Russia Has Lost This War: Jeff McCausland Talks To Armstrong & Getty

thousand and threatening nuclear war? Well, you know, Yogi Berra, who very famous Yankee and philosopher, once said you come to the fork in the road, take it, and I think that's what Mr Putin did. He had two options, as things have gotten very, very dismal for him for the last several weeks. One was to escalate and the second one was to suddenly have the propaganda machine start

turning out how successful we've been. We we spanked the Ukrainians, we killed off all the Nazis and called for a ceasefire to kind of freeze this in place and try to get the Europeans to bring Lynskey to negotiating table. Obviously he picked. He picked the fork for the escalation, and he's escalated in three ways. One you've mentioned. That, of course, is be calling up a three thousand reservists.

The second was this rattling of the nuclear saver, though I want to point out this also is part of the narrative because it's described in terms of Russia is threatened, the motherland is threatned. It's not about taking over territory of spank and Nazis. He's painting this as you know. Russia is now threatened and we'll use these weapons to defend our integrity. And then the third escalation, of course,

was this now sham, the referendums. They're going to occur over the next several days and the area is occupied by Russia, actually making that Russian territory. Well then, the the extension of that thought being, well, if the Ukrainians attacked, quote unquote, Russian territory, he's justified in using at least

technical nukes. UH, possibility to horrifying to contemplate, although I suppose we have to exactly right, and that puts that degree of at least ambiguity that he could escalate that point out to defend those particular territories, because they're now Russian.

Has always been a point of concerns since this war began, because the Ukrainians have talked a lot about liberating all their territory and they would tell you that includes Crimea, which the Russians took in two thousand and fourteen, and the doom of voted to make that incorporate that into the Russian Federation. From the Russians perspective, Crimea has been Russian territory since two thousand and fourteen. So that question of using nuclear weapons to defend territorial integrity has been

out there. Now he expands that. But I come back to the point. This also serves to try to motivate the population back and back in Russia by saying this is all about defense of the homeland, because he's tried to, I think, insulate the population from the lfx of this war and probably, since it's being a partial mobilization, I still think has a concern they're doing so we'll elicit some kind of social disruption in Russia amongst the population.

Response then we have seen some evidence of that in the last far yet out well, backing up a couple of weeks, which is what led us to Putin's speech the other day, when Ukraine had their stunning blitzkrieg, driving the Russians out of a whole bunch of areas that nobody seemed to predict, which led it to this. And I don't know what your opinion is of General David Petreas former CI director and commander, but he said the other day on CNN that he he stated that the

outcome of the war is no longer in doubt. Ukraine is going to win. It could be a slow slog but they are going to this is a major tide turning. You know event. Do you do you agree with that? Do you think? Do you think the tide has turned that much? Well, I know day fairly well and I've got great respect for days. I think this could been looked at as an inflection point. That's normally found in retrospect as opposed in in the immediate moment. I think at this moment we can say one thing for sure.

Russia has lost this war. There are no two ways about it. They are objective was to take over Ukraine put down the GARENSI government. They failed in doing that. Then their objective was the seas, at least the past, land all the way over to a descent. They failed to do that and now they're sort of concentrating on trying to secure these provinces, Lohanskan Ganets, but they've now failed to do that and this counter offensive makes it

virtually impossible. And then foreseeable future they're going to do that. So now this whole war is back to defending the homeland. My goodness, you were invaded and now it's all about you're the victim, which is kind of an odd way to turn things around. So and the effect on the Russians in terms of the loss of life, a hundred thousand casualties, massive amounts of military hardware. The reputation of

the Russian military is in total disrepute. It will take years and years just to rebuild the military of Russia if they stopped today. And that doesn't even account for the effects this. This is going to have on the Russian economy longer term, and some of the economists have told me it might be fifty years before they recover from this. Half a million Russians have fled, most of them young people who are very bright. A so called brain drain has occurred. So Russia has law. Whether or

not Ukraine has won. You've got to define what what when win looks like. If it's taking back all those territories, that could be hard. If it's going back to the status COO anti, that's certainly possible. Jeff mccauslin, CBS News, military consultant on the line. UH, Jeff. Given the state of the disrepair of the Russian military, as you mentioned, what's it going to look like trying to incorporate some portion of that? Three hundred thousand young men called up?

I mean these are guys who are having to be dragged into the battle in most cases. I think that's gonna be true and it's gonna take a long period of time. This is not gonna have any really significant military impact in the immediate future. It's gonna take a significant period time to identify these people, bring them up in a fashion that your training base can at least

give them some modest amount of retraining. They all have some military experience, and then either form new units or use those of individual replacements to fill out units that have suffered some degree of casually. Probably initially start with officers, to fill out officers and units that have been lost, people with special skills, think of doctors or medical people. They might start bringing some of them in fairly quickly.

In terms of overall military cigificant is gonna take a longer period of time and I don't think we'll see the effects of that really occurring until next spring. secondarily, of course, it has some other effects which are interesting and and that is part and partialist announcement. Also was what we would call in the U S military stop laws.

So if you're a Russian soldier right now serving in Ukrane and your enlistments supposed to run out sometime between now and the end of winter, guess what, you've just been extended until the war is over. Congratulations that. That's not gonna be a real morale booster. Oh by the way. Uh, and we've seen evidence already in some of the some of the demonstrations that are occurring, that some of the demonstrators,

when they're arrested, are immediately drafted. They get their hand their draft and not thiss just because you're you're out there demonstrating again. Not Going to be a real morale case if you are actually put in the uniform, and we've seen throughout this particular offensive over the last few weeks been morale and cohesion in the Russian forces is

rather disastrous, with Russian units were choosing to fight. In some cases we've seen Russian soldiers taking off their uniforms, putting on to then closed and running away, writing letters to their parents telling them that it's a humanitarian crisis, they have no food or water, and those are the issues that Russia is gonna have to deal with and it tries to bring this three thousand man force into the military to have some significant effect. I just had

a thought. I'M gonna call an audible. Joey, you have any more questions about Russia? I'm good. What did you think when the president of the United States said the other day that, you know, we're willing to whisk risk, blood and treasure to defend Taiwan from China? And this has been an interesting one. Mr Biden, I think, has said this basically about four times now, that the United

States would defend Taiwan, uh and repeatedly. His staff kind of walks is back, because the United States has for the last thirty four years had this to China policy, recognizing, you know, that China is the government but at the same time having strategic ambiguity about how will react. And I have to think that Mr Biden is not doing

this and making mistakes four times over. He's just trying to over time, I think enhanced that degree of ambiguity to the Chinese about how the United States would respond, and that ambiguity, I think, would be argued in the Pentagon. Enhances the turn effect. And secondarily, I think if the Chinese look at what's occurred to the Russians in the Ukraine, they might be a bit more somber about the possibility of invading Taiwan. The response from the West that a

smaller country can respond pretty vigorously on the defense. Oh by the way, it's an amphibious assault, the most difficult military operation going. So I think Mr g might take this a bit more somber when he thinks about the possibility of a military invasion of Taiwan. Twist and turns of history. I know you're a history buff. Just Putin's single man decision to invade Ukraine goes horribly wrong, might end up stopping China from invading Taiwan, which would have

started world war three. So World War three is averted. Because Putin's a nut job. I mean just you know. History is weird that way. I hope you're correct, and all those picture things you just said. Yeah, Dr Jeff mccaslin, CBS News, military consultant. Always enlightening, Jeff, thanks so much for the time. Thanks, guys,