Chapo Trap House - 911 - Red Dawn feat. Radio War Nerd (2/24/25)

Episode Date: February 24, 2025

We’re joined by Mark Ames & John Dolan of Radio War Nerd to discuss what may be the wind-down of the war in Ukraine. We look at the political ramifications both domestically and internationally, how the west & Russia have fared militarily, and the lives of the Ukrainians affected by the conflict. Plus, would you believe fighter aircraft, MMA, and a drive-by slagging of union general loser George McClellan all get mentions in this? Subscribe to Radio War Nerd: https://www.patreon.com/radiowarnerd NYC: Come see Will & Hesse host an Oscars watch as part of a party for Zohran for Mayor this Sunday, March 2nd @ Nightclub 101: https://secure.actblue.com/donate/partyforzohran

All I wanna be is a choco All I wanna be is a choco Hello everybody, it's Monday, February 24th and we've got some Chapo for you. On today, Felix and I will be turning our attention to the world of war once again, armed conflict as it perceives a pace in this human comedy. And joining us to discuss this, we can think of two better guests from Radio War Nerd. It's Mark Ames and John Dolan. Mark, John, welcome back to the program. Always a joy to have you. Thanks.

Oh, thanks. Great to be here. Yeah, it's always a pleasure. It's our honor. Well, okay. Like to kick things off, obviously, like I probably the biggest news in the world of war is the fact that the war in Ukraine is now entering its fourth year, but with, as you mentioned, sort of a surprise twist.

Basically that Ukraine's biggest patron is now seems to be switching sides. So to begin, let me just ask, like, what are the current prospects for an end to this war in Ukraine? And what does the end of that war look like for the principal actors, Ukraine, Russia, the EU, and the United States? God. Well, I think we could say this, that every year after the first six months, every month and every year has been exponentially worse than the previous year for Ukraine and for the Ukraine cause. Now it's a little, it's the Ukraine war. It's one of those, you know, theory of relativity things. The Ukraine war looks different to Washington and to whatever's left of Joe Biden's mind and

things like that than it does to Ukrainians who are suffering from this war and fighting this war. So from, you know, Biden's point of view, if you remember that harrowing Time magazine interview, maybe the only one he did in like the last two years of his presidency that was published last year. Time was asking him, you know, the war is going pretty badly and what are you going to do? And is this going to be a problem? He snapped at them. What do you mean it's going badly, man? You know, he's like, Russia's been degraded. They've lost 300,000 killed, man. And he was like, he was just all of a sudden he came alive and this number of all the dead that have been killed so to him and to DC the war was looking I guess in some ways almost better

and better because more Russians were dying but in terms of how it ends it ends badly for Ukraine absolutely badly for Ukraine, broken apart. However, this war ends. This is not going to end the way that all the cheerleaders were saying with the Orcs defeated, Russia broken up into a hundred states. And they were really saying this. And, you know, is Ukraine going to take Crimea and like Rostov and Voronezh and parts of Western Russia?

There was a lot of pundit anxiety about should Ukraine stop short of the Crimea? And I think that got settled pretty quickly. Yeah. So, you know, Ukraine has just Ukraine has been used. I mean, it's used by Russia to send a message to the US, NATO and used by the West to kill Russians and it's paying the price except for really the people on our payroll who just got cut off by Trump. And, you know, but they've made out pretty well.

So they're screwed Europe. Well, okay. Let's start with Russia. How does Russia and how does this war end with for Russia? Put it this way, it looked really bad for Russia in 2022. By September of 2022, I mean, the initial invasion went poorly. The initial plan to try to bring, to send a message to the West through Ukraine that Russia meant business and to listen to Russia and to not advance NATO into Ukraine and keep advancing West. That was all failing badly. And they should have done a deal early on. I mean, the West should have because Russia was not in a great position in the early months of the war when Boris Jordan flew out and killed that deal that Ukraine was

about to sign and then maybe in September, October of 2022. And since then Russia Putin has turned has snatched snatched, I don't know, defeat from victory, from the jaws of defeat because it looked so bad. It looked so dire for Russia by September, October of 2022. Russia was under sanction and had lost enormous amounts of manpower and armaments and seemed to be getting isolated. And things were looking really badly.

No one could imagine that they could turn it around and they have. And even Biden's top military people were saying last year that Russia's military now is bigger and stronger than it was when the invasion started. So the whole purpose of Biden's purpose, I don't know how well that's worked out. And Russia has reoriented its economy to China. So Russia is going to achieve, it seems like, at least some of its strategic goals. Like, Ukraine is not going to be a NATO and that is a huge, huge strategic victory for Russia.

Ukraine is not going to be a NATO and rump Ukraine is not going to be a NATO because that would require the Europeans in the US to go to war for Ukraine. And Hegseth, I mean, we were coy about that until Trump came to power and Trump just made it explicit. We're not going to war for Ukraine. And then the Europeans after Hegseth speech said, we need to be Europeans and we'll stand up and not since 1939 better enough and then they all had to put it on the line

Are you would you send peacekeepers and the polls who have been the loudest? You know most militant for this war came out publicly the prime minister said no We're not sending peacekeepers and McCrone who was the other one calling for more direct action, came out and said, France will not send peacekeepers. So, you know, Ukraine has Kyr Starmor. Um, but, uh, that's about it right now. You, you touch on it a little bit, but it is, I mean, like the main story really with a lot of this is sort of like how resilient Russia was to the sanctions and not just resilient, how it really like

fucked the West more than anyone in the end. But one thing I thought was pretty interesting, you did touch on it is just given how horribly it started out for them, this turned out to be something they probably never really dreamed of at the start, which is they got to sort of test and refine their military against like not all of the best Western technology, but a lot of it. Yeah. And they got to have, they got to develop like a proof of concept on how they would use their air force against like Western air defenses. Like that shit they were doing where they would just, they would just have

like MIG 31s fly way higher than anyone else and just fucking rip through everyone with those Kinzals. I'm probably fucking up the pronunciation, but the air launched. Yeah. The air launched a ballistic missile. They probably didn't really anticipate that in February. I mean, all of these weapons and America America does produce some very good weapons, but they've never gone against anything like near appear, let alone Russia.

Yeah. And the idea, the idea in the first six months of the war that was very popular, pushed out of Ukraine, but also very popular with Europeans and in Washington and London, is that the Russians, like because they conducted the war so incompetently, incompetently early on, there was something genetic there and they would never adjust. And actually this, you would have to have never read a single history book in your life to think that A, Russians start off wars well and B that they don't learn and adapt and wind up their closures.

They're fourth quarter players. Yeah. I mean, like if I could compare them to anyone, it would be like Jake Lamont on a few fights. Yeah. I actually saw this fight with a Russian against some incredibly sculpted looking workout King from the U S and the workout King was just jumping up and down before the fight and he just couldn't be contained. He just was dying to get across the ring.

