Bulwark Takes - Putin Hit a Passenger Train with a North Korean Missile (w/ Caolan Robertson)

Episode Date: June 25, 2025

Tim Miller connects with Caolan Robertson, reporting live from Ukraine amid escalating Russian attacks on civilian infrastructure. Broadcasting from an active train station near a recent missile strike, Robertson describes Ukraine’s unshakable resilience—embodied by its rail workers, the “Iron People.” Watch Caolan's report on Russian Soldiers' Cannibalism: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xr0w5690-5I Bring on the good vibes and treat yourself to Soul today! Go to https://GetSoul.com and use the code BULWARKTAKES for 30% off your order.

Hey guys, Tim Miller here with The Bullwork with our, you know, kind of quasi-Ukraine correspondent, Kalin Robertson, who you should be following on his platforms. And he's coming at us live here from one of the train stations in Ukraine that got hit by a Russian missile. Was it earlier today or overnight? Tell us about it. So it was earlier today. It wasn't this station, but these trains go to that station. The station was Dnitro, which is kind of the second biggest station in Ukraine. And over 10 people have already been confirmed killed now. And it was extremely dramatic. I mean, these trains are iconic in Ukraine. And, you know, this is where diplomats, ambassadors,

this is these are the trains that Biden came in on, on Rail Force One, and the Russians put a missile into one of them today. And it's harrowing. If you look at the footage, it's people in the sleeping compartments, you know, if you look at all the hallways, they're covered in blood, all the windows are all destroyed. And it's just a pattern. Russia has been doing this the last 10 days, way more than they have probably in the last six months to a year. They hit a maternity hospital in Odessa. They hit a residential building here in Kiev two nights ago that killed 10 people. And every single night, they've been three or four hundred drones into Ukraine. When Trump took office, that was around 200 drones a night.

So it's twice as bad now from when Trump took office. That's how quickly it's deteriorating. I want to talk about kind of that uptick in an assault onto Ukraine over the last 10 days, but just really quick on the train attack. And it's kind of amazing to me that the trains are still going. It looks like people behind you are getting on the train that hasn't shut down. This train is about to leave in the next couple of minutes, but this station has been just as busy as it normally is today,

going to stations all across Ukraine. And people look slightly more nervous, but in Ukraine, people are used to this. So they just carry on as much as normal as possible. But it was kind of crazy to see, I thought when I got to the station an hour after the attack, which was earlier today, that it would be partially closed down, or people would be a bit nervous, but it was just exactly as agonizing as here in Kyiv. So resiliency is just unbelievable, is remarkable. It's just kind of hard for me to wrap my head around. I don't know. Having never been in this situation, like you don't know what you would do, you know?

Yeah. I mean, Ukrainians, I guess, are really used to this. But I made a video earlier today talking about Ukrainian railway being a complete institution. The 180,000 workers that keep all these lines running every single day, a lot of them have military status because they bring aid, food, people all across this country. And if a track gets bombed, which happens a lot, they have it fixed in a couple of hours, and then things just carry on the next day. So it's kind of an institution within itself, but it's also a symbol of Ukraine's resistance, you know? The rail networks that are the lifeblood of this country that keep going every single

day, and the rail employees of these trains here are referred to in Ukraine as the iron people and the iron family, which is really lovely too, all of them. And they all have this really special status, not just in the military, but in people's hearts here. And it's quite beautiful. But again, it's symbolic of Ukraine and the resilience of Ukraine. We'll put the link to that other video watching on the show. It's truly remarkable for people to see. So let's talk about this uptick in attacks. I mean, obviously the world's focus has been kind of going on what's been going on in Iran and Israel. And like amidst all of that, there's a connection here. You can have an Iranian

foreign minister going to Russia and Medvedev tweeting about how he's going to give warheads to Iran. So there is a connection. So it's noteworthy that Putin has stepped up the violence and the assault on civilians in Ukraine, kind of under the media cover of what's happening in the Middle East. Do you think that there's a connection there? There's a huge connection. The drones that fly over the skies and hit the buildings here every single night are called Shaheed drones. They are Iranian made drones. Russia manufacture a lot of those parts now, but Iran has been supplying a lot of the weapons that Russia has been using against civilians here

every single night, Iran and North Korea. The missiles that hit Dnipro today were North Korean ballistic missiles. And this matters because Russia had a bit of an axis of evil going on. They had Moscow, you had Assad in Syria, you had Iran and you had North Korea. This is what was keeping the whole thing going. You had a sad fall not eight months ago. Now you've got a destabilization in Iran. So Putin is freaking

out. If the Iran regime falls apart and it's no longer sympathetic to Putin, he loses access to the Persian Gulf. That's the water. That's the last military strategy that he has that military stronghold in the Middle East after Syria. There's nothing left. And that looks terrible for Putin on the world stage. It makes him look more isolated, but makes him more isolated. Iran allows Russian airplanes to fly over the airspace. That won't be allowed anymore. And he'll lose access, basically, to a huge part of the Middle East.

