Kitbag Conversations - Proto Kitbag 4: The "Why" in Ukraine

Episode Date: May 2, 2024

Matt, Cody (episode 2), and Stephen start off this episode by discussing the role of Man Portable Air Defense Systems (MANPADS) in Ukraine. We also discuss the Russian War Colleges apparent disregard of lessons learned from the Soviet-Afghan (1979-1989) and Georgia (2008) Wars as well as touching on recently passed Russian laws regarding information and facts. Some other topics we talk about are: - Putin's academic background - The economic/agricultural situation in Russia and Ukraine - And how Ukraine impacts the next conventional fight

Hello everyone. Welcome back to the Proatomum Report, a podcast dedicated to delivering quality information at the community level. This week we're joined by our good friend at the page, Steven and Cody again from episode two. We're going to be discussing Vladimir Putin's means for war, as well as several other topics within the Russian geopolitical sphere of why they're in Ukraine, what possible causes there were for going to war, and where we see the conflict going next, not for the war itself, but for the Russian home front. But, all right, let's just jump into it. What part are we going to talk about? I think if anything, somebody has to explain themselves for why

rotary wing aircraft are stupid now because you pissed off a lot of pilots and clearly you know nothing. Let's touch on that. Stephen's the one who wrote the aircraft post about a month ago that really pissed off a lot of aviation brovets. Explain yourself. that really pissed off a lot of aviation brovets. So, let's just time ourselves. Yeah, I mean, I think that we've been spoiled for 20 years of the global war on terror, and we have been able to operate with radar-winged aircraft with almost near impunity. And I mean, we're seeing how play out with the Russians right now, that when you inject better tech, better weapons into the mix, when you remove those artificially created

safety bubbles for red-winged aircraft, things change really fast. And I just don't see how we can sit back and just write off hundreds of Russian helicopters and fixed-wing aircraft getting down by man-pads and say, well, this is only going to happen to them, and this won't happen to us. A lot of people talk about seed, and I just

don't think that they fully appreciate that seed worked back in the 90s in Desert Storm and then in other wars because we were dropping big bombs on big ADA. I don't know how to use... Can you, for the listeners who don't know, if you could elaborate on what seed is? Yeah, so it's suppression of enemy air defense. It's essentially kind of an all-encompassy term to describe a way to use aerial assets to deprive an enemy of their ADA capability,

as well as a combination of indirect fires and special operations forces. And there's just a whole gambit to suppress what the enemy can bring to the table and from a anti-air capability. And, you know, we, we, we mean the US and the West have been very good at that. But that has been under the assumption that we are fighting against large ADA platforms and not, we are fighting against large ADA platforms and not man-pads proliferated across the entire battlefield,

especially Gen 4 man-pads, which have devastating effects as we've seen in Ukraine. And this is just my humble opinion, so people can take it for a grain of salt, but we've kind of crossed the Rubicon in a way with providing the Ukrainians with these Gen 4 manpads. It almost seems like there's been kind of an unspoken

agreement across the world powers that in these small wars that we've been fighting for the past 20 years, there wasn't going to be proliferation of modern manpads. And now that that's taking place, it almost makes me wonder if the rules of the game have been rewritten in a way. From flying in Afghanistan, I could not imagine accomplishing the missions that we accomplished in Afghanistan if the Taliban had been trained and equipped with Gen 4 manpads. I just, I don't see that playing out. And I think that it, you know, I mentioned the person, I think that we're lucky in a lot of ways that the Afghan War ended prior to the Ukraine war starting because our over reliance on rotary wing aircraft, especially in Afghanistan, as well as, you know, Iraq, but especially

in Afghanistan, everything was by air. And so if, if men, if man paths were proliferated across the battle space, NATO's entire means of operating with almost near impunity in Afghanistan would have been, it would have been ground to halt real fast. And I think that it's, it's, it's a little unfair. It's an unfair criticism of the Russians to say that simply just not doing seed was the reason that their aircraft are going down or that they needed better ACE equipment, so aerial aircraft survivability equipment.

I think that it minimizes the impacts that Gen 4 man pads have. And then to a lesser extent, ATGMs, like we see that these ATGMs are being used effectively to engage low flying helicopters in Ukraine as well. The technology is rapidly evolving. And if that technology can be passed out in the past to a force, the way that we've been fighting, I think, is going to have to radically change. So anyway, this is just some thoughts that I had. They could be completely wrong. But I think that manned rotor-winged aviation especially needs to kind of rethink the way that we're operating.

Because I think a lot of people will go into the next war, whether it be an actual near pier war or one of these small wars, these low intensity conflicts. Um, and if the rules have been changed and, and man pads will be made available at the moment that, you know, Western forces start operating in an area, um, we may have to learn some hard lessons. That, you know, I'd prefer that we don't have to learn. I'd rather avoid those entirely. I wonder if in the big picture, the Russians remember their Afghan war at all, because once they were winning the aviation, the air campaign until we started supplying the Mujahideen

with stingers. And then all of a sudden, the aircraft started falling out of the sky, either A, they don't train to counteract these surface to air to surface threats or surface to air threats rather, or B, they just don't know how to. I think that that's a difference in like geopolitical landscape, right? So at the time it was the Soviet Union versus the US. And so you have Vietnam, where Russians and Chinese were found among the Vietcong, like training, advising and assisting, giving them literally everything. And it was like fair game. And then you have Afghanistan for the Russians. And it's like, okay,

that's fair game. We are supplying them stingers. Like they knew we were there. And we knew they were in Vietnam. But then it's like Berlin Wall Falls USSR is gone. It's like, okay Russia gets a we're gonna start over and so it's like every Where's the line right with guerrilla forces? What do you do? So like ammo and guns? Okay, cool training a little risky You know might have to send some green berets in there to make, you know, some training, but it's like, okay, what about manpads? What about tanks? Like when you start talking to these guerrilla insurgent forces, they ask for these things and the CIA and the Green Berets go, well, we can't, you know, give you stingers because that would piss the Russians off wholeheartedly.

