Judging Freedom - Ukraine’s Offensive_ What’s Happened, What_s Next_ Col Daniel Davis

Episode Date: June 19, 2023

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Hi everyone, Judge Andrew Napolitano here for Judging Freedom. Today is Monday, June 19th, 2023. It's a few minutes after 11 o'clock in the morning here on the east coast of the United States. Colonel Daniel Davis will be with us in just a moment. How well is that Ukrainian offensive going? But first this. When it comes to carrying valuables or even firearms in your vehicle, most people feel they have to choose between safety and convenience. A vehicle break-in occurs every 36 seconds in America. The Headrest Safe gives you the power to store cash, jewelry, medication, and yes, even your concealed carry firearm. You'll never have to worry about taking your valuables with you again. Keep them safe with

the Headrest Safe. Use promo code JUDGENAB and enjoy $50 off for a limited time at theheadrestsafe.com. Colonel Davis, thank you for joining us this morning. Always a pleasure. How well is the so-called Ukrainian spring offensive going? It's just about going as bad as it can possibly be imagined. I have seen some expectations prior to the launch of this with all of the equipment that they had assembled and all the training that they had gone through in the NATO that they really expected to have punched through one or possibly more of the main defensive belts of the first defensive belt of the Russian defense within five to 10 days. And then they thought they would be moving more to the south and then perhaps by the end of the month, be down to Melitopol down on the Azov coast. I think that was the general hope and expectation. And yet after now 14 days into this offensive, they have still yet to even reach the first belt of the Russian defense.

And they haven't even made it through the security zone in most places. And they have absorbed enormous casualties in both personnel and equipment. And I just don't see how this does anything except just completely chew through what this offensive capacity that Ukraine put together. It's really hard to watch. I want to ask you about what Ukraine has available in manpower and equipment to continue the offensive. But first, a couple of technical questions. You're referring to Russian defenses as belts, and I think we all know there are three belts. What is a belt and what are these belts? Yeah, depending on where on the front you are, there's as few as three.

There's as many as five in some of the areas that Russia considers the most important. is a three to five kilometer zone in which they have lots of these concrete dragon's teeth, which make it impossible or very difficult for tanks to go through. Significant minefields, some of which are up to hundreds of meters deep, and then many kilometers in breadth across. They have tank ditches, which are engineering dug tracks

that a tank can't drive across without falling into the pit. And then, of course, there's all the interlocking fire. There's what's called fire bags where they have a hold, what appears to be a hold in defense so that units can go into it. And then all of a sudden they're blocked and then they get attacked from the sides and free sided artillery and then air power and then other missile strikes. And so that's basically, the further you get into the defense, the harder it gets, and the more units that Russia already has waiting for the Ukraine side there. Can we safely assume that Ukraine forces, certainly senior military command, know what to expect, that they know either from Ukrainian intel or from American intel

about the nature, extent, depth, breadth, and strength of these belts? I mean, I don't see any way that anyone can not know what's awaiting them. Because, I mean, you don't have to go into the intelligence. You can go to the New York Times and the Washington Post that both published elaborate for months now detailed pictures with the Maxar and several other of these civilian satellite companies have developed photographs basically of many of these areas. exact location. So everybody knew what was there. What there may be some lack of understanding is the capacity that Russia has to execute these bans of defense. I think a lot of people had in their minds that like what happened in Kharkiv last year when Ukraine launched this surprise offensive in the north that Russia ran. And I think that some of them had some ideas that that would happen again, but there was every reason to believe that was not going to be the case. But it's puzzling to me with the knowledge that is out there in open source,

that anyone would think that this was going to be a successful operation with the number of troops they had and the deficiencies that they have. How would you rank the defenses, one being lowest and 10 being the best? I mean, in modern history, there's not a top to this. We haven't done it. I mean, we haven't seen defenses of this nature really since World War II, maybe the Korean War. Yeah, the Korean War. We'll say that it goes as far back as that, some of the Vietnam War, but since the Vietnam War, we've not seen this anywhere. And in modern history, this is the best that there is. And Russia appears to be doing a really good job at both the strategic development of the line, the operational construction of it, and so far, the tactical execution. It's really something impressive. Given your evaluation, which you say can be successful. impale yourself on these belts of defense and just slowly get destroyed as you move further in.

