Angry Planet - Russia's War in Ukraine Isn't Going to Plan

Episode Date: February 27, 2022

We talk about war a lot on this show. It’s kind of the foundation of what we do.But the war in Ukraine is different. Frankly, it’s scarier. It makes everyone think of World War II and World War III at the same time.So, let’s talk about it. Was there ever a chance to stop it, and what do we think will happen next?With us today is James Miller. He’s a foreign policy analyst and journalist who has spent extensive time in Ukraine.You can listen to Angry Planet on iTunes, Stitcher, Google Play or follow our RSS directly. Our website is angryplanetpod.com. You can reach us on our Facebook page: https://www.facebook.com/angryplanetpodcast/; and on Twitter: @angryplanetpod.Support this show http://supporter.acast.com/warcollege.Support this show http://supporter.acast.com/warcollege. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Love this podcast. Support this show through the ACAST supporter feature. It's up to you how much you give, and there's no regular commitment. Just click the link in the show description to support now. People live in a world and their own making. Frankly, that seems to be the problem. Welcome to Angry Planet. Hello and welcome to Angry Planet. I'm Jason Fields. And I'm Matthew Galt. We talk about war a lot on the show. It's kind of the foundation of what we do. But the war in Ukraine is different and frankly, it's scarier. It makes everyone think of World War II and World War III at the same time. So let's talk about it. Was there ever a chance to stop it? And what do we think will happen next? With us today is James Miller. He's a foreign policy analyst and journalist who has spent extensive time in Ukraine. Thank you for being with us. Oh, thank you both for having me. Well, let's just start off with. Can you tell us a little bit about your experience in Ukraine? Because you were there for quite a while.

Yeah, I mean, I covered Ukraine for quite a while. I've been in Ukraine many, many, many times. I worked for a magazine that some journalists might know called The Interpreter. And the interpreter started as a small translation magazine. So we translated Russian to English and I was the editor. of that endeavor. And we were mostly working on Russian sources and we worked a lot on the Sochi Winter Olympics in 2014. And right as the Winter Olympics were ramping up, the protest movement Ukraine was ramping up, right? The pro-European Union protest movement that May Don. And, you know,

I really thought that that was going to be our main story after the Olympics. And of course, we didn't make it that far because the government in Ukraine collapsed. The Maidan was a popular uprising and toppled the government of Ukraine right in the middle of the Olympics. And so what my magazine did was literally minute-to-minute translation and analysis of news sources, including a lot of open-source news sources. So a lot of video, you know, tweets, YouTube stuff. A lot of stuff that was posted not by journalists, but by citizens of view. But, you know, there's so much disinformation.

So we were spending so much time really analyzing all that stuff and analyzing Russia's claims and debunking what was real and what was what was not. And we were also really the first organization to prove definitively that the troops, the little green men who were taking over Crimea were, in fact, troops. And we did that through video analysis where we could actually track the soldiers and the vehicles who moved from this base in this video. And now all of a sudden they're in this intersection in this video. And you can prove who they are and where they came from and that they were Russian soldiers. And this is a period of time where the Russian government was denying that they were Russian soldiers, but also where foreign governments and news agencies were saying, well, we're not quite sure, but we're pretty sure. And, you know, we were saying, well, look,

we've got the proof. So that kind of work then really exploded when the war exploded in the Donbos in eastern Ukraine. And, you know, we were basically doing around the clock analysis of who are these guys who are calling themselves separatists? And, you know, are they really Russian? Are they supported by Russia? Are there weapons from Russia? You know, is there money from Russia? the vehicles that were seeing from Russia. And, you know, we tracked that conflict throughout. So during that period of time, of course, I spent a lot of time in Ukraine, but most of my time in the States directing, you know, teams of people from all over the world,

really. But, you know, really trying to follow what was going on in the ground, but from the perspective of a very zoomed out perspective, collecting all this citizen journalism information and sort of combining that with our personal sources on the ground. journalists on the ground who are doing incredible. You know, you need field journalists, but a field journalist can be in one location at a time. So you've got one field journalist in this town, on this street in this town or city, but we've got video from all over that city. So, you know, you can kind of use all these different sources to form a much bigger holistic picture. And we're updating in real time. So most of our updates were, you know, sometimes minutes, sometimes. times hours apart, seven days a week, 365 days a year for years on end. And that's really my experience with following this conflict. It's really fascinating to watch it unfold this time.

