Scott Horton Show - Just the Interviews - 4/27/23 Daniel Davis on the Actual State of Ukraine’s Forces

Episode Date: April 29, 2023

Daniel Davis joined Scott for Antiwar Radio this week to discuss the war in Ukraine. They talk about the leaked documents, which Davis says only confirmed what those paying attention already knew. In this interview, they compare what’s being said about the condition of Ukraine’s forces with reality.  Discussed on the show: “Will Ukraine’s Spring Offensive Bring Kyiv Victory – Or Set The Stage For Defeat?” (19FortyFive) “Take The Win And End The Ukraine War Now” (19FortyFive) 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: Tom Woods’ Liberty Classroom; 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

For Pacifica Radio, April 27th, 2023, I'm Scott Horton. This is Anti-War Radio. All right, y'all welcome the show. It is anti-war radio. Now I'm your host, Scott Horton. I'm the editorial director of anti-war.com, and I'm the editor of the new book, Hotter Than the Sun, Time to Abolish Nuclear Weapons.

You can find my full interview archive, 5,900 of them now, going back to right around this time, 2003, 20 years ago, at Scott Horton.org, and at YouTube.com slash Scott Horton Show and all your favorite pod catchers, subscription services, and so forth. And today's guest on the show is retired, U.S. Army Lieutenant Colonel Daniel L. Davis, the famous whistleblower of the Afghan war from 2012 and analyst of American foreign policy and military policy specializing in Eastern Europe and in Eastern Asia. Right now, he writes regularly at 1945.com. Welcome back to the show. Danny,

how you doing, sir? I'm doing great, Scott. Thanks for having me back, as always. You know, I should have said three-time deployed combat veteran and Bronze Star winner in my introduction there. I forgot to say that. But anyway, so I'm happy to have you here. And I'm so happy that you pay such close attention to what is going on on the ground in Ukraine. And, of course, all the news, we have this massive leak, the Discord leak, as they're calling it now, with tons of new information coming out. And especially in the post and the times, but in other places as well. And so I guess, first of all, could you just give us kind of a capital soul summary of what you've learned from the leak and especially not just learn that they're talking about this, but things that you have really come to understand that you didn't know before?

Well, you know, Scott, really, I can't really think of anything specifically I didn't know before. I think that the real value of this trove of information is that it just strips off what to. me has mainly been self-evident reality on the ground, but it just shows, I mean, not to unlike what we did with the Afghan report back in 2012. It just says, look, here you got all these people in the public eye and on camera and congressional hearings, making all these comments about things and how the way they are and what's going on, knowing that they're not true. And so it just shows that nothing has changed in all these years. And it's just continuing to go on before. And the thing that troubles me the most, I was actually talking with this,

ironically, just earlier this morning with a colleague, is that despite all the things that has been uncovered down, all the realities that we know, it's not going to make any difference in anything. No one's going to be held accountable for lying. No one's going to be called to the carpet for what they've been doing behind the scenes, meaning the government, anybody in the government. And after this news cycle, even as high as it's been in the Washington Post in New York times it's going to you know play its cycle maybe another week and then it'll be you know moved on by whatever's next in the in the media escape and um and the thing that they'll continue on with it uh at the government level just like they have been they'll continue to tell us whatever

they want us to hear and the media will dutifully report it okay well daniel davis you got me when you say that they've been lying about wars lately but geez this one too that it can't be right I know who who would have known who could have thought that it would happen again right yeah all right

well but you know what here's the difference between the Afghan war and the Ukraine war I knew that the Afghan National Army was a joke I knew it was made up

of almost all Tajiks who had no business down in Pashtunistan and knew it and I knew that half the army were ghost soldiers and I told you

all along from the very beginning I don't really know how powerful the Ukrainian army is compared to the Russian army. You know, already, I guess, a second or bordering on First World Nation, you know, with the entire NATO military alliance standing behind it versus obviously a much more populous and more powerful nation right next door. But they have on the Ukrainian side the defensive advantage.

