The Bridge with Peter Mansbridge - Who Is Yevgeny Prigozhin and Why Should We Care?

Episode Date: May 9, 2023

For Brian Stewart's regular Tuesday commentary, this week we profile the man who has brought mercenary armies to the forefront of discussion. Yevgeny Prigozhin operates the Wagnedr group and while we have talked about him before, today we take a wider look at the issue because mercenaries are operating in a lot more than just the battle for Ukraine.

And hello there, Peter Mansbridge here. You are just moments away from the latest episode of The Bridge. Who is Yevgeny Prigozhin? And why should we care? That's coming up. And welcome to Tuesday. You know what Tuesday means. Tuesday means Brian Stewart is by with his latest commentary on the situation in Ukraine. And we're going to get right to it because it's a pretty interesting one today. We'll save our end bits for their true place at the end. An end bit belongs at the end. Sometimes it belongs at the beginning, but today it belongs at the end. An end bit belongs at the end. Sometimes it belongs at the beginning, but today it belongs

at the end. Okay, our topic for today comes as a result of, I don't know, a couple of letters that I've received in the last little while, last couple of weeks. I do read your mail when you send something in to the Mansbridge podcast at gmail.com. I do read it. Sometimes I use some of them on air on the Your Turn on Thursday. But others that have suggestions for potential programming or potential interviews, I read those as well. And a couple in the last little while have been about this issue of mercenaries in the Ukraine little while have been about this issue of mercenaries

in the Ukraine-Russia war, and in particular the Wagner Group. Now, we have discussed them since the middle of last summer when Brian first brought them up. And they weren't getting a lot of ink at that point, but they sure get a lot of ink now. And while we did a couple of programs in the fall where we gave a little more detail on the Wagner Group, clearly some of you feel that we should update that story.

We should update the profile of Evgeny Progozhin, who's the guy who formed the Wagner Group. And we should update the whole story of mercenaries in war. Because the Ukraine war is not the only place that mercenaries are being used. And what does it say about the world today that mercenaries are being used. And what does it say about the world today that mercenaries have become more and more evident in different parts of the world? And should we be concerned about that?

One of the letters I got was from Elizabeth Jay, who wrote from Half Moon Bay in British Columbia. Love the name of that. I mean, there are lots of Half Moon Bays in the world, right? Some of you have probably been to a few of them. Usually on, like, Caribbean islands, there's Half Moon Bay. It has a shape like a half moon. And I assume the same thing goes for Half Moon Bay in BC. Anyway, Elizabeth wanted more information. She actually wanted quite a bit more. I'm not sure we're going to be able to answer all

her questions, but we are going to answer some of them and some of the others that have come in. And I'm just using Elizabeth as an example and appreciate hearing from all of you. So let's bring Brian in. You'll find this interesting. While the main portion of this interview with Brian today, his commentary, is about the Wagner Group, we don't start off that way. I give him a little plug because once again, he seems to be ahead of the pack, so to speak. So let's bring him in.

My friend, your friend, foreign correspondent, the war correspondent, Brian Stewart. I know I sound like I do this every week, but I talk about how you have been sort of ahead of the curve on a lot of the issues. Not all of them, but a lot of them when it comes to the story on Ukraine and the impact this war has had. And I notice in today's edition of The Telegraph, this headline, which echoes back to something you forecast, I guess it was last fall. Here's the headline today.

Why Poland Will Be Europe's Next Superpower. I guess it was in the fall you told us, you said, listen, Poland is now the new big player in Western Europe, if not in Europe overall. And people are going to have to come to grips with that. So now that it's starting to become clear to a lot of people, what's your take on the Poland story? Well, it's been coming, I think, for some time. It was kind of evident in the summer that Poland had a will to resist

and a kind of energy about its defense that was lacking, not particularly lacking, but much more superior to those other countries in NATO. I mean, it has a large population, much more superior to those other countries in NATO. I mean, it has a larger population, so it can have a big army. It's got an enormously impressive military history, which the Poles are very proud of, and rightly so. I mean, Napoleon valued them very much as fighters, and the RAF enormously valued them during the Battle of Britain as airmen. So you have a military ethos and history. You have a strong nation that frankly feels it's been not respected enough in many, many recent decades. And a very good army, very good military currently.