It's so different from even eight years ago. I really feel like kind of what you're talking about this, this kind of information gathering that's happening online, this kind of open source satellite imagery analysis. I mean, people are watching the war now through Google traffic patterns, right? Do you, do you ever, did you ever imagine a world back then where that kind of work was going to be kind of taken on by everyone on Twitter and the rest of online? It's incredible, actually. You know, and my work started in this sort of field in 2009, with the popular uprising in Iran after a rigged election there. and the mainstream media ignored it and a lot of the, a lot of, you know, governments were just not paying attention to this stuff. And, you know, when the Arab Spring started, you know, especially when it started to get violent places like Libya and Syria, you know, you would have mainstream journalistic outlets say, well, the opposition says this and the government of Syria says this. We're not there because it's not safe to be there.

And I'm like, yeah, but there are literally thousands of videos uploaded every single day. I mean, you effectively have live around the clock video from every part of that country. So if you're analyzing it, you are there. And, you know, if you're also building and relying sources, you know, I was never in Syria, But I had sources in every corner of that country who I came to rely on. It's not as good as being there for sure. But you do get a different perspective. But what's happened with Ukraine is this stuff is now the way we cover the news.

It's the way we cover these conflicts is through this kind of analysis. And it's great for a lot of reasons. The first reason is because unfortunately, most of the people who are filming, this stuff live there. They have to be. So I don't have to send, you know, a Matthew Galt or adjacent fields to the, the war zone to potentially get killed or kidnapped or whatever it is. Terrible things happen to journalists. You know, instead, we're relying on the people who are actually in those cities who have to live there. So that means we get more information. We get quicker. We get a bigger picture. We put fewer journalists in harm's way. We need a

fewer journalists, which is great because we have fewer journalists, right? That's a whole different conversation about sort of the collapse of the media landscape. But it is incredible that, you know, so much of what we've known about this conflict actually came from Russian citizens and citizens in Belarus who were monitoring and just filming convoys driving down the street or trains full of vehicles. And that's how we've pieced together, you know, what Russia was moving. and where they were moving it from and what kind of vehicles do we have? What kind of soldiers? Where did they come from?

Where are they going? And this kind of stuff, I mean, even 10, 15 years ago, you'd have to be the CIA to know this kind of stuff, right? You'd need to be a spy network to know. That's a good. And you'd get it wrong. Well, that's a good segue, right? Well, and that's the thing, right?

So they would tell you, hey, this is what we know about, you know, this is what we know about what's going on in Iraq, or this is what we know about what's going on in Bosnia. And maybe they were right and maybe they were wrong. But like as citizens of the world, you're either just going to take their word for it or not. There was no way to verify. You can't verify what the CIA tells you. Except now I can. I can verify what the CIA tells me because we've got videos. we got pictures, we got eyewitness reports, and they're coming from citizens, and then we add

field journalists to the mix, and all of a sudden you get a much bigger picture of what's going on. Tell me what you were seeing back in November. You are actually able to see a lot into the future, actually, right? So, yeah, so I started picking, I started watching this a little bit in in late November because I kind of got a tip off from, we'll say some sources in the NATO intelligence community that they were seeing a lot of Russian troop movement that looks like pre-invasion stuff. And this is important to talk about how this was different than what we've seen before. So obviously, Russia's most important border is in the West, right? You know, you've got NATO and you've got, and so most of their troops are positioned there anyway.

