Name: Lex Fridman's Analysis of Putin and Ukraine
Uploaded: 2022-05-26T17:52:49.000Z
Description: Watch the stand-up comedy video 'Lex Fridman's Analysis of Putin and Ukraine' from PowerfulJRE on Comedy Buff. Published 2022-05-26. Transcript available.

Watch the stand-up comedy video 'Lex Fridman's Analysis of Putin and Ukraine' from PowerfulJRE on Comedy Buff. Published 2022-05-26. Transcript available.

the Joe Rogan experience the thing is there is if you look at the details a
fundamental difference between what Vladimir Putin is doing and what the
United States is doing now everybody's a victim of somebody's propaganda now I
talked to Russians which is a very interesting thing both Russians and
Ukrainians say that they are not at all under the influence of propaganda
Russians believe there's no propaganda in Russia and Ukrainians believe there's
no propaganda in Ukraine that from Russians think if the West is influenced
by their propaganda by the CNNs and the Foxes in Ukraine is influenced by their
propaganda by the limited number of news channels they have that are state
controlled okay from our Western perspective that seems ridiculous because
it's obvious that Russia's and under influence of propaganda but so it's hard
to know what is true or not but the reality seems to be that Russia is
currently an authoritarian regime that tries to appear as much as possible as a
democracy because there is an election yeah and there's an extra hard truth on
top of that I don't know what to do with it but Putin is still and even more so
popular in Russia he's very popular in India in China and in Russia and
some small countries around former Soviet Union what do you do with that that's
real objective
well as far as we can tell data from outside of Russia taken from outside of
Russia
do you give any credence to the rumors that he has cancer I I'm not an
investigative you know because there's a lot of sort of rumors of this nature
Oliver Stone even discussed it he said yeah while he was there yes he said it
very
nonchalantly and I thought that was a known fact and then later I looked in
those you know I'm not sure that was objectively publicly known but if Oliver
said it then perhaps there's some truth to it he stayed there for quite a while
when he was interviewing Putin yeah two years no he visited multiple times and
he
yeah he spent time with them yeah I but according to Oliver he'll he beat it he
beat the cancer but you know he's 69 years old seven it's gonna be 70 beating
the
cancer when Oliver was there versus what he has now oh what he has now yeah
because
he looks like puffy you know which is oftentimes uh you know I had we were
talking about this with the Christa Stefano podcast I had a friend who had gout
and they
they gave him prednisone now he had something else to sarcoidosis and they
gave him prednisone and his like his face got big yeah it's just like you look
puffy well said it's just a side effect of the steroids yeah his face is puffy
you
know yeah Oliver Stone says Vladimir Putin has struggled with cancer during his
time in which the filmmaker focused on his work on the Russian president
pictured
about Putin waves during the victory day parade Red Square May 9th yeah well I'm
much more I'm much less of concerned about the puffiness of his face and more
concerned about what's going on with his mind it seems like he's a different
man
now than he was even a year ago in what way so from this is what Oliver Stone
commented on and I agree he's formed a much stricter information bubble around
him that there is a that
isolation that a lot of us have experienced the code I honestly think it might
have to do with just the isolation due to covid you know that the basic
distance you have to
keep and all that kind of stuff as a as a political leader you have to have
extra precautions especially a political leader that assassinates his enemies
yes well that's what no but that has that that was always the case that has
less to do with covid but
don't you think that increases his paranoia so yes like paranoia yeah paranoia
is the thing that's what gets
dictators that's what gets you start mistrusting everybody not just on the
outside of the circle but the inner circle and so you don't know who to trust
even though the closest advisors you don't know who to trust so your flow of
information is really
flawed yeah it's very limited yeah and so you start you start making really
poor decisions uh even more so than
before and there that that's where I mean if you and I hate thinking of it that
way because to me uh the war in ukraine is a is a humanitarian
thing not a geopolitics thing but if you think geopolitically invading ukraine
was just a giant miscalculation on putin's part on every level
level geopolitical social militarily um unless there's there's very few
scenarios in which this was
calculated all along the only scenarios of putin thought through um first of
all maybe he thought that
zelensky would just back down would just crumble under the pressure of even a
minor invasion and obviously you
have to give credit this is really important so ukraine got its independence
for the first time in many
centuries in 1991 30 years ago when soviet union collapsed so they're dealing
with independence
with sovereignty which is a difficult process as the united states knows we had
a civil war about it
and the same same thing in ukraine there's there's factions there's a lot of
corruption it's the second
most corrupt country in europe next next did you see when the new york times
was questioning candace owen
and where is she getting her information that because the new york times was
trying to push this
while the ukraine invasion was happening they were trying to push this thing
that ukraine was good
and russia is bad and she was saying well this is one of the most corrupt
countries on earth so they
said to her like where are you getting this information they sent her an email
and she sent them back
links to the new york times and all these articles about how badly corrupt ukraine
was
which just makes me go god damn if i can't trust the new york times to get it
right
like you're supposed to be the the paper of note but a lot has changed though
so zelensky the president
he got into office with 70 percent approval and before the war he had less than
30 percent approval
there's factions there's divisions the west side of ukraine is pro let's say ukrainian
and then the
right side is pro russia so he got into office and he had a high approval
rating and then before the
war it dropped very low yeah it had been dropping gradually over because of the
division because of
the factions he wasn't able to bring the country together and the war turns out
his great leadership
uh was catalyzed was made possible like he was uh sometimes sort of a
catastrophe brings out the best
in us and that was the case with him w george w bush yeah yeah that's exactly
what happened post 9 11.