And then Ukraine, like Steve says, Steven is saying, like, it's that the line has drastically moved so far that like, if you think we're going to go to Africa, and you're not going to see man pads, you've got another thing coming. If you think that the Chinese are because I mean, every like Russia is sitting there and they're like, well, you're calling us racist and look at what you do to black people in America, they have that like weird argumentive style of like, well, look at what you're doing. Look at what you're doing. You know, you have the KKK and you're calling us racist. The Chinese are loving this right now. It's like, oh, we can't give Boko Haram ATGMs. Why can't we? You gave the Ukrainians ATGMs. You gave them men pads. It's like,

Stephen's saying it. It's going to come back to haunt us so, so bad because we have drastically moved the geopolitical line on what is acceptable to give to guerrilla forces. I mean, NVGs, training, man-pads, tanks, S-300 missile systems, like the only thing we haven't given them, I mean we've given them a blank check at this point, it's like the only thing we haven't given them, I mean, we've given them a blank check at this point. It's like the only thing we haven't given them is the nuclear arsenal and planes. But we gave you Taliban planes and aircraft. So I mean, that's that's cool, too. So And I think the counter, I was gonna say, you know, the counter arguments this potentially may be well, Russia, or, you know, another near period I hate that term because it doesn't seem that as appropriate. It doesn't apply anymore. It doesn't apply anymore.

But another potential adversary, they won't have the means to produce enough of these newer generation man-pads to proliferate them if we go into another low intensity conflict. And at least that's one of the counter-arguments that I've seen in just looking around at different comments that people are posting in different spheres of conversation. And I think that the danger in assuming that an adversary won't do what we're doing in Ukraine is as technology becomes more readily available and as production costs become less with 3D printing on the rise, there's a lot of potential to mass produce these things, especially now that we've handed out so many ATGMs and so many man

pads in Ukraine. I'm sure a lot of them are falling into the hands of the mafia there, and they'll be used to help support and facilitate production of these weapons systems elsewhere, whether they be China or Iran or some other country, other people can figure out a way to lower production costs. So just because things are expensive in the United States and the way that we acquire new weapons, a lot of our weapons costs are due to R&D. So just the research and development alone,

getting the production lines up. The Chinese have demonstrated very well that once we spend all the money on the contracts, on the R&D, and we buy these very expensive weapons systems, other players can acquire them and produce them for infinitely cheaper. And they may be knockoffs. They may not be completely as good,

but they can still be pretty close. And they can be a lot more easily distributed with the lower production costs. So what we may be saying is, well, a Gen 4 manpad is so expensive, other people won't do it to us in the future. I think the more that these things get used, the more that they get in the hands of the right people, the more potential for these things to be produced with a much lower cost price tag associated with them, then the price tag that's come along with it for us in America producing these weapons systems. Yeah, I mean, what's crazy is like you don't even, we're saying Gen 4. For those that don't know, that's a huge, huge difference. Like Gen 1s are like 1960s and 50s.

And if you have enough of them, you have like seven or eight, that'll take a modern helicopter down. That'll take an American Blackhawk, Chinook, Apache down because it overloads the survival system, the system that shoots the dazzling lasers, it launches the flares for the pilot. Like seven or eight will overload the system and it'll take the helicopter down. But Gen 4, you only need like one or two, maybe two, maybe. And so if you can, like Steven's saying, like if you can get it down to a gen two or gen three, like you're, you're on the money.

And we were talking about this in the chat, but that star, star streak that the British gave them. Holy fuck balls. I don't know if you saw that, Stephen, you as a pilot, but did you see what the minimum speed that they think those missiles are at? No, I didn't see that. Mach 4. One guy can operate three gen four man pads by himself.

He doesn't need like you can fire it solo, but they can fire like one, two, three, and he just operates it in like one, two, three. Like Mach 4 is the minimum speed. And for those that don't know, an SU-35 only reaches like Mach two and a half. By the time that thing is fired, it is through your asshole. You don't even get to finish your fear fart before that thing is coming through the cockpit and blowing you up. That is, like we were, me and Matt were talking about it. We're like this man pad that the British gave the Ukrainians like a month ago. It was like, Hey, the star streak systems coming to Ukraine. And then every fucking

plane that came into that airspace just went down. And I was like, what is, what is star streak? And then you look it up and I don't know who hurt the British, but one guy can take out anything, anything that man pad is ridiculous. And the British are just writing a blank check. And like, like Stephen's saying, like, it's, it's there. We don't, who's going to, who's going to count the star streak systems when this is all over? Are we collecting the empty tubes to go, okay, we have 500 fired, we gave them a thousand and we have 500 over here. So that's a thousand. We have all 1000 star streak systems. And like he said, the mafia is there. So how, who's going to stop them from taking 10, 20, 30, bringing them to Afghanistan

for the Taliban to use or Al Qaeda or like any, any African terrorist organization that wants to shoot down a French foreign lesion plane or bird. I, it might take some time, but we're going to see them in Africa. I truly believe because they've got the money, they just don't have the access to the weapons. And now Ukraine is just the new frontier of stockpiled weapons. And if it's not American, British or NATO made or Ukrainian made, there's a ton of Russian weapons just sitting around that you can sell. And if I, if my home was blown up and there's a bunch of T-72 tech or like

a whole platoon of Russian infantry worth of AKs just happened to be in an empty field that I can go sell to some Africans, like you bet I'm going to go sell some guns and rebuild my house. And it's not that it's what I also think it's important to kind of clarify too, like for the listeners, by no means are we saying that this is the end of manned aviation, right? Like I love flying. I love doing it.

I hope I continue to do that for a long time, but I think in some ways. This is going to be potentially the beginning of the end. And that end may not be for another 50 to 100 years, but with drone technology getting differently better and cheaper, and if these man-pads, especially the newer generations, if they can be mass produced in a way that is relatively inexpensive and can be proliferated, then at some point, someone who's good at math, much better than me, I imagine,

will say, well, a company of Apaches is worth this. And a company of Blackhawks is worth this. Or a squad of F-18s is worth this much money. And it only costs this much money now to produce enough man pads to distribute across the battle space to bring those aircraft down. And at some point, the math will start playing out, where people will say, well, we should probably maybe invest

more in loader munitions. Or maybe we need to do something like, and I know we looked at videos of the Chinese drone art. These drones are able to be programmed and incorporated in ways that they can do beautiful things. And right now it's art, but it's going to be a matter of time before you can use these drone swarms for reconnaissance.

