Scott Horton Show - Just the Interviews - 3/14/25 Daniel Davis on the Ukraine War Talks

Episode Date: March 15, 2025

Daniel Davis returns to the show to give an update on the war in Ukraine. He and Scott discuss the ongoing talks, the consequences of Ukraine’s incursion into the Kursk region of Russia, the presenc...e of North Korean troops, the actual Russian objectives on the battlefield and more.  Discussed on the show: Watch Daniel Davis’ Show on YouTube 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 @DanielLDavis1and subscribe to his YouTube Channel. This episode of the Scott Horton Show is sponsored by: Roberts and Robers Brokerage Incorporated; Tom Woods’ Liberty Classroom; Libertas Bella; ExpandDesigns.com/Scott. 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: 1DZBZNJrxUhQhEzgDh7k8JXHXRjY Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Transcript
Discussion (0)
Starting point is 00:00:00 All right, y'all, welcome to the Scott Horton Show. I'm the director of the Libertarian Institute, editorial director of anti-war.com, and author of Provote, how Washington started the new Cold War with Russia and the catastrophe in Ukraine. Sign up for the podcast feed at Scotthorton.org or Scott Horton Show.com. I've got more than 6,000 interviews in the archives. for you there going back to 2003 and follow me on all the video sites and x at scott horton show all right you guys introducing retired u.s army lieutenant colonel daniel l davis he's the host of the daniel davis deep dive on youtube his great podcast he is of course a veteran of iraq war one
Starting point is 00:00:52 iraq war two and afghanistan where he was the great whistleblower of 2012 and um can read all about that in fools errand if you want but he's absolutely excellent on everything and especially his coverage of the russia ukraine war so welcome back to the show how you doing sir always great to be here scott love it uh well really appreciate you joining us today there's so much to talk about um i guess the most important thing is well i'm not sure what you do i guess we got to do the status of forces on the ground and the order of battle and so forth even just in a brief sketch here so then we can talk about the talks because I think the context of whose forces are where on the ground is the real background to the talks, right? Oh yeah, without question. So who's
Starting point is 00:01:40 occupying what and how's it look? Well, so first of all, I think the most important thing is the Kursk direction where last August the Ukraine side made a penetration deep into Russian territory in the Kursk Oblast north of the Sumi province in Ukraine. And at the time, so many Western people said, ah, this is great news. It just shows that Russia, that Ukraine has finally taken it to Putin. Now then they can see what it's like to have war on their own soil, you know, stick in the face, ha-ha. And a lot of celebration. The day it happened, I said, this is a complete disaster.
Starting point is 00:02:19 This is diverting an already thin force that they have. And now sending them into something that has no even operational value. Forget about strategic value. It's not going to change the course of the war because the Ukraine side didn't have the capacity to exploit this, to actually make a genuine deep penetration into Russia that would actually threaten them on anything of operational value. There wasn't even any tactical value for Ukraine there other than the PR value. And it looked good in newspapers, and they got lots of headlines really all over the world. It gave a temporary boost in morale to a lot of their troops. That's true.
Starting point is 00:02:54 But all it was going to be doing was a diversion and it did. diminution of their force. It made them weaker because they had to continue for all these months, shoveling force after force after force and reinforcements, ammunition, weapons, medical support, et cetera, food, fuel, water, bullets, I mean, all those things. It is enormous resource intensive for something that had no value to them, and it was a net loss of, depending on who you want to listen to, some of between 40,000 and 70,000 troops killed, and we don't even know for sure how many were wounded.
Starting point is 00:03:26 and, you know, at the same time, that was causing fewer Ukraine forces on the eastern front where the real issue is in the Donbos, so that Russia made a lot bigger gains as a result of that diversion of power from the Ukraine side. Well, there are many reports, and I think some are very valid, that Russia was aware of this incursion before it happened, actually made it easy for Ukraine to invade into that territory, but they had set parameters where they had basically defensive lines already pre-positioned so that it could only go a certain direction, and then they kept it open to continue having Ukraine divert its forces. Because here's something
Starting point is 00:04:06 is so important, Scott, that very few in the West understand it. I mean very few. Russia's objective is not first and foremost territorial acquisition. That's a byproduct. Their primary objective is the destruction of the Ukraine armed forces. That's what they're trying to do. So if they can kill them in larger numbers than an easier containment, basically shooting fish in a literal barrel or something close to that in the Kursk area, then that means there's fewer of them in the eastern front there. So if they kill them here or kill them there, the bottom line is that they're weakening the Ukraine armed forces. Well, it turns out that now then the utility for that has by the Russian Kai command opinions for whatever their criteria are, they said, okay, it's no longer beneficial for us to have this. So like in a lightning move, and it started on about the 8th of March, they just said, that's it. We're going to close it down now.