yes the the yeah exactly but in his case he wasn't able to hold that for a long
time let's see what
zelensky does but at the moment he was zelensky united a previously divided
country which is very
difficult to do so that that um i mean that's a historic event in in in in um
for ukraine in its sovereign
history and so in terms of corruption that might be a really big blow to
corruption that kind of unification
so um i think there's a fundamental difference between the corruption in ukraine
and the corruption in russia
what is the conflict in ukraine the the beside russia what is the internal
conflict like the the factions
what what what what do they want what is uh what the dispute well no there's
there's it's it's just
factions that are uh vying for power that's just at the basic level so it's
basically like right versus
left in america yeah but okay so there's a bunch of differences um what they
stand for what they're
looking for a lot of it in the recent years has been centered around the war uh
with russia starting with
2014 and so some parts are ukrainian speaking pro-ukraine some parts are russian-speaking
or primarily russian-speaking
and and pro-russia so on the east you have the donbas region but around that as
well they want to
be closer to russia and the the west part wants to be closer to europe closer
to nato closer to the european union is that that's one of the divisions you
want to be
pro-democracy or you want to be pro whatever the heck russia is so it's like
are you pulling towards
the west towards the west the western civilization are you pulling towards the
east um the way of
russia the way of china the way of those i'm sure they're influenced and they
got have the ones who are
pro-russia they're they're getting some signals from putin or meeting with them
and he's giving them
indications that they would best be served to be aligned with him and be better
for them and
yeah but he is still popular he is there's a i mean i don't know exactly why he's
popular but
there's a longing as it there is in a lot of nations to be the greatest nation
on earth
isn't there always just a longing for a strong man
like the strong man leader i would say a strong vision and that sometimes can
coincide or often
does with a strong man like isn't it like a natural inclination that people
have to be led by a strong
man like putin like like him or hate him think he's evil that's all good but
there's no doubt that he's
strong he's a strong leader i mean he's been running russia for a long time and
the way he's been doing
that sort of unopposed in a ruthless manner it's very impressive it's evil but
in terms of its efficacy
it's impressive what he's been able to do i think strength is one of the things
we admire in leaders
but it's not the entirety of it no so that's why zolensky is extremely popular
he stepped up
you know the the famous thing he was uh biden offered him a ride and he said
that i'm staying put
give me more bullets and uh he stayed in kiev kiev and held held his ground
where most leaders would
have fled uh this is the failure we had in afghanistan where we fled here's a
leader that
stepped up and held his ground and that's rare in this world and we admire that
kind of strength yes
and the same could be said by the russian people the indian people the chinese
people that admire
strength and putin but we also admire other values that make this country great
the united states of
america is this kind of respect for human freedom human rights and um i mean
sort of the embodiment
of this ideal of like all men are created equal that's not exactly communicated
very clearly by
by vladimir putin right um you know that's you know but there's also a
difference between and this
again the oliver stone perspective is uh between the messaging and the actual
execution you know hitler's
messaging was also very sort of uh beautiful sounding right what is he talking
about sort of uh national
socialism respect for workers right like the downtrodden workers uh that were
germany is a great nation
that deserves to be respected among other nations and it was not respected
because of world war one
okay but like are you also going to mention that you're going to murder and
imprison and torture people
millions of people you're not you're not and the same things with america
not moral equivalence at all obviously but we talk a lot about freedom but what
does freedom actually look like
you know when we fight terrorism and evil in the world what does that actually
look like
um well it turns out that it looks like you're bombing civilians children lose
their fathers and mothers
uh hundreds of thousands of people civilians die when you're spreading freedom
all over the world
so we have to be very careful sort of separating the the messaging from the
actions and we have to as
as americans make sure we live up to the ideal and we don't always and i think
when you just paint
the whole world is black and white it's easy for us to say america good china russia
bad yeah and instead
of the the full complexity of that and that there's warmongers like that watch
ukraine now with the
money that we're sending there and they get excited because they can escalate
and if they escalate they
can get more and more money for manufacturing weapons to both sides to all
sides and what if china enters
with taiwan that tension that military conflict and there's nukes on the ready
everywhere and

Lex Fridman's Analysis of Putin and Ukraine

the Joe Rogan experience the thing is there is if you look at the details a
fundamental difference between what Vladimir Putin is doing and what the
United States is doing now everybody's a victim of somebody's propaganda now I
talked to Russians which is a very interesting thing both Russians and
Ukrainians say that they are not at all under the influence of propaganda
Russians believe there's no propaganda in Russia and Ukrainians believe there's
no propaganda in Ukraine that from Russians think if the West is influenced