And I don't know, I've heard huge predictions of imminent Russian. and imminent Ukrainian defeat for more than a year now from all different sides. And so I guess I would ask you then, could you please differentiate? Tell us what it was exactly that they were lying about. Well, mainly that, you know, continuing the fiction that Zelensky himself has been propping from the beginning that we are going to recover all of our territory, everything back to the 1991 borders, which he said again just yesterday, or maybe it was the day before, in response to his telephone call with Xi Jinping, he again reiterated, his objectives are the 1991 borders. And as I have been saying, since the absolute very beginning had never changed, there is no military path for a Ukrainian victory short of NATO armies rolling onto the planes

and trying to push the Russians back. And of course, that would automatically, almost automatically lead to nuclear escalation, which is why it's not going to happen. Ergo, there is no military path that Ukraine will recover their 1991 lands because they can't. And the biggest issue that needs to be understood is everyone loves to talk about all the Russian missteps and their incompetence and their bad leaders and, you know, all the things they did bad, especially in the first three or four months was the most egregious failures that they made.

And look, I've been on record as saying the same thing. of their mistakes and they were they were colossal and many of them were multi years in the in the building a lot of it was because of corruption within the the Russian hierarchy in the military you know and stuff left over even from the Soviet days in terms of don't tell the truth to the guy above you and so by the time it gets to the generals they think they have this great army and they actually never did but here's the big change once Russia had their ass handed to them especially in in last fall in the Kharkiv and Kyrsson offenses, where Ukraine did, you know, gain tremendous amounts of

at least territory back in the north. Russia has finally woke up and they said, okay, forget about all the crap, forget about, you know, saying the right things and trying to wordsmith stuff. We got to fix this from the ground up. And so they had, they set about making significant changes to the way they do business, to the way they train their people, the way they physically conduct. combat operations and logistics and support operations. And they have now started to really look like a good military. And they've been preparing since September or really October of last year where they announced a partial mobilization. And they've been training their people a large number of them out of contact, which means they're not in the daily fight. So those guys are

taking the advantage of all the lessons that they had learned up to this point. And they're training for maneuverous warfare outside of contact for potential use at a time and place of their choosing potentially. On the other side of the coin, the Ukraine military outperformed everybody's expectation to include mine. I did not think that they would be as good as they were in the first three or four months. I'll concede that. We've come to find out part of the reason wise because the West, I mean, we do this even before the leaks with Macron and Angela Merkel, who admitted that the Minsk Accords were never sincere. They never intended to accomplish them. They just wanted to buy time for the Ukraine military to train. So they were being trained by NATO people,

or whatever. So they had a lot more training than I realized. And so they were prepared. Second big thing to understand, they are very good at defensive fighting, and they had shown that. But, They had never done the offensive kinds of thing. And let me tell you why that the Kyrsson of the Kharkiv operation last fall doesn't fall into that category because that was a surprise attack where they had overwhelming superiority, seven or eight to one by some accounts. And the Russians had basically left that just a screen line, just a thin screen line in the entire north, which was a mistake at the strategic level. because they had basically National Guardsmen who had no experience at all and hardly any arms. They did not make any defensive preparations. And so when they thought, the Russians thought everything was coming in Kyrsone,

and they had a lot of preparation down there. And when Ukraine launched that operation, they were getting slaughtered. But because Russia focused on that and at the expense of everything else, when the Ukraine did a great job both strategically and tactically of hiding the force that they built up, Then all of a sudden, they come sweep it in there, and Russia had no answer until they could rush reinforcements in there to stop the line, which they ended up doing. And then they solidified the entire 1,000 kilometer line at that point. So from basically November to to this day, Ukraine has not succeeded in going on the offensive anywhere, other than just small tactical short-term attacks. But they haven't moved the line anywhere.

