Putin apologist Doug MacGregor to Charlie Kirk: “The war, with the exception of Kharkiv and Odessa, as far as the Russians are concerned is largely over”
Charlie Kirk: “This seems as if to be more of a family conflict that he wants very specific parts of Ukraine”
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From the July 8, 2022 edition of The Charlie Kirk Show, broadcast on Real America's Voice
CHARLIE KIRK (HOST): With us to help unpack this is someone who has been a very clear and courageous voice since the very beginning of this conflict, it is Colonel MacGregor. Colonel, welcome back to the program.
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DOUGLAS MACGREGOR: The war, with the exception of Kharkiv and Odessa, as far as the Russians are concerned is largely over. There is no intention to do anything else because the Russians don’t have a very large army, Charlie. They’ve got a very limited armed force and that’s by design, they didn’t want to build a huge army, they certainly are not in a position to threaten NATO nor would they unless they were directly attacked by us.
KIRK: And where it gets confusing for a lot of people in the West is that if you just listen to what Washington, D.C. says it sounds like Putin is just beginning his grand Napoleonic or Hitlerian march across Europe. But when you break free of, kind of, that propaganda we recognize and realize that this seems as if to be more of a family conflict that he wants very specific parts of Ukraine.
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MACGREGOR: This nonsense that Putin wants to conquer all of Ukraine was never true. All he ever did in the Minsk agreement was ask that Russian speakers, Russian citizens inside Ukraine be treated equally before the law. That they not be penalized for being Russians. That they not be forced to adopt Ukrainian language. Obviously they could speak Ukrainian language in official capacity but they wanted to be Russians and he wanted them to have equal rights. That was one of the keystones in the edifice of Minsk, it was never fulfilled.
That I think is widely misunderstood. So the last thing, the last thing that Putin wants is to go west of that Dnieper River and end up incorporating, 20 million, 25 million Ukrainians into Russia. He knows they don’t want to be part of Russia, that’s never been his aim.
But, in addition to that, we need to understand that Eastern Ukraine was always viewed by us as a springboard for an attack on Russia. We were the ones that cultivated hostility in Ukraine against Russia.