And this Russian looked like he'd just gotten out of bed and he was flabby and tired. And he sort of waved to the crowd like, I got to hang over, leave me alone. And this American sculpted guy ran across the ring and just knocked him down with the left hook. And he slowly got up and he just, he had all these prison tattoos all over him. It's like, okay, you want to be like that?

I think, I think, I think I know the exact fight you're talking about. Yeah. That's, uh, Alexander Emelianenko versus James Thompson. Right. Brother of the million Yanko who was, who was big. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Fador's million Yankel who was, who was big. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.

Phaidor's brother Phaidor among like people think consensus probably best heavyweight of all time. Alex had like the yeah, really scary prison tattoos. Um, Phaidor and Alex had a falling out because Alex had a pretty nasty criminal conviction in Russia, but Alex, I don't know if this will shock you. His fighting career had to go on hold because he had hepatitis C in 2015. Well, you haven't finished up what happens. I mean, I'm assuming he then... Oh, he just demolishes him.

Turns him into an accordion. Yeah, not a one punch thing, just like a one minute, very damaging series of blows of all kinds. And guy is down. Yeah, that's so pretty no more. But to Felix's point, to Felix's point, like so when they first introduced, for example, the high Mars in that first month. And I think this is back in 2022. It's a it's a very good weapon system. At first, it was causing enormous damage. It helped Ukraine a lot, sort of prepare the ground for

what wound up being their big breakout a couple of months later in August, September of 2022. But within two months maximum, the Russians had figured it out. And it just has not been nearly as, it hasn't been a wonder weapon certainly since then. And this is the case with every single new weapon system. And so that is also a problem for America and the West because now these weapons systems, I mean, NATO and the US are all about wars

that are won in weeks. They don't have a, there's no, there's no plan for like a three year war, you know, based on production. And so a lot of these weapons systems now have been tested by the Russians and they can share that now with the Chinese, with the North Koreans, of course, with whoever else is interested. And I do think that's a problem. Ukraine's military is large,

it's much larger than any of the other continental Europeans. So this, I mean, this is a very formidable military was. A lot of their best soldiers, best units have been killed or, you know, turned into amputees. And they're not nearly, they are actually not nearly as good a fighting force as they used to be. And they're beset by horrific levels of corruption and abuse and poor morale and exploitation. Well, you have to go back to do a NATO. And I, what I particularly think of is years of NATO commissioning

painters to do sales paintings for its new weapons system. And they would always show a kind of clean war in which Russian armor columns became the patsy, you know, the bad guys who were easy to wipe out in a Western. And Russia played to that stereotype early on. They tried armored penetrations of Ukrainian lines, and they didn't have the infantry to support it at that time. And they got picked off in what was at least a humiliating way. It may not have been significant in a strategic sense,

but it was deeply humiliating. And they fell back and decided, well, we got all these artillery shells and we got mines, we got artillery shells, we got more of them than they do, and we're just going to grind them up. John, do you think it was that sort of a shift in tactics away from an active war about a blitzkrieg to seize territory, make it to Kiev. And then like as soon as the war became about a grinding war of attrition, that's where

the Russians began to find success. Like what accounts for this shift in initially disastrous invasion of Ukraine and now one in which they seem to be having the upper hand now? Well, there are a lot of wars, as Mark said, in which, you know, Russia didn't do well in the early going. Actually there's a history of wars like that in the US too. If you think about the course of the Civil War. Yeah, the Union got there, got rinsed for the first two and a half years of the Civil

War. Yeah. This is often the case with a highly motivated, smaller opponent, but what happened is that even under McClellan, who was possibly the worst commander Union army ever. John, he never did anything. He was great at like logistics, but he just simply wouldn't attack the enemy. He just stayed put. Yeah.

And he got like scarlet fever or something. I know. Well, he got yellow fever, I think. But he finally wrote a tearful letter when he was backed up against the Potomac, protected by like 12 gunboats and 120,000 troops saying to Lincoln, these are perhaps my last moments. You better not free the slaves or you'll upset somebody's sign. The former George McClellan soon to be dead. But anyway, even while he was being a coward, Lee in the Seven Days Battle had to send a

lot of troops against him because Lee knew that he was a coward. But those soldiers were probably the best soldiers in the Confederacy. They had swarmed to the Richmond and South Carolina areas from all over the South. And they kept dying. And I don't think it fully understood how much of an impact that had. It didn't matter that their commander was a coward and a fool. The Union people had a coward and a fool for a leader. Lee was a good commander, as good as anybody could get,

but he still had to send troops up against increasingly entrenched enemies. And the South had a smaller white population. They absolutely refused to recruit African Americans. And sooner or later, it was going to tell them. So, you know, these wars have a certain course. The bigger, the bigger country, the more mobilized country tends to grind it out. Yeah. And I would say, I mean, one of the major turning points of the war that was not appreciated at the time properly and not predicted. In fact, I remember Michael Kaufman, one of the big pundits, kind of, you know, NATO pro-Ukraine pundits said there was no way this would happen right up to

the day it happened was Putin's announcement in September 2022 of what they call partial mobilization. announcement in September 2022 of what they called partial mobilization. That changed everything since then. Russia went in there with a very small force for an invasion force of a large country like Ukraine. And things didn't work out well. And as soon as they realized, well, okay, this needs to turn into the kind of war that Russia has tended to do well in, which is a nutritional broad front war where production and manpower are going to win. So that meant they had to, he didn't want to do it.

They still call it the special military operation. You go to jail in Russia, you call it a war or an invasion, but they did a partial mobilization, which was very successful. And they've also offered tons of money because the sanctions have not worked, which is a real shock. I mean, this is another technology we need to talk about that it was tested and beaten. Sanctions, which is economic war, work really well against weaker, kind of one or two resource based, you know, divided, um, or, or sort of not very strong States on smaller ones. The sanctions have not worked when they were first announced, uh, Biden bragged it was going to turn the ruble to rubble.

And it didn't. He's got a silver tongue. How did he lose? Exactly. And, um, and what, what happened instead is, is that because Biden, and I know he did this without a PhD, you'll never believe this, but he managed to alienate both China and Russia at the same time and make it in China's interest by shooting down balloons and sending his people to Taiwan, make it in their existential interest

to back Russia as much as they possibly could. Otherwise, it was clear China was next. So that was a brilliant move. You know, you definitely want to put all the enemies together, you know, in your big war plan. But that's a big technology that was tested and it failed. And so we didn't have the levers we thought. But as you said, it blew, the blowback is from the sanctions really blew back on European countries. I mean, we just saw the AFD, you know, this Nazi adjacent party, um, just doubled their

score from 2022 before the war started. Um, and I think they polled AFD voters and they all said, because cost of living increases. Yeah. Mark, do you remember, um, speaking of incredible Biden turns of phrases that like, you know, if we had a fair media, um, there'd be no, no more democratic party would be the Brandon party and everyone would be in it. Yeah. Uh, Putin's price hike, the greatest piece of political messaging I have ever heard.