Starting point is 00:04:57 And then there was just this dramatic push, and they just crushed it like a house of cards. And now there's literally only a handful of fields and three villages, as at the time we're talking here, left until they reestablish the border. Here's the double problem. And I think probably why the Russian side came to this conclusion, they're not stopping there. They've already started a new incursion in the Sumi province to the west of the Kursk in salient and another one just this morning on the east of that sallion. So I think that when these troops get down to the border, and you saw Putin say this in a press conference he had with Gerasimov, his senior commander a couple of days ago, he said, we're going to establish a buffer zone, ergo they're going to continue to press into Ukraine territory itself, opening another full front. So the situation on the ground militarily continues to worsen for Ukraine because the eastern front is still has its constant pressure. So now then they're not going to have any troops to divert from one place to the other because they lost all of them that they had in the Kurski area.
Starting point is 00:06:01 And now if Russia starts pushing in the Sumi province, they're either going to have to withdraw somebody from the eastern front to try to stem that tide because they have fewer defensive positions there or they're just going to continue to lose everywhere. But in any case, this is bad for the UAF side. All right. So a couple things there. I mean, the idea with Kirstk was not just a PR ston. Wasn't it that they were trying to divert Russian forces out of the Donbass? But that just didn't work. The Russian forces stayed in the Dombas.
Starting point is 00:06:33 They just called new forces to fight in Kursk. That's what they claimed at the time. They said, that's what they said it was. And again, I said, I mean, that would be the dumbest thing Russia could ever do. You would have to be an idiot to do that. And they weren't idiots. Because look, there's somewhere around 700,000 Russian troops inside Ukraine, fighting inside Ukraine right now.
Starting point is 00:06:53 But there's another up to 800,000 troops elsewhere in the Russian Federation. So they just took some of those other 800,000 and moved them into five-ness. And then, of course, they added between 10,000 and 12,000 North Koreans as well. And so they didn't pull anybody away. So once you figure that out, the only sane military. thing to do for the Ukraine side would have been to withdraw and say, okay, well, we wanted this to happen. It didn't happen.
Starting point is 00:07:20 Now it's pointless to hold this. So let's withdraw. Let's claim, yay. We hurt Russia for a while, but this was a temporary thing. And I thought that they were setting this up because Zelensky actually said that in the first month. He said, this is not a permanent deal. We're not staying here forever.