And has desires to grow because it needs to grow. It faces Russia. It's going to always face Russia. It has been a traditional target of Russia. You remember 1939, it wasn't just the Germans who invaded Poland, it was the Soviet Union that also invaded eastern Poland. So you have that mixed together. Now, mind you, you have also a very conservative government that sees this as a national ambition. Whether another government down the road will be equally as militant,

we don't know yet. And another thing we don't know is, you know, will it always be a good, friendly, good guy type of NATO superpower, or will it start getting a bit bossy and pressy towards its neighbors and a little bit, you know, I don't know how you would call it, but irritant towards Germany, which it has a lot of, obviously, historical beefs about and geopolitical beefs. So that's it.

I mean, it's there. NATO has to accept it because it's obvious. And it's going to be a formidable power in Europe, certainly northeastern Europe in future. And it's going to be the magnet around which other eastern European countries tend to gather, including Ukraine after this war. I think we'll see a very close union between ukraine and poland and that's a very big that's a potentially very big strong block and how does uh i mean you mentioned how germany would might react to this how about france i mean between those two they've always been seen as the dominant european countries on continent on the European continent, if people start talking this way about Poland, which they clearly are now,

how does that sit with France? Well, you know, France has always sought good relations with Poland, but the reality is I don't think it's very happy. I don't think Macron is very happy to see his desire to be the number one statesman of Europe, increasingly, you know, nudged to the side a bit by the emergence both of Germany and Poland. And I think, I don't know how it will play itself out, because who knows how Macron is going to play himself, given the turmoil in France right now. If we had a more stable government, it'd be easier to read. But I think France will try to

work in a power relationship with Warsaw. The Paris-Warsaw bloc might at times convince the Germans to get more serious about a Paris-Berlin-Warsaw bloc, which I think Paris would very much like because it would see itself at the center of that. But we don't, the German government is very hard to read right now. The French government is very hard to read its future right now. And the Polish government is kind of emerging into a new super, not super, big power, geopolitical power force that the world is just beginning to get its mind around. So there's a lot of uncertainties here, a lot of interesting things to watch. For Poland's sake, I'm somebody who covered Poland when it was under the soviet union and covered the solidarity movement which

older listeners will remember i i'm very pleased to see olden rising um towards you know a kind of more respect in the world it's a remarkable country a brave country of his really brave country and it really does deserve an awful lot of respect. And certainly nobody's been a better friend and ally of Ukraine during this war than Poland itself. I remember well your visits to Poland in the early 80s, your following of Lech Wałęsa, the labor leader who, you know, set the headlines. And, you know, and John Paul II, JP II, who, you know, both who came, you know, were Polish

and had a huge impact on the way the world changed through the 80s and into the early 90s. Really, you know, the Soviet bloc, the communist bloc, really began to crack when the Lichwa Wenza, the engineer, and the Solidarity Movement got together, and they really started to resist in a serious way. And that sent really chills down the spine of a lot of Eastern European communist bloc countries. And that really was the first major step. And as you say, the Pope's visit there, where he would get crowds of, I saw them with my own eyes, up to 2 million people in an open field, really also changed the entire atmosphere of the Cold War. I can remember seeing, it was the 2002 Olympics. Lech Walesa was one of those who carried the flag into the stadium.

