Scott Horton Show - Just the Interviews - 5/11/23 Kyle Anzalone on This Week’s Ukraine News

Episode Date: May 14, 2023

Kyle Anzalone was back on Antiwar Radio to go over some of this week’s biggest foreign policy stories. They discuss the battle of Bakhmut, the plan for a Ukrainian counteroffensive, the concerning news about the upcoming NATO Summit and the ongoing Chinese negotiation effort to bring an end to the fighting in Ukraine. Discussed on the show: “NATO Considering ‘Upgrade’ for Ukraine Status” (Libertarian Institute) “Ukraine Seeking Advanced Weapons for ‘Next Counteroffensive’” (Libertarian Institute) Kyle Anzalone is news editor of the Libertarian Institute, opinion editor of Antiwar.com and co-host of Conflicts of Interest with Will Porter and Connor Freeman. Follow him on Twitter @KyleAnzalone_ 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, May 11th, 20203, I'm Scott Horton. This is Anti-War Radio. All right, y'all welcome the show. It is Anti-War Radio. I'm your host, Scott Horton. I'm editorial director of anti-war.com, an editor of the book, hotter than the sun. Time to abolish nuclear weapons. You can find my full interview archive,

about 6,000 of them now, going back 20 years, at Scott Horton.org, and at YouTube.com slash Scott Horton Show. And you can follow me on Twitter, if you dare, at Scott Horton Show. All right, introducing today's guest.

It's our opinion editor at anti-war.com. Kyle Anzalone, welcome back to the show, Kyle. How you doing, sir? Doing very well, Scott. Thanks for having me back. Very happy to have you here. And I should hasten to mention that Kyle is also host of his own show, Conflicts of Interest. It's a pun, guys, a pun.

So we got lots of news to talk about first and foremost here, obviously, the war in Ukraine, Kyle. And you've gotten some pieces here for the Institute that you wrote lately. But I was wondering if you could talk first about this latest news about what's going on in Bakhmut. It seems like this is sort of a segue into your piece about the, coming counter-offensive here, but apparently there's news in that seemingly all-important battle for that Donetsk town here? Yeah, so I'm not sure how important this is, but for the first time in quite a while, the lines have gone in some direction the other way, and Ukraine has captured about a mile of territory from Russian forces. And so, you know, just looking at some recent

developments, you know, you have the head of the Wagner group that is largely doing the fighting for Moscow in Bakhmut, recently threatening to pull his forces out, saying he's not getting enough support from the Kremlin, the Kremlin suggesting that they're going to throw, I think Georgian or Chechnan fighters into Bakhmud instead of the Wadner group. But then, you know, he says, oh, we're going to get the support we need. And so our forces are staying in. And just a couple days later, you have some territory being lost by his forces. Now, I read a couple posts on this, and it does seem that it could have been a logistical mistake on the Wadner Group forces, and it has to do with a lack of communication between the different battalions fighting there,

where I guess one battalion went early, and this left another battalion's flank open, and it caused them to retreat this distance. So I'm not sure, Scott, if this is something that, you know, is a changing trend in that Ukraine is pouring more resources into Bakhmut and maybe this is going to be a part of their new coming counteroffensive, or if this is maybe a faint by the Ukrainians, we saw, and they're, you know, more successful counteroffensive in the fall, one of the things that initially happened was that they attacked areas in the east of Ukraine rather than in the south. And Russia pretty easily, you know, beat off those advantages. and maneuvers by the Ukrainians, but then they actually gained quite a bit of territory in the

south of Ukraine because, you know, they fate fighting up north. And I think Daniel Davis recently discussed this on your show. So maybe there's something like that going on. Or this is just a logistical mistake by the Wadner group. And we're going to just see kind of the same trend going on, which is Russia slowly taking territory despite this small setback. All right. Now, can you describe, do you know where exactly the setback was?

In other words, I was just wondering if you know the shape of the map and how it's changed. I think it was in the south and then in closer to the western area of the city. But it's kind of hard for me to figure and piece some of this together, Scott, because a lot of the details, if you read them from different sources, give different names for the different villages based on his Russian or Ukrainian. so I'm pretty sure it's like kind of on the west side of the city and then to the south and that Russia actually made some gains in the north, but more remote, you know, further away from the actual city of Bakhm. So the Russians have been trying to take this city, I don't know how hard they've been trying to take it, but they've been, they launched their major assault against, I believe,

last August, and they've been unable to take the whole city this whole time, if in fact, That is what they're trying to do. And same for the Ukrainians, of course, have been unable to kick the Russians out of it. And yet it seems like both sides rationalize that. Yeah, but we're killing a lot of their guys. And we're having such success just, you know, with our body counts and both sides inflating the other guys and diminishing their own. And it seems like maybe that really is the policy that they think that that's what they're doing.

