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Happy Tuesday always made it extra special because now it's the time we get a Daniel Davis deep dive retired Lieutenant Colonel Daniel Davis. Always a distinct pleasure to have you on the fifty five KRC Morning Show. Sir, welcome back.
Thanks for having me. Brian.
Always a treasure to be here. I appreciate that, and I enjoy our conversations. Very enlightening and of course sometimes a bit sobering, most notably for those folks who continue to want to support Ukraine in the face of what appears to be growing disaster.
I see.
First sentence of this Russian forces conquer large Dontesk stronghold. Russian Federation forces have unstoppable momentum in the Dawnask region, with a string of victories and the noticeable weaking of the Ukrainian defenses. One Swiss paper Noya Zich Zaeitung, the military situation in eastern Ukraine has deteriorated sharply. Defense lines have collapsed in various parts of the front. I struggle to find really any good news for the Ukrainians at this moment in time.
Well, there's not any. On the battlefield.
I can assure you that because concurrent with that information there's also reports from the Ukraine side from their minister I'm sorry, from their Forstar General Serski, the guy in charge of their own forces, that they're saying, hey, we're not recruiting enough people even to meet losses. So the number of losses they have per month is not offset
by the new people coming in. And what that tells you, aside from just that it's the numbers the net net is shrinking, it also tells you that they every time they get somebody with some experience, they get killed or taken off the battlefield and they come in with the fresh so they are constantly getting rid of all their experience.
At the same time, you also have new reports that two additional brigades that newly formed brigades one was trained in France and one seven hundred people fled the battlefield before they even left and got to the front. Then they had another one on one fifty seventh brigade just this week also collapsed and went away before it even got to the front. So there's two new formations of the less than they're getting for replacements are falling apart.
And then they fired a lot of these committee, they fired the ground forces commander for the Eastern Front.
You see, the wheels are literally.
Coming off, and the question is how much longer can they continue to function as a coherent unit.
And I don't think it's that much longer, Well that much longer a months, weeks? How long is this gonna lae?
I mean at some point that there's going to be east an absolute collapse, and an absolute then I would argue perhaps Russian victory across the board, or they're going to be forced to sit down a negotiation table and seed some of their land to get it resolved.
Well, that's exactly the issue here. So you have a couple of different possibilities. One is like what happened to the Germans in World War Two. They were just methodically just pushed all the way to the west by the Soviet Union and they just continued to crumble, but they stayed at least coherent all the way through. The losses got bigger, got the losses got faster toward the end, but they just continued on until literally they just.
Cease to exist in Berlin.
Or you have what happened to the British and French in May nineteen forty, where the Germans, then on the positive side, broke through the lines, got in the back of their defenses and then the whole thing just collapsed. So overnight you had the entire army collapse. And so either of those two things are possible. Both are bad for Ukraine. Both are bad for Ukraine.
Now with this, I would argue, anyxt maybe you should call it this way. This positive momentum the Russians are currently enjoying, does that suggest to you they're less likely to want to sit down and negotiate a resolution of it.
Do you think they're just going to keep at it? Well, this is the reality. They are definitely willing to have a negotiated settlement. They have been emphatic about that from the beginning. They're emphatic about it right now. But that's not the same thing that may be in the mind of Trump or his supporters, which is that they think that they can negotiate a good deal at the current line of contact that's going to be good for Zelensky and good for Kiev. That's just not in the cards,
I'm afraid, Brian. What he's saying the Russian side is saying we'll negotiate for all the land that we want, which means land you haven't lost in battle yet, all of the administrative orders of those four provinces, and if they don't get those, and that of course that also includes and plads that Zelensky has to go.
That's actually part of it.
They said they won't sign a deal with him because he's exceeded his mandate and they said he's not legitimate.
We need you guys to have an election.
So there's somebody that we can negotiate or sign a deal with.
And there has to.
Be, of course, a declaration of no NATO, no troops, no peacekeeping troops, none of that stuff, or they'll just keep fighting until they win it.
All right, And that's because they all the negotiation ships on their side right now. Now, to those out there that think this is a battle that's worth continuing to wage and somehow magically Ukraine's going to be able to bounce back and defend themselves, what do you perceive any existential threat or other threat to NATO or the European Union generally speaking, if Russia ends up taking over Ukraine completely.
No, and that's what's been said, really from the outset of this war from the West, if they keep saying, oh my god, if.
We don't stop him here, he'll come and roll here.
No, there's the Russians don't have the capacity in my view, I mean, they don't even have the capacity if they had the desire.
They don't have the capacity.
To launch into a war in you in NATO because they know it doesn't even matter so much whether they're military. They're conventional military could defeat the West, and probably in the Baltics they could because the Russian army is now
because we didn't end this early. Instead of the about one million it was in February twenty twenty two, it's now it's one point five million active duty troops now, troops that are sustained, they're trained, they've got the lot of combat experience, and their industrial capacity behind them is
like a juggernaut. But they understand that if they go into NATO now, then you have Article five issues in three nuclear powers on the other side that could come into play, and Russia's not gonna want to say, hey, we fought this whole war to get security on our western flank and then we're going to take action that almost certainly would precipitate a nuclear response from the other side.
They're not going to do that because it's not in their interest to do so, not because we have to trust them or anything else, it's just not in their interest.
So if we bring.
This to an end, then all this stuff gets off the table, and there's this ugly business of reconstruction and world that's gonna go. It's going to linger for a generation. But better to start that now than later on.
With even more death.
