Scott Horton Show - Just the Interviews - 10/21/22 Daniel Davis on the Looming Battle for Kherson

Episode Date: October 23, 2022

Scott talks with Daniel Davis about the evolving situation on the ground in Ukraine. Davis has his eyes on the southern city of Kherson where the Russian forces are digging in for a Ukrainian attack. Clearly the Ukrainian forces have benefited from NATO weapons, but Davis thinks they’re in for a tough winter as Russia gets reinforcements and Ukraine’s armored divisions wither away. And so he expects the Ukrainians to try and take control of as much ground as possible before December. Scott and Davis also discuss how Russia’s annexations have changed the dynamic of this war.  Discussed on the show: “Biden’s Ukraine Strategy Could Start A Nuclear War With Russia” (19FortyFive) “Inside the U.S. Effort to Arm Ukraine” (The New Yorker) Daniel Davis did multiple tours in Iraq and Afghanistan during his time in the army. He is a Senior Fellow at Defense Priorities and is the author of the reports “Dereliction of Duty II: Senior Military Leaders’ Loss of Integrity Wounds Afghan War Effort” and “Go Big or Go Deep: An Analysis of Strategy Options on Afghanistan.” Find him on Twitter @DanielLDavis1. This episode of the Scott Horton Show is sponsored by: The War State and Why The Vietnam War?, by Mike Swanson; Tom Woods’ Liberty Classroom; ExpandDesigns.com/Scott; and Thc Hemp Spot. Get Scott’s interviews before anyone else! Subscribe to the Substack. Shop Libertarian Institute merch or donate to the show through Patreon, PayPal or Bitcoin: 1DZBZNJrxUhQhEzgDh7k8JXHXRjYu5tZiG. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Hey guys, sorry, I don't mean to go all FDR on you or anything, but here's the new deal. All the interviews are now going up first at Scott Horton's show.substack.com. Of course, they'll all be going up at Scott Horton.org the next day, and the archives going back to 1999. We'll still be free for you there at Scott Horton.org. But I've got to generate revenue, you know. All right, y'all, welcome to the Scott Horton Show. I'm the director of the Libertarian Institute, editorial director of anti-war.com, author of the book, Fool's Aaron, Time to End the War in Afghanistan, and the brand new, enough already.

Time to end the war on terrorism. And I've recorded more than 5,500 interviews since 2003, almost all on foreign policy, and all available for you. at Scott Horton.4. You can sign up the podcast feed there and the full interview archive is also available at YouTube.com slash Scott Horton's show. All right you guys. Again, I have

on the line Daniel L. Davis senior fellow at defense priorities and former lieutenant colonel in the U.S. Army and of course he's a bronze star winner, went to Iraq War I, Iraq War II and Afghanistan.

and is a military strategist and writer and was a great whistleblower, heroic historical whistleblower on the war in Afghanistan in the year 2012. Look that story up if you don't know it already. Welcome back to the show. Danny, how you doing, sir? I'm doing good, Scott. Thanks for having me back. Man, I'm really happy to have you here.

And I'm happy to have you to rely on for all your great analysis about what is going on with the war in Ukraine. Your last one at 1945 is called Biden's Ukraine strategy. could start a nuclear war with Russia. But man, I just interviewed Peter Van Buren yesterday about how don't worry, Scott. That's not going to happen. So let's hold that thought for just a second. Can we first start with an update on the battlefield in Ukraine, where the Russians are ascendant and descendant and on the other side with the Ukrainian forces as well? I'm reading that there's a final assault by the Ukrainians on Kurson, at least in the making right now, or that it's already happening.

The Russians are withdrawing some of their forces down to the south side of the Nipa River there. And I don't know, take it from there and then take us to the Donbass and give us an update. The last time we spoke to you was right after the Ukrainians had made their major success around the city of Harkeef there on September 10th and 11th. And we followed up shortly after that. So let us know what the hell is going on on the ground there, sir. Yeah, we'll just kind of start in the south and move our way up.

As you pointed out there, by all accounts, Ukraine has reportedly stockpiled up to 60,000 troops and are ready to storm the city of Kyrsone. Russia is definitely prepared for this. There's a bigger threat. I should have said for people not too familiar with the battlefield here, we're talking about a major city, just from the looks of it. I'm calling it. Maybe someone else already thought of this or not, or debunk this. Looks like the New Orleans of the Neeper River to me here was the last major city at the southern end of this important river that bisects the country.