You know, they always have kind of like four or eight big personalities. And, um, I was walking down a back stairwell in the Olympic stadium and I was walking down and walking up was like, for once that I looked at this guy, I mean, it was, you know know he was a huge world figure um and uh and to see him in the flesh right there i mean you'd you'd seen him in the flesh and and talked with him back in in the day when when he was carrying on that fight so anyway you you felt like you were in just a very quick story on him i might you can you can always cut it. But I interviewed him once for NBC and he came in and, you know, he's all in his presidential suit,

but he was, you know, president by then. And, or certainly the top leader. And he sat down and the technician, the sound man was having trouble with the plugs. And of course,

like for Wentz is a former electrician. And like for Wentz, it turns around. You idiot. You put that one in plugs. And, of course, Lech Wałęsa is a former electrician, a union boss electrician. And Lech Wałęsa turns around, you idiot, you put that one in there. No, no, no, no, not that. And he started directing to Salman. And I'm just setting up the equipment. I've never seen that in a leader ever before. That's great.

Okay, let's shift discussion from Poland to the main purpose of today's chat, and that is to talk about the Wagner Group or the Wagner Group. We've gone back and forth on that name, and its leader, Yevgeny Prigozhin, the mercenary, the mercenary group, and the man, the mercenary. We've talked about him quite a few times over the last year and the impact of the mercenary group, but I've had a number of letters in the last little while saying, you know, remind us of how this actually works. And it's a good time to do it because it was a crazy weekend for the Wagner group. On Saturday, they were saying, we're pulling out of the battle for Bakhmut. Moscow won't support us. They're not sending us ammunition.

They're this, they're that. It really dumped basically on the Putin regime. By Sunday, they said, oh, no, we're staying. We've got all our ammunition is on the way now. That was a power play that clearly worked clearly worked but it kind of underlines this guy and his methods very unpredictable very unpredictable and also um you know this is an example he just shook down the the russian military he he called the russian military leaders by every vile name imaginable virtually accused accused them of getting his men killed, and then sort of said, we're pulling out of here unless we get more ammunition.

I mean, can you imagine in the Western Army any division leaders suddenly saying, we're going to leave the field unless we get more what we want? So this is a sign of just how powerful the Wagner Group is when it comes to power plays in Moscow. And also, it's a kind of sign of, you know, really the growing menace of mercenary groups worldwide. We can maybe talk about that later. But Wagner Group was set up years ago to pursue Russian interests in countries like Syria, Libya, and Africa. It also had a very commercial instinct. It was looking for access to oil wells and mines and material gain wherever it went, like as all mercenary forces do. And it entered the Ukraine war as really a really tough fighting unit made up of people who signed up as mercenaries. It wasn't part of the Russian army.

It was separate from the Russian army. And it was denied by Russia to even exist for a long time. But it went in. It was a totally ruthless force. They also sent originally 50 000 into ukraine it lost at least half that number which is an incredible casualty right that uh you know only shock troops of the most reckless kind uh could could endure um and basically it uh you know it's become a real power but it to fulfill itself, to keep filling in ranks, it went to the prisons of Russia and got out some of the worst prisoners imaginable.

Not only the bank robbers and the mafia-type groups, but also the kill-for-hire and murderers, you name it, were in its ranks. And they committed horrific atrocities on the front, still are probably every day. And that's where we stand right now is a new phenomena entering the world, warfare and politics. And that is a large, self-confident, aggressive, perhaps megalomaniacal mercenary force that could see a lot of imitators in the world. And in fact, this just appears to be a boat to sign an agreement with a Chechen

mercenary group, the Ahmed troops. And they may be joining up with the Wagner to try and take the city of Bakhmut that they've been trying to take since last summer, you know, and again, losing many casualties, but bit by bit getting more of the city. So that's what Wagner is. It's a real phenomena of our time. It's a dangerous sign of our time. And the world, you know, better look out. The guy often comes across as a clown, but look where he got to. His guy's an ex-jailbird himself.

