Azerbaijan has won the battle with Armenia and Erdogan has his pipeline. But what is Russia doing by sending in peacekeeping troops?
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brad johnson december 26 of 2020
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and uh i thought the whole azerbaijan
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armenia thing was a done deal i thought
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turkey won it
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and uh you know erdogan was dancing
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around
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on the on the ruins and the spoils is
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there more to that
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there is there’s some interesting kind
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of aftermath developments i guess is the
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best way to describe it i would say your
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your uh your your outline there is
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correct that essentially
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the the the azerbaijanis backed and
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basically
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run as a turkish operation have won what
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they won
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was the larger swath of these three
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and districts that are generally
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referred to as karabaw
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of course just to recap this was done
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for the money this is a pipeline that
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goes through there with
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natural resources coming out of oil and
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gas type resources coming out of
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of uh azerbaijan who has a lot of wealth
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of that way being pumped out and ending
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up
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in turkey for their for their use in
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wealth now turkey has
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uh very very similar and something we
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pointed out very similar to the problems
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that
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japan had leading into world war ii
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turkey has in this
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this period where they’re intending to
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expand
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in the sort of neo ottoman empire sort
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of
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game plan so uh energy everyone
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recognizes you got to have energy you
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got to have a steady supply you got to
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control your energy
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in order to be able to be aggressive in
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a military sense so
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turkey most assuredly recognizes that
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these guys are not dummies
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and this is all part of that overall
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plan it’s not the only place but it is
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one of the places where
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turkey’s trying to achieve uh energy
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independence so
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uh but they didn’t take all of those
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areas there’s some of those
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regions that remain under armenian
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control and a lot of the things that we
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suggested would happen have happened and
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there’s uh
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armenian soldiers are being uh captured
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killed and decapitated and those sorts
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of things in the heads
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shown this is i think largely done more
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by the uh
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syrian mercenaries that are sent in than
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azerbaijani regular troops although
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it appears that they’re involved as well
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to some degree
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uh so it’s it’s it is an area where it’s
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been
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you know not a pretty thing uh but now
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what’s happened and an interesting
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development out of this
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is russia as part of this settlement is
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sending in essentially what’s supposed
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to be this peacekeeping force
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so what they’re doing is they’re opening
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a second base they have the one large
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base not far from that area
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in armenia proper and now they’re
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reporting that a second russian base is
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going to be opened up
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now according to the agreement this
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peacekeeping force this base that’s
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being opened
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inside outside of armenia proper and
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inside the karabaw region
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was scheduled to have a couple thousand
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soldiers or something like that i don’t
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remember the exact numbers but it wasn’t
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some huge number
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but what they’re doing is they’re
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bringing in and this is standard
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you know practiced by the socialist
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countries of of years gone by
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what they do is they bring in large
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numbers of relief workers and health
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workers and all this sort of stuff
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all of these other sorts of humanitarian
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workers that come
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in all of whom are also military so
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suddenly this base has gone from a
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relatively small number to this huge
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number of people plan to come in
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and i’ll just uh i uh this is a tactic
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used all the time in the past where
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they’d only
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report say a couple thousand regular
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soldiers but they would have all these
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relief workers come in who are all
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military trained
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armed you know have weapons all
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ammunition
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all this stuff in order to to um
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be part of you know the military unit
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overall for fighting now
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my speculation is on that it’s an
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interesting development why would russia
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when they’ve already essentially lost
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want to go to all the trouble and time
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and expense
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to bring in all these russian troops and
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in a
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size that’s much larger than
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uh you know what would be required for
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peacekeeping so
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i think it’s one of those things where
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we’ve seen a development this is part of
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the larger strategic
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plan by russia they see you know they
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are starting to face off against turkey
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i’ve described them as kind of frenemies
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before
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they do have areas of cooperation but in
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the long term overall
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there they are kind of largely hostile
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to each other and each other’s
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intents and goals so i think this is
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something where they’re going to be
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right next to that pipeline
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and we would be in a position with this
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base right there
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to immediately cut off that pipeline to
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turkey in times of problems
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so it looks to me that that’s what
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they’re doing is they’re looking at
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long-term strategic
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threats coming out of turkey and looking
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at this as a way
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as a as a backdoor way to cut off energy
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to turkey immediately and this is
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something that
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turkey clearly recognizes they need so
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that’s the the one explanation that
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seems to fit all the data points that we
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have right now as to why
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russia would go to all this trouble
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after that war is lost
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to move in so many russian troops to
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that area that are most assuredly not
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required to
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to keep peace in the region the
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azerbaijanis and the turks have what
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they want
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so they’ve got no particular reason they
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don’t want to particularly conquer
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armenia i mean they hate the armenians
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but
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you know they don’t really make any
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money out of doing that right now so
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it’s just one of those it’s one of those
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things that there’s there’s really only
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one purpose and that would be
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to to create a large russian presence in
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that area a large russian military
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presence in that area for
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for future conflict so it’s an
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interesting
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development development in karbala and i
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i
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i would say as the tension
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rises between russia and turkey it will
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become a lot more important
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so
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