Yes. Putin's price hike. They push that hard and people just, they didn't know what they were talking about because he was, they were also talking up this war, Like it was the greatest moral crusade since world war two. America was back, George Packer and the Atlantic, like this war, we're on the, we're the good guys and Ukraine embodies all of the great values. It was like we were finally going to wash away the sins of the last 20 years and the global wars and terror and all the shit we've done all over the world through this just beautiful, great war in Ukraine.

And it would be one that would like no Americans would die in. Yeah. Yeah. So finally, finally, we get to be the good guys without sacrificing anything or risking anything really on our own behalf. But like we're fighting Russia, our old adversary. But like Mark, on a recent episode you said that like a lot of the war in Ukraine has to be kind of understood in like in the context of the domestic politics of the United States of America and like this sense of nostalgia, this sense of revenge.

I mean like I can hear people already getting angry because like, Ukraine is its own country. It's like America is not. We're only just bystanders in this. But like, because you talk a little bit more about what you mean about how like the Ukraine war is like, has to be understood through this filter of like how the United States sees itself. Yeah. But you know, and first of all, I should just say like, Ukraine has the right to defend itself. It was invaded and they have the right to defend itself. And I've always had that position. I've, you know, I don't know about you guys. I mean, I know because we talk about the war, there were times when I was accused

of being a NATO shill and times, many times I've been accused of being a Putin shill and whatever, it's just a lot of the discourse around it has been really stupid, so leaving that aside, but we cannot pretend that the reality is for America, Ukraine and its war is a proxy war. And it works on many levels, though it's primarily a proxy war to weaken a major rival, Russia, which became a headache for a regional problem for the US Empire. And they wanted to kneecap it, hobble it down. It was very clear when Biden came back into power, he and Blinken worked with their counterparts and Solovian, their counterparts in Zelensky's administration

to reverse what Zelensky was voted in to do, which was end the low level hostility that was going on in the Donbass and come to a final peace deal. That's why people voted him in with 75% of the vote. Zelensky flipped within, well, when Biden came to power, he said, here's what we want you to do and we're gonna back you all the way. He things up with the Russians, you know, and we're going to get you a better

deal and we're going to show the Russians they can't boss us around. So, but, you know, Ukraine also was directly involved in the sort of the MAGA versus the center split within this country and the kind of elite factional split in this country. You also mentioned how it was a severe miscalculation by Zelensky to essentially like not hedge his bets on this upcoming presidential election that just happened. Because now with Trump, like I mean, now now we get this attitude from Trump and his State Department that Ukraine should really show some show some gratitude to us. And by the way, we'll also have all of their oil and rare earth minerals. First of all, because you can't even have any rare earth minerals. I keep hearing about they're going to give us their their minerals. And I'm just wondering, like, what, what,

like an old world monkey. I mean, I you know, who knows if there really is or how I mean, this whole rarer thing is just like it's just rocks. It's more rocks, you know. Like, do they have oil, they have some lithium, but the Russians are about to take it, you know, lithium seems to matter. They have coking coal, which matters for their metallurgical industry, which is big in Ukraine, but a lot of it is in Russian hands now and the coking coal, which is used to process all the metal industry in the rest of Ukraine, that has now fallen into Russian hands, 90% of it.

I don't know, but it's pretty clear that what Trump is doing is punishing Ukraine, punishing the Europeans, but really punishing Ukraine. It's kind of in a similar way that you, that Putin punished Ukraine to get at. Um, the West Trump, well, Trump's punishing Ukraine because he's personally pissed. I mean, if you go back and look at, well, first in 2016, we talked about this the last show and the 2016 election, Ukraine is where the Democrats got Russia gate going. Yeah. Right. Ukraine is where the whole Paul Manafort scandal happened. It was the perfect phone call. Yeah. And Siriy Lysenko came up with the black box of the ledgers. The phone calls 2019. But even in 2016, Manafort is, if you remember, Trump's campaign manager

in 2016 had to resign because a Democrat party aligned and USAID funded as Ukrainian deputy claimed to have proof of these ledgers showing bribe money paid by Yanukovych to Paul Manafort. And that's why, so Trump's campaign was supposed to be over in August because his campaign manager had to resign because of ties to Yanukovych and Russia. And so that's where the problems first start. And then 2019, they tried to get them on Russiagate, right? The Mueller report comes out in 2019. They can't impeach them over it because there's no collusion

even according to the Mueller report. So then they go to basically Ukraine gate, which is the phone call where Biden or Trump calls up Zelensky, this newly, this new president, Jewish comedian in an anti-Semitic country, you know, calls him up and says, you know, I want help from you to dig up some dirt on Hunter Biden, former Vice President Biden's son, because we know he was up to dirty stuff there. Hunter Biden, after the Miodon Revolution 2014, Hunter Biden was hired by Burismo, this huge gas company, to basically lobby his dad. And because of, you because of criminal charges and potential sanctions that hung over this company. So Hunter Biden is brought into the board and paid $83,000 a month

in a country where the average wage at the time was between $200 and $300 a month. And it just so happens that Biden leans on the president to fire the prosecutor general who is corrupt, but the thing that is the problem is he's pursuing a case against Burisma, which is where Hunter Biden is getting his money from. And daddy Biden, when he's vice president, succeeds in getting the prosecutor general thrown out of office. And that is a scandal and should be a scandal. So Trump calls up Zelensky after he becomes president and says, you know, you've got something I want, I got something you want, which is like a couple hundred million dollars in aid. Let's do a deal. And this call is listened into by this guy, Alexander Vindman, who's on the National Security Council, who is

Ukrainian and pro Ukrainian. And he's scandalized by that because it is, you know, he was already a hero with the Biden people, right? And in the sense that true blue officers were heroes in the McCarthy era with Democrats of the time. And they had him already there as someone who could be trusted. But there is something about this I don't understand, and I probably should, but Zelinsky had so much time to hedge his bets and he never seemed to do that. Couldn't he have just said, I think they're both fine upstanding people.

I kind of tried to, but I don't think I look, I don't think the sort of, I don't know, the centrist establishment in America allowed him. There was no, there was no being good to both sides. One side was evil, Nazi, Putinist, right? And the other side is democracy, freedom. And so you're a traitor if you and he did still though he did sort of try to hedge his bets. He tried to keep a neutralist position as much as he could in 2019. I'm saying John when you say you're you're you're sort of in trillicosing of what Zelensky should have said, brought to mind a novel I know you're a big fan of, Charles Portis's True Grit, where Maddy refers to Woodrow Wilson as the finest Presbyterian gentleman of our generation. Yeah, you can't even say that about Trump.

What church is he attending now? With Zelensky's personal calculus, I think one thing that is kind of important here is that like, you know, obviously like Trump is hugely vindictive and incredibly personally petty, you know, on the scale that, uh, people aren't used to for like a, a world leader, but Biden also is too. Yeah. Yeah. It's like he's like bitter. Yeah. Yeah. At some point he's between Gaza and Ukraine. His focus was entirely on, uh, we've killed a lot of people and it was really frightening. He started to resemble grandpa from Texas chainsaw massacre.

