The Duran Podcast - After Avdeyevka, what happens next? w/ Lt. Col. Daniel Davis (Live)

Episode Date: February 20, 2024

After Avdeyevka, what happens next? w/ Lt. Col. Daniel Davis (Live)

All right, we are live. We are joined by, one second here, we are joined by Alexander Mercuris in London. Alexander, how are you doing? I'm doing very well and very, very thrilled and delighted to have Lieutenant Colonel Daniel Davis, Colonel Davis, as I will refer to him, address him in this program with us on this channel. We have a very special guest with us, the host of Daniel Davis Deep Dive on YouTube.

Retired Army Lieutenant Colonel Daniel Davis, 21 years of active duty, including four combat deployments. Lieutenant Colonel Davis, tell us about your channel. Everyone can follow you on Daniel Davis, Deep Dive on YouTube. Tell us a little bit more about your channel, and then we will start the live stream. Well, I'm very grateful to be invited on this show. I mean, it's kind of one of the standards that everybody who does anything on YouTube looks to, especially in this realm. So I'm delighted to be here. So thanks for that, first of all.

Our channel, we're fairly new. We're about five months old now. I've been going on Fox, CNN, NBC, several leads other networks for, I don't know, five or six years since I retired from the Army. But I always felt that was so limited in what I was able to talk about. you literally get like 30, 40 seconds to answer a question and maybe three to four minutes of total time. And I'm like, you know, I've never able to really give a deep understanding to the audience about some really complex things. And so Gary Villapiano, a former Fox producer, and I got together last fall. And we said, hey, let's do a deep dive show specifically where we're able to give more context to things and give people an understanding of what's really going on,

especially from a military diplomatic and political background on things that affect everybody's life here. And one of the things that we really like to hone in on is that we always talk about what is the ground truth reality and whatever we're talking about, not what the right may want or what the left may want, but what is the truth on the ground. And then people can make up their minds about what they're going to think about a given situation. So we, we especially with my four combat deployments and time in the military, extensive time traveling around much of the world. during my career. So I've got a pretty good level of experience on, you know, some things from different people's perspectives. And that's another thing we like to do is, you know, it's not all one side of one person, but it's, you know, many people have different viewpoints on the same thing.

And so we're delighted to get a chance to actually get to delve into some depth on some of these things to so people can have a better understanding. Yeah. Fantastic. I have the links to Daniel Davis deep dive on YouTube in the description box down below. And I will have them as a pinned comment as well when the live stream ends. I recommend for everybody to follow Lieutenant Colonel Daniel Davis and his amazing show on YouTube. A big hello to everybody that is watching us

on Odyssey, Rumble, the durand.locals.com. YouTube and Rockfin and a big hello and a big thank you to all our amazing moderators. Alexander Merkiris, Lieutenant Colonel Daniel Davis. let's talk about the conflict in Ukraine. Let's is indeed because, of course, we've had dramatic news. Now, Colonel Davis, you may not know this, but today we've just had a report from the Kremlin. Putin has just met with his defense minister again.

They've just been talking all about Avdavka again. Lots of information there. They claim 2,400 Ukrainian casualties over the last couple of days. Of course, they don't tell us their own casualties. They never do that. but they told us about Ukrainian casualties. They have given some rather vivid accounts of the way in which the battle played out. We've learned about this mission of these soldiers who supposedly went through the pipe.

We've learned today, by the way, that they appear to have been mainly ex-Vagner fighters, which, of course, nobody knew before. I didn't. And also, the other thing is that Putin told us. holds, Shoegu, there must be no slackening. The attack, the offensive must continue. And lastly, we also got information that this bridgehead that the Ukrainians established on the East Bank of the NEPA has now completely collapsed, according to Putin and Shoyugu,

there's about five Ukrainian soldiers still hiding there. but all of the others apparently have left. So it looks quite dramatic. I think somebody completely unfamiliar with the events of war like me. I've been watching and following these events over the last couple of days. And grueling, tough battle over many weeks and months and then a sudden collapse because that's how it looked. Is that an accurate summit? It is.

It is very accurate. This battle has been going on for quite some time. And I remember it may have been as recently as the late spring of last year, where Russia had tried to make kind of a bull rush on the city with a lot of armored formations and just had their butt handed to them just to be blunt about it. The defenders did a terrific job. The attackers were very foolish in how they were launching the attack, but they just didn't give up.

And so then they started basically kind of a siege mentality. where they started going on, you know, more methodical, much heavy with firepower instead of trying to rush it with mechanized troops to soften the area up and then just incrementally go in there. What happened over time, and especially in the last month or so, is that the Russians started using much more air power, what they call the FAB glide bombs from their from their aviation organizations, where they launched them from a great deal. distance away far farther than the ukraine air defense can even attack and then these bombs were just methodically just wiping out on top of all the artillery that they're having on top of the the drones that they've no been adding to lot both for FPV drones as well as drones to drop bombs from the air and all of that was coupled with the fact that the ukraine side uh is under a shell hunger they have fewer and fewer artillery shells.

They still have a decent amount of drones themselves, but not enough to offset the loss there. So every way they were getting squeezed in. And finally, after all of that pressure had been building up, then finally Russia, as you mentioned there, they found a very clever way to get inside the defense through a tunnel network, which is really quite fascinating just by itself.

But once they did that, that seemed to be the beginning of the end because they got in behind the defenders, unseated everything they thought they had and they start trying to move around. They didn't have other positions to go to. And then Russia really started bringing on the pressure now then on the ground as well as firepower. And finally, defense just finally broke.

And they had to abandon the city. And it looks like the evidence is pretty strong that even though the Ukrainian military claimed that they gave the order to withdraw, it looks more like that they actually gave the order to stay, but that the troops themselves just finally abandoned the city. and then they tried to cover it over by saying they told them to leave. But the bottom line is that they have, in fact, left the city. Does it often happen that soldiers just abandon their positions in this way? Because I've not seen it happen on this scale in this wall.

I mean, mostly, as far as I can see, the Ukrainian army does what it's told. I mean, they're very disciplined, motivated fighters. They fight. and suddenly this collapse, this chaos, it suggests to me also, and maybe I'm wronging it, but a disconnection between the higher commands and what is actually happening on the ground. And was that your impression? And is this? I'll tell you, I think that several things are conspiring here against the Ukrainian side.

First of all, and I just interviewed on my show here a week or so ago, less than a week now, actually an American volunteer who's been working inside of Ukraine for years, actually for most of this war. So he's got direct access to what's going on. He fought for a period of time on the front line. So he's the one, in fact, that the Ukrainian fighters, as you had seen and talked about, are almost fanatical in their willingness to endure hardship and not give up. I'm not aware of any large-scale surrenders of this level anywhere in the war at any point, other than individuals here and there.

But when those troops, and this is what he told me, when they see that the U.S. Congress is not providing any money, they see that all the stuff that we're giving is now going prioritized to Israel and going in that direction, but nothing is coming back to them. And almost nobody else in Europe is either. This $50 billion package was actually over four years and it's about 25% of the needs administratively, and that's not even weapons and stuff. Nobody's talking about giving them more tanks, artillery pieces, et cetera. The shells have been going down. There's no apparent backfill coming anytime soon. And then the biggest issue, I think, was the firing of the very popular Zelousini and the bringing out of Serski, who had a very bad reputation, generally speaking among the people. And then when it looked like Serski told them to die in place, which is exactly what happened in Bakhm, because he was in charge of that one, too. And they know how that ended. And I think that that just cratered their morale. And then when they saw a chance to escape, to at least have a chance to live, It looks like they took it.

What's uncertain is, is that just a local issue that's now going to be resolved and then now the further defense is going to be fine? Or is this systemic and evidence of a bigger problem? That remains to be seen. You anticipated a question because I was actually going to ask you, do you think, in fact, that the decision to withdraw should have been taken sooner? Because I know a lot of people think this, that the moment they got through the pipe and all of that, it really was an undefendable position.

and that Siersky, to some extent, has this habit of clinging onto positions too long. I mean, that seems to be essentially what happened here as well. Well, so we've seen this from the outset in Mariupil, early in the war. The Ukraine side refused to withdraw from that area while they still had an opportunity before they were surrounded, and instead they chose to basically fight to the death. And it cost them thousands of troops that were killed and eventually captured. The city was lost anyway. They should have withdrawn to more defensible positions where they could have saved all of their troops.

They didn't do it. But then it had similar dynamics than Cerro Donetsk and Lisi Chansk after that. And then, of course, in Bakhmud, you had Zaluzni had been advocating withdrawing for there many months before the thing fell to other positions they already had dug, which were more defensible, which from which they could have inflicted more casualties on the Russians as they advanced. Instead, Zelensky said, no, absolutely not. We are going to hang on to this fortress Bachmood, and he wanted to keep it. But that's understandable emotionally, but militarily, Zaluzzi was right. It was not going to be something they could defend. And once Russians got into the outskirts on the far eastern side, the city was no longer

defensible and it was foolish to stay. But they stayed until literally the last building was pride loose at the cost of tens of thousands of Ukrainian forces, which were needed for an offensive that they didn't have. Now the same thing played out again here in Adivka, Zuluzni again, as far back as December that I was seeing in public in the Ukrainian telegram channels, they were saying that he wanted to withdraw from it then in November of last year. He wanted to say, he did say, we should stop the offensive because it didn't work. Let's acknowledge that.