He did six years for burglary, you know, worked his way up as a chef and an event manager in the Kremlin, and now runs a private army, basically, that even the Kremlin seems worried about. You know, when you read his story, it is quite remarkable. I mean, he spent most of the 80s, as you say, in jail for, you know, breaking into apartments and stealing stuff and what have you. And then basically started his chef life as a cook and a restaurateur, but started in the streets of Leningrad selling hot dogs with his mother.

He came out of jail to do that, to kind of clean up his act, at least publicly, by doing that, and then rose through the various levels and became this confidant of Putin. But, I mean, this guy, I mean, he's got quite a history. I mean, he was a big-time chef, at least his restaurants were big-time. He served George Bush, W, with a special meal when Bush was in Moscow.

Other world leaders he got to know, I guess, in terms of his restaurant. So, and then he moved on. He decided he actually started the Wagner Group and launched it into this situation it's in now in Ukraine. But as you said, in other areas as well but i want to get an understanding of how it works i mean does the wagner group decide on their own where to take their battle to like in ukraine do they are they the ones to say okay we're going to go to back mood or do they work this in conjunction somehow um with the russian army and who pays for them like where's

the money come from they do uh work it in conjunction with the the russian army otherwise it'd be chaos in the front they'd be going in where they're not wanted or whatever but i think they pretty well say russia is having trouble taking this city that's very important for putin to win particularly by May the 10th if possible, and we're the ones to do it. Then they get involved in the fight, and they lose an enormous amount, and the Russian military resents them to the absolute core, of course, because they're despised by paratroopers and others.

So there's enormous friction there, but they would work out where they're going to fight. They would then start demanding so much ammunition as all the different areas would say, we need this many shells, you know, the fire per day, that kind of thing. And sometimes they get what they want. And other times the military holds back. The money flows in overwhelmingly from Russia and itself. I mean, money is flowing from some Russian budgets into their hands because they pay quite well for Russian. They pay the above average salary for a Russian worker. And that's a lot of money. It's not just these are guys not fighting for nothing. These are guys that sign up because they want to make money or they want to get out of jail and make money.

And when they're out of jail, they get a free pardon at the end of just six months service. And they get people coming in from many countries in the world wanting to join up because the money is good. And who knows what robbery you can pursue while you're in the front? Who knows what looting goes on? Who knows what terrorizing protection jobs are also in play? And that's pretty well how it works. And they get money from, they serve in Africa. There's at any given time, at least 2,000 Wagner soldiers in Syria helping the regime there.

And in the Central African Republic, they appear to be in other areas of Africa. And maybe even there's some rumors they're now starting to show up in Haiti, of all things, right in the Western Hemisphere. So anyways, that's pretty much how it operates. How? Brutally, of course. I mean, he seems to also have a charisma that is kind of hard to understand because he's not exactly the most prepossessing-looking guy, but he's got a tough-guy act that seems to really warm the right-wing nationalist crowds in Moscow.

And the people signing up seem to see in him some real, you know, dark Vader, whatever kind of character who they can show allegiance to. And we'll get Russia moving on the right path towards a far more ruthless persona in the world than it has right now are under international law is the use of mercenaries legal well it's not protected as prisoners of war they're not regarded but uh you know the fact of the matter is it's irrelevant because the international law can't really now police the growth of mercenary armies. They're too big. They're too well armed. And here's the reality.

All over the world now, new mercenary groups are springing up. They have many names, many respectable corporate names, like Aegis Defense Services and Triple Canopy and lots of others we never hear of. The Middle East is supposedly awash in mercenary groups now. Some of these are getting very big. They're made up mostly of ex-service personnel. And a lot of countries are finding it's a lot cheaper to hire a mercenary army than it is to have your own army and own it, because that's very expensive.

