You Won't See Russia Relent: Mike Lyons Talks To Armstrong & Getty

analysts joins US. Mike served with various military organizations both the US and Europe throughout his career. On his a well known commentator on a number of networks. Et STERA, Mike, how are you, sir, Hey, guys, great to be with you this morning. Thank you, it's great to have you. What was your reaction to the news that it was announced on high that the Russians were withdrawing from Curson. Well, I think actually Russia avoided the disaster, so one would

have been a disaster. Is there on the on the western side of the Nembro River, and they had anywhere from twenty to three thousand troops in outside of the river, and I think what would have been a bigger disaster if those troops surrendered and then then you have a real Russian problem. So Russia, it looks like they're finally getting general officers that are kind of getting it understanding

the situation on the grounds. Wants taken nine months, but in order to you know, kind of save the troops and fight for their day, they got to bring them to the eastern side of that river, knowing full well the Ukrainian military doesn't have any capability to conduct a military type river crossing in an offensive operation. So Russia general says, we're gonna save these troops, We're gonna bring them back here, and now the long war is on for the wintertime to just kind of shut things down.

So I think that Russia averted a disaster, and while it does look like defeat on their side, it really is going to save Russian troops for a future battle, of which you know, Ukraine still just doesn't have enough men. Well, it's interesting to me how many things have happened through this whole campaign that aren't any different than if we were talking about war a thousand years ago, you know, getting to the other bank of the river before winter.

I mean, that's that's some classic old timy military stuff right there. Yeah. Yeah. For all the technology and precision bombing and all kinds of things, that does come down to geography. And you know, army guys like myself always look at that as well, and this is what what's what they're trying to do, and it's it's it's pretty clear that you've got to save these troops to fight them for another day. I mean, look, Russia is gonna Russia.

What that means is they've got this kind of fighting in their DNA for the last hundred years and the last thousand years. They're not going to stop there. They're going to continue to use what weapons they have to to strike deep into keep. They're going to continue to try to take out infrastructure. Um, you know, the weather, the weather in Ukraine, there's not tundra, it's not Moscow, it's not this. You know, they're gonna like freeze them out.

I guess I had a good analogy yesterday. I was talking to a friend of mine who we said, it's kind of like, uh, you know southern Illinois, you know Kentucky weather in the winter, it gets called but it's it's kind of survivable, so you know, there's not going to be this this challenge. Ukraine can kind of sort

get through this. You know, I'm talking another guy like yesterday and another uh you know, high ranking guy we were talking about to where this thing is going, and it looks like you know, Q two of next year, at some point these both sides will be just exhausted and perhaps um NO will start to negotiate, but you're not going to see Russia quit at least through the winter. Well, so just to clarify then, I think you've made this point.

The withdrawal from Cissan, it should not be read as some sort of trend or sign of weakness per se. It's just a reasonably intelligent strategic move. Yeah, exactly. And we want to prop up the Ukraine side. We want to obviously see them do well. They're they're on their the right cause for for freedom and justice and the Russians are the bad guys here. But the Russia is just doing what they have to do in order to

fight for another day. So again I don't look at this as their defeating and I'm sure they're not telling their their troops that they're they're they're they're trying to make basically save twenty tho troops, because if twenty troops surrender on the east side of that river, that's the disaster, that's that would be something that would be the big

victory that Ukraine then could claim. Well, I'm thinking about all the times that you know, Grant pulled back to regroup and just you know, kept at it, um, referring to the Civil War. Um not he listens, asked Grant, not Hugh Grant, clarify exactly. Um. Uh So. I guess that explains why it was announced, because when I heard it yesterday, I thought, why are the Russians announcing this with you know, um, not glee, but certainly with with

such confidence. Well, I think you've explained it now, yeah, and and and so looking at other ways, like in normally in a regular military operation, now the Ukraine's on the offense, they would call this pursuit operations. But but that pursued stops at that river. They don't have that capability. They'd have to cross that river with three times the amount of men in order to have any kind of

assured success to try to do that. And they just don't have that kind of capability that the West will continue to support them, no question about it, and that'll that'll last for a while. But I think you're gonna see a real stop in some of the fighting there in the southern region. So I find myself curious, Mike, if the United States UH was tasked with crossing that river and doing what needed to be done, what would that look like logistically and what is it the the