And now shift over to the defensive and they should start building defensive belts, just like the Russians did the year before. so that they will make it much more harder for the Russians to come in and give them time to build up new forces in the rear. Zelensky didn't want to do that. He wanted to maintain the fiction of offensive. And so they didn't do it now then they have been forced out of Adivka. And by all accounts that there's only minimal defensive positions. And as you just pointed out there, I hadn't heard that.

You're right. I was actually on a different show. But this is what I expected that Putin is saying, we're not going to do what we did at Bachmood in 2023, which is they were exult. by the time they took the city and they didn't have any more forces. Now then they've got at least in two different areas concentrations of between 40,000 in one area and 50,000 in another, that it looks like they do have fresh troops to now exploit this penetration. Now, I'll just say it's really up in the air to see how effective Russia can be at this because they haven't shown any real ability to exploit an opening. So it's very much an open. But they do have about a year of preparing troops. So we're going to see what happened.

but apparently they do have the force to at least continue on. Can I just ask about the bombing, the fact that Avdavka got bombed quite early on in the conflicts, a member of the community who's actually an Indian army officer, former Indian army officer, said to me if you really want to break fortifications, the best way to do it is not with artillery, but with bombs. that bombs have a much more powerful effect on fortified positions than artillery, because they're bigger. They carry much more explosive. They do far more damage. Well, you fought in wars. If I remember in Kuwait war, Saddam Hussein, trying to build fortified lines. Is that correct?

I mean, is this view that bombing is more effective than shelling in terms of 55 lines? The best thing to do is to have a combination, a combined arms approach with a strong contingent on aerial bombardment because they have more penetrating power as long as you have good at targeting intelligence so you know where the fortifications are. And I think that's exactly what Russia did in the final phases here because you've got to understand that if Divka was turned into a fortress all the way back to 2014. So they had a lot of fortifications dug in there. And by all accounts, these FAB 500 aerial bombs just blitzed the place. in the last like two weeks and methodically just wiped out a lot of the fortifications that they had. My personal experience in going against the Iraqi fortifications in 1991 was that we had lots of aerial bombardments like substantial virtually unhindered aerial bombardment along with attack helicopters

and then we had our own artillery and then we came in with direct fire once we got within range of that, but everything was methodically going in and it was all coordinated. So that's obviously the best way. And they did have, you know, a lot of minefields there, but they were poorly constructed. So, and I can also tell you from my time as the second in command of an armored cavalry squadron in the first U.S. armored division in the mid-2000s, we did lots of training ongoing up against defended positions by the Russians in the Soviet Union back in that earlier days. But what we would have to do then is used again, and combined arms with lots of engineering equipment and the bombs in a coordinated opportunity. And if you're well trained, you can breach those minefields. But that was the

biggest glaring deficiency in my view of the Ukrainian offensive last summer, even more than the fact they didn't have air superiority or adequate air defense capacity, as hugely important as those are. They didn't have the engineering capacity or the training to know how to go through these minefields and they just stumbled right into them and lost almost all their engineering assets in the first 48 hours. It was unbelievable, really hard to watch because I've done those operations and I know how you set them up and man, I don't think they were set up very well for success and they certainly didn't execute that way. Can I ask you to repeat again a thing that you said to me in a previous program which perhaps people don't realize, which is how long it takes to train

a team of troops to carry out operations like this, combined arms operations of the kind that you've just described, because this was one of the great problems that you identified before Ukraine's summer offensive. I remember you writing about this, that the Ukrainian army just hasn't been given the time to train properly, to do this sort of thing, and that the entire army altogether is too raw, that the officers are too young, that they don't have the kind of experience, that there hasn't been the time to train the soldiers, and that just isn't that kind of coordination and understanding, not understanding, academic understanding, and actual instinctual understanding on the battlefield of what you need to do.

Yeah, that's exactly the right way to put it. And let me even back up a little bit further than that in May of 2022. So what is that? Like the third or fourth month of the war. I wrote a series of articles that said, okay, Ukraine was shocked at what happened here. They, you know, the Russians came in and even though they weren't as effective as they wanted to be, they took like 20% of the country right away. And so the question is, what can Ukraine do to fight back?

Now, they had been fighting in an eight-year war with Russia, but almost all from the defensive. So they didn't have offensive skills or manpower capability. or even training to how to do that. They were fighting trench warfare for all those years along the line of contact. So what I suggested was that for Ukraine to have a shot at driving Russia out, they would have to take between 12 and 18-month process. And by doing that, they would need to have as much fortifications along the line of contact as they could. Then they needed to build subsequent lines to go to fall back to because they would have to conduct a fighting withdrawal,

what's called an Oregon operation where you have as few people on the front line as you can get by with to still keep the line. But then you had this large formation of our recommended 75,000 troops that would train out of contact for a full year on how to do combined arms operation as long as they had the tanks, artillery and APCs to be able to do the job there. they needed to train for a year to be able to have a shot that then having a unit that could then coordinate actions on the line. That's what they needed to do. What actually did happen is that I put a lot of the blame on this on NATO. And what they did was they basically piecemeal this training out. They would send some troops to Poland. They would send another few to Germany.

They would send another to Romania and just piecemeal things here and there. They'd give some six weeks of training. Others had two or three months. And then they tried to pull them all back together. And then the problem without having the units fight together in a progressively larger scale. And by the way, let me point out what that means. Before we went into that big tank battle, I talked to you about in Desert Storm, our unit deployed in December of 1990.

And we spent a good almost two months as a coordinated unit at a regimental level, So that means three battalion size organizations. We did maneuvers all throughout the Saudi Arabian desert so that we would understand how to move together. And that's a well-trained unit already, but coordinated as a cohort as a large unit. They didn't do any of those. NATO didn't give them the chance to do any of that kind of training and even try to do it. And so now then when they throw them down in there, you don't have units that have cohesion. They've never fought together.

They've never done these operations at scale, not even in training. and then the biggest issue you hit while ago was that, you know, the brigade commander of their elite unit the 47th was a 29-year-old kid. I mean, he didn't have any experience to be able to know, okay, we need to do this now. I need to move this company here. Oh, this unexpected thing happened. All right, let me block it here and move this other company over this. He doesn't have that knowledge or experience.

So all you can do is react, you know, thin as something's in front of you. And you just don't know what to do. And that doomed it because nobody can operate into that. I don't care if you had, you know, whatever it was, 50, 75,000 Americans and put them in there with four weeks of training, we wouldn't have done any better. I promise you we wouldn't have. Absolutely.

Can I ask what you think of the Russians in this battle, specifically in Afdaafka? I mean, are they more coordinated and better than they were at the start of the war? Some people are saying so. Yeah, that's what, I was actually on a panel earlier today where too many in the West still don't want to accept that Russia has made changes. They want to still view Russia as being the bumbling fools that they were and the disaster in the opening rounds where they literally drove whole tank units up city streets without any cover and got bombed, where they tried to cross rivers and bunched up and made it easy for the enemy, just made horrific tactical errors. That army has been burned away over the last year and a half before this war here.

And you can see now at scale that they are learning how to do combined arms operations because they had they had the drone strikes. They've learned now how to work that in there along with artillery. Now with the air power going in coordinated with on the ground maneuver. And then of course, that very clever way that they found to use the tunnel system to get in behind. And then the fact that they hit coordinated multiple units from three different directions to come in to try to accomplish something unified on the ground. than they did that. So you can't say that Russia hasn't learned anything and that they didn't pull off something pretty impressive because the Ukraine side had enough capacity there. They probably could have held that place for another month or two if they did really well because they,

you know, they had held it a long time. But once Russia started this maneuver kind of operation that coordinated and combined arms, it changed the dynamics pretty quickly. So that's what I'm really interested to see what happens in the next level, especially when they get into the next medium-sized or above, how do they perform then? That's the real question I think I have. Because it certainly it seemed to me a much more sophisticated

operation than anyone that I have seen the Russians conduct at any earlier point in the war. I just wanted to say that, I mean, much more sophisticated than Bachmuth, or Mario Paul, or wherever.

Can you tell us a bit about drones? Because we're hearing so much about drones. I mean, the story today, it's very widely expressed here in Europe. I don't know whether it is in the US, is that drones, kamikaze drones can replace artillery. And we don't need that many shells. So the European Union, which failed to provide Ukraine with a million shells, they're not saying they're going to provide Ukraine with a million drones. I mean, can drones replace artillery? If they can, why do you need artillery at all? Perhaps an obvious question.

No. A banal question to ask. Can you- Drones have at least right now revolutionized ground warfare without question they have, both from an intelligence capacity, reconnaissance, and then definitely

on the FPV drones, the first person of you, where they fly into the targets, where they drop bombs, where they actually launch missiles. I mean, all different categories, and so many different, you know, tactical, operational, strategic assets that they have. So you can't fight without it anymore.

