The Ben Mulroney Show - How Ukraine duped Russia, and where that leaves peace talks

Episode Date: June 2, 2025

Guests and Topics: -How Ukraine duped Russia, and where that leaves peace talks Guest: Marcus Kolga, Senior Fellow MacDonald Laurier institute and Founder of disinfowatch Guest: Adam Zivo, National Post columnist and Executive Director for the Centre For Responsible Drug Policy If you enjoyed the podcast, tell a friend! For more of the Ben Mulroney Show, subscribe to the podcast! https://globalnews.ca/national/program/the-ben-mulroney-show Follow Ben on Twitter/X at https://x.com/BenMulroney Enjoy Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

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Welcome back to the Ben Mulrooney Show, and if you know the expression that revenge is a dish best served cold, then a corollary to that could be if you are fighting an unprovoked war with Russia and you are in a weakened position, then maybe the best way to hit back is by planning over the course of a year and a half in this war, probably the most effective, when we saw a drone attack deep within the heart of Russia that affected so many aspects of its war machine. Our two great guests, Marcus Kolga, he's a senior fellow at McDonald-Laurier Institute

and founder of DisinfoWash, and Adam Zivow, who is a national post columnist and knows more about what's going on in Ukraine than most to both of you. I say welcome to the Ben Mulroney show. Hi, thanks for having me on. Okay, so Marcus, I'd love for you to break this down. Jason Kenney, I think effectively wrote in a tweet

that this is Mossad level genius. Why don't you tell us about what happened over the weekend and why this rises to the level of what he called Mossad level genius. Yeah, you couldn't get the best Hollywood script writers to write a script like this. I mean, it's just incredible, this operation. So over the past year, what happened

is that Ukrainian intelligence basically concocted this plan to produce multiple lightweight drones to place them into shipping containers and on trucks, basically deliver them into Russia, and then have them sort of remotely deployed from these trucks across five different time zones of remotely deployed from these trucks across five different time zones at incredible distances from Ukraine in the middle of Siberia, basically the far east of Russia, remotely deploying these drones undetected to attack Russian military sites across Russia. And the results were spectacular. I mean, we have at least 40 Russian strategic bombers. These are bombers that are being used to drop cruise missiles, various different other munitions on Ukrainian cities and such,

destroying 40 strategic bombers causing at least $7 billion in damage. So the fact that this went undetected and the scale of success of this operation is really miraculous. And Adam, I think one of the things that Jason Kenney highlights as well is that Russia will now have to carefully inspect hundreds of thousands of truck trailers, cargo containers, and temporary structures,

and they'll have to tighten massively inspection of cargo imports. Time and money is binary. The time and money that you spend on checkings, one thing is time and money you can't spend doing something else. So they're going to have their hands full making sure that this volley by Ukraine wasn't a one-off. They have to assume there's going to be more. Well, of course, and this is where I think the Ukraine is doing something very intelligent. So after they launched the attack, they weren't shy about how it was done. They carefully explained how they managed to destroy all of these bombers. And basically it was a warning to the Russians that we've done this before, we can do it again. Now you have to check your entire supply chain very carefully, which then of course wrecks economic havoc. And Russia right now is not exactly in a position to lose internal trade, right? I mean,

right now they've got high inflation, they have high interest rates, their economy is sputtering, and that's a concern. So this is both an economic, psychological, and a military victory. However, we have to keep in mind that anything that the Ukrainians do to the Russians, the Russians can now do to any other Western adversary. So we've opened up a Pandora's box. The Ukrainians happen to have been the first ones to have realized that drones can be deployed this way, but now our enemies know that this can be done as well. And so this might revolutionize how we conceptualize security for our military sites going forward and raise new protocols for security relating to transportation of sensitive materials, much in the same way

how 9-11 changed the game when it came to airport security. Now, that doesn't make the Ukrainians the bad guy. They were just the first to realize that war can be waged this way. And I would prefer that they made this innovation than anyone else. I've got to ask about what the psychological impact on the Russian people might be, Marcus, because for the longest time, this was a war that was happening. I mean, every now and then, the Ukrainians would be able to lob some attack

