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🚨UKRAINE ESCALATIONS: Putin Assassination Claims | WAGNER vs Kremlin
Recorded: May 5, 2023 Duration: 4:49:27Space Recording
Short Summary
The transcript primarily focuses on the ongoing conflict between Russia and Ukraine, discussing various aspects such as military strategies, geopolitical implications, and potential escalations. Key points include the possibility of Russia's strategic objectives shifting, the role of international support for Ukraine, and the implications of recent events like the drone strike on the Kremlin. The conversation also touches on the complexities of warfare, including territorial control and attrition, as well as the broader geopolitical landscape involving NATO and Western alliances.
Full Transcription
What's up boys?
Hey guys, how are you?
Yeah, doing good.
Yeah, Mario, good, good.
How are you?
Yeah, good, bro.
Good, mate, good.
All right, guys, just don't bring up speakers, please.
We do have a structure and a process to invite speakers.
Just sent that in the group.
All right, I'm sending out the invites.
Give me a couple minutes.
Oh, shit, we have James Carafano joining.
Let me send an invite there.
And then if anyone requesting to speak, do DM me and we'll bring you up.
We'll be rotating the panel throughout the space.
Okay.
I've been dying to do this space for a while, by the way, the Ukraine space, but all the banking issues.
Yeah, me too. There's a lot going on too right now.
I'm sure we're going to get into it, but we're not far away from seeing it ramp up even more, I think.
Yeah, it's not looking good. Now, Piotr will come in and say, guys, you're overreacting, as he always does.
And I, are you surprisingly? I tend to agree a lot of the times with him, but in this case, it just does seem very...
very concerned just too many things like i would never have expected the kremlin to say uh there's
been an assassination attempt on the president's life on the prime minister's life sorry president life
so that's um that alone is concerning enough and then we have that video coming out the
of the the leader of wagner group and it's from what i understand it's pretty uncommon to see
any public dissent among the leadership among these uh yeah
These decision makers. Now, that wasn't, and I was having a whole debate with Slyman before the show, that wasn't direct criticism of Putin. And that's a very important differentiation. But nonetheless, it's still very, in my opinion, very serious video. But we do have a panel. We're waiting for more speakers to join. But maybe we can kick it off with Daniel. It's been a while we haven't had you here. How are you?
I'm doing really well. Thanks for having me. This is definitely an interesting topic for today.
Have you seen that video by the Chief of Wagner?
Oh yeah. Yeah, I've tracked pretty closely a number of Russian telegram channels and then saw that almost as soon as it came out and was...
It was almost, not almost.
I mean, I was pretty shocked even for,
he's, you know, he's been doing a lot of this kind of stuff here in the last
couple of months or so and more in the last few days.
But this one just way over the top of anything that he's done,
anything that I've even seen done in any top of Soviet space.
Can you, Daniel, let's kick it off for anyone that hasn't seen the video.
Let me pin it above.
I did a whole tweet.
I know it's a day late and people saying it's not breaking,
but we were waiting to try to better understand the things said,
who he's targeting and see how it's covered before we tweet about it.
But can you just tell us what that video says?
What did he say in the video?
Like I, from what I understand, he's attacking the defense minister calling him a, I think
he used the word faggot and he called him, and he's calling other oligarchs, like the leadership,
the decision makers, the oligarchs, because you're talking your children are sitting there
watching YouTube videos.
I'll read out the transcript in a while, but give us a brief overview, Daniel, of what that
video says.
Yeah, but first of all, the setting is pretty important because he starts off at night with 35 dead bodies behind him, which he makes the camera pan to at a couple of different spots, which are his men all lined up, and they're all bloody. I mean, it's a horrible scene.
And he is just fiery angry in his face like I've never seen him on any video.
And then he just literally rips into the Minister of Defense and the commanding general of the force, Gyrismov, by name, in just the most virulent, you know, profanity that you can even imagine in the Russian language and blames them for what happens directly because he says, I've been begging for shells, I've been begging for ammunition.
five times more of my men are dying than are supposed to, and you keep not giving it to me.
And, you know, this is on your conscience, basically.
And has he done videos like this before?
He has. He's done a number of videos, but usually they're pretty measured and pretty
matter of fact. He's done quite a few, actually, but nothing like this one.
So you can see that this is no, you know, act or this is not just something he's doing to try to
posture for something.
I mean, you can tell he's fed up and he's, you know,
and then I'm sorry, I missed a part there.
He also said that because of all these things,
Wagner is going to withdraw from Bachmute in five days on the 10th of May,
which is pretty big deal.
Okay, and does anyone, let me read out exactly what he said before we get more thoughts on it for the audience.
Now, if you want to watch it, it's the blurred version, the black and white version where you can't see all the dead bodies is on my profile.
Sorry, it's pinned above, so you can see it there.
But otherwise, let me just tell you exactly what he says.
Let me mute it if you don't want to watch the video.
So there are, let me see that.
There are guys from PMC Wagner who died today.
The blood is still fresh.
Right.
And he says, film all of them.
He tells the camera person.
The camera person starts filming all the dead bodies.
And he says, now listen to me, fucking bitch.
There are someone's fathers.
These are someone's fathers and someone's sons.
And these, I think these faggots who are not giving us ammunition,
bitch will be eating their guts in hell.
And this guy's aggressive.
And he says, and then he says the gay slur here.
We have a 70% ammo deficit.
And then he goes, Shoigoo, which I'm guessing is the defense minister.
Yeah, the defense minister.
And then get us to him of.
Yeah, the defense minister.
Where is the fucking ammo?
Look at them, bitch.
You scumbags are sitting in expensive clubs.
Your children enjoying life, filming, enjoying life, filming YouTube videos.
You think you are masters of this life.
And that you have the right to control their lives.
He's talking about the dead soldiers.
You think that you have stockpiles.
Do you think that if you have...
Stockpiles of ammunition, you have a right to this.
The calculations are simple.
If there is an ammunition norm, we get five times less.
He's referring to deaths.
They came here as volunteers and are dying for you to get a free ride.
I don't know what he means to get a free ride.
In your, to get a free ride in your cabinets with redwood.
Consider this.
And then I don't know where he says that he's going to pull out.
I think it's maybe a separate video or part of the telegram message.
He says he's going to pull out by May 10th.
And he talks about that he's doing it on May 10th because on May 9th, I think it's the...
some national celebration day in Russia some patriotic day and that's why he's doing it a day after that and he says because we're patriots
And so I want to get other thoughts on this how uncommon or common are videos like this and what does it really mean is there struggle within
Russia's leadership does that come as a surprise so I'll jump in very quick
So this is pretty unusual
So May 10th is because on May 9th is Victory Day.
Victory Day is when the Soviets took Berlin.
So if you've ever seen the famous image of the Soviet flag being put over the top of the...
I forget what the name of the German building is for a second.
But it's incredibly important, yes, to Soviet and Russian history.
And every year you've seen massive military parades.
Now there are some...
who would argue on one side that Putin did the drone strike because he wanted a way to draw down the celebrations in Moscow.
We actually saw reports come out yesterday that the Victory Day parades and celebrations in 21 other cities around Russia had been cancelled.
I can't verify all of that information, but I think that's quite an interesting point.
As for this development, there's a couple of points of note here.
So Wagner is a PMC, but the owner is incredibly close to Putin.
PMC, what do you mean by PMC?
Private military contractor.
Okay.
Blackwater.
Right.
Equivalent.
The Wagner Group are the most notorious
entity in the world.
Progrosin only came out in the fall
of 2022, I believe.
admitting that he was actually the, you know, founder of it.
But they're active in Libya.
That's the first time they really came to notoriety.
They're very active in Mali now.
Official government work with the government in Mali,
active in potentially Sudan as well.
So there's lots of fingers and lots of pies.
But what I do think is interesting here,
and I'll land with this last point, is that...
we've been debating, as in people who follow the issue closely,
you know, the Russians are doing well on the battlefield,
the Ukrainians are doing badly, the other side will say it's the other way around,
but I think this illustrates to you is that clearly...
Whilst no side is obviously clear of problems, the Wagner Group are struggling.
There were some estimations that they'd lost, you know, several thousand, tens of thousands of troops.
Again, I can't verify numbers.
But clearly, there is a problem with supply chains.
There's a problem with both horizontal, so between battalions, the regiments and vertical.
So between the politics, the generals and the military staff communication-wise.
So there's a lot of issues here.
and I do think that this is a bit of a play on some ways by progression to either challenge Putin or just make Putin have to feel the...
Okay, that's... So you think he's targeting Putin directly because me and Slyman, we're clashing on this.
You think that this is directly aimed at Putin?
I think it's directed at the political establishment that Putin represents.
Don't forget that Putin is the arbitrator of everything that the current Russian oligarchy is.
And you can get rid of Putin, but there are still many oligarchs who be loyal to him,
because without Putin, there'd be nothing.
So we touched upon it yesterday with the pressure that Putin is feeling from more nationalistic parts of the country,
whoever it is.
But I don't know if it's a direct play,
but I definitely think it's targeted to Putin
and the uppermost in the circles like Shoygu
and Goh and Ganeshimov.
Slaman, just quick, I'll give you the mic,
but Slaman, that goes to your point,
you know, how earlier you were saying that
everything, every decision is made by Putin and it would be hard to believe this isn't a direct shot at Putin.
Now I was a bit more skeptical. I just think it's pretty foolish.
Like it's pretty extreme. Like things must be really bad or there must be a power struggle.
One other two, but I can't imagine either being true. Maybe the former being more true.
So my argument was, if someone believes.
that this is a major piece of news,
which it seems like everybody is here.
And if what makes it major,
so if it's just something...
Yeah, not sure who that was.
Yeah, it was something excellent.
Sorry.
Yeah, yeah.
Or goodly.
No problem.
I mean, people tend to buzz when Mario's speaking, but yeah, it's unusual when it happens to me.
So what is it?
When it, so if one is saying that this is a major thing and a major issue and it's some form of major attack,
then my argument was just that if you believe that to be the case,
then the only reason you'd say is major is because he's basically...
attack and puting in some
I think it's major
because it reveals potentially just
the incapacity
inefficiencies of the Russian military
it's not even about
progenyans comments it's about if what
he's saying is genuinely true then the Russians
have a real problem with their military
and again I'm not trying to get
you know what I mean that's that feeling that they had issues with
ammunition and I do believe the Ukrainians are also having issues
with the ammunition as well I think that's an issue on both sides
but more so maybe with Ukrainians.
But you're right.
But there's no idea.
It seems the issue of ammunition is more severe on the Ukrainian or Russian side?
On the Ukrainian side.
And Mario, let me give you a little bit of background, which plays into this.
Back several months ago when the Wagner group took Solidar,
which was a pretty good size place right next to Bachmoot,
Kregosian really angered a lot of the Russian general staff when he just went overboard of claiming all the credit for it.
I mean, he said, look, this was us.
This was not the Russian army.
We did all this.
We did it by ourselves.
Nobody helped.
I mean, way over the top.
Really angered these guys.
Right.
The issue right now is that Fregosia is saying
is that he is being targeted by not getting the ammunition.
Not that Russia doesn't have it,
but that they're withholding it from him.
And it's possibly not a coincidence
that they are just on the cusp
closing out
Bachmwood. There's down to like maybe
5, 7% left in
Ukrainian hands and the fact that they
have withheld this from him and now
potentially, according to Koziroval
earlier today, he is with
Chichin's going to come in and backfill
progozian after the 10th if he withdraws
and then someone else might get the credit for it
and it could be part of this power struggle
people are talking about. Well,
it's kind of
Can anyone push back?
Trash, maybe you can go first.
I don't know if you can push back though.
But after Trash, if someone could push back on, are we over exaggerating?
Is there another way of looking at this?
Because this starts to show Russia really struggling here.
Yeah.
Well, Trash, go ahead.
Yeah, so I'm looking at this a little bit differently way.
Right.
So I saw a video come out with Progoshin talking about.
after the after the conflict if it's over that Wagner will probably be disbanded I just know to survive past the war I also know that that they were doing an extreme amount of risk taking into Ukraine's like they were going into a lot of these danger zones and the Russian military was being far more conservative
And so and then you add in the fact that he was going to basically prisoners and having him free to go fight for Wagner.
It seemed like that they were almost like kind of not working with the Russian military so much in trying to go in and get glory and fame and all these things.
But the fact that he's going to disbanded and he's having all these losses is.
it almost seems like he might actually be making a valid argument that they're holding it back because there's a struggle between what the Russian military wants to do and what he wants to do with his group.
Like I said, I mean, I've seen some of this recently with him and it seems like that they were taking the excessive amount of risks.
Now, the Russian army is going to come in and backfill when Wagner leaves that that's the plan anyway in Bakhmut.
It just seems like he's trying to kind of almost do his own thing.
I don't know that it was a shot at Putin, but it's definitely at the rest of the establishment,
specifically the defense minister.
This is in two days.
In two days we saw the chief of Wagner potentially taking a shot at Putin, otherwise people in Putin's cabinet,
and a drone over the Kremlin, which we still don't know who's responsible for that.
And everyone seems to be pretty split.
John, I'll let you jump in.
How do you see this?
I'd love to get your thoughts and Lee's thoughts.
Yeah, definitely.
Thanks for having me up.
One thing I would say about this,
kind of Trash kind of alluded to this as well,
right, is this idea of how risky, you know, are
Wagner was being in their operations with less resources than the normal Russian armed forces.
Because these are people who normally operate with artillery support, you know, close air support,
and things like that. These are resources that Wagner has, but they weren't using them.
They're strictly sticking to squad-based tactics or lack thereof on the battlefield.
It's also, I think, important to note that Putin did mandate that Bachmupi kind of, you know,
wrapped up before the May 9th parade. And I think
This is starting to exacerbate,
progoshin's attitude is starting to exacerbate Wagner as a whole
because he understands his deadline is literally less than a week away.
And they're not really close,
they're close, but so close.
And,
essentially what Tras, I think, may have been saying was they're essentially,
they've been extremely risky, but then alluding to some other people's points that I think
Daniel made this good point as well, which is the idea that the closer he gets to the goal,
they bleed him more and more and more because at the end of the day,
there is this kind of power struggle going on within the MOD.
And it's not Shorgues, it's not within his...
You know, so he doesn't really want it to see that happen.
But John, just a quick question on that.
So, like, as a number of people on Panthers are mentioned,
you essentially got a situation where he's taken,
almost taken Bahamut is only like 5% left.
He's done the hard bit.
Where'd you get that source? Hold on. Where did you get that source from that they have only 5% of Bahmoud left to take over?
I mean, I remember reading it, but a few people have mentioned it. I think Daniel mentioned a few people.
They're saying it all of the...
Yeah, yeah, that's what it is. But you look at the map of who owns what. It's down to about 5% to 7% left.
I know where you're going with that question.
I know where you're going with that question, then Sleman.
Why the fuck would he pull out if he's already got 95% of Bahamud?
Yeah, that was my question.
I mean, is this more of a just power struggle?
Not in the sense of he's just using leverage to get more weaponry and more.
And by the way,
the reason is because he's losing two minutes.
If I may jump in just for a second.
So he doesn't have enough to get it by this.
All right. So I know Daniel was just speaking. I'll give you the mic right after Daniel.
Sorry, go ahead, Daniel. What were you saying? And by the way, Lee, I know it's first time on your stage.
Anyone else first time on the panel, just put your hand up or jump in whenever you find it, you find it suitable.
But yeah, go ahead, Daniel.
Yeah, sorry about that.
What's driving this right now is that Progoje is running out of troops and ammunition to be able to take the city.
So he can't do the last. And if he keeps pushing, he's literally going to run out.
Because at least what he's claiming, he's been losing...
100 to 136 people per day.
And then he had that 35 he showed earlier today.
And I think that he's just running out of troops
and he's not getting enough artillery
to be able to make it happen.
Can I ask a question on that?
So why would he have this epiphany
when he's so close to the finishing line?
Like if this was an issue...
If this was an issue...
And it's been, as you're explaining it, it's been an issue for a while.
He keeps losing men.
You would do it in a lot earlier situation.
You wouldn't leave, you wouldn't wait until you're almost, you're on TechMay.
Yeah.
Oh, he has been.
This has been weeks in the building.
It's been getting more and more.
He's been saying this is literally for weeks.
So I think the difference between Wagner Group and the actual Russian army is that Wagner Group are all,
paid soldiers, right? And it does not look bad for Russia that they're losing so many soldiers
What I do think is that I don't believe that they have shortage in ammunition
I don't believe that they have shortage in man
I do I do strongly believe that this is a theatrical act and this happened before
I believe it happened in October and November when
He also did something very similar.
He went after, you know, Russian military command, you know, top positions such as Shaigu.
He, you know, he's huge.
He's the defense minister of Russia.
And then all of a sudden it became that, you know, this was literally a theatrical act to get more Ukrainians soldiers involved.
and to literally to just slaughter them.
So I don't know whether this time this is exactly what it is,
but we do not, hold on, hold on not.
You think it's just slaughter, it's to attract,
Anna, no, just you said to slaughter.
Anna, and again, you know, they're holding 95% of Bahmood.
Why would you...
Why would you do this now?
Anna, can you hear Mario?
Anna, she can't bro, she can.
Yeah, Anna, why would they, why would they, um...
So you said it's to attract, it's to attract, can you hear me Anna or no?
Can you hear me?
I don't think she can hear me?
Anna, can you hear Mario?
Oh good, all good.
So what did she say, Simon?
She said that it's, because I don't think she could hear us.
But she was saying that it's to attract who, which soldiers?
First thing she said is Mario never knows what she's talking about.
And the second point, okay, come on.
And the second point she made was that she believed it's theoretical, like basically it's fake in order to essentially get more weaponry.
So, I mean, this is completely counter to what Daniel and somebody else was saying.
So Daniel, what's your thoughts on what Anna was saying?
Yeah, yeah, no, I think I partially agree with what she's saying because I think that right now it is in a critical situation, which is why I think that Progoshin was so emotional today.
But there has been a lot of speculation in the weeks, in the months prior to the last two months in particular, that maybe some of this that Progoshin was saying was not really true, but they wanted to make it appear that they were running out of ammunition, etc., to draw more Ukrainian reserves into Bachmoot.
And then they would be slaughtered.
I think that's what she was referring to.
And I just had one quick point, which is that I think...
You know, again, we've got to, I like to emphasize the bigger pitch.
Just in the timing of this is quite interesting.
And given that it's Victory Day,
given that it's also just a time that we are seeing more and more narrative
around the Ukrainian counter-offensive that's coming,
that's coming, that's coming.
The Russian offensive over the winter was, you know,
claimed to be not as successful.
There's a lot of, again, inflammation warfare going on here.
And one could pose it that,
If the Russians have struggled so much to do, to take or deal with Bachmout and the Ukrainians have, this has been the bloodiest corner of this war so far other than maybe Maripal, right?
It's one of the symbolic parts of the whole war.
And...
If there is any accuracy to the numbers that have been lost on both sides,
progrosion is clearly going to be disgruntled with the fact that
how much forces and time and energy has it taken to take just back moot,
which most people agree is of not much strategic importance.
Can anyone hold on, hold on, I mean, that's kind of today...
Yeah, Lee, please do, because everything is poking holes into the argument that Slaman and Ian, I invited Ian and others would make that Russia's winning the war, Ukraine is struggling.
Well, we just saw a drone over the Kremlin.
We didn't see a drone over the White House.
And we just saw the...
We saw a drone that didn't do anything.
They didn't do anything, but just the fact that a drone came over the Kremlin.
And then the Kremlin just to point it...
Actually, I'll take that statement back.
Because I think that there's also the possibility that was a false flag attack.
operation for various reasons.
Maybe it is, maybe it isn't.
So I'll take that.
No, I don't know.
I've lost flag.
Do you think Nordstrom, too?
I think, so Lee, let me answer.
Let me, okay, let me, let's go one by one.
Lee, Lee, let's go one by one.
In terms of Nord Stream, of course there's a possibility.
Nothing is certain, but I think it's very, very, very unlikely.
based on what I know.
But I try not to take positions on things I don't have the facts for.
But yeah, I think the drone over the Kremlin,
and my opinion here is very loose,
so it could be changed during the space
because I haven't looked into it enough to have a strong opinion.
But I think the drone over the Kremlin,
I'd love to get your thoughts on it, Lee.
The drone over the Kremlin is more likely than the Nord Stream
to be a false flag operation,
and we could go through that in a bit because that's part of the topic.
And lastly, and I'd love to get your thoughts on it,
the video we saw today does show weakness of the problem.
within the Russian military and potentially within Russian leadership, in my opinion.
But I'd love to get a different take on it, Lee.
So the mic is yours.
Well, so thanks for having me, by the way.
So first of all, let me mention the host a show on Radio Sputnik,
and I personally am very pro-Russian and actually very pro-Pudin as well.
And pro-Juotin, to understand him, you have to understand two things.
I don't think he's an attack on Putin, but I think Putin is the audience.
I think what Anne was saying about what...
This is a battle for resources, basically.
Putin can choose to give more resources
to the Russian military or to Projurion.
Does it make sense?
There's not an infinite amount of resources.
I actually agree.
I think this explanation, I think,
is the most plausible, in my opinion.
It makes a lot of sense.
I like this one.
The other thing, the fact you're in about Progurion,
is he's like Rondizantzantz,
in that he's an undeclared...
potential future candidate.
And like DeSantis, who he's...
Candidate for presidency?
Well, look, obviously Putin's going to leave at some point.
Putin right now is very popular, but he's an older guy.
He's in the 70s.
And, you know, people leave.
So, Projurja, I think, would like to fill in for Putin.
There's no clear successor.
And if there is, it's a guy like Shogu or a guy like, you know, in the military.
But do you think Lee, do you think, do you think Prudorjans, him not mentioning anything even positive about Putin?
Like the fact that we're questioning whether he's referring to Putin is already going to bother Putin.
So if he wasn't targeting Putin, he did a pretty bad job at it because we're unsure.
He shouldn't have been more explicit like saying Putin, are you seeing what your guys are doing?
Or even that's too extreme.
But like I'm loyal.
It's like say something to show loyalty to Putin.
If he said that, he'd have to kill him, isn't it?
Like you can't be that direct.
No, this is more positive.
I think he said if he's not targeting Putin.
Look at this.
Petrosians done stuff before it's worked.
We were talking about what happened back in December.
Yeah.
He got the resources.
Putin basically came out and made very positive statements.
Petrosian wants to make sure that, A, he gets credit, right?
And he wants to make sure Wagner gets credit.
So when he came out in December and said negative stuff,
Putin came out, he got his way.
He knows how to work with Putin.
You don't suck up to him too much,
but he also, you know,
a certain amount of toughness goes a long way.
So he's taking credit.
And I think he was especially aggressive
against Shogu and the other guy I call him.
So, Lee, so just a couple of questions on what you said.
So you made the argument that
Basically, Putin is in charge of who gets them weapons and who doesn't.
And if that's the case, and he's getting less weapons than he should,
then essentially when he's going on his tirade about having less weapons,
is he not then directing that at Putin?
Yeah, exactly.
Just to add to that your argument about him being the next possible potential leader after Putin.
Well, so the, I'm sorry, what was the question on the last point?
I'll explain it.
He's British, man.
So in terms of Putin, you said that Putin makes a final decision.
Yeah, Wagner's chief, exactly.
There's ammunition, where the ammunition or the weaponry is supplied.
Is it going to be the Russian military or Wagner?
And then in this video, the leader of Wagner
is criticizing the people not providing ammunition very aggressively.
So if it's Putin that makes the final call
and he's criticizing the people not giving him ammunition,
then you just kind of implied that he's directly criticizing Putin.
And then what Sleiman added to it,
and I was thinking the same thing, so I like that question.
If this person is a potential candidate to replace Putin,
We've talked before, and there's been reports of Putin being a bit paranoid about anyone
threatening his position as the leader.
And we've kind of seen that with his actions.
I'm sure if Ian is here, he'll be pushing back heavily.
But my question to you is,
If the leader of Wagner is one of those people that could replace Putin,
I know you're saying no, you'll be coming after Putin as a candidate after Putin,
but if he has that ability to replace him even now at such a weak point,
and he's being that aggressive, you're kind of adding to the explanation that this was a direct attack.
attack towards Putin, which contradicts your initial statement that this was,
Putin is just a spectator and he's attacking others, which I think is a good explanation.
There's no real possibility that Putin is going to be kicked out of office because he's unpopular.
Putin is very popular. He's among the most popular leaders in the world, like 80% approval rating,
and that is real. And the guy like Projohn...
There's no, and even the drone attack on the Kremlin, that has not generated a panic in Moscow.
No one is thinking, okay, we need to take Putin out now.
So the only way Petrosian, as a Russian, would think he could take over is after Putin.
So, can I just jump in on the threat nuclear war?
And I'll just mention...
Putin's going to be in power until...
One other quick thing.
A lot of people forget Petrosian had come up in a news cycle before in Russia gate.
Because he's the guy who owned the...
company that bought Facebook ads that were told
what Russian interference in the election.
He is called Putin's Chef.
That's Petrosian.
That's who that guy is.
So the media has been,
Western media has been lying about this guy
and deceiving about him for years.
That's my case.
I can split the difference here, I think, between Pioter's view and Lee.
I think I can kind of split the difference here and kind of give maybe some pushback,
but also some agreement.
Like, to Mario's point, he's saying that, look, like, a good example is sports, right?
Like, a winning locker room, you don't hear leaks.
You don't hear backstabbing.
Like, you don't hear anything coming out of a locker room.
But when the team starts losing, yeah, you do start hearing backstabbing and gossip.
So, like, this is definitely not a positive sign.
But I would say this, like, to kind of...
maybe balance things is that, you know,
Pedigrosian is based.
So what happened was Russia's military was sort of not prepared for this war.
And they had to conscript a lot of soldiers.
And they needed to buy time in Ukraine to train and equip these people because they
didn't have the equipment.
They didn't have the training.
They didn't have the organization.
So what did they have to do?
They had to sacrifice the pawn peace to sacrifice and to buy time for this military was Wagner Group.
And Wagner Group fought in Bachmuth and the rest of Ukraine and were decimated because they were the only piece that Putin can play.
So this guy, prognosin is like, in his mind, he's seeing this unit that he, you know, he's given his life to as a very important part of him and his political power as well, being decimated and exchanged in so that Shogu and Russia could buy time for their soldiers.
I don't say I can.
And this is for him, he's very frustrated.
Yeah.
they won Bakhmud.
I'm not saying they're being decimated.
Drogosian is saying they're being decimated.
I'm not the one saying that.
He's making the argument.
And how do you say,
Lee, how do you say they won, which is,
I thought they won earlier,
but now he's saying he's going to pull out by the 10th.
So they won.
It's difficult, like he would be celebrating that he won right now.
I mean he's saying he's won.
They won 95% of a .
Right.
They're basically doing a clean of operation
in like three blocks.
But it's like
Pierich victory, right?
It's a victory that costs him
like so many...
He himself saying
his...
What do you think
Russia was trying to do?
Dubai, the way...
The way...
Petrosian talked about this.
He used a phrase meat grinder for the Ukrainians.
This is a war of attrition.
That's what Russia is fighting.
A war of attrition.
They're trying to deemotize and denotify the region in Dombos.
And they've been tremendously successful.
They've killed like five times more Ukrainian soldiers.
And Ukrainians are out of ammo.
Ukrainians are out of people.
It's Ukrainian side.
Okay, so I'd just like to jump in on that.
I mean, isn't that true, though, Piota?
Peter, I want you to speak, but let me ask you a question, then you can answer that as well.
So, Piotta, I mean, isn't what he's saying right?
Yeah, it looks like, for sure, Wagner group have lost significant losses.
But we know, I mean, we have to be balanced.
We know Ukrainians have had significant losses.
They were about to retreat at one point because their losses were so much.
Zelenskyy sent loads of Ukrainians in despite the advice of his military leaders.
So just...
if you can answer that question and then whatever you want to say it's all
yes i'll answer your question and then i wanted to speak to the putin replacement thing
because it's one of the biggest running themes of all of this um so yeah so look
We cannot deny that there's been a huge amount of losses on both sides.
As I've said before, no one's winning in a war, everyone's losing.
What I would also underline is that the Russians approach military doctrine very differently to the West.
And again, I'm not saying whether the West is good or bad.
I'm just stating that the Russians approach it through a mentality of total war,
which is that you'll fling as many people at the problem as possible
and win through sheer overwhelming might.
and as
you're saying
Russia
said
this is a
Well, yeah, it's called the Soviet doctrine.
He said in Russia does that.
Do you disagree?
I disagree, obviously, in this case.
Well, can I even if I'm putting in.
So it's not going with enough people.
Yeah, so what I would say is that in Soviet doctrine,
it's just the general idea that, you know,
you can talk about the taking of Berlin in 1945, right?
The Soviets sent 2.5 million against the Marx 800,000.
So the Russians or Soviets do have a approach to warfare in this way.
What I would say though is that, yeah, the deaths have been astronomical for both sides.
And I agree with Lee about this.
It's called strategic patience.
The Russians have strategic patience in that they want this to be a war of attrition where
they can just grind out, hold the Ukrainians back, use the artillery to just chip away at them,
and eventually the West will get tired, give up supplying Ukraine, and the Russians can
slowly beat them out that way.
way. I do think it's not beyond reasonable doubt that both sides have suffered heavy losses.
I don't want to get into who's done more or worse because I don't think that that's really
helpful. But to the other point about Putin, so
Pogrosian has been one of only few names posited.
You've got Medvedev, who is the deputy chair of the Security Council.
He does a lot of tweeting.
You've got these two brothers who basically are one of the biggest funders of Putin,
these two massive oligarchs, if I can find the name,
Dmitri and Nikolai Patrushchev.
Then you've got Sergei Karayenko, who is the first deputy chief of staff.
Then you've also got the head of the FSB.
So there are lots of different people who have been voted as potential replacements.
But the problem is that Putin is so well in bed with so much of the establishment
none of these people seem likely.
And whilst many people are tired of Putin's not willing to do more,
many also don't want to remove him because they're not sure what an alternative look like.
Also, let me say this. I agree with you about the list you gave.
And let me mention one of those people, Medieviev, for instance,
entertaining is very bold on Twitter.