And it's northwest of the Crimean Peninsula. And it's one of the first cities the Russians took when the war started in February, right? yeah i believe it was uh like within a week uh it was they just stormed uh straight in from uh the crimeia and took that it was the first and importantly it's just like a hundred miles from odessa as well that's like from austin to waco that's nothing yeah yeah it's it's very close in there and and even i think just uh 20 or so miles from uh michaeliav uh which is another pretty important city that Ukraine has basically where they've been facing off against each other for the duration of this for almost all of the, what, almost eight months, I guess.

Sorry for interrupting your train of thought there. I just want to make sure people have in their minds on where we're talking about in the war here. Got it. Okay. So, yeah, this is the southernmost area of the battlefield. And Ukraine has, I'm sorry, Russia has held this, as I said, from the outset. Ukraine started this Kirstoan offensive actually on August to 28, and their initial attacks were just disastrous failures in that they attacked across open land. They came out of their defensive positions, and Russia was prepared for them and just caused thousands and thousands of casualties and just chewed them up when they came across the open area.

But Ukraine has just been relentless, and they have suffered just unbelievable levels of, of, you know, Soldiers killed and wounded, but they could continue to push down. They captured in a second push in September, probably a good solid 20 miles along that DeNepro River that you referred to there, that bisects the country. And they've kind of started now from there. And now that they've got about three or four different directions they're allegedly preparing to assault. Russia, meanwhile, has not, they haven't been withdrawing their military from Kyrsone.

They've been withdrawing the civil population. because they know this big fight's coming. And, of course, with this annexation, they just had, they claim these are actually Russian citizens, so they want to get them out of the way, out of harm's way before the fighting starts. So they've been withdrawing about 60,000 people, or at least that's the plan here within the next few days. They're streaming out of there.

But at the same time, they're also digging in. They're building trenches, bunkers, concrete fortifications. I mean, they're really digging in for a big fight. Now, here's the big issue. if this is just a straight-up fight, then Russia could literally hang on for months. And I'll explain why a two-month period is critical. But the biggest threat to this is if the Ukraine side is able to destroy a certain dam on the Danipro River, it could completely flood the plane down there and swamp areas where that Russia needs

in order to supply the garrison there at Kyrsson and also to use to place its artillery in there. They have to be at a certain range from the front lines or they're not going to be able to impact the fight. If the Ukraine side does blow this river and completely flood that area, it floods the backside of Kyrsone but leaves the front side open so they can attack but that Russia can't withdraw. They can't take any of their equipment with them. They can't get new equipment in and they're basically trapped. So if that's the case, they could probably escape personnel by going through the marshes, but they wouldn't be able to. to take anything with them. They would literally lose everything they have. So it's a real risk for the Russian side. The downside for Ukraine is that if they take that path, they have a good

chance of taking the city, though I'll say if Russia is still contested and they have stocked up enough ammunition, food, and water, they can hold out for months in there because it's so hard to attack a city as the Russians saw when they took Mariupo and how costly that was to But then Ukraine, if they succeed, though, because of the flood, it will be sometime next year before they could go another meter beyond that. So that is as far as they could go and they won't be able to put any more pressure on Russia. Certainly not in the Crimea direction for the foreseeable future. So that's kind of where it is in the south. Now, in the middle, the middle area in the Zaporizia and the Donbos area, Russia still continues its incremental moves in the Donbos.

they've actually never stopped that, and they're close to almost completely capturing the city of Bakhmud, which is very important from a tactical perspective. And then Advivka, a couple of other areas there, but it's very slow going because the Russia just doesn't have as much power to put in there anymore because they have to defend these other areas. And then the last areas in the north in the Kharkiv area, which you just mentioned, you know, there was that big advance in September. It's kind of slowed down now, but apparently Ukraine is going to try. try one more push in there before we get into the wintertime. It's just unclear if they have capacity to make all these pushes in all these different directions. So it's unsure, clear they can do that. So far, it looks like they've been prioritized in the Kirstoen fight in the far south. So that's kind of where things are at the moment. But underlying all that, and I think this is