Maybe you can use them for doing a deep attack. Or maybe you have to use them to screen your manned aircraft as they fly along their low altitude route or as they enter into their HLZs or their battle positions. battle positions. There will have to be new ways to mitigate an environment of proliferated man-paths everywhere. There just has to be or else we will continue to lose aircraft. I just don't see the Russians bouncing back from this anytime soon. The number of aircraft that they've lost is … That's a fortune. They've lost a fortune. For a country that doesn't have much revenue right now with the sanctions, I don't see how they're going to build back the fleet that they've lost in Ukraine, at least not anytime soon. That doesn't even include all

the logistical costs that come along with operating, you know, a company or battalion of helicopters. That doesn't come along with the cost of training pilots, which is a huge cost for anyone who's ever been to, it's a Fort Rucker down at Pensacola. I mean, the amount of money that comes in with, you know, the contracts and just training these young aviators is, it's hard to kind of wrap your mind around.

If I could take it back a few minutes here to what Cody was saying about how the mass port reforation of manpads in say Ukraine is a good status of yeah a lot of aircraft are not going to be able to fly after these manpads getting in the hand of the deep state but if we take it back 10 years after Gaddafi fell in Libya, 10,000 man pads went missing because we bombed him in the eighties. And he went, that's not happening again. He just bought every man pad he can get his hand on,

Gen one to three for 30 years, went, yeah, this is happening. I'm not going to get bombed again. And then when he fell, that box opened. And so every American who flew into country to attack ISIS in that period went, yeah, I understand that there's SA sevens, 1416, at a minimum, at every corner of this country and every little house that every individual, they had a Kalashnikov and they had an SA seven, like bare minimum. And all you have to do is hook those

up to a car battery and say, yeah, it's good forever. Yeah, the battery is dead, but I can just hook it up to the car that I haven't used because I have no gas, like one of those. So it's good forever. Yeah, the battery is dead, but I can just hook it up to the car that I haven't used because I have no gas like one of those. So it's like a good example of once that wall came down the air springs hard rolling across Africa and the Middle East, there was a collective oh fuck moment that even if the America was predominantly in Iraq and Afghanistan in that little area, Africa as a whole opened up to, you got in certain groups like Boko Haram, it's like, oh now I have plenty of contact in Benghazi and now it's just open for anyone to purchase because they want to pay for their kids' food and they're going to do it through selling manpads. So it's already in Africa, but if we're giving the Ukrainians Gen 4 manpads, there's no question that it's going to dump there here soon.

Yeah. No, I think too, you know, we have a level of hubris being Americans or even just, you know, being Westerners that I know from being in the aviation community, we can look at the, you know, K-52 is going down or the other, you know, Russian helicopters and aircraft that are going down and say, well, ours are better, right? Ours would do much better in those environments. And we have a lot of faith in the aircraft that we have, and we have great aircraft. However, another thing to point out is this proliferation has happened against Western aircraft in the past few years in Yemen, where the Saudis are using American

and Western aircraft to include Apaches, and the Yemen rebels have man-pads and ATGMs and other weapon systems, and they have been bringing down those Western aircraft. So just to kind of point out for those of the individuals out there that may be saying, well, yeah, the Russians have lost hundreds of aircraft in Ukraine to these man pads and to the ATGMs, but that's just because they're Russian aircraft. They're not as good as ours or their pilots aren't as trained as ours. I would say, I just want to point out that the Saudi pilots are all trained in America.

They're trained by us. They're flying our helicopters. And you could do a quick Google search just to see how many Saudi aircraft have gone down in Yemen in the past couple of years. And it is a lot more than I think what most people would imagine. how many Saudi aircraft have gone down in Yemen in the past couple of years. And it is a lot more than I think what most people would imagine. That's that's like the hidden wound, right? Like that's the hidden thing that like even we didn't need.

Who pointed that out in our group where they're like, Hey, check Yemen. And it was like, Oh my God, these pilots are dropping like, like flies. I sent that to you all. It's because I was reading or seeing some posts essentially indicating that the problem was not the man paths being proliferated in Ukraine. Their pilots just weren't trained like ours are trained. And their survivability equipment, the aircraft, just aren't as good as ours.

And that may be true. I would say it probably is true. And the counter argument, though, in my mind was, well, why are all these Saudi Apaches going down in heaven? Or they're Blackhawks and the other Western aircraft that they're flying. And I know that they're all trained here in the United States and that they have a small fleet of American contractors and

Western contractors that support their day-to-day military operations or day-to-day aviation operations in Saudi Arabia. So it's hard to just laugh at the Russians and say, they just don't know what, they're not as good as us. Which I mean, I think they really aren't as good as us, right? Like they're definitely not a near peer anymore in my mind. But I just, I wouldn't want our hubris and Russia's catastrophic incompetence in Ukraine to potentially divert us from having this great lesson in front of us that technology is changing things.

And just because we're able to fly wherever we wanted to for the past 20 years during GWAT may not necessarily mean that we will be able to continue to do the same if we have to go back into a prolonged low intensity conflict again in the Middle East or somewhere in Central Asia, especially if future low intensity conflicts could motivate or force an adversary nation to want to intervene.