And so from time to time over the last eight years, you've seen big military drills and things of that nature. And oh, Russia could invade. And it is threatening. And look, at any point in time during that period of time, Russia could have launched pretty much without notice a small military incursion, maybe attacking eastern Ukraine or some of the border towns, not a full-scale invasion like what we're seeing now. but they always got that capability.

This was different. And one of the reasons, there are a few reasons this is different. Basically, what my sources were saying is they were seeing forces from Russia being repositioned from all over the country in a pattern that matched war games that they had been observing

that might fit a scenario of a, a potential Russian invasion of Ukraine. So let me sort of stop there and say kind of what they were looking at. So obviously, Western intelligence sources are constantly doing like communication intercepts, right? They're monitoring electronic and voice messages. And, you know, the Russians are always wargaming as we are, as most countries are. So they had sort of a pretty good picture of if Russia was going to invade Ukraine, here are of a couple of different scenarios that it might look like.

And then there's war games, you know, where you take your troops and your tanks and your airplanes and your helicopters out into the field and you do maneuvers and you train. One of the things that intelligence agencies look for is can you take that war game and take some of the specific details of it and superimpose it somewhere else? So, for instance, there's a Russia, there's a river in Russia. you have a unit of forces doing a river crossing in one location and then 15 kilometers down the road. You've got a different group doing a river crossing. And then afterwards, they make a certain maneuver and they meet up in a certain spot.

Can you sort of take those lines on a map and superimpose it somewhere, say Ukraine and maybe see where they might make such a maneuver? And once again, when you combine this sort of like intelligence, like traditional intelligence like communications interceptions. With those sort of that like satellite war game kind of stuff, you can sort of start to put together, oh, this is what a Russian invasion of Ukraine might look like. And that's what they were saying. What they were saying is, hey, this is what a Russian invasion of Ukraine might look like and we should pay attention. And of course, once we started to think that that might be a possibility, then you can just turn to the internet. And sure enough, here's videos of a huge train full of vehicles.

You know, you can start to pay attention to even, you know, Russian social networks where soldiers might say, hey, I'm doing this, you know, maneuver. I'm being repositioned here. And all of a sudden, it's kind of started to look like maybe. this is what was going to happen. And then what happened was really in December, the alarm bells were really kicking off. And throughout all of January, they just got louder because everything that happened matched this scenario. And it wasn't it. I don't want to get too into the weeds. There were some weird things about the Russian troop movements. Actually, my colleagues at the

Institute for the Study of War just did a fantastic blog post about this or a podcast about this, just like last week, because they actually thought that Putin wasn't going to invade based on the fact that that some of the troop movements didn't match traditional military doctrine. But I was convinced they were going to invade. And one of the reasons was when we looked at those trains that were moving all these troops and moving all these tanks and vehicles, they were also moving ammunition. They were moving building supplies that you would build like a field hospital or a forward operating base. And here's the thing. Your troops need to train. Your troops need to train.

They're going to train. But you don't need a billion rounds of ammunition. You don't need a field hospital for a training mission. And this stuff is heavy and expensive to move. And so you start to look at it. And I'm like, man, Putin's going to do this. Putin is absolutely going to do this. And the U.S. intelligence agencies started to say it.

And now I'm like, okay, my sources are saying it. Now the U.S. intelligence agencies are saying it publicly. We've got the video to back it up. This is going to happen. And it's happening. Can we talk about U.S. intelligence agencies real quick? Because I think this is another kind of fascinating part of the story. The three of us are old enough to remember the buildup to the war in Iraq.