But you can bring in a mercenary army to fight a war for maybe a year and a half, conquer your enemies, and then send it home. Hopefully, they'll go. This is a real reality. Another reality, which I've mentioned several times on this show, and I think it's one of the fundamental political, international political realities of this era, and that is democracies are very casualty averse. They don't want to be losing their own citizens in conflicts. Notice how Canada is pretty well dropped out of peacekeeping. For example, how the United States has become, for the first time,

and maybe in our lives, really hesitant to go into places to clean up a mess. Haiti being an example. The British and the Europeans are increasingly hesitant too. So countries will see they have more, when they get a mercenary group of some size and they give it a flow of income that is really important and they can get top weapons, what democracies are going to go in

and clean out a country of its mercenary forces? Take one example. Here's an example. In the world of 196 countries, international bodies like the World Bank figure there's 50 countries that are failed states. They're failed or failing. They're so failed that basically they're almost anarchy. Nothing is sort of working. How easy would it be where a major mercenary company, corporation, or an alliance of several mercenary companies to, for instance, start taking over certain countries? Countries like Haiti is a classic

example. Go in, suppress the gangs that are there, put them down, give a kind of order to the country that most citizens would regard as with a breath of fresh air, a kind of liberation almost, and then make money from whatever ways they can. Drugs come instantly to mind. A whole international network opening up there. Or islands here and there. Or a country in Africa, perhaps even a major country, with mines and oil stakes could be taken over by a series of mercenary forces. And they've not been stopped because who's going to stop them?

Are you going to send in the U.S. Marines to a country to wipe out the mercenary force? What would the citizens make of that? Why are we going in there? What would the U.S. Congress make of suddenly going to the Central African country to try and take out a mercenary force of well-armed ex-soldiers of, say, 1,000 to 1,500 strength, that means kind of real fighting. So it's a worrisome thing the world has to start thinking about. Is there a way to regulate these mercenary forces?

Maybe not. I mean, mercenary armies. Maybe not. I mean, mercenary armies have been common in the world for 4,000 years. They were through the Middle Ages, the main military forces. Really up until 200 years ago, it was an honorable thing to serve in a mercenary army. You know, maybe we're drifting back towards that when people will see more opening for themselves in life to serve for a mercenary army and make a good paycheck

than going into a national army and sitting around doing nothing and not making all that much money. All these are works. Any evidence that the Ukrainians have mercenary soldiers? Oh, they have, yeah. They have an international legion, which some people, you know, you can compare with, say, the French Foreign Legion, but actually it's very different.

This international legion in Ukraine, which at certain times has had up to 5,000 or 6,000 soldiers, was formed on the urging of Valensky to get foreign troops in to invite people to come and fight for Ukraine. And many signed up. Many signed up for the chance of action. Many were ex-soldiers who believed in Ukraine's fight against tyranny. And some of them just came for the thrill of being in war. They're not like the French Foreign Legion,

which takes people in and only gives, and they only accept them after a very, very long and rigorous training. And at the end, they don't pay them all that well. But at the end of service in the French Foreign Legion, you get French citizenship, no matter where you're from. And nobody asked too much about your background. So that's not checked either. And that's a big selling point to a lot of people who figure they can work in the French Foreign Legion, suffer some hardship for some years, and then have French citizenship and a clean slate.

In Ukraine, these people are invited in to fight for money. I'm not sure how much they're paying now, but they were paying not a bad buck. And then they fight. And it tends to turn out that some of them are really good. They've had excellent military background. They perform courageously. Two Canadians were killed not long ago fighting in Bakhmut for that same international legion. So some are good and earn the respect of their mates. Many are not that good. Many are sent home because they're basically,

the military skills they boasted of were simply not there. And they lacked the will to really fight it out when the going got extremely tough. And in Ukraine, it is extremely tough. Okay, I'm just a little confused by that because I'm trying to determine how that fits under the term mercenary, because it almost sounds like they're part of the regular army, just in a separate regiment kind of thing. Well, it is a separate regiment. It's mercenary because these are soldiers not fighting,

not Ukrainian soldiers fighting for Ukraine. They're expeditionary forces that were hired abroad to come and fight in a foreign war and are paid to do so. Whether or not they think the money's all that great is secondary. They are certainly paid to do so, and they're not Ukrainian soldiers. They are foreign soldiers. And that's one of the things that defines a mercenary. They fight for profit, not for politics overall.