We were kind of lucky, too, in a lot of ways, Iraq and Afghanistan, it didn't really present any significant impact, I would say. This is just my assessment. There was no existential threat placed on China or Russia by us responding to 9-11 and going in Afghanistan. Across the board, a lot of the world supported our intervention in Afghanistan. To a lesser extent, Iraq, but even Iraq still had a significant amount of support going in from the Western countries. And it didn't place any existential threat on

China or Russia. But if we were to kind of imagine a different scenario where we had to go back into Central Asia, especially now with the Chinese and their Belt and Road Initiative up and running. If a future low intensity conflict was to put an economic strain on someone like China, they may be motivated to respond similarly to the way that we're responding with Ukraine being invaded, passing out those man pads, passing out those weapon systems. And we have broadcasted to the world for the past 20 years exactly how Western militaries fight

these low intensity conflicts. We could just be in a very awkward place if we don't learn these lessons now from Ukraine. I mean, that's kind of the hard part is like lessons learned and stuff like that. But I think the military industrial complex is already going to jump on this because I don't remember. I'm spitballing here. We got rid of the Kiowa and now we use Apaches for reconnaissance, right? And so what that does is it's everybody's like, oh, the Kiowa's gone, screw this. And it's like, well, having nothing but Apaches makes parts easier, right? So the recon and the assault are both one

and makes parts and training and all that stuff easier. And it's like, like you're saying, we're not trying to be like, oh, it's the end of rotary wing as we know it. It's just the style and stuff that we are used to is completely different. Like it's gone. Like the idea that aircraft are just going to hold a hover at 3K out in like, you know, 3K out, 5,000 feet up, whatever you flew, you know, like in the stack, like they're just going to do racetracks around the objective. Like, no, that's not, that's never going to happen ever again. And I think you were talking about like, maybe, maybe each Apache has drones that kind of act as like interference, like, you know, the man pad gets shot and a drone pops off the Apache and runs into the like a suicide drone that just runs into the man pad.

And it's like, well, screw you. Now I don't need flares or, you know, more high intensity lasers or how do, how's it going to change the tactics, techniques and procedures of rotary wing? Because like you said, the idea that you're just going to sip your rip it out a cool 68 degrees will fly in a left turn and putting 30 millimeter down on some dude's house, it's gone. So that's why I mentioned Afghanistan in the beginning because I wonder if the Russians learned from that at all because I know it came right after the they're right before the Soviet Union collapsed and they had that readjustment period for 20 years and they spent 30 years since they ended their operations in Afghanistan. But I wonder if they took any learning experience from that where they went hey the Americans are going to supply them with stingers are they training to counteract stingers this is just a Russian focused question not so much a US because I know for a fact we studied that very well but so the short answer

is they did um it from from reading the bear went over the Mountain multiple times. That book was essentially written off of the after-action reports that the Soviet army put together during their Afghan war. At least according to the author, I wish I remember his name. He pulled those reports, and it was the Russian, like their version of the war college. They were teaching those lessons learned from Afghanistan. So he essentially took their after action reports, and then he made The Bear Went Over the Mountain, wrote the book off of that, which is essentially

just a collection of those after action reports. So in theory, I would have assumed that those lessons learned would have continued to progress from the Soviet Army into the Russian Federation Army, at least at the War College level, or their equivalent of the War College. But it's interesting to me that it looks like they didn't pass that on.

And what's concerning about that is they've been watching for the past 20 years us operating in Afghanistan. They've been watching what modern aerosols look like on a grand scale, multiple times, a night or a week in some cases. You would have think that they would have been more prepared. have been more prepared. They seem to have copied our multicam and our uniforms and the tactical look. And they seem to have stopped there, which tells me they're

very, it was almost as if their lessons were very superficial. Like we can, if we can look the part, then the rest will kind of play in. But they clearly missed the lessons that mattered, right? They missed, I don't know, I think you posted, this was posted on the Instagram page, but the Ukrainians captured like some battle plans of the invasion. And it was like couple of pieces of paper and an old map, and just some pencil marks about what their axis of advance was going to be,

and that was it. But in all the operations that we were doing in Iraq and Afghanistan, I mean, the amount of planning that would go in to a single air assault was astronomical. The number of PowerPoint slides that were made. I'm not saying you have to make PowerPoint slides in order to plan a mission. I'm sure people are listening like, this guy sucks.

He doesn't know what he's doing. He's a classic officer. But there's something to be said about detailed mission planning. Detailed mission planning that encompasses multiple courses of action. Detailed mission planning that encompasses multiple courses of action, detailed mission planning that clearly demonstrates different phases of an operation, risk mitigation across the board.

And at least based on the pictures that have been posted by the Ukrainian Army of these captured battle plans for the Russians, there was none of that. Which I think if anyone was to take anything away from the US's and NATO's interventions in Iraq and Afghanistan, it's the importance of risk mitigation and very detailed mission planning. And obviously we weren't good at that. We were probably really good during the invasion and then we got kind of lazy in the middle portion and we started kind of picking back up towards the end, I think. But mission planning is everything. You look at the Russians, the way that they've operated, I mean, they got some cool gear

along the way over these past couple of decades since the Soviet Union fell. They look more modern. They have newer aircrafts. They've updated their T-72s and T-80s. But God, they just appointed a unified commander over the operation. They were operating on multiple axes with zero coordination. And at one point during the push into Keef, with like zero coordination and at one point during the push in the key they had their like police units the riot units driving ahead of their armored tops to like race towards the city and it it's it's almost like I feel bad but like it just goes to shit like I actually kind of feel bad for it. It's like it's that bad. But like, it just goes to shit. Like I actually

kind of feel sorry for like, from from, you know, from seeing it on both ends of the ground in the air in combat, like I just I can't imagine being such an awful leadership and such awful mission mission planning. And I just think about that, that picture that was posted when the Ukrainians captured those, those battle plans, just like a crappy map with a sketch is access of it. Clear, just clear right to left. Mission planning complete. Like, I don't know. It's, it makes you appreciate how much, like you said, just like how much planning we did

in the military. Just like, I know you're Tim Kennedy's are like, you just need action. Not a put like action is better than action. Now is better than a plan later or like whatever. But it's like, bro, if you knew how much firepower is coming behind any NATO country, it doesn't matter, not even just America, just NATO, like how much we put behind you. Like there are Intel guys who are doing, like we know every movement, you can't put on or turn on a radio without us knowing you're there or whatever, but essentially like the logistics, the planning, the air support, the fire and maneuver effect that we bring to the table is so impressive that it's not just cool guys and gear, it's

