Bryza: Putin wants to weaken NATO

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00:00I mean, President Putin himself literally wrote the book, or at least the monograph

00:04on the topic, when he said, essentially, that Ukraine has no reason to exist as an independent

00:11country.

00:12It's false.

00:13There's not a Ukrainian language.

00:15Ukraine is really just Russia, or little Russia.

00:17So what Russia is getting at in terms of the irritants beyond Ukraine is something that's

00:23been on their proposal since 2008, when then President Dmitry Medvedev said there needs

00:28to be a new European architecture of security based on the concept of equal security, meaning

00:34that no country or no member of the transatlantic space or the Euro-Atlantic community can take

00:40any action that would be perceived as threatening the security of any other European country,

00:47which of course includes military-political alliances or any sort of collaboration between

00:54some Europeans and or Americans that, in this case, Russia would not like.

00:59Putin made that request or demand more specific in the lead-up to his invasion of Ukraine

01:05in 2022, and he said that NATO must withdraw all of its forces that were deployed after

01:11Russia invaded Donbass and Crimea, and must even reduce its overall commitment to the

01:17Eastern European members of NATO, which is an absolute non-starter for those members

01:21of NATO who feel that throughout their history they've been threatened by an aggressive Russia.