Yeah, I mean, and I just have to observe it's taking Russia this long to get as far as they did in one single country. So compare that exactly the entire might of the United States and the entire NATO countries. So I concur with your assessment on that as much tea leaf reading as we can do pivoting over your I like, generally speaking, Pete Heegsas's message, which is we
are going to establish a military fighting force. Donald Trump's not an executive order getting rid of DEI and I have no idea what that has to do with killing people and breaking things, But I have a more optimistic positive view of the direction of America's military With Pete Pete Hegsath at the realm and the getting rid of DEI what's your perception on that one?
Yeah, you know, in the like the eleventh hour, just before the vote was taken, there was a number there was senate debate and some of those who were against him were saying, look, there was why do you have to go up to this guy that's never been in charge of a big company. H He wasn't a general, so he wasn't in charge of a lot of troops. He was only a major and that was relatively low
level in terms of the hierarchy of the army. And they said, why wouldn't you go after somebody that that's in the Republican Party, that's like has been, you know, in all of these kinds of categories. And they said, you know, like Mark Esper or like James Mattis. You know, those are the guys they had these past ninety eight to two, etc. And I'm liking, Okay, that's the last thing that we need right now. Those are status quo guys that don't want to change anything, that were very unsuccess.
You may remember James Mattison actually left office and because he had a tantrum that Trump wanted to withdraw our troops from Syria, so he resigned over that.
So he pushed back.
Not only would he not support the president, he didn't have the foresight to see that that's not in America's interest, right, that's not the person. We need, somebody from the status quo who's been in the defense industry and all this kind of stuff. We need somebody with some fresh thinking. Now Hegseith doesn't come in with a great view. I mean, he's got some genuine skeletons in his closet and that has to be considered.
But his focus and what he's saying.
Anyway, and I give him. I'm going to give him the benefit of the doubt and give him a chance to say if he's going to action with his words. He says he wants to reform the military. Wants to bring the warrior ethos back, which as the warfighter that excites me. He wants to bring high standards back in one standard for everybody.
You either meet it or you move out.
The bottom line is what is going to make the army stronger or the military stronger?
And that is the right focus. Well, and I think that will assist in large measure to get more people interested in enlisting, because I think all this woke ideology has really turned off a lot of very patriotic young people who otherwise might have signed up to serve their country.
Yeah, I totally agree, that's that's part of what the what the at least what they're saying. I looked at one of the executive orders that talked about the de I stuff, and they're not saying they don't want any more equality or you know, opportunity anything like that. They're
not saying this is against anyone. They're just saying they don't want something that basically gives quotas and saying that you have to have a certain amount of these categories in higher positions, because now then you're you're elevating people based on a criteria other than merits, other than do they deserve it or not. And the focus is not on making the military stronger, it's on making sure it
meets DEI stuff, which is not the same thing. And so I want to make sure I hope they don't go too far with that where they you know, it goes back to where people are pushed down or certain groups are minimized, and they don't get a fair shot. We don't want that, but we do want merit based promotions.
Yeah, you're I mean, sexuality has nothing to do with it. You have the appropriate merit and skill sets to do any given job. So I'm with you on that all day long. And briefly, let's pivot over to Tulsi Gabbard National Intelligence. She's somewhat controversial. I know that she was in favor of Edward Snowden, wanted him pardon, and I
person don't have an issue with that. I think the world is a better place for knowing what we know after the snowed and release, but also previously against reauthorization of FIZA section seven oh two, which I have judged a Polaitano on every Wednesday, and boy, that's something that he just finds absolutely an offense to the Fourth Amendment. But she's flipped her position on that and now is in favor of it. What's your take on Tulsa Gabbard. Yeah,
let's look at that part first. That's not accurate.
That's what's being characterized in some parts of the media that she flipped on it.
She did not flip on it.
When you look bad, I've had I featured this on my show. When you look at what she said at the time she was against seven oh two, it was just seven oh two. She expressly said as a member of Congress when she voted against it was that we said, we need some of these provisions for our national security and our intelligence service definitely needed, but we need protections and reform so that we don't get into the Fourth Amendment parts.
She has said nothing different than that.
Now, what she has said in recent days was that there has been some changes that lessened her concerns about the Fourth Amendment part, but that keeps the issues for the security part.
So she didn't flip.
But she has so many enemies, Brian, I'm telling you because she is gonna faithfully say whatever the intelligence says, that's what gets put before the President of the United States. The deep I had to take to say deep stake the establishment. They don't want somebody like Gabbard in there. They want somebody in there like themselves that's gonna give what kind of They're gonna pick and choose what kind of intelligence goes to the president that fosters the.
Opinion that, well, you have to use military force.
They all they do is They want somebody that's like them, that's gonna keep saying force for force, military, military. They don't want somebody that may say, hey, sir, intelligence says this, so we actually don't need to use military power here. We can use other instruments of national military power. She is gonna faithfully do that. She's been consistent from the front, and she is always focused on what's good for America. I think she may be the best pick on the cabinet.
How about that? Coming through loud and clear on that one. Daniel Davis Deep Dive. You can find his podcast online. Just search Daniel Davis Deep Dive. You run right into it and you can always tune in every Tuesday at the bottom of the eight o'clock hour for another edition of the Daniel Davis Deep Dive. Always great talk with you, sir. It's my pleasure. I'll look forward to another one next Tuesday.
See you next week, Brian. Have a great week.
It's a forty coun eighty forty one, I fifty have krcdtalk station and we're gonna learn about cervical cancer. It is Cervical Cancer Awareness Month. One of the great doctors for my cancer doctors OHC is going to join the program next and enlighten us about that what we need to look for and watch out for.
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