That's for sure. But what they have done is they've altered the way ground combat is done. They haven't changed it. They haven't, like, eliminated the way it had worked before so that now you don't need artillery. You do still need artillery. Drones can and are routinely knocked out of the sky with electronic warfare capacity. Not many people want to talk about that, but that's going on every time on the other side. I believe I saw in the late winter, the late to the end of last year that Ukraine was losing

upwards of some days, 10,000 drones in a single day to electronic warfare from the Russian side. And I'm sure the Russians had a similar number going down too. So you have to launch a bunch to get one thing done here. But an artillery shell is just a ballistic trajectory. You fire it and it falls. There's nothing you can do to stop it. There's nothing the enemy can do to stop it. The guy that the side that has more of those artillery shells is going to win.

The artillery shells also have a significant psychological impact. And we've seen it all the way from even before World War I, for that matter. But all the way through and pervasive right here is the constant shock wave of those explosions going off. It just rattles the defenders and it just makes it so hard to fight. I had limited experience with enemy artillery. And it wasn't pleasant in both Desert Storm and then also in Afghanistan. I had some near misses a few times and it'll ring your ears for a few days. And that was relatively low.

I actually was very low density. I can't even imagine what it's like for these people who live with it on a daily basis on both sides of the line. But you've got to have artillery. You've got to have tanks. You've got to have our personnel carriers because here's the thing. Drones can't take ground. Drones can't hold the ground. Drones can't drive armies out of ground.

You have to have armies to do. that. You have to have infantrymen to defend and to take. You have to have armor personnel carries to get to the ground and you still have to have tanks with direct fire weapon systems against other kinds of issues like that. So the side that's going to win is the side that's going to figure out how to use their drones to the maximum extent that they can to avoid and to bypass the electronic warfare problems and they've got the side that's going to deter the other side's drones and shoot them down or to block them so that they can't get them in. So counter drone capabilities. That's where I think the next big research and development kit's going to

be in the side that's going to be best going for future is the side that can figure out how to blind their opponent's drones and how to keep theirs from being blinded. That's what's going to succeed. I'm anticipating a question which will probably return to again in the program, is the United States ready for this kind of drone warfare? I mean, when I think of American drones, I think of big drones, I think of reapers and predators and global horse. and things of this guy. I haven't seen the U.S. military confront drones, these small kamikaze drones on this scale. Is this something that was anticipated in the U.S.? Doesn't seem to be anticipated here in Britain, if I may say. Well, so I wrote a series of articles when I was still

in active duty, one in the Armor Magazine and another one in the Armed Forces Journal, and one of them, the last one I guess was in 2008, where I said, you know, here's what the next future needs to be. And I specifically said, here's the drone for reconnaissance and attack, and then the counter drone capability. I said, this is where clearly where technology is going. We need to put a lot of effort in this. And, I mean, I was only a major at the time. So obviously nobody important to listen to me. But the fact is that it was going all over the place, nobody did anything about it, just around the edges only. They still, even when you were looking at how the U.S. Army was preparing for combat. It was basically a plused-up desert storm or 2003 operation

Iraqi Freedom where our armor rolled into Baghdad. You know, it was just a few, you know, just changing things up on the edge, but basically can still do in the same kinds of thing. In the 2020 Armenia-Azerbaijan war, that's the first time that any kind of scale that the utility of drones and their impact on armor really blew up. And I thought that would be the wake-up call and that we would start putting a lot of interest in. energy into it, but it doesn't seem to have until now, and now then we are. So I know for sure that there's, because I've seen a lot of articles where the U.S. Army is looking into all kinds of capabilities.

And, you know, they're putting lots of R&D into it. I know there's a couple of companies in particular that are really trying to be out front in this. And a couple of them in particular, one in particular really did foresee this and has been doing lots of R&D. But here's the thing. It's easy for us to cast stones at the Ukrainian Army. easy to throw rocks at the Russian army and how poorly they performed at the beginning.

But here's the thing, Alexander. Okay, we have a lot of combat experience, you know, all the way back to Desert Storm and then in Operation Iraqi Freedom and Afghanistan or whatever. But what we have experience against was a force that didn't know what it was doing in Iraq in both 1991 and 2003 or the Taliban, which didn't even really have an army per se, just a bunch of insurgents. We don't know what it's like to go against an army that has. has drones, air power, a navy, you know, large scale armor of its own.

We've never done that. We've never gone up against a force that has a drone capacity. So we don't know, honestly, how we would respond in a certain similar situation. But my guess is that based on how we've trained and how slow we think mentally over institutionally I'm talking about, I think that we would perform much more poorly than we believe we would and probably like both Ukraine and Russian armies have made a lot of terrible mistakes that they didn't think they would make. I don't think we're quite as good at that as we believe because we don't have that kind of training in a long time. Can I just ask about tanks?

Because again, one of the things I'm always hearing about is that this is the end of the tank. The war has proved that tanks are no longer viable weapons on the battlefields. And it's certainly the case that, you know, I don't see, well, it doesn't see the sort of Hollywood in I don't know how real this ever was, by the way, you know, mass tanks in action, trundling across the fields. Maybe that's not how tanks ever really worked. But certainly, the Russians seem to be using a lot of tanks. I mean, I see in the films all the time, lots of tanks operating all the time. Sometimes, though, in surprisingly small numbers.

I mean, what is the role of the tank in modern world? Yeah. So, you know, I mean, you can go all the way back. One of the biggest ones, I think, was in the 1940 German France War, where armor led by Goderian and Rommel made some major penetrations through the French lines and then just sped and rolled up the entire, you know, formation in a month and defeated the country in a lightning war because the armor broke through and was able to get in. So that definitely was no kidding then.

My own experience in Desert Storm, I mean, we had a. a three-day march with our tanks leading with the tanks up through the Iraqi defenses. And once we found their armor, which was dug in, we again led with tanks, a big tank charge in the Battle of 7-3 Easting. So that still was the case then. And armor played a big role in the 2003 invasion too. But when you're talking about a force-on-force situation, it's a little bit different. But the question you posed, is the tank dead? No, the tank is not dead. But the tank has to adjust. And now then the way we used them has to change because that's what the Ukraine side tried to do in June of 2023. They tried to lead with tanks, you know, breaching these minefields and they were just slaughtered,

whether it was the Bradley fighting vehicles, the Challenger tanks, the Leopards or the T-72s, whatever they had, all of them got blown up. I mean, they just, they didn't even make it to the first line. They did not make it to the first Russian line. They were blown up in the either by long-range fires or the mines. that were preceded that because they tried to fight the same way the U.S. did in 2003 in Iraq, but the conditions were very different. So what you have to do is you have to change the way you fight.

And that means the combined arms or warfare is more critical now than it's ever been because now it has to include the drones as well as artillery, air power, air defense, engineering assets and tanks and infantry. All of that stuff is necessary to agree to also with electronics. Warfare issues, communications, those are all inseparable. The side that can figure out how to do that is going to win because you can have good drones, but if you don't have the ability to take ground and to exploit an opportunity when it comes, then, you know, the enemy can recover and they can build more defenses.

So I don't think anyone's figured it out yet. That's something I give a lot of thought to. But right now, I mean, Russia and Ukraine are both doing it on the fly. And, you know, that's the best laboratory that you can have. when your life literally depends on it. But no one's figured it out very good yet. And if Russia does, then that could give them a literally catastrophic loss to the Ukraine side. If they figure this out, if the Russian side figures out how to put all that together in a way that can make a penetration through the now weakened Ukrainian lines, I mean, the war could literally be over in months.

It remains to be seen if Russia has figured it out. But that's what I'm watching for, because that's the potential danger for the Ukraine side. Tell us about what's about command and control. I've heard of this expression in this, because it sounds unbelievably complicated. You have to have commanders who understand all of these weapons, presumably, and how to use them, and presumably all the way up the command chain. I mean, the management skill that is required here and the communications, I suppose, I presume, you know, have to have, I mean, people, you know, providing the information for the data, you know, crunching and analysis and all of this.

I mean, the challenge of this must be absolutely enormous. I mean, you seem to have that worked out as far as I could see in Desert Storm. But, I mean, you know, it seems to have just got a whole level more complicated. Well, Al Jena, this gets back to the question you asked a few minutes ago about the utility and the criticality. of training and having trained people at various levels of different numbers of years of experience. That's where that comes into play. So I can give you our unit for an example and why this is so crucial. So we in that period told you where the whole regiment was training as a group a couple of months before we actually had enemy contact.

We would be going on there and we would do what's called battle drill. So we train first at a tank level. So you have a crew of four in there, right? And so they learn how to do everything that they need to do so that they can, without thinking, can just operate. Then you get the tank platoon together. And then now they do platoon drill so that they know without thinking what they need to do and so forth, at company. And then at battalion, and then finally up at regiment slash brigade. So you go through all those things.