So it's super tied into this. This is why Putin is furious about the American airstrikes on Iran's nuclear sites, because he needs Iran and the Iran regime to exist for him to continue bombing this country. And Ukrainians are kind of bittersweet about it as well, because Ukrainians disarmed their nuclear weapons decades ago when the West asked them to. And Ukrainians now watch every single time Russia threatens the world with nuclear disaster when they offer support to Ukraine.

So this country knows that it is bad for a dictatorship to have nuclear weapons because they use them as threats. So they don't want to run out of nuclear weapons, but they also feel pretty sad about it because America has essentially pretended that Ukraine was its proper ally and Russia was its enemy for a very long time. Well, America actually showed last week what having an ally and an enemy actually was. And that was literally striking the heart of military in Iran for Israel. And they've offered nothing like this for Ukraine.

So it's also kind of depressing for a lot of people as well. But Iran is completely tied in. Yeah, there's another depressing element to it to me, watching all of this and watching how the Iranian missiles aimed at Qatar and Bahrain were easily rebuffed by American patriots. And we've seen that America has the capability to help Israel, help our Gulf allies defend itself from these missiles. And yet, they're not offering that to Ukraine. And we have, you know, trains getting bombed, people dying, you know, in a democratic ally, allegedly, in Europe. And it feels like we have the capability to help and we're not. I mean, is that the sense that folks have there?

Yeah, that was the instant reaction from Ukrainians as well when I was speaking to people here. It was, oh, okay, that's what it looks like when America actually wants to help. That's what it looks like. So yeah, so it's difficult. And I don't talk about the reasons for any of this. Why Trump did it, if Trump should have done it, anything about Israel, that's kind of irrelevant when it comes to Ukraine. This is just about the implications for Ukraine. But again, back to what you were saying earlier, the reason that the attacks have increased so much is because Russia tried to start a summer offensive and it hasn't worked. They tried to take Sumy, they tried to take Constantinikha, these are cities in the east of Ukraine, and they've made almost no ground.

And so the backup to that is just to terrorize the civilian population, try and grind them down, try to get them to give up support on their own country, try to get them to turn on Zelensky. It's a desperation tactic. And it is desperate because last weekend I made a video talking about how Russian soldiers have now been intercepted in their radios, resorting to cannibalism, literally eating each other in certain parts of the East, which shows a total breakdown in morale and logistics, in basically everything when it comes to war. Cannibalism hasn't been seen in wartime since World War II in Europe, which was during Leningrad. We know how crazy Leningrad was. So it shows a complete disaster on the Russian front line.

The result of that is, okay, we'll bomb Odessa, we'll bomb the cities, we'll bomb the train stations. That's what Russia does out of desperation. And they're extra desperate now. We call that dommering here in America, where they've got to eat each other. It's an American cultural reference you won't know about, but you can Google it after. NATO is meeting, Trump's going, there's a NATO meeting today. What is the ask at this point? I mean, if I'm Ukraine, I'm just like, I'm utterly frustrated by the lack of support from materiel-wise and otherwise to defend against these attacks on civilians. NATO's meeting, like, what is the hope that the outcome might be that might be helpful?

There isn't really much thought about NATO, not from people in this country either. This country has wanted to join NATO since 2022, and NATO showed no interest in allowing it to join. If it had joined, or if it hadn't given up its nukes, none of this would have happened. And so there's a lot of resentment towards NATO. And honestly, I haven't even been following it that much because nothing comes from NATO meetings. It's conversations, those conversations finish. So Lenzy comes back to Ukraine, Ukraine gets bombed. 2026, there's another NATO meeting. So Lenzy comes back to Ukraine Ukraine gets bombed 2026 is another NATO meeting so Lenzy comes back the Ukraine gets bombed Honestly, nothing changes for these NATO meetings and the expectations of nature right now are really really really small Ukraine are developing their own ballistic missiles their own weapons

We had Operation spiderweb all these interesting things that Ukraine is doing but they're doing it internally Because they've realized they can't rely on things like NATO. It just doesn't really, it doesn't have any impact. Hey guys, it's summertime and we're all getting out and enjoying ourselves a little bit more. But if you're like me, you don't want to be drinking your calories or waking up with a hangover. And that is especially true because I've got to get up the next day and deal with my kids. I love them. I love them. I love them. I love my kids.