really important to understand the context, is that because of Putin's mobilization that he announced and is now well underway, sometime in late November, early December, it's likely that you're going to see the first major incursion of Russian forces in the neighborhood of 70, 80, maybe even 100,000. You know, that's a massive increase in the amount of Russian troops that it's not clear that the Ukraine side could withstand that, especially if Russia focuses on any one area. And it's unclear where they would do that at this point. But it looks like Ukraine is doing everything they can to capture as much territory as they can now while they still have the advantage over Russia because they have a manpower advantage of up to four to one

over Russia right now. But come December timeframe, that is going to reverse. And then, you know, things could take on a very different nature. So whatever you see happening right now, it's not going to portend to any change in the war one way or the other. It's just going to set the stage for what's going to happen in November and December. Okay. And so tell us, sir, what You're basing all that on as far as, I mean, we know that Russia announced a partial mobilization and, you know, heightened conscription and called up their reserves and all of that. But so then what? You got satellite pictures of their forces building up on the other side of the line there, or what do you know? Yeah, you know, this is one of the, there's been an interesting change in the Russian side in terms of their media coverage, their war bloggers and several others is that. In the first part of this, well, really, up until the offensive in the Kharkiv area from the Ukraine side, at first, the Russian Ministry of Defense kept giving the same old happy talk.

They always said, oh, we killed 200 enemy soldiers today and destroyed four aircraft and all this kind of stuff. And yet the Russian people were going, dude, we see on the ground, we're getting driven back mile after mile day after day. and they got sick of being told lies to. So they actually revolted and rebelled. And the Russian government apparently has taken a choice that says, okay, you know, it's stupid to keep trying to lie to people just to make it sound good. We're going to actually start telling the truth, the good and the bad. And so there's been a refreshing change where they're being honest about what's going on.

And there's a pretty accurate picture coming out of the Russian side. And what you do, and I think we talked about this the last time, I was on your show is that you take a look at all the sources that you have, like the Maxar images that come out, the satellite images that are publicly shown. You see the Ukrainian claims about where the battle lines are. You see the U.S. and the British intelligence, which is another common source of information, the Institute for Study of War. You see all those, and you can get a pretty consistent picture up to where the lines are and where people are moving back and forth. So there's actually a pretty good ability to see where the lines are. And, of course, you know, it remains to be seen.

And no one knows this for sure where the blow is going to fall when the Russians put this next phase into the operation in the December time frame. But it's guaranteed certainly coming. All right. Now, so, and there's a couple of different major ways to interpret the Russians' official annexation of these four major oblasts here, not just the Donbass, but also as a progen. and Carson as well, that this is a hell of a bargaining chip to negotiate, or it's Putin throwing his hat over a very tall fence and swearing that he is going to fill all four of those provinces with, what, hundreds of thousands of Russian troops eventually

in order to the degree it would have to be that the Ukrainians give up trying to take it back, and he's officially declaring this is Russian territory. On the other side, you have the Ukrainians who are willing to fight to the death here, clearly, and the Americans who are willing to fight to the last Ukrainian in terms of sending all their weapons in. So you really do have unstoppable force and immovable object type of a situation going on here in terms of Russian manpower and proximity, but NATO technological superiority. And in fact, I'll go ahead and set it up this way. I read Doug McGregor

at conflict of interest he's your old commanding officer everybody should know but I read him saying oh man this is going to be so bad for the Ukrainians when it's all said and done we're going to wish we hadn't have done this he wrote that in the American Conservative magazine

but then I was reading this thing in the New Yorker and in the New Yorker they said well you know the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff and all the joint staff and his guys and everybody they've got special operations forces and CIA on the ground, and they're running all these war games and battle plans, and they've got all these really fancy algorithms that determine the rate of artillery fire

and all of these things. And with high mars and with harm missiles, those are the anti-radar missiles, the high mars are the much, you know, higher quality, longer range artillery that we've given them and so forth. And with the training, they said they put them in Poland, or in Germany, they train them up for two or three weeks, and the guys are ready to use one of the these Haimar things and that it's totally made the difference and that it's uh you know the advantages on uh ukraine's side now as you're saying they got russian manpower waiting for the the other uh foot to drop here or whatever the other shoe to drop was a damn cliche anyway