Starting point is 00:07:34 We just want to achieve some objectives. You could have just said anything you wanted. Yes, we accomplished our objectives, A, B, and C. Now we're doing the smart thing. that we're going to reestablish our positions inside of our territory, blah, blah, blah. You could have done that. Instead, they resisted every opportunity to do that, and now they have again, and this is a repeating steering theme throughout Zelensky's tenure, he would not withdraw troops from
Starting point is 00:07:56 a lost cause when he had a chance, when he had a chance to redeploy to a stronger position of defense. Instead, he resolutely and just relentlessly stayed in these areas requiring every village, every house every field to be taken by force from Russia, by the Russians, and instead of having a better position made it easier. This is the perverse part. He made it easier for Russia to kill Ukrainian troops, and they still lost the territory. That's the key thing. If you withdraw from a bad position, and then you go to a more defensible position, you increase the difficulty of the other side to then move towards you, like you have large areas of open fields where the Russians
Starting point is 00:08:36 would have to cross, makes it easier to kill them, et cetera. But by staying in these other positions, you made it easier for Russians because all they had to do is go from one house to the next as opposed to a huge open field. The bottom line is that by doing what I recommended, which would have been the same military thing, you lose the city, you give it up willingly, but you give yourself a stronger position. Instead, they didn't give up the city willingly. They lost it anyway and lost the troops, and then they still had to go back to that position. It's the worst of all cases, and one of the reasons why they're losing this war. All right, now, about the North Koreans, there were a lot of reports about that for a long time, and a lot of them seemed
Starting point is 00:09:15 pretty disputable, but then I read in the Wall Street Journal, they said that they had direct access to two of these guys and questioned them themselves. The journal reporters did, and that they were not, you know, Asiatic Russians. They were, in fact, DPRK regulars who'd been sent there. I think you just said 10 to 12,000. What's your best information about the North Korean presence there. And does that not telegraph some weakness on the Russians part that they had to go ask him for his forces to come and help, Danny? Yeah, no, I think that is, I think the West has badly missed this one. I think that the preponderance of evidence says that this was not something that Putin wanted, but that something that Putin was forced to take in order to get the ammunition
Starting point is 00:10:00 and everything else from the North Koreans. This was, in my view, Kim Jong-un saying, hey, I need to get some combat experience from my troops. Not one person in my entire military has combat experience. I want to send these guys in there to some number to get some combat experience, and then they can come back and train the rest of my forces on the modern requirements of military to strengthen my entire force. Because you're talking, these numbers are incredibly small on a national level. When you're talking about a war, 10,000 is nothing. Russia has no shortage of people. Everything has been confirming that Russia has hundreds of thousands of troops in reserve. right now so they don't they could use any of them that they wanted to and it's also difficult in
Starting point is 00:10:41 fighting coalition warfare i've done it and it's difficult we i remember for myself once in desert storm there was a a an egyptian tank formation that was not far from us and it was really difficult to coordinate because of the language issue the compatibility issue of communication systems etc the ways of fighting etc it's difficult and you've got to be very careful so you don't have fratricide which i've read some reports that there were some some. So it's nothing but a headache for the Russian side. It didn't help them anything else. I think it was a concession to Kim Jong-un to say, hey, I need some of this because this is what I want in exchange for all the help I'm giving you for the rest of the theater. So no, I don't think
Starting point is 00:11:22 it's signaled to any weakness on the Russian side. I think that it's just something that the North Korean side wanted. Okay. So we talked all about Kursk and all that. So what is the situation? I believe the last map I saw has Russia in control of 99.9% of LaHansk or more, there have some presence in Harkiv. Obviously, I don't know the exact proportion, but they control the super majority of Donetsk Oblast. And I'm just spitball in here. About half of Zaproja and Kurson. Is that approximately right? Probably a little more than half of the other two as well. They've got a majority of all of them, but there's still large swaths of Donetsk, Lohansk, I'm sorry, Donetsk, Zeper
Starting point is 00:12:06 and Kyrsson that are still under Ukrainian control. And then so I guess I had read this may have also been the Wall Street Journal that said where the Russians had made major gains in previous months that the Ukrainians had been putting up a fight or maybe even keeping them out of some of these cities that the Russians had thought that they had already succeeded in taking. And I know that the war party has their spin. They're trying to boost the Ukrainian side. but then again they have fought for three years and they ain't dead yet not all of them that's a fact yeah
Starting point is 00:12:39 there have been i think in torresk uh the there the ukrainian side has recaptured portions of that one of those cities and in one other area and i can't think of it is right off hand they have made some tactical uh recaptured some certain areas but they're there are portions of towns uh there are you know portions of blocks and many of those or some of those that they have taken were retaken again in recent days. But this is just fits and starts here. It doesn't, just like the Kersk, offensive, this doesn't lead to anything
Starting point is 00:13:12 because they don't have the capacity to exploit whatever they've gained. This is just something where they moved, they had a superiority of numbers in these given locations to try and take back something because they could. And so you can, in a front of, as Putin said yesterday, 2,000 kilometers total from Kersk all the way down
Starting point is 00:13:31 to the, Zaparisia area. And so you can mass a certain number of troops in certain areas and achieve some local breakthroughs. But what is that going to do for you in the course of the war? Because you're still losing troops. You don't have the capacity to actually conduct an offensive or a counteroffensive that would cause Russia to have to move some.