You realize you have no offensive strike capacity left, and it will take two-thirds of a year to a year to even replace that. But in the meantime, you've got the potential for Russia to go on a counterattack when you're at your very weakest, the weakest than they've been at any point since February of 2022. And that's the real risk that they're running right now. Russia launches a counterattack if they can pull it off, because it's still very difficult for them to do so, but they may not be able to resist it if Russia does. So I know we're talking textbook here, but if you're going to conduct an offensive, don't you have to have sort of a ratio of superior firepower and superior troops, two to one, three to one, something like that? I mean, you have a rule of thumb where it's when you want to attack

something successfully that you have a three to one advantage. That's historical, of course. But what you have here is something that perversely is the opposite. Last week, we had Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Mark Milley openly say that Russia had somewhere around 300,000 troops defending within the borders of Ukraine. Now going against this, you have an offensive force of somewhere between 35 and 50,000, i.e. one to 10 or one to six or seven at the best, depending on the location. Okay, so instead of three to one, it's one to ten. It is far, far overwhelming against the Ukrainians. And if both sides were equally matched, obviously one to ten is going to be just a nearly impossible thing to do, but the sides aren't evenly matched. The Ukraine side has nowhere near enough engineering assets

to be able to breach the minefields. They certainly don't have the experience, but they also don't have the air power, the air defense or the drone, the missile support. So they're deficient both in personnel, equipment and in tactics. It's just an impossible task. And I don't know why they want to keep pressing it. Can the Russians both defend against the Ukrainian offensive and conduct an offensive of their own moving westward at the same time? Now, that depends on who you want to believe, and this party is much more... I want to believe you. Well, I'm talking about it for information, because in February, the Ukrainian intelligence services publicly declared that Russia had about 300,000 defending in the borders, which is the same thing Milley said.

But they said they also had between 150 and 250,000 Russians in Crimea and on the western border with Ukraine that were preparing for offensive operations. We never saw those troops employed. So if that's correct, then they do have, let's say that some of them had been used to fill backfield elsewhere. Maybe there's 200,000. That is an enormous number of troops that are fresh that haven't even been in Canada yet. And if they then go against somebody who's been battered after however long it turns out, a month, two months, it's going to be very difficult for them to defend against Ukrainians. So if this report is accurate that Russia does have a couple hundred thousand people outside of the 300,000, then yes, they do have the capacity. And then it's all a matter of do they have the ability to make good with that capacity? And that remains to be seen. That's

the one thing we don't know for sure. The 36,000 more or less troops that the Ukrainians have for the offensive, is that the extent of the troops they have left? Or is that just what they've set aside for the offensive? That's what they have set aside for the striking power for the offensive. They still have anywhere between four and five hundred thousand defending across the entire thousand kilometers of the front line, as well as in Odessa and in the west, up in the Belgorod area. So they literally have them scattered all throughout the country. They can't, you know, mask them all in one place because they have too much to defend. Colonel, do you suspect that Ukraine's motivations are political and public relations and not military. I mean, stated differently,

we know General Zelushny is injured, and he's well respected amongst you military, career military folks, but whoever replaces or has replaced him must know the basics that you are telling us and must know that this is virtually suicidal and must have told President Zelensky that. All of those things appear to be true. And on Zelushny, he was the one back in December of last year that said militarily it doesn't make any sense to continue trying to defend Bakhmut. They need to fall back to their next defensive line where they already had prepared positions from which they would have been much more strong to be able to defend Bakhmut. They need to fall back to their next defensive line where they already had prepared positions from which they would have been much more strong to be able to defend against the Russians. And the political leadership did not listen to him, sidelined him, went ahead

and did it anyway. Now that they lost 20,000 or so of the forces they should have had for the offensive, which made it even less chances of success. In the current situation, it does appear that the political leadership in Kiev is saying, no, we're going to keep this going so that it looks good getting into the NATO summit on the 10th of July in Vilnius so that we can get more support and more tanks, more airplanes, all those kinds of things, long range missiles, all the things they want. But the problem is militarily, I'm not sure you can get there. And Zelensky appears to be making decisions on politics, not on military reality, thinking he can just ride it out. But I think he's spending so many troops. I don't think he can ride it out. Time will tell.