Ukrainians lack. Yeah, it's good question. I think a lot of it though, is we wouldn't put ourselves in that place because we would have now looked to taken that position across the river already. We would have prepped that that area, and we would have tried to have cornered them before our enemy escaped. I mean that that would have been our commander's intent. But they just again don't have that kind of manpower to do that, So you know, they were not able to take advantage of something that

we would have done. We would have had the capability in order to to really surround those twenty tho troops and try to make them surrender. But now if we had to do that, um, it would take months of planning and it would likely not. We wouldn't do it right away either, and given our our military um kind of what we do, it's it's old fashioned, you know, ribbon bridges, it's old fashioned, people up front, you know, getting shot at its old fashioned. Take storm in the

beaches at Normandy. I mean this is there's no kind of technology that's gonna do that. It's gonna take brave people in order to get out in front and face, you know, face the enemy and a lot of fire. Well that's really interesting. So even if the mighty advanced, well funded US military we're going to try to cross that river, it would take months and planning and to to pull it off. Yeah, we probably wouldn't do it until the springtime. Interesting, we'd put people in place, and

we would we wouldn't even try. I would like your reaction to this headline. This is from the Wall Street Journal, But I saw a number of places US refuses advanced drones for Ukraine to avoid escalation. The Biden administration won't give Ukraine the Gray Eagles, despite please from Kiev and a bipartisan group of members of Congress. How do you feel about that? Are are we are we only arguing with ourselves on this whole escalation thing, or does that

make sense to you? Well, no, I think we have to be careful on escalation and we're doing everything we can to try to keep the playing field level, but we're gonna we can't risk giving them something that Ukraine decides to pour over the border into Russia. I think

that's going to that would escalate it quickly. And that's why they still really don't have patriots, they don't have some of the eight tacoms, they don't have really the long range missile systems, because they believe that Ukraine would use them to its inside of Russia, that that would trigger then Russia maybe lear into the Baltic States, maybe doing something. And they're getting a trilier every day, no question about that. But but they're in it for the

long run. I mean, they could be like the Chinese. They're they're gonna put a long run. This could be two to three years at this point um from their perspective. So I agree with that. I don't think we should be giving them things that that would likely tip the balance so far on their favor, or potentially be crossing that border. That's just a no go. So listen, Mike.

I know your specialty is a military and analysis and you're not like part of a Russian study think tank, But what's your sense based on what you've heard about the Russian home front, the domestic approval for the war, the support and and doesn't matter at this point. I don't think it matters. I think, um, with a hundred and sixty plus million people Russia and eleven times zones, Russia grabs people from all over its its its geographies and only has to bring a couple hundred thousand of

them to the battles to make a difference. And so why you've got TV reporters and mosque gown There might be protests going on there. There's places well east of that that I have no idea what's going on. That just gets told to the fight for the fatherland and they can, you know, can show up there. What what

Russia should be doing right now is training divisions. They should be training soldiers at a time if they if they want to win this and go back on the offensive, they're going to have to do that, take the next six months and do that. Instead, they've been putting tropes in piecemeal, one at a time, a few at a time, and it's not proven to be effective because they're not really well trained. So they still have tremendous capability, and they still have all that infrastructure, They still have all

of that ready to go. And I don't think you're gonna see this thing, you know, explode from within it. They're gonna still it's gonna go on for at least another six months if not more great stuff, really interesting military analystm Mike clients there. Mike, thanks so much for the time. Thanks, thanks for me