Starting point is 00:13:51 They're still moving forward in all the other areas. And the manpower pool and the Ukraine side still dwindles to this day. And you see they can't even stop what happened in the Kyrsone area. I'm sorry, in the Kersk area. So now then you're just following that the overall balance is still in the Russian side. You do have these at least two areas where there has been some meaningful tactical counterattack that was successful for the Ukraine side. But everything I can see shows that this is going to be short-lived. And it won't be another few weeks probably when they'll lose those again.
Starting point is 00:14:22 All right. Now, so if I'm a hawk playing Delos advocate here, I might think that you're sort of rational. What's happened in Kursk because they were able to stay inside Russia for months and months and then you're saying Aha, but see, it was a trick and they were trapping them and it was like what the police call kettling right? Where you group all the protesters down at one cul-de-sac before you start smacking them. So that makes sense, you know, on the face of it. But at the same time, this invasion did happen back in August. And I think when we talked about it then, I don't think you expected for it to last until March at the time. And so is it just that the Russians weren't trying that hard to take Kursk back? It seemed like that would have been their highest priority, if only to demonstrate their strength that you can't invade us, not for six days. You can't, you know? Well, no, that's why I said that that is if the Russian attempt or interest in priority was the capture of territory or the recapture of territory or the recapture of territory,
Starting point is 00:15:31 in this case, then you can make that argument because that's what the West would do. That's exactly what we would do. We're always focused on territorial acquisition, ergo. So we're looking through our lens and saying since they didn't, that was evidence of their weakness. Since they haven't taken, you know, they were on the offensive for the entirety of 2024 and have continued on it at 25. But when you look on the national level, the percentage of the territory that's been gained
Starting point is 00:15:55 has been relatively small. So you say, okay, and many of the do, in fact, I talk to them people very often. And the view is, well, they're just not that strong. That's, that's, they've only taken as much because that's all they can take. If they're using our strategy and doctrine. But if the Russians have a different strategy and a different objective and different doctrine, then you have to look at it through a different lens, which I think is now starting to become clearer because they kept this cauldron open and all they were doing
Starting point is 00:16:25 was basically nibbling around the edges for Ford. They didn't, like I said, they had 800,000 other troops not. in contact inside Ukraine. They could have deployed 100,000, 200,000 and just crushed it just by sheer numbers if that was their objective. But instead, they kept relatively small numbers in there, and they just kept on keeping that cauldron open. They didn't even move to try and close off the, because it was kind of a bold, sort of speak, almost like the battle of the bulge in World War II. And Russia had access to the to the cauldron neck, so to speak, which they could have easily just said, all right, if we want to kill this, we don't have to take all this stuff.
Starting point is 00:17:02 All we got to do is have two pincer movements here at the neck of it at the border, close it off, and then they'll be trapped. So if you wanted to do that, that would have been the most efficient way to do it. But it appears to me, and now the evidence is starting to stack up that they, the Russians wanted to keep that calder open because of it, the diversion of all these troops and equipment and everything else, keeping them away from their priority where they've always said is the Donbos. And I say that that's been validated because now then that is no longer.
Starting point is 00:17:28 in Russia's interest to keep it open, then they crushed it in a matter of days. So they obviously didn't suddenly have, you know, more troops come from somewhere else. They had them in place. But then they decided it was time to move because I think they're going to start moving into Ukraine territory. That implies the physical evidence that that was what Russia was doing. And now they changed their tide. They're doing something different and they succeeded at that too.
Starting point is 00:17:51 Yeah. Hey, guys, I've had a lot of great webmasters over the years, but the team at expanddesigns.com have by far been the most competent and reliable. Harley Abbott and his team have made great sites for the show and the Institute, and they keep them running well, suggesting and making improvements all along. Make a deal with Expandesigns.com for your new business or news site. They will take care of you. Use the promo code Scott and save $500.