And even in computer exercises, whatever, so you go through all these different scenarios and things that you could have. Then you get out in the field and the, you know, the guys who run the exercise will throw unexpected things at you. and you'll have to respond and you do these reaction drills, action left. You know, something unexpectedly happens right. So without thinking, you already know that you're going to do this. This is going to block here. These guys who are in contact are going to go immediately into the fire where the other guys are going to look for places to get overwatch fire.

All those kinds of things are done over years of preparation and training so that you don't have to think that much about it. And of course, the communications is vital because you have to be able to tell that flank unit, what you're going to do and what they need to do to respond. And as long as you have that and the experience, you don't have to give that much instructions because we've already done it a hundred times. And so we know how to do it. When you've never done it, when the guy who's given the orders is trying to figure out what to do on the fly, that means everybody else, the battalion, the companies, and the platoons, they're waiting for orders. So they don't know what to do because

they haven't trained on that before. And they've never experienced it. So that's why it is so vital to have trained units before. And this whole thought about trying to basically form an army on the fly, under fire, while you're trying to defend against an invasion is just asking the impossible because no one can do it. There are some things, Alexander, you can't shortcut. You can't shortcut experience. You can't purchase experience. Doesn't matter how much the Congress wants to send. Doesn't matter how much the European Union wants to send over there. You can't buy experience. That has to be done one-to-one. It can't be rushed. And until that happens, and command and control is extremely difficult.

I can imagine, I can just imagine the chaos, because that's the other thing that I get the sense of seeing some of this video footage. It seems to me that the sheer amount of willpower that must be needed from the sort of senior command going all the way down to try to prevent this type of fighting, that we see on the front lines just breaking down into chaos. It looks to me

like you're on the edge of chaos all the time and trying to order it, trying to impose your will on it, that must be exhausting. I mean, you must also have enormous reserves of physical and mental energy to draw upon. Absolutely.

Yeah, without a question, that's a necessity. That's why it's so important to rotate troops out a lot of times. Some of the units I've heard on really on both sides of the line, that's something they struggle with is that they don't have, because they have this, you know, 1,000 kilometer front line that has to be manned all the time and there's constant battles going on.

It's hard enough to be able to have reserve forces that you can move from one part of the front to the other if you have breakthroughs or the enemy breaks through and you've got to move people around depending on what's happening. That means you also don't have enough people to rotate people free. One of the things that the Allies did in World War II pretty effectively, both the U.K. and the U.S. there was that they had troops that they would have them in the line for a given period of time a month or so, and then they would rotate them out and bring in a new unit and send them back to rest and refit because it was crucial psychologically to be able to get mental rest as well as physical rest. And a lot of these guys haven't had any of that. And it's hard to imagine how you can keep the edge that time. I don't know that they are able to. And, you know, that could be also part of the reason why a lot of the units there in Avdivka, for example, cracked finally. Well, the brigade that was the leading one that was defending of Daewka, the 110th Brigade, which I think showed extraordinary courage, by the way. I think this has to be said.

I agree. Wholeheartedly. Extraordinary courage in defending up Darke. They were complaining months ago that they were not getting any rest or rotation. And right across Ukraine. There's been complaints from families, but there's also now increasing complaints from military units across Ukraine that they're just not getting the rotation, the rest that they need. And this is why this issue of mobilization in Ukraine has come up so much,

because the same men have been fighting continuously in some cases for almost two years. And they say, you know, we just can't go on doing this much. on good. Yeah, and I'll tell you, there's, there's, there's, they're facing an issue that's going to be a problem in Ukraine because I saw on a report just earlier today, uh, that was contrasting what the life is like and they're at the front lines and all these troops of the 110th, specifically you were talking about. And then it showed what was going on back in the western parts of the country in Kiev among even a lot of the same age group and the young people, it's, it's like there's no words. It's like there's somewhere else in Europe and just having a normal life. Uh, and that's starting

to wear on those guys. They're like, why are we out here all the time? And there's all these people back here who aren't at the front. And that's creating some enmity among the troops there. And that's something that the Ukraine side is going to have to be careful about. Now, of course, I read the media here in Britain. I read the media in the United States, not just professional military media, not places where you write. I've been reading a lot of what you've been writing, a lot of the military people have been writing. But I find overall the way in which journalism has covered this wall in the civilian media absolutely marked by great ignorance and refusal to acknowledge reality. Has this been your impression also?

Yes, 100%. It's so frustrating to me. I was on a panel earlier today where it's like this one certain expert was just talking. And all he did was highlight every either real or alleged failure of the Russian army from the beginning all the way through the current issue here. And then ignoring everything on the Ukrainian side. And I said, listen, I said, you got to look at both sides of the equation. You can't just look at one. And I know that we like Ukraine. I know that they were invaded.

Their cities are being wiped out. Understandable why we would want to be on their side. But if you turn a blind eye to the conditions there, then you're seeking an outcome that can't be. accomplished. And that's my biggest anguish right now is that we want to say, no, the Ukraine side, they can't. They just need more money. That's what our, what is it, Kirby, the U.S. spokesman at the Pentagon of the White House. He said, he straight out said that the reason why the Ukraine side was losing that Dibka is because we haven't given this $60 billion and let them have more artillery ammunition. Well, militarily, I can tell you that's not even related because

the absence of artillery is not because we didn't have some cash like we could. could go down to the store and buy a few pallets of artillery if we had the money. The artillery is not there. They're trying to make it as fast as they can. And we're still sitting stuff. There's very practical reasons. But instead of acknowledging those very practical, identifiable reasons, we're pretending it's just money.

So let's just keep giving more money and keep pursuing an objective that can't be militarily attained. Because who's the bill payer, Alexander? It's the Ukrainian people. It's the Ukrainian cities. It's the people who live around the line of contact. That's why this anguishes me because what we should be doing is saying this is militarily unachievable. Ukraine will never drive Russia out.

I don't care how badly they want to do it. Every fundamental in the world shows that Russia is on the position of strength and getting stronger. Ukraine is getting weaker. So let's encourage them to find the best negotiated deal they can get, which is not going to be pretty. It's not going to get any of the territory back, but it's doable. Putin has been saying.

saying the same thing from before the war at the short start of the war right after the war. And again, during that interview the other night, he says he's willing to negotiate an end this, which centers on the Ukraine not being in NATO. As long as they're willing to say they're going to have a neutrality status, then he's got something to work with there. So instead of going down that path, we're continuing Zelensky still says 1991 borders. And you saw just two days ago in Munich, where the vice president of the. the United States stood right next to Zelensky and said, we are going to continue to go until

as long as it takes and Russia is going to pay war reparations and some nonsense like that. It's totally divorced from reality. So now, what is the media going to do? They're just going to report what she said and what Zelensky said, but they're not going to look at the stuff you and I are talking about here today. I mean, this is not the first time this has happened. I mean, politicians throw money at a problem. I mean, that happens all the time.

But in war, you would expect this to be taken more seriously. And you would expect the politicians to be seeking advice from the military, the military in the United States, the military in Britain. Now, I should say I've had some contacts now with people in the military in Britain, less so obviously in the United States. And I get the feeling from the people I've been speaking to that they're not getting the proper advice. The politicians are not getting the proper advice.

They don't want to hear the advice, which is one of the major problems. But they are choosing the people within the military that they talk to. And they talk to people in the military who tell them what they want to hear. Is that your impression in the United States? It's a lot more than an impression. It's a fact. You have a former judge. General Ben Hodges, David Petraeus, Jack Keene, they routinely and exclusively say, yes, more money,

more arms, more this, more that, Russia can be defeated nonstop. And we have, unfortunately, a horrific track record of 20 years in Afghanistan doing the same thing to where you had general after general after general all the years of that war up till almost the very end saying, nope, they're turning the corner, they're getting better, the Afghan military is getting better. They can stand on their own. They're leading the way. All this stuff. I went on the ground in 2010, 2011, actually from 2005, but then again in 2010, 2011, and I wrote publicly while still in uniform, that's nonsense. Nothing of the cases going on. In fact, if you don't make these changes, we're going to lose this war. Well, of course, I was ridiculed and laughed at,

as you might guess, except that's exactly what happened. And for the very identifiable reasons that I pointed out there. But you had all these generals telling the public. politicians telling the media that things were going good and they were getting better all the time when in fact it was crumbling and falling apart before our very eyes. And after a while, you can't spend it anymore. And finally, reality imposes itself, which is what happened in April or August of 2021. And I fear we're heading towards a situation just like that here to where reality will one day impose itself on top of what all of this myths making is saying. I have to say, because we There's two questions that I think we've been asked to put to you.