It wasn't very sentient anymore, but what he did. He can still bring that hammer down between his ears. The motor function worked and it's just vindictiveness and blood. But yeah, that, and also, I mean, you know, let's be honest, they were vindictive against Trump. I mean, they kind of violated their unwritten rule that you don't arrest a president. They have their reasons or charge them with a felony and convict them. And it's not that Trump isn't guilty of all kinds of crimes. I mean, they got them on kind of the lamest ones, but most presidents in theory should

be guilty of tons of crimes. But it like didn't, yeah, Biden is incredibly vindictive. I agree. But if you remember, you know, I went back to this. The impeachment is called the impeachment papers that were delivered to the Senate. It's called the Trump Ukraine impeachment papers. You think he doesn't remember that shit? You know, like, yes, to him, Ukraine, which then becomes like the cause celeb for the whole liberal globalist, you know, whatever is in Marxist establishment in their minds,

like to him, Ukraine is the very opposite of that Ukraine is the source of all of his problems. But like a corollary to that is that Russia has become something of a cause of its own on the sort of international right, sort of like a fashion turn, if you will. I mean, outside the like, you know, hardcore Nazis fighting Russia in Ukraine, what do you make of the like global right wing or like the Western right wing's fascination with Russia? What did like, what do they see Russia as like, like a counterweight to what they

regard as kind of like the global liberal order that also happens to be a country full of white people? I think it helps if you don't know, if you can idealize Russia, if you don't know Russians and you've never spent time there. I don't mean that they're bad or I just mean you can create, you can invent in your mind this, I don't know, perfect white anti-globalist nation, if you actually haven't been there and seen, you know, hung out with them and they're just people, right? But, so I think, I don't know where the hell it comes from except that, except that all the people that they hate, hate Russia. So therefore Russia must be good. It kind of comes down to that because Russia's at least like the big cities.

I mean, it's, I mean, it's liberal. It's liberal in the kind of European sense. Right. So it's not into like, it's not woke, but it's liberal. So it's not like it's, it's, um, I don't know, whatever their, their Turner diaries, fantasies are, it's like, it's nothing like that. Um, and so I'm not fantasies are, it's like, it's nothing like that. And so I'm not sure where they get it from.

It's just that Putin is hated by all the people that they hate. And correspondingly, Ukraine is beloved because... Exactly. Exactly. Even though Ukraine has, it's kind of weird. I mean, it must be tough to be a Nazi, right? Because it's like, the biggest Nazi place is Ukraine, but Ukraine, and actually it's tough for Ukrainian Nazis. There's a great substack of events in Ukraine, which just collates all of how Ukrainians themselves

talk about Ukraine and all the telegram channels and all this stuff. And, um, and, and a lot of this is also kind of translating bits from like the fourth Reich and the Votan, you'll get like all these different Ukrainian telegram channels that are huge and cater to the, the neo Nazi and Nazi adjacent crowd, and they're always complaining. They're like, God damn it. We have to suck it up with these EU liberals and all these Soros grant feeders here because they're the ones that basically, like we need, we need these awful globalist liberal Marxist LGBTQ people to kill Russians, which is our first thing, but God do we want to kill them

too? It's driving us crazy. It's a tough time to be a Nazi. Well, this is what I want to get into. I mean, it's like it's a tough time to be in Ukraine period. I mean, it's a nightmare. And Mark, you just said something earlier that I wanted to get to, which is the issue of morale in like in the among the Ukrainian public. Like, because like, whenever whenever you see someone like from the West saying like, Hey, gee, like, it kind of seems like this war needs to come to an end. You get like an angry cross of people saying like, No, like, the West has nothing to do with this. Ukraine is its own country. They have their own agency. It is that is for them to

decide how long they want to fight this war. Not you, which is like, yeah, I definitely agree with that in principle. But like, I know the government and like a lot of the Western back NGO network in Ukraine, they want to keep this war going. They want to fight the last man. But like, this is the same government that has also like banned opposition political parties and elections for like the last man. But like, this is the same government that has also like banned opposition political parties and elections for like the last couple years. Like, does the Ukrainian public, like, how does the people of Ukraine feel about continuing to fight this war? Because I bring this up because like, it's one of these things that like when I come across it on like a social media feed, or I become aware of it through a news article, it just freezes my soul with like how frightening and nightmarish it is.

But like just the phenomenon of like the press gangs that are just like going around on the streets, pulling, pulling people into vans off the street. And then they're down to like basically like the crippled and the alcoholics and sending them to these like camp. Well, you know, if you haven't seen the video of the Hare Krishna membership being press ganged on mom for the. It's true. What? Oh my God.

This really happens. Yeah. Oh my God. But like this phenomenon of like squeezing like the last dregs out of like the men who were left alive in this country to like send them straight to the front with like almost no training to just die basically. I mean it's almost unspeakable to imagine how frightening and not just how terrible that is. How do you think the people of Ukraine feel like?

Did they want this war to keep continuing outside their government? I mean I'm sure it's very divided, but what is the appetite to continue this war among Ukrainians themselves? My best guess is we can't know because Ukraine is under martial law and people get press ganged or go to prison or something, you know, for speaking up against the war. So it's hard to know. And polls are conducted under those wartime circumstances where it's dangerous to give your opinion. But even polls now that sort of in the last few months that some official Ukrainians have come out and said, you know, we do need to start talking about ceasefire

talks or negotiations or peace, suddenly the poll numbers shot up, which says to me that people were waiting for permission to say that yes, we want peace and we're willing to give up territory for peace. But I think a much starker number are the number of desertions in the military. And I think officially the number was something, this was last year though, about 80,000, but unofficially, and by this I mean what Ukrainians and military analysts themselves have been able to judge up, the numbers are more like about a quarter of a million desertions. That is massive, massive. And that's why they have manpower problems.

Like right now the Ukrainians don't have huge munitions problems. They probably will over time if Trump cuts them off. They have almost parity, it seems like, with artillery. I just heard people who are near the front lines. They have parity with drones, which are increasingly a huge part of the war. The problem is their units are just full of holes and the reason there's so much mass desertion is because the commanders treat them like absolute shit. They rent-seek off them. You have to pay money not to be put in the front lines where you

die. And if you don't pay money, you're put in the front lines. And then all of these units, there are some better ones that don't do this. And the Nazi ones tend to be better, less corrupt in some ways. That's a grim thought. Isn't it? I know. What the Nazis do is they shake down other people, but they don't shake their own people down as much as far as I know. At least there's an ethos.