the whole shebang. We essentially bring a lot of planning to the table. Every guy on the ground who does an air assault has so much behind him. It may be 24 dudes on the ground, but there's hundreds of people behind him that can keep him operating, those 12, 24- man teams operating for weeks on end like we will bring you pain. Like for everlasting days like you'll be starving and running out of ammo and the guys we set on the ground will be getting fat like I've eaten so much like I can't shoot all this ammo, but I was going to say shifting gears from the aviation piece. This is something that's been on my mind the entire time. Can we somebody please explain to me the thought because I don't have thoughts right now. I don't have

a constructed headspace around this, how these militias, these mercenary groups, like not Wagner, but Ukrainian, like forward observation, as of battalion, these random SF dudes showing up from Canada and America are just demolishing Russian units, like units that have, even if it's crappy training, they've still trained together. And these random groups of militiamen are just outperforming a state-sponsored military. And I don't have an ant... A lot of people are saying manpads are the next big... I mean, we could say, we're saying, a lot of people, we are those people saying manpads are the next big thing, but these random groups of NGOs, these random militia groups outperforming Russian special operations, what are you guys looking at? If the Russian conscription is between a year and two years, it's like I know as an American, you go to boot camp, and then you go to like Marine marine combat training and that's a lot of what you get

field experience if you're in garrison it's like if the russian economy is already broke do they have enough money to send their guys into the field and go yeah we're going to dump you off for a month do a do a combat exercise play force on force try to see test our tactics and see if that actually works let's play the red cell who are they? Why are the Ukrainians acting the way they have? Because they've changed a lot since 2014. It's, was there any red planning going into that? It's, and it's also, it's like, yeah, these guys are in for a year or two.

I don't think they give a fuck. So they didn't put a lot of effort into their training, but the Ukrainians spent eight years getting ready. It's like, they look like in 2014, they look like they just crawled out of the Cold War. But then today they look like in 2014, they look like they just crawled out of the Cold War. But then today they look like Americans on the ground. It's because we gave them the actual training. It was like, we know how to stop the Russians. But the Russians are, do they even have the money to put into training their guys properly?

Or is it just a check in the box? Because Cody, you and I before, I think it was episode two, talked about how all the way the corruption all the way down to the lowest level is, yeah, I know what I'm doing. But there's no oversight of there's no officer or NCO. Or if it is an NCO, it's a 17 year old kid who was just there for two weeks. It's like, yeah, yeah, we're good. We know what we're doing. And so it gets all the way up to the general division who then goes to the Joint Chief of Staff going, yeah, our division's ready for war. So there's no checks or balances or even remediation of, yeah, we failed this exercise because I know that Americans like pilots, they have to hit or the Marine Corps

at least, they have certain wickets they have to hit before they go on a mute to sit in the ocean to do nothing. You have to hit these wickets. You have to go 29 palms and do combat training out there and do force on force. Sometimes with the British, they're like, there's dynamic training in the US military where if you don't hit that wicked, they'll call the next guy in line because they've been training because they also wanna deploy.

I don't think that's in the Russian military because where do they go? Syria? And then the guys going to Syria, they're just police force. I don't think they're doing much outside of like, yeah, let's dry run or aircraft, oops, bombed a village. Well, I guess we have no ROE, who cares? I think that's a lot of what goes into it because it's the lack of discipline, the lack of leadership, the lack of coordination. If you have all these guys moving

east to west with a piece of paper saying go that way, that really reinforces what came out of the early days of the war of conscripts getting rounded up who were 15, 20 years old going, I was just told to go this way. It's maybe the Russian leadership did not put any faith in their soldiers in the first place because they knew they were shit. So and that's why there was no coordination between the two because if some guy in Kyrgyzstan is doing really well waving the Soviet flag, here's about what's going on. And you know, Parkov? Yeah, I don't think they want to advance further either. So it's, I think there's a lot of things at play when it comes into this. But it's, it still boggles my mind that a couple hoodlums from, you know, Alabama could join in and go over to Ukraine right now in Don Dona division.

Well too, you know, I think that if you look at the units that we can at least say have some sort of selection and some sort of standards and training process, like their airborne units, or their specialized units, if you look at how they did, what was the airport right outside of Kiev that they held initially and that they just abandoned a couple days ago? Well, they took the airfield and it's like taking Atlanta airport. It's massive. But they were dropped in with three to five mags and no food and water. And they were like, we'll get to you, don't worry. So it's like the VDV, they did their job, but they had no secondary meeting point. There was no supply. So they just got surrounded. They went, well, we're out of ammo. It's, can't really fight back now.

Well, I was gonna say like, no matter how well trained your unit is, if you go days without ammo and days without food and water and days without being able to to medevac your wounded out or even kazavac right like they have i have not seen anything by the russians that instill any level of confidence in their ability to do medevac kazavac um they have a mobile furnace yeah i'm gonna say the mobile furnace is can you imagine being on the ground and you just get told like, don't die or turn around because you're going right in there.

Like, I mean, I think it goes back to, and this is such a, like a nerdy officer thing, but it goes back to like the lack of planning that they had that they didn't plan for medevac and CasVec. They didn't plan for resupply. They didn't plan for contingencies. Like if they were able to take the airport, and then the airport gets enveloped by units with man pads. Right?

So to me, I don't know. I can see how these militia units, which I don't know how much coordination and mission planning the Ukrainians have for these volunteer units or these foreign legions that are coming in. I'm not sure how much coordination the Ukrainians can facilitate based on their just current state of their command and control.

But if it comes down to a well-supplied force versus an exhausted force that's sitting on multiple casualties, you know, no ammunition, no hope for resupply. I mean, the Russians just put themselves in probably the worst imaginal position. I think it goes back to the original question of who lied? Was it the military or was it the FSB? Because the FSB was arrested almost immediately, which told me like, oh, they're just blaming Intel for doing the, they were wrong. So let's blame Intel. But did the FSB said they could do it in three days or was the military said that we could

do it in three days? Because those are two completely separate entities that don't talk to each other and don't like each other. Well, you know, I think this kind of feeds into the conversation that we've been having a lot about, you know, what were Putin's motives for the start? And I think I told you, you know, last time we spoke that is this a, a situation where Putin views himself as, as like the next czar as a conqueror, as like a nationalist who's, you know, restoring the glory of, you know, Russia, you know, the legacy of the Soviet union, or is this a man who sees himself as like a savior figure for his country? Right?