And he makes a lot of bold segments.
So it's kind of like when you get on the right, you know, for instance,
Milo competing against Crowder or something like that.
Those guys both talk trash very well.
And one guy needs to up the next guy.
So I see what you think, what you're seeing with Petrosian is he's upping Medvede
to some extent.
I think Medvedev would just be a puppet, to be honest with you.
I don't think he carries enough political clout to be taken seriously.
But you read him on Twitter?
I genuinely cannot think of anyone else.
He says a lot of gussie stuff on Twitter.
That's my point.
Yeah.
I agree.
Yeah.
So Daniel, so I just want to, I know you got your hand-ups,
you want to say something as well, but same question.
Let me ask you.
Hold on.
How can anyone argue Russia's not struggling, Daniel?
I don't, after this, it's just difficult to argue that.
I do it because they're winning.
That's why I say that.
How, but how, how, how, I know,
winning is a, is a subjective term.
Like, what do you define as winning?
I mean, that's, that's number one.
By the,
by the goals that they set out at the beginning,
demilitarizing and unassifying and taking Dumbos.
Man, I don't know whether these were goals or were just part of the narrative to start a war based on other reasons.
Are you saying the Nazis within Ukraine is the bigger reason to start this war than NATO's expansion?
I'm saying, this area I know very well.
Yeah, they've taken Dumbats, but their ambitions, but hold on, their ambitions was to, I don't know how accurate is that they wanted to assassinate Zelensky or whether there's just propaganda from Ukraine. I haven't looked into it. But I know that they were, obviously they were looking at taking Kiev relatively quickly. They wanted to end within weeks.
Where's evidence that Russia actually wanted to take Kiev itself?
I don't know, man. Did you see that big line of tanks and military equipment heading towards Kiev?
And they got bombed down?
Can I jump in here quickly?
Because I'm not going to be able to be on for too long.
But thank you for having me on.
I think that they're, I agree with Lee in that they're unquestionably winning the war.
And I think that we need to define the war not just as the battle that is happening in Ukraine,
but as the broader geopolitical fight that is happening between Russia, the bricks, and the West.
And when you analyze it from that perspective, it becomes all the more clear that they're winning because you have now many countries getting off of the dollar.
You have the Bricks Alliance really consolidating the relationship between Chesh and China coming together.
Brick has nothing to do with this. What are you talking about?
No, Brickson.
This is part of the war.
This is part of the analysis.
This is an enormous...
massive geopolitical shift in favor of Russia and the East
as opposed to the West and the United States.
Right.
So by the time the break,
there's no question that they're winning in that sense.
Hold on, Hon. Nick, Nick.
You made two points.
Lili, let's take a break just for a few minutes.
Let's chat to Nick a bit.
Nick, you made two points on why Russia's winning the war.
Now, would you say, just before I address those two points
and get your thoughts on them,
would you say they're winning...
in comparison to their expectations prior to the war,
or they did not, they did, you know,
they expected the war to turn out better for them,
they didn't expect NATO to unite against them,
to have that much involvement in Ukraine,
and for the war to drag on that long,
for that many deaths, it turned out worse
than they initially expected.
I wanna know where you stand on this.
Yeah, so militarily on the ground,
i think it turned out worse than they expected and i think there are regrets in russia in the
kremlin uh that they didn't really push harder and invade with a greater force at the beginning
and really they weren't prepared to they didn't have the forces to now they of course they've
drafted hundreds of thousands of more they've increased their military spending now they're
able to so i think that they underperformed what they thought they would military i know i know
i know you said over performed
They overperformed in terms of the geopolitics.
Okay, fair point.
Now, I do want to address two examples you gave,
Bricks and many countries getting off the dollar.
So many countries getting off the dollar,
whether this is even true, something we can argue,
getting off the dollar is a pretty extreme statement.
Many countries are even more extreme.
But I'm not going to go down that rabbit hole.
instead because I don't have a stance on this either.
But I'd say this is going to happen with or without Russia's war.
The reason that countries are moving away from the dollar, okay, maybe the sanctions on Russia
played a role in that, but that's de-dollarization has been a narrative well before the war.
It's been many, many years that people are talking about de-dollarization.
And the bricks.
you know the bricks has been the talk of town especially in finance since the GFs even before
the global financial crisis so the point i'm making is that i don't think the war played much if
any role in in maybe a small role in the bricks moving forward all countries getting off the dollar
this is a these are financial reasons that do not really relate to the war well as i don't share why
i disagree and i think that the war has massively accelerated it i
Since the war began, the war has forged relationships and alliances and strengthened alliances with Russia that didn't exist before.
You know, number one is Saudi Arabia, Saudi Arabia, which is now trading with China and Yuan.
Russia is trading now with China and Yuan.
Brazil now trading with China in Yuan.
So all of these relations of Brazil, Lula, as we know,
has been very critical of the war and has offered to help negotiate a peace.
And so it's accelerating the downfall of the dollar.
And part of the reason is that countries saw the way that the United States weaponized
its control over the financial system with the dollar as the world's reserve currency
to punish Russia.
And other countries, especially China, which is under threat in Taiwan,
said, well, we don't want that being used against us.
Yeah, and the accuracy of all of this is completely rubbish because of the time scale involved and the actual propensity for this to be done.
Almost 90% of the BRI initiative is actually funded and supported by the US reserve currency.
The renimbi is not even 4% of reserve currency usage.
Please explain to me which alternative currencies are going to be levied in that.
in that way. Moreover, the BRICS, as I've always said, is over-leveraged because the Chinese and the Indians
have a very poor relationship. Equally, the BRICS was not an official alliance. It only recently
established its central bank, the new development bank, which has a budget of about $100 billion,
about 45% of which comes from China. This is not an equal alliance, which countries are going to be
okay with.
Plus, Brazil and Lula, Lula's just won an election.
He needs to be powerful.
So he's going to make provocative and strong statements to get people on his side.
I'm not disagreeing that the propensity for the BRICS to be an alternative,
Saudi Arabia is probably the most notable one.
Let me jump it.
Let me jump it.
I want to move away from the BRICS.
I think you're both making good points, and I want that discussion in a bit.
I want to get Patrick and Mickey's thoughts, because I haven't heard you guys.
On the events that happened in the last 48 hours, the drone over the Kremlin and the video by the leader of Wagner.
Maybe, Patrick, if you can kick off what you think about the drone over Kiev, over the Kremlin,
what's your conclusion after everything we've seen?
It's been pretty unclear.
We've seen Kiev deny it.
We've seen Kiev deny it.
We've seen people within Russian parliament, I think, deny that that was Kiev as well.
Yeah, I don't know.
There's not very much denial on the Russian side that it was Kiev.
There's quite a lot of signals coming out of Kiev,
whether it's almost as if they're either cheering it on
or that they sort of, you know,
there's statements beforehand of people offering cash rewards,
if they can do something symbolic right before Victory Day.
So, I mean, there's plenty of data points that will point at
the fact that it is what it was, but the point is just take that single event and isolate it and put it into the context of all of the so-called, well, in the West they'll call it asymmetric.
warfare on Russian territory. And the amount of incidents over the last just 10 days is incredible.
If you start adding them all up from the IEDs, the Kamikaze drone attacks in Rostov, in Crimea,
in Belgarod, killing civilians.
Briontz trains, and then the attempted drone attacks in Moscow,
as there was another one a few weeks ago.
So, you know, the West would call that terrorism, you see.
if it happens to them or any of their allies,
certainly the Israelis would call it all terrorism.
But it's now, for our narrative in the West,
anything that happens inside Russia that's potentially damaging
to the PR image of Kiev is automatically,
automatically or the Nord Stream 2 is it automatically a Russian false flag.
Are we getting close to crossing that red line we've always talked about?
There's been a few red lines.
One of the major ones is attacking Russia within its own territory.
Another one which is threatening Putin's life, like a direct threat, military threat.
I don't look at the drone as a threat to Putin's life.
I think most of us would agree he wasn't even there.
But it could be.
But it could have, it could, it could, the technology exists, Mario.
Definitely, possible.
I would say possible, just unlikely.
I don't know what you think, but I think it's unlikely.
But I think they're crossing, they're getting close to crossing that red line, Patrick, which concerns me.
Well, um, well, look, if you look at the intelligence, uh, the intelligence that was made public last year, I believe, where the CIA caught wind of, uh, uh, Kiev wanting to hit target in Russia.
And they talked them off the ledge.
and either or delayed it.
So that tells me that everything that's going on in Kiev, Washington knows about.
And if it doesn't, then that's a problem.
If they do and they let it happen, that's also a problem.
It means they don't have control over their proxy.
So both of those are bad outcomes.
And if you look at the fanaticism that's being engendered on the Ukrainian side,
the fanatic nationalism combined with the desperation of the situation that they can't have a military victory in this.
And they're losing...
very bad in terms of casualties and morale is plummeting.
It's not a good picture.
Okay, so what does that mean?
Well, look, world wars have been started over the assassinations of heads of state.
You're talking about the UN Security Council member.
The drone technology is very, it's revolutionary for warfare.
It's a revolution in military affairs.
it's an RMA, it's an official RMA situation we're in now this paradigm.
And unfortunately, they're very dangerous.
You've got a huge range.
So it could have come from different places.
I wouldn't put it past the United States to do it, to be honest.
That's how crazy things are right now.
Certainly there's a number of other states.
Why would the U.S. do that?
What is in their interest to even risk doing that?
If they don't get blamed for it, Piotr, does it matter whether they do it or someone else does it?
But the point is...
Because Russian intelligence isn't so bad.
I'd sure they'd be able to tell if it came to America.
Well, how many U.S. senators and congressmen and people in the U.S., high-ranking people have called for the assassination of Putin?
I've lost count.
Right.
over the last 14 months.
Okay, you're in America.
You watch the news.
Don't tell me that that's not happening.
So America has knocked off.
No, I'm not entirely sure where they've explicitly stated their routine.
Peter, read your history books.
Read your history books.
How many world leaders have the United States deep-sixed?
How many?
I've lost count.
Nobody can count that hot.
How many of them were great powers?
and, well, look, we're in extraordinary times.
This is an unprecedented situation.
This is a proximate.
It doesn't mean you take out the head of state of the country
of the largest nuclear stockpile in the world.
They just blew up.
The United States just blew up.
a major energy infrastructure
note for Europe, okay?
That's state-sponsored terrorism.
Oh, it's a false flag.
Russia blew up their own pipeline.
Yes, well, you can argue your point.
Do your double backflips
to try to justify that logically.
I'm not going to justify anything.
That's a propaganda.
The day after the Nord Stream, we literally
This is propaganda, Piotr, come on.
Everyone knows Nord Stream.
It's a joke.
I mean, the fact we're having this conversation is really sad.
It is.
Yeah, but that distracts in the actual point of taking a position on North.
Hey, guys, just, just, let me go to Mickey, because I know, Mickey, if you're not going to jump in, you won't, you won't get the chance to speak.
But my question to you is, hearing what Patrick just said, I know you disagree with some aspects of it, but.
It's not fee mongering to say the war has never been at a worst state.
I think this is the peak that we've seen, not the peak, but this is the highest level of threat to severe escalation from either side and mainly the Russian side here.
Yes.
As that red line gets closer to be crossed.
I agree with that sentiment. Mario, what you're saying is the horse is taking a turn and things are ramping up.
You know, it's very interesting being on the space because, you know, I'm grateful to have been on it.
It's been wonderful. I've learned a lot and talked to some great people.
And what we're starting to see, I don't know if you notice it, I certainly notice it, is that panelists here, even the most ardent Kremlin supporters here, for the first time, we're starting to acknowledge that Russia is...
not being not successful on the battlefield like patrick notwithstanding that's nick and lee and ania
and anna as well are starting to acknowledge one thing that russia is not winning on the battlefield
this is a very very new thing i think even a couple weeks ago no
Even a couple weeks ago, I think maybe it was Nick who said it.
Even a couple weeks of someone coming on here being pro-crummer would not have made a statement like that.
And we're starting to see the goalposts moving from winning on the battle to some grader.
Nick said that, I think it was Mario asked the question, do you accept that the Russia's military goals have not been met?
And they have not been successful as they wanted.
And Nick said yes.
And that's probably the first time we would have.
to win in the war.
Like, what is it?
Well, I think like we're starting to see a trend, right?
We're starting to see a trend where the goalposts are being moved away from
battlefield victory and military victory to some sort of spiritual political victory,
like this idea that the bricks are going to create a new currency,
the dollar, even though it's at an all-time high being used,
eventually it's going to go down.
And I think we're starting to see, and I agree with Mario,
And what you're saying that we are at a point where things are getting.
I just need a yes or no, Nick.
Like is your position that Russia is losing the military war right now?
No, not at all.
Yeah, I didn't think you said that.
No, that's that they're winning both.
Now, I think that they believe that they could have won the military conflict
if they had not done the special military operation that had just,
engaged in warfare immediately, I think that is a regret.
of theirs.
Well, what I can do is cite and put in the nest.
I can cite and put in the nest messages from Russian telegram groups
where they're starting to question whether or not Russia is actually winning.
This drone attack in the Kremlin is also another example
where people in Russia are starting to ask,
where is our money going?
How are we not able to respond for seven or eight hours of a drone is attacking
the Kremlin?
How is this possible?
This is something you never have heard six months ago or even three months ago.
But, Mickey, but I think...
I think, I think it's like, Mickey, the people in this panel, listen.
Let me just finish my point and I, and I will be.
The last thing I'm going to be able to say, because I'm going to have to jump off just now, is that you have a situation.
I think some people were getting to this where the,
the russia has officially said that the drone attack was an assassinating attempt on putin
and it came out yesterday and then blamed the united states for the responsibility it said the
u.s was responsible involved in the drone attack so the the russia a world nuclear superpower
is blaming the united states and other global nuclear nuclear superpower
on for an assassination attempt on its president that is pretty remarkable and i agree it's remarkable
that it is at a level of the war is at a level of danger that it has never been before i'm i'm gonna have to
go but but it's been great being on thanks thanks nick and i think i think that's that's fair and you know
it's also the like the the the the kremlin has a history of same some pretty wild things like
that gay trans-andered demons are at the battlefield helping Ukrainians.
You know, like you've had Hadirov talking about, you know,
burning people alive.
Like, you have a history of some pretty wild demons from the Kremlin.
And that's nothing new.
But I do, I do agree that.
I've never heard that.
I've never heard of me.
I just want to come in on you what you're saying.
So, Lee, this is to you.
So basically what Mickey is saying, I just want to summarize a few of the points,
which I want you to answer.
He's saying Russia is losing the war, and his argument,
and he's saying that the psyche of Russians in telegrams and so on so forth is of panic.
So please.
The panic is on a part of Ukraine who's clearly losing the war.
Even Western sources are admitting that Ukraine is out of ammo.
And they've lost 95% of Bakhmut, which has been a war of intrusion operation,
and even the Western sources are saying that.
So the desperation is on Ukraine's part.
And the post-Nortstream U.S., I think absolutely would do something like this.
But I'm seeing no one on Russia.
No one is saying that Russia is losing militarily.
Everyone thinks they're winning.
Because they are.
So what if...
Then why are they in a defensive posture right now?
What if Wagner Group does pull out?
He didn't come out and say they're losing.
He said they're...
That's called retreating, by the way.
Like, that's called retreating.
You know, right.
You guys, Wagner said when they leave, listen, they leave, they're going to be replaced by the Russian military.
What are you guys talking about?
they're leaving back moved.
Did you not read the whole article?
I agree with that.
Yeah, but why are they in a defensive posture
across the whole theater of warfare?
If you were winning, you would be on the offensive, right?
What does the satellite imagery show
about lines of defensive barricades and shit
in case of the upcoming Ukrainian counteroffensive?
Of course they're in defensive posture.
Yeah, yeah, C.C. Lee, I'm not arguing that they're not waging a war of attrition. They are trying to do that. I think that's kind of what both sides are trying to at great rate, and we're seeing that happening. That's why we're seeing casualties that are essentially unprecedented. We've never seen these since the last great power of war. But
arguably right if you if you're winning a war you'd be on the offensive right when we were
winning in the pacific in world war two we were constantly on the offensive when we were winning
so both russia and the united states were winning forces are they in russia are they in
back moot which is in ukraine or they're not on the offensive this they are sitting
preparing for a counter attack which is indicative of of of your your forced structure and your
force implementation and a war john john
Sorry, Lee, if you excuse me for a minute.
Look, John, I think you're making a fundamental mistake that a lot of Americans especially make.
I'm an American as well, so I understand this.
Americans have a certain idea of what military operations and campaigns look like.
Lots of power.
Yes, see, I'm going on for the so.
I'm going on the Soviet.
And then bring the tanks in and wait for the flowers and the candy.
Okay, that's not what you're looking at here.
See, that's not what I'm talking about.
No, Russia, listen, Russia, if Russia wanted to take massive civilian casualties, they could have steamrolled a lot of these areas very quickly.
But that's not what their operation is about.
They've said as much, and they've demonstrated as much.
They have to be prepared to administer and to possibly govern over some of these areas.
And you don't do that by going to scorched Earth and killing civilians.
Which is essentially scorched Earth.
Americans, your problem is you project on other things what you think your view of warfare is and not even considering another perspective.
And everyone says the same thing.
Oh, Russia's.
Russia's slow and they're meeting this.
They're outnumbered.
They're running out of ammo.
They're on the verge of losing.
They're disorganized.
I've heard this for a year.
We've heard this for a year.
It's ridiculous.
You believe that Russia will gain terror.
You believe that Russia will take.
I don't get what your point is here because I haven't said anything that you said I've just said in the past.
No, you said they're not on the offensive.
You said, sorry, John, you said they're not.
You ask a Russian if they're on the offensive.
They'll tell you no.
So, guys, let me ask you guys.
The Russians are saying they're not on the offensive.
Look at the map, John.
That's what I'm saying.
John.
Can you let John speak?
Real quick, guys.
Peter, they're having a good discussion.
You don't need, like, jump in.
Go for it, John, and Patrick continue.
Go ahead, John.
It's really.
So essentially what I'm saying.
He interrupts John all the time.
No, it's totally fine, man.
I'm not going to take offense and fire it back.
I'm not that type of...
But my point essentially is,
the point I was making, if you go by Russian doctrine, right,
when they sit back, right,
and they essentially form a defensive posture,
especially in depth that's really indicative of what you either
both expect to come and your capacity to wage war, right?
So if you look at the battle of curse, right, in World War II,
the Russians were not able to affect a...
a positive like positive offensive change against the Germans.
And they knew the Germans were about to counterattack.
And they knew that if they kept going offensively,
they get pocketed and reduced, right?
In the same way here,
they're forming a defensive posture in anticipation of Ukrainian counteroffensive.
Right. And we're already seeing an uptake in Ukraine, an uptempo in Ukrainian offensive operations, right?
So it's a simple fact that the Russians are not only offensive really essentially anywhere.
Now, yeah, we have localized offenses on both sides, but in a major way, right?
The Russians, there's only an uptempo of Russian operations at scale in Bachmoot with Wagner and VDV forces.
that that's looking at the map, like you just told me to do.
Anything else you just said, I said, I didn't say.
No, well, look, you can't compare World War II.
You can't compare World War II to this,
totally different conditions, different objectives.
It's not warfare, as you're describing it.
I don't think you know what happened.
But it's the same still strategy that they've been using
throughout this whole operation.
Yeah.
They act in this offensive, defensive posture where they sit back, they wait, and then they attack strategically, and then pull back and wait again.
You can get into the nerdy, my new show, which is what a lot of people spend their time doing, especially in these spaces, trying to...
armchair general, every freaking detail of every village, every conflict.
The reality is Ukraine, it's been a meat grinder.
The dead soldiers, it's ridiculously tragic.
You guys are cheering.
You guys are sitting here cheering for that meat grind.
And what are you doing, Patrick?
You're loving it.
You're sitting here doing your own thing.
No, no, listen, I would like to see this whole madness come to an absolute halt.
today.
But I don't hear any of that.
That's besides the point.
No, it's not beside the point.
That is the point, Pioter.
And by the way, you interrupt everybody as a matter of course.
So let me ask you guys.
Let me just ask you guys real quick.
So I've always been under the impression and I've been told I'm wrong, but I've always
been on the impression.
I'd like to hear it from you guys.
that it would appear to be, at least what Russia said that their strategy was,
and then what they appear to be doing is taking specific regions,
mainly in the east, some in the north, some of the south.
I didn't know that I didn't see that they would be crossing the river going into Kiev
Whereas they were taking back kind of like the more Russian areas to the east, having natural bridge to Crimea, taking a little bit to the north.
And they've been kind of holding those positions.
And yes, to Patrick's point, it does appear to be a meat grinder slowly pushing that front a little bit.
But I don't see this huge offensive now.
I'm seeing pockets.
Like we were a bunch of attacks from Russia the last 48 hours.
But is the strategy to take over all of Ukraine or is the strategy to kind of hold the reasons that they have?
I mean, that is my question.
It's not that trash. It's the time frame that you're looking at.
If you're looking at six months, or you're looking at a year or five years,
Russia is preparing for a 30-month conflict.
Yeah, yeah, yeah. Let you play a conflict.
Right, one second, guys.
Piotas is getting upset, but Patrick, you go first and then...
Patrick knows me, mate.
Thanks, Peotter.
Russia announced they're looking at 30-month,
they're preparing for a 30-month conflict.
Time is on their side.
Time is not on Ukraine's side.
Time is not on NATO's side.
Definitely not on Washington side.
So the appetite for this proxy war is waning much quicker
than what a lot of people in this room
who are cheerleading for people.
victory, just a few more weapons, a few more leopard tanks, and we'll turn the tide.
Really, this is so delusional.
Can I ask you a question on that?
You said that time, I agree with you in terms of Ukraine, but you said time's not on, you know, the U.S. side, but essentially...
outside of Russia and Ukraine in terms of this whole proxy war,
you've basically got multi-nations spending a significant amount of money towards this.
Haven't they got more, isn't it in their favour to continue this on long enough
and to continue supply and finance the weapons?
Yeah.
Politically, it's not.
There's a huge price to pay, Suleiman.
And also the economic situation in Europe is putting additional pressure on that.
Not to mention the facade of this.
As a U.S.-led proxy war, the public aren't stupid forever.
They've managed to go along with this for the last 14 months, and it's not going to last forever.
There's going to be a political price to pay for it.
And they can't hide the death toll on the Ukrainian side forever.
And neither can Ukraine, by the way.
Okay, so I'm going to jump in because I think I've had one perspective.
Let Peter go first and then we'll go to your Vladimir.
I think it's...
I'm sorry, what was that?
I'm just as Ukrainian, can I take a floor as well, please?
Yeah, yeah, I've got you.
After Piotto, unless Piotto will have to feed you.
Yeah, I just want to make one quick point, which is that, look, Patrick has this habit of grossly simplifying what's being said to...
strengthen his points.
No one is saying that we want the war to continue forever.
No one is cheering the deaths of everybody.
No one,
that's a gross simplification and a deliberate misrepresentation of the argument.
I'm not a fan of the war. I'm not a fan of either side, particularly fighting.
But if we, and I don't think it's particularly constructive nor helpful to sort of just basically say that we're all sitting around an arm just being geopolitical historians and analysts.
I mean, well, we're sitting, you know, you could be sitting on your ass doing your radio show or I'm doing my podcast, right?
We're all doing something projecting ideas about what's actually happening on the battlefield.
Right.
Look, simply put, the Russians, and there's a good article,
there's a good documentary from the Imperial War Museum,
which was done by not just English,
it was a multi-national collaboration effort,
about Russia's first initial week within the war, right?
And it's very interesting simply because,
and this is my personal opinion,
but what was most likely the intended objective of Russia
was to try and force the change of,
the Ukrainian government and to force Ukraine to become more like a Belarus, so more friendly to
Russia, right? Does that mean they physically occupy the entirety of the country? No, that's
very unrealistic. Ukraine is the second or largest European landmass depending upon how you measure it,
right? So it realistically, they wanted to, because if you take the capital or force the government
to change, then you by de facto,
control the country, right? That's what they wanted to do. But within the first week, 10 days,
it didn't go according to plan. Now, Russia is saying that they only want to take Donbass,
or they ultimately want to remove the Nazis and that exists supposedly in Ukraine.
These are the changing in narratives, which have adjusted as the war has gone on.
So I don't think that-
You know, this argument that Mario was making, as well, and a few people have made,
that basically Russia wanted to take Kiev, and that was actually the goal, the objective.
Are there sources that aren't Western who make that argument?
Which are, what, that they wanted to take the hold of Ukraine?
Yeah.
No, hold on, what do you mean? Yeah, sorry, sorry.
Slam-in.
And then the whole of Ukraine.
Both, if you can answer both.
Hank and sorry, can you summarize it again?
You cut out.
Yeah, yeah.
So the argument that Russia wanted to take Kiev,
and that was their initial goal,
and they wanted to take the whole of Ukraine,
that argument, is that solely from Western and Ukrainian sources,
or do we have that information from Russian sources as well?
Russia, well, look, there's a difference between physically taking the whole of Ukraine, i.e. occupying it all with Russian forces, which was never realistic, versus two, maybe reinstalling or installing a more pro-Russian or less pro-Western government, right? Those are two different things, right?
What about?
Yes.
There are definitely Russian sources or perspectives that have argued that Russia does feel threatened by or anxious or whatever word you want to use, wary of a Ukraine that is more and more and more aligned to the Europeans, because if the Europeans suddenly envelop Ukraine into NATO or Europe, that puts in Russia's eyes NATO directly on their border and then they feel an existential threat.
a national security crisis.
So in people's minds, including Russian theorists, the government, particularly Putin, wants
to see a buffer state between Russia and NATO.
You've got the Carpathian Mountains, which is a very natural border.
You've got the Great Plains where Napoleon on the Nazis have invaded over history, time
and again to Moscow.
So Putin wants to put distance between himself and NATO.
Yeah, yeah, that makes sense.
By the way, Vologna, yeah, I want you to comment on whatever you want.
I've got a question for you, but I do want to read a story.
I'll read out, so Brian Krasenstein just said to me, he tweeted about it, so I'm mentioning the source so everyone understands what his stance is, but I'll read out the, I haven't read the story itself.
and don't know what the source is, but I'm sure panelists could give us more light.
New US intelligence states that Russian President Vladimir Putin has given up on ambitions
to conquer Ukraine. The report also indicates that significant Russian military losses could take
a decade to repair. Details, I'll go through his bullet forms. According to the report,
US intelligence believes that Putin has switched to US intelligence, has switched goals to
to concentrate on preventing Ukraine from joining NATO.
In a hearing yesterday, Avril Haynes, the director of national intelligence, said that by preventing Ukraine from joining, Putin is seeking to limit NATO's influence in the region and maintain Russia's dominant position.
I'll read out a quote, she said.
We assess that Putin probably is scaled back his immediate ambitions.
Can you mute your mic, everyone, please?
We assess that Putin probably is scaled back his immediate ambitions to consolidate control of the occupied territory in eastern and southern Ukraine and ensuring that Ukraine will never become a NATO ally.
Three more points. Haines informed lawmakers that Putin might pursue a ceasefire to rebuild Russia's military, which, as per U.S. estimates, has incurred over 200,000 casualties.
The one danger is that as his military further degrades, he could be more likely to use, quote, asymmetric options such as nuclear, cyberspace capabilities and rely on China.
With that said, it appears that if this assessment is accurate, they may opt to try to drag the war out over an extended period of time.
So that's the report that Brian just sent me and he mentioned the source as well.
I would love to get your thoughts on this, Vladimir.
Patrick is not too happy with it, neither is Joshua.
So maybe Vladimir you can kick it off and then we can get the thoughts of other panelists.
Thank you, Mario. I'm very happy to be with you. It's one of many assessments, and it's very difficult to predict what will come next day.
But first of all, I would like just to state that Russians are always lying.
They lie to you before even you say hello to them. You should always keep that in your memory.
Finally, Germans, even French, understand that, and I would love to that...
All Americans will get to that point.
Secondly, if we talk about pre-Gosian and he says that he's in lack of ammunition, he lies.
I don't know how to send you a picture of our position.
I will try to do it right away, if it's possible.
But why would he, hold on, Vladimir, why would he lie about lacking ammunition?
I will show you the proof.
Okay.
If you can just...
Did you put it at the top?
Did you tweet it on your profile?
No, no.
I tweeted to your...
Just a second ago.
Oh, okay.
So that's a...
Yeah, that's a screenshot.
Yeah.
Yeah, yeah, do you see that?
Great.
If you can just post it for everybody, I would be right.
Yeah, can you send me the link?
Yeah, can you send me the link to the tweet?
So you have to click on share or you can pin it above by clicking on share and clicking pin at the top.
But otherwise, it's a case.
I'll let you explain to us what the evidence that you're sharing is, and I'll try to pin it at the top in the meter.
It's one of many pictures showing our positions and you see only holes all around and inside of our positions.
Those holes are done by Russian missiles, bombs, and mines.
So when Pregojin says that he is in lack of ammunition, he lies.
Right now, Bahmoud is heavily bombed with phosphorus bombs, which are prohibited under international legislation.
They do it.
The only thing with Pregozhen that he is in real trouble.
He promised to Putin many times that he will occupy Bahmoud.
and he failed.
Most likely that his troops will be withdrawn from Bahmoud by Russian Red Army.
not his own will.
And he has nothing to say because he failed all those promises.
He is allowed by Putin to criticize Ministry of Defense of Russia,
Gerasimum, General Staff commander, and many other guys.
Without allowance of Putin, he would stay in prison as many other oppositioners in Russia.
You have as a great privilege and cherish your democracy.
to criticize anybody you want to, to talk about anything you want to. In Russia, it's not the case.
If you say something against Kremlin, you get 10 years, 20 years sentence in prison.
Navalny is a great proof of that, and there are many Navalny's in Russia who are already in prison.
Another issue I would like to stress once again,
Russia is losing.
And I really enjoy this talks
that Russia was never going to capture Kiev or whole Ukraine.
It's only...
I want to get that.
Let me, Slaman, how...
Let me ask a question Slaman,
if you mind Vlodymy.