Russia has been methodically moving the line to the west. Now, let me address one of the thing that's often in the newspapers these days in the TV analysis. And they say, yeah, but Russia hasn't moved hard to any. They're moving sometimes meters per day. You know, this is not like these big moves. And so even after their winter offensive, it didn't hardly do anything. Well, that's if Russia's objective was territorial acquisition. If that was the objective, then it's been minimally successful.

And they've gained a little bit of territory, not a whole lot. But if their objective, which they say out loud and have for many months now, it's the destruction of the Ukrainian Armed Forces, they have been very successful because especially in Solidar before this and Bachmoot now, Ukraine has just been pouring reserve after reserve after reserve to try and hold even the fraction of this city. And they have lost tens of thousands of soldiers that were supposed to have been earmarked for an offensive that they were going to try to do sometimes. this spring or summer. Actually, initially it was this spring. Well, now that because they sacrifice so many troops in the Bakhmut meat grinder, now that they're left with basically conscripts and people with no experience to try to accomplish the most complicated military maneuver there is, which is a coordinated combined arms offensive operations into the teeth of a dug-in mechanized enemy defense, which is what the Russians have right now. They learned

their lesson from the Karki disaster last fall. And now then all along that line, they have significant belts of dug-in defenses with dragons teeth, tank mines, tank ditches. And, you know, they've got lots of armor in place. They have pill boxes, machine gun positions. They have created fire sacks, et cetera. They are as ready for any kind of an offensive as you can get. And into that, you're considering sending it a bunch of guys who have maybe allegedly up to 11,000 have been trained by U.S. They're going to get a handful of U.S. and German and British tanks, which are good. But look, they don't have the experience of knowing how to do this. They have never done it on a front level, even in the training here.

It's basically a battalion level to try to do it for the first time, under fire at a large level. into the most difficult operation that there is and then expect that they're going to have success, I just think is so unreasonable. And most likely what it's going to do is, as I wrote about it in a three-part series, not long ago, when lose or draw, this thing will probably be the Ukraine's last gasp to try an offensive. And then Russia, who is in the process of trying, at least, to mobilize through volunteerism, another 400,000 people through the rest of the year has a manpower advantage that Ukraine can never match. So over time, Russia doesn't have to be in a hurry because all of the fundamentals

overwhelmingly say Russia is going to win. The problem is for our side, is that none of our leaders are telling any of people this stuff. In fact, I read just about an hour ago in Defense 1 today that the commander of European command confidently said in testimony that he believes that the Ukraine's side has all that they need. They've received 98% of the gear that we promised them, he said, and he is very confident. This is the word he used, the phrase he used, that they're going to be able to reclaim their land. And I'm just puzzled by that to no end, because I don't understand how a four-star general in Congress under oath is going to be able to sit there and say that they can do something which even a second lieutenant with some knowledge

of military history who would understand fundamentally why there's no chance that that's going happen short of some kind of a miracle and I don't see any evidence a miracle is coming and yet that's what they're saying and of course you have all kinds of retired force general saying the same thing but I think that you know you can't hide that very much longer because once they try this offensive and if it doesn't work or they use up their power they got nothing left Scott and then the Russians have a lot left. So we'll see how this plays out. But, you know, this fiction is going to be exposed to you pretty quick, I think.

Well, folks, sad to say, they lied us into war. All of them. World War I, World War II, Korea, Vietnam, Iraq War I, Serbia, Afghanistan, Iraq War II, Libya, Syria, Yemen, all of them. But now you can get the e-book, All the War Lies, by me, for free. Just sign up for the email list at the bottom of the page. at Scott Horton.org or go to Scotthorton.org slash subscribe. Get all the war lies