They're structured really as a personal business, and they have lethal skills, and they fight not at home but abroad. They're different from, let's say, security guards who would protect a major shopping center or something like that. These are people who go broad to fight in a military force with lethal force attached to it. Last question. And it's back to the man Pergozan, Evgeny Pergozan, the head of the Wagner Group. Do you think he has ambitions beyond what we're seeing now?

Does he want to be the power broker? Does he want to be a political leader? Does he want Putin's job? Almost certainly. I think he has all the signs of megalomania. And megalomaniacs are not usually shy when it comes to ambition. And I think it's natural for him to be sitting, the kind of guy he is, it's quite natural for him to say, this is not a strong government right now. My good pal Putin is earning a lot of the,

you know, contempt, quiet contempt, for the most part, but not always quiet, of the right-wing nationalist force in Russia, which I would really like to corral and mobilize, galvanize, to make this a really, I have to use the word, a more fascist country, a more kind of totalitarian state militaristic country. I think that's very much part of his ambition. I can't see what else he wants. He wants to try writing a children's book, but I don't think that's really where his ambitions really lie. No, I think he's got his eye on either being the central power broker

and feared as such, or in fact, somebody, if Russia falls into into chaos that the right the conservative elements of russia would turn to as a man that sort of a gold figure maybe a man in an emergency to take over the state he probably has those thoughts going through his mind all the time what a resume resume. He goes from convict to hot dog seller to friend of the president to the leader of

an army of thugs and murderers. I mean, it's quite the list. Alright, Brian, we're going to call it a day for that one. We appreciate your time on this, as always, and look forward to talking to you next week. Pleasure. Thank you.

Brian Stewart with us again, as he is on all Tuesdays. Almost since the beginning of the conflict, which is now, you know, we're coming up on, well, we're not a year and a half yet, but it won't be long before we are for the conflict in Ukraine. And his, you know, every once in a while it's good to put the kind of brakes on and delve into one particular area, which is basically what we did today on the whole issue of the Wagner Group and the, you know, Evgeny Prokhorin,

just who he is and what impact he has beyond Ukraine. And clearly there is an impact, not only of he and his group, but the whole idea of mercenaries. When Brian talks about, you can imagine the mercenaries in Haiti dealing with that situation. That could very easily turn into a mercenary-run state. Anyway, we'll see what happens there.

Okay, that brings our main segment of the program to a halt for now. There is, you know, I promised an end bit, and an end bit we will get. But first of all, this quick break. And welcome back, Peter Mansbridge here. You're listening to The Bridge on Sirius XM channel 167 Canada Talks or on your favorite podcast platform. Tomorrow on The Bridge, the Smoke, Mirrors and the Truth, Bruce Anderson will join us. And Wednesdays, as we do on Fridays as well, the program is also available on our YouTube channel.

And it's interesting to see each week, we just do those two shows on YouTube, but it's interesting that each week the audience gets larger on the YouTube channel and a lot of people like to comment. And while there are the odd bots and and and trolls the vast majority of uh of those comments like the ones that come directly to the podcast for use on your turn many of those comments are are you know are really good in the sense they bring up interesting ideas and

topics so i appreciate hearing from you on that. Okay, I promised an end bit. And here we go. This was a headline last week in the Daily Mail in the UK. And, well, let me just give you the headline first. Out-of-control rockets and spacecraft could become deadly. A scientist warned there's a 10% chance falling debris will kill someone within the next decade.

Okay, let's think about that. If there's a 10% chance that they will kill somebody in the next decade, that means there's a 90% chance they won't. Now, having said that, 10% is still an interesting number. It's the kind of thing that makes you want to look up. You've got to be quick, though. But it does raise the question, okay, okay seriously how much stuff is there up there how worried should we be well you know something crashed earth last week it was um i'm not sure whose satellite it was i think it was a russian satellite russian spacecraft back from the 90s.