At least in the way that he kind of, at least in regards of how he envisions himself as a leader actually does. And what's interesting is depending on how Putin views himself, and it may be a little bit of both, it may not be mutually exclusive. But as we look at the laws that have been enacted in Russia over the past decade, specifically the memory law, where I think it was back in 2014,

the first law came out, has some information about it right here. I'm going to quote some of it. Well, I know that while you looked at it, I know offline you were telling me that Putin, that 10 years ago was asked what his personal heroes are and he said Peter the Great and Charles de Gaulle and he was in France when he said this. So he's like, he could have been pandering to the French audience. But if he sees Charles de Gaulle as a good guy and one of his personal heroes that a guy who crawled out of World War II for fighting a guerrilla campaign

in Africa and taking back the Vichy France and fighting the Nazis. And then becomes, in recent memory, the most successful Russian president since probably, I don't know, in probably the last hundred years, or leader in general. He's like, yeah, if he looks at that as his recent, you know, 50 meter target of that's my goal, that's my idol, then yeah, he definitely sees himself as the savior of Russia. Yeah, there's a great academic paper that came out. It's called Fighting Russia's History Wars. And this was published in History Memory back in 2017, I believe. We could put a link to it if anyone wants to read it. But this paper covers these, what's referred to as these history wars, where essentially

Putin has positioned himself and injected into academia, especially, into what can be taught. This is in regards to war too, but also kind of the Soviet Union as a whole. This is in regards to war too, but also the Soviet Union as a whole. And on May 5th, 2014, this is when the Kremlin signed this new law called the memory law. Western media didn't talk about it back then, but I think it helps paint a picture of the psyche of Russia, at least the Russian government and their military. And what this memory law did was it criminalized the expression of certain opinions about Soviet past. So the first article of the law threatens up

to either 300,000 rubles, or the equivalent of two years of salary, or three years of forced labor, or three years of prison for the following offenses I want to lay out. The first one is public denial of facts established by international criminal tribune for the punishment of the major European war criminals of the Axis powers, public approval of certain crimes, public distribution of lies about the activities of the Soviet Union in World War II.

Defender is unaware of the false character of these statements. Then they have all these references of what the Kremlin said was considered a false statement. Essentially, what this did was it started kind of putting this precedence into academia that if you say the wrong thing, you face some pretty outrageous repercussions, like three years in prison for even questioning the criminal and improved narrative of World War II or different aspects of the Soviet Union. And the reason I bring that up is because right before the invasion, there was another law that passed, the kind of a continuation of this memory of law. I think this was signed in like late February, early early March in Russia.

It was brought up in late February and signed off as fact and law in early March. I want to say it was March 3rd where it said you can't call this operation a war because it called, it paints the Russians as the aggressor and the bad guy. But he's like, no, we're there. It's a security operation. We're peacekeepers. It's a special military operation, not a war, because war means we're actively engaging. We're actively pursuing this.

I don't know the exact phrase they use, but yeah, it just paints them as the aggressor because they call World War II the great patriotic war, not World War II. They were like, yeah, that's us. That was all us. We were on the defensive and we took the fight to them. So since 2014 with the memory law across academia, and I imagine too across the education systems that the Russian military has, their work colleges, there was now an approved narrative.

That approved narrative, if not adhere to strictly, could land you in prison for three years, or cost you 300,000 rubles. The reason I think that's interesting is, how can you train a force to prepare for all these contingencies and create an accurate timeline if you really haven't discussed lessons learned in almost a decade? There was only an improved narrative and they glorified a lot of the Soviet Union's actions, especially in terms of Nazis.

So when it came to Ukraine and they started injecting the importance of denazifying it, I imagine that the paradigm going, and this is pure speculation, I could be wrong, but if you have a system in place across the society with outrageous criminal repercussions for questioning this narrative, whoever's setting the narrative, if they're wrong, who's going to be encouraged to question that or put up another opinion? They've essentially slowly cut off different opinions in academia and Russian society at a large. academia and Russian society at a large. I don't know, I speculate a lot of how much those laws that Putin had been

signed in effect in the past decade have potentially impacted his force's ability to make accurate assessments and offer up critiques. If the improved narrative was we're going to invade Ukraine and denosify it, you know, go. So that because I posted this on the Instagram yesterday that was talking about that, the military age Russians that are in Ukraine right now, and they're anywhere between the ages of like 18 and 29. That's a military age male. But if

they've received this indoctrination for the last 10 years of painting, you cannot decriminalize or you cannot criminalize Soviet Union's actions World War II, but it's okay to criminalize Nazis. And so if you say that Ukraine and World War II partnered with the Germans and partnered with the Nazis, you're like, okay, so you're already putting that into the military age male's mind. And then from there, we've seen dehumanization across Ukraine. It's very quick. It was, it's remarkable at how fast they went from peacekeeping to we are going to cut people's heads off. It's, it's incredible. It's just, it boggles the mind of how quickly they jump from zero to 100. And if they spent the last, say, 10 to 15 years getting heavily indoctrinized on how, if you think counteracted to the narrative, how it works. And then you have all these,

they have three million actor, soldiers told they got a million active, two million reserve. They're just getting a steady diet of, yeah, do not address the past in a negative way. And this enemy is the enemy because, so it's a lot of layers being fed into one another. And I think they really heavily relied on that when they were planning this military

operation. They were like, yeah, it's, it'll take three days and we're going to absolutely crush them because they deserve to go away if they're Nazis. So yeah. Yeah. And especially when you talk about the approved narrative. There was an approved narrative for Ukraine from Putin. This goes back to a book called The Fragile Empire by Ben Judah. This was a great book that just kind of covered Putin's rise to power and how he's kind of sustained popularity throughout Russia over the past few years. But Putin's tone has mirrored this guy, Alexander Sullen Hitsen. I'm going to butcher that name.

