Dave Smith: belief

Transcript context

…Putin is not upset about Finland joining NATO nearly as much. I’m just saying, Vladimir Putin in his own words, what his issue always was, was the military hardware that comes along with NATO membership. It’s not just that you get into NATO, but then you get all that military hardware there. And he made a huge deal about the dual-use rocket launchers in Poland, which George W. Bush put there after 9/11. I think all of those things are factors. I think Ukraine, Crimea being their only yearlong warm-water port, I think there’s several elements to it. But I do think a huge part of it is that also the country’s been invaded through Ukraine multiple times. I think very reasonably, grading on a curve of how reasonable governments are, he saw that as a security threat. We should make very clear, because the way that comes across, the full responsibility of the invasion of Ukraine lays at the hands of Vladimir Putin.…

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