No, pardon me. Excuse me. Sorry, Russia. It wasn't one of yours. It was an American satellite. It was a NASA satellite. Crashed back to Earth. Last week,

it made warnings that it had a 1 in 2,500 chance of killing someone. Those are pretty good odds, too. But instead, it crashed into Earth. And what's interesting when you think about it, you know, the majority of Earth is water, right? And you figure, odds are it's going to hit water. Well, it didn't hit water. It hit land.

Well, kind of a land. It hit the Sahara Desert, somewhere between Sudan and Egypt. That's a fair chunk of land, right? But in the Sahara, there is a crashed NASA satellite. My bet is NASA is probably trying to figure out a way of finding that. But back to the question, how much stuff is there up there? Well, you'd be surprised. There's a heck of a lot of stuff up there. And eventually it'll turn into, most of it anyway, will turn into junk. Now, it could be centuries or longer before some of it ever falls, but some things are going to fall.

There's a website called Leo Labs, L-E-O-L-A-B-S, that is operated in conjunction with NASA. And I'm looking at one of their visuals. And it's the Earth from space, but all the satellites and space junk around it. And there's a lot. It looks like a diseased ball, right? There's all this stuff sort of orbiting around it. So, okay, that's very interesting, Peter, but really how much stuff?

Give me numbers. Tell me what you're talking about. Okay, I'll do that. Because that's the kind of people we are here at the bridge. We're on top of the story. How many items are there in orbit? This is from the European Space Agency. Well, first of all, you've got to go by the rockets launched since 1957.

Sputnik, right? How many rockets have been launched since 1957 that went up into space? 6,380. The number of satellites in orbit around the Earth, 15,430. That's how many were sent into orbit. How many are still there in orbit or in space? 10,290. The number is still functioning.

33,050. I'm sorry. The number is still functioning. 7,500 of the 10,290. So there are a bunch of dead satellites up there that don't do anything, but they're still in orbit. But the ones that are still functioning, there are 7500 of them. The number of debris objects, that's the 33,050 figure.

That's pieces of debris from, you know, spaceships that, you know, blew up in space or had some kind of accident or started to, you know, fall apart. Mass of objects in orbit. So the total weight of everything that's up there, 10,800 tons. Prediction of the amount of debris in orbit using statistical models. This is interesting.

Just so you know, that piece that's heading towards you or your garden or your cottage or your roof or whatever, the number that are over 10 centimeters, I guess in length, 36,500. But listen to this number. The number of pieces that are between 1 centimeter and 10 centimeters. Take a guess. It's a piece of space junk somewhere between 1 centimeter and 10 centimeters. One million.

There are a million pieces like that. You still don't want to be hit by that, nor do you even want to be hit by something that's between one millimeter and one centimeter, right? So that's pretty small. One millimeter and one centimeter, take a guess. How many pieces do you think there are out there orbiting the earth and eventually going to come down. 130 million pieces. Now, I'm telling you, the bridge, it gives you the information you need

when you decide to venture out of your house, walk down the street. Now you know what's up there and what eventually is going to come down. Now mind you, when it comes down from that height, no matter what size it is, you don't have to be walking outside. It'll go right through your roof. I'm sure. Now I'm not a scientist, so I don't know that for a fact. And if I've unduly scared you, I didn't mean to. Remember, most stuff's going to fall in the water, right? Okay.

I've given you something to think about. Don't ever say I don't give you things to think about. Because there you go. Tomorrow, Wednesday, Smoke, Mirrors and the Truth. Bruce Anderson joins us. Not sure what we're going to talk about. There's always things to talk about. And we'll find one or two or maybe even three tomorrow. So take care. Thanks for listening on this day. And we'll talk to you again in 24 hours.