And I grew up reading about the church commission and just all the horrors and bongles of the FBI and the CIA. and in the run up to this war, they were being pretty routinely mocked. I always thought it was interesting the way that the reporting was couched. It was, you know, U.S. intelligence sources say X, Y, or Z. No proof was shown. They didn't, you know, they didn't say, like, here's the satellite imagery of the troop movements, etc. They would just say, like, this is what's going to happen. And now, on February 27th, it seems like they've largely been proved right, right?

right yeah do you know do why do what is changed in the 20 years and do you think that we can now trust us intelligence should we or should we always trust but verify as the russian proverb says he should always trust but verify so in um boy this might have been oh it was it was after the Syrian, the big chemical weapons attack in Syria. My work on that had been really widely cited and a contact in the State Department said, hey, our media relations team would like to pick your mind, not give you intelligence, like, we need your help. And I'm like, okay. And they called me and they're like, so we say, you know, we put out these statements that say, you know, X, Y, Z happened. And then you. And then you.

put out these statements that say X, Y, Z happened. And people take you more seriously than us. And it wasn't just me, but there were lots of people doing. And I kind of pointed out, I'm like, yeah, because I am nobody. I'm not the State Department. So when I say, hey, this thing is happening or this thing happened or this thing is going to happen, I actually have to show, because otherwise I'm just. some dude with a computer saying things, right? And there's plenty of those. It's way too many of those,

right? So I've got to show my work. I have to show proof. And the State Department doesn't want to do that. The CIA doesn't want to do that. And when you do that, it's these sort of low-res satellite videos. And people say, oh, that could be faked or whatever. Right. So there's a there's a reputational damage problem that they've got. But there's also this show your work issue that they have. This time it was a little bit different because there was so much information out there who've been talking about. So they were saying, hey, look, and they were being much more transparent about it too. They were, they don't usually like to be alarmist. They don't usually like to do things like at one point, they predicted a specific date. And that was a really interesting episode.

They said on a Sunday or Monday, hey, it's going to happen Wednesday. And what's interesting about that is, I think was the day. I think you're right. I think you're right. And there's a theory that they actually thought it was going to happen on Wednesday, on that 16th, on that date. And by so publicly stating it, they scared Russia away from launching an operation. I think the idea was Russia may have been plotting a much smaller scale, a sort of special forces incursion ahead of a much larger operation that we're seeing now.

And that was going to happen on that date. And so by putting this information out there, they're almost daring Russia to prove them right or scaring Russia into changing its plans because, A, everybody knows they're coming, and B, that would just make the United States look right. So they're very much toying with this idea of how do we regain the public's trust and how do we use strategic communications? So how are we using communications as part of the strategy, not just as like PR where we're like explaining away what we've done, right? But that's the in the past, the government did whatever the government wanted to do. and then the PR team spun that, right, hid the details it wanted to hide and presented sort of the public relations package to the world.

This time what happened was they were using communications strategically to not only explain what they thought was going to happen and what they wanted to happen and what they would do if it did happen, but also to really interfere with Russia's operation. It's been really fascinating watch. The way that the West has been kind of struck by Western response to this whole thing in general, in part because for eight years, I think, I've been doing this. And part of the story for me, one of the most fascinating beats for me has always been the way that Russia controls the information space. and boy, it is not going the way that it used to right now. You know, we've, like, all their old tricks just seem to really be falling flat in that regard.

And especially after four years in America of this kind of hysteria about Russian interference in our elections, to then have, to have these cell phone videos coming out of, you know, 18-year-old, 17-year-old captured Russian soldiers calling their parents and explaining them that they're in Ukraine, it's just like an incredible propaganda win for Ukraine, right? It's just really wild stuff happening. And then to have U.S. intelligence have largely called everything correctly, and then to be coordinating this, an international effort unlike anything I've ever seen,

as far as sanctions and, you know, cutting some of the Russian banks off from Swift. You know, I'd read that AMD and Intel won't be shipping chips to, Russia anymore, all these airspace closures. It's been, and they're going after oligarchs saying quite literally they're going to, you know, pull them, they're going to take their toys away from them. It's been, it's been quite incredible. What do you make of all of that part of it? Oh, boy. I mean, there's, there have been some serious missteps in this process. It hasn't been smooth. You know, at one point, I think France and Germany and Joe Biden had all got their teeth kicked in for maybe signaling that they might be capitulating to the Russians or that they, you know,