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That's r-rbi.com. You'll be glad you did. All right. So there's a couple of issues there. The first one, I think, is that this new Discord leak shows that the CIA and or military assess the situation much closer to the way you do. And that's your point about people like this have been publicly misleading us, claiming otherwise. But also wanted to rewind one step back to the battle for Bachmute that's been going on here. As you say, the Russians are very slowly taking it. The Western side says that the Ukrainians have decided not to withdraw. And yes, they are sending in reserves, like you say, but they claim that they are just wasting the Russian forces. And that's why Zelensky decided not to withdraw was because they were almost having a good time blowing away the Russians who are just, they're even sending people like conscripts from their Wagner group, mercenary army, conscripted right out of the prisons. and they're sending them even without rifles forward to begin to dig a ditch for the next wave to come

and this kind of, and they're just blowing these guys away. And so therefore the advantage is theirs. They're doing body counts, and they say that the Russians are dying at such high rates that it's worth it for them to stay there. Maybe even it'll help them when they try to launch their spring offensive in the South that they have so many Russians bogged down,

dying here for nothing in Bakmoo. What do you say about that? that. Yeah, yeah, that is wishful thinking. That's what they want to be true, but the evidence strongly contradicts that because Russia has changed their tactics. Number one, it should be a real red flag for our side that the Russians are doing all this with the Wagner group, not the Russian army per se. So, you know, that whole army still is out there basically holding the line and doing small offensive in a couple of different areas, both north and south of that. So they're sending this allegedly 50,000 group, 40,000 group Wagner organization to do the ones that's

chewing up this stuff. So even if they lost the entire Wagner group, that basically means the rest of the Russian army is untouched. They're unscathed for the most part. And the Ukraine side, though, they throw in their best, highest trained troops into here. So if you're talking about trying to get into an attrition battle? That's a bad move, man, because you're playing right into the Russian hand if that were the case. But evidence indicates that's not the case. First of all, let me look at that issue you mentioned about the shovels and whatnot. As evidence said, my, you're just throwing guys out there. They don't even have guns. Well, that's because they're ignorant of how Russia fights, the Wagner group, how they're fighting. They have specialized groups. So what they do is they

have one group, which is a stormtroopers, basically, that storm an area with rifles and machines. guns and grenade launchers, et cetera, that they're fighting. They have a separate specialized group that comes in right behind them with shovels who start digging trenches so that those guys can continue firing and not stop what they're doing to try to get cover, and these guys dig them cover. They have a third group whose only job is to bring up ammunition, water, food, and other battle supplies. So they have a specialized organization. That's not evidence that they don't have enough guns or whatever. That's an evidence that they're very coordinated and organized and specialized and what they're doing, and it's working.

The third part is that the way the Vogner Group is fighting is that they're not just throwing massive waves of people in there. They only use these stormtrooper tactics after they have pulverized an area into submission where they think that the Ukraine side of that area is too weak to resist the stormtroopers. And if it turns out that they're not, they'll stop the storm troop offensive, and then they'll go back and more with artillery and rockets and just pulverize. the area. And, you know, everybody is aware that, that even in the Western media, that Russia still possesses a six or seven to one artillery advantage over the Ukraine so they can afford to do that, meaning they're not just sacrificing large numbers of infantrymen, you know, to just storm into these areas. They're using shells. And then they bring in the infantrymen only when

the opposition has been weakened to a certain stage. So you can see just by the numbers, if If people are, you know, if Russia really was, the Wagner group really was suffering casualties at the rate claim, they were run out of troops a month or two ago, I mean, two or three months ago. And yet you see that they're still moving forward. So that by itself tells you, okay, that battlefield math ain't working. What they're telling you, it can't be true. Otherwise, the offensive would have stopped it. It's not.