On this particular point that Vlodymy mentioned,
how can you say...
And I know there's panelists,
I want to push back on what I read earlier
regarding the statement by the US intelligence.
But first, Slaman...
When there's a whole regiment, a whole line, massive, I remember watching it, because I have friends and family in Ukraine, I remember watching it move and get bogged down, when that whole line is heading towards Kiev and everyone is talking about, you know, it's very well known, it's not something that was hidden.
How can you argue despite that that they were not trying to, not take over all of Ukraine, but take over Kiev, the heart of Ukraine and lead to a government change?
So in terms of government change, obviously there's no disagreement on that.
Essentially, we know how this government,
or the government before it was overthrown by the US and so and so forth.
In terms of your argument about Kiev, specifically,
when he said we know is overthrown by the US,
it's a fair argument.
We don't know for sure.
There's people disagree.
He's a lot of me disagreeing.
So don't state fact as something we don't.
I don't know.
I don't know.
I'm not, hold on, I'm not saying it wasn't.
I'm not saying it.
We don't know if the US went to the moon, but we just take it as like the most likely did, even though Russia dispute it.
I think there's more evidence, yo, there's more evidence that.
We've won basically philosophical certainty.
So why we have?
Let's talk.
Okay, so what evidence do you have that the US led to the change of government in Ukraine?
Great evidence.
We have an episode on the moon as well now.
That was really, really good argument.
Saman, what evidence do you have on that, that, that, right, hold on, Samma, can hear me?
Yeah, yeah, I can hear you, yeah.
What evidence do we have that Russia led, sorry, the US change governments in Ukraine?
Bro, there's significant evidence.
It's significant right in showing that.
Actually, hold on.
Before, yeah, sorry, so let me do it differently because I don't want to a different debate.
So just for the panelists, if you could put your hand down, Von, Mickey, John, and Telosteck.
Just for a second.
If you put your hand down, I'm going to do a quick exercise.
Okay.
Now, put your hand up if you think the U.S. did not go to the moon.
Put your hand up if you think the U.S. did not go to the moon.
Okay?
No hands are up.
All right.
Next question.
Put your hand up if you think the U.S.
did not change governments in Ukraine.
It was within Ukraine.
Put your hand up if you think that's the case.
All right.
Mickey has his hand up.
John has his hand up, Telostek and Pyotr.
So you got five.
Then Velina and Vladimir.
You got almost Piotr as well.
I don't know where you moved it, Piotr, but that's more than half the panel.
So that kind of goes back to your point about the moon versus changing.
Now, I'm not saying it wasn't the case, Slamand, but it's important we don't state it as fact when it's still being so heavily debated.
I mean, by people that we both, by people we both consider as intelligence.
No, no, listen, the problem is when you phrase it like that, of course, a lot of people are not going to put their hands up.
But in Russia, there are a significant number of people.
I don't want to bring this to a moon argument, but the whole point is that in Russia, there are significant people who don't believe that the moon landing occurred.
In addition to that, when you look at specifically...
The pictures, obviously the pictures were faked and hence why that is one of the arguments behind.
There's other scientific reasons.
What pictures were.
The moon landing pictures were.
Okay, man, I don't want to discuss the moon landing.
I'm just saying that this.
You can't compare both.
Let's go back to the point of the Kiev, bro.
The reason I brought that up is because you're trying to make that equivocation.
I just give that as an example.
My point is this.
Coming back to the point, when it comes to the coup in Ukraine,
where the legitimate government was overtaken, yeah, there is...
I understand that people who are pro-Ukraine are going to make the argument because they're so loyal to their country accepted.
But essentially, it's well known that the U.S. was behind the overthrowing.
Of course, you can never prove it.
You can never prove many of the assassinations that U.S. committed on all the leaders.
You can't prove it based on philosophical certainty.
But you're like, yeah, you know what? We know the U.S. did it.
So this whole argument that you need some kind of like philosophical certainty is just ridiculous.
Yeah.
Not finished off of course certainty. Evidence to back up a claim. I'm talking about one plus one equals two.
So I'm, I say again, I don't think it's...
You know that one plus one equals two.
No, but you can see evidence. But men, there's certain evidence where there's sleek documents or actual facts or you know, you've got to have enough evidence that will get the intelligent people here.
There might be pro-Ukraine. And when you said loyal to their country, most people here that are pro-Ukraine are not Ukrainian, just for the record.
But going back to the Kiev discussion, what makes you think that despite that line of tanks heading towards Kiev?
Hold on, maybe you don't think that.
Do you think that Russia was trying to invade Kiev?
I'm not saying permanently, but temporarily.
Yeah, so if I'm able to finish my sentence, hopefully, I believe that that was never the original objective.
But what happened was, obviously, when it came down to the war, you're basically going to go as far as you need to go.
But initially, the objective, I believe, wasn't to take the whole of Ukraine and to take the whole of Kiev.
And hence why, I wanted some source.
and I was asking for it
because if there is then that's fine
I'm not like so adamant that
I want that position to be right
if it is then that's fine
but as well I was asking for a source
which is non-Western
that is none
that I want to basically cause this
propaganda that basically
Russia was going to take Kiev in three days
Do you know about the line
okay so do you know about the line of tanks
that was heading to Kiev
at the beginning of the war
the very early stages of the war
Do you know about it, Slime Man?
Just don't be...
Just to know how much you know.
So what...
You know, no, I'm aware of how that was propagating, but my point is I know that the US
propagated this whole idea of the basically Russia is actual goal is to take over Kiev and that's
the actual...
No, I said temporary...
No, not permanently, temporarily, but just want to say...
No, but it makes a difference, bro.
If their goal, which is what has been propagated in this space quite a lot, is that that
was actually the goal, then yeah, if that's their goal, then that means...
that they're not meeting the objectives.
But if that wasn't their goal
and that was in addition to what...
Okay, but again, I know, you just stated...
You just stated the obvious
as far as they're going on up,
but I'm just asking...
That wasn't obvious.
You literally were saying it.
You were literally like...
A lot of people on this space
and you were saying,
that was their goal and they failed.
But I was...
No, my question is temporarily taking over Kiev,
that line of tanks.
This last question, I'll move on to the panel.
What do you mean by temporarily?
Temporate means they go in,
they change the government,
and then they move out of Kiev.
It happens very often in wars.
So I don't believe that they wanted to go into,
I do not believe that the actual goal was to go into Kiev
and take over initially.
Okay.
Yeah, go ahead, Vladimir.
I'll let you finish off and then we'll go to Patrick.
I'd love to get Patrick's and Joshua's thoughts on what I read earlier.
But I'll let you finish off, Flodymy.
Thank you a lot. I just need another minute. So I'm very happy that we finally realize that the goal of Russia was not to occupy Ukraine and to compete the West, but only to capture Bahmoud.
I'm joking. Concerning the real situation, it's really simple. Yes, it's bloody war.
We are losing a lot of our brother in arms and civilians, but only because Russia decided that they can attack West and they can attack Ukraine, occupy Ukraine, because they do understand, without Ukraine, they cannot challenge anybody.
It's miserable to see how great power, nuclear power, is fighting for 14,000 people, small town for a year, killing everybody with phosphorus and other bombs.
And finally, I would like just to stress once again, because I heard it many times that Putin is extremely popular in Russia.
Tsar Nikolao II was also extremely popular in Russia. He was gutt.
until he lost World War I.
Then he was shut down by Bolsheviks and Lenin,
and regime was changed.
The same thing happened with Stalin after World War II.
He was poisoned by his comrades, and Khrushchev
told all those people Russians and Soviet people who were crying at funeral of Stalin in one year time that he was a criminal.
Vladimir?
Can I ask you a question?
Vladimir, I want to ask you a quick question before going to other panelists.
So Slaman asked a very valid question to me.
He's like what evidence is there to show that Russia was trying to invade Kiev?
Now, in my mind, and obviously I'm not the expert here, in my mind, there was a line of tanks that was heading to Kiev, but I don't know of any other evidence. So I'm curious, and I probably should look it up as well. But can you, is, do we have any direct evidence, direct evidence that Russia's intention was to directly invade Kiev in the year. That was part of their mission in the early days of the war?
I would say that we have 200,000 corps of Russian Red Army soldiers in Ukraine, and we have between 20 and 30,000 dead Russians around here.
Did he say 200,000?
Did he say 200,000?
40 miles column of Russian troops was heading for Kiev and surrounding Kiev.
And finally, if we are so worried...
So they were heading, hold on, so Vladimid just quickly, when did they get close to Kiev?
I remember the troops deploying because I was watching it closely.
It was starting from the 24th of February 2022.
And they were trying to surround and to circle Kyiv in March, 2022.
When they failed, in April, they started to withdraw, April 2022.
Since that, Kiev is heavily bombed.
every single month with Russian missile.
The Kiev, Kiev getting bombed, hold on,
for Lodombe, Kiev getting bombed directly,
could be the weekend the Ukrainian military,
the Ukrainian armed forces,
they could have, you know, depots or military equipment there.
So I wouldn't link that.
But in terms of encircling Kiev, that's different.
But that was, so is anyone, is there, Miki, I see you agree.
Let me see, let me get a balance in,
and Slyman, let me jump in,
but I'm trying to balance it by asking.
Let me just,
Yeah, I'll finish it off. Go ahead.
Last sentence from my side. Yeah. And I would like just to stress once again, every time, if there is something happening in Russia, we say this is the end of days. It's a final countdown.
Russia will impose nuclear missiles against Ukraine or West. It's another lie from Russia. Look at this last strike on Kremlin.
We were waiting for nuclear winter.
Nothing happened.
Russians simply forgot about that.
So let me read this out, rather.
Let me read this out to you, Slyman, and I can send you the sources and all that,
but I think you'd be happy with this one.
Let me know what you think.
I'll send you the link.
The Battle of Kiev, or they call it the Kiev Offensive.
Um, so the battle was, last is from 25th of Feb to second of April.
And, and, and then I go to, I want to go to, just to balance it.
I do want to go to Von to kind of see if there's, if there's any pushback on that.
Um, um,
So initially, Russian forces captured key areas to the north and west of Kiev,
leading to international prediction of the city's imminent fall.
Now, remember those media reports that Kiev was going to fall, and that was the sentiment,
even I had that sentiment.
However, stiff Ukrainian resistance sapped Russian momentum.
And I remember there was a lot of criticism around Russian logistics and some of the tactical decisions made.
And then during peace talks in Istanbul on 29th of March,
the Russian delegation declared they were drastically
scale down military activity in Kiev and Chernaiv.
Four days later, the Ukrainian authorities declared
that Kiev and the surrounding Kiev Oblast were again
under Ukrainian control.
So I've got a map here of how close I got to Kiev.
I'll send you the map now.
But maybe let's just get in this also dated as well.
So I'll send that to you now, Slayman, and if you want to pin it above, you can.
And maybe you go to Von.
Von, just on that particular point, because I'm sure you have a lot to say,
and I know that Patrick, Joshua, and other speakers want to comment on the U.S.
intelligence report that I read earlier.
We'll go back to that in a sec.
But, Von, on the particular point that Russia tried to invade Kiev,
do you have any pushback on that, Von?
Kind of yes, kind of no. It's not possible to know for sure what the intent is because we're not the people making the decisions, right? But we can look at what happened.
40,000 soldiers, 40,000 troops is not enough to encircle Kiev. It's not enough to take Kiev. But what it does do, actually no, just a second.
We heard a lot about logistics and breakdowns, but when it came time for him to leave, notice that they just left.
There was no breakdown, no logistics, no delay, they just left.
That suggests that they were parked around Kiev for a different reason.
That reason could well be, this is what I think is most likely, because of the other operations.
For Buccia atrocities, yes?
Did I interrupt you?
I know, I know, that's okay, I know, Vlodamii, I know this is emotional to you
because I know you've seen those massacres yourself, et cetera, so I, and I understand where you're coming from.
Von, I'll let you make your point, but Voddini, I'll let you respond right after before going to other panelists.
Go ahead, Van.
Okay, what was happening on other fronts in the meantime was fighting on the Donbass LLC
and the encircling of Marupil.
What parking forces outside of Kiev does is it pins the Ukrainian forces that are in Kiev in Kiev.
So they can't reinforce the outer fronts.
You'll notice that once the caldrons in the east were completed, they would drew.
Wait, but Maripa lasted way longer than after the withdrawal, though.
And, Ron, you make a good point, and I do respect your opinion.
But it was functionally encircle. That's the point.
Mario,
because I was fighting Russians
near Kiev in February,
March, April.
I personally envisaged all this stuff.
It was nothing about Mariupol.
Russians came to
occupy Kiev, but they thought it would be easy walk. It would be parade.
I think, I think, I understand. So I actually have a personal question just out of curiosity to you, Vladimir.
But I think Von makes a good point in a balanced way. He says it's a possibility and you can't say no.
I think also Von you'd say it's a logical possibility, but there's also other possibilities which also makes sense.
I think John even said you make sense.
Is that a fair way to character?
Okay, perfect.
So it's definitely possible that either, so the two likely possibilities is either they wanted to invade Kiev,
and it makes logical sense to do so.
It doesn't mean it's permanent.
It's just part of the, just to end the war quickly, replace Zelensky and his administration,
which I think most of us would agree.
You can see this on the way that the invasion was done initially, right?
It was used being power troopers and an attempted Blitzkrieg-style fast entry, basically.
And what's interesting is in the Imperial War Museum documentary,
they talked about that the actual vehicles that the Russians were initially using weren't heavily...
fortified. They weren't vehicles
meant to hold. They were
meant to simply be
stationed to wait for the
proper lines of the Russian military to come
behind. But it was meant to be a lightning speed
attack into Kiev. At least this
is again, not my opinion. I'm not saying it's
100%. It's just one theory.
It's that it was meant to be a quick
into Ukraine, secure the outer perimeters, then the Russian military comes in more broadly and
begins to bolster those lines.
And, you know, we've seen this done in Georgia.
We've seen the Russians do this in other forms like in Syria or in the Caucasus sometimes.
So, and that's why it didn't go right.
And so when the Russians then began to experience difficulties from Ukrainian resistance,
but...
That's when you began to see the public radio channels being, you know, released on the, on the airways.
You began to see the pushbacks.
Then you saw the 40-mile column that you were asking Suleiman about before.
So that's when you began to see the Russians being like, oh, crap, our initial invasion didn't go well.
You know, they attacked at the dawn, early dawn of February 24th, and then they kept barraging.
And that was what was intended.
Right.
And that's when we were all thinking, Christ, the Russians are going to steamroller.
And then quickly within a few days, that didn't happen.
And that's when people began to realize that maybe this wasn't what the Russians expected or planned.
Let me ask a quick personal question to Vladimir before we move on to the next point.
Vladimir, just out of curiosity, I'm genuinely curious.
What was the sentiment like?
Because I never spoke to anyone on the ground back then.
I was just watching from the outside.
I just have friends and family in Ukraine.
Everyone expected Ukraine to fall relatively quickly, in the war to end quickly.
And when I say everyone, most people expected that.
So my question to use, what was this sentiment like in Kiev?
When you guys went to the front line, when you talked and try to be honest,
did you guys expect it to, did you expect Kiev to fall, but we're going to fight for it anywhere until the end?
Or did you think you really had a chance back then?
Frankly saying emotions were very tough and we took weapons and I would say even in my battalion 90% of people it was like a first experience to handle machine guns or something like that.
to fight enemy.
We were desperate, but we knew that we had to fight,
and there is no other choice for us.
And the first two weeks were decisive for Ukraine,
And we managed to stop Russians due to armed forces of Ukraine and a huge support from the nation.
Because many things, I wouldn't dare to say that more things, but 50-50 was done by Ukrainian people.
people and Ukrainian army.
And then thank you,
all of you, that you supported
Ukraine. I mean, United States,
first of all, United Kingdom,
Biden, namely, and other guys.
Because without permanent support,
it would be really
heavy for us to fight Russians.
They came to kill
all Ukrainians and
there was no kind of mercy
for somebody
and they were very
precise on that.
I understand.
Now, thanks for sharing that.
That's just me personal curiosity.
But Patrick, I want to go to you on this point, and then if we could help us pivot to
the, and I know Tolest Tech, I know you've been trying to speak, but just let me, let
me start with Patrick.
Yeah, Patrick, if you could-
My headphones are about to run out, this heads up.
Cool, cool.
I'll actually tell a second, before I got it, Patrick, I'll let you jump in because I know
you sent us a DM you wanted to push back on a few points made.
Maybe you could touch on this particular point regarding Russia invading Kiev, what
your thoughts are, because there's two plausible explanation given by the panel.
And then I want you to move on to what I read earlier regarding the intelligence, US
intelligence saying that Putin's ambitions, based on the performance of the world so far,
and he no longer wants to, let me see what it is,
switch goals to concentrate on preventing Ukraine from joining NATO.
That no longer is a focus.
A switch goes to concentrate.
Okay, he wants to concentrate on Ukraine from joining NATO,
and he's given up ambitions on conquering territory in Ukraine.
So this is I'm trying to summarize the report.
But we'll have to get your thoughts on this, and I want to go to Patrick afterwards.
Yeah, I've been wanted to speak since then. I think it was Lee and Nick were hopping on.
And it will wrap this segment up nicely, I think, in the transition to Patrick.
But yeah, thank you for having me up.
I just wanted to wrap up the point. I know Nick and Lee had done stating the fact that Russia was winning the war.
I just have three just solid facts on the ground that are undisputable to dispute that.
The one is...
Russia has not taken a major city in Ukraine since December of last year.
They've taken small villages.
They've taken 95% of Bakhmut as of today,
but they have not taken a single major city in Ukraine since last year.
To compare that to Russia, sorry, Ukraine's counteroffensive of last year,
where they liberated hundreds and hundreds of square kilometers of Ukrainian land up in Kharkiv,
and down in harrison so there's a major difference between russia goes on the offensive
they can't take a major city and then ukraine where they've liberated everything and it only
gets worse as time goes on as you see the ukrainians are getting more and more western weapons
high-tech weapons that were built in this decade whereas russians are going worse and worse they're
pulling out t-64s t-fifty-fives those weapons were developed 10 years after world war two
so you can see where this is going my third point and i think the
the most important point is russia has putin himself has fired six generals in charge of the war
in ukraine i'll repeat that repeat that again he has fired six generals since the start of the war
you do not fire your generals if you are winning the war simple as that simple as that and that's
all i wanted to say uh in terms of who's winning the war
And just to add, they have 17 commanders of military operations on Ukraine within one year time.
Thanks, man.
And I've linked to the documentary that I was referring to in the nest.
I just want to go to Patrick for a bit.
I do, I do, yeah.
I know.
I already gone to Patrick.
Patrick, there's a couple of points I want to ask here.
First of all, Vladimir said 200,000 Russians died within Kiev.
So if you want to answer that point.
And the second point is...
In Ukraine.
In Ukraine.
In Ukraine.
Do you mean for the entirety of the war until now?
Yes.
Okay.
So that's different.
So Patrick, in terms of what these guys are saying,
essentially their argument is that the objective of Russia was to basically take Kiev and possibly even Ukraine.
So what's your thoughts on that?
I would skip to the next question because I'm with Von Klausowitz War College on that point.
He articulated my thoughts exactly.
Exactly.
Okay, and Patrick, do you think, before we move on to the next point, the US intelligence report, do you think, though, the argument that Russia wanted to invade Ukraine?
I know some arguments you think are just stupid and you disagree with them, but do you think this is still a plausible, this is a possibility, but it's more likely they wanted to encircle Kiev instead of invading, but it's still possible they wanted to invade?
Because I think both explanations make sense. What do you think?
I don't know. I really don't see how it's relevant right now.
I mean, events have moved on.
Things have developed far past that now.
You're avoiding a question, Patrick.
I've got a lot of respect for you.
Because it's directly tied to the previous question, Mario.
Ask me something more substantive, please.
Sure, I'm happy.
I'm happy to. I'm happy to.
And the second question is about that US intelligence report regarding Putin's ambitions changing.
I take every US intelligence report with an absolute pinch of salt.
I've always bet against them, and I'm batting about 900.
So that's just my default position.
And then I'm like Stephen Crowder, prove me wrong.
I've got the mug.
so I it's whatever Averohanes is putting out in a report or whatever it's hard to know
this is we're in the United States is at war with Russia so every piece of information every
especially coming from intelligence services the British as well you should read their
their daily reports they're they're quite amusing it's propaganda
for the most part.
Just a quick question.
So one thing that isn't propaganda is
the leader of Wagoner basically
calling out
the defense minister, possibly even
Putin. So first question is, do you think he was
calling Putin out? The second point
is, I mean, do you
think he's going to withdraw? And if he does,
I mean, is that like
basically Russia, again,
is Russia in this scenario having a
significant loss in the war?
I don't know. It could have been a planned withdrawal. There's a lot of politics involved. Progogian has political aspirations. So it's a lot about getting credit as well, getting the respect.
but maybe taking the opportunity to grandstand,
even though it was a scheduled handover
to the Russian Ministry of Defense.
So there's a lot of possibilities there.
Progrosian definitely hams it up on social media.
If you remember, I think it was December,
he did another similar sort of stunt,
and he got what he wanted.
So maybe he's very good at playing that political game.
But yeah, definitely you're talking about...
Are you a major political...
he's a major political figure now in Russia
by default just going forward
so that should be factored in
you know he's a big personality
I'd agree with Patrick on that
like prognosions
rise from basically not admitting any relationship to,
well,
the,
to Wagner group being this Putin chef and suddenly now running,
or being associated with the world's most effective,
but equally brutal,
PMC to suddenly now,
you know,
running potentially political games in the Kremlin is,
it's pretty fast in less than what,
six,
seven months.
So yeah,
I think it's,
And there's also the SIEOP component as well.
Some of this could be drama as well.
Maybe it can be, both things can be true at the same time.
He can be an over-the-top dramatic figure, but also be, this can also be used to kind of send out a false signal to Ukraine or the Ukrainian public or the West.
So it is, it's war.
So, you know, you have to.
you have to double consider everything that's being said and printed all the time.
Piotto, do you agree that with the Patrick when he said that this was,
unless I misunderstood of Patrick, so do correct me if I'm wrong,
but do you agree with this point where he said that there is,
that there was a planned handover from Wagner group to the Russian military?
No, as I say, I think, look, I'll promise my response by saying,
There are a few things in this war that will remain forever debated over who the arbitrators were.
I'm not going to try and trigger Patrick again.
But, you know, Nord Stream, the...
the drone and possibly this, right?
I'm not going to take a position of confidence in whether or not this was staged by Progrosian or if it's genuine.
There is a lot of psychological warfare going on, and if this guy is playing as much the Russian military off against the Russian polity, as much as he is playing the West.
you've got to take all of that into consideration.
Could it be a precursor for them to hand it over to the Russian forces?
Quite possibly.
Again, Batmute has become a symbol of just the war and how much it means, right?
Whether or not the Russians eventually do take that last 5% is yet to be seen.
But, you know, both sides have lost a lot.
And I think it is fair to say that the Wagner Group,
were brought in because it was thought that they would
overrun the Ukraine forces or be
an exceptional part
or addition to the Russian military
and they haven't
you know, Batmute has been an intense fighting space even with the Wagner group.
So I do think that they've definitely lost forces and want to either relocate or focus their efforts
maybe on, you know, Kharkiv or Hassan, or wherever they think another counter-offensive is coming.
So I don't know if that answers your question.
Or is that Zaporosia as well?
Or Sapirotia, yeah.
So it's a tough one.
Yeah, thanks for that.
So, Von, I know you want to say something, so I'll let you say that, but just an additional question.
Okay.
If this video from him is real, I mean, sorry, it's not for sure and he legitimately means what he's saying, is this a direct attack on Putin?
I mean, that's a big hypothetical. I did a thread on this not long ago.
So the thing is, you have to keep in mind who Pregosin is.
This guy has direct channels to leadership to the upper echelons of military to Putin himself.
Why would he post this on his public telegram where everyone, including Western Media Watchers, is watching?
I agree with, shockingly, I agree with Volodymy on this.
This is Maskidovka.
You don't do that unless it's a ruse, unless it's bait, unless you want them.
Oh, look.
Look how weak we are.
Look how weak we are.
I sure hope they don't come get us to push more troops into the Bachmoot Meat Grindr, which he's done over and over and over again.
So I can't answer that.
I can't answer that hypothetical because I don't believe...
that I don't even know how to word it.
I can't address that hypothetical.
Now, it could be that...
I mean, it is a bit of a hypothetical, Mon.
Can I just ask a question?
So it is a bit of a hypothetical,
but look, he did call out
the Russian government, you could say, or the defense minister,
to say you've not given us enough ammunition.
And somebody was on here, I think he's pro-Russian.
I forgot his name now.
But he was essentially on here, and he said that it's Putin who's in charge of who gets the ammo or not.
So if Putin's in charge, and he's complaining that you're not giving us enough ammo,
is he not saying to Putin that you should be given us ammo?
Well, in that case, noticed that he was cursing out Gerosimov and...
and shogu but not Putin.
Keep that in mind.
If Putin's the one that controls the flow of ammunition,
he's not the one who's being berated.
That's something that's something to keep in mind with this.
Also about Wagner being moved out and replaced there,
it's, guys, you want to eventually rotate troops out of a front line.
This is not controversial.
This is sane military strategy.
You don't leave them.
They don't leave.
them out there until they die of exhaustion.
Well, yeah, Vaughn, to that point, the whole point, and this has been talked about already
the last couple days as well, I don't know about the artificial actual date.
I think that that's probably connected to other things that has nothing to do with it.
But Wagner has been more of like the expeditionary force, right?
They've taken way more risks.
The Russian military is way more conservative, so...
Wagner goes in and they go to town and then, you know, if they can capture it, great, Russian military moves in and they move on to the next region.
I mean, that's the most plausible to me as well.
Oh, yeah.
And about your hypothetical, Mario, it's like it's entirely possible that are out of, that are actually out of ammunition.
I don't rule that out.
But I don't get what...
making a ruckus about it on a public telegram accomplishes when he has a direct line to the top of the hierarchy.
If he had grievances, he would use that.
He would use back channels.
He would use his direct line.
He would not get on public telegram because this isn't a TikTok teenager.
The guy is not brain damaged that I know of.
He might be.
I won't rule that out.
Maybe he's going to launch only fans, and he is the way to make money because there's no more money coming from the Kremlin.
So, Von, based on what you're saying, if that's the case, though, then why do you think he's made the video?
Pardon? Why the video exists? Like I said, Maskyrovka. It's the Lord, it's to lure the opponent in.
Like, look at how weak they are. They have no ammunition. Look, he's serious. He's cursing it people. This has to be real.
But, like, he's done this...
I agree, Volodymyr, I think it's funny too.
But it's worked before, so he'll keep doing it until it stops working.
I mean, if I could interject...
Just shortly interrupt, because I know perfectly well what's going on in Bahmoud and with Wagner private company.
They are most well equipped in Russian army.
They are supplied with the best ammo.
Don't believe this bullshit coming from pegosan lips.
He is talking on behalf of Putin only because Putin allowed him to speak loud.
Otherwise, he is sent to prison.
It's very easy in Russia.
It's not United States or even Ukraine.
If you speak anything against Kremlin, you are imprisoned or killed.
As happened with Nemtsov near Kremlin.
Guys, don't be so serious.
They are bluffing at you.
They are laughing at you.
They are making all these schemes.
Ask where money of Medvedev son are in your own.
in United States.
He is still with assets in United States.
He is talking that he will destroy.
His father Medvedev, alcoholic and partner of Putin,
says he will crush the United States with nuclear weapons.
And his sons is happy with the United States.
Guys, they are bluffing.
They are not able to...
occupy Ukraine. They are not able to occupy Bahmoud. They are just trying to survive in that
those conditions. The only alliance is Northern Korea and Iran. That's it. But haven't they got 95%
of Bahmoud? I will tell you simply. Because they concentrated 95% of their army around Bahmoud.
And if you fight in one place... But you said they haven't got Bahmuth, but they've took 95% of it.
It's a small town. It's...
It's not a big city.
It's a critical city.
It's a critical city.
No, it's not.
No, it's not critical.
It's not critical.
Okay, and so why is Ukraine so adamant to defend Bakhmud?
Why is...
Because of the signaling.
Because of the signaling.
I think of...
If it's so unimportant, why does both sides fight there?
Guys, come on.
I've never heard of the family of Stalin, or any of war that was symbolic.
I know what I'm talking about.
I'm not theoretical, I'm practical.
I was fighting Russians there for two months.
Volodymy, the problem is that you're so biased.
You said, you made the argument that,
Vladimir, you made the argument that the problem is when you're making an argument
saying that they haven't took Bahmuth,
or they're struggling to take Mahmoud,
or they're losing in Bahmoud when they've taken 9% of it,
then your argument comes across very biased.
Because he's biased, he's Ukrainian.
It doesn't really matter.
Obviously he's biased, but he's missing information.
It's like a blog, isn't it?
I think what matters.
You can't just put everything down to misinformation because you've got to buy it.
No, no, it's a black, isn't it?
If somebody's checking, not if I'm kind of a city, you're like they're losing that.
Thank you for unblocking my mic.
First of all, did you hear anything about Bahmoud before it took place?
Nothing.
Believe me, for me, it's a first travel to Bahmoud in my lifetime. I'm 44 years old. To fight Russians there. They decided that the only small town they can capture is Bahmoud.
That's why everybody is talking about Bahmoud.
If they decide to capture another small town by Bahmoud, Cheshiviar, everybody would talk about Chassiviar.
Vladimir.
Would you even do the same thing about Maripole?
We need to Maripal. Was that a small town? Was it that unimportant to you guys?
Yeah, but that's a strategic industrial city.
So I think what Volodymyr is trying to say.
Every single town is important for us.
That's why we are fighting furiously for Bahmoud as well.
So there is no exemption.
And the reason only is that you are trying to find something great in Russia.
It's a miserable state.
So, Volodymy, and I just ask you, right?
The reason...
Vologna, you need to listen as well.
I mean, I'm mutely last time
because I kept on saying your name
100 times and you just carried on.
So just a quick question
on what you're saying.
So there's two questions I've got
and then you can go ahead and answer.
So the first question is,
that you said that Russia is struggling with Bahmuth, but it took 95% of it.