But one of the key things that, you know, Prussians, and this is something I've, you know, it's well known in Europe, even I used to know about it. And I don't know much about military things, is that the absolute necessity for soldiers to tell truth to power, that war is just too important. for you just to tell the politicians those things that they want to hear. And if you don't do that, if you don't tell truth to power, you're not, you're not a soldier

anymore. You become a courtier. You're becoming somebody who basically is an opportunist and not somebody who is doing their job, which is what soldiers are required, you know, are trained to do. Let's put out this again. Yeah. Yeah. Well, I'll tell you, I have an answer for that. So during the time I was saying all these things I was in Afghanistan, when all the generals were going in for Congress and front of the media and all that saying the nonsense I did,

underneath that, other guys at my rank, which was a major and then lieutenant colonel throughout this period, they recognized the truth. They knew it. Every time I would go and visit, you know, a company commander or a battalion commander or certainly down on the line with the privates and the sergeants who were fighting. I mean, they all knew the truth. They all knew exactly what was going on. But the cameras never get down that far.

And you know who gets up to those positions of colonel and then, you know, one, two and three star general admiral is the guys who were politicians. The guys who know how to play the game and do what they're told. So it's no surprise that the generals who were the architects of the disaster in Afghanistan are the same ones the media turned to to explain why it failed. in 2021. And so they, you know, they're all just shaking their head and said if they'd done this or that different. No one thought, wait, you're the guy who was in charge in and it was a disaster. So why am I asking you now?

But that's how it works because the money. You can't get around this either. All those guys are hired by the defense industry. Like the vast majority of them are paid by defense industry, whether they're on the board, whether they're directly, you know, have a job with the company. And then they'll go and make these claims. up here. You don't get to that position unless you're willing to play the game, both politically and militarily and behind the scenes as well. And so as long as that's going to continue to be the

case, then a lot of the media, frankly, some of them are well-intended people. And they see stars on your collar there and they see you were a commander of this or that division or something like that. I mean, it seems reasonable that you would rather listen to a general than a lieutenant colonel, who is a mid-ranking guy. You know, to them, that's the way it seems. But they rarely go back can see what these people said and how it turned out or what these people say and how that turned out. If they did, they would be in a different state. But until that changes, it's not going to make any difference. And people will still give it the fiction and the media will still eat it up. I'm just going to ask one last question, which is something that I've been thinking. And I wonder

what you think about this, which is that the summer offensive, which we foisted on the Ukrainians, was an absolute and unmitigated disaster, that what Ukraine needed to do at that time was not launch an offensive, which it wasn't trained and prepared for against fortified Russian positions. It needed to stop, consolidate all those weapons that we gave them then.

The tanks, the infantry fighting vehicles, the shells, would have been much better conserved and gone into the defensive. And the reason why we're seeing these problems, this catastrophe in places like up to Africa is because as a result of the offensive, the Ukrainians burn themselves out. Alexander, you keep saying that you're not a military expert, but based on what you keep saying, sounds like you're more of an expert than most of the people I hear on TV.

That's exactly what should have happened. You referenced it earlier. I mean, months before the offensive, I wrote that it was a disaster in the making, that it had virtually no chance. it had only a little chance of some success, but likely was going to fail. And even the best case was going to be disaster strategically. And it was so identifiable. The reasons were so obvious and I pointed them out.

And, of course, that's precisely how it turned out. That doesn't mean that I'm a brilliant analyst. It just means that I'm looking at reality and seeing it on the ground and calling it. If Ukraine had done what you just suggested instead of what they did and solidified their lines as the Russians had done in the nine months prior to that beginning, and had spent that time building fortifications, Russia wouldn't be in Avdivka today. And you could then have said, all right, now Putin, if you want to try to go further, it's going to cost enormous amounts of troops and material and you might not even succeed.

How about we have a negotiated settlement and just call this a day? He would have had much more incentive to have a negotiated settlement in June of last year than he does now. when now that he sees he's on the march so they're moving forward so he's not going to be anywhere near inclined to give as good a deep uh the negotiated settlement now in terms that are even partially beneficial to kea now then he's like we'll let it play out on the ground which is what he said in December now it looks like he's doing it because we didn't do what you just suggested which was the rational thing to do the question before is now are we going to belatedly do that or are we going to keep with the fiction and lose more territory in ukraine

That remains to be seen. So, well, thank you very much, Ken. I think we are starting to run short of time because you've got a hard stop. I'm going to transfer to Alex now, but thank you for your forthright and clear answers to all my questions. My pleasure. Let's do a couple of questions, and then we'll do a hard stop, and Alexander will answer whatever questions remain, okay? To the extent you can. Yeah, to the extent that we can.

But let me find the questions that. I'm doing a pretty good job so far, so I'd listen to me. Let me find the ones that are very specific to Lieutenant Colonel Davis, and then we will let you go, Lieutenant Colonel. So before the show started, we had two questions from viewers. One was about the U.S. military. Do you think the U.S. military is in decline? And if it is, how long does it need to get back on track?

Well, look, we're not being helped by this war right here. I actually did a show on my channel, Daniel Davis, deep down, yesterday. afternoon on that very topic right now because there was a report that came out on CNN that said a lot of our operating funds have been going from the U.S. Army Europe into Ukraine so that we may have to cease operations in May. So like more than a half a year before the next time we might get some money, we'll have to stop doing training. We have been doing so much about this kind of thing, so much still over the last, you know, two decades of focusing on counterinsurgency going up against you know, guys who don't have army or air forces or navies or anything like that or any kind of mechanized capacity,

we've lost our edge. I assure you when my unit fought in Desert Storm, we had been prior to that on the east-west border between East and West Germany in the Cold War when it was a live border patrol mission because the Soviets could come across at any time. We always had to be ready for that. So we were trained to it, you know, on that knife's edge nearly all the time before we would rotate off. and another unit would come in there. So you're constantly studying, you know, doctrine, studying the enemy way they fight, their capabilities. Then you go out and you do it.

So we were at a high level, it's the highest type of combined arms operation you could do. We've lost that. We're no longer capable of doing that. We can't even recruit people right now because a lot of people see what I've been talking about where these generals say one thing on TV and normal people see another thing on the reality. So that's damaging it. So yes, it is without question.

and less capable than it was during Desert Storm or even during Operation Iraqi Freedom in 2003 because of everything that happened since that time. How long would it take to get it back? Well, until we make a significant change in what we're doing, that process won't begin. And I don't know how long it'll take because we really aren't moving in the right direction yet. All right. From G1-416, about the Kloshevich strategy, does it account for alliances like NATO? wiping out the enemy, does it account for alliances?

Well, Klozvitz was very comprehensive in what he talked about. He's talking about all different levels of war and levels of operations, you know, that the defense was a superior form of warfare. The offensive is the less strong because it costs more to try to accomplish it, whatever. But the bottom line was that there is a time and a place where you go for the destruction of the enemy armed forces, not like wiping his country out, but wiping out his ability.

to put up a significant defense. And certainly that is still as valid today as it was before. And that's what right now, Russia is focused on. That's exactly what they're doing a Klausvitzian. They're focused not on terrain, not on capturing territory. They're focused on destroying the Ukrainian armed forces. I think few people are aware of that. That's a lot of people look and they see the line hasn't changed much in the last year and they conclude that Russia is incapable. Well, I think that Russia is focused not on terrain, but on the destruction of the Ukrainian and armed forces because if they get it to some point, then they can break through and suddenly they may have a large game, which will shock many people. It won't shock me. It's still not a given.

Let me point that out. But what they're doing is a methodical and it's a well-planned operation and it remains to be seen whether it's successful. But that's what that's what Klausovitz would have suggested. All right. From Soapy Ork, 11A2-505 PIR, OEF, 2012. It has been interesting to see the tactics used in the SMO so closely mirror the training I received as an enlisted man in 2004, then forgotten when I became an officer. Is the U.S. military learning? Well, I mean, I hope they are. I've retired in 2015, so I haven't seen what's been going on since then. What I saw when I was in, the last time I was in a tactical unit was actually 2008. So it's, it's been a while since I've seen what's actually going on on the ground.

I like to hope that they are. But just based on what. I've seen. I'm not confident that that's the case, I'm afraid. Okay, a couple of more, and we will let you go, Lieutenant Colonel. From David, what is Daniel's comment on the training and arming by NATO to the Ukrainian forces for eight years, and now we must admit that Russians have handled the Ukraine Air Force pretty decently? Yeah, well, I mean, there's no question about that. I mean, the Ukrainian Air Force was probably never very good to begin with. They've got a lot of antiquated stuff. They don't have many of the modern fighters. I don't think they had any fifth generation

fighters at all or even fourth generation, if I'm not mistaken. But the problem is that Russia had a substantial number of S-300 and S-400 air defense systems as long as tactical units. So they had, they prioritized that before the wars came. So they had a lot of those things to put all throughout the line of contact as well as is deeper. And as you see, no system is perfect. many missiles have gotten through. And Russia's, especially their Black Sea fleet, has taken some serious hits, even though Ukraine doesn't have a Navy, but because of drones, naval drones as well as aerial drones and missiles, that's been a lot of the problem.

But Ukraine doesn't have it to give back. So the Russians, now that they're using their Air Force much more effectively at the tactical areas with these what they call FAB bombs, which are glide bombs, old dumb bombs that have now been equipped with basically the ability to become precision guided munitions, and they're using them quite effectively now. All right, two more. Two more. And we will let you go.

