern military district, and sent down to Ukraine, yeah i get it Finland, you and your huge, massive military, you know that Russia is probably on the verge of declaring war in Ukraine, which then allows Putin to order general mobilization of the Russian military capability, which allows for millions of Russians now to be mobilized , into the military, which means that the pathetic little Finish military will be swamped, swamped.

It ain’t gonna be 1939, Finland. You’re not gonna have some heroic resistance . {34:30} Your boys ain’t that tough anymore. Ok its not like you bring a bunch of farm boys out there that are ready to go off and play winter warrior. You know, You’re like the rest of Western Europe, soft, capitalist, have a nice lifestyle, you like your cell phones, you like your coffee, like everything else. ; The Russians are gonna bring some bad boys out of Siberia.Man.

And they’re mad now. You wanna join Nato? Bad things are gonna happen. And Sweden. Whattya got? 26,000 active duty troops? 40,000 reservists? Great, you can send enough guys to fight in Finland and last a week.

Last a week, that’s all you would last, you got nothing. And you don’t need anything, that’s the beauty of it. c’mon Finland and Sweden. You guys are dealing with, you got some of the greatest economies in Europe. its wonderful. Finland’s a paradise compared to many other nations. Sweden has some problems, but they’re still a paradise. One of the reasons is - you don’t have to divert all your resources into building a military, for what purpose? Russia does not threaten you. Russia won’t threaten you. Russia does not view you as a threat, unless you go to Nato, then you’re an existential threat that has to be destroyed.

This is one of the most mindboggling things and it scares me to death because it just seems to me that the Finish leadership and the Swedish leadership have forgotten how to think independently. I mean, neutrality means neutral, it means you don’t take sides. So when Europe’s sitting there screaming about Ukraine, Finland and Sweden should say, “we don’t take any sides on this one, we’re sorry.”

Umm, that’s your problem.

Especially when we’re talking about a Ukraine, a Ukrainian conflict which is solely, that the blame for which is solely rests on the shoulders of Nato and their irresponsible expansion, and their support for a neoNazi ideology.

Now i know that Finland has the history of Mannerheim, mumble, fought alongside the Nazies, but maybe deep down in the Finish DNA there’s some sympathy for Stephan Banderas Nationals - i’m being facetious here.

Because i’m hoping the Fins are smarter than this. But the point is you know, Finland should not be aligning itself with Ukraine, with the Neo Nazi ideology that resides there, Finland doesn’t have to support Russia’s special military operation, indeed , Finland can speak out against it, as they should, because if you’re part of the civilized world, you have to say that war is not the solution. That’s a sort of given. {37:07} I mean, war only accomplished one thing, and that’s the destruction of humanity…

So Finland can be critical of the Russian actions in the Ukraine, so can Sweden. But to sit there and align themselves with Nato, and say that we support what the West is doing in Ukraine, so much so that we want to become part of it, which is foolish, its suicidal, and it makes no sense.

{37:37} If Finland joins Nato…[transcript to be continued as part 2 of this post…when i have time, thanks for reading]

please share these sentiments of Scott Ritter.