We're going to take a break. When we come back, we'll talk about the recently retired American four-star general who actually claims the Ukrainians can take back Crimea. And we'll hear from General Petraeus, who has a decidedly different view on this than Colonel Davis. I believe Colonel Davis. Right after this. The headrest Safe is quick and easy to use. Some may even call it a game changer. The Headrest Safe acts as a safety net, protecting your belongings while keeping them out of sight and out of bounds of others, serving us security while also keeping your valuables in bounds. That's what the Headrest Safe provides for me. Game, set, match. So General Ben Hodges, a retired four-star, the former commander-in-chief of U.S. military

in Europe, actually said recently he believes that the Ukrainian military can take back Crimea. I guess he's hanging out with Victoria Nuland. But how profoundly unrealistic is a statement like that coming from a four star? Look, I've been saying for literally months, taking an issue with General Hodges, who's been making that claim all this year. He's been saying, yeah, by August, he stuck with that, that by August, that Ukraine can liberate Crimea at the end of August. So he says, I really believe that once this offensive started and Ukraine clearly had no offensive forward movement that he would revise it, but he didn't. He has stuck with it as of last week, still says that Ukraine will defeat Crimea.

Look, that's over, I think, depending on where you want to start the line, 130, 150 kilometers to get to the Crimean insulate. And so far, Ukraine hasn't been able to go more than four or five kilometers into the security zone of the Russia, haven't even gotten to the main security belt or penetrated it anywhere. And to suggest after two weeks where they can't even take small villages, that somehow they're going to take four or five large cities in between here and Crimea, their start point, it just defies any kind of logic. And yet he's

sticking with that. Let's see if you can sense any logic in this. Here's General David Petraeus over the weekend, this past weekend, with his view on the likelihood of success, got to say it with a straight face, of the Ukrainian offensive. I think that the Ukrainians are very much ready for this. They'll be very distinctive because they will be using, employing Western tanks, Western infantry fighting vehicles before they go back. They just get individual replacements to fill the gap. They're not well-trained, they're not well-equipped, they're not well-trained, are well-equipped, are going to break through. And then you might see a real dynamism to the battlefield that could give real opportunities to the Ukrainians to exploit. It's like he's in an alternate universe,

that the Russians are not well-equipped, not well-trained, not well-led, and the Ukrainians are. Judge, that's like he's reading from a novel that that he wrote that he wishes those things were true and he's saying it was though they are but it's graphically depicted on the ground as being dramatically untrue and i just don't understand these retired force general sticking to their old stories in the light of physical evidence to the contrary and that's what you have here. And this idea that Russia hadn't been able to rotate troops off and all this and they're tired.

Look, I told you for six months they have been building these defensive positions without being under fire. They are as fresh as you can get. And he hasn't even gotten to the primary defenders yet. And these guys on the front line are being shown they're excellent at coordinated operations, air and ground coordination, drone artillery coordination. And they're fighting very smartly on the ground by giving when they need to. And then they go back forward when they do. So they keep the lines always on the Ukraine side. It's been very impressive. And look, I know that they don't want Russia to be good, but you can't deny what's happening on the ground or you do so to Ukraine's detriment.

And that's exactly what's going to result here. I don't I don't understand General Petraeus, but here he is again at the tail end of this clip. And by the way, I was incorrect when ago, talking about how the F-16s, which we know won't be there and usable for a year, will tip the scales for the Ukrainians. Oh, my. But there should be a very solid path to NATO membership that's provided at the Vilnius Summit on 11 July. But in the meantime, the focus should be on enabling Ukraine

to the greatest extent that we possibly can so that the Ukrainians can prove to Putin that the Russians will not be able to out-suffer the Ukrainians. And also, we prove they won't be able to out-suffer the Europeans and the Americans as well. Does this include F-16 jets? Oh, absolutely. We should have made the decision to transition to Western aircraft long ago.