Sipcated caveman says, when it makes strategic sense for Russia to liberate Person City first, then move north up to the Dnieper and west towards Nikolive and Odessa. I would suggest from a strategic point of view and most importantly, from a logistics point of view, the most sense would make, it would go to Kharkiv first because they got the friendly border with Belarus, and then the closer to their own lines of reinforcement

and resupply. So the supply lines would be much shorter. If they tried to go in down there, especially down in Kirston, they would run into the same problems they did when they abandoned the Kirston City, which is extended supply lines. And it's easier to get knocked out because if if the Ukraine side again puts its effort in, it knocks out the Kerch Bridge, that'll put a serious cramp on there. But there's no single point of failure in the north. And the lines are shorter. So I would guess if they're going to do something beyond the current line, it's going to be up in Karky first. All right. And from Darwin. is right. Old Air Defender here. The U.S. Army has countered drone weapons, not for export.

Russians playing catch-up in this area, but making progress. My son, first grant U.S. Army to deploy drones 2006-82 ABN. Iraq. Can't really speak to what they're talking about there, but my observation at a force level is quite the opposite because Russia is doing it under fire And they're developing systems they didn't even have before the war, especially electronic warfare capabilities. You've probably seen some of these anti-dron guns, which fire electronic pulses of various kinds to try to block the signal. I'm sure we're trying to develop those kind of things, but we haven't had them for a long time for sure. But again, we've been doing things kind of incrementally, and we have a really bad track record for doing a lot of R&D. and when things don't work, kind of hiding the results and not doing things that makes sense.

So I'm skeptical that we could do it at scale, though I would love to be proven wrong. And so Bjork says U.S. infantry companies are still issued with terrible systems like Ravens and are not issuing COTS drones down to the lowest levels, nor training with them. Well, that's indicative that my fear is probably correct because we had those kind of drones when I was in the mid-2000s. So if we haven't upgraded from that, then that's a red flag by itself. And if they're not being trained, whatever, that's a big problem. And again, I go back to really the 2020 war between Armenia and Azerbaijan,

proved all that you need that the warfare had changed. And we should have been putting it into high gear then and not waiting until down 2024. Fantastic. Lieutenant Colonel Daniel Davis, thank you very much for joining us. Host of Daniel Davis Deep Dive on YouTube. That link is in the description. box down below, I will also have Daniel Davis deep dive on YouTube as a pinned comment as well. Please, everybody, follow Daniel Davis' YouTube channel for fantastic information.

Lieutenant Colonel, thank you so much for joining us. Thank you so kindly for having me on. It's been a pleasure. Thank you. Pleasure, all ours. We'll see you next time. All right, Alexander. Let's knock out these questions. Are you up for it? Absolutely. All right. Not a bad.

account let's see here not a banned account now that ukraine has consolidated their forces will putin be forced to cede eastern territories and finally negotiate a settled peace compromise in your dreams very better they bill thank you for that super sticker um what happened death dealer says what happened with the f-16 delivery is that even happening or did the west realize that they would get destroyed by the russian air force last the latest word is that the first ones will be delivered in June. And even more remarkable, apparently only eight pilots have so far been trained to fly them. And they're trying to train another 12.

That's what they're saying. And Yuri Ignat, who is the Ukrainian spokesman, very, very capable, likeable man, actually, of the Ukrainian air defense forces. He says that the fundamental problem is that they can't get the infrastructure in Ukraine sorted out because it's very difficult aircraft to operate. It needs good, clean, long runways, lots of systems. And, of course, with the Russians shelling and setting missiles all the time, that's very difficult to do.

All right. Paul Walker says Siskie is the most effective. General Russia has. Not a band of count says, which will Russia invade next? Poland or Finland? Neither. No, nothing.

Teg Durb, will civilians in Donetsk be safer now? Good question. Well, marginally so. I mean, when the Ukrainians were in Avdavka, they did use Avdavka, not the city itself, but some of the villages to the west of Avdavka, they had artillery positions there, and they did carry out artillery strikes on Donets City. But I'm going to say a few things here. Firstly, I saw a study of where the greatest number of Ukrainian artillery positions that were Shellingdornet City were located, were based.

And this is, you know, about a year and a half ago. And it was not Avdevka. In fact, it was a place called Krasnagarovka, which is to the south of Avdewka. There's two Krasnogorovka's rather confusingly. this one to the south is still under Ukrainian control. So they can still show Donet's city from there. They can also show, this is with ordinary guns. They can still show Donnet City from other positions.

The latest artillery strike on its city was carried out from another town called Kurovo, which is still under Ukrainian control. Once the Russians have cleared all of these places, it'll become more difficult for the Ukrainians to continue to shell Donet City. But long-range missiles, high-mars missiles and rockets, they would still have the range. And we're looking at many, many months of hard fighting before the problem. That particular problem goes completely away. The big question again, the military question, is why do the Ukrainians do this?

Why do they expend valuable shells and rockets and missiles of which they are increasingly short on Shellingdolnet City? I mean, it's unbelievably brutal strategy, which has achieved nothing except enraged the Russians and provoke the special military operation. And yet they're still doing it. I mean, they did it again yesterday. Chris Brenner, welcome to the DRAC community. Commando Crossfire. I think of that super sticker. Life of Brian says, given Burrell's focus on the narrative,

can NATO just lie that Ukraine has restored its 1992 borders when it is in fact annexed into Russia? Well, of course, all you have to do is make sure that all the newspapers and all the television stations tell you that thing. And who knows, it might even happen. And then, of course, you've got to make sure that the social media companies ensure that this narrative is adhered to. But of course, in the real world, it is otherwise.

And that's the problem. You can do an awful lot in the virtual world, but in the world of actual reality, physical reality, that is impossible. And Borrell can talk and say whatever he wants, but he can't change the facts on the ground merely with words. Natabandak count says, when will America finally send troops into Ukraine?

Well, that's a question that you must ask the United States. They sometimes given the hint that they might do it, I personally think it will never happen. I think that if the United States goes down that road, there will be enormous opposition from amongst the American people and some people within the US military. And I think that would probably provoke something of a political crisis. And of course, if American troops entered Ukraine and came. up against the Russians. Well, you've all heard what Lieutenant Colonel Davis has been saying. They're not prepared for it. The Russians have now had the hardest educator of all two years of actual fighting and war to prepare. The US military at the moment is not ready.

RL says often when discussing Ukraine east of the NEPER, people don't mention Sumi, Chernigiv and Poltava, what could happen to these three oblasts? Well, that is an excellent question. Now, Sumi, as I understand, is largely a Russian-speaking city. Chernigov, I believe, is not. Poltava is Ukrainian-speaking, but historically voted for the party of the regions, because it's apparently an industrial area. This is my understanding.

wrong. And I also believe that Poltava is located west of the Nipa, not east of the Nipa, but I might be wrong about that too. But of course, the Russians briefly occupied Sunni, right at the beginning of the special military operation. They never occupied Chernigov, but they almost surrounded it. Of course, if they do what Colonel Davis said, if they advance into Harikov region, it's difficult to see how Sumi and Charnigof could not become involved in a Russian operation of that kind. And for the record, I think he's right. I think the next big Russian operation will be in the north in Kharkov region, not in Hurson region. I think that that is something the Russians will do much later.

All right. Valies, thank you for that super sticker. Life of Brian says, hasn't Durand changed its perceived? core mission all since the SMO you seem to be more journalistic now I sense a tonal change like the Beatles after this after 65 note I'm a huge fan of both iterations can I just say I remember the Beatles but I was there I was there in 65 I was in London in 65 and I remember the Beatles then and then I came to London in 68 and I saw how different they were so I saw that change I don't think we've changed that much.

I mean, it's just that probably after, you know, years of doing this program, we, you know, we evolve and we change and we improve and we do things somewhat differently. But we've not thought of ourselves about changing things in any way. Joe Public says, Will Elenski return home after Munich? Good question. He has. I think he has, has it? Yeah. He went to Kupi.

He asked him. Yeah, he's on the tour of the battlefront. So I mean, he went to Kiev and then he immediately left Kiev. He doesn't want to be in Kiev. So if he can't be abroad, he wants to be with his soldiers. But he doesn't want to be in Kiev. He doesn't want to be close to where Klitsko and Zoluzni and Poroshenko and all of these people are.

And potentially the very angry people from the Third Assault Brigade, the Azov Brigade, who are probably streaming back to Kiev, very angry about, what has happened in mariu in sara in sara's says if the russians fight less professional do the ukraians lose professionally and by nato standards i i'm not sure completely understand that my impression is that the russians are now fighting very professionally indeed as a dvdegovs was a very complex operation carried out

very skillfully and i think that we're starting to see how well we're We are definitely seeing how two years of war and intense training and the sorting out of the command systems and all of that are starting to tell on the way the Russians conduct their war. Zashan, thank you for that super sticker. Sticky Mark says free Julian Assange. Thank you for the journalism that the Duran has brought to us. I'd be insane, crazy old cat lady, if not for the two great Alexanders. Thank you very much for those words. I should say that the first day of the hearing in Assange's attempt to get an appeal started in London took place today. And two people have just come to the house.