well, if it's not a full-scale invasion, right, Joe Biden says, if it's not a real invasion, we're not going to do anything. That went over like, you know, terribly. You know, France's meeting with Putin, you know, Macron's meeting with Putin, that went over terribly. Germany suggesting that maybe they wouldn't do, you know, pull a plug on the, on the pipeline. But in the end, And I think a lot of that came from the fact that nobody actually really thought Putin would do this. I shouldn't say nobody, but a lot of people really thought this was more posturing whatever it was. And then it wasn't going to happen. And so why dial up?

I think that might have been part of the thinking. But yeah, it has been remarkable to see, you know, Germany is sending weapons to Ukraine for God's sake. I mean, this is just an incredible development. And I think also what we've seen in the last two days is I think a lot of people thought this war was going to be over by myself included. And it is going terribly for Russia. And I think a lot of these countries have started to realize that, oh, wait, we're going to look awful if we do nothing to help Ukraine. And Ukraine wins or maybe this battle last months. And also, if we actually do something, Russia could actually lose this thing, which are words that I cannot believe are coming out of my mouth.

I mean, I give the Ukrainian military a whole lot of credit and always have for holding out and really shocking Putin and how well they've held out since 2014. But still, nobody thought they were going to do this. So I think a lot of these countries are starting to realize, man, we could get on board and actually flip this board. Well, so wait, what does it mean for Ukraine to win? Doesn't it just mean that Russia has decided it doesn't really care enough to win? I mean, can't Russia roll in an awful lot more of resources at this point if they wanted to? Can it? If it could, wouldn't have – if it could, would it not have done so already?

This is the biggest confusing thing. Okay, so, I mean, now we're going to kind of get into the battlefield situation, which I should warn the listeners as you and, as we've all talked about as being recorded on Sunday morning and things changed by the minute, right? But it's undeniable that Russia had a whole lot of equipment and very little of it has been committed to the battlefield. And what has been committed to the battlefield has largely been destroyed, bogged down, run out of gas. Russia is not doing well. The fact that Ukraine still has an air force, this late in the fight, is absolutely remarkable. You know, Saddam Hussein had a pretty big air force.

And that lasted hours when. the United States attacked him. The fact that Ukraine is still flying helicopters and planes around is just absolutely astonishing. And I don't understand anything about the Russian strategy. And, you know, again, we talked about all the work that was being done to look at, oh, Russia's got forces here and forces there and this there and this there. and we figured, I figured for sure. So my intelligence sources gave me two scenarios.

Scenario one was what I call the blitz and siege scenarios. So it was Russia overwhelmingly outnumbered Ukraine. So they're going to deploy as quickly and as massively as they can in as many fronts as they can. Divide Ukraine into little corridors. So they would blitz in sort of straight lines on five or ten or fifteen fronts and then encircle cities rather than try to take them and split Ukrainian military up and sort of crush it. Scenario two was, I think, more dire, which was the sort of the siege and capitulate scenario, where they were just going to use artillery and airstrikes and all this, you know,

ballistic missiles to really hammer Western Ukraine while most of the fighting was focused on eastern Ukraine. And the idea here was that Kiev would capitulate and just give Russia southeastern Ukraine. And there would be some sort of peace pact and a new border and Ukraine will be divided up even further. Neither one of those scenarios happened. It kind of looked like they went for the blitz, but like a crawling blitz. And where were the airstrikes? There are barely any air strikes. Right. So most of the Russian equipment hasn't been committed to the fight. And that's not sustainable. I mean, how many losses can Russia take before it decides, oh, now for real, we're going to commit most of our equipment? I do not understand the Russian strategy. I don't

understand their execution. They really have lost almost every battle they've fought, even in areas that they now control. I should say the worrying thing is in southern Ukraine. But I really don't understand what's going on. So yes, at a certain point, I think Ukraine might fight Russia to a standstill. I think it will still be very, very bad for Ukraine economically and whatever. But now there's a glimmer of hope. And the glimmer of hope is on a couple of fronts. One, all of a sudden, the world really believes in Ukraine. You know, it's pretty hard to buy anything from Ukraine right now since, you know, the whole country is under war.