by their propaganda by the CNNs and the Foxes in Ukraine is influenced by their
propaganda by the limited number of news channels they have that are state
controlled okay from our Western perspective that seems ridiculous because
it's obvious that Russia's and under influence of propaganda but so it's hard
to know what is true or not but the reality seems to be that Russia is
currently an authoritarian regime that tries to appear as much as possible as a
democracy because there is an election yeah and there's an extra hard truth on
top of that I don't know what to do with it but Putin is still and even more so
popular in Russia he's very popular in India in China and in Russia and
some small countries around former Soviet Union what do you do with that that's
real objective
well as far as we can tell data from outside of Russia taken from outside of
Russia
do you give any credence to the rumors that he has cancer I I'm not an
investigative you know because there's a lot of sort of rumors of this nature
Oliver Stone even discussed it he said yeah while he was there yes he said it
very
nonchalantly and I thought that was a known fact and then later I looked in
those you know I'm not sure that was objectively publicly known but if Oliver
said it then perhaps there's some truth to it he stayed there for quite a while
when he was interviewing Putin yeah two years no he visited multiple times and
he
yeah he spent time with them yeah I but according to Oliver he'll he beat it he
beat the cancer but you know he's 69 years old seven it's gonna be 70 beating
the
cancer when Oliver was there versus what he has now oh what he has now yeah
because
he looks like puffy you know which is oftentimes uh you know I had we were
talking about this with the Christa Stefano podcast I had a friend who had gout
and they
they gave him prednisone now he had something else to sarcoidosis and they
gave him prednisone and his like his face got big yeah it's just like you look
puffy well said it's just a side effect of the steroids yeah his face is puffy
you
know yeah Oliver Stone says Vladimir Putin has struggled with cancer during his
time in which the filmmaker focused on his work on the Russian president
pictured
about Putin waves during the victory day parade Red Square May 9th yeah well I'm
much more I'm much less of concerned about the puffiness of his face and more
concerned about what's going on with his mind it seems like he's a different
man
now than he was even a year ago in what way so from this is what Oliver Stone
commented on and I agree he's formed a much stricter information bubble around
him that there is a that
isolation that a lot of us have experienced the code I honestly think it might
have to do with just the isolation due to covid you know that the basic
distance you have to
keep and all that kind of stuff as a as a political leader you have to have
extra precautions especially a political leader that assassinates his enemies
yes well that's what no but that has that that was always the case that has
less to do with covid but
don't you think that increases his paranoia so yes like paranoia yeah paranoia
is the thing that's what gets
dictators that's what gets you start mistrusting everybody not just on the
outside of the circle but the inner circle and so you don't know who to trust
even though the closest advisors you don't know who to trust so your flow of
information is really
flawed yeah it's very limited yeah and so you start you start making really
poor decisions uh even more so than
before and there that that's where I mean if you and I hate thinking of it that
way because to me uh the war in ukraine is a is a humanitarian
thing not a geopolitics thing but if you think geopolitically invading ukraine
was just a giant miscalculation on putin's part on every level
level geopolitical social militarily um unless there's there's very few
scenarios in which this was
calculated all along the only scenarios of putin thought through um first of
all maybe he thought that
zelensky would just back down would just crumble under the pressure of even a
minor invasion and obviously you
have to give credit this is really important so ukraine got its independence
for the first time in many
centuries in 1991 30 years ago when soviet union collapsed so they're dealing
with independence
with sovereignty which is a difficult process as the united states knows we had
a civil war about it
and the same same thing in ukraine there's there's factions there's a lot of
corruption it's the second
most corrupt country in europe next next did you see when the new york times
was questioning candace owen
and where is she getting her information that because the new york times was
trying to push this
while the ukraine invasion was happening they were trying to push this thing
that ukraine was good
and russia is bad and she was saying well this is one of the most corrupt
countries on earth so they
said to her like where are you getting this information they sent her an email
and she sent them back
links to the new york times and all these articles about how badly corrupt ukraine
was
which just makes me go god damn if i can't trust the new york times to get it
right
like you're supposed to be the the paper of note but a lot has changed though
so zelensky the president
he got into office with 70 percent approval and before the war he had less than
30 percent approval
there's factions there's divisions the west side of ukraine is pro let's say ukrainian
and then the
right side is pro russia so he got into office and he had a high approval
rating and then before the
war it dropped very low yeah it had been dropping gradually over because of the
division because of
the factions he wasn't able to bring the country together and the war turns out
his great leadership
uh was catalyzed was made possible like he was uh sometimes sort of a
catastrophe brings out the best
in us and that was the case with him w george w bush yeah yeah that's exactly
what happened post 9 11.