Starting point is 00:18:19 That's expanddesigns.com. Man, I wish I was in school so I could drop out and sign up for Tom Woods' Liberty Classroom instead. Tom has done such a great job on putting together a classical curriculum for everyone from junior high schoolers on up through the postgraduate level, and it's all very reasonably priced. Just make sure you click through from the link in the right margin at Scott Horton.org. Tom Woods' Liberty Classroom. Real history, real economics, real education. Scott Horton Coffee. It's a thing. It's really great stuff, too. The Scott Horton shows Supreme Breakfast Blend from Moon Doe's Artisan.
Starting point is 00:18:57 and coffees at Moondoseartisan coffees.com. I drink a lot of coffee, and I drink a lot of Folgers and things over the years, but I'm never going back now. Moondos is so good, and they have great wholesale deals for all you restaurant tours and Quickey Mart managers out there as well. They're now doing online commercial sales to coffee houses, coffee trailers, restaurants, and bakeries. So help support this show.
Starting point is 00:19:21 Drink anti-war coffee. Click the link in the margin at Scotthorton.org or just go to Scotthorton.org. org slash coffee. Seriously, buy some. And thanks. All right. So, which brings us to the talks and the various positions of the sides going in here. I mean, it's just been obvious on its face. I wrote in my book months ago that the Russians are in the position of strength. The Americans are just not. Trump has basically no cards to play here other than just carrots, right? He doesn't have any sticks. I just already added some more sanctions. What's that going to do? He's going to put in some more attackums or something.
Starting point is 00:20:00 That's not going to make any difference. So he doesn't have anything to threaten Russia with that they better do what he says or else. He can promise normalization. And that's a lot. And I sure wish the Russians would take it. But then again, just like with Saigon and Kabul before, Kiev doesn't want a peace deal. They would rather keep fighting as long as they can keep America there fighting for them. But unlike Saigon and Kabul, they can last.
Starting point is 00:20:26 I don't know exactly how long, but they can last without the U.S. government much longer. They have an actual standing army of some kind compared to like the Afghan National Army, which was just nothing but a joke, right, which we had laughed about for years before it finally ceased to exist. So it seems like Zelensky's in a position where he can throw a wrench in all this. You can't make a peace deal without me because I'm going to keep fighting. That was what blew up in that big contest in the Oval Office a couple weeks ago. It wasn't just, you know, personalities. It was him saying, you can't negotiate with this guy.
Starting point is 00:21:06 So I don't want to negotiate with them. And you guys are fools for saying you can negotiate with them. And I refuse to deal until I'm done winning the war. And the Russians have left all Russian, all Ukrainian territory, which just means fight forever or until they're all dead. So that puts Trump in a very difficult situation, even if, And I think it's correct that he wants to end this war in an agreement with the Russians as soon as he can. I'm not sure he's going to be able to do that. And I'm very interested in what you think.
Starting point is 00:21:36 Yeah, on paper, Ukraine is definitely has the capacity. They could drag this out a long time. And you're 100% right that the capacity of the Ukrainian armed forces is miles better than what the Afghan armed forces were at the end of the time there. So they have proven tremendously capable with their limited resources on the battlefield. And they have my enduring gratitude and not gratitude, I'm sorry, admiration for how they fought under such incredibly difficult conditions. But it's ultimately going to be wasted valor because they don't have the capacity at the national level to continue to do this.
Starting point is 00:22:16 If the United States pulls out, and by the way, I do concur with your assessment that Zelensky doesn't want a negotiate, I'm going to aside for what happened in the, in the Oval Office, on the day that the U.S. and the Ukraine cyber meeting in Jeddah, Ukraine chose that morning to launch a 370-some-odd drone attack into Russia, specifically into Moscow to just kind of spit in your face as we're allegedly meeting for a way to end the war. Oh, yeah, I was going to mention that in my giant, long-winded, twisting, winding question. Yeah, so that was just yet another evidence of it. Zilinski was made. made a video yesterday where he said in response to Putin's comments about his conceptual
Starting point is 00:23:00 willingness to have a ceasefire, he said, oh, he doesn't want it. He just wants to gum this up and he wants to keep fighting it. That shows you why we have to keep struggling here because he doesn't even want peace and blah, blah, blah, all this kind of stuff. But then you have to look at the capacity. What's why I said a second ago on paper, they can. And you saw, he actually said Zelensky before he left town after that White House blow up with Brett Bear on Fox News. Brett Bear asking point blank, if the United States stops support, can you keep fighting? And he said, well, it'd be more difficult, but yeah. So his mental position is already trying to do that. That's why he's trying to get support from European states, whatever they want,
Starting point is 00:23:39 etc. But the fact is, if you pull the United States out, for example, if Trump concludes that, hey, I'm trying to set a place to save your country to end this war and you keep throwing wrenches in it, you're on your own. I'm out on this. And Trump has already indicated he is conceptually willing to do that. If that happens, now then, even though these Ukraine troops are good, if they know that they no longer have the backing of the United States, they know that the Russian, the Ukraine, or the European side cannot match what we had. They can't bring that up.
