Live in the Moment. Mike Lyons Talks to Armstrong & Getty

the Armstrong and Getty Show. Hey, Jack, thanks so much for hand me back. By the way, some of the reporting, uh I, I keep talking about what a great job CNN is doing, but a lot of a lot of the journalism out there is just great around this story, and it's one of the you know, it's one of the stories of our time, no doubt about it. Where where do you see things currently? Where We were just talking to David Ignatius of the Washington Post. He feels like a phase one has ended, in a phase two

is beginning. How do how do you see this? Yeah, that's probably a good way to put it. The Battle of Kiva is over, with Russia being defeated by first a Ukraine maneuver force and then by Ukraine guerrilla force

that actually ejected them from land that Russia took. You know, I can't look in history and see many times when the defenders have done that without adding more troops, without repositioning more troops, and not getting any help other than the equipment that's poured in from the West that's come the javelins and those combat multipliers that story just had on the drones is is phenomenal. And the fact that they're able to synchronize fires as we call it in

the in the field artillery. Um, you look every day and see the pictures of the nation that's taking place between real time intelligence that we're providing them. We're not talking about that a lot, but we're providing them real time intelligence to where those Russian troops. So I think that's why I think we talked about that's one of those general officers are getting killed because we're telling them, hey, look guess what, there's a general officer here, you know,

could kind of go after them. So so I do think it's now based too where they're gonna try to reposition all these forces now. But they've got to take what's called exterior lines. That means is they gotta go all the way around. They gotta travel about fifteen hundred or so kilometers around to get to this new battlefield, which is going to be the east in the dome Bass region, and ukrain Or repositionist forces and start the counter attacks already, So Russia doesn't have any momentum. They

likely lose that as well. And mary Pole still hasn't fallen, so I can't get over house. So probably the Ukraine military is performed. So the atrocities that we've all seen, the pictures, the videos, the things you read about what happened in these towns over the last six weeks. Yeah, while the Russians occupied them. Is this an undisciplined, out of control military full of thugs or was this the

plan from the beginning? You know, we talked about this a couple of weeks ago, and I said from the very beginning that this will turn on what the Russian soldier does at the private level, at the lowest level of the execution phase of the Russian military, what they do when they are faced with Ukraine citizens and civilians and non combatants. And um, there was a side. To me, that was just kind of helping that we weren't going

to see what we ended up seeing. It reflects frankly, and this is gonna sound really terrible, but it reflects Russian culture unfortunately. And and we would do the same for us, we'd project, you know, are the military reflects the society that it's from. It's just that simple, which where we get the soldiers from. And I'm afraid now the Russian culture and Russian people are are staying now with the the performance of their military. Now, you know,

part of the playbook. That's the most overused term right now, the Putin playbook and all that goes with that. But but but for whatever reason, this is how the Russian military on the ground fights. That's the first time it's it's it's nineteenth century tactics. It's what happens back that's what Russia has done before and every war they've ever been involved with when they tried to conquer another another country.

We just maybe didn't think it was gonna happen now, but it did, and um, it just just not change. And I'm sorry, but it reflects poorly on Russian culture. Yeah, it is amazing Historically Putin's doing the same thing Stalin did, who did the same thing. The Tzars be for him. It's just absolutely amazing, right, Um, it got everybody, It got everybody's attention. When General Milly said this is going to be measured in years, and he said possibly not decades,

but years. So I don't think any of us workspect in that. So what does this look like for years? So so now we're gonna look at this. So deep down the United States wants the Russian army destroyed in Ukraine, and that's why we're pouring the weapons that we're doing in and Russia is doing a pretty good job of getting itself destroyed in Ukraine. Still a regional conflict, we have to look at it that way. Still can't get involved.

Let's hope Pluton doesn't expand it doesn't attack NATO, doesn't, you know, go in such a way that forces us to respond. But it likely goes months because he has the people in the mass. He's got these these battalion tactical groups was what they're called, and how they fight, and you know, he brought about a hundred and twenty of them or so to the battlefield and still got about eight years so left, and he's repositioning all in this dome best region where he's gonna out number the

Ukraine military, um maybe two or three to one. Still so um, again, it's just gonna see how well the Ukraine military fights and how they defend and what they can do. I think this is like the abb Is really war from the nineteen seventy three and that it had two basically two fronts in the north and in the south, and the same thing that happened there. Um and after these railities, you know, kind of win in the north and then focused in the south. And that's

really what I think could happen here as well. And there'll be this trade off for land for peace, and the Ukraine border likely gets redrawn. But if Ukrank can keep Odessa the lost Crimea, that's gone right, we all agree with that. But if they could keep Odessa, that keeps that warm water port, they have something. Um. But Mary Poles is probably the last thing that the Russians are going to go for, and they have to have it if they want to declare any kind of strategic victory.

So Secretary of State Blincoln said yesterday that we are providing or they will soon have uh ten anti tank systems for every Russian tank. You're the only person I've heard explain the whole tank to me that losing tanks isn't a thing, and Russia has lost a lot of tanks and now they're there's gonna be ten systems for taking out tanks for every tank that exists. So you know that's gotta be good news for the Ukrainians. Yeah, and that those things take out things more than tanks.