But, man, if this conflict were to freeze again, everybody's going to be wearing Ukraine t-shirts, you know, made in Ukraine. It's going to be a thing. And so Russia has somehow turned Ukraine into a world hero, which is pretty remarkable. And I think you're going to see a lot of government aid for Ukraine. But the other thing is that I think this war in theory was very deeply unpopular in Russia. I think it was deeply unpopular with the Russian military. I think it was deeply unpopular with the Russian elite. And I think none of that would have mattered if it was over by now.

if Putin came in and did what I thought he was going to do and take over Ukraine, that cloud would have blown over. Yet the sanctions would have been there. Yep, there would have been that kind of fallout. But also you would see a massively renewed Putin. He would look like a god to the Russian people. And he would be able to have some sort of stability. But what if he launches an unpopular war and loses?

It's an incredible scenario. It really is. I can't even believe we're talking about it. Yeah, it felt, I was thinking about this yesterday. And also I want to say, so again, we're recording on February 27th. It's just after 930. The latest is the two things I'm kind of tracking in real time right now is that there are peace talks with no preconditions that are going to be held in Pripyat on the border with Belarus. Zelenskyy's talked to Lukashenko, who's the Belarusian leader.

And apparently Lukashenko is guaranteeing there's not going to be any shenanigans. And so there's going to be some sort of delegation and talks there. The other thing is that Putin has issued a statement in response to what he sees as Western aggression, say that he's putting his nuclear deterrent forces on high alert. What that exactly means I'm trying to figure out right now. But yesterday I was thinking that it feels like we're seeing historic realignment of some kind. And that no matter what happens here, no matter how this ends, Putin has done damage to Russia that feels like it's not going to recover from for some time.

It feels like they've been kicked back in the international space to like 1972. What do you guys think? I think they have to lose for that to be true. You know, one thing that I've been thinking about and did a little reporting on is the longer the war goes on, the more involved other countries do become, right, whether it's through sanctions or supplying weaponry, the more that Putin puts his nuclear forces on high alert, as you said, whatever that means. Does that mean that the West and the rest of the world actually becomes involved in this war in some way? They see that Ukraine is winning. Do we then jump in and help? I mean, this is the

kind of thing that I worry about. What do you think, James? I mean, it's all possible. You know, I think if you look at what happened with Syria, Russia gets involved in Syria in 2015, which total side note that I don't want to get into. But I think the reason why you didn't see Russia invade Ukraine in 2015 is because they invaded Syria. They had to derail their efforts in Ukraine to go into Syria. But Russia goes into Syria. They kill a lot of civilians. I mean, a lot of civilians. They carpet bomb cities and they destroy hospitals. And but they effectively win the war. And, you know, yeah, Turkey gets involved and now you've got this really awkward situation, but it's awkward, but kind of stable. I mean, as stable as something like Syria could be. And Putin has suffered almost no consequences for that.

Almost none. Because he provided stability, he won the war. People have moved on. And that's awful on a whole lot of fronts. but at the same time, is the whole world going to be it sort of a constant war footing because Putin won the war, even if he committed atrocities to do it? I don't think so, right? I think what Crimea showed is that if Putin can do a thing and win, but it's stable, even though it's ugly, the world will move on. So, yeah, I don't know. I mean, look, there's a lot of scenarios, and I'm, you know, I'm really hesitant to to postulate too much, right?