Exactly. At least it's an ethos. So it's so really, um, I think, you know, that is the fact that they can't, that they would, that they know how explosive it would be to mobilize 18 to 25 year olds, not just because there's a serious demographic problem there. And that's true, but because it could cause an explosion. It could cause a political explosion. That wouldn't happen if you had people lined up and if you had high morale. The problem is from the systemic structure of this government, to the leadership from Zelensky's office down to the generals, the command, the strategy,

this guy, Searsky, who he appointed as his commander in chief, who's a crap general, who's hated by everybody. He was called like the butcher of Ukraine. You know, all these Russian generals are called like the butcher of Syria, the butcher of this because they killed other people. Searsky is called the butcher of Ukraine because he kills his own people. He says his own people to die. So it's yeah, he's he's absolutely awful, but he's a loyalist. And you know, you had like units, this this actually even came out in Ukraine's Gapravda, which is was funded by USAID. I don't know how much they're going to be doing. But like the problem of of of like, I don't know, exploitation within military units is so bad. They've been suppressing these

stories and the Western media still suppresses it, but Ukrainian not as much, where you had this one large formation where the dad was at the top, pulling all the money. You forced all your grunts to pay you money. You pay them whatever your salary is, pay you money. If you want to be further from the line, you have to pay more money. And then his son was like the enforcer. And there were people who weren't paying up. And the son wanted to make an example of one of them. So he crucified him and took a photo of it. This was published in Ukrainskoy Pravda, of this grunt who wasn't paying up to show it to the other grunts that, you know, this is what's going to happen to you if you don't pay up. The number of stories about, you know,

soldiers left to die. No one will, commanders won't risk having one of their APCs put in any danger. So they'd rather just let like five grunts die near the front. Like I've read story after story of stuff like that. So if you ask me, like the war is unpopular because, well, the war is broadly unpopular because people do not trust or believe or have faith in their leaders and in the people running the show. It's not that they are welcoming the Russian expansion or Putin. They would rather just be left the hell alone.

I mean, and you add to that, like, another factor which I learned about through your show is that, like, this phenomenon of a certain class of people in Ukrainian society, those linked to the sort of Western backed NGOs have somehow managed to be exempt from Being drafted into the military. I would imagine that Inspires an unbelievable amount of hatred and anger among people who are you know losing family members and loved ones by you know every day Absolutely the class structure of this war. It's like You know an exaggerated version of a class structure of this war, it's like a, you know, an exaggerated version of a class structure of a lot of wars, but it really is.

The US civil war, you know, the 20 slaves rule in the Confederacy. If you had 20 slaves, you could be exempt from military service. And if you had 20 slaves, you were very rich. I mean, it's, it's automatic. So it's equivalent to saying the very rich don't have to serve in the ranks. And that infuriated southern soldiers who were otherwise very, very willing to fight for the Confederacy. But you know, the other thing I thought has been oddly muffled in the Western press is losses.

I mean, how many have died? You could not get a reliable estimate on this until the New York Times published one toward the end of last year. And they say, and it's probably a conservative estimate given the Times biases, that 105,000 soldiers have been dead or mangled. That is, the word is irreversibly lost. The word is irreversibly lost. And if there are that many who are mangled and not serviceable anymore,

there must be hundreds of thousands who are out of combat. I mean, put it this way, in the Wall Street Journal in the summer of 2023, so this is a month into that disastrous counteroffensive, and this is one of the kind of contingent points in the summer of 2023. So this is a month into that disastrous counteroffensive. And this is one of the kind of contingent points in the war that really sank Ukraine, this NATO advised counteroffensive. Just go right into those minefields. I was actually looking back at some of the New York Times articles

and they were quoting US and UK officials who advised the whole strategy for the counteroffensive of walking through the minefields. They said, the success of this depended on the Ukrainians willing to take very high casualties. It turned out they just weren't up to the task or something like that. Jesus Christ. There's that lack of gratitude that Trump was talking about. So, but in the Wall Street Journal article a month into the counter offensive

and it was a three month just bloodbath. They reported that. So that would have been you know, a year and three months or four months into the war, there were 50,000 Ukrainian amputees. And that's a year over a year and a half ago. And the war has gotten a lot bloodier since then for Ukrainians. Think about I mean mean, it's, it's, there are, it's so bad, man. It's so depressing. And like in, in, in the Western press, in the American press, like, you know, in, in now in 2025, like I, you still see like op-eds and voices that are saying, America, US credibility is on the line here or a mistake to abandon Ukraine. But at the same time, you can kind of tell that they're preparing their readers for a

kind of an inevitable defeat. But like I'm interested in this idea of US credibility because it seems like I don't know what you guys make of the Trump administration and they're kind of open acknowledgement that the United States is not in the credibility business anymore. You know, like, like, like we're like, the power that we have is considerable, but we don't need to be the moral force that overrides the world and our behavior and our empire is justified by that moral force. Because frankly, and the experience of Gaza this past year with the Biden administration, it's not worth our time to pretend that we have credibility. Right. Yeah.

Right. And the Democratic establishment's response to that is like open mouthed, wait, you can't do that. But they can. Yeah. I mean, I think what the Trump people are saying is no one's going to invade us. So what is the purpose of all this? Like they, you know, people, no one's going to invade the U S that's kind of their basic way of looking at it. I think, I mean, it's not like I wouldn't

get our hopes up that, you know, the Trump administration is going to somehow be the anti-imperialist administration, but they do seem less. No, they just want to return to like an earlier form of imperialism rather than like kind of the post-World War Q liberal hegemony. Yes. Trump's favorite guy is McKinley. Yeah. Yeah, no, he's that's his, he keeps talking about him. I don't know who told him about him.

He loves him. I know it's very strange. Um, but, uh, yeah, I think, um, you know, there's this amazing quote. Uh, I think it was Dean Atchison, uh, who said, well, this is, I don't know, maybe similar prestige. Prestige is the shadow cast by power. And, um, it's a really kind of fascinating, weirdly fascinating quote for an Americans usually don't have interesting quotes like that. I think John was, I said it once on our show and John, you said that it was almost Maoist sounding.

Yeah. You said that it was almost Maoist sounding. Yeah. It's just kind of cool. But, um, but you know, that, that assumes that every way you designate credibility is on the line is equal and it's not equal. This was, this was a stupid war to put credibility or prestige on the line for. It was, it was rooted in a lot of really bad assumptions, stupid assumptions, and a lot of really like malevolent assumptions, which is, well, whatever happens, at least we'll kill a lot of

Russians and bog them down. And so, you know, will the war end up? Like, if Trump ends it, Trump doesn't have his own, put it this way, Trump doesn't have his own prestige and credibility at stake. Ukraine's victory is not tied up with Trump's prestige, right? At all. The very opposite is true. So his credibility does not, is not going to be hurt. Although I could easily see what's going to happen is like the centrist liberal establishment in this country. They're going to cry stabbed in the back theory at Trump if and when the Ukraine war is ended on bad terms for Ukraine. I don't know if that'll hurt him. I don't know if he cares, but I think it will.