They blow up buildings, they they destroy bunkers, they do things that that that uh and they do it in a way their heat seeking, their fir and forget there. They're high. They're the kind of technology that we brought to the battlefield that's making a difference. That all wars

have these kinds of things that make a difference. Right, Desert Storm had GPS systems that the fact that got us to the right spot at the right time, and MLR as multiple loft rocket systems that allow deep interdicting fires. In this war, it's these drone technologies to switch blade. You're seeing the fact that the stingers are still keeping the skies open, the fact that the skies are still uh contested and no no one really has their superiority there.

But these Javlins, those last things are just tearing the tops off those tanks and the BMPs, and they're causing Russians to to surrender really in mass. And and the fact of the matter is we aren't just flying one for one. We're firing five or six at one tank. We're making sure that tank dies. So the um A spokesman for Zelinsky said yesterday, I need I need three things, weapons, weapons, and weapons. The public in the United States, according to polls,

is all four giving them more. Should we be giving more? What would more look like? I just found out that even though we've we've given Ukraine a billion dollars worth in the last six weeks, we're pumping in nine billion a month in Iraq at the time. Right, so we were able to do kind of the heavy crew related equipment interact, but we can't really do that here. I

don't know how it gets there. You see the Czech Republic trying to give a pc s all Soviet made because it's too difficult to now train Ukraine troops on ABRAMS tanks or US based equipment. We've got countries in data that have the same kind of equipment Ukraine does. If we're gonna give anything, that's where it's got to

come from. We have this. The MiGs are all the time people said, oh, let's get them the MiGs, and I see where we go from there again, too hard, you gotta they'll fly in, They've gotta park them, you've gotta realm them, refuel them. I'm not sure they're going to be difference makers. The difference makers are those javelins. The different makers are the individual weapons systems that are

easy to use. Um, they're easy to train on that that they've We've got so many in there now, I am a little bit concerned that we're actually sending too many there because those stingers, so I think we've talked about two those stingers are weapons of mass destruction if they find their way back to the United States. You know, those are those are not They're in the playbox right now.

They're in the playpen of the Ukraine government there. But the bottom line is those those get in the wrong hands and those become you know, weapons of they could shoot down commercial aircraft and things like that. We've gotta be really careful about some of the weapons. We also provide there and make sure those accountability for them. Interesting

one final question. I've been trying to figure out how to ask this, So I was looking at the picture of there was a side by side thing floating around on social media a couple of days ago when Zelinski went and visited one of those towns where all the horror happened. And the look on his face and just his face in general, compared to what he looked like six weeks ago. I mean, the guy has aged ten years in six weeks. And how do you blame how do you for those of us have never been around

this such a horror? How do you keep your what do you focus on to keep your your your your here, your humanity, to keep from going crazy, to keep from questioning everything when you see this sort of stuff. Yeah, that's a great question. And you know, I prepared to go to war my whole adult life, you know, at the West Point, and I read books and I trained hard. And here's a guy that gets thrust into that environment. He's a comedian, he's a movie star, and all the

other things before he gets that spot. But he's quickly learned that number One, you have to live in a moment and you said, live right there, right at that point in time, make a decision based on your instinct. He has great instinct. I think that's from what he's demonstrated. But then the second thing, he's got to be able to compartmentalize. He's got to really look at something and not get too emotional about it, keep his emotions so in check. Um. I can tell you again, being in combat,

you see things that you have to look once. You look twice and say, Okay, I gotta keep going, I gotta move forward. And I look at that guy and he just gets up every day. You know, I'm a little bit feel better now about keeping about his safety. There was a time when we were getting up every day thinking about whether or not he was going to survive the night. But um, but I think he's gonna be okay. And I think he's gonna he's gonna emerge

as a real leader. Um and I think it's gonna you know, he's he's gonna be getting a Nobel Peace prizes, lots of things that are gonna be good to come his way. He's just got to maintain it. But but he was thrust onto it. And when people are trust into the greatness they sometimes perform, and he's done superbly. This fact I think will be lost to history. But our government told him to leave before it started, and

he said, I ain't going. Man. What a decision that turned out to be for the history of his country and maybe there for the history of the world. Yeah, no, absolutely if he had done that. And we're we're we've become, unfortunately, the risk averse. You know, we're the super power that's risk averse. And you know, I get it. I still

don't want to push them too far. I think the administration has pretty much played this the way they needed to played it, and there's not you know, this is telling us we have to fix this in the future, and we can't fix it now. We just have to get the combat to stop. We have to get the shooting to stop. But we've got to realize that we've got here because the thirty years of bad foreign policy and and then then in the moment, we've become risk

averse and and almost psychologically disarmed. And I think that's, uh, that's unfortunate, and that's that's that is a bad reflection of this administration. Frankly, Mike Clients, thanks for your time. I love your work everywhere I see you. Your Twitter uh feet is good to follow and thanks for coming on today. Thanks Jack anytime. Thanks to One More Thing podcast Jack. This is roughly the equivalent of carrying around two and twenty four slices of bacon in your body.

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