but so uh which is it here unstoppable force or removable object and what the hell's going to happen in the medium term yeah you know i i don't don't put any stock at all in what the Pentagon is saying. I haven't seen that particular report, but if that's what you're saying, I think... Well, one of the things about it, I guess... Let me say one specific thing about it to try to make at least sound credible from their point of view's, you know, argument, which is that this is how they plotted their success in Northern Lahansk there in Harkiv, was that they did all these different war games,

and then the Ukrainians figured out what we'll do is we'll divide them, and we'll do an offensive down in Kurson, and that'll divide the Russian. forces and then will surprise them with a major offense at Harkiv, and then it worked. And it worked because they were so smart and they used their computer programs and war games and battle plans to outsmart the Russians who are so dumb and slow that they fell for it. And so now they know that they can do that again and again until they win. That's essentially the narrative there in the New York. Okay.

Well, that's the, forgive my bluntness. That's BS. That's not how it happened. And if they ran the algorithms or whatever, they're happy. to do that. But the, and I've written about this extensively already, what happened is Russia made an initially good decision to prioritize the Donbos fight, and then they fought what's called the Economy of Force missions in the Kyrsson and in the Kharkiv area, and this is in April timeframe, in order to hold the Ukraine defenders in position in those areas so that they

weren't able to mass all their troops and fight in the Donbos. And that made sense, because then you see that Russia had success with that when they took Mario, Lisi Chonskin, Severo Donets, up through July. So it worked then. Russia's problem is that they didn't change anything. And then they started this incremental slow progress to try to limit the risk to their troops. And by doing so, they allowed Ukraine to recover from the blow and to say, okay, well, now that we see what's going on. So what they did very smartly, the Ukraine side is they said, okay, these economy of force missions, they're just, you know, have the least amount of troops they can just to hold us. So they can't. They're not going to go on any offensive. So what they did is they prepared these large number of troops. Now, remember, Ukraine mobilized right off the bat. So they started with somewhere around 250,000 troops, and then they expanded to around 700,000. So now all of a sudden they have a three and in some places, a four and one, actually across the theater, about a four to one advantage over the Russians in manpower.

That's the first thing to understand. It's not like they're, you know, swamped by the larger Russian force. they're actually significantly advanced above them in numbers. Now when you add all this NATO stuff, all these NATO training that you talked about here, then Ukraine very smartly put an 8 to 1 advantage in this thinly held area in the Kharkiv area and rolled over it. You don't have to have any kind of special capabilities. If you just have some artillery and some tanks and then you go an 8 to 1 advantage against a thinly held line, you're going to win it.

And now then Russia, because they didn't change their tactics, and they were, I guess, kind of arrogant to think that the Ukraine wasn't going to do that. They weren't prepared for it. Those shagg, those stupidities have been burned off now, and they're fully aware of what they're facing. The Russians are now. So they're not going to get caught that easy anymore. And that's why you see that all this advances after these massive, you know, thousands of square kilometers they took. Now it's kind of slowed down.

You haven't seen much movement, especially in the north, in the last almost four weeks now. They're still trying to get this place called Svotivou across the Oldskill River, and who knows if they're going to get it, but they have failed in their last two weeks to break through that. So we'll see if that works because Russia then moved up some reinforcement. So there's no more surprise. All the surprises are gone. So you can't repeat that. Once you use the element of surprise and you burn through a lot of the personnel that it cost to win that, you don't have the striking power that you had anymore. And here's the key thing, Scott, which no one's talking about.

Now, I bet it's not in that article is that the amount of tanks and other armored vehicles that Ukraine paid to win this and losses, both in the north and in the south, there's no replacement for those. Now, there's lots of artillery pieces that the West is given, millions of rounds of ammunition and rockets, you know, et cetera, drones and other kinds of health. But what you haven't seen and Ukraine has been pleading for is modern battle tanks. since they got about 250 T-72s from Poland in like the first month or two of the war, no one else has given them any, meaning that all of these losses that they've taken and all these tanks and stuff that have been destroyed, there's no backfill for that. Now then you roll in all these hundreds of additional Russian tanks because they do have vehicles that they can bring back up to out of storage, you know, modernize them and being prepared.