I am sort of curious to see if they'll attempt to do like a sort of replay of what happened to buy in with Afghanistan. But there was something I wanted to ask both of you that I was kind of curious about, because I've seen a few people ask about this, or speculate about this, but that this idea that the Biden team's plan, not really Biden specifically, because I don't think you could yank this concept out of him, but like more the Sullivan and possibly Blinken type people in the administration, that their idea was basically that like, they were setting things up for Ukraine to just be like a 20 year long insurgency that would bleed

Russia for like a generation. Right. The Javelins were perfect for that. Right? Yeah. Yeah. The, that dream has been around DC for a long, long time. And it is on a cella corridor dream, a DC dream.

And it meant that not just Biden, but the liberal establishment that people I knew had dinner with occasionally became frightening, really frightening. Like a friend of mine walked out on a dinner party after they started talking about how delicious it was that thousands of Russians were dying in this war. And I think there's some kind of upper middle-class bubble in the US that has never really moved on from the Cold War, even though a lot of these people weren't even children when it was going strong.

John, when I interviewed the filmmaker Alex Cox, he brought up the fact that he'd read a profile of Jake Sullivan, in which Jake Sullivan said the movie Red Dawn is his favorite movie of all time. Oh, no! in which Jake Sullivan said the movie Red Dawn is his favorite movie of all time. No! No! Oh, my God. And then he's punching his fist in the air going, Wolverines! I mean, that's a great movie, but man, that... I love Red Dawn too, but I wouldn't base my political worldview around it.

I should not be the national security advisor because I like Red Dawn. Let's just make that absolutely clear. Yeah, much less I because I was deadly dweebly serious about that. But as your friend pointed out, Mark, like, well, that's Dolan because he's got this fucked life. I'd like to become secretary of education because I like the movie equilibrium. But getting back to your very first question, if you don't mind me bringing this, I'm curious what you guys think, because I always listen to your show and I'm a big fan of

you guys. I'm curious what you think, how you think this war ends, what it looks like in the U S. Um, how do you, how do you like the political fallout or like, yeah. You should all side for like the blob. Um, well, maybe both actually. Yeah. Um, that's a really good question. It's a tough one. Yeah.

I, I like for, I've been really interested by like specifically like Sullivan McGurk, Blinken, basically all these people who, you know how Biden always talks about how he was friends with Scoop Jackson and that's how he learned to love Israel and all this bullshit, and that a lot of his administration was this pantomime of Scoop Jackson and Dean Rusk and all these Cold War liberals. With the Dean Russ and all these like cold war liberals with the, you know, the actual like meat and bones of the administration. It at times seemed like, you know, a kid putting on his dad's suit, but with like, you know, like Dean Atchison, dude.

Yeah. Yeah. Model UN stuff. Exactly. Yes. And like in the best of, like, not even the best in like a baseline average world, the result of this would be like a mass demoralization of this line of thinking where they're like, oh my God, everything was going our way.

We fucked everything up. Everyone hates us. Everything we tried to do backfired. Literally everything is just the end of like, you know, liberal intervention is liberal, like liberal institutionalism post-Cold War. But in actuality, um, what we actually see every time someone suffers, not just a loss, but a humiliating loss is they come back 10 times more delusional and insane.

Yeah. So I think, I think in like the next democratic administration, which the current administration seems dead set on saving the life of the democratic party. No one is trying harder than the fucking Trump administration. Because the democrats aren't trying at all. Yeah, they're tying off a vein, shooting fentanyl into it, going to their head. A Rube Goldberg device putting a fucking putting like a plastic bag over their head, knocking them into the Pacific Ocean and like putting stones in their pocket. And the Republicans are doing everything in their power to, you know, replace the fentanyl with pure black tar.

Just do anything. Save them. It's amazing. I think, yeah, in like five years, it's going to be like, we need to give a hydrogen bomb to fucking Estonia. Yeah, it's a kayak call us. Yeah. Yeah. Just just add on to like, oh, well, my what my impression of this is

just like to add to what Felix says, like I just like go back to something I said earlier, like I think they're going to be they're going to be stung by it, but they're going to kind of pretend like they do with everything. They're just going to kind of pretend that it never happened. But at the same time, I think that they're actually kind of secretly relieved in especially in the new kind of like Trump world order. Like what I said, we're like the US can be an empire without overriding moral or democratic principles,

because I think for liberals, especially the cost of that is just too high for them and I'm speaking specifically about the the war in Gaza like when the when Putin when Putin launched the invasion of Ukraine that wasn't like Hillary Clinton was making public statements like if Vladimir Putin doesn't want to be called a war criminal he should not bomb hospitals and then like well and then we realized well you know like I mean they're real sometimes you have to bomb hospitals and schools. And then like, well, and then we realized, well, you know, like, I mean, they're real people. Sometimes you have to bomb hospitals and schools. Sometimes you have to just indiscriminately kill civilians.

If it's, you know, to our benefit. And I think the right it's easier for the right because they've never claimed to have been on the side of morality, democracy or virtue of any kind. So I think for the liberal establishment, yeah, I think for the liberal and they're right, because like the liberal establishment, yeah, I think for the liberal and they're right because like the liberal establishment, like it is a scam to them. And it's the scam is ceasing to work for them. And I think that they're privately are kind of relieved that they have to stop justifying

American power in the terms of like democracy and human rights. Yeah, I think that's a really good point. And so they're going to be able to like scale it down a lot, but they're still going to try and find a way. I mean, it means a lot to that class to be the moral leader. It means a lot, you know, in that Acela corridor classic, it means a lot to them to be able to believe that somehow they are better, different and better. And it doesn't mean that, of course, the Trump faction has just pure contempt for that. They think it's a scam and they think it's aimed at them. And they're right, in a lot of ways,

they're right. It is aimed at them too. And so, you know, they'll find a way when they get back in power because Trump will and the Republicans will screw up so much, they'll force the Democrats against their will to retake power. And when they do retake power, they'll find a way to be like, we're great again, our long nightmare is over. And the same. I mean, I think also it'll be part of their kind of like their continued, their growing distrust and hatred of the voting public in America from laying them down. That's been their main answer that I've seen. Because they're going to be confronted with the reality that when this war does come to

an end, Americans mostly won't care one way or the other, because it doesn't really affect them. And I think that the average American, be they Republican or Democrat, does not think that Ukraine is the most important thing to fight for in the world today. No, in fact, nor do they want to see their tax dollars going to fund it. Yeah. One of the ironies about this is that there's kind of a demarcation in the liberal or mainstream American mind about what people matter.

And it was very clear that Palestinians didn't matter, but you could have figured that out from sampling American opinion any time during the past few decades. So it wasn't really a surprise. But I don't think Slavic lives matter much to those people either or ever have. And that includes Ukrainian lives. Like it made it very easy to say, well, that's a sacrifice we're willing to make. You know?

