Ukrainegate impeachment saga worsens US-Russia Cold War (November 2019)

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• Well, the first thing to remember is, is that President Obama was under enormous pressure to send military equipment to Ukraine/And why did he refuse? Well, I’m not sure what his calculation was, but the, the wisdom of not sending is clear... 
• First of all, what everybody must want is peace between Russia and Ukraine...
• Why would you tempt one or another Ukrainian leadership to broaden the war, where you want above all to bring peace? 
• The chance for Zelensky, the new president who had this very large victory, 70 plus percent to negotiate with Russia an end to that war, it’s got to be seized. And it requires the United States, basically, simply saying to Zelensky, 'Go for it, we’ve got your back.'
• This is an opportunity for Trump to do the right thing and do it clean, to say to Zelensky, I support this negotiation with Putin. I hope that you and Putin can settle your conflicts.
• In four, maybe more decades of... studying Russian-American relations, I never really took seriously the possibility of war between the United States and Russia...
• Today I think it’s a very high probability, partly because of this Russiagate nonsense, partly because the lack of American leadership. 
• What Putin came to power to do was to modernize Russia, and that does not involve a cold war with the West. Period. End of story. That’s his mission. He wants to go down in history as the man who did this. Cold war, not to mention hot war, is spoiling what he sees as his mission.
• There’s a golden moment now to be had for everybody’s security, and it’s been thwarted by this mindless… I mean, you can hate on Trump all you want, but there’s got to be a higher priority and that’s got to be international American security, and we’re letting that opportunity slip away, I fear. 

War With Russia? From Putin & Ukraine to Trump & Russiagate (2019)

• When Putin began talking about Russia’s sovereignty, Russia’s independent course in world affairs, they’re (the Washington elites) aghast... This is not what they expected... Putin was kind of the right person for the right time, both for Russia and for Russian world affairs.

• The people who created Russiagate are literally saying, and have been for almost three years, that the president of the United States is a Russian agent, or he has been compromised by the Kremlin.

• I don’t know if there has ever been anything like this in American history... That accusation does such damage to our own institutions, to the presidency, to our electoral system, to Congress, to the American mainstream media, not to mention the damage it’s done to American-Russian relations, the damage it has done to the way Russians, both elite Russians and young Russians, look at America today. This whole Russiagate has not only been fraudulent, it’s been a catastrophe.

• There were three major episodes of détente in the 20th century... The first was after Stalin died, when the Cold War was very dangerous. That was carried out by Dwight Eisenhower, a Republican president. The second was by Richard Nixon, advised by Henry Kissinger—it was called ‘the Nixon détente with Brezhnev.’ The third, and we thought most successful, was Ronald Reagan with Mikhail Gorbachev. It was such a successful détente Reagan and Gorbachev, and Reagan’s successor, the first Bush, said the Cold War was over forever.

• Who is behind all this? ...I don’t have the evidence. But all the surface information suggests that this originated with Brennan and the CIA.

• If our intelligence services are way off the reservation, to the point that they can try to first destroy a presidential candidate and then a president, and I don’t care that it’s Trump, it may be Harry Smith next time, or a woman; if they can do this, we need to know it.

• Now is the time for a serious, new arms control agreement. What do we get? Russiagate. Russiagate is one of the greatest threats to national security. I have five listed in the book. Russia and China aren’t on there. Russiagate is number one.

Manufacturing War With Russia (3 June 2019)

Chris Hedges quoting Cohen in his review of Cohen's book War With Russia?

• They told Gorbachev, ‘We promise if you agree to a reunited Germany in NATO, NATO will not move—this was Secretary of State James Baker—one inch to the east. In other words, NATO would not move from Germany toward Russia. And it did.

• As we speak today, NATO is on Russia’s borders... From the Baltics to Ukraine to the former Soviet Republic of Georgia. So, what happened? Later, they said Gorbachev lied or he misunderstood. [That] the promise was never made. But the National Security Archive in Washington has produced all the documents of the discussion in 1990. It was not only [President George H.W.] Bush, it was the French leader François Mitterrand, it was Margaret Thatcher of England. Every Western leader promised Gorbachev NATO would not move eastward.

• The ABM (Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty), by prohibiting wide deployment of anti-missile defense installments... had long guaranteed equal security based on the underlying principles of MAD {Mutual Assured Destruction] and parity. Bush’s abolition of the treaty in effect nullified those principles and signified Washington’s quest for nuclear superiority over Russia...

• Putin went to Texas. He had a barbecue with Bush, second Bush. Bush said he ‘looked into his eyes and saw a good soul.’ There was this honeymoon. Why did they turn against Putin?

• You have to ask yourself, why is it that Washington had no problem doing productive diplomacy with Soviet communist leaders... Why do we like communist leaders in Russia better than we like Russia’s anti-communist leader? It’s a riddle.

• If you’re trying to explain how the Washington establishment has dealt with Putin in a hateful and demonizing way, you have to go back to the 1990s before Putin...

• There were three major episodes of détente in the 20th century... The third, and we thought most successful, was Ronald Reagan with Mikhail Gorbachev. It was such a successful détente Reagan and Gorbachev, and Reagan’s successor, the first Bush, said the Cold War was over forever.

• Trump comes out of nowhere in 2016 and says, ‘I think we should cooperate with Russia,’...This is a statement of détente...It’s then that this talk of Trump being an agent of the Kremlin begins.

• What do you end up with today? Betrayal. Any kind of discussion about Russian-American relations today, an informed Russian is going to say, ‘We worry you will betray us again.’… Putin said he had illusions about the West when he came to power.