So that bit I don't get.
Even if you're fighting in there, how does that work?
The second point is I've just been sent an article,
and what it says is Zelenskyy warns of an open road.
So Russian troops will have an open road to capture key cities in Ukraine
if they seize control of Bahmuth.
So is your...
President is arguing that it's very important from a strategic point of view.
He might be lying, I don't know, but this was from CNN.
So if you want to explain that as well, so those both arguments.
Okay, let me start from the first thing.
I will simply remind you that Russia already captured 100% of Crimea in 2014.
It's the same Bahmoud, but in different geographical position.
And we will take it back for sure.
It's war.
you cannot be kind of 100% forecast was going to happen.
It's not even weather forecast.
It's war.
Secondly, we said very clearly that we will not Russians take any centimeter of our land.
We will take everything back.
And it's up to us.
We are very grateful for your support.
But if we are decided to fight alone, we will fight alone.
There is no alternative for us.
Secondly, concerning the president's statement.
He is right because he is chief command.
I'm captain of the armed forces.
I see my small perspective of one or two kilometers from plane.
That's it.
I explored all neighborhood around Bahmoud.
And I know perfectly well that even if Bahmoud is captured and Russia is,
Russia spent a lot of resources for a year term to capture Bahmoud and it's still not decided.
But even if we imagine that Bahmoud is captured by Russians,
they will not move further.
This is the problem for Russians, and they know that.
Because their golden dream after failure in Kiev, in Harson, in Kharkiv,
was to capture at least Donbass region.
And Bahmoud, it's not the end point of Donbass.
There are a lot of other cities.
And they are not able to.
That's why they are trying to poison you with many alternatives.
Let's make peace deal or all of us will die.
Nobody is going to die in Kremlin.
They would like to cherish because they are billionaires.
They keep their money in the United States,
in the United Kingdom, in France, in Monaco, everywhere all over the world, not in Russia.
They want to live and they want to have a peace deal.
But this peace deal is not possible under Russian and Chinese terms.
Just make it clear for yourself.
Because if you make it this once, you will be in great trouble as a superpower in next decade.
That's it from my side.
I think there's a way to kind of thread the needle a bit as well.
Mickey, let me go to Patrick for balance and I'll come to you.
So Patrick, you go ahead and respond to anything.
For Vladimir, you said you're going to take every inch of Ukrainian territory.
How many men, in terms of lives lost soldiers, is a price that you are your government's willing to pay
to theoretically take back every inch of soldiers?
Ukrainian territory in 1991 borders let's say what what's an acceptable cost in terms of men
Patrick any second you are available I can invite you to Ukraine and will take you with my
hand to butcher and you will see tortured men girls kids women by Russians
you should clearly understand there is no alternative for us than to fight if we stop fighting
we are dead because russians will kill us all do you think the russians are genocidal
Absolutely. Absolutely.
So why haven't they bombed the crap out of Kiev or leveled any of your cities?
If that's the case.
They have, Ian.
They have.
They've been doing that systematically.
Kiev is still saying people are throwing parties there.
I mean, you can play semantics.
You can play semantics.
But I mean, but look at Bachrude.
It's leveled.
Yes, I'm not back.
One second.
Let's go to Ian.
Ian finish off.
Then I vote a John.
Yeah, my point is that, you know, you guys said Bachmood's unimportant.
So, I mean, bringing it up, saying that, oh, they leveled Bakhm well, it's unimportant.
So what does it matter so much?
We're talking about Kiev here.
You know, you're saying Russia is genocidal.
Why haven't they level crap out of Kiev or Leviv?
Because they can't.
Because they can't.
They don't have the fires to do that.
They don't have the strategic stockpiles to do that.
Are you serious right now?
You know they have ships, right?
They could literally level Odessa.
They could smash the city into bits from the coast.
Oh, I think you should go do some research on strategic fires.
Yes, he should do some decapitation strikes.
I mean, I can send you some, I can send you some sources.
Ships off the coast.
Like, they can't level the city that's impossible.
Exactly, but stoppiles exist.
The replenishment, reconstitution is a thing.
Are you going to let me talk or are you going to keep talking?
It's so difficult to be.
Just talk over him, John.
Just talk about it.
Listen, guys, let Ian go first.
Let him finish his point.
It's not talk about, I mean, look, it was Ian who was making his point and John talked over,
which is fine.
It's all right.
We don't mind discussion, but then both start discussing.
Ian, go first, then let John go.
Yeah, I was just saying, yeah, and I don't like being interrupted.
You know, it's hard to have...
You do it with everybody, buddy.
Okay, all right, so yeah, fine, fine.
Just, I'll just be quiet now.
Got it.
Thank you.
Thank you.
And then, uh, then we'll go to John.
Sorry, Pieter.
Yeah, just put the fuck up while I'm speaking, you know?
Like, it's not high.
Aye.
There it is.
Yeah, there it is.
I mean, you do the same thing, don't you?
Okay.
So the point of making is it's hard to have these kinds of conversations in any space, right?
Any room, any, uh, uh, uh,
any place really you know when when half the people involved in the conversation are either
completely delusional or just lying to you and saying that Russia doesn't have a capability
to flatten the city you know I mean this is just basic stuff right basic stuff if you
wanted to do that they would have done so already they would have bombed the crap out of the
presidential palace but they haven't done so why is that
So what I love about this is then you get hard geniuses who pretend to be strategic
well-analysis and you're acting like they're going to level the whole place
and yet they haven't done.
So what did Putin do?
Like let me finish.
No, because you'll have your chance to be.
Like, oh my God.
Like, you know, it's so impossible to have these conversations because, you know, I constantly
get interrupted, you know, like I'm not allowed to finish my point.
It's ridiculous.
Then get to your point.
Not if you're going to keep interrupting me.
Well, you do it, you do, but you tell me I drag on.
Okay.
All right, you know what?
I have a show to go to, so I'll just be quiet for a while.
Okay, so what I want to just say is that Ian has a habit of saying that, you know,
it's so categorically that it's like this or like that,
and yet I'm unaware of your in-depth military, like, service or experience.
Um...
I would also just say that I wanted to actually ask Vladimir a question because I was trying
to be for balance of the panel to balance it out.
So basically, so Vladimir, there was something, I think it was in a space that I heard Patrick
raise it or Karswitz, Khrmitz, Khrmitz, but one of the things that I think people are concerned
about is that if you.
Ukraine, okay, so the Ukrainians are victorious and they kick the Russians out of Ukrainian territory.
But that's not, but is that the end point?
Ukraine wants to take back all its territory and retain its 91 borders, right, in Crimea.
But that doesn't resolve the threat, at least if you're a Ukrainian, arguably, of Russia remobilizing and doing this again.
So when you hear people who are more pro-Russia or anti-West or whatever, their argument is that this isn't just about retaking the borders of Ukraine.
It's about the removal or destruction or whatever it is, disintegration of the Russian state.
As a Ukrainian and someone who served in the government, how do you view that?
Is that just talking points or is there some degree of like you know truth to it if you get where I'm coming from? I'm just curious to your thoughts.
Peter, I'm originally from Western Ukraine and we never accepted Russian occupation or Soviet Union occupation of Ukraine.
Yes, people from eastern Ukraine are a little bit different, but after Russian bombs, they are quite similar to all other parts of Ukraine.
So there is no big difference anymore.
Frankly saying, yes, we hear a lot of statements, and sometimes I share them that Russia should be splited in sectors as it was done with Nazi Germany after World War II.
But the reality is that there should be no gray zones on neutral countries in Eastern Europe.
Russia, China never attacks NATO or EU member states.
They are only ready to attack.
weak states or neutral states where they know that nobody will stand for them.
Wait, who has China attacked? I'm confused. Who's China attacked?
I can also show you pictures of Chinese drones used by Russians.
Chinese deny that. They say, okay...
No, I'm asking you who, which state has China attacked? I mean, it's a simple question.
I hope not yet.
We will see how the situation will go around Taiwan.
Don't you see any threat around this island?
Taiwan is China, Vladimir.
Absolutely.
Absolutely.
Until Chinese armed forces are not there.
Mickey, do you want to get in?
Yeah, yeah, thanks.
Thanks so much.
I think just to split the needle on this a bit and to like maybe bring it back to the conversation we were talking about earlier.
Like I take Voldemir's point and Ian's point and the question is basically from Ian and I think from Patrick as well is like, okay, yeah.
It sounds like they're asking, hey, if Russia really is genocidal, why haven't they completely obliterated Ukraine?
And I think you have to put it back to Russia's initial intentions, right?
Like, you couldn't possibly argue that their number one intention, their goal of invading Ukraine, was to try to take...
95% of Bachmut after one year.
This is 25 miles from Russian control territory.
It's obviously been a military failure.
And to echo actually a point Vaughn made earlier about deception
and why the Wagner Group is deceiving people about their lack of ammunition
and why the Wagner Group is deceiving people about the situation in the ground.
Bachmook, this is deception in order to win a fight.
And I think it's the same for Zelensky in Bachmute.
He's trading a pawn in his mind for a rook.
He believes that there's no strategic importance of Bakhmud,
but he wants the Russians to think there is
so that they invest their best and best equipped forces in Bakhmud to fight
and get bogged down in over a course of a year
to do as much attrition as possible.
So in my mind,
That's why you would have someone like Zelensky make a public statement on the importance of Bachmoud and to try to go the Russians into into into Bakhmud.
And I worked a lot in Eastern Ukraine and every person I know who was from Eastern Ukraine all agreed that there's no strategic importance.
Like there's many more cities that are more strategically important and they were kind of confused as to Russia, why Russian did it.
But now it's egoic, right? Putin cannot lose.
He cannot lose in Bachmuth.
He has to throw soldiers there until he wins because his entire PR campaign is about this victory here.
And this is why he sent Wagner Group because they promised him they would be victorious and they have not been.
They're already behind on their dates to be able to capture the city.
So I think what's going to happen if I were to make a prediction,
many of the people on this panel within a few months will start to accept.
Right.
that Russia is not going to be able to win on the battlefield.
This is my prediction.
And we can talk again in two or three months,
and we'll see if my prediction comes true.
So just kick the can down the road a little bit.
You can keep doing that indefinitely.
And I think that's what a lot of you've been doing for the last 14 months.
Amazing.
The mental gymnastics, Mickey, that you try to perform is amazing.
And by the way, you dragged me into that talking point with Ian, and I didn't make that point.
And you use deception as well in your style of framing all these arguments.
It's not going to notice, Mickey.
Oh, I'm so sorry if I hurt your feelings.
I tell you what, let's make a deal.
You didn't hurt my feelings.
I'm just calling it like it is.
Let's make it, let's make a deal.
If you believe that Russia will be victorious in Ukraine,
I believe they will not be.
So how about this? We make a bet. We shake hands as a gentleman. Make a gentleman's bet or we can put money on the line. I believe you cream would be victorious within one year. Do you? You sound like fidgetle. You sound like fidgetles. Was it a 10,000 dollars I'll bet you? Okay. I accept. It's a joke.
I accept. Let's make the bet. Put your money where your mouth is. If you don't believe what you're saying, you wouldn't put money on it.
only an idiot comes in here and wants to like threaten people with wagers
in order to win an argument. I'm offering a wager. You're free to decline the wager. I'm offering you a wager.
You're the one who's losing your rag right now, Mickey.
He sounds pretty calm to me, to be honest, Patrick.
Anyway, can we move on to something less personally divisive?
Mickey's made a lot of money.
He's been betting everybody in the last few years.
That's right, baby.
Let's go.
You get a 10 grand bear, and you get a 10 grand bet.
He's like, oh, probably.
Let's go, baby.
Let's go.
Let's go.
I'm taking everyone out to dinner.
Yeah, yeah, nice one, G.
But let's go for John.
John, I know you wanted to respond to Ian, so go ahead, bro.
Yes, so this is the point I was trying to make.
And I wasn't trying to be condescending when I said, I'm serious about I'll send you information about Long Beach.
Decap strikes or, you know, things like that.
And more importantly, reconstitution, which is a big thing, right?
Russia themselves has admitted that, you know, they're having trouble reproducing caliber missiles.
The United States admits that, right? CSIS has.
had a um they war game we our uh strategic stockpiles won't last us the week when it comes
to long range fires right these are things like high precision weapons are not very pervasive in
most forces and even the forces that have a lot of them we aren't able to sustain you know uh
warfare and elisco environment uh large scale conventional operations right i wasn't trying to be
understanding i was seriously telling you that um uh
I can send you the CSIS report as well.
Yeah, go ahead.
Yeah, yeah, definitely.
Yeah, yeah.
Another thing, though, so basically what I was saying,
the reason they haven't, now I don't believe they would have, though.
So I would just give you a reason as to why they haven't.
I personally don't believe they're going to level Kiev because, I mean, Keev, because obviously, you know, it's counterproductive to level the lands that you're trying to take over, which is why it's confusing to me, why they're leveling other cities.
You make a good point about Bakhmud, right?
Obviously, it's not strategic.
But it is symbolic.
That's kind of the point I was going to make to your question earlier,
which is if it's not strategic, what is it?
It's symbolic, right?
So as soon as the Russians started talking about,
you see Zelenskyy talk about it.
Now, personally, I believe it was a mistake
for the Ukrainians to stay in Baku for so long
when they have easily defensible ground directly behind them.
Personally, I think that's a mistake.
But, you know, and I think multiple times they put forces,
you know, they push more forces and more reserves that they may not.
John, just quick a question on that.
I think you're about to answer it, but just in case you're not.
what about this argument that people make that essentially Zelensky's become a meat grinder
where he's sending troop after troop at one point his generals or his military was advising him to retreat
and he went ahead so i mean your thing is a mistake so how many lives like how many lives have been
lost on such a mistake that your arguing isn't even tactically important
Yeah, yes. So essentially, I think as soon as they started taking a loss above a brigade level, I think they should have done a tactical withdrawal to the once again high ground behind Buckmoot. Now, I can't once again, I'm not in the MOD. I'm not in the Russian MOD. I'm not in the Ukrainian, right? So I can't speak to their own...
their own machinations. But what I will say, though, is the U.S. was advising the Ukrainians to pull out.
Now, I understand once it becomes symbolic, it becomes a different thing. I think Piotr made the point about Stalingrad.
The same thing. It wasn't necessarily, now, there are some arguments that because of its positioning on the river and other things like that, it was strategic.
But largely it was symbolic, right? Largely, um, uh,
Hitler diverted large amounts of forces.
He diverted the,
he diverted Von Polis's army there and then basically got and became heavily
attritional,
engaged in heavily attritional warfare simply because it has Stalin's name on it.
And as all his generals,
as all his high command was telling him,
don't do that because we need to go for the oil fields or our offensive will stall.
But he didn't listen to them.
So I think Bakhmud is the same type of battle.
Uh, yeah, those are the only point I have.
Just to jump on that point, like, it's,
Stalingad is a good example whereby the
strategic significance of it wasn't there.
The, the Nazis and Hitler specifically were,
should have gone on the southern...
point offensive towards the oil fields in the Caucasus.
But Hitler at this point was frustrated with some hiccups in the northern offensive around Leningrad,
because the Russians had dug in around there, to the point where he redirected,
I think it was the fourth Panzer Division, to Stalingrad.
And through a bit of a recreation of the Nazi's own tactics,
the Soviets eventually took Stalingrad by encircling them in a classic Pinser movement like...
style.
And had they not done that,
many people think that the
Operation Barbarossa would have been
far more effective.
Yeah.
So I'm not saying it's the same level or so on, but, you know, throughout history time and again, there have been wars fought over cities which have no strategic significance whatsoever.
They just become so obsessed with, you know, symbolism that you do it.
And I can appreciate the other speakers' points about, you know, there was a point when Zelensky maybe was...
made an error or erroneous, if that's the right word, in continuing to hold back moot.
But, you know, it's, you know, the fog of war, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the,
you don't think it's wrong error to do that because they're still holding it.
I mean, it's still holding 5% of it.
5% yeah. So, but that's the point.
So anyway.
Yeah, but they're sending all the troops there every single day.
I mean, this is like the focal point of the war right now.
So both are. That's the point.
I know, but you're saying Ukraine, you know, that, that Ukraine is playing this, this big game, you know, but.
Aren't they also being bogged down in back mood?
Shouldn't they be...
Yeah, that's what I'm saying.
I don't think it was a right for decision.
I think that the Ukrainians would be better placed to withdraw, regroup, and re-you know, focus on other areas.
But again, I'm not privy to details that you guys aren't.
So, yeah, it's a tough one.
I can't say I'm 100% on it.
Yeah, so, Von, I want to ask you, based on what Piotr has just said and John has said,
they're basically saying that Zelensky has made a terrible decision
to basically focus on Bahmoud and send troop after troop there
and so first of all do you agree with them
and if you do then how much of a loss on those lives are on
Zelinsky's hands and therefore is that a problem going forward
where later on he may get blamed for all these casualties?
It's absolutely a strategic mistake
they probably should have pulled out months ago
if not more than months ago
I think someone said once you lose a brigade, it's time to pull out.
I don't disagree with that.
We're led to believe that there's eight years worth of fortifications built behind it would draw to nose.
You generally want to preserve the life of soldiers, trade territory for time, as it will be, or pull back to make smaller lines.
to, that are more easily defend,
that are more easier to defend
and require a higher concentration of force to overwhelm.
It's, it's absurd.
I think that both sides calling it a meat grinder
and both sides claiming to be intentionally using it
as a meat grinder is telling,
because it's a hell of a meat grinder.
As for how much Zelensky is responsible for,
I mean, if he gave the, uh,
The order, if you were, because I remember not long ago, Zaluzini had said that I believe that it would be wise to withdraw.
And if you overrode that order, if you overrode that, then yeah, it's on his, it's on his hands.
But how severe that is is going to depend on how severe the losses are, which we're not going to know until the smoke clears.
I also want to speak about two quick points if I can.
One about the leveling of cities, as Ian said.
I think everyone rules out the massive stockpile of non-precision weapons that can be used.
And if they want to start leveling cities, they would start busting out those.
But that, I think, is far, far up on the escalation ladder.
Yeah.
Yeah, that's what I was referring to, right?
I mean, I wouldn't think it's a genocidal war.
They want to destroy Ukraine.
And if that's the case, why haven't they just used their non-precision weapons?
I mean, I'm talking battleships, right?
I'm talking just artillery, this bombardment of the cities like that.
And we've seen this been done before in multiple wars.
I mean, it happened to Belgrade, well, put most part.
And so this idea, right, this idea that, you know, they want to level Ukraine,
we want to destroy it, completely kill all the people there.
It doesn't make a lot of sense.
doesn't add up.
Well,
great level.
Just to interject
real quick,
you do have to be
within range
for artillery and
other things
and they don't have
battleships at all.
And so any
fires coming from a ship
is going to be
a long range
precision fires,
which is the point
I was trying to make.
I mean,
you can use Murfs, right?
You can use Murfs.
You can use what?
Like multiple...
Yeah, rocket launchers, once again, you do have to be within range.
And I think there is a Russian reticence.
Now, this kind of speaks to your points as well, both Vaughn and Ian,
that there is a Russian reticence to launch strikes from Belarus, right?
But still, you do have to be within range,
which would require another strike from Belarus,
specifically a ground campaign.
And the last little point I want to bring up for now was...
Personally, like, Zell know, I'm a strategic analyst.
I'm not a, I'm not a gambler.
I don't, I don't like treating wars like sports.
Yeah, but Mickey will bet you 10,000.
Make it 20, I'll take you to do so.
Yeah, I don't care.
I don't like treating wars like sports.
I mean, who's winning and who's losing.
It's not, it's not like we get like, oh, it's three to one for side A.
No, we don't know until the objects are achieved,
or until one side capitulates or until it's ended by negotiation.
There's no winning or losing.
It's more of a stalemate than anything else,
and that's not even the correct term for it.
It's, it's, I just think it's, I just think,
The partisanship takes a very serious and frankly tragic affair and tribunizes it like it's a game and that is not cool.
I'm with Vaughn on this. I mean, it's not a team support. You've got to stop treating it like, but there's a human character.
If it is a stalemate, isn't that basically U.S. winning?
No, I mean, look at your economy.
No, it's a stalemate.
No, no, if it's a stale mate, because with the U.S., they're not losing any men.
I know they're spending money and seven.
Well, men are not what matters, right?
It's the economy.
It's always the economy.
Men are expendable.
You can waste 50,000 people in Vietnam.
You can waste 20,000 people in Afghanistan or whatever.
You know, I don't think 30,000 people died there.
But from suicide, yes, right?
Long-term ramifications.
Right.
nobody wins in those situations. And with this, you know, ongoing conflict in Ukraine,
America has spent a lot of money and spent a lot of capital there. Europe has more or less kind of
cut itself with its energy dependence on Russia. Nobody wins. At the end of the day, nobody wins.
Like, we need peace.
At this point, I just want to finish to...
To the question, at this point, it's a war of attrition.
So how do you even gauge, I'm calling it a steelmate, yes, but it's a war of attrition.
So we can't even gauge, like, who's winning or losing because what metrics are we using?
It's not about territory.
It's not, territory isn't the big objective anymore.
It's about attritting the other side as much as possible.
And because we don't have clarity on, on loss figures, we don't know what that is.
And I could say for sure we do not have clarity, at least on this panel about the casualty figures, because there's nothing to substantiate the 200,000 casualties for a casualties figure.
And we have at least one person in here claiming those 200,000 casualties are all KIAs and not casualties.
So let's just keep that in mind.
And as far as the U.S. winning because it's stalemate, I don't know.
It depends on how long it drags on, because the longer it drags on, the worse it is for European economies.
And with an election in the States around a corner, you got to keep that in mind.
So I just want to just go to, I mean, I want to go to Mickey, but I'm afraid he might try and bet me and I haven't.
Hey, listen, so we'll have a pact. I won't bet you, promise. And I think I do want to respond.
It's not allowed to my religion you see. So I don't. Oh, yeah, mate. Listen, I will, I will take you to dinner.
And no bets. That's a promise, a one-way handshake. Listen, I understand Avon's point about not being flippant. I understand very well. I lived in warrants in Ukraine many years and have many friends in Ukraine. And there's a reason why I'm doing it specifically with certain people, not with everybody. Because I think
You know, it's fair enough to be in a safe place and to make predictions without consequences.
But, you know, if you're, you know, on the spending most of your days working from the internet,
you can make these predictions without having any consequences to your prediction.
This is why when I hear people say these predictions that Russia is going to win the war,
I say, let's find a way to make it so there's something at stake here when you make these predictions.
So you don't just throw them out.
That's why I introduced this idea of betting.
But if there's a better way, shake of a hand, donation to charity,
Absolutely. And Patrick, you know, I'll take you to dinner too. You're going to come with me and Suleiman.
You know, get your best suit on and put a smile on that face. And we're going to have a nice juicy dinner together.
You don't need to wear a suit to Taco Bell. What are you talking about?
Hey, man. Wherever you want to go, put on your best, whatever you want.
Mickey, Mickey, is Park's your-
guys? Mickey.
Mickey. Mickey. Mickey. Is Parks your last name or is that just a nickname?
No, no.
So you don't risk anything by making predictions because you're...
I'm willing to risk money.
Because you're flying under a sock puppet identity.
I'm willing to risk money.
That's why I agree to bet.
We can have...
Since Sincilliamon can't be the banker, maybe Mario can do it.
That's an immature...
There's greater currencies than money in this world, Mickey.
And if you were flying under your own name and your own ID, then you'd be risking something.
Hey, hey, guys.
Sorry to Bustin here, but Mario's team asked me to be here,
and I've only got a few minutes.
I'm sitting in an airport and found a quiet corner.
So, sorry about this.
Let me just go in and say,
they asked me to come and speak a little bit about the nuclear situation.
I'm just back from some meetings at the International Atomic Energy Agency,
not on Ukraine, but the conversation is, of course, in the air there.
And, you know, Russia is an important member of the IAEA,
and they had staff members.
And it's the first time to see...
Rose Adam, the state atomic energy corporation folks since before the invasion started.
So that was interesting to hear their point of view.
And I just stopped into one of the Central European nations to check out,
to meet with nuclear plan officials who are running a major part of their country's economy
off, still off of Russian fuel.
So a lot of really interesting little things going on.
I think what I'll do is say about one minute on the state of Zaporis,
including the most recent news that there's...
explosive stored on the facility and then I would like to open it up to questions.
I know there's a little bit of pinned up demand for nuclear stuff and I don't know if I'll be able to get to it all,
but I'll try to get really succinct, fair answers as quickly as possible and then anyone else that didn't get their question answered, as always, just send me a DM.
I won't necessarily get to it in the next hour, but I will, I answer every DM, it's the best of my ability.
So, Saperies.
If you don't mind, is the explosive, the landmine? Is that, are those the same story?
It's not clear. So this is one of the problems with the stories.
There's a game of telephone, there's the different news reports, there's the original reports.
The main thing I wanted to say is that no matter what explosives are stored in and around at the moment,
the main thing to remember is that of the six nuclear reactors that were on at Zaporizha at one point in the last couple years,
Two were off at the time of the capture of the plant in March of last year, leaving four on.
All four of those have been since turned off in the months following the capture of the plant until the last reactor that was on went off sometime last fall.
What this means is that the decay heat, the amount of heat that must be constantly removed from the cores of these reactors so they don't heat up, start boiling water, and start melting, causing a meltdown.
The amount of heat is now fallen to levels so low that a relatively small amount of attention and equipment
is all that it takes to stop any of these very slow moving accidents from happening.
So what I'm trying to say is the energetic level of the plant is extremely low,
incredibly low.
It's...
basically to the level where one person working with a bucket could practically provide enough water coolant to just lift it up from the reservoir to stop water from boiling off and causing a problem.
That's not an amazing situation, but I guess the best engineering way to put it is this.
My concern now is almost totally with personnel at the plant, not like their health because of radiation, but just their health status at the plant.
Yeah.
and the level of damage of the equipment is sort of the proverbial Solomon's baby where both sides claim this plant now.
This site is a crown jewel of industry, not just in Eastern Europe, it's the largest nuclear plant by capacity in Europe.
And Europe has not shown a great ability to build more of these things.
So they're kind of precious, extremely difficult to replace.
And the fight will be over this piece of equipment that is effectively worth undamaged, tens of billions of dollars.
in future energy revenues.
And that's the stakes.
It's not an issue of like, if the plant has an issue,
there's going to be a cloud of radiation that causes health damage outside of the vicinity.
No, that's something I was worried at the start of the capture of the plant
because so much energy was in those reactors,
so much heat had to be continuously removed to avoid a...
you could call it a Fukushima Daiichi-style meltdown.
Those stakes have been drastically lowered,
and it's more an issue of panic
or an issue of, say, street fighting
that involves workers or their families.
That's the concern I have more than...
and the damage of the equipment.
Call it the insurance cost,
the replacement cost of the plant,
not is there going to be radiation health effects
immediately outside the facility?
All right, so I would love to have some questions.
Sorry, Mark.
Um...
So good to see you. From the last time we spoke on a space, what's the status with the IAEA sort of dynamics there?
Because from what I remember reading, you know, there was a bit of political paralysis.
The, I remember reading something in the Security Council Dialogue under the Russian presidency last, you know, a couple weeks ago, given what's been going on with the plant.
Could you expand a little bit more on the, on the UN bodies, uh,
perspectives and and you know recent reviews of the actual plan so one of the biggest things i was
wondering about when i went to vienna since i haven't actually dealt with the i aia before i haven't
actually been to their headquarters before last week um was what the mood actually was and i
And maybe it's all hidden, but essentially I found a relatively high degree of collegiality there.
And what that means from, of course, the Ukrainian perspective is something like, almost like, I don't know, collaboration is maybe too harsh.
But on both sides...
almost certainly think that the IAEA is being unfair to them and too accommodating to the other side.
The IAEA has critical functions that are run by Russian nationals, but the spirit of the place, dare I say,
I know I may get some pushback for saying that there's such thing as the spirit of this, you know, Vienna headquarters is of fairly strict dedication to the mission and
people who have worked with each other for years and years and years and there's a seems to be a really high degree of trust and cooperation there.
And because most of that personnel is Russian, who's from, you know, of the people from Russia and Ukraine, most of the folks that work at the IAEA from that part of the world are Russian.
I think that does, I don't want to say influence the way they look at things, but it makes it, I think, difficult for Ukraine.
to see the IAEA stage of permanent presence at the plant and say, you know,
careful guys, careful guys, we're sort of neutral referees, we're just going to be here and watch.
I think it's difficult for them to see that presence that what they consider,
and I think possibly rightfully so, an enemy occupied industrial facility that they plan to retake.
So, yeah, in terms of statements, there are people who say that IAA is scaremongering whenever they say that this is on a knife edge or it tips.
There's a possible catastrophe that could happen if there isn't a, you know,
demilitarization but um i don't think that a demilitarized zone is likely to happen until or in
if russia thinks they almost certainly can't hold the facility they might start calling for
a demilitarized zone around the plant in which case things get very interesting with the iA
and that's not clear how they're going to respond but no one's going to be perfectly happy
I've heard from folks in the U.S.
that IA is being too accommodating.
I think they're trying to do an almost impossible task as well as they can.
And I was impressed by their professionalism.
And none of that means that they're going to have influence over the final stage of this,
which may include something like, I don't know, amphibious assault to try to take back the facility
or sabotage of the plant so that nobody can have it.
That's the final stage of the competition.
comparison with solomon's baby if somebody decides that they'd rather it not be functional
than be in the hands of the other party i still don't see that as a major radiation risk i see it as a
major panic risk but only briefly until people move on to other things and i see it as a major damage
risk for the facility taking years to come back online if ever if it's severely damaged enough so
Sorry if that's a sort of long answer to your question, Piotr.
No, I appreciate it.
And just a quick follow-up.
What about this, from what I recall, there was reports that the concerns about the competency of the Russian engineers that were working there.
I don't know if you recall early on in the war, there was the Red Forest.
and that there was, you know, poor treatment or awareness of radiation exposure.
I don't know if that's been addressed.
So let me address that really quickly.
The stories died out.
The initial stories were dumb Russian troops, dug in the forest, got fatal radiation poisoning,
and bust loads of them were heading back to Russia to die.
