It's that time a week for the day Deep Die with Daniel Davis, retire Lieutenant Colonel Daniel Davis on the program every Tuesday to talk about well sadly speaking of late war and I see World War thres on the list, Daniel Davis. That does not comfort me any bit at all. But let me wish you in an early happy Thanksgiving and hope that you do enjoy your Thanksgiving. And I fortunately get the rest of the week off, taking some vacation time, so I don't suspect we'll end in a
happy note. Just got out the phone with Oliver Lane, the London bureau chief for bright Bar, talking about of course Ukraine. The fog of war came up. You know they did the missiles hit, didn't they hit? Did they do damage? They didn't do damage. One side's got a statement, the other guy's got a statement. But I mentioned the idea and my wonder, my wondering out loud over how much longer Ukraine can even continue to fight, regardless of the military hardware they are given and whether or not
we're operating it. But there's a finite amount of people in Ukraine, and a lot of them are getting killed on the front line, and Oliver pointed out, you know, when you see photographs in the front line battlefields, these are old men. These are people in their forties or fifties with you know, gray beards, And I mean, are those the backup reserve troops? Are they going through the old guys first before they get what's left to the young people because nobody's having kids anymore. Where are we
on this? And are I mean, I mean, you get where I'm coming from on this?
Unfortunately I do.
And listen, there's also a news out just this morning that puts a little bit more facts on this issue here, and that is that I think I may have mentioned maybe last month or so, there was a piece out in the New York Times that had a graph that graphically depicted how much territory of the Ukraine has been losing to Russia in the last six months, and there
was a dramatic uptick. And as of October I had said, an old time record that was more than all of the games that Rush had made in twenty twenty two, which was pretty amazing since that initial invasion. And then now, as expected, the numbers out for so far in November, and you see we still got reporting.
More than a week to go of the data from when it's again.
It's already exceeded what they had lost in October. The last month, they have lost more square kilometers than any single month of the war. I mean, it's just unbelievable and of course commensurate with all of those territorial losses or human losses, and they're continuing to be killed in larger numbers. You're right outside of this issue with the hypersonic missile and the irashnik is it's called in Russian.
It's a very real issue that by itself, but even off of that, by the headlines, off that on the ground, the ground is just continuing to go in Russia's favor, and no matter what anybody wants to say, if the war is not brought to a negotiated end pretty quick, then Russia will win militarily on the ground by force
what they want. And that is a stark, cold reminder that most in the West just can't get their head around because they've been told stories the whole time about how Ukraine's winning, in Russia's losing, etc. Listen, I gotta tell you, I was on Fox News a couple of days ago, and the anchor actually said he must have believed this.
But people are saying that.
Russia is worn out and they're about to collapse at any moment. I can't believe people are still saying that in the third year of the war. But that's where we are right now, very different than reality on the ground.
So absent and infusion of troops, which I imagine would come from NATO countries, they would have to enter into this conflict, turning it probably in the into a global conflict. Ukrainians can't rely on the North Koreans, the sent a bunch of people have to fight the war on their side of the of the field. So this is just
a puftally going to slowly go in that direction. Do you think that Vladimir Putin with the new election with Donald Trump taking over, might take us a little bit more of a wait and see approach because he has heard Donald Trump say it. You've heard Donald Trump say it.
I don't know how he plans on accomplishing it, but laying hands on this situation and resolving this conflict right away, obviously that is going to require, at least in my mind, I'm going to rely on your learned opinion over mine. If it's wrong, it's going to require Ukraine to give up some land in order to resolve the conflict. They're gonna have to give back what they did in invading Russia,
but also make major concessions on Ukrainian land. In any resolution, it doesn't involve well just losing completely.
Right.
Yeah, the first point, No, Putin is not taking away and see attitude he has is put on the accelerator and he is pressing harder and faster, and they are taking more and more territory. He is going to do everything he can to put on the table before January twentieth conditions for Trump to come and negotiate.
This says, I've got all the big cards here. I want to negotiate. He's already said.
But Putin has willingly I will definitely talk to him, would be happy to do so. He's never said anything different all throughout the war. We've had many chances to have this stopped with negotiations.