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and treat yourself to Soul today. Right now, Soul is offering our audience 30% off your entire order. Yeah, you heard that right. You're not high on Soul's gummies right now. 30% off your entire order. Go to getsoul.com, use the code BULLWORKTAKES. That's getsoul.com, promo code BULLWORKTAKES for 30% off. You'll love it. Well, you've covered it a little bit, but I guess just one more time because you made a comment

on social media, I think that was right about just, if this was happening in any other country, like there'd be wall-to-wall news coverage. I mean, the kind of boredom with which the Western media now has, you know, resorted to when it comes to their posture towards covering this war, I mean, it's just, it's kind of crazy to me, the lack of interest. So make a pitch about what has happened in the last 10 days and why it's crucial for there to be more coverage and more focus on what's happening in Ukraine? Well, this is why it's amazing that you're talking about this, because the media still think, most of the media still think that there are two sides to this conflict. And they think when Russia bombs Ukraine, that somehow Ukraine is still maybe to blame.

And so they don't cover the atrocities that happen here every single night. Like today, the very fact that a passenger train in Europe was hit with a North Korean ballistic missile is absolutely outrageous. It is a story that if you told somebody sitting in a pub they'd probably fall off the chair with shock. And if you were sitting on a train from London to Paris and a North Korean ballistic missile hit that train, you would not stop reading about it for weeks. There would be documentaries, there would be movies made about it. Yet it happened here today in Dnipro, literally a few hours from here. And I have seen probably seven or eight articles. And again, it's because a lot of the media, and not you guys, this is why

independent media is so fantastic, is because it genuinely views Russia and Ukraine as maybe two sides. And they think that Ukraine is somehow to blame for this. And if you look at actually CNN recently, and a few different mainstream media outlets, when Russia bombed Ukraine, they cited Ukraine's operations, operations by the way, they started saying, well, they kind of deserved it, they kind of asked for it.

When Ukraine was literally hitting military targets. So that's why this is happening. But it's not just the train, it's the maternity hospital that got smashed to pieces in Odessa when I was there, literally two weeks ago, drones were flying past my windows and crashing into apartment complexes. I made a video two weeks ago in Odessa where I broke curfew because there were buildings on fire all around my apartment. There was a woman that had to be pulled out of her apartment building, holding a photo of her grandparents.

That's the only thing she had left running through the streets at two o'clock in the morning. No military sites around. And I read the news the next morning, and there's nothing. And again, that's why it is. And it's so difficult to see this stuff with your own eyes every single day in a civilized, democratic country like Ukraine. Open the newspaper the next day and see nothing about it. But this is what we're dealing with.

Yeah, I think some of it's more equivalence and some of it's just boredom moving on to the next story, getting distracted by Trump and it's horrible because we need to have a focus on it. And the more focus on it, I do think the more pressure there will be for Europe to do the right thing. I don't have a lot of hope that America is going to continue to do the right thing, unfortunately, but there needs to be more aid. like there needs to be more military aid and assistance. We have seen in the Middle East that like we can prevent some of these atrocities if we actually try. And so anyway, I'll be encouraging for us to do it here. Any other final observations or thoughts on that, Kielan? No, no, you're right about it. And it's this idea that Putin put out at the beginning that any help to Ukraine is escalation. Well, you know, Trump is pretty happy

to do whatever he wants in the Middle East. Apparently that's not escalation, but giving some old tanks to Ukraine is following that rhetoric and following those lies is why we're in this situation. But I'm just really glad that you covered this because you're probably the biggest network today to cover this train disaster, which is horrific. So thank you for doing that. But that's the situation here. Thank you for being there, man.

You got to stay safe for us. Appreciate your reports and let's just stay in touch. All right. Well, thank you. All right. That's Kaelin Robertson. Go check out his feeds and subscribe to them. We'll be back here soon.