Right.
I've been discussing that with experts on soil radiation and other things.
And as far as we can tell, that part was always bullshit.
It's likely that soldiers had some amount of psychosomatic disturbances if the stories were true that they were visibly acting injured or hurt or sick.
But no, there was not such amounts of radiation that that could have ever been physically true.
I just want to answer that one really quick.
No, that's fine. Thanks a lot. I'll pass back to everyone's to tell me.
Yeah, that was like a daily mail article. You shouldn't source them.
Yeah, John, go ahead.
Okay, thanks. Just one question I had for Mark strictly about the...
So are we seeing... So you said it's more so like a damage problem, like so for, you know, projected earnings that the...
Based off the output, you know, future output from the facility...
there's really no chance, right, that there's going to be any type of mind down, right?
So essentially what it sounds like you're saying.
So why are, is that, so why do we see countries on both sides kind of making that as like kind of, you know, propagating that story?
And then just like a quick follow-up question would be how much money kind of would it make, depending on what type of damage and what kind of components of this facility have to be damaged?
to where it won't be able to work, it simply produced output.
Sorry for my lack of correct terminology as well.
No, both of those were really great.
Let me start with the first one.
This is a novel situation.
A nuclear plant has never been taken in war.
So there's a lot of people on edge trained to be on edge through decades of worrying about nuclear in general.
I'm actually shocked there isn't more concerned daily.
I eventually stopped tweeting updates about serious incidences at the plant because nobody cared.
I mean, I'm a little bit vain and I care that my information is seen and spread.
And people just stopped caring about updates like, oh, the power lines to the plant were destroyed again.
This means the plant's running on emergency backup generators, like one of the precursors of
of Fukushima Daiichi was needing to run on backup generators and the backup generators being damaged, right?
So I'm almost shocked there isn't more concern.
I think there's an issue with the, I'll use another idiom, boy who cried wolf,
the story about a boy who screams that there's danger too often,
and then he isn't believed and eventually there is danger.
In this case, I don't know that the wolf is ever going to come.
You ask about the meltdowns.
If there was damage to the fuel, at this point we're talking about an extremely slow unfolding,
like over multiple days or even weeks of water getting hotter, starting to boil.
There's an immense amount of time for relatively easy interventions compared to Fukushima Daiichi when there were hours of
or even minutes in some case to make the right decisions,
or at Chernobyl where there was microseconds to try,
I mean, there was no chance to stop.
Once Chernobyl was in a position to blow up, it just went, and there was nothing anyone was going to be able to do.
At Fukushima Daiichi, there's arguably several intervention moments that either taken would have limited the scope of damage possibly.
We're still hashing that out 11 years later, but since no one died of radiation, that gives you an upper bound.
It certainly cost a lot of money and scared a lot of people and caused some scared nuclear countries like Germany to
hurry up their phase out and stuff, but it didn't kill people with like radiation damage.
Then in this case, the worst that we're looking at is if fuel rods, these are metal rods that carry
ceramic, so like uranium dioxide ceramic, like imagine coffee cup materials, but heavier because it's got uranium
instead of a lighter metal.
that getting hotter, hotter, hotter, boiling off water, and eventually starting to slightly melt the metal around it.
These are, it would take an enormous amount of time now to get to that point, and almost no intervention required to stop it.
And if it were to go, these reactors have much stronger, thicker, tougher containment shells than anything that you could have found at Fukushima and Aichi in Japan.
So there's like multiple layers of things that protect.
protect even a non-lethal accident from happening. So it's just we would have a ton of lead time,
I suppose, John. Now, on the value of the electricity from the plant, as you may have noticed,
it's a bit of an electricity, slow running now, but a big electricity crisis in Europe. That means,
you know, electricity is extremely complicated and I could fall down a rabbit hole and that's a danger
for me. So I'm going to stay away and just say turbines, cost
cost like on the order of between tens of millions to low hundreds of millions.
Even more if you think of the shutdown time, lost revenue and the replacement effort to bring in
their special equipment, ship the turbine. And by the way, just for anyone who doesn't know,
the turbine is the big spinny thing with blades, steam moves through it, pushing it along.
The steam goes out the other end and goes back to the reactor. And then...
you've got the spinning magnets on this axle and that's what drives the electricity system.
So that big item is not part of the inside of the nuclear containment.
It's separate. That thing can get damaged or hurt and you can still protect the nuclear plant.
The story about the explosives was then in the turbine hall, not inside the containment,
this thick like 1.2 meters concrete and steel shell that's around the reactors.
So damages to that turbine is something that I see is a very easy way to sabotage the plant from retreating forces.
There's actually a weird precedent in Europe of somebody upset and sabotaging a turbine and it costing about 500 million between their replacement turbine, lost income and the labor to rebuild it.
That happened in Belgium and there's suspicion of who it did, but some disgruntled employer contractor had access to the lubricant valve.
at a nuclear plant was able to unscrew the valves such as it started draining the lubricant system,
and it burned up the turbine.
And one of the biggest reactors in the low countries without a commission for over a year,
and they've never announced who did it or that they found it,
that's such an easy thing for an insider to do and burn up the turbine.
It wasn't a nuclear safety risk.
It was instead a plant revenue and profitability thing.
So those are ways you could damage the plant that would be,
possible to repair, but it would take a while.
Damage to the reactor.
Now, that's a much more expensive problem.
I see that severe damage to the reactor system may permanently remove one of those six reactors or two,
depending on what's done, and repairing would be in the low billions.
That's the way I see it.
Hey, Mark, can I ask you a question as to why you think interest in this has waned, at least...
according to your perceptions of your own social media content or whatever um there have been
numerous occasions maybe it's dwindled somewhat when claims have been made that russia was
imminently going to carry out a false flag attack as relates to the zapparisia plan right i pulled
up some examples yesterday just to refresh my memory i have a congressman
Rajah Morthy, the Democrat, who is actually the co-chair of the CCP select committee in the House, he tweeted it just as a fact.
I mean, he stated as fact last August.
that Russia was, quote, carrying out a false flag operation at the plant.
You had Dimitri Kobello, who's the foreign minister of Ukraine,
saying that he and Blinken, the Secretary of State, Anthony Blinken,
are in firm agreement last October that Russia is on the verge of doing a, quote, false flag.
you know, it was a seemingly conventional wisdom in much of the media for quite a while
that Russia was shelling its own forces in the nuclear plant.
I don't know why they would do that necessarily,
because they think it would be fun to expose one another to radiation poison.
I mean, no explanation was ever really given for that.
And yet, it seems as though, this litany of just nonstop,
provably false, we later find.
Accusations out Russia's conduct vis-à-vis that plant
maybe to sort of pollute the information landscape to some degree
where people don't know what to believe anymore.
And so maybe they just in general dial down their interest in the subject.
It seems as though the...
issue of sort of nuclear safety or preventing a catastrophe of this plant has been subordinated
to the wider sort of like propaganda imperatives of the warring parties. And that's probably
not the most rational set up to have. And so I wonder if you think that has any influence. And maybe
the most striking example of this phenomenon was that while Russia was being roundly accused
all over the place of shelling its own
forces inside the nuclear plant and look i don't know what rush is capable of love i guess it's
possible that they might do that but there's never any proof given it was just asserted as usual
usually through these anonymous leaks or dodgy so-called uh intelligence analysis around the same
attempt same time that was happening we find out and this was only reported you know six months later
that the you in the times to their credit in april early april uh they published a report
the times of london that is published a report
chronicling for the first time that the Ukraine military had launched an assault on the plant in October,
meaning they attempted to recapture the plant, and they were firing ammunition, munitions, in and around the plant.
Now, I don't know that there was any sort of fallout from that in terms of like an actual nuclear fallout of it or anything, but clearly, maybe not the most safety-minded,
action to take. And yet,
Nick, there was no...
Can I jump in? I think we...
But, but if so, let's quickly wrap up.
So if there's no scorn or no criticism or no even just informed scrutiny of that decision
by Ukraine to take that brash of an action...
in the direct perimeter of the nuclear plant.
And yet Russia is just accused over and over again of shelling itself in the plant.
I mean, do you think there's like a discrepancy that emerges that then might redound to the disadvantage of those who would seek a more rational perspective on how worried they should be about some sort of calamity here?
Okay, so first of all, there's a, I don't think there's anything anyone's going to do, IAA included.
to keep the plant safe or not other than the people there working at the plant.
So the fact that there's a lot of stories going around,
I don't think that that's going to influence safety at the plant one way or another,
for better or worse, depending on your point of view.
I definitely think that the number of stories,
and I will say that each of the stories you brought up,
and I'm glad you mentioned some of these,
has an other side counterpart and explanation.
I'm not here to adjudicate between those,
just that the claim is that it wasn't an intentional shelling.
shitty shells that were launched on arcs over the plant.
And by the way, again, I'm not here to talk about shells and do that.
Ah, assent and stuff like that.
I'm just saying that the claim is that crappy quality Russian shells shot in arcs that were
dangerously over the plant with the plant being used as just a, or the town in the plant,
surroundings being used as a staging area was what was falling.
Let me go ahead and say that in...
Is that a professional opinion that they were, quote-unquote, shitty shells?
Well, if it is, it isn't for me because I don't work on that stuff.
I'm telling you that you say there's no explanation being given from the other side.
I'm telling you, I'm not here to adjudicate between those.
But Mark, when the existence of shelling was reported in popular media in the U.S.,
meaning there would be some news items saying the separation nuclear plant is under shelling,
It would just be stated, like sometimes they would just omit who did the shelling.
Wait, that's fine. I'm not, I understand that's one.
What people say about what happened isn't going to influence safety on the ground in my opinion.
I asked you about popular opinion or public consumption of news around this issue.
I know, but it was a very complicated multi-part question.
I'm trying to get to it.
You're right.
I don't know.
Okay.
Let me.
No worries.
No worries.
That's fine.
Because you were, the general framing, I think you were absolutely on the constant stories about stuff of the plant, things that did happen or might happen or could have happened or should.
All of that without any meltdowns as a payoff is going to make people just realize that nuclear plants are kind of tough, kind of robust, and seemingly aren't melting down despite all the scare stories.
And I think it's like I said, sort of boy who cried wolf with maybe no wolf at the end.
What I wanted to say about this shelling is that accidental shelling is not going to cut the mustard here, guys.
These are 1.2 meter thick.
heavily steel, like steel rebar reinforced, thick rebar.
We're talking like inches thick and bunches of these with an ultra thick.
Like this is not going to be an issue of these shells being popped.
by accidental it's going to take intentional effort and really intentional effort nuclear demolition is a
big expensive lucrative field for the reason that these plants are built extremely tough and so i'm not
worried about a dud shell if that's the story or a false slagetop from either side causing how about
how about volleys of automatic grenade launch launch or fire that won't that won't do the job
Okay.
Yeah, that won't, that won't get the job done.
It's too thick.
Is that, can't, do we concerned about it?
I mean, fire-
No, well...
It's just the hall of mirrors.
Should we be concerned about people panicking because they're worried about the launching of those causing an incident?
Those aren't going to cut it.
The parts that are, even the spent fuel and canisters, like, it's just not going to do the job in trying to intentionally spread radiation.
And even then, let me do one more thing that I think is really important.
Chernobyl reactor four blew up April, 1986.
the reactor and the turbine building shared a lot of facilities with reactor number three.
Reactor number three stayed online for daily electricity production for 14 years
until the Ukrainian government got a payoff from Europe to shut down their own power plant and the workers were pissed.
So what I'm saying is I think people radically over index on this radiation danger supposedly because the Chernobyl plant was built
nowhere near as thick and tough
as the, it doesn't even have a containment
in it like the Zapparisia
units are. It's just not
Nobody wants to be, the engineer says never, because then you look like an enormous douche, even if people are scared of something happening and you aren't acknowledging their feelings that they're scared.
But I'm going to go ahead and stick my neck out and say, I am not worried about any unintentional damage here.
Would you think it's fair to say that to the extent this boy who cried Will phenomenon is the correct explanation for why there's been a somewhat,
somewhat of an ebbing of interest in this as far as you can see.
Those cries of wolf are almost exclusively coming from pro-Ukraine partisans,
whether it's the Ukraine government, whether it's the U.S. government, EU, et cetera,
or just supporters and media activists, whomever,
who are making these claims about some kind of imminent catastrophe at the plant
and kind of ginning up fears and using it to,
bolster their moral indictment of Russia.
That's the source of it, at least in the
quote West, because nothing Russia says about
pretty much anything is taken at face value or believed
or transmitted as
some reflecting reality, so it would have to be from
Ukraine. Now, just to be clear, I'm not
countenancing Russia seizing
the plant by force in the first
place. Clearly, that is not the greatest
move for nuclear safety either.
But if there's a information
ecosystem problem,
the perpetrators of the problem, it's all coming from one direction, or it seems like the
lion's share of it certainly is. Can I say this, Michael? First of all, really quick, very, very,
very, very fast bio for those who are hearing from me for the first time. In college, I got a Russian
degree and engineering degrees, switched from mechanical and aerospace engineering to nuclear
engineering in Europe. I was in UK for graduate studies. My Russian's really rusty, but that's
where I spent until I lived in
Europe for grad school, that's where I'd spent
by far the most time overseas
had two summers studying at
St. Petersburg State University, another one
in another former Soviet
Republic working in engineering
internship at a factory. Like
I'm not any kind of reflexive anti-Russian.
I've got dear friends who were in Russia.
The host families I stayed with, I've read a ton of Russian literature and history.
I mean, not even just for the college degree, just like, and I play piano and I specialize
in Russian music.
I'm not a Russian hater.
And so just you just.
You don't have to worry about me being, you know, some kind of blind, Russian, illiterate, hating not.
I can read the text that I want in the original.
And if I get some practice and stop sucking at Russian, I'll sound good and sound semi-fluent within a few months if I were to return there.
So not any kind of anti-Russian.
Have you read war in peace and you don't have to worry about.
Russian?
No, I mean, there's some snobbery and like, oh, you know, Tolstores, the type of writer that non-Russians want to read, whereas Russians want to read Pushkin.
But no, I haven't read it in its original, but there are other texts that I, much shorter that I have.
but yeah thanks for the question um anyway so all of that to say that if you're asking
i mean just given that you made that proviso maybe it'd be worth me just echoing you in that
i don't have any anti- ukrainian sentiment at all ever people think that i have i guess because
of my perspective on u.s foreign policy or whatever likewise nor do i have a particular affinity
for russia i don't don't have strong opinions about like the moral sanctity of nation states
So, you know, I have a great. So just second. I only have a few minutes here. So moving forward on your actual question, which just says, who's polluting the information landscape? I took a lot of shit in the opening days of the war when I was a tiny little account. Nobody knew who I was really for openly denouncing. I'm just going to say denouncing the claim.
that because there was an attack on Zaporizia, it could blow up like 10 Chernobyl.
And I actually got a lot of people upset at me saying, even if that's true, you don't have to quote tweet the, you know, Kuleba himself, and you don't have to quote, treat Zillinsky.
That's overly aggressive.
You're being political.
So I've gotten actually stuff from both sides of people being upset at the way I was, I'm, I'll just admit, I was trying to police the information environment from the perspective of a nuclear engineer, right?
Having said that, I will say that a lot of stuff that gets said from the Russian side is not for international consumption and rarely breaks out of like the Russophone world and the Russophone telegrams and stuff like that.
So although there's an immense amount of noise outside of Russia that's not the Russian side, that's going to be mostly what I've heard.
there were time to time statements like, oh, Ukraine is preparing a false flag attack.
Ukraine's preparing to damage these reactors that were being careful, caretakers of, that sort of thing.
So I will say this. I do not begrudge.
And just because I love nuclear and I work in nuclear doesn't mean I'm going to change on this subject.
If Ukraine decides that they want to do an amphibious assault and take back the reactors, everything that I said about safety still stands.
The people at risk are not outsiders that are going to get radiation damage because the plant's going to blow up.
The people at risk are people in the town.
Any garrison forces, any like that, and any eventual future Ukrainians or Russians who were counting on the electricity, that's going to be the victim not like clouds of radiation going over Stockholm or something like that.
Does that make sense?
So the stakes to me are the plant, the health of either garrison troops or invading troops, and the citizens and workers based in Inogadar.
Is that fair?
I mean, yeah, I mean, I think it's fair.
I commend you for...
pushing back against those initial outcries around the possibility that was being proclaimed
of like an imminent turmoil.
But they said 10 times Chernobyl.
I forget they'd even use that kind of extreme.
There was a variation.
Some people said 6x.
Some people said 10x.
And they bounced around.
But that gets to the heart of my point.
Because the reason why those claims were being put out at that moment was because
Cabello and Zelensky and their...
colleagues in the Ukraine government were actively lobbying for greater U.S.
slash NATO military intervention in Ukraine, and they were citing the prospect of nuclear
catastrophe to encourage that intervention. And so the higher priority...
Can I just say, if you were there, you might have too.
Well, I mean, look, and like...
No, I understand. I'm not either. That's why I called it out.
Well, you know, I like to think that if what I was...
Even if I was there and I was calling for something that more or less would probably approximate the closest thing we have had so far in human history to, you know, World War III or a global nuclear war or something.
Like I'd like to think that I would have enough presence of mind to maybe...
kind of hedge my beth somewhat before I demand somebody
intervened militarily in my combat zone, but that's...
No, no, I hear you, I know. I heard it.
But the point is, but the accuracy of information regarding what was going on
was subordinated to what was then seen as the higher moral political strategic priority of banging these war drums, generating a war fervor to, quote, for, to quote, support Ukraine.
And of course, that's the idea that Ukraine is being victimized by a potential Chernobyl is going to serve that end.
So I guess my, but the basic point is, if one is worried about the landscape being polluted informationally, then at a certain point, like, the culprits have to be identified.
I'm not saying that Russia doesn't bear any responsibility for it.
I think they actually maybe bear primary responsibility for in that they're the ones who took the plant in the first place.
So then let me say this.
The Russians conquered a plant that was in territory that they were going to conquer.
And that set a new historical precedent.
And Ukrainians set a bunch of bullshit about it as it was getting conquered.
So there you go.
There's my both sides.
Okay, guys, I'm like two or three more minutes.
If I don't get to you, always just DM me.
I'll get to it, I promise.
But one last question, I suppose.
I've got...
i've got a question for michael actually i just jumped back on um i'm not sure if saman
you've got questions for mark before i asked my question for my dad i was gonna ask michael
yes so my oh iian's here as well um so so michael you want to have a question for mark
can i can i have a 30 seconds before he goes yeah of course go ahead yeah thanks i'm not a nuclear
engineer or a nuclear physicist but i did study it heavily
in my Soviet studies and in my, well, nuclear weapon studies.
And you've done an amazing job at explaining it.
Thank you. I appreciate your expertise.
And people really underestimate how robust these things are built.
That's all.
I'm feeling jealous.
I really appreciate your input coming in here, setting records straight on the dangers of nuclear fallout.
I think a lot of people imagine that it's going to be another Chernobyl or Fukushima, and it's clearly not the case.
As you've explained, there are many ways to stop that from happening.
And furthermore, as Vaughn just articulated, you know, simplifying grenade launchers at the place is not going to do anything.
Yeah, thank you, Mike, what he's with you sorry. I really appreciate that guys. Can you hear me, Mark?
Yeah, I can.
Yeah, so that must be, yeah, no, Mark, Mark.
So obviously, it's going to piss off the orders because I jumped off for a bit.
Ian can't hear me.
Let me bring Ian down and bring him back up.
So Mike, just the question that I had for you is because I missed the part and I'll listen to the recording again.
I was just off for a bit.
But you're talking about the nuclear plant that the Russians were trying to take over.
I think they eventually took it over.
And there was a lot of media attention on.
when the Russians were attacking the plant, they were using grenade launchers,
and then the narrative that was built up is that that could lead to another Chernobyl.
Is that the story that you were just covering that I missed?
Yeah, yeah, and it was always false, and I'm pretty sure I had this correctly,
and I was watching basically as the events were unfolding,
pretty sure it was defensive troops that had the grenade launchers that they were firing at tanks and other
armored personnel carriers in the employee parking lot and then the return fire was in the direction of one of the reactor
containment and that was what set everybody off and made everybody scared and then there was a fire in the employee training building that caused really graphic images considering it was at a nuclear plant but
the reactors were not and when that was a physical threat there that was a few months ago correct
It was just over a year ago.
Oh, wow.
But here's what the Times article says that I was referencing us to that assault that was launched by Ukraine on the plant in October.
Quote, a Ukrainian special forces team boarded a 40-foot armored patrol boat taking up positions,
and its heavy machine guns and MK19 automatic grenade.
grenade launchers. So that would suggest that there were automatic grenade launchers that were employed as a weapon of war in the vicinity of the plant, right?
Hey, look, if that if look in the end, if you take a nuclear plant by force, you got to be ready for people to take it back by force and it's it's just fair play at that point.
If there and with the reactors off significantly less hazard not just to the plant people, but to general panic to retake a nuclear plant with the reactors off.
So final word I'd say is the reactors off.
gives the gift of time in responding to any problem.
The grid goes down.
That was a near-death sentence once the Fukushima Daiichi backup coolant diesel generators.
When those were flooded and the power was lost from outside the plant and the reactors turned off,
but we're still making a ton of heat, that was very close to a rapid death sentence.
It...
And still no one died from radiation.
It's just, you know, severely damaged Japan's entire energy system because they shut off all the reactors and decommissioned the damaged plant.
But in the case of Zaporizia, I anticipate that even a storming and assault and taking of the plant would lead to at least some of the reactors returning to service within, I don't know, some period would.
after the end of hostilities in that region,
you'd be able to return them to service.
Thanks a lot for coming, Mark.
I appreciate it, man.
Thanks, bro.
For sure.
Send your questions by DM,
and good to be hosted,
and thanks for the tough...
Thanks for the tough Inquisition, Michael.
I actually do appreciate it,
and I'll be glad to stay in touch.
I thought...
I went easy on you, Mark.
All right.
All right, guys, guys, I want to go, Michael, I want to go a question to you.
Again, thanks, Mark.
Just going back to topic, we started this space, and Ian's here as well, so I'm glad.
Michael, in terms of the drone that was over the Kremlin, you might have answered this already,
but I want to get your thoughts on it, and not more about who causes it, because the way I look at it is, like,
whatever scenario you look at, it is a serious escalation.
If it's, obviously, Ukraine directly sending out that drone symbolically or to kill Putin,
and...
That's getting close, if it's particular Putin,
you've kind of crossed that red line that we always talk about.
If it's symbolic, you're getting close to that red line.
If it's separatists that sent out the drone,
Still people operating within Ukraine.
I think we had a panelist earlier say that there was a bounty, not a bounty, but there were prizes given to anyone that could do something symbolic before the Russian anniversary.
I can't remember the freedom anniversary, whatever it's called, the one on the ninth.
Victory Day.
Victory Day.
Victory Day.
And then you've got the possibility of this being a false flag operation,
which is also concerning because then if it is a false flag operation,
then it will be Russia using it as an excuse for something to come.
And that thing would be some sort of escalation.
So these are the three or four explanations that I could think of,
and all of them kind of indicate to an escalation in the conflict.
Where do you stand on this, Michael?
And then I'd love to go to Ian and other speakers.
Okay.
Yeah, so first of all, I don't know who caused the drone bomb.
I know you said we don't need to address that.
But I do think it's worth pointing out that all of us, not just me, unless you have insider information, in which case, please leak it to me over signal, none of us know who the precise circumstances by which this attack was carried out.
And yet, if you notice, when the news came out that this happened...
The entire media ecosystem, at least in the U.S. slash the West,
was just absolutely flooded with pure bullshit.
And I say bullshit almost in like a technical sense,
in that people were just making up bullshit that they couldn't possibly know
as to this being a false flag event.
And that aimless speculation then gets...
repackaged as like news articles somehow because one of the main
progenitors of the false flag conspiracy theory
and it is a conspiracy theory in that if you're asserting that something is that
some of that was a false flag that actually requires a conspiracy to carry out
so it actually is a conspiracy theory but nobody is going to call these false flag claims
a conspiracy theory because that might be discrediting of the credibility of the people
who traffic in them so we save that term for people who kind of you know
Spout off on
Discord or something about nonsense involving the monarchy and the blood feuds and I don't know.
Going back to the point, like how, my real question is, because I think we can, yeah, no, no, we have to speculate in the space because we're trying to get answers.
So we get both sides to speculate to educate.
We're talking about what's on TV, you know, when.
Yeah, but TV, but hey, the TV speculate as well.
Like, I give them credit.
Well, I mean, you can speculate.
Everybody takes a fact.
But here's what I was going to say.
Like what Michael is saying is that, you know, you're happy.
I love you guys.
You guys are the, you guys are, you guys are,
hold on, Ian, Ian, Ian, Ian, Ian, Ian, Ian, Ian, just too,
I let Michael, I like, because you and Michael are two of the strongest personalities
on stage.
This is going to be interesting.
So yeah, Michael, I'll let you, I'll ask you, I'll ask you to get it, Ian.
He's very disciplined before you came on Mario.
I think you've been.
I trigger him, man. I trigger him.
So Michael, my question to you, and then we'll go to Ian and then Carl as well.
Carl, good to have you on stage for the first time.
But Michael, the direct question is, I'd love the speculation of what it could be, because
it's just interesting discussion.
But more importantly, what I really want to know is...
I look at it as a serious escalation.
I think when we tweeted,
I amended the tweet,
but he called it,
like increases the risk of nuclear war.
That's how far he took it.
Which I know is kind of a bit dramatic,
but I think it's valid as well because it,
you know,
You know, you're talking about the Kremlin here.
You're talking about the heart of Russia.
First of all, are Ian and I really the strongest personalities
are the most autistic?
That's what I'm told on Twitter.
Okay, so yeah.
And the reason why I was doing that prelude to address the escalation question
by commenting on the media depictions,
because I think it's actually relevant.
Why is there such this?
furor to depict the strike as a false flag or not what it seems or not representing any kind of significant strike on the Kremlin.
Because then it wouldn't be as much of an escalation as it might be.
Like if it were proven, let's say, to have been a full-fledged assassination attempt on Putin, even the most hardcore...
foe Putin would probably have to concede if it represents some degree of an escalation, but if they don't even concede to that, then they're not required to make the escalation-related concession.
So it is relevant because speculation is fine, I guess, but I don't know, if I'm going to speculate or I feel like if one speculates, it ought to be like informed speculation or
fact-based speculation, rather than just like spouting bullshit, because that's what's been spouted for the past 24 hours or 48 hours.
And it actually has...
I think the narrative, Michael, Michael, the narrative...
Let me say something that it will trigger Ian and he'd love to respond.
Is that the discussion...
I want to take my point on this first, yeah.
Yeah, I'll let you finish your point, because I will move to Ian afterwards.
I'll say something that will trigger him.
So I'll let you finish your point first, Michael.
Okay.
So one of the reasons why everybody is told to reflexively assume that this had to have been a false flag is because Russia, the claim is Russia has this sinister pattern of always doing false flags all over the place.
Meanwhile, every single allegation of an imminent false flag that the U.S. made in the past year or Ukraine made or...
Others made with a vested interest against Russia in the war.
None of them were actually borne out, in fact.
All of them were disproven as having been false.
So ironically, the allegations of a false flag were themselves false.
Does that mean the allegations of a false flag or the false flags?
I don't know.
There's not a whole lot of coherent logic.
Here's the final point.
Here's the final point.
Here's the final one.
Go ahead, man.
Right.
So the final point is that this skews perceptions of how significant of an escalation this clearly is.
And the idea that anybody could seriously try to argue that a drone strike on the Kremlin, which we all see the footage of,
with the explosions and whatnot, that that is just ho-hum or it doesn't say anything about
the ineluctible escalation that's been inherent to this conflict from the outset.
That's delusional.
And so they have to resort to these various propaganda tactics.
Some of them are just stupid.
But whatever the reason for doing the tactic, it's meant, it has the effect of distorting
an accurate comprehension of reality, which is that you're right.
Clearly, this is a major, major step.
So, Ian, what I wanted to say is that the narrative of this being a false flag attack is, I don't think it's just like crazy.
It is speculation, but I don't think it's too far-fetched.
Yeah, so I want to get your thoughts on it because the way I look at it, and obviously I can't be sure, I can't be sure, but I think it's the most likely, I put number one as like a separatist script doing it symbolically.
Number two is...
led you know it's kind of the you know maybe like Zelensky directly or other departments within
Zelensky's administration kind of authorizing this without you without the US knowing about it because
US is not as stupid yeah I just yeah but I don't know I don't think the US will green light something like this
maybe they would but strategically just doesn't it's stupid so you know
Potentially, yeah, potentially.
Hold on, Mario.
Remember when there was the assassination car bomb attack
that killed the daughter of Dugan last August?
Yeah.
The US essentially didn't quote authorize or sign off on that either.
What they did was weeks later, leaked the New York Times,
that the Ukraine government actually did it
because Ukraine had been denying it.
So there's...
Do we know? Hold on.
Who leaked?
Hold on.
Hold on.
Before I got it to...
The government leaked it.
Okay.
The U.S. intelligence officials.
Is it officials leaked it intentionally or we don't know who leaked it to the NYT?
No, they spoke to them.
To the New York Times specifically, yeah.
Exactly.
Yeah, but do you know, but either it was it authorized to leak or was it just like some people from?
Usually is.
No, because you know how some-
You know how-
Responsible for Dugina's murder when, in fact it wasn't, right?
Ukraine did this on their own and America was distancing itself from what was clearly a terrorist attack.
Yeah, so...
What is the fact pattern, though, that leads you to believe that false flag is the most viable theory?
I mean...
No, I didn't say...
Michael, Michael, I really like you, man.
I just said it's like the third theory.
Oh, I think it's the third likely...
I think the most likely...
I still think the most likely one is either...
Number one is either separatists or directly Ukrainian government.
But I don't have the knowledge you guys have.
So maybe I'll go to.
That would be my gosh,
I would be in agreement with you there.
I think, you know, to your question, I think just addresses Michael as well.
What leads people to believe that, you know, any of this is a false flag attack, right?