I think it's Sullen Hitsen. But anyway, this writer, he published a pamphlet back in 94 talking about how Russia needs to rebuild after the Soviet Union's collapse. He argued that Russia needed to rebuild itself around a Slavic Orthodox core that consisted of Russia, Belarus, Northern Kazakhstan, and Ukraine. And this was a pamphlet that seems to have heavily influenced Putin. Putin seems to have kind of embraced this idea of this Slavic Orthodox core of these countries. And if this has been going on for decades in Putin's inner circle, that the future consists

of establishing this Slavic Orthodox Corps and that Ukraine is essential in it, how many people would want to go against that paradigm? Especially if you're talking about battle plans that actually reflected the fact that it may not be as easy to accomplish this as Putin wanted. I know this is kind of a long rant. It just makes me wonder how much of like the psyche of a man that puts together a law that

punishes three years in prison for history teachers not not teaching what he was taught. I don't think that's restricted to just the law itself, right? Like that's that's that's a man that's injecting this this mindset throughout his entire inner circle, as well as throughout the Russian government and military as a whole. Like that was just, you know, a normal sane person doesn't just come up with a bill to punish history teachers for three years of prison. For not teaching an improved curriculum. Like this is a person who is, that's probably just the tip of the iceberg,

the way that he runs things. Yeah. I mean, I'm not going to say the book because it'll probably get us blacklisted, but the comfy chair book written by a certain Mr. Adolf talks about that. Like he read a book before that talking about like Germanic history and like, you know, this is how it should have been. And this is what, you know, I mean, it goes like, okay, let's take as off, for example, all of their, all of their stuff like the totem cough that the deaths had the the symbology of Nordic units in their countries, like the Z that they use for their unit patch. It's traditional Viking stuff. But because the Nazis took it and branded it as their own, now it's no longer, you know, the Vikings were around for hundreds of years and they had the symbology and now it's Nazi stuff.

And if you're a Ukrainian using this Nordic symbology, you're a Nazi. And so it's that changing of the history to meet your demands and your viewpoints. And so, I mean, Putin's doing the exact same thing. He's changed, we're not the Soviet Union, we're the Russian Empire, baby. That Stalin stuff is not who we are. The Russian Empire is who we are. That gets applied to every situation

in a lot of governments today where it's like, the Turks deny the Armenian genocide, but they said, okay, but if it happened, it wasn't us, it was the Ottomans. We're not the Ottomans. Yeah, yeah, right. They're like, I'm not saying it happened, but if it did, you can't point it at us. And he's like, oh, by the way, we're NATO. So what are you going to do? Kick us out? Like, let's condone this violence real quick. But I mean, that's, that's the same thing that like, you can do that with so many things

where it's just, you change like two or three things about the history of it. And it's just like, yeah, that's not that. Let's, I mean, let's, let's do it with the Marine Corps. Right. Let's, let's have a little fun. Like, cause this is, this is something that I've been reading. Like if you look at basic Marines, it's like, oh, man, they don't have good gear, they don't have crap. Like, yeah, Army hand me downs, you know, first Marine division

is a fucking joke. They just got suppressors. And it's like, bro, if you look at it from a different viewpoint, it's like Guadalcanal, Okinawa, I mean, the history is on and on. You want to talk about elite units, like what makes an elite unit, the training, the patch, the special forces, or is it the history of the first Marine division? And it's like, you change that little bit of history. You just look at it from like four degrees different, like, oh, they suck, or like four degrees to the left.

And you're like, dude, they single-handedly spear to the left and you're like, dude, they, they single handedly spearheaded the entire Pacific campaign. Like, holy shit, it's like, what's my mind change at four degrees, anything, anything, anything, like, I mean, all right. So real quick, what blows my mind is how for the last 20 years, and Steven just mentioned this, that Putin's, the tone in his voice on certain topics has changed over time. And so on one day he's going all Slavs are one we're one people Ukrainian and Russians are the same people were all Slavs we're going to die together because we're family and the next day is like all Ukrainians are Nazis. He's like, so are you saying indirectly that Russians are Nazis do because you're Slavs and they're like no Ukrainians are Nazis.

They're like okay but you're Slavs. Yes. But you're saying that Russians and Ukrainians and Belarusians and Kazakhstanis are all one. Yes, we're a family. But they're Nazis. No, it's the Ukrainians. And it's all depending on both the audience and too, it just blows my mind. It's like, yeah, who's my audience? All right, let's tweak it. What am I writing for? Yeah, let's tweak it. I'm writing for the Kremlin today. Okay, let's tweak it. Yeah, I think, you know, we're fortunate that we have some great insights into how Putin thinks with his dissertation, which may or may not have been written by him. And for those that haven't seen this or read it or know about it, Putin actually has the equivalent of a PhD. He has a 140-page research paper.

It has his name on it. At least 16 of those pages are listed. I say his name is on it because there's no record of him attending classes, apparently. He just shows up one day, drops 140 page research paper and gets his candid dissertation, which is the equivalent of a PhD. But in this 140 page paper, 16 pages are lifted verbatim for the 1978 American textbook, Strategic Planning and Policy, by William King and David Cleland. And so this 140 page paper is entitled, The Strategic Planning of Regional Resources

and the Formation of Market Relations. relations. What's interesting about this is it's a heavy focus on natural resources. And so in this paper, it mentions that mineral and raw material resources represent the most important potential. This is a quote from the paper, represent the most important potential for the economic developments of the country. And in the 21st century, at least in the first half, which we're in, the Russian economy will preserve its traditional orientation towards raw materials. Given its effective use, the resource potential will become one of the most important preconditions for Russians entering into the world economy. So essentially, Putin starts laying out

whoever wrote this paper for Putin, lays out the importance of natural resources. And assuming he didn't write it, assuming that he just paid somebody and then they plagiarized 16 pages right from this American textbook, I would at least argue, he at least was aware of the bullet points that were his key argument for the paper,

which were Russia will remain a resource-driven economy, but a free market one. The state must support the creation of giant raw material corporations. These corporations will compete on the free market with the West. These corporations must act in the interest of Russia as a whole. And Russian capitalism will be raw materials driven and guided by the state. And so why do I bring this up? Well, at least according

to his dissertation, this is a man who's focused on national resources. And there's some interesting things that have happened in regards to Russians' national resources over the past just few years that I think may have played into Putin's shift in his rhetoric that happened between 2012 to 2016, around when he started slowly invading Ukraine back with the invasion of Crimea in 2014. But the interesting things that have happened were,

and this gets super nerdy, this gets like totally into the weeds. So bear with me because it's going to sound kind of dry. But I think this is important because before Putin went into Ukraine, Russia was on the precipice of being the major energy supplier to Europe, which means like passive income that would have taken care of them for generations, or at least that's what I would think. Why risk that with all that money? And some interesting things have happened over the past couple of years. So for one, Russia is actually warming 2.5 times or 2.5 times more than any other country on the planet. And what that's done is it's warmed some of the areas of Siberia, but it's actually forced