I mean, Russia can absolutely still win this thing. Russia could absolutely capitulate and lose back. We can see a hybrid of that where Russia takes. I still think Russia could make a play for southeastern Ukraine. The south is the only area where they're having any sort of military success. You know, so what does that look like? Is there, you know, a new dividing up of Ukraine? Is there a new armistice? Is there an insurgency there?

I don't know. It's, it's, there's too many questions, but I do agree that at a certain point, we could really, I mean, we already basically have a proxy war, don't we? I mean, we're providing javelins and stinger missiles. And Ukraine says they're two most effective weapons right now, we're javelins and stinger missiles. I would add YouTube videos and Maltaf cocktails to that mix. But yeah, I don't know.

if Russia loses this war due to Western stingers and and and and and and and and and and it's going to be a problem right. It's going to be but and you know this could go on this could go on for months. I mean I think you know most of us thought that this would kind of almost be over an hour would be not wrapped up but it would be the outcome would be much more clear. I think we all. expected a replay of Georgia 2008, right? Yeah.

And that's not what's happened. Not at all. So there, you know, I mean, listen, Russia's nuclear threat, and I saw, I saw those statements roll out just before we started to record from Putin. You know, that to me reads like more saber-rattling, mostly designed for his front. You know, I think, look, the bottom line is if he can convince the Russian people that they're actually under threat from NATO, that, that, would be the best thing for his war effort. I think that's not going to really happen. I don't think

the Russian people, I think, are more surprised than anybody that this war actually happened. I think that's clear from the cell phone video that you were talking about earlier of some of these Russian soldiers who were like, whoa, I didn't expect to go to Ukraine today. I thought this was just more of business as usual. But also, like, there were a lot of reporters in Russia talking to people on the street. No one said, yeah, we're going to go. Yeah, I hate Ukraine. Yeah, stick it to NATO. It's not a sentiment you're just going to find it's all talking points and I think the Russians know it's talking points so they were kind of shocked that you know what happens next I mean I don't know what happens if we're talking about thousands and thousands and thousands of bodies returning to Russia

where does that anger get placed does it get placed on the west for providing the weapons does it get placed on Ukrainians for actually doing the killing or does it get placed placed on Vladimir Putin for uh, comming this. I hope it gets placed where it should get placed, Vladimir Putin. Do I know that's going to happen? No. One thing that I've read recently is that Russia only ever has regime change through palace coups of one kind or another. And Matthew was talking about how the various oligarchs are now being, you know, their toys are being taken away. There's their yachts

in Spain, right, are supposedly not going to be able to go out to see anymore. So do we think that this could really shake up the people who need to be shaken up in Russia? I don't know how much he cares that the people are upset. You know, 2,700 people were recently arrested for protesting. He can probably keep a clamp down on that. But maybe the wrong people are getting upset. Yeah, I mean, look, if you lose a yacht in Spain, but you gain a castle in Odessa, it's a pretty good trade.

If you lose a yacht in Spain and you gain a letter that asks you for another billion dollars, then it's not a very good trade. Look, there's even some crazy speculation that I don't want to get into yet. I still think it's too early. That actually what we're seeing is the Ukrainian brass or someone in it throwing this and saying, you know, I don't want to do it. You mean the Russian brass? Yeah, absolutely.

Yeah, I said Ukrainian brass, sorry. Oh, no, yeah, sorry, I misspoke. Russian brass. So I don't buy it, but I do know that there was absolutely dissent in the Russian military about this. Palace coup? Maybe. I'll tell you what. Something really ugly could happen that we haven't talked about, which is our old friend Ramizank Dirov in Chechnya.

He is really, so first of all, there are. He's mobilizing his troops to go to Ukraine. His troops have a very different worldview than Russian troops. They are very fired up. And they are also almost railing against Putin. He's saying, you know, Kedarab saying, I can't believe Russia is just playing with Ukraine. We're going to send the Chechens in to, you know, finish them off. Do you guys remember what he did to us?