We're unwilling to do so. Now Putin is going.
To show both strategically with that orationik that was just fired, and tactically on the ground, I have all the cards and if you want to have a negotiated settlement, it will definitely require the succeeding of a large amount of territory, and then Russia had already has and probably more than the current line of contact in negotiation. If Trump doesn't agree to that, he'll just keep his foot on the accelerator and keep going.
That's the hard part about this.
I kind of had hoped that by the time Trump came in, if he had won, that he would be in a position to maybe freeze, to call along the current line of contact. But now then that's off the time table in my view, because Putin has the ability to say, no, I'm not willing to take any deal short of the territory that I think we need for our security. And so I think that we're going to be in a tough situation. And by the way, I don't know if you've seen, but there's been some really conflicting signals.
Coming out of the Trump camp. Coming out you had won.
Mike Waltz on Fox News, you know, recognized kind of what you said that there's you know, there's potential for conflict all over the place. We could be into a global conflict really fast if things don't get taken care of,
so they want to have a negotiated settlement. Then you had Gorka Sebastian Gorka go on separately and say that Putin's gonna come or Trump's going to come in and demand that Putin to give him exactly what he wants, or if you think we've given a lot of stuff Ukraine so far as peanuts compared to what we're going to do, which is not a good signal, and it's a contradictory signal. So it's unclear exactly what Trump is going to do when he takes office.
Well, the contradictory signal seems, you know, maybe low from some level to keep them confused, because that way we're not hardline in any one direction or another. But I mean, I find the idea of continuing to throw hardware at this to just be a wasted proposition, given there's got to be people behind the guns to use them and shoot them and defend the territory, and that's not happening right now, as you point out. So I know that there are areas of Ukraine who are pro Russia. I
mean that was the situation with Crimea. Correctly, they weren't necessarily. Ah, so what is Russia. Let's look down the road. I mean, worst case scenario, Russia takes over and takes over the entire territory. What are they biting off in that regard? Because I think of, you know, the anti Russian people who would still be there, the pro Ukrainian the patriotic Ukrainians, you know, fighting a guerrilla war or constantly like you know,
mosquitoes going after the larger Kremlin occupiers. How do you see that playing out over the long term. Yeah, it certainly could.
And if you may recall, even before February twenty twenty two, when all the Russian forces were massed around there, there's a lot of talk in the West that Ukraine couldn't fight a conventional war against Russia and win, so they were already planning even then for a guerrilla world war.
I mean feel like that from the outset.
Then all of a sudden, Ukraine did a lot better in the first year than anyone thought, and that kind of tabled that. But I would imagine that there's so much hatred for Russia in the West that, just like we did in Afghanistan when the Soviets invaded in the eighties that we would probably still support, you know, a clandestine operation just to keep Russia, keep people nipping at
their ankles, et cetera. But I think that Putin is aware of a lot of this, and so I doubt very seriously he's just going to go and conquer all the country, because that would be botting off a huge, you know, hard headache for him long term, because especially in the western half of the country, there is intense hatred for Russia, and he has no interest in any
of that. So I think that he would limit himself territorially to the other part, to the western part, as long as that what's left in the east, I'm sorry, what's left in the western part of the country is non aligned and not going to be in NATO. I think that he'll be okay with that. We'll see how it works out. But that's what he says from the beginning.
I think that's probably true.
Well, and that speaks volumes to negating the whole idea that you know, his designs are on all of the eastern NATO countries. I mean, that's that's just not possible.
That's always been a canard by the war supporters to try and fear cause fear in people to say, oh my god, it's Hitler again.
It's never been that way.
He still doesn't have the capacity to roll in and take conquer and territory.
He doesn't have it, He has no interest in it.
Daniel Davis Deep Die find him online podcast Deep Die with Daniel Davis. Daniel, I always enjoy our conversations. I look forward to next Tuesday in another one. Keep up the great work and.
Always my pleasure. And have a good thanksgiving any.
Thanks I'm giving to you and your as well. Take care of my friend. It's eight forty year, but five cars to the detalk station. Time for me to mention because I want to, and you're gonna be happy that I did covers since he