In fact, every day they seem to take, you know, another two or three blocks. Lastly, Russia has added a new capability here. here, basically trying to do something that we did almost two decades ago. That's turned regular dumb bombs into smart bombs. They have a, it's called a glide bomb, an FAB 500 and 1,500, which is a 500 and 1,500 kilogram bomb. They have now figured out how to turn their large stockpile of even Soviet area, just standard gravity bombs dropped off jets to now then to be able to launch them from 30 to 50 kilometers

behind the front line and have them land. with near pinpoint precision, and these are massive bombs. So they have been having a big impact in the front, especially in the Bakhmud area, because they are completely destroying the houses or buildings where the Ukraine guys have been hiding. And there is a real alarm on the Ukraine side, if you're reading the Ukraine war bloggers, that they're being worked because they have, you know, they've been using these things as defensive positions, but now all of a sudden, one bomb lands in the entire unit is wiped out because the building collapses on them. So that's, you know, continuing to chew away the Ukrainian manpower and it's preserving the Russian side.

And so the last thing I want to leave you with is the understanding that this is almost like 80% of Wagner group. And the vast majority of the Russian army itself has still not been employed. So that's not going to do well when the Ukraine side's attrition gets down to some certain level. Well, and I think the reports were that the Americans had told Zelensky to which. from Bachmute, but he decided or his men had decided that this was a smart thing to do. But now, so last couple of points here. Oh, first of all, it's anti-war radio. I'm Scott Horton.

I'm talking with Lieutenant Colonel Daniel L. Davis, retired, U.S. Army, the great whistleblower of the Afghan war from 2012. And we're talking about the war in Russia here, well, the Russian war in Ukraine. I mean to say, I guess you could say America's war against Russia, too. And so that's our last two points I need you to cover here. back to the spring offensive and, you know, the effect that the Bokhmut battle is going to have on the capability of the Ukrainian army to, I guess they say they're going to try to sever the so-called land bridge there in southern Donetsk or in Zabrosia in the land between Crimea and

Donbass. And then also, I guess to end, you have this article, take the win and end the Ukraine war now where you say look you said strategic defeat was your goal well or or weakening Russia well you've weakened them but you ought to quit while you're only this far behind not worse so obviously that's sort of one answer anyway but if you can kind of tackle that for me got it yeah so the issue with the you know what could happen in the offensive uh look i have personally conducted large-scale offensive operation to try to penetrate a tank or enemy who was dug in to try and make a penetration to have more forces spin through into the enemy rear in Desert Storm. We were trained to the hilt. We had trained as the second U.S. cavalry for well over a year. Of course, it really went back through the Cold War. But as our organization, as our teammates, we had trained for a full year intensive training in both Germany and then also in the Saudi deserts before we launched into that operation, like you can't even imagine.

I mean, the vast majority of the days were spent in all this training. And that's with a fully manned crew, whereas each level had its, you know, like a sergeant that had three to five years experience, company commanders that had five to six years experience. First sergeants and sergeant majors, 12 to 15 years experience, battalion commanders, regimental commanders, division commanders, 12, 10, 15, 20 years of experience of having done this for, and everybody knew what they're doing. We were fully equipped. We had one set of kit. It's an American set of kit.

We had all the logistics for it. Every advantage you can have, we had attack helicopters. We had unlimited power in the skies, and it was still a challenging situation. I was the second in command of an armored cavalry squad for the first armored division in Germany in the mid-2000s. And my job was to help train people in this organization to be able to fight. So I know what it takes to be able to conduct this kind of operation. And you're asking basically conscripts, and there are none of the levels of experience of the troops. They don't have anywhere near the kind of kit that you need.

In fact, it's a podge-podge and mix-match of all kinds of things. And they don't have the logistic trails for it. They don't have the knowledge and years of experience of how to operate it, how to fire it, but much less how to maneuver or work together. They have almost no attack helicopters. They have virtually no air power for tactical air support, only a little bit, and very limited artillery. I mean, I cannot tell you how much of a disadvantage that will put the attacking force in, and yet we're saying you're going to succeed and drive Russia out.