from their own territory into Russia. But this is the first time that it started in Russia. And I've got to wonder if this has a psychological toll on the people and and and perhaps on their ultimately on their allegiance to this war well certainly I mean for those Russians who are who are able to receive information about this attack it will it will impact them it it means that though their cities even as remote as some of these locations may have been, that they aren't necessarily safe. But I don't think that Russian media will

quite frankly report on the true scale or the nature of this operation other than to try and blame Ukrainians. I think that it will change the calculus when it comes to Russia's leadership. I mean, this is a this operation as much as it was a success for Ukraine. It's also a success for NATO and Canada because now this is really degraded Russia's perhaps its future planning for an attack on the Baltic states and also its operations targeting the Arctic. You know, 40 strategic bombers, that's a huge number. It's one third of Russia's capabilities. So it's this is a huge benefit for this has a huge benefit for for NATO and Canada as well. Adam, explain the timing of this attack, knowing that today, the there were there was a meeting in Istanbul on, I'd call them peace talks or talks to slow down the war.

So they've already happened today, but explain to me the justification or the reasoning behind hitting them hard today in advance of those talks. Well, so we have to keep in mind is that these peace talks are not genuine peace talks because Putin is not genuinely interested in peace. He hasn't dropped his unreasonable demands that Ukraine cede future territory.

And there were rumors that Russia was planning a major strike on Ukrainian cities last night in the lead up to these peace talks to demoralize Ukraine and pressure Ukraine into accepting a bad peace, which would leave the country vulnerable to dismemberment in the future. Ukraine then flipped the script by destroying one third of Russia's strategic bombing capability. And so now they have the upper hand in these Potemkin negotiations.

They were able to avoid being cornered diplomatically. So I think that this move is brilliant in its symbolic value as well as the military value. I want to ask you guys a question. I may be asking you to speculate here, but I looked at this sort of how complex and long-term and sophisticated this offensive was. And I got to wonder, like, could the US have not known anything about this?

They're claiming they know nothing about it. But it just feels to me like something like this has to happen with, I don't know, a few advisors from the US helping out with laying out these plans. Am I being conspiratorial about that? What do you think? Mark, as you go first. Yeah. Well, just very quickly, I mean, this didn't really require much, much assistance from Russian or rather US intelligence. The Ukrainian intelligence, they knew exactly where these targets were. They had these, the devices, the drones placed in close proximity to them. So I'm not sure that they really needed too much assistance from the from the US on this one and quite frankly I think that that's a benefit. We know what had happened with the Pete Hicks that's in

the and the signal chat so it's probably a good thing that the US didn't know about this. Adam? Yeah I would concur. I mean I don't think that the Ukrainians let the Americans know about this because the Trump administration can't be trusted to keep this secret. Also, this isn't a very complicated operation. You just have to smuggle a few hundred drones into Russia and place them near military bases. And I know that sounds complicated, but these drones are not that expensive. They're pretty easy to hide. You know, these are drones that are commercial grade, the kind that you can buy your kids,

obviously not with explosives attached. So basically just put drones inside a container, move that in a truck to an air base, allowed, created a remote control roof that could open. It's not that hard. Yeah, it's a remote control roof that I just, it impresses the heck out of me and these swarms of drones coming out. Anyway, it's a heck of a, I don't know if it's a remote control roof that I just impressed. There's got to be these swarms of drones coming out.

Anyway, it's a heck of a... I don't know if it's a good news story, but I certainly love it when the good guys score one. And I thank both of you for joining me today. Thank you very much. We'll talk to you soon. Anytime. Thanks for having us on. Your choice sales event is back at Nissan and the choice is yours. Choose our best-selling Rogue, always ready for adventure. Or the dynamic Sentra, packed with safety features. Or the all-new boldly redesigned Kicks. And now during my choice, you can choose up to $1,500 in Nissan bonus or accessory credit.

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