Yes, yes. Oh, how are we? John, do you remember when, during like the sort of first three months of the war, when like everything media wise marketing wise was, was sort of, it was working in sync for the Sullivan Biden type people and the ad campaign that came out with where it's like, you know, this is what it would look like if the fucking Eiffel Tower got bombed That was always so in exactly because it's like well, you might not care now, but what happened to real Europeans? Americans what would it what would you feel if the Eiffel Tower got bombed to an American audience? They'd be like sick. That's awesome

Going back to going back a little to what Will said. I think you're right in that, like, not just this, but like after Gaza, that it just, it's going to have to be more naked. But I also think like, I don't know, this administration has been incredibly instructive for me because the depth of cultural memory in America and just the Western world in general has been so fucking ravaged by our mode of media consumption that anything that happened six months ago, it might as well have happened in the 11th century. Yes, totally. But the Trump campaign, this go-around was so interesting to

me because it was a billion different things going in a billion different directions, but there was a lot of this national conservatism shit where it's like, you know, Josh Hawley and like, you know, we're, we actually liked this CFP. We would, you know, we, uh, we're going to go after painting. We like Lena con she's we would keep her. Yeah. And it was, it was just like pantomime of like, like a mid century conservatism that's never really existed in America, but like pantomime of like, like a mid century conservatism that's never really existed in America, but like, you know, like all, all forms of American reaction, just

a past that never really existed and a future that you can't attain melded together. And in practice we get super austerity, the dumbest program of austerity I've ever seen in America, like worse austerity than like maybe Hoover and done it at a more reckless pace. And like the head of the CFPB is this like Christian soyjack guy who follows only fans models on his official account. Wow. He's hawking a payday lender from his official government account. And it's just so naked. Wow. He's hawking a payday lender from his official government account. And it's just so naked.

But also so so far in the other project. Twenty twenty five guy, Russ Russell Vaughn. Yes. Yeah. He was he was like he was like previously the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau was strangling working class Americans by preventing them from getting these great loans on offer. That's right. Yes, I saw that. That's insane. And like, and this is a company that got dinged by the Financial Protection Bureau because

it was just like, it was just just just defrauding people. It was just, I would have to say, having lived in Kentucky a bit and I don't know how many people like a lot of people from the base that that's drawn from are used to getting scammed and ripped off by people like there. I don't know. It's a different it's a different type of getting ripped off. It's that kind of low rent ripoff. Yeah. Scamming that is a lot more endemic to that culture. And you know, New York, California liberals rip you off in other ways and scam you in other ways. But that kind of low rent scam is like, Oh, well, he must be one of us.

Yeah. But, but I think we're going to, everyone is going to be like that. I, we've talked, we've talked a lot about how like there are these swings and micro swings in American culture. Now how we're, we're currently like in an anti woke moment that is rapid, like quicker than the woke stuff. Is wearing out. It's weird. It's predicted, it's wearing out, it's welcomed. Yeah. Part of the microswings will be that like each major party will like the, the micro,

the swing will be part of like the campaign. As in you will campaign on like national conservatism, uh, to the base, I guess, and then, you know, like Project 2025 to the evangelical institutional class and then, you know, as a moderate to like Pennsylvania voters. When you're actually in power, it's like Silicon Valley, it's super austerity with no plan. For Democrats, it's going to be, we're going to restore honor and dignity. And I have a lot of, uh, normal Democrats in my life. The line I keep hearing is we're going to rebuild. We have before. Wow.

And you know, the rank and file believe that in some cases and the line from whoever the next democratic president will be, it will be echoes of this, like cold war liberal institutionalism, but in practice, it will be echoes of this like cold war liberal institutionalism, but in practice it will be more naked than ever, similar to what happened with the Trump people. And that will make these cultural and political swings much quicker and much more violent, but also will, I think, diminish participation in them ultimately. Yeah, that's interesting. I think one thing, yeah, that's one thing a couple things that you know what you're talking about brought up. One is that, yeah here when the when the Ukraine war is wound down this greatest crusade since 1945 moral crusade for democracy and all this stuff

it'll just be a puff of smoke except to people, you know a small group of people to whom it did mean everything and they look bad, but I'll move on to something else. But in Europe, and so that can go away without a lot of damage, but in Europe, I think it's going to be different. I think the Europeans have been very suicidal. I mean, they have, like the war has been actually pretty good for the US economy for fossil fuels and for the arms industry and for things that we make actually, it's probably been more of a boon for Europe, especially Germany when they lost that 30 year long contract at a fixed price, a fixed amount of cheap Russian gas and had to go out

in the market every day and buy their gas. It's just like their industry was already suffering from some problems. And it was like the push that kicked them over the ledge. And they've been really suffering. They just committed suicide so that Biden could brag to time that he killed a lot of Russians. It's absolutely bizarre. And when this war ends and they realize they've convinced themselves or had the the Estonians and the Poles convinced them, if we don't stop them in like, Velika Nova Silka, which it took them two years to take, then the next day they're going to march into Berlin and

Paris and when they realize that that's not going to happen, that didn't happen, that I think could be very destabilizing for the establishment political class. What do you make of these calls that I've been seeing in Europe to like have the EU like form their own united military to like because I mean, you mentioned at the beginning that like when it push comes to shove, they're like, are you sending peacekeepers to Ukraine? They're like, nope, nope, nope. But you're right. They're so they think the Russian bear is going to overtake them.

What do you make of these calls to like have a unified EU military as a balance for Russia? Yeah, talk like, John, like, I mean, you don't just then say, Okay, what are they gonna have like those those Ukrainian bands going around throwing, you know, French kids and cars? First of all, do they think that? Do they? Exactly. And I don't think they do. I think they're just flat out lying. They're making up this threat. If Russia can't take Kiev, it can't take Berlin. I mean, that's pretty clear. So I think this has been a chance for the European governing class almost to detach itself purposely from the people.

And it's expressed a kind of hate for the people, much like the United States governing class has in the past couple of years. They wanted to be distinguished from this in that they still feel the enthusiasm for, I don't know what you'd call it, like conference politics. Yeah. Everybody else got really sick of long ago. Yeah. I, um, I just think they're going to look at the costs and the time you can't just

put together an EU army that is in any way a threat like that could do anything, but like, I don't know, maybe move, um, goods to the Ukrainians, you know, maybe that's what they plan to do, but they're still vulnerable, but you can't just create an army and have them up and running in a couple of months. Like John said, you know, recently, it's not like the 18th century militias or something like it takes. You have to create institutions and it takes a long time.

Yeah, just coming up with shell production for the basic artillery shells that are the main weapon of the war and the trenches. They've had to revive factories in Copenhagen that produced shells long, long ago, like 50 years ago. And they're back in business, but you know, it's going to last for a few years maybe, and then what becomes of those factories? It's not really clear that it's going to do anybody any good.

