Evidence receipt / evaluation
Published · transcript-backedM. Gessen: evaluation
14 Aug 2019 Conversations with Tyler M. Gessen on the Ins and Outs of Russia
“All the countries that joined NATO — without exception — asked to join NATO, begged to join NATO, because they wanted to have protection against Russia, which had colonized them and of which they had good reason to suspect might want to colonize them again, and so they wanted to be a part of NATO.”
Source trail
Everything needed to verify it.
- Speaker
- M. Gessen
- Attribution
- Verified speaker
- Claim type
- evaluation
- Recorded
- 14 Aug 2019
- Publisher
- Conversations with Tyler
Transcript context
…Final question: the new cold war with Russia — how much did America provoke Russia with NATO expansion, electoral influence in Ukraine, and even earlier, the Serbia-Kosovo intervention? Who started it, in a sense? I don’t have a lot of patience for the NATO expansion argument for the simple reason that it fails to take into account the countries that joined NATO. All the countries that joined NATO — without exception — asked to join NATO, begged to join NATO, because they wanted to have protection against Russia, which had colonized them and of which they had good reason to suspect might want to colonize them again, and so they wanted to be a part of NATO. This idea that the United States provoked Russia by taking those countries under its wing completely ignores the agency and desire of the people of those countries. Kosovo, I think, was huge. I think that we still have to reckon with the corrosive effect of the illegal bombing campaign in Kosovo, both on Russia but also on American politics and on international politics and politics of military intervention. M. Gessen, thank you very much.…
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