Starting point is 00:24:10 And the psychological loss of the superpower support that they have had for three plus years, if that's gone, then I think that you're going to have a much higher possibility that the Ukraine army finally breaks just from the psychological stress of knowing. that you're fighting a losing war, and now then you can't pretend otherwise. So we'll see how that actually works out. But even if they did, you're right, it could drag it out for another six, nine months, maybe even another year. But ultimately, Russia has the manpower and the industrial capacity and all the other inputs to crush the Ukraine side, even if it's continuing by these fits and starts in a small amount. They just can't stop it on the Ukraine side.
Starting point is 00:24:49 And then so what do you imagine are the extent of Putin's territorial ambitions here in the end? Once his forces get what they want or once he sits down at the table and starts making his side of the demands, is he going to want? I think that Putin has genuinely been willing to settle on the 14 June lines that he made last summer, which were the four administrative borders of the four oblast, which you mentioned a good portion of the southern three are still under Ukraine control. and he said there has to be a new leader, meaning they have to have a presidential election because he won't sign anything. Putin won't until they have a legitimate leader that stood for an election in one by the legal means.
Starting point is 00:25:30 And the other big sticker that doesn't get much talk about in the West but is always on the front of the Russian side is that is the demilitarization. They said you can only have 85,000. It's the number that they used in December. The Russians did. So it's not just the territory. it's the other things that goes along with it. That's why Putin said yesterday. That's why
Starting point is 00:25:49 Lavrov said two days before that and said many times. This has to get at the root causes of this, not just to stop into the fighting, but the root causes that started it to Russia's perspective. That means no NATO and no threat to its Western border by whatever's left. And those are the huge sticking points for Trump to have to negotiate away, much less Ukraine. Right. It's new Western border. So, But in other words, though, you don't think that Putin really wants to take Harkiv province or city or Odessa? Well, yeah, I'm sorry I didn't finish the thought. That's what if we're willing to meet a negotiated settlement today, that's where the territorial
Starting point is 00:26:31 ambitions are. But if we don't settle on that, meaning if we don't agree to a ceasefire on the very harsh terms that Putin appears to be setting, then they'll simply keep fighting. And I know that inside Russia, because I've read about this on Russian telegram, the Russian media, there is apparently a lot of pressure from inside Russia on Putin. Do not settle for those four old blasts because Lavrov actually hinted at that a couple of days ago in an interview they released where he was speaking English is that he mentioned the Russians on the Ukraine side of this.
Starting point is 00:27:02 That's why they say there has to be some constitutional changes inside Ukraine or the implication being they'll keep fighting to take that. And that territorial ambition would be up to the Denepe River, and I believe would likely include Odessa and Kharkiv as well, maybe even going right up to the gates of Kiev. It could get that bad if the West doesn't agree to a deal. Yeah. So that's the big province between the river and Donyetsk is the Nipronopla-Flipfla-Flopsk. I forgot how to say it.
Starting point is 00:27:34 Nobody knows how to say it. Say it again? Dinepera-Tarvask, I believe. Yeah, of course. Maybe I'm saying it wrong, too. Something like that. Well, whatever. You've got a good education.