Again, this was inevitable. All right. So F-16 jets, which of course aren't there, and Ukrainian membership in NATO. I guess dear David really does want World War III. I mean, he seems to be singing the tune that Zelensky wants, which, of course, he's just been nothing but nonstop hitting the drum for NATO membership in Ukraine, for Ukraine in the July summit. I mean, that's what he's been trying to get. And NATO has been very adamant that they're not going to give that to him. But Petraeus,

God only knows why, seems to be singing the same song. It doesn't make any sense whatsoever. It's not logical. It's not rational. It's against our own national security interests. And Biden gets credit for saying, no, that's not what we're going to do. But again, it's like Petraeus almost doesn't have any knowledge of military affairs to think that getting F-16s is going to make any difference because the ones they're even talking about are some of the older models of the F-16s because that's how they can get there faster. And those things are going to get shot down by the Russian air defense just as easily as the MiG-29s and Su-25s Ukraine's already lost. And so they are

not going to provide any kind of change on the battlefield. They will have some success if they're used well, but goodness gracious, it is so hard to train a Soviet pilot steeped in Soviet tactics on a Western gear that's in English that they've never seen before and think that they're going to have dominant effect. They're not going to, Judge. Gary, while Colonel Davis and I are chatting, see if you can find that clip of President Biden saying F-16s equals World War III. And if you find it, just pop it in there. Your friend and colleague, Colonel Tony Schaefer, said the same thing, that the first thing the Americans have to do when training the Ukrainians to fight the to fly the F-16s is untrain everything they already know from fight from flying the Soviet era jets with which they're familiar because the F-16s are so different.

It'll take a year to untrain them and then then another year to train them. Do you agree with that? Look, if you need any proof of that, just look at the tactical performance of the Ukrainian military on the ground in the two weeks since this thing has kicked off here. Because to much hype, we talk about how they had been trained in NATO versions of warfare, in NATO themes and ideas, equipment on how to conduct combined arms operations. And then when you see them on the ground, it's the same tactics they've been using for the last year. None of them have been applied. I mean, they've done every mistake that you can imagine, and they have not used the standards and tactics I was raised on. So I know firsthand what they

look like and what they're showing on the ground is nothing like what we would be training on. I'm sure they were trained in the right thing, but you can't untrain a mind in combat under fire and think they're going to remember this new stuff instead of what they've known their whole life. If it didn't happen on the ground, it won't happen in the air. How do you see this playing out in the next four or five months? Big picture, the entire conflagration, what will we be talking about after Labor Day? If Ukraine is lucky, then we're going to have a frozen conflict and we're going to have a new line where it's going to be positional warfare, like what we had basically from

September or October of last year until April of this year. So just moving little bits and pieces back and forth. That's the best case for ukraine the worst case is that when russia has chewed up all of their striking power here then they launch these new offensive that uh with troops that are fresh and ukraine doesn't have anything to stop them in which case you can literally lose kharkiv or odessa and in the absolute worst case maybe lose them both by, say, the end of the year. Wow. Gary, do we have that clip? Are you able to find it? No. Okay. It's buried somewhere. We'll run it for you next time. It's President Biden a year ago saying, I know you guys want this, I know you guys want that, but if we send F-16s, and he whispers that's world war three of course a year later

while in hiroshima japan of all places uh he announced that we would authorize our allies to send the f-16s that american industry manufactured and sold uh to the allies he's trying to hedge on the edge because what he specifically said in that clip i remember very well was that if you man it with american pilots or ground troops whatever then it's world war three so he's trying to just take the last piece of that out and give all the equipment all the intelligence all the support and somehow think that's not going to equate to it and he he may be right because Russia has no incentive to escalate to nuclear weapons as long as they're winning conventionally. And they simply won't because that would invite a nuclear retaliation. But in the

event that they ever do the foolish thing and say, yeah, we're going to put Western troops in Western Ukraine, then everything could potentially turn upside down. God help us if that ever happens. Colonel Davis, Colonel Dan Davis, always a could potentially turn upside down. God help us if that ever happens. Colonel Davis, Colonel Dan Davis, always a pleasure, my dear friend. Thank you for joining us. More as we get it. Judge Napolitano for Judging Freedom. You want to feel safe in your vehicle. With access to your firearm, that's both secure and convenient. The Headrest Safe keeps your firearm where you can access it and no one else can. It starts at theheadrestsafe.com. Thank you.