They tried to get the entire EU or at least EU above a certain income. of those factories. It's not really clear that it's gonna do anybody any good. They tried to get the entire EU, or at least EU above a certain income level, like the main players on the same multi-role, like 4.5th generation fighter jet, the Eurofighter Typhoon. And it almost worked, but then of course, there was a falling out with France, and they made their

own plane out of spite, but they're going to unify. They're going to make a unitary military. Like, okay. Yeah. No, I mean, if they look, I do think this, this Russia's invasion did stir up some deep European fears and other feelings, not very pleasant, you know, old European feelings that were supposed to have been put away after 1945 in a lot of places. But I think, so I think there's, I don't think they're like kind of inventing this fear. I think at least with the governing classes, the fear, like they've whipped each other up into a frenzy and they also, you know,

police each other and make sure they're all whipped up into a frenzy at all times. Otherwise, like you're maybe have the Russian disease. But they don't really believe it because if they really believed it, if anybody really believed that today, you know, Bakhmut, tomorrow Berlin, we would have gotten involved directly in the war. And the war has been going badly for Ukraine since January, February, 2023. So two years now, very badly. And if you really thought you would have done like what the Allies did and after Poland was invaded, you would say, okay, I'm putting actual skin in the game. And we keep saying over and over, we will not put like physical skin in this game. We'll help the Ukrainians put all their skin in the game, but we're not going to do it.

And that's because I think, you know, ultimately they know, but certainly their populations know that Europe is not threatened. Russia is not going to invade them. And I think that that is going to cause a real, because the Europeans have actually sacrificed, particularly Western Europeans have sacrificed their beloved, you know, high standards of living to a certain degree. I think it's going to really cause another level of problems for the kind of establishment political parties and media and that whole class. I would think it would be problematic for them.

One of the last things I wanted to ask you about is the last group of people that I think are going to be negatively affected by the end of this war. Is the rise of this class of like, what they refer to themselves as SIGINT analysts. Or open SIGINT analysts or open SIGINT analysts, really a collection of wannabe war nerds who have become all experts on armed conflict. And of course, they're all, you know, extremely pro-NATO and anti-Russia. I mean, and they were really filling themselves for like the last couple of years. But one by one, they've sort of clammed up and moved on because, you know, they're not actually fighting this war. They're just posting. But like, what do you make of the phenomenon of these kind of like, you know, the classic

Warner type, the armchair signals analyst and their role in this conflict? The open source intelligence. Yeah. SIGINT. Yeah. A lot of them, a lot of their funding, weirdly, a lot of them went quiet when the USAID money got pulled. But that whole phenomenon kind of goes back to Bellingcat. They're the ones that popularized that. And then of course,

it turned out Bellingcat gets all this money from the National Endowment for Democracy, the National Endowment for the Contras, whatever they really are. And they're just such an awful group. And, you know, one of the things again, that really kind of showed who these people really were was as soon as the war, Israel's war in Gaza started, they all, all of them cited, it's like, like those accounts like Nexsta and, you know, so there's different like Polish right wing run accounts. They all cited. Visegrad. Visegrad, yeah, Visegrad.

Yeah, yeah, yeah. My favorite account. Yeah, these great accounts. Yeah, they all were just, you know, the terrorists, killed the terrorists and, you know, covering up for Israel's crimes and calling protesters in the West against the genocide, calling them Hamas terrorists. All these OSINT accounts were just violently anti-Palestine and pro-Israel. So really they lost because no matter what that war did make, it made a lot of liberals queasy in one way or another. So that kind of hurt their credibility. But yeah, their value, I think more than anything, was in the first year of the war, year and a half, in both massively amplifying and exaggerating how

poorly things were going for Russia and how well great it was going for Ukraine. And then more importantly, perhaps like NAFO in suppressing anybody who went out of line who was not completely... Yeah, I think that's a really good point that it was a lot like a church congregation and now it's like a church congregation whose second coming didn't quite happen. But, uh, for a long time there, they were, they were policing the congregation for signs of doubt and you could pay pretty heavily in online terms if you expressed any of that doubt. But the interesting thing to me

is, and Mark and I were talking about this before, there's no original, as far as I know, Western free inquiry about some of the facts of the war that are being fiercely, let's say fiercely downplayed, downplayed by an elephant's foot. Like, what are Ukrainian casualties? Yeah. I mean, there are sources in the Russian sphere that try to cover that, but I haven't heard any brave Western inquiries about that. All these OSINT accounts and somehow they can't come up with casualty figures because that whole it's what it is is propaganda. Obviously it's propaganda to give people the immediate impression that actually neutral citizen journalists and citizen, uh, open source, uh, intelligence followers and, um, that

they're giving us unbiased views, but none of them, nobody is trying to give us numbers on casualties. I saw even Tom Massey, you know, that, that sort of Ron Polish Republican guy, he's like, he's the only person in Congress who's actually openly complained about it. He said, even in their intelligence meetings, they're given prop. He said, we're given just propaganda on casualties like the Congress intelligence committee, they will not give us casualty figures. And he kept being complained openly about this over and over, you know, so they're keeping it not just from us and this is our media. I mean, our meat, we have so much media resources geared towards that war. openly about this over and over. You know, so they're keeping it not just from us. And this is our media.

I mean, we have so much media resources geared towards that war, towards finding out how bad things are going for Russia, how the ruble is gonna turn into rubble and all their problems there, and how many have died. I mean, we wanna say it's close to half a million or something, and at least we want people to believe that.

I don't believe that, but it has been bad. But they will not tell us the casualty figures. This is a huge, like in three years, this is supposed to be a war about freedom versus authoritarianism, freedom of press versus censorship, democracy versus dictatorship, and our own press. And the Ukrainians will talk about it some, but we're the ones who, like our press is deliberately keeping from us by deliberately not inquiring into this. What are the casualty figures? And we can guess

why, because it's going to be a bummer. It's going to be a bummer for all of us, and it's going to make it clear that the war has gone badly, and it's going to disgust people too. And the job, I think, of the media and the Osen bros and all this has been to keep up morale on the home front where all the money and armaments come from and keep that flowing to the Ukrainians. Because the Ukrainians, you can just press gay. You can just grab them off the street and throw them in a van,

beat them up and throw them in the front. But with the Westerners, what you have to do is lie to us. Mark Ames and John Dolan, I think we should leave it there for today. But I want to thank you both for joining us again on the program. And I would encourage all our listeners to check out Radio Warner, if you haven't done so already. Available on Patreon. We'll have a link in the show description. Once again, Mark and John, thank you so much for joining us. Thank you very much. Thank you guys. I just have a bit of something to

announce at the end of the show today. If you're in New York City on March 2nd, Sunday, March 2nd is coming up. I will be part of a fundraising party for Zoran from Mayer at the club 101 on Avenue A. Hesse and I will be doing a live Oscars watch party on Sunday night. So we'll have a link to tickets for that if you'd like to come out and have some fun and donate money to Z for Zoran, Z for NYC. Alright, till next time everybody. Bye bye. Bye. Thanks. The End