Starting point is 00:27:43 I can't say it. But anyway, that's a bunch of wide open space that from the beginning of the war, I thought, just playing it out from like an Austrian school kind of perspective is once a government, in this case, Moscow does something, now they're going to cause problems that then they got to solve. So like in this case, if they carve out the four provinces in the east and south there, but they leave whatever. which would call it, and Harkiv, between the river and their new territory. Then they're leaving a lot of Russian speakers, if not pro-Russian partisans, in those territories to the tender mercies of the new much more right-wing and much more Galatian nationalist regime, you know, based on people out of Leviv and in Kiev there. And so then you had the same problem again.
Starting point is 00:28:38 from the Russians point of you now it's why the hardliners in Russia are pushing Putin not to agree to the 14 June lines but to take more everywhere that there's geographical uh or uh you know it's Russian speaking people ethnic Russians all the way up to the river because they say there's too many to leave behind for that reason we'll see how it plays out but that's a dynamic inside Russia well and of course that would include Odessa and yes Odessa is also obviously an extremely valuable port city and everything, too. So it really goes, you know, Odessa may be, I don't know about Harkiv, because Harkiv has a strategic importance for its proximity to Russia there and all of that that is a bit different. But Odessa is really just a jewel. Do you want to take it, or can you afford to leave it alone? And it goes back to the question of Putin's real motive here, whether he's just trying to be a czar. From everybody I've talked to that Putin wants Odessa, but he wants it intact. He would not destroy the city like, say, Bachmoud or something like that, or Mariupil, etc. So they would do a siege where they would surround it, but they would not destroy it.
Starting point is 00:29:48 They would take everything in the territory around it to preserve the city. That's my understanding from what the Russian mentality is. Yeah. Well, here's something nobody ever says. Mark Millie was right. They should have gone to the table and said, okay, uncle, uncle, back in September of 22. And remember they had a peace deal going and American Britain came in and ruined it still in the spring of 22. So then they fought over the summer and then they got their one big break in September, the weekend of September 11th, 2022. They handed the Russians their ass in Harkiv and in Kurson at the same time. And everybody celebrated. And Millie said, negotiate now while you're only this far behind. That's what a wise man would do here. And then the weenies overrode him and said,
Starting point is 00:30:36 no, this proves that you can kick the Russians' ass and drive them all the way out of the country and that not only should not deal, you should escalate. I want to say about about a month ago, it was Anthony Blinkin that sank that. He's the one who said, no, according to the Times, that's who sank that. I think it was actually the statement was in November of 2022. I've actually used it on my show several times because I'm a right agree with you. I disagree a lot with Millie, but I was right with him on that one. Yeah, we all were.
Starting point is 00:31:04 Everybody who was good on this said, see, even Millie, saying, and we all knew it was the State Department weanies, but we didn't really know, but it was like, yeah, Sullivan and Blinken are in charge here. And then the footnote there that you're referring to is the New York Times, they called the article, Secretary of War. It was about our chief diplomat, Anthony Blinken, and how he exactly was the one who overrode the advice of the generals and said, no way. And remember everybody how it played out, we're going to do a big winter offensive, except they couldn't because the ground was too muddy, it never froze solid. So they said, we're going to do a spring offensive, but it just kept rain and so.
Starting point is 00:31:36 They couldn't go. So they said, we're going to do a summer offensive. And then they got like 14 kilometers or whatever the number was. They achieved absolutely nothing got smashed. And that was the history of 2023 there. It was the absolute failure. And it was all Anthony Blinken saying, don't listen to the guys who know how to fight. Listen to me. I know what to do here. Well, man, I'm sorry. I'm all out of time, but I want to keep asking you things. Dang. Oh, well, I'll just have to leave them wanting more just like me. Romania obviously is a huge one and there's still much more to discuss about the negotiations there but I guess we hit the heart of it so definitely look forward to coming back though all right absolutely well thank you so much for your time on the show
Starting point is 00:32:20 Danny really appreciate talking to you always talk to you soon thanks all right you guys that's Danny Davis he wrote the 11th hour in 2020 America and he hosts the Daniel Davis Deep Dive on YouTube for you there thanks for listening to the Scott Horton show which can be heard on APS Radio News at Scott Horton.org,
Starting point is 00:32:40 Scott Horton Show.com, and the Libertarian Institute at Libertarian Institute.org.

There aren't comments yet for this episode. Click on any sentence in the transcript to leave a comment.