He's playing, you know, he's playing the. easy mode with Ukraine, he might be saying. That's speculative, but it just, he can't, he has to remember the Chechen war and what that was like, right? Yeah. I mean, look, he's always one of, he's, he's one of the weirdest figures in all of this, but it doesn't, that doesn't change the fact that he's got a very dedicated group of people who follow him and they're very militant. They're also the most likely to be holding actual hatred towards Ukraine. You know, I mean, look, the Russian people just don't hate Ukrainians and the Ukrainian people just don't hate Russians. But the Chechens, I think some of them, Gadirov, has bought the propaganda. He's, he's, you know,

he's the guy who could make this really ugly. And, you know, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, And so what happens if now you've got his troops in the field, you've got a frustrated Russian military, now they really are, you know, doing massive shelling of civilian centers because they can't conquer them, so we're going to flatten them. And how does that play off at home? That could play off very poorly at home. Somebody could step in and say, you know, enough is enough. somebody could step in and say, like this Kedarov guy. Like, let's get somebody like that. I don't know.

I mean, you know, every time we, every time something like this happens, I think people, people have kind of pooting out before, right? And it hasn't happened yet. My money's not on it. But at the same time, I've never seen him this week. I mean, this is really bad for him. You're listening to angry speculation. It's unfortunately, like, I know that that's not normally what we do, but it's kind of, I mean, other than giving you a blow-by-blow, the blow-by-blow by-nuchia of what's going on in the battlefield right now, I think this kind of has its place at the moment, right? True, true.

Yeah, and so, look, I think the big question, right, to get away from the speculation about what will happen is to talk about more what we could or might be. do. And I think in the short run, you're going to see a massive effort to get a whole lot more stingers and and and javelins into the hands of the Ukrainians. And that works short term. But, you know, I don't see the Ukrainian Air Force, if this continues, right? I don't see the Ukrainian Air Force lasting a whole lot longer. I mean, they are massively outnumbered. You're seeing, you know, a lot of Russian, I've seen a lot of videos today of Russian sophisticated anti-aircraft weapons being deployed to the field. Like the Puk that famously shot down MH17 back in the summer 2014, the civilian airliner. So you're starting to see that kind of stuff deployed to the field.

Eventually, if this continues, Ukraine is going to lose the air war. That's inevitable. And so that happens, you know, what do you do? I mean, a Stinger missile is great for shooting down a helicopter. It's not going to shoot down a Sukul. It's not going to shoot down some of these big Russian bombers. You need real weapons to do that. Ukraine has those weapons, but how many and how well do they play out in the long term?

I don't know. So is the United States or NATO really interested in deploying VAC kind of power? I mean, at that point, it's crossing the – that's very close to cross. from proxy war to war war. So I doubt it. And so, you know, at a certain point, if this continues, what the United States and everybody else is doing isn't going to be enough. Even if you do everything, the sanctions, the stingers, the, all that stuff,

at a certain point, if Russia really wants to grind this out, it won't be enough. James Miller, it's been a real pleasure. Well, can you have pleasure out of something like this? I don't know. But it's been really interesting and helpful to help us understand the situation. So thank you so much for coming on the show. Yeah, thank you both. I wish the circumstances were better.

But there is a glimmer of hope. Yes, there always says. Thank you so much for coming onto Angry Planet and walking us through all this. Thank you. Thank you both. That's all for this episode. Angry Planet listeners. Angry Planet is me, Matthew Gall, Jason Fields, and Kevin O'Dell.

It's great about myself and Jason Fields. It's a very busy time for us right now. We are going to be back with another conversation about conflict on an Angry Planet very soon. Next will be with Mark Galiati, and it will be a bonus episode. If you want to hear that, go to Angry Planet pod.com or Angry Planet. Substack.com. $9 month will get you access to all of our bonus episodes as well as commercial-free versions of the mainline episodes. Stay safe.

Until he's talking good.