yes the the yeah exactly but in his case he wasn't able to hold that for a long
time let's see what
zelensky does but at the moment he was zelensky united a previously divided
country which is very
difficult to do so that that um i mean that's a historic event in in in in um
for ukraine in its sovereign
history and so in terms of corruption that might be a really big blow to
corruption that kind of unification
so um i think there's a fundamental difference between the corruption in ukraine
and the corruption in russia
what is the conflict in ukraine the the beside russia what is the internal
conflict like the the factions
what what what what do they want what is uh what the dispute well no there's
there's it's it's just
factions that are uh vying for power that's just at the basic level so it's
basically like right versus
left in america yeah but okay so there's a bunch of differences um what they
stand for what they're
looking for a lot of it in the recent years has been centered around the war uh
with russia starting with
2014 and so some parts are ukrainian speaking pro-ukraine some parts are russian-speaking
or primarily russian-speaking
and and pro-russia so on the east you have the donbas region but around that as
well they want to
be closer to russia and the the west part wants to be closer to europe closer
to nato closer to the european union is that that's one of the divisions you
want to be
pro-democracy or you want to be pro whatever the heck russia is so it's like
are you pulling towards
the west towards the west the western civilization are you pulling towards the
east um the way of
russia the way of china the way of those i'm sure they're influenced and they
got have the ones who are
pro-russia they're they're getting some signals from putin or meeting with them
and he's giving them
indications that they would best be served to be aligned with him and be better
for them and
yeah but he is still popular he is there's a i mean i don't know exactly why he's
popular but
there's a longing as it there is in a lot of nations to be the greatest nation
on earth
isn't there always just a longing for a strong man
like the strong man leader i would say a strong vision and that sometimes can
coincide or often
does with a strong man like isn't it like a natural inclination that people
have to be led by a strong
man like putin like like him or hate him think he's evil that's all good but
there's no doubt that he's
strong he's a strong leader i mean he's been running russia for a long time and
the way he's been doing
that sort of unopposed in a ruthless manner it's very impressive it's evil but
in terms of its efficacy
it's impressive what he's been able to do i think strength is one of the things
we admire in leaders
but it's not the entirety of it no so that's why zolensky is extremely popular
he stepped up
you know the the famous thing he was uh biden offered him a ride and he said
that i'm staying put
give me more bullets and uh he stayed in kiev kiev and held held his ground
where most leaders would
have fled uh this is the failure we had in afghanistan where we fled here's a
leader that
stepped up and held his ground and that's rare in this world and we admire that
kind of strength yes
and the same could be said by the russian people the indian people the chinese
people that admire
strength and putin but we also admire other values that make this country great
the united states of
america is this kind of respect for human freedom human rights and um i mean
sort of the embodiment
of this ideal of like all men are created equal that's not exactly communicated
very clearly by
by vladimir putin right um you know that's you know but there's also a
difference between and this
again the oliver stone perspective is uh between the messaging and the actual
execution you know hitler's
messaging was also very sort of uh beautiful sounding right what is he talking
about sort of uh national
socialism respect for workers right like the downtrodden workers uh that were
germany is a great nation
that deserves to be respected among other nations and it was not respected
because of world war one
okay but like are you also going to mention that you're going to murder and
imprison and torture people
millions of people you're not you're not and the same things with america
not moral equivalence at all obviously but we talk a lot about freedom but what
does freedom actually look like
you know when we fight terrorism and evil in the world what does that actually
look like
um well it turns out that it looks like you're bombing civilians children lose
their fathers and mothers
uh hundreds of thousands of people civilians die when you're spreading freedom
all over the world
so we have to be very careful sort of separating the the messaging from the
actions and we have to as
as americans make sure we live up to the ideal and we don't always and i think
when you just paint
the whole world is black and white it's easy for us to say america good china russia
bad yeah and instead
of the the full complexity of that and that there's warmongers like that watch
ukraine now with the
money that we're sending there and they get excited because they can escalate
and if they escalate they
can get more and more money for manufacturing weapons to both sides to all
sides and what if china enters
with taiwan that tension that military conflict and there's nukes on the r