Russia to lose a lot of farmable land. So in 2017, the amount of arable land that they had shrank by half. Jesus. And they've actually, in 2020, so just last year, they had a 40% decline in wheat crop, which, you know, people may be saying like, oh, who cares about wheat crop? Well, food. Yeah, Russia is actually a core part of the global food chain. And so they account for 20% of all global wheat exports. And just last year, they lost 40% of those wheat crops, which is astonishing. Yeah.

What's that? Their wheat production or export, what is the Ukraine? I think it's like 11 or 12%. But if that's global export, that's 35% of the world is those two countries. And if they're fighting and not producing wheat, that's targeting everybody. And if we look at exactly where they're exporting predominantly to, it's African nations and Central Middle Eastern nations and it's all the places where the U.S. is at right now. So if they started having food shortages there and you thought internal conflict was bad before, the U.S. has to

quell a quasi revolution in those areas who are looking for food and water. So it's targeting different demographics. I'm not saying that this might be like a Russian grand plan or anything, but it's there's a lot going on into this. I mean it may at least be a motivating factor on you know what's what's happening. I mean it's it's bad enough that the Russians audit chamber, which I guess like assesses like these economic impacts, they've released that due to just the changes in climate alone with droughts, floods, wildfires, permafrost damage, disease, impacts on crops, it's going to lower their GDP by 3% every year over the next decade.

And so essentially just the damage to infrastructure alone could end up costing 9 trillion rubles, which is like $99 billion. You know, it was part of the invasion. That is one Wendy's job. Yeah. And then, and then that kind of ties in with like, oh, well, at least Russia is gonna be supplying Europe with natural gas, right?

Like at least they're gonna have all this money. Why sacrifice that to invade Ukraine? And what's interesting is they were actually predictions, and this is all coming from the climate change will reshape Russia. This is right in January 13th of 21 by the Center for Strategic and International Studies. This paper discusses how the global demand for gas is expected to go into a sharp decline by mid-century, so by like around 2050.

And so they're actually anticipating a huge drop in the need for natural gas, which would cripple the Russian economy even more. And then the EU, the European Union was actually planning on introducing a carbon border adjustment tax as part of climate change. the European Union was actually planning on introducing a carbon border adjustment tax as part of climate change. And that alone, that tax alone would cost Russia exporters 33 billion euros by 2030. So just eight years, it costs potentially up to 33 billion euros, which kind of paints an interesting picture, right? Like, so if you have decreased food production, known lower demand for natural gas,

which was a huge export for them, if they're not able to produce wheat, if they're not able to sell their natural gas, or if they're going to get taxed on it heavily by the European Union, it almost seems to create this amount of potential desperation that Putin has right now. A lot of Putin's rhetoric, he references Russia as like this castle on a hill, like besieged by all sides, by all enemies. There's a really great paper looking over Putin's rhetoric. It's called a study of Vladimir Putin's rhetoric

by Askanah Drogdova and Paul Robinson back to 2019. And Putin mentions multiple times this idea for this need for single security space around Russia that Russia's this like lone castle on a hill, as I mentioned before. And if you add on these economic impacts, I mean, this may be a man who feels like he's desperate to create this orthodox Slavic Union of Russia, Belarus, Kazakhstan, and Ukraine. If he doesn't, it may have potential disastrous impacts on Russia down the road.

Which the reason I think this is important to at least talk about and consider is, potential disastrous impacts on Russia down the road. The reason I think this is important to at least talk about and consider is we see Russian forces are withdrawing and reconsolidating. The question is, well, what's next? Are they just going to lick their wounds and call it a day? Are they still being driven by the same level of desperation that Putin has to establish this, this Slavic Orthodox block and this need for Ukraine real estate, right? Whether that be wheat or just access to the Black Sea or whatever else. So the big, the big thing about that is that when we were talking about this like six months ago,

Crimea's water got shut off from the Dnieper. They put up a dam and they've already crushed that thing and taken it back. So objective secured. And I mean, they've put in billions of dollars into infrastructure and tourist stuff for Crimea and then Don Bass is pretty much secured. But it's I think we're about to see the counteroffensive of Ukraine, but I think what's really about to happen is over the next six months as we go into summer fighting, it's people are going to care

less and less and less about Ukraine, and this is just going to become a dragged out. Slapfest that is going to, you know, I think now that Ukraine's got all these weapons, they can probably push East into Donbass and Donetsk, but will they take back Crimea? Probably not, because if you do your research, Crimea is a fucking fortress. But I think we might see a counter offensive, but Russia is going to have to pull back and pull out they're pulling their troops back already. And so they'll just reinvest into Don Bass and Don Esk. And so we've got five minutes left. Matt, you got anything you want to say? Everyone keep a lookout for what's coming up. Got a couple big plans for the Krootone report at large, as well as some future projects that we're putting some time into passively. But once we start getting more traction on those, we'll start becoming more noticed on the page itself. And then be sure to follow the other outlets like Facebook and LinkedIn and Twitter. We

have a Twitter. We have a Facebook and a Twitter? Wow. Come on in boomers, come get our news. Yeah, we're targeting our certain demographics here. But yeah, unless you gentlemen have something you would like to plug, I think that would wrap this up. I'm good. We have a Facebook now.

We have a Facebook. So many people are gonna post our fake news. Did you ask the Russians. Just angry react every single post get them going. Tell your grandma she'll she'll share our stuff. But all right everyone thank you for joining us and we'll see you next time. Thanks for watching!