That was what all those dog sounds, if you had, people barking. They've just come from that hearing and they want to tell me what's happened. So I'll be very interested to know. All right. And will you share any of that? Absolutely, of course I will. I absolutely, that's why I'm, that's why they're coming. That's why I want to know.

Perhaps on your live stream on locals tomorrow. Yeah, I will, I will indeed, but, you know, no doubt we'll be doing programs on shows about it as well. Okay. Nico says, hi, Alex, Alexander, my fellow Greeks, I know it's small potatoes, but can you please talk about Mitsodakis? Trudeau is greater than Zelensky, who's greater than Mitsodakis on an IQ level. I'm not going to try and judge Mitsodakis his IQ level. I mean, we should do a program about Greece. We haven't done one for a long, long time, actually.

And I think we should actually. And I think you're quite right. I mean, I should say that Alex is much better informed about the situation in Greece than I am. I mean, he's there a lot of the time, for one thing. And the other person who keeps me well informed, but I haven't spoken to him for a while is my brother who can, no doubt, also provide a lot of things, a lot of information. But I think, you know, definitely we will come and have a program about Greece.

Salila, welcome to the drag community. Let's see. Paul Walker, military veterans manning complex weapons systems such as the Patriots, as no way can they be effectively manned by a conscript with minimal training. Will we see the same when, 16th arrive. Well, you know, the Russians have been saying over the last two days that to their knowledge, these complex systems that you've just been talking about, the Patriots and the others, are being operated by NATO personnel who are normally mercenaries. But they're not real mercenaries.

They're actually NATO personnel. And they're also claiming that some of these people were killed. in the fighting in Afdeiqa and that they have their bodies. So you may be right. At least the Russians think that, or say they do. Yeah. Rochas, thank you for that super sticker. Zisi, thank you for that super sticker. Torsten says, keep in mind that Russia is only fighting an SMO, not a war.

Maybe Andrei Martianov can one day explain the difference on the direction. He has already, we've done programs with him. And maybe we should do one sooner with him also. But you're absolutely correct. This is still only a special military operation, according to the Russians, which explains an awful lot about the things that the Russians have done and both also the things that they have not done. I mean, they haven't engaged in anything that resembles total war.

They haven't carried out total war in Ukraine itself. and contrary to what people endlessly say in the media now, they have not militarized their economy or gone over to a kind of total war system in the way that their economy is organized. It's an absolute myth that they have and a dangerous one, by the way.

Sophisticated cavemen says, Russia is a competent and sophisticated civilization. US, Europe, military and politics will dwell in delusion and spite until the fact is recognized. You're completely correct. In fact, I've done a, you know, earlier today, I did a big program with Glenn Dyson,

with Nikolai Petro, who is a Russian emigre family. And we discussed that very thing, that Westerners have this fundamental difficulty taking Russia seriously. And, you know, you see the same legends and stories, about Russian incompetence, Russian bungling. The Russians do everything by weight of numbers. Their weapons industries are Stalinists.

Their weapons are crude and unsophisticated. They don't adapt to klepmeis tactics. I mean, you see this repeated time and time again. And it's incredibly difficult to break through this. And until we do, we will consistent. get the wrong. David says Ukraine was the best trained the NATO force. How would the real NATO perform against Russia now?

I really shodder to think, actually. I mean, I've been hearing things about the state of some of the NATO militaries, the European militaries, which are just astonishing. The British military, which is the one I'm obviously closest to because, well, I'm British and I live in prison. Apparently that is a very, very poor state. And the same is true of many of the other militaries as well.

People are talking about increases in defence spending and putting, you know, arms factories and things like that, you know, into service and militarising Western militaries. But the actual reality,

what's actually happening is the diametric opposite. You heard what Colonel Davis had to say that the United States military is itself now short of equipment because they're sending so much to Ukraine. And this is a problem for the U.S. and it's an even bigger one for NATO, for the NATO militaries, the European militaries, whereas with the Russians, every tank and every shell they produce is for their own use, not for someone else.

they're bogged down in Ukraine Collective West Fragments of USSR Huge shortage of trained manufacturing personnel in the U.S. Project Relocate Taiwan failed What's being done to solve

this military hardware production problem at home including microchip production? You know, I was watching a program about two weeks ago with Under Secretary Bush who is a Pentagon official and he impressed me actually as a capable man

and he did explain what the US is trying to do to get shell production in the United States increasing. And it's proving very hard. I mean, there are lots of bottlenecks and problems. They've only doubled shell production since the time of the start of the SMO. They've only increased shell production. Still, it's under 30,155 million rounds a month. but they are hoping that it will start to increase to perhaps 80,000 rounds and months by 2025. So, I mean, you know, next year.

So at least the Americans are doing something at one level. But in so many other sectors, there are problems. And he basically said, you know, that in missile production, problems are simply, you know, intractable because these are private industry and you can't just order private industry to do things. It takes time and it's difficult. And of course in Europe it's much worse. And there's apparently problems between the various military industrial complexes and the various European countries. The French, for example, are refusing to pull resources with the others.

and the Ukrainian foreign minister Kulayber is complaining that a 155 million millimeter shell made by France might not work with a 155mm gun made by Germany. Or if it does work, it works in a different way than a German shell would do. This is very confusing for the artillery soldiers who have to operate these guns, whereas the Russians have a completely centralized and smooth artillery production system. Summer of 1970 says Free Assange. Zareel says Free Assange now. Paul Walker says footage of shell shock on the Ukrainian side, as well as injured female troops crying in the trenches. Yet still, they have sent even a Down syndrome runner in the trenches is shown.

It's truly shocking. It is absolutely shocking. I cannot begin to tell you how distressing it is to see these pictures. And of course, I see them every day. Spock 23, thank you for that. Awesome. Supersticker Sopy Ork says, I remember telling our Afghan partners and the ANA I worked with, we'd be there as long as it takes.

None of them survived the Taliban. No idea. Tabernak says, will Trump be forced to pay the huge sum in New York? You know, we really need to talk about this. Maybe we need a program. All I'm going to say about it in this program. I said it also, by the way, on my program that I did for my channel, this is the most ludicrous, the most insane decision I've ever seen come out of a court.

A case brought where the victims have actually been made richer by the alleged perpetrator. So there is literally, not only there is. no loss, low loss. There's actually this actual gain. A decision to convict him without a trial. It was all done on the summary basis. So there were no real witnesses were brought forward. I mean, none of the banks, for example, gave oral evidence saying that they had no problems. And then a calculation and a result of damages, a fine. that is insanely out of proportion. I mean, if a technical offence was committed,

and I'm not familiar with the lawyers in New York, given that, as I said, the victims, who don't always consider themselves victims, actually benefited are richer than they would have been if they'd had no dealings with Trump. This merited, at most, a token fine. We've had this ludicrous judgment and apparently attempts to restrict Donald Trump's appeal rights. I mean, the whole thing is crackers. And Jonathan Turley has written well about this.

And he says, the New York Court of Appeals must now act to sort this out. And if they can't or won't, then it really does need to go to the Supreme Court of the United States. This is so agreed. and ridiculously wrong that he can't be allowed to stay. Well, I hope that is what happens. New 2 says, thanks guys for doing good work for the world. Thank you for that. Nick, thank you for the super sticker. Alexander says, would a war with China topple the US government?

I think if we get into a war with China, well, first of all, that would be an insane thing to do. But secondly, it wouldn't just be the US government that would be toppled. I'm afraid. I mean, this would be an event of epochal significance. I mean, it would be a clash of titans on a colossal scale. And I would be, you know, what happens to the US government is the least of our worries. I mean, it would have a devastating shock on the US economy. Oh, not on just the US economy, on the world economy.

It would have a devastating effect on international relations. It would change everything in the Pacific. And that's saying all of those things, even without starting on the question, whether it might escalate into outright nuclear exchanges and World War III bringing in other countries. So, I mean, I don't want to dwell too much on this, but it is something we should be working to avoid at all kinds.

Death dealer says if F-16s isn't being flown in Ukraine and being flown from a NATO country, what will Russia do? Will they hit an airfield or leave it alone? They've already said, now, of course, we don't have, you know, honestly are. But apparently they've given warnings both to NATO and to the potential countries involved, that if they do provide basic rights for F-16s, then as far as, the Russians are concerned. They're engaging directly in the conflict, at which point the Russians would consider themselves justified to respond. Tabernak says Putin mentioning failed cooperation in

missile tech in economic matters shows again the Russian preferred a different outcome. Failures benefited China. I think that's a Chinese emoji flag. Yeah. Yeah, I mean, this is completely true. I mean, you know, I think that relations between China and Russia would have improved. I mean, anyway, there was no reason why they wouldn't have improved after the end of the Cold War. They were really starting to improve in the Gorbachev era. So they would have continued to get better. But we would not be seeing this de facto partnership, this grand strategic partnership of cooperation, coordination for the new era,

as the Chinese call it, what is to all intents and purposes, an alliance emerge. And that is a direct product of this way in which Western governments have mishandled Russia. From Elsa, Kupiansk will fall next after Olensky's visit. Very possibly. Everywhere he goes, the cities fall. John Ski says, can you answer the truth of this? I cannot seem to get real info from anyone. Is Putin a member of the W.E.F?