I think what leads people to believe that is there is this narrative that's, you know,
mostly been put out by the mainstream media, typically the British press, right?
They're quite known for this.
claiming that, you know,
X, Y, and Z has all the hallmarks of Kremlin, you know,
like they always say this.
Like, this is like a narrative where a false flag attack happens,
whether it's in the United States or anywhere else.
I mean, not a false flag attack,
but like an actual thing happens, right?
They'll say this is all the hallmarks of Russian disinformation
or Russian false flag.
And it's like they're never able to actually cite a single point in history
where Russia has produced a false flag attack.
It has never done that.
Well, Ian, oh, Ian, the one thing that they will cite is the 1999 apartment bombings
that precipitated the launching of the next phase of the Chechnya and War,
right as Putin was coming to power as president.
But even that's a conspiracy theory.
Hold on, well, you know, I don't know the full story on that.
Matt Taivie was in Russia at the time.
He is privy to...
indications that, you know, it's at least plausible that there might have been machinations
within, you know, certain security state elements that could have been involved.
Like, I wouldn't dismiss that as being a total conspiracy theory, although it's not like
established fact either. Hold on, but hold on, but the...
Let's say that is a false flag.
Just for the sake of argument,
let's say what happened in 99 was a false flag.
The Russian state at the time was a total mess.
So it wouldn't be crazy
because certain factions are doing certain dubious stuff, whatever.
No, that makes sense.
Still, if that's the one example,
if that's the one example,
then this claim that Russia is always running around doing false flags every day,
and that's why we need to think that the drone strike was a false flag,
doesn't hold up.
It's like saying, oh, you could easily just say...
Let me let me take the mic away from me just because I want to get some thoughts from anyone else that believes this is a false flag attack
If they're like to hear evidence of how it is a false flag attack right not just some oh it's whole marks of Russian blah blah blah right that's just a silly talking point
What are my one one problems with this whole thing? I could present an argument for why yeah
I want I could be a false flag
Hold on hold on hold on just a guy trash
Yeah, yeah. So my big problems about this is, well, the Biden administration comes out and says, well, you know, maybe peace talks are on the table. But now, in light of this out of the Kremlin, peace talks are no longer possible right now. And like, it's that kind of language of posturing. And Kirby said it, Biden administration said it. And I just don't understand what to make of that, right? So if this was a Kremlin false flag, why would that then preclude any peace talks from happening? But at the same time,
is it seems to me that over the course of this entire event,
anything but peace talks have been encouraged, right?
So it's always been avoided.
It's always been changed.
Whether or not I can prove that Boris Johnson went out there and stopped peace talks
is what was floated, is what was said.
But it seems to be that everything has been going against peace talks,
and I see this happen.
And then you see the drone shot in Kiev as well.
I can't make sense of it, but all of it seems kind of suspect.
I mean, don't you agree, Mario?
Yeah, yeah, it does.
It does.
And also I'm hoping someone will push back on the false flag theory.
Like, I want someone to tell me, Mario, this is why it could be a false flag,
and these are past false flags that could make this seem more logical.
Not sure if Schizzo or Mickey or John.
Let's go to him next.
Yeah, but I think Von wouldn't think it's a false flag, Von, knowing Von.
I think Von, I'll like Vaughn Joe, sir.
Let's go to somebody who thinks it's a false flag.
Yeah, I know, exactly, exactly, Michael.
That's what I would hope, but it seems no one wants to jump in this part.
Let's go to Von first and then we can go to Intel Schenzu, I think.
Okay, yeah, it seems no one, no one thinks it's a false flag, so hold on.
Yeah, yeah, yeah, no, but before going to Vaughn,
because if one would agree with both Michael and Ian, I'm putting words in his mouth.
He's got some opinion.
All right, let's give it a show.
All right, Ian, let's give it a show.
Von, what are your thoughts?
Okay, I'm going to reiterate what I did, what I said last time we had the space before it crashed.
There are arguments for both.
There are arguments for both.
I am not sold either way.
For Ukraine doing it, I mean, we have to consider not the big narrative.
It goes, oh, they flew a drone 400, blah, blah, blah, blah, no, but there's SBU and
affiliated groups operate on the ground, so that's a possibility.
The intent would be to stoke fear of...
leading up the Victory Day, but it could also, but I don't rule out it being a false flag,
simply because of, do you have any idea how much the airspace above the Kremlin is jammed?
How much ECM is in that area?
It's ludicrous a thing that something can fly from outside and still be receiving signals.
Above the correct.
No, it must be internal.
Must be internal.
It could have...
No, I mean, I don't think that stands to reason.
I mean...
I'm also not, Michael.
No, no, hold on.
Let's get run.
Okay, sorry, go ahead.
But the thing is intent.
What's the intent?
That's what doesn't...
That's what doesn't line up because...
Russia doesn't need an excuse like this to escalate.
The whole assassination, but on the other hand, I don't blame them for capitalizing on it like they have.
This was not an assassination attempt.
He doesn't Putin does not live at the Kremlin.
He does not sleep in the Kremlin.
His office is not directly below the dome either.
This was a spectacle.
So whichever side did it, it's for spectacle.
It's for message.
It's for a message.
For Russia, it would be like, hey, look, we could use as an excuse to go one rung higher on the escalation ladder to prove once more that we have escalation dominance.
But like I said, I don't know who did this, but I will not rule out that it's a false flag because someone has to explain to me how it got through all those layers of ECM.
Let me, let me, before you jump in, before you jump in anyone, Michael, that was meaning you.
I want to kind of pivot.
So we've discussed the false flag theory and who's who's behind us in depth.
And I'm leaning to it's a Ukrainian operation and it wasn't okayed by the US.
But I want to move on from this.
I've never been more worried about a nuclear conflict as I've been in recent months.
And that worry has escalated in the last two days.
And I'll tell you why.
And I'm not fee mongering here again.
I was the person that was telling, look how naive I was.
I was telling people in Ukraine that I knew.
I'm like, hey, don't worry, just hide a few hours, a few days.
I'm sure they're going to be extremely nice to citizens.
It's going to be quick.
Ukraine will fold and we'll see what happens after that.
I was thinking they'll change the government, maybe take some territory, and that's the end of it.
And I thought it was going to be very, very peaceful, and I didn't expect it to end up where we are today.
So I'm definitely not a person that always looks at the worst case scenario.
But where we are today is we've talked about a red line multiple times, and I keep mentioning it.
it. In this case, we saw the drone, which is embarrassing the Kremlin. You're kind of pushing
them into a corner, pushing Putin into a corner. And then we have the video by the leader of Wagner
that's showing internal conflict and potentially showing weaknesses within the Russian military
or within Wagner, within both.
I think it shows weakness within both.
So my concern is that we're pushing Russia into a corner,
and maybe Mickey or Patrick can take this one or Carl.
We're pushing Russia into a corner.
We're pushing Putin into a corner.
And we all know they can escalate this.
We all know there's weapons they haven't used,
but if we push them enough into a corner
and they see they have no other choice,
they might end up using those weapons.
And, you know, as all source you're here,
we've seen what happens between Palestine and Israel,
take for tat.
You know, you do one thing, they escalate, they escalate,
and that's how things get really get out of control.
That's what worries me, and I think we're getting closer
to that tip-for-tat where Russia crosses the red line that the West has.
Hey, don't use nuclear ballistic missiles.
So also, am I overreacting to the developments over the last 48 hours
with the drone and with the Wagner video?
So I literally just another space,
and I'm going to bring the same point out, right?
Where I think,
Russia, I think Russia still has a lot of tools in their hands before they go new, right?
I think that's still a far ways.
But let's look at, I think the next letter, and this is what we were talking about,
so this space was kind of this mass mobilization or declaration of war by Russia.
Right.
I think that is something that we would, that is still remaining in Russia's hand, right?
Because in Russia, they still call this a special military operation, right?
They're not in a war footing by law.
And I think what we saw, the first time that Russia declared a mass mobilization, right, forced conscription, basically, was in September, October after the Kharkiv offensive.
That's what triggered it, right, when they were defeated in Kharkiv.
I think that is what we would have to say.
I think the military situation on the ground in Ukraine,
let's say a counteroffensive Ukraine is successful,
that is what's going to dictate to Russia their next step,
which I think it would be,
I think the next one would either be a declaration of war
and another mass mobilization to kind of do everything.
But it's the situation on the ground in Ukraine militarily.
That's more important because everything else,
I think, yeah, the strike on the Kremlin is,
Yeah, but I mean, they didn't really damage the Kremlin.
Nothing really happened.
It's great for the press, whatever, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera.
I think the military situation is going to dictate more than anything else.
I mean, just to pair it a bit.
All for us is, I mean, don't you think the symbolic effect of it is kind of more relevant, though?
I mean, even if there were an ineffective assassination drone bomb and carried out on the White House
and would say Biden wasn't there at the time, I mean, I'm not sure how much that would temper
the visceral reaction to it and the calls for some sort of retributive action, no?
I think the Russians are more saying and more rational than Americans.
So I don't think the drone attack on criminal has the same effect.
I say a drone attack on the White House or Pentagon.
And so I've been waiting for everyone to hear everyone's viewpoint.
So because I also want to learn about the situation.
I just want to ask a question because I heard many panelists have talking about this is going
to be a Ukrainian victory and you know Russia is going to lose.
But from what I gather, right now we're at the very ugly point of attritional warfare.
So, you know, a traditional warfare, how can you argue that Ukraine could possibly win against
Russia?
Especially Russia right now hasn't even put, you know, haven't even fully committed to war footing
yet.
That's my question.
That's a very good question.
I'd like to hear someone answer it.
I'd be happy to answer if you don't mind all sorts, if I can take that.
So, first of all, I think everyone's making good points on the drone,
and I think everyone's, yeah, I think false flex seems unlikely,
but it's possible.
But I think what's certainly true is we're starting to see,
I'm talking about this in space,
where some of you joined, which is like you're starting to see
you know,
The perception of the war is shifting to the point where the public is starting to question
whether or not a victory is possible.
And that's a new trend we're starting to see not just in Russian media, but also from
Russian politicians.
So I think like sort of like the sports analogy is like when a locker room is winning,
you don't hear anything about what.
what player is saying what, what manager is saying what,
but when a team starts losing, then you start seeing division.
And this division is something new.
And of course, people are saying, oh, this is just fake division,
it's all false flag, could be.
But I think to your point, Carl...
The question is like how, what's the, what's the way in which Ukraine can make victorious and what would make people think that Ukraine can be victorious?
I'd say like there's a couple of things, at least to my mind.
The first is, you know, basically after a year of combat, this idea that Russia is strategically getting its ass kicked, like for some strategic reasons so they can like launch a currency in 10 years, doesn't make a lot of sense to me.
I think Russia wanted to win this war and has not been able to.
Um, they've had to, I think what they've been doing in Bachmuth specifically is by basically sacrificing a pawn so they can build time to train their conscript forces. But, you know,
Wagner Group is the best equipped, best trained military force in the Russian military,
and it hasn't been able to be successful in Ukraine.
And Ukrainian is fighting for their own terrorist who I think have a better chance of winning than the Russians.
That's my personal opinion.
So, you know, I think, you know, but notwithstanding, you're starting to see a trend,
a trend of not just people within Russia thinking Russia may not win...
You're seeing publications, like documents about Russian communications officials basically saying,
hey, prepare us for the possibility we're not going to win this war.
And let's sue for some different goalpost.
Let's say Ukraine can, you know, as long as Ukraine doesn't join NATO, then we can withdraw.
So I think you're starting to see a shift in perception from the Kremlin.
And that, to me, gives me a sense that they don't feel themselves that they're winning the war.
So if I may, Carl, to answer your question directly, though, on the aspect of militarily, right?
So two points.
Number one, this notion that's a nutritional war, it's an attritional war at this time and moment at this scope right now, right?
Because Ukraine is building combat power, right?
The Russians have committed the vast majority of their conscripts to the front.
Right? That is what we're seeing right now. So number one. So but right now that's what we're seeing. Clearly what the Russians did shortly after the mass mobilization of October is they committed the reasoning why it looks like a traditional war is because simply put, the Russian winter offensive.
declared in December, January, February, March, April, and now has not been successful, right?
So everybody's looking at this for a matured war, but let's look at a year ago to now.
What have we seen, right?
Let's look at equipment.
What we're seeing the Russians right now currently doing and having to do is they're starting to pull older and older and older Russian tank equipment to the front.
The T-62s were tanks that were developed in 1962.
We're starting to see them getting pulled from storage being sent to the front.
We're even seeing older models of the T-55s getting sent to Hersch on those pictures of that.
So the Russians, after a year of war, having had to declare a mass mobilization and pull old Soviet equipment, very old Cold War equipment,
to the front to stabilize what they had there currently.
Let's look at Ukraine and the other side of the house.
What we've seen Ukraine done is actually pull thousands of thousands and thousands of soldiers, if not tens of thousands of soldiers.
sent them to the West to train while there's an act of war zone going on into their country.
So Ukraine felt comfortable enough to pull tens of thousands of soldiers to get trained in the West.
And more importantly, where there are right now military equipment-wise is that the most modern equipment that they had were old Soviet tanks, right?
What we're seeing them get right now is modern Western military equipment, Leopard 2, Challenger 2's, Abrams, and more equipment, right?
So while the Russians are forced to send conscripts quickly to the front to stabilize the area,
The Ukrainians are able to pull forces out to get trained, and they're getting more modern equipment.
And so they're basically a more modern force that they are than they were a year ago.
If you look at the table of equipment that they have, Ukraine is a lot more modern now than they were when this is totally meaningless.
Now, this is my question.
This kind of speaks to the force-reconstitution stuff I was talking about before.
Like when you have a half dozen different tanks that you have to train soldiers with, and there's no standardization, it weakens the army. It doesn't make it stronger. It makes it more difficult for them to be cohesive. This idea that you can just throw modern equipment at a problem is not how you win wars. This is video game nonsense. Okay.
There's no level two.
I know you're talking about.
I was talking about the same thing.
This is exactly what I was talking about.
Ian, the same thing can be set about the law.
I just want to respond with another question
because there are a lot of people
with apparently a lot of military background.
How long does it, do you need to be trained
to be profession using driving an Abram or a lipper tank?
So I gladly will answer that because that's my, okay.
So to this is, when you do training, right, in military, driving an Abram tanks is like the, it's not hard.
Like we have 18 year olds without driver's license joining the U.S. military that can drive a tank in a couple days.
It is the easiest thing in the world to drive a tank.
It's not that complicated.
No, it's not that complicated.
it's really not that complicated.
You go through iterations.
The training of how to utilize the maintenance of it is a little bit harder.
That's why you have specialties.
Those are specialties.
You have basic maintenance that you can do as a soldier trained.
You know, that's not difficult.
What takes time really to train is not necessarily how to utilize the equipment,
is how to utilize it doctrinally, right?
In a military doctrinal term, formations, the ability to understand tactical orders, et cetera.
The benefit that Ukraine has right now is that they're a country currently at war.
right right they went through this they fought through this war so all you really have to focus on now
now there's we can get into the weeds of like soviet doctrine versus we can also get into how uh you know
they need jet fuel to run the abrams right to but right but so that that's that's logistics and now
i can get to that later you can get to the logistical aspect later right so that let's part that
for a second but what takes a long time is the doctrinal utilization of those vehicles what ukraine
has the benefit of is that they've been fighting a war
Right. They understand the doctrine. If anything, Ukrainian tankers utilizing leopard twos after the war, regardless how this ends, can actually train the West very effectively of how we utilize our leopards and our Abrams and our challengers against Russian doctrine because they utilize it.
So the doctrine is what takes the longest, but it's good because the Ukrainians have been fighting right now. Now, the logistics.
Ian, you're right, that causes a lot of problems.
There's a lot of issues of sustainment.
The benefit that Ukraine has is that the people that master logistics, more than anybody, is the West, specifically the United States.
I bet you there's a clear understanding of if you're going to give these equipment to Ukraine,
and if you're going to do it one the good thing is a lot of the western equipment not all but a
lot of the western equipment are nato standard right so there's a that that's the whole point of
nato standard is the key term it's not universal but there is that out of benefit for sustainment
but the second thing is obviously when you give that equipment there's going to be the
unknowns that nobody's talking about is everything you're talking about ian is to ensure
that the sustainment of the logistical piece
of that is maintained.
I do not want to be that Ukrainian logistical
officer because holy shit, that's going to be
very hard job. But in the end of the day, it's the country
war that has to fight. One of the big concerns that I think a lot of people bring up with, you know,
supporting Ukraine's war effort, you know, whether it's Leopard tanks, whether it's through Leopard tanks or to the Abrams,
is that you're going to need, you know, engineers, a core of them to know how to repair these things and maintain them, right?
And what's going to happen? I mean, do we, like, are you guys, like, I mean, can you, like,
ostensibly train enough Ukrainian troops to be able to do that, to handle that, to handle all the
equipment that they need.
Absolutely.
You can do that?
I guarantee you there is a huge training of logistics and all this.
But, you know, I think a lot of people are rightly concerned that this would mean, you know,
having direct involvement of, say, Polish or British troops on the ground to help service these,
these tanks, you know, and that's...
Hey, all sources, to that point really quickly.
To that point really quickly on whether this would entail some sort of commitment of manpower to handle logistics, apart from just Ukrainian personnel.
Around the time when the war first started, there was an initial clamor for Patriot batteries to be deployed to Ukraine, for the U.S. to send Patriot batteries in its packages of aid, quote unquote.
And the argument that was put out by Pentagon officials at the time was, no, we can't send the Patriot batteries to Ukraine because it would necessitate the
that there be an accompanying U.S. personnel at the point.
But now I realize that there's been training going on in Oklahoma, wherever, for quite a while.
But if you're intensifying this military-to-military coordination to such a major degree,
and through all different kinds of weapons systems and different kinds of formations that are developing,
whether it's in terms of the strategic,
devisement of plans or the more tactical stuff, what have you, it's still a very observable
and clear integration of the military forces between the U.S. and Ukraine and NATO.
This is why Reznikov, the defense minister, of Ukraine, says, hey, we're already de facto
members of NATO. At this point anyway, might as well just let us in formally. It's because
the war has accelerated this process of integration of what they call interoperability.
So whether Ukrainians themselves or whoever is going to be put on the tanks or whatever,
whether they have the know-how to master the equipment is kind of beside the point.
It's the broader fusion of Ukraine with the quote West,
which is what the Ukraine wants.
It's part of the war, their war objectives, right?
So it's part and part, and that comes part and parcel with the deployment of more and more systems like this.
Michael, but I think...
Also, before you respond, Ian, I'm just finding it harder and harder.
I know some people still make the argument, I think you will as well, that Russia's winning.
But I know winning can be defined in different ways, but I just find it more and more difficult to make that argument as time passes.
We saw Ukraine, the narrative around Ukraine joining NATO, and I think recently they said...
They consider themselves a de facto member of NATO.
So that argument, they're not in NATO, correct.
But the narrative is just gaining traction.
They said de facto.
They said not formal members.
Yeah, exactly.
De facto by saying they've been more vocal about being more vocal about being.
In Germany, I guess Britain, you know, are opposed to them joining NATO.
I don't think you're going to see it happening.
I mean, you can have all these tiny countries which are insignificant and have no real armies to begin with, right?
Like Estonia, Latvia, and so on, who depend almost entirely on Western support.
When they're saying, oh, they're a member of NATO.
I mean, they're looking out in their own self-interest.
I get it.
You know, if I was them, I'd be like, yeah, we need Ukrainian-NATOs.
That way we can fight against the Russians.
I get it.
No, they're just relaying the reality that's the military integration.
uh the germany never said and i'll read out exactly what they said but they never said they're opposing
it they said that it's not time to talk about it now they're opposed the door is open a crack
but this is not the time to decide now opposing you'll be like no opposing they're just explicitly
say no unless they're hungry you know you're or ban but most of these countries including
france and and and germany are going to say oh what
Now's not the time to talk about it.
Like, when's the right time to talk about it?
20 years from now?
Like, who knows, right?
After the war?
Not even after the war.
I mean, I don't think so.
No, I mean, it's the right line.
You can't have Ukraine.
No, but you can't have Ukraine join NATO when they're in a conflict with Russia
because NATO's in conflict with Russia.
Because they're not as opposed to World War III immediately.
Yeah, exactly. So that's what I mean, like, guys, let's sort the war out.
It's not because we just simply wouldn't let them in, right?
By NATO rules, they can't be in.
Yeah, they can't be in a direct conflict.
NATO rules could be changed at will for whatever reason.
Yeah, no, but based on the current...
Michael, Michael, NATO rules can't just be changed, right?
If you want to change the world, all member states have to agree.
So...
let's say they wanted to make a rule change saying that, you know, we're going to let
let's let you're going to let's make that rule chain.
Hell no.
So that's not what you're talking about Michael.
Let's not look at, let's not let's go down that discussion.
It was a good discussion whether they'll join Ukraine.
So yeah, the question is so number one, Ukraine joining NATO, the narrative is gaining traction.
Russia hasn't gained as much.
I don't know if they've gained the territory they would like to gain, but either they haven't gained enough.
Relative to thought they wanted, maybe I'd like to get your thoughts on that, but the cost has been immense.
The cost has been, well, I mean, we talked about the cost earlier, right?
I think everyone is an agreement that at this, at this point, maybe even since the start, or even all wars, really are just wars of attrition, right?
And right now, it's a question of who's losing more stuff and who's able to rebuild faster, right?
And I think...
Which is a different discussion, but we can agree that Russia...
There's still winning or losing a war.
I mean, it always comes into attrition, and then, you know, both sides make concessions.
That's just how it is.
Every single war, I mean...
They've had...
They've had...
The simple example of Vietnam War.
You know, America went there, fucked shit up, killed two million people.
But did they win?
No, right?
Even though they lost, you know, far less people.
I'm not saying, look, whether they win, whether they win or a lot...
Okay.
Okay.
Yeah, economically as well, the Russian economy,
maybe they'll have long-term benefits by decoupling from the US.
I'm not saying they're fighting for this 10-year plan to de-dollarize or something.
I think that's just, you know, that's just tangential, right?
I think what we're seeing right now is the depletion and severe degradation of European power, right?
European soft power is being severely diminished because, you know,
they're sending so much of their support and they're making so many sacrifices.
And this is due to poor leadership.
I mean, the people are not for this.
And you go to, you go to Germany.
Yeah, but Ian, you're doing with the, what we're doing with the, what you're doing in the answer is like when I say Russia's economy taking hate, but yeah, Europe's taking a bigger hit, which is, again, that's a different discussion.
I mean, fair, but it is still taking, but I think, but like the populace in general is not really at all, like suffering from this.
Maybe the price of blueberries or something has gone out because it's.
And the last thought, I think there's a general inflation in Russia.
But I'm sure someone would have the numbers.
Right? Every country.
Not to the extent.
Russia's had bigger inflation, higher inflation numbers.
Russia's inflation is less in comparison to most of Europe.
There's only a handful of European countries that weather this pretty well, but the vast majority of European countries are experiencing far more severe inflation.
And a lot of it is in the price of goods due to the rising cost of electricity.
So it's not even necessarily that their economy is going to shit.
It's more like things are just getting more expensive because electricity is expensive.
And electricity in Russia is very, very cheap.
So Russia, inflation, so inflation based on Statista,
inflation Russia, March 223, 3.5, February, 2023, 11%, January, 2023,
So December, 11.9%.
Hold on, did it drop to 3.5 March 20203?
Yeah, like this is what-
They start publishing data.
Hey, Mario.
Hey, Mario.
Mario.
All right, let's go.
Let's go to Schizo just because I know he disagrees with Ian.
Michael, the inflation, so yeah, that month over month that you're reading.
So yeah, you're accurate.
Where that 3% comes back in, so it didn't go from 11% or 15, whatever.
all the way back down the three.
There's some change from the month before.
Yeah, they changed from the month before.
So, like, you'll see it, say, like, with the United States during COVID, right?
Like, inflation was at, like, 10%, but, you know, the media would talk about the,
the new report has come out and said inflation only went up 0.2 or down 0.2.
That's the shit that they're talking about in Russia, too.
So it hasn't gone from 11%, you know, 3% to 15% back down the 3%.
it's gone from 3% to 11% and the...
But it's been dropping, yes, but it's been dropping...
So I'll tell you the numbers.
So before, before...
That's the official number now.
So you look at revenue.
Sure. But look at, fair, fair. But look at the GDP and things like that.
You know, Europe has been...
Because they shut down a lot of factories, the GDP has sunk.
So even though, you know, while they're...
But look, we never expect...
Their GDP's going down at the same time.
That's double mega.
But Ian, Ian, we never expected that many attacks on Russian Seoul.
We never expected a drone over the Kremlin.
We never expected the chief of Wagner having such a scathing public attack on other people, the leadership.
Can I address that, Mario?
I really wouldn't.
I'd like your instance.
I'm going to patch if you don't mind.
I just want to address what the Wagner thing, because I haven't really voiced my opinion on that.
he tends to do this a lot. There's no question there are back channels. And furthermore, he was going to withdraw his troops anyway. I mean, you have to rotate the troops. You can't just keep them there and have them just die. I mean, that's ridiculous. You have to have fresh troops there. And right now, but he said we're going to leave from memory. He said we're going to leave.
Yeah, that unit rotation already happened.
If you look at the Russian troops and, you know, Wagner, right, just in general,
the Russian coalition around Bachmute, the unit changes have already happened.
The bulk of the military forces around Bachmute for at least the past month,
month and a half have been Russian V-Dave forces.
I believe it's the like 98th or one, 102nd or something like that.
But in Bach and the Wagner troops have also done unit rotations.
as well. So, like, the entirety of Wagner isn't just deployed in Bachme, right? Solidar. You also
saw Wagner down there. They've already done unit rotation. So to say, like, they're only
do, they've already done the rotation.
Yeah, but the point I'm getting at is that you're not, you know, like their best purpose, right, their best use case for Wagner is to serve as an expeditionary force.
The fact that they were bogged down in Backmoot doesn't make a lot of sense to me.
I mean, since this is not the best use of their capabilities anyway, right?
They're more of an expeditionary force.
And define Expeditionary force.
They're always at the tip of the sphere.
That's what I mean by expeditionary force.
They're always at the tip of the spear.
And, you know, they were the tip of the spear.
Wagner Wagner isn't an expeditionary force.
Wagner is best suited as literally just mud-crunching infantry.
What do you think it is?
Like they have a couple tanks.
What do you think it is?
It's shock troops, right?
This is the guys, they send it up front.
Yeah, but they don't have the vehicles, right?
Wagner doesn't really have the vehicle.
For an expeditionary force, you need...
You're arguing about how they're not...
Wagner is literally just...
Let's go to Patrick and John.
So, Patrick, the same point I made to Ian.
I'm just seeing it more and more difficult to argue that...
Russia's not losing the war, not going to lose the war, but definitely getting, the position
is getting in is getting worse and worse. I'm trying to articulate it the right way.
It's like I said, it's distritional, right? The Ukrainians are not going to just surrender.
At this point, surrender is not an option, so it's going to get harder and harder for Russia to make
any pushes. This is just reality, and Ukraine is not about to back down unless they start talking
peace, both sides are going to be added, right? And Russians are...
have to face a harder force because you know prior to that the Ukrainians probably hope that they would have some Wunderwaffe show up and you know change the tide of battle like the high Mars thing but now you know today there's news reports showing that Russia has more or less made the high Mars useless by fucking up there uh let's get let's get let's get let's get Patrick John let's get Patrick John's thoughts Patrick um what's your stance on this
Well, in terms of the way this war began, and I'm talking relative strengths and perceptions of strength, yes, the Russians have not had a good war.
Does that mean that they've lost?
No, not yet.
But I think going forward, everyone's kind of waiting on baited breath to see what this expected Ukrainian offensive.
I'll say that.
We don't know when or if it's going to happen in the next week.
Sorry, but I need to leave.
But I might be back later.
I'm doing a show with Elijah Schaefer.
Yeah, so I'll be back later.
Oh, cool, cool.
All right, cool.
Thanks, man.
Yeah, go ahead.
Thanks, man.
No, Ian, don't leave.
Okay, Patrick, go ahead.
Yeah, we don't know what that's going to look like.
Now, it could go great.
The Ukrainians could deploy several brigades of Western equipment, Western train troops,
and mow through the Russians like, you know, crap through a goose.
Or they could break their teeth on heavy Russian defenses,
especially if they try something in the South against the bulk of the fixed fortifications
that the Russians have been able to throw up.
Nobody knows.
I think that more than anything is going to really set the tone for the next six months.
And I say that because for all the Kharkiv offensive was good, the Ukrainians basically struck the least defended portion of the Russian lines and then overran second-rate troops.
They made a conscious decision not to go after and kill the core of the better units that were in and around at Hurson at the time.
And that may have been a tactical decision.
They may have said, okay, our first time out, we don't want to risk this and have a lot of our combat power destroyed if it goes badly for us.
Instead, we're going to hit these guys up north after all these better troops have been denuded and sent down south.
I do expect this to be a major fight because they have no other options.
How do you expect the offensive, the counteroffensive by Ukraine to go?
Do you expect him to gain a lot of ground?
That's an unknowable.
I think it's going to depend on who's in charge, what their plan is, where they hit the Russians,
and then how the Russians are able to react.
But if Russia's struggling so much to get Bukhmut, I know they've got 95% of it,
Slaman numbers were mentioning, but anything Slaman mentions, I take a grain of salt.
But other panelists have also said 95%.
So if they've got such a large majority, like for me, I thought Bukh was wrong, isn't it, bro?
I thought Bukmute was going to fall months ago.
And we're still talking about it.
And now we see that video, which could be just posturing, et cetera.
Even if it's just posturing to get more ammunition, to say something we're going to pull out of Bukhmud, is just crazy to me.
And then now we're going to see a Ukrainian counter-offensive.
It's sense that we saw a drone over Kremlin.
Like how far is this going to go before Putin just goes, fuck this, and we're going to use ballistic nuclear weapons?
Right.
Sorry, not ballistic.
I'll rephrase what I said.
Sorry, tactical nuclear weapons.
I'm with intel and all sorts.
I don't think he goes there.
But on the Bakhmuth thing, you have to remember,
offensive operations in an urban environment are always very, very, very hard.