Even if they're not top of the line, it's better than no. And if all you have is, you know, infantry fighting vehicles and trucks, et cetera, on the other side, even the oldest T-55 tank can destroy all of those. So if you don't have modern tanks on the other side, then you're going to have a lot more difficulty making any kind of headway. And if you then, now then, if the Russians are smart, finally, and they certainly weren't in the initial phase, and they massed their armored forces in a concentrated area, they could potentially blow through the Ukrainians and take back everything they lost in the first part of a winter offensive, for example. And it remains to be seen whether the Russians can pull that off. They have the manpower, whether they're going to apply them effectively by historic terms is certainly an open question. Maybe they will, maybe they won't.

But the idea that the Ukraine, because they are fighting from their home territory, are going to succeed, may not be the case because, You know, you still have military fundamentals, combat fundamentals that don't care who's on the right and who's on the left or who's the home team or who's the visiting team. All it cares about is who has the combat mass, who has the combat power, and who doesn't. And that's what it's going to come down to. Give me just a minute here. At the Libertarian Institute, we published books. Real good ones. So far, we've got Will Griggs Snow Quarter.

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So keep that in mind. and don't worry about the mess. Your wife will clean it up. All right, well, you have a couple articles here, Danny, about how you're concerned that this really could escalate into nuclear war, and you quote all the Biden people saying, as long as it takes, as long as it takes. Now, of course, we know that on the Russian side,

especially now that they've gone so far as annexing these provinces and all of this thing, that it would be extremely hard for them to back down from that to face a total defeat there. And as you warn in your article here, if Biden gets what he wants, and they're talking about kicking them all the way out of every last bit of the Donbass

and the Crimean Peninsula too now, that if they get anywhere near that, and it really looks like that's going to happen, Putin at that point will not cry uncle. He'll start throwing A-bonds around. Yeah, I can't even imagine a circumstance that would be any different than that. Because, I mean, now that,

that he annexed those four territories. He told the people of Russia and the Russian speakers in that part of eastern Ukraine, they are Russian citizens now. If he allows them to then be methodically defeated, and you've seen already in the Kharkiv area where this current offensive, and the places where the Ukrainians went back over, they just terrorized the people of Russian speakers behind there and called them all traders and all.

this kind of stuff and throwing them in jail and just, you know, abusing them from their perspective. And, you know, that terrified all these, the rest of the Russian speakers there. And if he, if Putin allowed them to be abandoned and defeated and turn back over to the, to the Ukrainian side, there's no way he stays in power. But if you're talking about Crimea, especially, I mean, that's sacred Russian territory. And, and there is no Russian leader on the, you know, in the country that's going to allow the NATO, Ukraine, you know, any kind of force at all to take that back from Russia and leave all their nuclear weapons in the sheath. There's just no chance in my mind they would do that.

So if we think that that's the definition of success, and Zelensky does, and Biden and many others have just seconded his statement, then you basically set up a situation to where if you accomplish your military objective, you raise the chance of the use of nuclear weapons to almost a high probability, not even possibility, and that is a foolish decision and a foolish strategy to have. Well, doesn't it seem like everybody's overconfident that, come on, it's not going to come to that. So that way, you know, we can do more like this. Yeah, that's, see, that's, that's exactly what we've seen from the beginning.

You know, Russia had all these claiming red lines and, you know, if you do this, NATO, then there's going to be, you know, consequences, et cetera. And you see we've progressively crossed a bunch of those, and the world didn't come to it in. So now that we're kind of having the idea that, you know, we can probably do whatever we want. We can keep crossing these red lines. And, you know, you see that the north stream pipelines were destroyed by somebody. You see the courage bridge that was hit, which was apparently off limits before, and now that got hit.