That just makes no sense militarily. All right. But so when you say take the win, this is as good as we can do, that means, well, so the Russians have claimed to annex. I say that given what I just said there, my best analysis before something happens is that they're going to get obliterated. The Ukraine side will get crushed if they try this offensive for the reasons I just pointed out there. If that happens, now all of a sudden Russia is in a much more powerful position. and balance of power and they can start going on the offensive and there's not going to be much left to stop them because the Ukraine side won't have all these defensive positions to go through that has been the case up to this point if we don't make a deal now while the Ukraine has all the land that it does at the moment they may be forced to have a negotiated settlement later months later possibly a year or more later from a much more disadvantageous position and even less territory because right now it's still a hard situation and You know, Russia doesn't have a lot of negotiating position to get, you know, maybe not even to keep what they have, but certainly not to get more.

If you don't take the win now and you wait, then in time, Russia is going to get more powerful and they may take more and they may not be willing to make a negotiated settlement until it's something that they really like. And that's why I'm saying that the danger is we may have to make a negotiated settlement later that's much less advantageous than what we could do right now. yeah or could have done a year in a couple of months ago absolutely or prevented the war at all that's another issue of mine right well i mean last september october putin annexed four provinces of eastern ukraine not just the donbass too but the projia and curse on as well he doesn't control all of them but i mean the obvious thing i guess would be well he keeps to and gives up to but the thing is there's no lambridge to Crimea without at least some of Zabrosia there.

Oh yeah, they'll never give that up no matter what. And look, I think it's important to note that if Zelensky tries to make a deal, there's a very real risk that the Nazis will kill him or that someone else will kill him and do a coup and keep fighting or keep trying to fight.

Remember, a year and a few months ago, the plan was that the army is going to be obliterated and we're going to be backing an Afghan-style insurgency for the long term. So that was plan A in the first place. This is plan B. We could go back to that, and that's what they think anyway, no.

Right now we're not even thinking about that. We went way past that. They may end up. But, you know, I would passionately argue against that because all that would do is keep Afghanistan, Ukraine, in a state of perpetual war to the detriment of millions of people. And that's what's so anguishing to me is the daily cost on the people of Ukraine. Ukraine unnecessarily. That needs to stop. So I would be opposed to that, but they may do it. Yeah. Well, now, wasn't there something in the Discord leaks where the Biden administration was at least considering telling the Ukrainians, maybe now's the time for a ceasefire, aka half a surrender at least here and, you know, follow your advice, quit while you're only this far behind, not worse. Is it coming to that? Or they're going to go for this. spring offensive it looks like to you, huh? I mean, it looks to me like that they're going to

at least do the spring offensive or early summer offensive now because it looks like it's been pushed back. That's what it looks like. I couldn't more strongly argue against it because I mean, nobody in the Ukraine side is going to win if they do this. I mean, in any capacity, they're not going to succeed. So if you're afraid of having a potential coup, if you make a deal now, I mean, just imagine how much higher that risk will be if you lose the offensive. If you fail, I mean, how much higher it'll be then if you have to. So at least you're in a position of having the initiative in your hand here. But I just don't think, I just don't see how this works out well for the Ukraine side. All right, you guys. That is Daniel L. Davis. It's a retired

lieutenant colonel of U.S. Army. He was in Iraq War I, Iraq War II, and Afghanistan. He's the great whistleblower of the Afghan War of 2012, senior fellow at defense priorities, and author of the 11th Hour in 2020 America. He's Daniel L. Davis 1 on Twitter, and you can read him at 1945.com. Thank you so much for your time, Dan. I appreciate it. Always appreciate being here, Scott. Thank you.

All right, chill, and that has been Anti-War Radio for the Day. I'm your host, Scott Horton. I'm the editorial director of anti-war.com, and author of Hotter Than the Sun, Time to Abolish Nuclear Weapons. Find my full interview archive, 5,900 of them. going back to 20 years ago, 2003, at Scott Horton.org and YouTube.com slash Scott Horton's show. Follow me on Twitter at Scott Horton's show. And I am here every Thursday from 2.30 to 3 on KPFK, 90.7 FM in L.A.

See you next week.