I mean, you can ask John Spencer or any number of other people who study this stuff
for, you know, study urban combat specifically for a living.
It is one of the hardest environments to get through.
And I'm not surprised the Russians have gotten torn up doing it.
The Ukrainians got torn up defending it.
It became a nasty little mini-Stalingrad, and the casualties became huge.
What the Ukrainians will now have to do is they're going to be the ones on the offensive,
which is always more dangerous for your people than it is defending against an enemy attack that you can prepare for.
So the tone of this is going to change.
As far as how far does Putin let this go? Putin has options. He's still got the best part of four divisions uncommitted in the east, basically the eastern flank of this mess as opposed to the south down around Crimea.
Elements of them have engaged up north, but the bulk of them are still sitting it out. I expect that to be their strategic reserve.
Hold on, the bulk of who's sitting it out?
The bulk of four regular divisions are sitting it out.
Russian or Ukrainian?
Just make sure I understand.
Russian, Russian.
Okay.
Opposite basically where the Kargiv offensive terminated.
Now, some of their elements have done probing attacks, but by and large, those units have not engaged.
I think they're being held.
Now, what can Putin do?
Putin can do a whole lot of things.
And this is why I, and I am not, I forget who it was who said.
I'm not sure what this looks like.
I might have been Vaughn.
I don't know if this was a false flag, but it would make sense to me if it is.
And I'll tell you why.
Number one, the video shots of it are beautiful.
They're absolutely gorgeous.
It's almost like somebody set it up that way.
Now, could that have happened by accident?
Yes, it absolutely could have.
But the shots of it are gorgeous.
Two, we get what is basically a lot of pyrotechnics when the thing hits the flagpole,
detonates.
We get a nice little fireball, but the flagpole is still standing.
That was not a big explosion.
So you have maximum insult, maximum psychological damage, minimal actual damage, and that lets Putin come out and say exactly what he has.
This is a war, you know, for the survival of Russia, we must mobilize the nation, all this nonsense that he loves to repeat.
He finally has a tangible event that he can point to and say, this in fact.
But doesn't he weaken his position?
No, no, he can say, so you see what I'm facing. You see what I, Putin, the great leader I'm facing. You know, the West is attacking us. These are Ukrainian special forces and all this other stuff. And it could have been Ukrainian special forces. I don't know. But certainly this allows him to to do his kind of galvanize the nation for the long war. That makes sense. You know, schick.
With all due respect, Patrick, I don't think Putin need to rally up more support.
Right now, the vast majority of the Russian public wants the war to go harder that currently Putin has been executing.
They want Russia to put in more firepower.
So I don't think there's a need for Putin to do something like that to get more popular support for the war.
I do.
It's not just to put it.
It's recruitment drive.
Like we've been seen since the mobilization.
We have not seen, we have, so we had the mass mobilization.
And that was like if you're looking up pulling data, you know,
You can say what you want about polls.
But that was the first big dip in support.
Like, there's still broad consensus for the war within Russia.
But after the mobilization, there was a pretty decent dip in support, right?
Because it's like, oh, shit, like, I have to go fight now.
But by having this event happen, you know, doing the speech of the existence of the Russian nations at risk, right?
This is a great way to get people who are, you know, like...
potentially on the fence, but didn't necessarily want to enlist themselves.
Like, this is a way to rev up that patriotic fervor to get the recruits that they haven't been getting without calling for a mobilization.
Because if you had the call for another mobilization, that's not going to look well.
That's going to have messaging of, hey, maybe we aren't winning this.
Like, we don't have the resources.
but you know by having this attack happen
it would be like the existence of russes of peril
they destroyed the senate building
or you know destroyed the flagpole
of the senate building
you know we are in danger
our skies are not safe
so so schizzen patrick if this is a false flag attack
because we tried to find someone with that argument earlier
and no one could make that argument
but you've made it really well
so my question to you if it is a false flag event
what escalation are they trying to
What escalations could we expect?
I don't think it's necessarily escalation.
Like, you know, people like to talk about the latter, you know, like, you know, whether it's nukes or, you know, new bombs or whatever.
I don't think it's necessarily escalation in the sense of ratcheting up the duperation.
the degree of violence if this was, because I don't know either, right?
Like, this could have been Ukrainian.
Like, I had a threat about the drone itself, and I've talked about it in a few spaces.
It's a Mugin 5 Pro.
So mathematically, it could have came from Ukraine, but the probability of that actually happening
is pretty slim.
Like, you need perfect conditions and the fuel mixture, like everything, like the amount of
assumptions you'd have to make, it's mathematically possible.
Right.
but probably unlikely.
But if it was a false flag, I don't think it's escalation in that sense of bombs and shit.
I think it's for the way to get the recruits needed without calling for a mobilization,
which I guess that could be seen as escalation, right?
More troops, more, but they just haven't been getting the recruits for months.
Like, yeah, they get 20,000 conscripts a month, but they're,
But that's, you know, just maintaining the, uh, the current force that's there.
The Russian army has a lot of contracts, right?
Like their, their military is very contractual based.
Sure, they're, you know, reports here and that people's contracts are getting fucked over and they're essentially getting extended indefinitely.
But you can look at the unit around the time of the mobilization, right?
A lot of those contracts were only for six months and they expired.
You look at Wagner, their PMC, their whole fucking operation, sorry for the language, is contract-based.
And by revving up that patriotic fervor, you can drive...
increasing the troop numbers without the political bludgeoning and nastiness that comes from manding.
Let me ask you to Slyman before going to Vonn.
Slamman, you there?
Yeah, bro.
We saw the intelligence report earlier that I read where I can't remember her name.
She said that Putin's ambitions for more Ukrainian territory.
have waned, so he's not looking for more territory, but he said now his goal is to make sure Ukraine does not join NATO.
So there might be...
Adro pains, it's the Director of National Intelligence.
Jesus, you know too much, man.
Simon, what's your thoughts on this?
Yeah, I mean, I do believe that that was one of his main objectives anyway from the beginning.
He didn't want Ukraine to join NATO.
His main concern was the separatist and annexed regions.
I think these other issues that have come about due to the start of the war are different to what he actually wanted from the start.
Hence why it doesn't make sense why they didn't do peace negotiations in the first place.
And that's because obviously US wanted a proxy war where the military industrial complex basically propagated this wars, essentially.
And in terms of they're talking about how Putin might pursue a ceasefire because of the amount of losses they have.
So do you think this, this, what the intelligence is sharing here is accurate?
Yeah, I mean, I think, and they also say he's more likely to use, quote, asymmetric options such as nuclear, cyber, space capabilities and rely on China.
So do you think this is accurate as well?
So I do think that both sides have received losses.
Now, I understand there's a discrepancy and disagreement on who has received more losses, but I guess we'll never know that because both sides are always going to propagate the other side, that other sides are receiving more losses.
I do believe that we know anyway, I wrote a thread on it, that Ukraine has been struggling
significantly when it comes to ammunition for a considerably long time.
But I do, I did have this feeling, although there was nothing coming out about it, that Russia
was having similar problems.
And, yeah.
If the Wagoner guy is right, then it is that they're also having some ammunition problems.
So I could never prove it, but I just thought, wait a sec, I do think based on, based on, you know, the old ammunition storage is that there was problems.
In terms of China support, obviously China, I do believe that China will be overtly supporting them anyway.
And so, yeah, what was your other question?
No, that's it. And do you think, I actually expected you to go to say something similar to Patrick's like, hey, man, can you not tell me what the US intelligence is saying? Because everything that I say is bullshit propaganda. And I had a really good comeback to that. But he seemed a bit more logical this time. So, so.
Hey, Mario, I know I've been chopping at the bit. Would you mind if I make the point that I've been trying to? Am I chopping up, Slaman?
No, I said, I've been...
Sorry.
Oh, you've been interrupting.
You've been chopping in.
Yeah, sure, Michael.
Oh, chopping at the bit.
Yeah, sure.
I wanted to go to Vaughn, but I'll let you...
I'd love you to jump in, then we'll go to Vaughn afterwards.
Okay, yeah, I don't want to necessarily really to get the false flag thing, but I would just note that if the purpose of the alleged false flag is to give a pretext to institute a new mobilization, then that's the definition of an escalation in that it's escalating the magnitude of the war that's underway.
So I don't know how that could somehow not be classified as an escalation.
When Putin announced the first mobilization in September, it was clearly also an escalation.
I mean, it's just kind of definitionally so.
Yeah.
I also think it's odd that the fact that none of the allegations of a false flag committed by Russia since the war started actually even before because there are all these pre-war prognostications of imminent false flags as well coming out of the U.S. and so forth that never bore out.
These have all been false.
Like the allegations of false flags have themselves been false.
And it's just interesting to me that doesn't.
uh, cause anybody who is a proponent of these theories to think that maybe there's a higher burden to
proof for believing in some, you know, theory that has been repeatedly disproven, like,
almost dozens of times now. But anyway, this doesn't have something here there. The point I wanted
to make, Mario, is it goes back to your initial question from a while ago, which is, are you, um,
You're not trying to scaremonger, but you're more worried about nuclear war than you've ever been.
I think that, if anything, you should be critical of those who are complacency mongering.
Because this connects to them the question you posed to Ian about your skepticism of whether Russia is supposedly winning the war.
I agree with you in that I wouldn't take it as somehow gospel that Russia is, quote, winning the war.
I think a war is an enormously kind of complex war.
phenomenon that almost everybody who claims that they have a firm read on is kind of bullshitting
um and it's not clear that they're winning regardless never has been and um
That goes in tandem with this increasing nuclear threat, right?
Because one of the conundrums of the U.S. slash NATO war strategy this entire time has been that these strategic studies people, the war gamers and so forth, they're not dumb.
They recognize that the Russian nuclear doctrine as far as people understand it is that
nuclear weapons can be used, and I think the focus on doctrines is kind of immaterial because it's not like it's a binding document, but whatever.
The idea, though, is that Russia probably is going to be in a position where we would most likely use nuclear weapons if the state itself
is at risk.
Is that risk?
And then I've got the Kremlin.
And now they're saying that Putin himself,
there was an assassination attempt on Putin himself,
which is, to me, says, like, let me, Michael,
I do want other panelists to jump in,
but like, just to tell you why I'm saying this,
and to kind of give the logical explanation,
it's like,
We talked about the Wagner video.
We've talked about the drone.
And now we're going to add on to it, and that's in the last two, three days.
Now we're going to add on to it what the US intelligence, Averall Haynes.
What she said is that the danger of asymmetric options such as nuclear, cyber, space capabilities, and reliance on China, this likelihood is increasing.
Again, one of them is asymmetric options such as nuclear.
and yeah very quickly on that point and they'll let people go yeah go ahead
yeah okay so so so I don't think I don't think
I think even if there had been no drone strike on the Kremlin
even if there had been no progenreuxian video
and even if Avril Haynes hadn't said what you said
my argument still sense right well
and it's just as necessary to emphasize it
because the trajectory is still in the same direction
and here's the key component that people don't fully appreciate
The kind of bureaucratic momentum in the United States government, in the State Department, the Justice Department, the White House, Congress, it's all heading in the direction of the aspiration of imposing regime change in Russia as the final resolution.
That's crazy aspiration.
That's crazy aspirations.
But that's the thing, though.
So you have the competing sides.
affirming that they believe the conflict has existential stakes. Putin actually said that explicitly on the speech he gave before the one year anniversary in February.
And you have the, that's not the Western side, and I've had the piece that I've been working on for like literally months down.
It's going to come out soon. That goes into a lot of the detail on this because it's actually appreciated.
I'll land the plan, Michael.
Yeah, yeah. I'm landed the plan. I promise.
Ukrainian civil society and the government apparatus, they're radicalized toward regime change as the option that's necessary to actually achieve resolution of the war.
The U.S. says it's deferring to Ukraine to set the strategic imperatives.
And then they're talking seriously and putting the actual motions, the actual mechanisms in place.
to prosecute Russian officials in these tribunals
that they're saying are going to be modeled on Nuremberg.
That you think about, but it may be symbolic.
No, they're not, the people who are talking about this,
go listen to what the people in the Estonia, Lafay, Lithuania, Poland,
parts of the U.S. UK.
Listen to how they talk about these forthcoming tribunals
that they're modeling on Nuremberg.
They're dead serious about it.
They're not talking about it as the symbolic thing.
And Nuremberg happened after they destroyed the German state.
So that's the regime change.
There you go.
So, Simon, before I go to, I'm going to go to AllSource before Von actually now, just to balance it out.
But what was your question, Simon?
Yeah, yeah, my question is to, I mean, you want to go to AllSau specifically, so maybe Allsau can answer.
But basically, it was overall one thing that I don't think anyone's given a logical answer to is,
Whatever think, whoever you think is behind that attack on the Kremlin,
but what is the logic behind it?
Like every single argument you make is,
It makes no sense unless you say that even Ukraine doing it.
Every single argument.
Every argument makes sense, man.
I'll tell you what the arguments we've heard so far.
False flag attacks to rally more support.
I'm just simplifying it.
Ukraine doing it directly as a symbolic way.
No, no, let's do one at a time quickly.
So false flag to rally sport, but at the same time, it loses confidence in Russia.
Because, again, you had this thing.
It doesn't lose most confidence.
Putin's not injured.
I mean, they attacked the...
They didn't attack the Kremlin.
It's a drone that was not able to achieve its mission
and was shut down pretty quickly.
It just shows the security at the Kremlin.
The drone was shut down relatively quickly.
So it doesn't, I think the benefit...
I thought this, by the way.
I thought this, but I think the benefit outweighs the cost
and that's the point that Patrick was making.
I think what Solomon was getting at is the confidence of the defense of the capital or just a weapon gel, right?
Which could, yeah, the defense being weak, but that could help the cause because, hey, we're directly at risk.
The capital is directly at risk.
When did the U.S. enter World War II when Pearl Harbor was attacked?
So when there's that level of-
Mario, you're looking at it from a U.S. perspective.
You know, like when it comes to a Russian, Eastern Europeans,
they have a more different psychology of doing of things and they see any form of weakness
makes them lose trust in the leader so there's that aspect of it so i get it you're looking at
a very americanized viewpoint of the way you're looking at it but if you look at the eastern
europeans like they literally have this idea that if you show weakness you're not the leader
yeah i don't know do we have velina are you from eastern europe
Or Mario?
The other Mario.
Is anyone from Eastern Europe that can tell me that Slime?
No, yeah.
So please tell me, is the Eastern European mentality that if your capital is at threat or something,
instead of rallying support, it actually makes you more worried than your week?
He's given me 100.
No, he's giving me 100, man, because your statement is such a...
No, I'm with the shake on this one, too.
See that.
Mickey, who, Mickey?
I muted everyone.
Let's see Mickey say.
Go ahead, Mickey.
Can you tell me what you're giving 100 for?
Mari, I love you, bro.
But I have to say I'm with the shake on this one.
I think he's correct.
Like a, there's a lot of what's shifted in public sentiment and conversation following the drone attack is a starting opening questioning of the defense budget of the possibility to win the war.
No, I'm just counting.
Hold on.
Let me mute Mario.
Let me mute Mario.
Mario, hold on, Mario, Mario, just two sex, Mario.
Mario, echoing, you know, I don't know if there's for somebody else a speaker.
Yeah, all right, Mr. Mario Paolozki.
I want you to speak, I set you an invite.
No, I'm muting on purpose, man.
I'm going to keep you muted, please, because your mic is really echoing.
So please, I'll give you a minute or so to fix it,
because it's really, really echoing and so much feedback sound.
Okay.
Mickey, but so I agree with your statement if it related to Russia's case,
I'm saying it's not an Eastern European mentality.
It could apply in this specific case in Russia based on the circumstances.
But I just don't think it's an Eastern European mentality.
I don't know where you got that information from.
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
I think Russia specifically, right?
This is like a history of Russia and the Tsar.
Like the history of the Tsar is like its ability to protect.
He supports you, Simon, Sam and Saman.
But his argument, because his argument is just...
Okay, Mickey, hold on, hold on, Simon.
Okay, Saman, he gets you.
Saman, he agrees with you.
I give you the point there.
He agrees with you about Russia.
So, but Mickey, it seems you're echoing, by the way,
because Mario was muted, and when you're unmuted,
I heard echo.
So you got echo on your end.
All right, cool.
I think you've asked your question,
but let's go through the other two
before I go to Mario and where is Von?
Von is still there, great.
But the second point you made,
so that's the false flag attack.
You made a good counterpoint, but the argument about it rallying support is still valid.
It could rally support.
Now, will that be outweighed by the weakness scene?
I don't have enough expertise.
The second one is being by the Ukrainian military, directed by Zelensky.
or approved by Zelensky, that's plausible.
If your point about this showing weakness in Russia
and maybe getting more support against the war
or scaring Putin or the symbolic nature
leading people to start opposing the war more,
if that was your initial argument,
then the point of the Ukrainian military doing it
would then make sense.
And the counter to that is,
Them doing it, first of all, what issue you have is, now you've done that, what's the response?
So then Putin now has to demonstrate that basically they are strong.
Yeah, true, true, but I'm saying the benefit of it, of showing weakness and the sentiment change in Russia could outweigh the military response by Russia.
They might know, they might know Russia's...
But they've crossed that line a few times, man.
Like they've assassinate people within Russian territory.
They've done covert attacks within Russian territory.
So they've been crossing that line, haven't they?
Yeah, but this is like an attack on the Kremlin.
It's not a...
I don't think it's different.
Attack on the Kremlin, a drone exploding this, or they attacked the flagpole.
Yeah, I mean, it didn't go great, but it was an attack on it.
So the issue is...
Maybe it went exactly, maybe it went exactly his plan.
That's what I'm trying to say.
Just attacking the flagpole, symbolic.
I mean, if that was Ukraine...
like plan was to like throw a drone that didn't do that well then they basically no was to
explode on the flag a symbolic nature to to stalk fear yeah again that's dumb but the point is
what the issue is this that again if that was their plan is illogical it doesn't make much sense
there wasn't and you have a scenario where Russia can hit back and um
And Russia will be hitting back in a much more aggressive manner because Putin, if it is that he, there is a loss of confidence in him.
His aggression, so some of the lines that he didn't cross.
And we know Putin has been not crossing lines.
There's people in his, in his military, in his government who are saying that, look, he needs to be a lot more aggressive.
And so it'll make him be a lot more aggressive.
So again, it doesn't make sense from that perspective.
No, I think what are you saying is that your counter argument is valid.
I think they're both valid.
The argument I made or the panelists made that I summarized and your counter argument, both
are valid and we're trying to make sense of it.
This makes it more complicated, like makes it difficult to know.
Like I think the explosion, the Nord Stream attack is, in my opinion, easier to kind of point fingers,
even though we're still speculating.
It's easier to point fingers than this one.
But AllSource and then, Von, I'd let you guys jump in.
I know there's a lot of points made.
I'll actually defer to Vaughn because I had a point on something else.
I want to hear what you said, but I want to see what Vaughn said.
Go for it, Vaughn.
Before Mario gives a spare speaker, somebody else.
So I was going to comment on the Intel report.
Can you get close out of the mic, Vaughn?
It's not hard to hear you, man.
I was going to comment on the intelligence report.
I think a lot of people might have forgotten that a while ago it was...
It was made public that the US intelligence isn't a habit of releasing unconfirmed or outright not true information as a means.
They say the preempt, but it's basically it's info war.
So don't take intelligence reports as a given.
And this one in particular, it's flat out incorrect the state that objectives have changed to preventing
Ukraine from joining NATO because that hinges on assuming people don't have memory past a few months.
You might recall if you've been following this from the beginning,
that there were negotiations about exactly this before the invasion.
And all Russia got was a constant refrain of NATO expansion is non-negotiable.
So to say that that is a new objective,
is incorrect.
Maybe I think it just means it's not a new,
maybe it's a shift of objective.
Now, the first point you made about,
I would agree that not every Intel report is gospel,
and a lot of it might have,
might be completely false,
and might have...
might have other purposes.
But just remember that intelligence reports were saying for a while that Russia is going to invade Ukraine.
And many of us were kind of, oh, maybe you weren't Ron, but I know a lot of people around me, we're doubting those reports.
So I think we should take them seriously, but we should not take them as gospel.
But I mean, they flat out said that they...
will publish unconfirmed or in or untrue or less than factual.
Which is why we don't, which is why we don't take it as gospel.
And I agree there.
They did say, so we assess that Putin probably has scaled back his immediate ambitions to consolidate control over the occupied territory in eastern and southern Ukraine and ensuring that Ukraine will never become a NATO ally.
Oh yeah, but that's...
So probably has scaled back.
They're saying we don't know for sure.
But I'm just trying to...
Let me understand...
Sorry, Von, can you explain...
Sorry, I'll let you finish,
but can you...
I'm trying to understand.
Maybe it means different to what I said.
I'll read it out again
and maybe you can explain it to us
because I don't think it says...
that his focus is going to be on Ukraine not joining NATO.
And apparently they're saying he scaled back both.
I'll read it again.
We assess that Putin probably has scaled back his immediate ambitions
to consolidate control of the occupied territory in eastern and southern Ukraine
and ensuring that Ukraine will never become a NATO ally.
Did he scale back his ambition for both?
That's wishful thinking.
The TLDR of that is they're assessing that Russia's radiated capitulate.
Because that's conceding on those two are capitulation.
Also about the scaling back attempts to consolidate territory, that's, I mean, on the surface of it, that's certainly what it looks like.
My assessment of this, though, is that they're basically stalling for falling back to defensive positions and stalling back for time until their military and national complex gets kicked into war footing.
because it, believe it or not, has not done so yet.
So there's that to keep in mind.
And also, it's a war of attrition at this point, not about taking territory.
You want to wear down the opponent.
You want to bust, you want to wear down its supplies.
You want to wear down its munitions.
You want to wear down its gear.
Most importantly, you want to deplete its manpower.
And...
That's done with stuff like Bahmoud where it's a meat grinder or as I said before as both sides claim as a deliberate meat grinder
You don't do that by just advancing on a map. That's not gonna eliminate manpower
So there's that to keep in mind the throwing and tactical nuclear weapon use is a very bold claim because we are so far down the escalation ladder and
before that even becomes feasible, that it's frankly insulting to me that the chief of intelligence would publish that.
Moreover, it makes zero sense to use a tactical nuke in Ukraine because none of the scenarios that these things are intended for exist there.
There's no massive armor columns.
There isn't anything that we know of that needs bunker busting that hypersonics can't handle,
and there's no aircraft carried a one shot.
So tactical nukes, no. Not likely to happen, pointless in Ukraine.
And I mean, does she say that they're going to change, they're to shift to more asymmetrical warfare or that they're going to, we're going to see more of it?
Because everything else she named is stuff we've seen since day one.
So I'm not sold on that.
I just want to also raise a point because several people keep doing it.
There's a difference between conscripts and reservists.
The people being mobilized are reservists, not conscripts.
They already have military training.
They've done their mandatory service.
All source, you're a military guy.
You know there's a difference.
Let's please not use them interchangeably.
And that's all I got because honestly, I'm tired of the false flag or not talk.
Oh, wait, one more thing.
The rally behind the flag phenomenon is a good argument.
A way to go and tell.
The whole strongman looking weak, I mean, that is true to an extent.
But let's be real.
This is a errant drone that missed its target.
No one's going to start like, oh, no, we need to get out of this war or, oh, down with Putin over something like this.
This is salami tactics.
Believe it or not, that's an actual term.
It's actions that are usually perceived to be below the threshold for retaliation.
And I think that's all I got, so thank you.
Allsos?
Actually, Vaughn, can you tell me, because you cut off for one second,
what was the terms I was using or interchangeably that I shouldn't?
You just cut off for a second.
Conscripts and reservists, because there are no conscripts being sent to the front
to people being mobilized or reservists.
They've done their military service.
Okay, got it. Got it, got it, got it.
Understood, yeah.
Okay, so what I would disagree on the notion,
I'm just going to disagree on this idea that this war is attritional.
There's a reason Bachmood is not being fought as I know both sides are framing it as a meat grinder, right, for obvious reasons. But this is a war of territory, right? The Ukrainians view this as a war of territory and the Russians view this is the war of territory. So why does Ukraine view it as a war of territory? You can look at her son, right? Patrick touched upon this earlier.
The Ukrainian's decision was, if this was a war of attrition, in other words, that they wanted to destroy combat power, Ukraine would have fought completely differently in Harsan, right?
They would have tried to destroy the significant amount of combat power that the Russians had in that area.
What they'd rather decide to do is force the Russians to withdraw because they didn't want to fight in the city of Hurson, etc., because of the citizens.
If you look at Bakhmut, this is a fight about territory because one of the reasons why it's a fight about territory is a lot of the ways that both the Russians and the Ukrainians are finding that battle is about control of the territory.
The Russians have tried multiple times, specifically Wagner, to encircle Bakr because they want to completely seize the city.
You cannot look at this as a – and the winter offensive in general, right, from – it's not only Bakhmud, right?
The winter offensive was a lot –
It was smaller than a lot of people anticipated, but as larger the Bakhmud is from Volodar all the way to Kermina, that entire front, what it was.
The problem is the Russians haven't been successful in seizing significant amount of territory.
They just haven't.
It just has not been what you would expect this vaunted Western, this Russian offensive would have been, right?
Volodard was an absolute disaster for the Russians.
You're talking about hundreds of Russians vehicles destroyed their naval infantry brigade.
eliminated spesnas
of the DPR wiped out, etc.
I mean, it's just been an absolute disaster.
The reason why we cannot look at this
from a nutrition point of view is go,
I'm going to use an historical example,
look at the Iran-Iraq war, right?
That was a war that lasted eight years.
Over a million people killed.
And it was just,
Pure international pressure, why they was forced to be a ceasefire between both sides, right?
The Russians and Ukrainians can fight this war for a long, long time.
Both sides want territory.
It's territory, territory, territory, territory.
If you look at the offenses that both the Ukrainians and the Russians have done since the beginning of this war,
it's about the territorial control of Ukraine.
Even Russia, when they launched your offense of Kiev, it was all about seizing Kiev.
That was their primary objective in February, March, and April.
Hey, man, hey, this is funny.
Also, Slimeon was telling me that this is not true, which I started looking into it.
So, Alsace, what's the, same question to you then.
So what is the evidence that they want to take Kiev, which is not from the US and Ukraine sources?
Well, there's not from any sources.
They surrounded Kiev.
Now, it doesn't, just to be clear, I don't think that proves...
It's from all source.
That doesn't prove they wanted to take over Kiev.
But we're saying it's the most probable...
I mean, you sound a bit different, but anyway, cool.
Yeah, it's because my voice has become prettier,
so that's why you're enjoying it better, and I sound smarter now.
But I'm just saying there's no definite proof they wanted to take over.
Alls, all right, all source is an upgrade.
Allsosos, go ahead.
I know Patrick is waving his hand, so I'll push it to him.
Okay, so if the Russians didn't want to seize Kiv, so what, okay, so let me put this.
What I want is also what I want evidence of is actually.
This is, for this time, look, look, look how, look.
So I don't know, if there is evidence, I'm fine.
You know how you make, you know how you made an argument before and you busted my balls for an hour on a call saying,
why do you need evidence which is so obvious?
on the space earlier and you compared something to the moon.
But here you've got tanks and military equipment surrounding Kiev
and then taking over Kiev is the easiest way to force government change.
But they're like, yeah, but no, we don't have exact proof.
You're right, I agree with you.
Now you're talking like me.
But just showing how much of hypocrite you're being.
Because all you guys have been making the argument,
not you, Mario, obviously, you're somebody.
But everyone else has been making the argument.
So what was the objective of the offensive in Kiev?
Like,
I'm just going to explain.
So all your,
all of you guys have been making the argument that guess what,
you,
The reason Putin invaded was because he wanted to take Kiev and he wanted to take it within three days.
And so all I want is evidence that that was his actual objective.
So why would they go after Hossamil?
So they went after Hossamil Airport to send him reinforce this, right?
Within three days.
Hold on.
Hold on.
Now you change.
Also, already he's changed his question now.
Before it was in Kiev in general.
No, no, both, both, both.
So the reason, okay, look at the, let's go back to February 24th, 2022.
The first military, the main military offensive that the Russians is was the cease-hust of Malar
airport because they did not expect Ukraine to fight.
Their hope was to cut off from the command center of Kiev,
capture, kill, you know, Zilinski, decapitate the, the Ukrainian government, and hope that the entire Ukrainian military cease to exist, right?
But also, before we continue, hold on, Slaman, hold on.
I did we realize you were literally sitting with Putin when this plan was getting out.
Okay, no, so now this is being unfair, this Slaman, you're being a shitty cause.
Because you know right now there's no one is going to be able to offer proof for anything with debating.
We cannot prove, we could, because I know it's bull, that's why.
No, you don't know, it's good.
Hold on, let me, let me, let me, let me, let me, let me, let me ask, okay, let me ask also,
so an interesting question about something he said, and then we get into a shitty,
every time you're proven wrong, you have to sit there hugging the space to prove why you're not wrong.
But also, she says something interesting, that they wanted to kill Zelensky, and I've heard this before.
How do we know that one?
That's interesting.
Was there any leagues or any, any officials saying that?
How would we know it, Mario?
How would we know it?
Jesus, Slimeon.
So, so, okay.
Okay.
Let's let's, let's, what the reasoning why is because there was a, we were all, at least me, Patrick, we had all these spaces in the past that it was basically 24-7.
We were mining the feet and there was consistent reporting.
And I know people are going to disagree of, of, of, of, of, of, of, of, of, of our groups.
That was the turn that was huge as like we saw fighting in key.
But let's, let's, let's just put that aside.
Let's just put that aside.
Okay.
So what was, why did you, why did Russia fight the way they did for Keyes, right?
Because.
The military decisions that they made only made sense if they wanted to seize Keith.
The perfect example was, it's not even the 40-mile convoy,
because a 40-mile convoy was from Chernobyl all the way to the Belarus border.
They didn't try to seize Ternif.
They tried to isolate Ternif, and then they pushed.
The priority was key.
The other one was the front they opened from the Russian border from Sumi.
Sumi is right next to the border of Russia all the way in the east and the northeast of Ukraine.
