Piers Morgan to Jeffrey Sachs: Why Do You Trust Putin?
Piers Morgan to Jeffrey Sachs: Why Do You Trust Putin? Jeffrey Sachs proceeds to school Morgan on the history of United States meddling in the affairs of other countries, including the fact that we have repeatedly overthrown democratically elected governments. Here is the discussion:
Piers Morgan:
You seem very reliant on accepting Putin's world view rather than perhaps the stark reality of the barbarism with which he's executed this war.
Jeffrey Sachs:
Yeah, maybe because I know too much about the United States.Because the first war in Europe after World War II was the US bombing of Belgrade for 78 days to change borders of a European state. The idea was to break Serbia, to create Kosovo as an enclave, and then to install bond to steel, which is the largest NATO base in the Balkans, in the southwest Balkans. So the US started this under Clinton, that we will break the borders, we will illegally bomb another country. We didn't have any UN authority. This was a quote NATO mission to do that.
Then I know the United States went to war repeatedly, illegally in what it did in Afghanistan, and then what it did in Iraq, and then what it did in Syria, which was the Obama administration, especially Obama and Hillary Clinton, tasking the CIA to overthrow Bashar Al Assad. And then what it did with NATO illegally bombing Libya to topple norm or Gaddafi.
And then what it did in Kyiv in February 2014 I happened to see some of that with my own eyes. The US overthrew Yanukovych, together with right wing Ukrainian military forces, we overthrew a president. And what's interesting, by the way, is we overthrew Yanukovych the day after the European union representatives had reached an agreement with Yanukovych to have early elections, a government of national unity and a stand down of both sides that was agreed. The next thing that happens is the opposition, quote, unquote, says, we don't agree. They stormed the government buildings and they deposed Yanukovych, and within hours, the United States says, Yes, we support the new government. It didn't say, Oh, we had an agreement that's unconstitutional. What you did.
So we overthrew a government contrary to a promise that the European Union had made. And by the way, Russia, the United States and the EU were parties to that agreement, and the United States, an hour afterwards, backed the coup. Okay, so everyone's got a little bit to answer for in 2015 the Russians did not say we want the Donbas back. They said peace should come through negotiations. And negotiations between the ethnic Russians in the east of Ukraine and this new regime in Kyiv led to the Minsk two agreement. The Minsk two agreement was voted by the UN Security Council unanimously. It was signed by the Government of Ukraine. It was guaranteed explicitly by Germany and France. And you know what? And it's been explained to me in person. It was laughed at inside the US government. This is after the UN Security Council unanimously accepted it. The Ukrainians said, We don't want to give autonomy to the region. Oh, but that's part of the treaty. The US told them, Don't worry about it. Angela Merkel explained in design in a notorious interview after the 2022 escalation, she said, Oh, you know we knew that Minsk two was just a holding pattern to give Ukraine time to build its strength. No, mins too. Was a UN Security Council unanimously adopted treaty that was supposed to end the war.
So when it comes to who's trustworthy, who to believe, and so forth, I guess my problem, Piers, is I know the United States government. I know it very well. I don't trust. For a moment, I want these two sides actually to sit down in front of the whole world and say, these are the terms then the world can judge, because we could get on paper clearly for both sides of the world, we're not going to overthrow governments anymore. The United States needs to say, we accept this agreement, the United States needs to say, Russia needs to say, we're not stepping one foot farther than whatever the boundary is actually reached, and NATO is not going to enlarge. And let's put it for the whole world to see. You know, once in a while, treaties actually hold.