I came to Moscow in 1995 under Yeltsin. I couldn’t believe what I saw. The Wild West. Hundreds of people living across from train stations, burning fires, trying to survive. Cops officers taking bribes right in front of me in a taxi I was in. In October 2015, I returned to Moscow again. Exactly 20 years later. And I left Berlin, and I thought I was still in Western Europe.

A clean, orderly city. Why? What happened? It was no longer a crazy country. Vladimir Putin. He restored the sovereignty of this country, the dignity of Russia, and that angered a lot of people on Wall Street and in Washington.
That led us to this invasion, the overthrow of Yanukovych.

Name me one revolution in which a democratically elected government was overthrown. Revolutions happen to kings, dictators. It was a coup orchestrated by the US. Why? Because Yanukovych chose economic package from Russia over the EU. It was started with our help. NATO trained Ukrainian forces, armed them. It was already a de facto NATO state.

Only people in the US and Western Europe believe all this nonsense about Ukraine. Sorry. Why? Because there is no history there. It is excised, it is taken out, and the Russian point of view is removed. They deliberately suppress journalism because we interfere with the state narrative. A noble lie.

I invited Howard Zinn, the great American historian, to the UN. And I asked him then, what is the American noble lie? He answered without hesitation: democracy.

...But because there are our own interests and those of a global player like the US in the region. A security provider to the allies.