grab power. he s not insane at all. he has done this several times before. in south ossetia, in abkhazia. send in penal who are loyal to those places. you have them put facts on the ground. you push out the local forces and then you create little states that are really russian states and try to get the world to recognize it. he s done that successfully in the past. nobody kicked up a fuss when he did it for abkhazia. was it particularly successful on the world stage, but got him what he needed to get. those territories, we say they re part of georgia. georgian troops cannot go into abkhazia or south ossetia.
russia decided to recognize each of those places as their own country. you don t become your own country by saying that you are. ask taiwan. if you want to be your own country, other countries have to see you that way as well. that s why taiwan was will to pay vanuatu and why russia has the same problem when it comes to these two countries it wanted to create inside georgia. russia wanted to create these two countries so russia recognized them. then they said, okay, south ossetia, you recognize abkhazia. abkhazia, you recognize ossetia. somebody call vanuatu. it was 2011 by the time russia was shopping around the world for micro countries it might be able to persuade to recognize the two fake new countries it had invented inside georgia. vanuatu for a while was happy to go along with the russians plan. we don t know what russia
there s been any broadcast on any television network where you re talking about vanuatu and abkhazia in the same sentence. but it ends up being, i think, part of the calculation that russia must be making here. this referendum, everybody knew there was going to be some sort of referendum staged in crimea in terms of how to try to normalize the russian invasion. did you know or should we have expected it would be to annex them into the russian federation? i think you re on to something here. can i take a step back? yeah, please. people are saying, putin s crazy, not acting rationally, he s an insane man who wants to grab power. he s not insane at all. he has done this several times before. in south ossetia, in abkhazia. send in penal who are loyal to those places. you have them put facts on the ground.
he s an insane man who wants to grab power. he s not insane at all. he has done this several times before. in south osettia, in abkhazia. send in penal who are loyal to those places. you have them put facts on the ground. you push out the local forces and then you create little states that are really russian states and try to get the world to recognize it. he s done that successfully in the past. nobody kicked up a fuss when he did it for abkhazia. was it particularly successful on the world stage, but got him what he needed to get. those territories, we say they re part of georgia. georgian troops cannot go into abkhazia or south ossetia. embarrassing in its own terms
china, all of places, mad at you. you know what, $30 million is $30 million. if you re the kind of country that cycles through prime ministers every few hours, that gives you a way to unburn your bridges in cases like this. yeah, vanuatu made china mad at them, but when the prime minister who made that decision got thrown out of office, just a month later vanuatu reversed the policy, making up with china, hopefully pocketing the old hard taiwanese cash. whatever you think of a country diplomatically prostituting itself like this, it s one way to make money and opportunities like this arise from time to time. four years after the china/taiwan deal, cha-ching, russia was trying to create two new countries inside the nation of georgia. you ll remember that vladimir putin in 2008 invaded georgia. russia and georgia went to war for about a week. there are pro-russia local governments in these two places inside georgia in abkhazia and south ossetia in the east.