It's just killing enough of the other guys guys to keep them soft in breakfast. preparation for the coming offensive on both sides. Yeah, I think it's probably a lot of that, Scott, where at least as a rhetoric you hear from both sides is that, you know, we're making logistical gains here, even if we're losing forces and we're not taking any territory or continuing to lose territory from the Ukrainian perspective. We're inflicting more on the Russian than they're taking from us. I think another possibility is here, you know, you're just looking at human error.

The White House has demanded for months and has told the, you know, has told the, Ukrainians for months that they shouldn't pour so many resources into this fight, and it's essentially became a symbolic fight for the Ukrainians, and the Ukrainians have warned that, you know, their entire front lines could collapse, that the fight for Bakhmuk falls apart for them. So this is, you know, maybe a symbolic battle for the Ukrainians at this point that they're afraid to lose as to what will happen. Hey guys, Scott here for Leo Hamill Fine Jewelers out of San Diego at Jewelry StoreSD.com. They do business nationwide.

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See, that way it says on your shirt, why you're so smart? Libertas Bella, from the same great folks who bring you ammo. for all your ammunition needs, too. That's libertasbella.com. All right, Kyle, so what do we know about the planned coming counteroffensive and on both sides?

And, of course, this gets into your piece for the Institute about the transfer of more weapons to the Ukrainians in preparation for this big assault. I mean, they have been holding back their reserves for a while, right? Yeah. So we've known for months now the White House has been helping Ukraine plan a massive counteroffensive from official statements. They were hoping to sever, you know, what they call the lambridge that Russia has from Russia proper to the Crimean Peninsula, the area north of the Sea of Ozov.

And that seemed very ambitious from the start. And then we got the leads from the Discord leads that said, you know, the even high-ranking members of the U.S. military didn't think that plan would succeed and would be very successful and we had reports from Politico and other sources. And then just this past week, we had a high-ranking Ukrainian defense officials say that the expectations are overestimated at this point as to what Ukraine can achieve. And so they're really starting to suggest that this idea that this would bring about the end of the war because Ukraine was going to take a significant amount of territory and then they would be able to negotiate with Russia and

the conflict doesn't seem like that is, you know, the White House doesn't think that's going to happen. Kiev doesn't think that's going to happen. And in fact, this week we had the Ukrainian foreign minister in an interview with German media saying that there's going to be a net's defensive. And so, you know, they're already planning that, look, we're going to have to do this again and throw more troops into this meat grinder months from now. And they're lobbying lobbying for advanced weapons for that next coming offensive, and this includes F-16s. All right. Now, what's this bit about NATO considering upgrading Ukraine's political status?

Yeah, so these are some statements that we recently had from the Estonian foreign minister and then also NATO chief, Jen Stoltenberg. And there is a upcoming NATO summit. This is going to happen in Lithuania, in July. and they're already talking about what's going to happen there. Ukraine is seeking what they call a path to membership, and so they want a concrete, you know, say you had to take these steps over this amount of time, and then you're going to be admitted to NATO.

They don't want any more statements just saying that the door is open to them. But Estonia is talking about either giving Ukraine security guarantees from the alliance or giving them some kind of upgraded status. It's not clear exactly what this would be, Scott. It may be more rhetorical than actually impacting how the alliance's relationship with Ukraine currently is. But it does seem like it's going to be some kind of stuff. And it will probably be seen as fairly provocative by Moscow. Okay.

And then what about China? I know that they had originally proposed this relatively vague platform for peace talks. and Chairman Xi actually called Zelensky last week. They make any progress, and what's the latest there? So it does seem like, you know, maybe we had some progress. The Ukrainians responded favorably to, I guess, what Xi, the Chinese president, had to say. And then despite Moscow's all their recent rhetoric, Scott, being around, you know, this is now a military solution. We're going to find a military solution to the conflict.

But they did say they were open to the Chinese negotiation efforts. And so that was also a positive sign. And now we have China just kind of, I think, giving a status update on it, saying that, you know, they're trying to maintain contact and communication with all relevant parties. And they did mention that Germany was a particular party that they're working with to achieve a ceasefire. So hopefully something comes out of this. I'm not particularly optimistic yet, but it does seem like a. good sign that all parties are at least taking steps towards the negotiating table. All right, you guys, we got to move on, but thank you very much for your time, Kyle.

Really appreciate you as always. Thank you, Scott. All right, you guys. That's Kyle Anzalone. He is the news editor at the Institute and Opinion Editor at Antiwar.com. Check out his great podcast, Conflicts of Interest. All right, y'all. And that's it for Anti-War Radio for today.

I'm your host, Scott Horton, editorial director of Anti-War. www.com, an editor of the new book, Hotter Than the Sun. Time to abolish nuclear weapons. Find my full interview archive more than 5,800 of them now, going back to 2003 at scotthornton.org, and follow me on Twitter at Scott Horton's show. I'm here every Thursday from 23 to 3 on KPFK 90.7 FM in L.A. See you next week. Thank you.