The Russians...
attempted to go in. They couldn't. There was
resistance. And then the order was given.
Bypass. Sue me. And they
just bolted to Keev. They wanted
to go through Kiv in multiple directions.
The directions were from the Northwest, which was
Erpin. They tried because HOSML
failed. They couldn't send reinforcement to Hossam L.
So then they said, Northwest, through
Through Belarus all the way the northwest to Erpin and Boucha, that was one front.
The northeast bypassing Charnip to the northeast through Chernobyl down to Kiev, and then the
Sumi was the eastern front.
The problem was that the Russians were not successful.
They were unsuccessful in isolating Kiev, and they suffered such casualties, especially
their elite forces, that the decision was made.
If we continue this route, we will lose our other objectives in Dombas, specifically.
And then that was the decision was we need to pull our combat power out.
There were tens of thousands of military personnel.
Tens of thousands, like 30,000 to 40,000 Russian soldiers were dedicated specifically to the military operation of Kiev to the point where they bypassed completely Sumi.
sacrificing the rear. And that's why the videos we got of all these Russian soldiers getting ambushed,
specific around Sumi, because of these convoys that were just bypassing territory to go to Kyiv.
I mean, this idea that Kyiv was not the main effort and the initial invasion is defying all the logic of what we saw.
It failed. The Russians made a calculated decision in that point to refocus on their next main effort,
which was going to be the Dombas.
They pushed the forces out.
They send them to the Dombas.
They realized they were not that successful.
They kind of consolidated the lines.
After Ukraine did their offensive in Kharkiv,
that's when Russia did the mass mobilization
to stabilize the front
because they realized they didn't have that much peaceful.
But Suleiman, I mean, to just look at Keeb,
and to see all the footages of the massive amount of tank, combat power,
and everything we saw there and the destruction of those forces suffered.
To say that, seizing Kiev was not.
The other argument, the other argument made that made logic.
So Slaman is going to be very annoying right now, so prepare yourself.
But the other argument that made sense, because I'll just give, like,
I'll try to give value to the auditors, that they were trying to surround Kiev.
and choke it out to force a regime change without actually entering it.
Now, I think this is just whether they wanted to surround it for that purpose
or whether enter it for that potential same purpose,
the goal was the regime change, whether by surrounding or entering,
I don't think it makes that big of a deal how they do it, whether they enter or not.
But Simon, I keep taking the mic from you, so please, go ahead.
Thank you, guys, do you mind if I was one to all stores very briefly, because I got to go?
Yeah, man, please. Anyone that takes some mic, because I know what's coming.
There we go.
If you wound him and then I'll just finish him. I'm joking also.
I just want to say about territory versus attrition. I don't disagree with you. I'm just saying that we're in an attritional phase of the conflict.
Whereas when you destroy combat power, you could then more easily focus on territory, whereas claiming territory doesn't necessarily destroy manpower, if you catch what I'm saying there.
I think I 100% agree.
I think at this phase, I agree with you right now.
We're in a traditional phase because neither side has had the combat power at this moment.
We got to wait until Russia, Ukraine, what combat power they build to launch.
But I agree with you 100%.
That is that right now we're in a traditional phase, 100%.
Let me, sorry, Fond, you might stay a bit longer.
And I won't give you the mic, but please stay a few more minutes,
because I want you to hear, this is important to me,
I want you to hear Slyman's argument.
Okay, go ahead.
Hence, which is about...
I am just going to refer to the argument I made like three hours ago.
I stand by it and I don't want to repeat it because it was quite long.
And I'll stay a bit, but I got to bail in a few.
All right.
Thank you for having.
Stay a bit, yeah.
Pleasure always, man.
All right.
So Slimeon, how are you going to trash?
Sorry, what was the word?
You smash?
Smash all source.
Go ahead.
Right.
Okay.
Anyway, look.
The reason why these guys...
I'm not sorry, let me say it more nice to where, because people...
You always go with personal attacks.
That's the beginning.
Always the same.
Go ahead, please.
I mean, it's personal because it's a personal dialogue, isn't it?
Even though it's not personal.
No, it also hasn't said anything per...
Also says it said anything about you or you guys or any of that.
He's made objective discussions about military strategy, but go ahead.
Let's see your intellect.
Anyway, anyway.
Like, don't stop being emotional, Mario.
Let me finish my point, right?
Okay.
the reason why I make this argument is, right?
The reason why I'm going to push back is because essentially what aliens,
let's use the word aliens, can not let's use the word you guys.
The aliens are making this argument is because they're saying,
they're trying to make it look like Putin was a madman,
he invaded, he thought he's going to take over Ukraine in three days,
and decimate Kiev and chop Zelensky up and take over, right?
But there's no evidence for that.
It's just the...
figment of an imagination of the West to make him sound like a man-man.
Now, let's look at what actually statements we've heard from Putin
and statements we've heard from, you know, various sources within the Russian military.
So what Putin said was, and you saw it by his actions,
he wanted to go into Ukraine for sure based on the issues that he had,
but he wanted to do it by doing it through the most, at the least resistance possible.
And so he even said...
that look,
these are Ukrainians
are Slavic people.
He had that under consideration.
So you saw the way
he conducted the war
early on was,
in my view,
a mistake.
He took a very soft approach
to try and make sure
that there was the least
casualties possible.
And so when you saw that,
recently that changed where he started going...
For example, he didn't go off the infrastructure.
You want to take out a city.
You want to take out an area.
You basically decimate the infrastructure system.
He didn't do that.
So all of these actions so showed that his objective was
to basically get into Ukraine,
to make sure that the resistance was least resistance
and then have a situation where, yeah,
of course, he probably wanted a regime change.
But it wasn't through the mechanism, but you've got...
you guys.
Okay, let me, let me.
And it wasn't meant to be a three-day thing.
Let me, let me, okay, so also let me, let me jump here.
I took some points.
So number one strategy, one, number one thing you did right now, Slayman, is you painted
and someone's in the trash, you're unmuted, bro, I can hear typing.
So the first thing you did was you made it seem, um, you made it, you made it,
you changed the argument that all source or others made or even I was making.
is that we said Putin's a madman.
I didn't say that.
Also didn't say that.
Now, Putin trying to enter Kiev,
that's not a madman, this argument.
Everyone thought he'd be able to do it within days.
I thought he was.
The media was saying he was.
You mean the West?
No, the West, but even the East.
Putin thought there's going to be very limited resistance.
The is very common sentiment.
People in Ukraine maybe didn't or did, I don't know.
But even in Ukraine.
I agree with you.
I agree with you in terms of he thought they'd be limited resistance.
I don't agree that.
It was meant to be in three days.
This is a fake narrative.
No, ignore three days.
Ignore three days.
I'm just saying the argument.
Hold on.
Okay, okay.
No evidence.
Okay.
I'm not saying, okay.
Whether it's disinformation or not, which is intentional misinformation, I don't know.
I'm just saying you're arguing.
We said that.
Putin's a madman.
No one said that.
Choped Zelensky up.
That wasn't even...
If you're going to assassinate Zelensky, yeah.
We're not talking...
And you're basically trying to destroy Kiev.
That is the actions of a matter.
We never said destroy.
You're putting words in our mouth, entering Kiev.
And I thought I was... I even said earlier,
I think he's going to do it with limited damage.
He doesn't want... if he wanted to damage to Ukraine,
it would have done it very differently at the beginning.
So yes, he wanted to do it with limited damage.
I don't know if you wanted to assassinate Zelensky because I even asked all sorts
that question.
So to say, Put this a Madman because he wants to destroy Kiev.
By the way, I've been sent forces one second.
So again, you guys, thanks to all the peeps.
Okay, can I finish?
Okay, good for you, so can I finish counting your point?
So do you have to stop putting words in people's mouth when you're making the
argument because you took us to one extreme and then started easily attacking us?
No one said put this a madman, you put those words in their mouths.
No one says it's going to chop Zelensky up, put words in our mouth.
You said destroy Kiev.
No one said destroy Kiev.
We said enter Kiev.
You put words in our mouth.
And then he said, take over Ukraine.
No one said take over Ukraine.
We said, enter Kiev for regime change.
You made it into it.
He's a madman.
He wants to destroy Kiev.
He wants to chop Zelensky up and take over Ukraine.
So you've made us seem so extreme that makes your argument seems a lot more logical
because you took us to the extreme.
That's your strategy number one.
And then you went after what Putin said.
Now, I think it's important what Putin says.
But also don't take it as gospel.
Remember, he said he'll never enter Ukraine days before you entered,
hours before you entered Ukraine.
But just when you're making the argument, man, do it in a way.
Do it in a way.
And I'd love to see sources.
Like, I'm open to it.
And maybe you'll have, I'm not convinced he wants to enter Kiev.
Maybe he wanted to survive.
I don't know.
And I'd love to see your sources.
But I just want to do you make your argument without personal attacks
and without putting words in people's mouth.
And I gave an example of how you did it.
You're basically trying to minimize my argument.
Can I just counter?
I actually use the word alien because you guys were getting emotional.
right so if i may you put words in our mouth well and i gave you exactly i gave you four i'm gonna
explain i'm gonna tell you how them four are wrong right so first of all someone did mention
that he wanted to kill zolenski i think it was allsos but i could be wrong no no he wants
yeah true true also i think alls us mentioned that why are you denying it why you
no because the discussion i never i'm saying the discussion around us about entering kiev that was
a whole discussion that was one of your four points was no one said that they want to kill zalinski
now go ahead one so
Oh, go ahead. Maybe, maybe...
Go on, Bonn.
Yeah, cool.
So I mean, you have sources you want to mention, or do you want to finish your argument first?
No, no, so that was it.
And the refutation of that was that Bonn sent me an article that shows that Putin literally said the opposite of that a source.
Again, this is an example where the sources are one fact.
Putin said the opposite. Putin said the opposite of what?
Putin, so basically, Neftali Bennett literally said that Putin promised that he does not want to kill Zelensky.
So that's a...
Yeah, which is, again, I'm moving, this is, there's killing Zelensky's one discussion.
I never made the statement, hold on, I never said, hold on, you just put words, more words in my mouth.
For fuck's sake, bro, I never said that he's going to kill Zelensky.
I don't know what is going on with you, bro.
You get way too emotional, let's know.
No, no, but did I say, no, because you...
It's one thing, hold on, also, I'll give you the mic, I'll give you the mic, I'll give you the mic, I'll give you the mic, I'll give you the mic, you just said I said that, I even questioned Olson about it.
Yes, also said it.
My whole discussion was about entry in Kiev and I twisted it.
So I'm debating, also, you keep...
All right, go ahead, go ahead.
Allsos, the mic is yours, yeah, go ahead, also.
Go ahead, Oursus.
Go ahead, Oursus.
Murdering our arguments, for fuck sake, go ahead, Oursus.
Merging, merging, merging.
Oh, okay, okay.
Let's get, let's get, okay, let's get Ossos.
So let's get Ossus, maybe, because we're hugging.
Neither of us said it, but he did say it.
No, never said, Ours, no, I was making, okay, anyway, go ahead, Ossus.
So, I think, so, so, I think one of the proof is that, is that,
Biden did offer evacuating Zelensky, but let's listen, okay, let's just ignore the killing
Zelensky.
Let's just completely ignore that.
Let's just push that aside.
He didn't want to kill Zelensky, fine.
Got it.
He didn't want to.
No, but even also, sorry, one thing about killing Zelensky, I don't know if he did
or not.
Sorry, last thing, I promise.
I'm hugging the mic a bit too much.
but Simon also
Putin promised he doesn't want to kill Zelensky
didn't Putin say multiple times
and actually I'll go to Von
on that point I'm not saying one way or another
because I don't know I don't pretend to know
but I didn't put the same way
US intelligence reports you take him with a grain of salt
so was what Putin says
because didn't he say he's not going to invade Ukraine
just before invading it?
Von so also jump in
I just want to make that point Von
maybe he's not on his mic go ahead also
So exactly
I mean that's that's that's
Basically, it's good.
But let's just ignore that for a second.
That's not the priority.
That's not the focus.
The evidence I gave is like Biden offered to evacuate Zelenski.
That was widely reported.
And Zulinki said no, because they feared for his life.
But let's just push that aside.
That is immaterial to the conversation that Keev was the main effort during the initial invasion.
Right.
Keev, Keev, Keev, Keev.
And the reason why someone was it doesn't make sense that Keev wasn't the main effort.
The argument I've heard was Keev was either a faint or a distraction or,
to allow Russia to conduct offensive operations in other parts of Ukraine, right?
Specifically in the east of the bus.
The only area outside of Kiev where we saw Russia do any offensive operations,
but it was a lot smaller with a lot less combat personnel, was Herzlons.
Where they seized Kerson, they tried to go to Mikhailiev.
Mikhailaya failed.
They retreated back into Kershon, and they held the defensive perimeter around the north of Kershon.
But while that happened, while Herzlson was stabilized under Russian control,
and the rest of the East in Zaporizia was stabilized,
the Russians continued to fight to try to encircle Kiev.
They continued to bypass Sumi.
They continued to bypass Charniff
because it was Keev, Keev, and Keev.
Keev was a center.
Either it was by, there was multiple debates.
It looked like they might have wanted to go in.
They saw there was resistance.
They changed their tactics to an encirclement.
The problem with the encirclement was
that the offensive from Kerson,
when they failed against Mikhailia,
if they tried to push up north,
that also failed to go from Karsan north
up to the southern part of Kiv.
They weren't successful.
So at that point...
They tried to encircle.
Also, why do they want to take Keev?
Because that's the center.
I mean, why wouldn't you?
I mean, I'm a military island.
If I want to decapitate, if I want to take over and achieve a military objective that I have, I go for the capital.
I go for the center of the power.
Of course, I mean, that's literally any invasion plan dictates that unless there's a ceasefire because you've already teased your adjective before that.
Russia, having troops in Belarus enabled Kiv to be at their crosshair.
Right? If Russia did not want to seize Kiev, they would never have had a northern front of that magnitude.
That was the one of the largest concentration of combat towers was in the north, and the intent was to go after Keith.
If not, they wouldn't have used Keith.
And I'd want to add one more also, I'd want to point one thing.
It's like, because I know that this argument and kind of slammed with the way you tweeted about us calling Putin a madman and decapitating and all those extreme words, it's kind of making it sound or implying that taking a...
He did say he wanted to kill Zelenskyy, he's just backtracking now, but yeah.
Okay, decapitating is a bit different to killing.
You can kill someone, shooting him in the head.
Well, it's basically, oh, you can shoot, oh, guys, don't worry.
This is Semen, Semen, Semen.
There's you, so when you start, Semen, Semen, okay, let's, I'm just saying,
when you see the word decapitating, or even calling Zolenski madman,
put in a madman.
But this is kind of implying that entering Kiev is like such a bad,
can I finish my point?
It's like you've not been watching the news.
and not being keeping up to a day day for the past since it, since it happened.
Are you now making the argument that basically none of these pro-Ukraine people were making the argument that Putin is a madman?
Of course they are.
I'm saying this is not the argument we're making now.
Of course they are.
But I'm saying the argument.
Go ahead.
But you've got to understand, Mario, when someone's making this argument, it's always with that preface that this guy was a madman.
No, so also, okay, I don't make that pretext.
So I'm asking the question about Kiev.
And I'm not like, the point I'm making now exactly is the opposite.
So what I wanted to say now before you jumped in.
is that Putin entering Kiev doesn't make him a madman at all.
This is military strategy 101 and I'm not a strategist.
So if you want to correct me, do correct me.
But this makes it, this is just, this is smart military strategy.
Enter Kiev and the war quickly.
regime change, put in a new government, and it's done and dusted.
It doesn't make him a madman at all.
So me asking you or trying to debate you on the likelihood of him entering Kiev being a possibility
does not mean I'm saying he's a madman.
Does not mean I'm saying he wants to decapitate.
I know you're referring to all sorts.
And let's stick to kill.
That's the objective.
I want to kill all source.
And there's also no need to dramatize things to make your point,
also saying that Zelensky is going to decaportary.
Sorry, Putin's going to decapitate Zelensky.
But let's go to Von and let's move it on because I think we've kind of butchered that point enough.
And I hope you get my point because it's difficult.
But Von, go ahead.
First, Mario, decapitate is a military term.
A decapitation strike is when you remove the head of state.
Okay.
I promise you, Slamat didn't mean that he didn't know it's a military term, but good to know that.
But you get my point, though, Von, that doesn't mean Putin is a madman if you wanted to enter Kiev.
Is that a fair point?
That's a fair point.
I dispute the...
I dispute it on the grounds that no government that Russia would install in Kiev would be legitimized by anyone.
So it would be kind of pointless.
It's not like to go in Kiev, change the government, leave, and everything's hunky-dory,
because you'll have partisans everywhere, and that government will be toppled immediately.
I also wanted to state to when Allsor said that there was no other theaters other than Harsan when...
when Kiev was advanced upon, that's factually incorrect.
The siege of Maryupil began on the 24th of February, 2022.
The Battle of Kiev began a day later on a 25th.
So I maintain my point that I made three hours ago about
The purpose of the column in Kiev being to lock the, to pin down the forces in Kiev in Kiev,
so they cannot reinforce the other fronts that we're trying to encircle at the time.
Which is also, so on that point, just, sorry, I'll let you finish von,
but I think this is a, as Von finishes also, so I want to get your thoughts,
because this is a, this is the other valid point that made sense to me earlier.
So I let you finish it off, because I know he said it earlier.
Okay.
I do not dispute that they're, you know, if you're going to do that, there's always the hope that, hey, maybe it'll just capitulate if they see this mass of forces right outside of capital.
But I don't think they were, I don't think they were hinging their plan on that.
I think it was more like, it's when you move a chess piece to lock a piece, an opposing piece in place, because if it moves, the king goes in check kind of thing, while I just derailed my own train of thought with that analogy.
Yeah.
Oh, good, man. Oh, good. Let's, I know, I know. And it's, I think, coming coming to an end.
So, also, so I'll let you respond. Then we'll have final words for Mario and Telos Tech.
So I understand. I understand. And yes, you're right. I was being a little bit over to dramatic, but you're right about my pupil.
The question, though, and pardon me, Mario.
Sorry, I'll go. So, so from a military point of view, though, the question is, what was the main effort?
Right? And what was the supporting effort?
And I say until Kiv was over, right?
Kiv was the main effort.
And the idea that the plan was to, so you can achieve, Von,
you're not incorrect in the sense that it was to lock,
combat power in an area. But that was just a secondary objective. The primary objective, and from all the strategy we saw and the other tactics we saw, because of the push that the Russians were doing in to Keeb was to either encircle it or to seize it or to encircle it for eventual capitulation.
Quickly, do you think 40,000 troops is enough to encircle and take Kiev for that constant?
In the force and not you'll pull within Iraq?
Because that's where I'm drawing a lot of this.
But what you're saying is that because this is the problem that this is the problem that Russia ran into.
That Russia did not expect.
a significant amount of military resistance as when it in the invasion occurred.
And then the plan, this is actually the irony, right?
If you look at press reporting, one of the reasons why the French did not believe that Russia was going to invade Ukraine
is because the French identified, right, that Russia did not have the military personnel to properly occupy the country.
The Russian's entire strategy was, in the beginning of this war, was to do a shock in awe, send personnel,
and hope that the Ukrainian government surrenders.
Right.
It was, it was a,
it was a,
it was a poorly executed plan.
Yeah, yeah.
It was a poorly executed plan.
Yeah, yeah.
Yeah, yeah.
Yeah, yeah.
So your,
your argument is that you're not going to look at the military strategy that would happen
in terms of personnel and so on and so forth and the fact that we had Mariopal just
a day before.
But your argument is,
guess what,
they just flopped.
They had real intention with Kiev and how you know that is just trust blood.
No, no, no. It's the tactics that they did. Because if your argument is not that, then how do you explain the push from Sumi hundreds and hundreds of hundreds of kilometers all the way from east to the Russian border west to Keith?
Hold on. Let's say.
Hey, also, do you mind if I ask you a question?
Why go to Maripal first? Okay.
Well, because it was an easy objective.
Oh, many of them was right there in the spot.
Yeah, go ahead.
Question for you.
So I actually think the theory about the attempt at a coerced capitulation of some kind.
We don't know exactly what that would have looked like.
I think that actually is consistent with the factual record, as we understand it,
in that there were negotiations underway at the time that at least appeared.
to have been making progress to accommodate both Russian demands and Ukrainian conditions.
And clearly, the encirclements, even if it wasn't sufficient to carry out some kind of large-scale
occupation of Kiev, it was sufficient to exert that kind of coercive force that
conserved as leverage in negotiations.
That seems plausible to me.
I don't know for sure that that's what the strategy was, but, you know,
accepting just for the sake of argument that that was actually the strategy and that strategy was then
completely derailed in part due to the influence or involvement of the u.s slash nata whatever i don't want to
do the reductive o boris johnson flew to kee one day and scuttled the whole thing i think people
kind of we read slightly too much into that one event to bracket that but
Clearly, the role of the U.S. slash NATO made it such that Ukraine could have the backing necessary to not, quote, capitulate and not bring about a cessation of the war at that point and actually wage counter offenses and keep the war going and protract it.
And now we are where we are in May, 2003.
So I just don't understand why there's such resistance.
the part of people who I'll broadly associate with you, although I don't know that this necessarily reflects you, but I could surmise, there's such broad resistance to recognizing the role of that
U.S.
for influence
and operationally
and logistically
in terms of weapons
and everything,
the whole kitten caboodle,
in protracting and prolonging
and causing the war
and causing the situation
that we're in now
where we have,
you know,
drone strikes hitting the Kremlin
and no big deal.
Let's eat some popcorn
and watch that.
I'll answer that.
I'll answer that.
So there's this question of, okay, armament, right?
And I've argued this before in the space.
The first armament that were given really to Ukraine was more geared towards an insurgency, right?
Because there was not an expectation that Ukraine was going to last this long, right?
So, but pushing that aside, you can give armament and intelligence to a country, but in the end of the day, you need the people to fight it.
Right. And let's look at Afghanistan, right?
The Afghan, guys, I draw that. I know you'd want to respond and kind of, Michael, you kind of digressed.
And I want to wrap up the space. So I'll actually take that response from you, all source.
And before going to Telescope, Mario, tell us, Telos Tech and Mario to kind of give us a final word.
Slam, I know how you got excited during our debate. And they're like, I have a source. I have a source.
Was that the source of what Putin said, the one that von sent you? Was that the source you were excited about?
No, no, quite a few people sent me here.
Vaughn was one of them.
Because the discussion ended up going on that, then that's where it was.
But yeah, I mean, I was going to...
Hey, Alton, if you want to finish that train of thought on a different room, let me know.
Yeah, I'll connect you guys on WhatsApp anyway if you want.
But you go ahead, Simon.
Yeah, yeah, and I wanted to come back to you on that, but I know we need to go to Mario and tell her before we can
Yeah, yeah, we'll talk about it afterwards maybe you prepare it for the next one so you have a better debate
No, but I wanted to like expose you in front of everybody, but I love it.
Expose me fire.
This is this is one of the things with you man it's like you lose an argument, but at the end you're like I smashed you man
Like, hold on bro, you just lost every single point
No, bro, it's just you know what it is?
I have to tell you because sometimes you don't understand what's happening.
So I have to like basically keep you in the loop about what's happening.
So yeah, when you get smashed up, it'll be like, yeah, Mario, you know you got smashed.
Why don't I have you as co-host, man?
I don't know.
I question it sometimes.
Let's go to Mario and tell us, like, Mario, I'd let you go first.
Just make sure your mic is clear, please.
Cool, Mario. Great argument. Final words. Let's go to Tel-Ustek while Mario fixes his mic.
He just said Mario's never know what they're talking about.
You scared, hold on that. You just scared the shit out of him. He's like, I'm not, I'm pretending I'm not here, guys. Tell us like, go ahead.
No, he's just like, I don't want to speak because then I'll sound, you know, either I'm going to sound, I'm going to be the smart Mario on the space.
It's going to sound like all marios don't know what they're talking about.
Actually, it is a good joke.
Go ahead, tell us.
Wrapping up two points I wanted to mention that weren't mentioned earlier.
If you look at that drone attack on the Kremlin,
two points of evidence pointing to that it is a false flag attack.
If you look at the video, there's two people climbing up the side of that little mount flagged area.
Very weird timing for them to be climbing up the side of the Kremlin or on top of it, exact time.
Dron hits.
If you actually look at the size of the drone,
and doing some analysis on it, that was a very small explosion, did very little damage.
Those guys up there, if it was packed with high explosives or fragmentation, those guys would
be dead and that damage to the roof of that crimon would be a lot more than what it was.
So just two things that, to me, make it seem like a potential false flag.
Another one would be...
it's justification from it from Putin's side.
And I know, you know, Suleiman and I disagree on this.
It's Pearl Harbor, but a little bit less.
Obviously, Pearl Harbor is a million times stronger than that,
but just galvanizes the nation into a pro-war footing.
So that's one point I wanted to make.
And then the other point I wanted to make more recent in our conversation was,
I do think it was a strike.
The goal was to take Keeb in three days.
If you remember closely at the beginning of the war, we're
reports of Ukraine shooting down two Aleutian 76 transport planes each of those planes held about 200 Russian Marines in there
I don't think they're going for a joyride over Kiev in the middle of launching war because there were three days is very specific so like I'm sure you've got a sauce yeah why is everyone saying three days actually I'm curious because it's been mentioned a lot so I have no idea
It was a lot in our...
It was a talking point early on,
and it got repeated over and over
until people...
It was a lot in our Western media,
for sure,
at least here in the States.
They were talking about it a lot.
Was there any source
anyway that kind of triggered this or not?
I know the origin of it exactly.
I can tell you.
But briefly,
if you want to end the room,
yeah,
okay, briefly,
Mark Millie,
the chairman of the joint chiefs of staff,
delivered a briefing to members of the House and Senate in early February, so about three weeks before the invasion.
And there were leaks to the media from that meeting from congressional staff, actually Republicans who wanted to leak Millie's assessment in order to put more pressure on Biden to,
accelerate the arms provision to Ukraine in the run-up to the war in the interest of supposed deterrence.
How long, Michael, quick question. How long since the war started, did Ukraine start receiving military aid?
Well, it's received military aid for years. This current category of military aid
They actually characterizes having started in August of 2021, because that was the first...
But when was the first major shipment of arms after the war started?
When? I think it was within days that they announced the first
tranche. I might have literally, I think what did the next day. Yeah.
It was very shamed afterwards.
Michael. I think after the war started, they initiated the, they decided to send
Stinger missiles. They hadn't done it yet. It was just javelins. But then the war starts
and with 24 hours, they already start escalating the grade of the weaponry they're sending.
Jesus, okay.
Michael, you'll look a quick question,
and if you can be as brief as possible,
you know, I know I've just read a report
that basically Gonzalo Lira has been arrested in Ukraine.
Like, what's the reason for that?
Is it against censorship of journalists?
Who's Gonzalo?
Who's Gonzalo?
I don't know who he is exactly.
I've been on his stream.
He's invited to me on to, he's,
I think it's fair to say he has a generally pro-Russian perspective.
He said that he lives in Ukraine and Kharkiv.
He's American, I think, originally.
I guess just sort of a social media personality.
I saw the report that he was a record, I saw footage of it.
But I don't know.
I haven't, if anybody could send me the primary source of where the SBU apparently announced the charges against him, please do.
What's the SBU, Michael?
Basically like the national state police of Ukraine who apparently executed the arrest.
Let's get Mario's just quick final words, Mario, before we wrap up.
Go ahead, man.
Mr. Paolovsky.
Hey, how are you?
Can you hear me well?
Mike is not great, man, but let's try to make it work.
Okay.
So listen, I want to get back to the question you asked before about the mentality.
The mic is...
Paolozky.
I know you've been waiting for it, but your mic is bad again like before.
Is there any way you can improve it?
Hold on a second. Hold on a second.
Yeah, yeah. Why is included? The reason why what we were talking about is important is because what's been propagated is that, or what's the concern of many people is that this is Zelinsky silencing any dissent.
Yeah, but this is.
I'm basically imprisoning journalists.
Yeah, but I think anyone, even, any people pro-Ukraine, we don't have many on stage anymore because we're wrapping up, but even people that pro-Ukraine will say there's,
heavy censorship in Ukraine, especially during times awards.
They deny it.
So they deny that this censorship, they deny that the other party.
I don't put what, I don't know who's there.
There is a press release on the SBU, Ukraine government website.
Doesn't mention Gonzáilera specifically, so I haven't confirmed that,
but there is a press release they put out saying yesterday they rounded up and arrested 11, quote,
internet agitators.
So they're just overtly criminalizing speech, it seems.
And that's like the bastion of liberal values that...
No, but Ukraine needs to be liberated because the bastions of democracy aren't there.
Right.
No, that's unfair statements.
I mean, that's unfair statements.
No, that's the thrust of the rhetoric that's been...
No, I think we're past...
We're past...
No, we're past...
No, come up, bro. Can he stop these attacks? Can we? Can we stick to the points of the value?
I'm just saying that the war is beyond liberating a democratic country. I think it's a power struggle, NATO expansion.
Not for Joe Biden.
Is that?
No, so how?
Yeah, but this could be part of the narrative.
But this is, which one's more important?
Weakening Russia or liberating a democratic country?
Because there's many democratic countries that we're not liberated because I didn't give a shit.
The narrative is important, Mario.
Yeah, true.
I think the narrative is important to achieve a certain goal.
But the real reason they're trying to achieve it is where you solve the problem.
The narrative is just an excuse.
But we should focus on the real reason.
Biden believes it actually.
I don't know.
I don't know.
Look, Michael, you've spoken on Biden on the call a lot more than I have,
so I'm sure you know better.
But let's get, let's think power lost get dropped.
Yeah, cool.
All right, guys.
I think we'll do another space in a while.
Let's see, hopefully no new developments.
We'll do another space in the Ukraine war.
I'm not sure the topic is tomorrow,
but you'll see you pop up on my feed.
But again, we'll see you tomorrow, Monday morning for the finance space.
And tomorrow evening for our daily news and event space.
All right, appreciate you all.
Thanks a lot for the panelists, and thanks for the moderators.
Bye, everyone.