And does he support the W.E.F. goals? No, he has answered this many, many times. No, he is not a member of the W.E.F. And the last time he attended, he said, all kinds of things, which had everybody there furious, including Klaus Schwab, who he made some really not, you know, clever, but ultimately brutal the sides about, which apparently Klaus Schwab didn't like at all. So, yes, he has attended to W.E.F. And apparently he went to some kind of school or other that was connected with it.

But he is not, he is, he is straightforwardly, it's a potent. I mean, let's put it in that way. Paul says, please have Andreas Antonopoulos on Nation states versus Bitcoin talk. Okay, ma'am. We'll try, yeah, Andreas Antonopos, okay. R.L. says, Russia might leave a part of Western Ukraine for the EU, economically too small to survive, but big enough for the EU to choke on it. Sadly, Western and Ukrainian leaders hate the Russian people more than they love their own.

Well, you may very well be right. I mean, I think that the question of how Ukraine is going to come out of this is still a deep topic of discussion in Moscow itself. I do that they come to any definite conclusions, but it might very well turn out with you, sir. Cool, Roy says, Russia has been on the verge of attacking us since 1947. What are they waiting for, L.OO. Sure enough. Elsa says, A and A, thanks for your work. Don't forget some rest.

Thank you for that. NGS says, have you considered doing a program with the mappers? Could be really interesting after Avdifka, Dima, Wyatt, DPA, WEEB, Union, maybe all of them. That would be a very, very interesting idea. I suspect it be a little bit like herding cats because bear in mind, they're all competing to some extent with each other, but it would be an interesting idea.

We've done programs with Dima. We've done two of them. And with Wyatt. And with Wyatt, absolutely. We've done two programs. Yeah, that's right. We've done one with Wyatt and two with Dima. Dima, by the way, is on Avdavka,

he has been absolutely on fire. Samuel says, Hi, guys. Greetings from Italy. as you know, what is the current monthly shell production rates in the USA, EU and Russia, respectively? We know the USA because that program with Under Secretary Bush told us it's about 28,000, 155 rounds a month, which is more than it was at the beginning.

It was 14,000. But they're hoping to increase it next year. We'll see. In Europe, it's much worse. Now, the last figure I saw for the whole EU was 4,000 rounds a month, but that was in about, I think, September. The French Defence Minister now claims that France has increased shell production to 3,000 rounds a month. Perhaps others have done the same. Who knows?

What the Russians are producing, nobody fully knows. but I've heard a figure of 400,000 rounds a month, 400,000. Melkor says Ukraine just hit Donetsk again. Two dead civilian, six injured at the moment is the count. Well, there you go. I mean, that answers the point that was made before. They're still within rage. Tapato says a few weeks ago, you mentioned Lenin's quote about weeks and decades.

I'm starting to believe we are living three. years where centuries happen. Yeah. We are in an epochal time. We are at a point where the old world, the unipolar world, which has only been relatively short, I mean, about 30 years,

is ending, and the multipolar world is emerging. And in some ways, if you think of it in that way, it is not entirely surprising that this has been a time of great tension. Some months ago, Glenn Deeson and I interviewed an Indian ambassador, and he said that they'd been hoping in India that this could be a negotiated transition. And they're very, very

disappointed that instead it has been resisted. And of course, if you're talking about people like Victoria Newland and people like that, and given the influence she has in the US, it was inevitable, I suppose, would be resisted. It's the Thucydides trap. It's the classic. Yeah. Exactly. Yeah, it's classic.

Fragments of USSR, US sees EU as a rival. They are clearly using these events to destroy them. What chances there are backstage deals between the CIA and Russia to systematically destroy the mutual rival? I don't think this is the case, actually. I don't think the Russians would have entered into deal. were the Americans that destroyed the EU. Because the Russians, if you actually look at what they were doing before the 2014 crisis, they were working to get into good terms with the EU.

It was the EU that was creating all the problems, not the Russians. It was the EU that came up with the association agreement that they tried to foist on the Ukraine and all of that. I agree that U.S. policy has been deeply destructive of the EU economies, the country, the economies of the EU states, and specifically a German, but disastrously so. But two things to say. Firstly, that's a bad policy anyway. I mean, if you are a superpower and you want allies, you want strong allies, then it makes no sense to me to weaken those allies and undermine them.

All you're doing is weakening yourself in the end. So that is one. The second is, I don't think the EU as an institution has become weaker as a result of this war. I think even as the states, the various European states have got much weaker and in deep economic crisis, the EU institutions have become much stronger. I mean, you know, they're now taking steps. Ossil now talking about, you know, they're becoming involved in arms production. I mean, they've used this crisis to intensify and accelerate the process of integration,

even as the countries of the EU are becoming emiserated. And I think that is the reality that people need to want to. understand. So I don't think the United States has weakened the EU as an institution. It's made it stronger. It's the EU economies, the economies of the member states, and the people of Europe who are paying the price of all of this. Yeah, that's the problem, though. I mean, can you have such a strong center when the periphery is collapsing? I mean, no, it will eventually pull the center down. I mean, That is what will happen in the end.

But I doubt that people like Ursula see that. I mean, that's the trouble. Yeah. Industrial farting complex says, what is the best angle to argue for peace with Iran from a U.S. perspective? What is the best angle to seek a peace with Iran? I think you have to do it in a fairly, you have to use small steps. but I think the first thing you should do, actually,

if I was the US, I would suggest opening diplomatic relations. That is the first thing. And I think I would tell the Iranians, look, you've got all of these schemes and plans in the Middle East. Ultimately, what you really need is economic development, rapid economic development. and you are much more likely to do that successfully if you come to a stable arrangement with us rather than try to compete against us all the time. So, you know, let's agree to have a stable, peaceful, quiescence situation in the Middle East. We won't attack you, we'll slowly ease off the sanctions against you.

You open up all your facilities, give up whatever plans you have. nuclear weapons or that kind of thing, which the Iranians deny they have. And they've never really made much sign of wanting to acquire. Work for that and involve Iran in the regional structures in the Middle East with the United States involved in them as well. And I think it would work. Why wouldn't it? Nino, NPC says Putin has just come out and said

at the current rate of Russian army victories, the war will be over in September 24. I've heard this, and I haven't actually seen the commentary yet. He had a meeting with Shoygoo in the Kremlin. I saw the report just before we started this program, and I haven't read it fully through. I would be surprised, actually, if Putin had said something as straightforward as that. he's never actually given dates like this before. And, you know, it could be that this is a misunderstanding of his words, or perhaps it's been said by someone else and attributed to Putin.

So I'll need to see exactly what Putin said, and it'll be something we will talk about when we next do videos together. Alex and Al. R.L. said some Western leaders talk about the Ukrainian war or some kind of business venture. It really saddens me. always remember the opposite of love is not hate its indifference you're completely right i mean i've nothing to add to that very uh moral and correct statement all right alexander that is uh that is

everything those are all the questions once again um a big thank you to lieutenant colonel daniel davis for joining us on this live stream uh his information is youtube channel info is in the description box and I will have it as a pin comment as well. Alexander, any final thoughts before? Yeah, I would just say one thing, which is just to come back to a point that Colonel Davis said about the fact, you know, that we seem to be tell key,

say more sense than many experts do. The reason Alex and I are able to say more sense about this world than many experts, not experts, many leaders and people like that do, is because we listen to the action. actual experts. We go to people like Colonel Davis who are real experts. It's on the basis of their expertise that we're able to give the commentary that we do. But we search them out and we listen and study what they say. And that is not a simple thing, not by any means. Two last questions,

Alexander. Then we'll sign out. Papperdak says, was Putin issuing a personal threat when he mentioned rice, etc. by name while talking about missile tech, no running from Zeus hypersonic lightning. I'm not sure I know that. I think the Tucker, during the Tucker interview, didn't he mention

Condoleezza Rice? I think Connoisseurice. He was. He was talking about that. I think you're right. I do that he was making any kind of personal threat against her, actually. Or personal threat from her. But I mean, he clearly didn't relish his interactions with her.

Yeah, and a final question from Jam. Who really runs the West? People would say the U.S., but the U.S. seems like a vassal state of Israel. Is it really APEC? How can they be stopped? No, it's not APEC. It's not Israel. It is the shadow government in the United States,

the elite consensus that exists there, which unfortunately is dominated by people of neocon views and globalists and people like that who have completely lost touch with reality. and who are driving the United States to disaster. That's what I think. All right. Thank you to everybody that joined us on Rockfin, Rumble Odyssey, YouTube, and the durand. Dotlocos.com.

Thank you to our awesome, amazing moderators, Vali, S.T. Jordan, Zaryel, Peter. And I think that is everybody. Did I miss anyone that was moderating? I don't think so. So thank you to our moderators and, Alexander. I guess we will call it a night. Take care, everybody. Good night, everybody.