Well, you know, now that you see Russia did finally push back after the courage bridge was hit. And that's why this salvo of destruction of the Ukrainian energy. system is continuing to go on even as we speak. But the idea that, you know, yeah, Putin won't do that. So we can keep pushing. We can keep doing this is setting up a dangerous precedence because all it takes is one time for him to finally say that enough. And now then life as we know it is no longer the same. Because if one tactical nuclear weapons use, no matter what the circumstance, it crosses a threshold that this just changes everything. And look, Scott, the idea that, you know, if nuclear weapons are used, that people are the leaders in the West and in Russia are going to say,

okay, now it's serious. Let's, let's be smart about this. Let's be wise. It just seems pretty low to me. I think that to the contrary, you'll have hotheads and stupid people acting foolishly in emotions. And I just can't see anyone going, okay, that's enough. You know, I just don't see a lot of material in our leadership to do that. I see lots of hotheads and arrogance that I just can't imagine making good decisions in that environment. The only chance we have is not to get to that point. Yeah. Well, so, I mean, it really does seem, well, the other side of the narrative from it's not going to happen is that these Democrats are just completely crazy.

That they just can't sit in a room and admit to each other how damn. dangerous this is. I mean, I don't know. On the other hand, so Biden did mention Armageddon. It seemed like he brought it up to say, look, that's why we have to kind of maybe find a way to negotiate. But then, you know, as Van Buren said yesterday, not soon or anything, like they want this thing to go on and on and on and on. But they just want to give Putin an off ramp right before he reaches for his atom bombs. They want to make sure that he has some kind of face saving something to stop short of that. but not Biden was not saying okay okay this has gone on long enough he was saying no no no

still whatever it takes but just whatever it takes but also short of provoking omniside and you know he just figures that he and Sullivan and Blinken and Austin that they can walk that tightrope it'll be fine well and that's that's why I worry about people who think they can control you know so tightly something this volatile it's a danger dangerous play, because that also assumes that the other side is going to be following your playbook. And I'm pretty sure that's not a good bet to have. But, you know, the Biden administration though, it's almost like they've got a two-track and a competing two-track playbook here. Because on the one hand, you know, Biden has shown some restraint in that, you know, as I mentioned a second ago,

He still has not given them any of our modern M1 battle tanks and certainly large numbers of these High Mars and some of the other year. Well, coming soon, though, right? Like, I mean, if there's this massive infantry invasion by the Russians coming, the next pace of the escalation, well, then what is Biden going to do? Sit there and watch the equation. He's boxing himself. That's why I say he's boxing himself into a corner by making these statements. We'll do whatever it takes as long as it takes. and then so far he's not done what it's what it's necessary for ukraine to actually have a decent

legitimate shot at driving russia out so it's like he recognizes that would be a bad place so we hasn't done that but what does he do if if this you know this winter offensive that russia is is certainly planning starts to roll the ukraine's back you know in massive like basically reversed what happened in september and now all of a sudden you've got ukraine forces being driven back left and right are they going to then say yeah, I'm still not giving you tanks and damn, it sucks to be you. I just, it's hard for me to see that happening. But, you know, then, then you have, you know, we get right back into the same issue of, you know, how far do you go? And that's the problem. They painted themselves into this horrible situation. Yeah, where the best case scenario is that they betray these people like among tribesmen. Exactly. That's exactly right. That's what you're facing. You may have to betray them and say, yeah, y'all are on your own now. Or you say, no, you get everything and then you risk all of our security. by crossing the nuclear threshold. And there's, that's a, well, I say that's a no-win situation.

To know-in situation the way they're doing it, there is a situation and an answer, but it needs to be happening now before the Ukraine suffers any kind of drastic pushback. You know, now's the time when we need to be pushing both sides to say, all right, dude, neither one of y'all are getting everything you want. It's time to find where is the least common denominator. And they admitted it, the Biden people said to the post, officials admitted to the post, bury the lead in the middle of the story about how, yeah, they know that the

Ukrainians can't win ultimately, that it has to be negotiated thing one way or the other. Well, that was the implication. They know that the Ukrainians can't win without what, just calling in American heavy bombers. So, all right, I'm sorry, we're out of time, but thank you so much for your time

again on the show, Dan. I really appreciate you. You bet, Scott. Always my pleasure. All right, you guys. That's Daniel L. Davis. He's at Defense Priorities, and he writes for 1945. It's the digits, one, nine, and then spell it out 45.1945.com and there's a whole bunch of great articles there for you to dive into. The Scott Horton show, Anti-War Radio, can be heard on KPFK 90.7 FM in LA. APSradio.com, anti-war.com, Scotthorton.org, and Libertarian Institute.org.