The Duran Podcast - Military update. WEST still believes STALEMATE w/ Stanislav Krapivnik

Episode Date: April 2, 2025

Military update. WEST still believes STALEMATE w/ Stanislav Krapivnik

All right, Alexander, we are joined today with Stanislav, who was with us on a live stream about two weeks ago on a Duran live stream. We are happy to have you with us again, Stadislav. Before we get started talking about the military situation in Ukraine, where can people find you and follow your work? Gentlemen, thank you for having me on. I've got a YouTube channel, Mr. Slavic Man, with a... K for another C. I've got two telegram channels, Stas Tuday Abratna, in English. That's for the Russian language one. And then Stas was there for the English language channel. All right. Now we'll have those channels linked up in the description box down below as well

as a pinned comment in the comment section. So Alexander Stadislav, let's talk about what's happening in Ukraine on the front lines. Indeed, and let's focus on the military situation because there's a huge amount of discussion about this in the media. And as I'm sure you know, Stanislav, there's been a lot of diplomacy at the moment. And a lot of the opposition and hostility to the diplomacy that Donald Trump has been trying to carry out in order to bring the war to an end. A lot of the opposition in Europe is predicated on the assumption that,

the war is again in stalemate and that the Russians are running out of momentum, that they are in fact exhausted and that they can't keep this thing going much more, and that all we have to do is wait a few more weeks, months, and eventually something will happen on the battlefronts, which will presumably cause the Russians to crack in some way. Now, is that your conception of where we are? Is that where we actually are? Because I'll say straight away, I don't see this, but you're closer to the situation than I am. And perhaps you could tell us what you think.

Right. Actually, should be going down there within the next week and a half. So I'll be able to give you a much better update. Well, first of all, let's begin with Europe gave Russia a very, very big gift, particularly when it comes to the grain deal when it said no. But most people don't understand. I think the main misconception right off the bat for most Westerners, particular politicians, is that Putin is some kind of dictator.

He can do on a whim whatever he wants to do, which is very far from reality. Putin is also very legalistic. So he's actually quite limited in what he can do, which most, Western politicians don't seem to understand. It's like, oh, we'll talk with him. And then, okay, fine, maybe we'll give him the Dunbos. He'll give back the other territories that Russia's occupied. Well, he can't do that.

In fact, the Russian military cannot stop as long as any of those territories have now been accepted by referendum into the Russian whole are fully in Russia. So as long as there's one square centimeter that's occupied, it's a state of war, basically. Whether it's a declared state of war, not declared, it does. doesn't matter. By the Constitution, everything has to be returned within the Russian boundaries, which means Zaporosia City and surrounding areas, Kursan, which is on the other side, 30% of Donetsk Oblast, which hasn't been reconquered yet. Lugansk is almost, it's like 99%, I think, was what they were saying. It's about 1%. It's a very small area left. And of

course, the too small settlements still held in Kursk, and the monastery Gordno, which is also still held in Curst, which, by the way, interestingly enough, Gordo, which is a monastery, was the first one to get attacked, was the first settlement to be, if you want to call it a settlement, to be attacked by the Ukrainian army, direct tank fire on the monastery, which says a lot about who you're fighting with, what you're fighting with, and against whom you're, and the ideology that they're fighting with. There was, you know, there was a very, very palatable fear from not only in myself in this case, but talking with several generals and colonels that I know and talking with people on the ground and talking with people who were there doing aid delivery or doing reporting and their talks. Everybody is afraid that the government was going to make some kind of a deal. I should put it

Russians want peace but they don't want another Minsk 3 or another Istanbul accord they want victory and the drive with everybody is we've gone this far we're going to go to the end and the end is

we can't accept this government in Ukraine in any form or shape we can't accept this ideology next door no matter what so the drive is we're going home to the end to the very end so the same thing

say 1944. Nobody would have accepted if Stalin said, okay, Adolf, let's make a deal, we'll split Poland or whatever, we'll stop there, and that's it. Well, no, no, that would have never flown. It's the same thing right now. The country's committed. Granted, not everybody, of course, but about two-thirds of the population is committed, and it needs to be done to victory. As far as the military on the ground, no, units are being rotated. Let's begin with that. I know one brigade in particular He just got pulled off the line They've been on the line in Zaporosia

for, I won't say which brigade number But in the Zaporasia area And that's not what even wanted the active fronts But they've been not active In Zaporosia area for About half a year They've been pulled out, rotated out New brigade's been rotated in

So there is rotation, continuous rotation. There's another thing And everybody's hoping with this And I'm surprised it hasn't happened yet, to be honest. There's a coveting of forces. So what you see on the ground right now is about some around 5,000 to 600,000 on the line and in the near rear. But there's a coveting of around 300,000 forces. So you're talking about basically two tank armies that have not been pushed into battle yet.

They're being held in reserve. And been held in reserve and being prepared. and been enforced for the last two years. Quite a few people, including myself, thought that you would have the big action sometime toward the end of 23, okay, 24, and nothing yet. They're there, but nothing. So obviously they're there.

Obviously, there's a very large fist. That could actually be two fists, slightly smaller, but able to strike through. So with the Ukrainian lines beginning to collapse, the attrition is working. I mean, the casualties are, well, for modern warfare over the last, since World War II, the casualties are very high. It's just a matter of time. Are they going to be used or are they not going to be used? And we're going to see one of those large arrow movement type maneuvers.

We see something on the side size of not just even a division, but a four-level. level breakthrough with rapid advances. You said on our previous program, our live stream, something which I found very interesting. Now, I've seen it mentioned in other places, and I mentioned it. I passed it on myself, which is that Donbass is very difficult country to break through in. The ground is very soft, apparently, so it's not actually particularly good for armored vehicles. It's very built up. There's lots of rivers and natural barriers. And of course, the Ukrainians have had a long time to fortify it. So what I remember you saying is that there's

nothing analogous to that elsewhere once Dombas actually falls, that in effect, it's like a kind of shield that protects the rest of Ukraine. Did I understand you correctly about that? this because this is, I think, something that is absolutely never mentioned in the West. It's certainly never talked about. But is this, did I get you correct on this? Yes. As far as the ground, the ground is seasonally unpassable. Basically, during deep winter, of course, the last two winters have not been that cold. This winter wasn't cold at all. Even as far north as Moscow, January had 22 days that were above freezing. So the ground never really froze hard.

It did it a little bit of February, but it's a very limited amount of time. And you've got to remember, this is Luganskis' 450, I'm sorry, about 550 kilometers southwest of Moscow. So it's already a different climatical zone. Once you get south of Veronish, it gets much warmer and much more sunshine than you do north heading toward Moscow. So 300 kilometers south of Varanish, you're starting to hit the black soil zone, which is actually a very large area. So when the ground is wet, now when the ground is dry or frozen, tanks will roll very easily. And western west of the Nepper River, it's the same thing until you get about towards at least another third into Western Ukraine. Then it starts to change.

but the ground during the summer the ground is hard I mean tanks will go easily across that ground and even if you get rain unless it's a rain that lasts for like a week to two weeks the ground is still very firm fall when the heavy rain starts around the end of September beginning of October you get a month

month and a half two months of rain depending you get about two months of rain so the tanks can't pass with that And in the winter, when it all starts to melt, then you get the same effect. So this winter, like I said, this winter was very soft. Winter, mild winter, sorry. There wasn't that much snow.

So the dry terrain should come around, unless there's heavy rains, the dry terrain should come around much earlier than regular. So I'd expect it by mid-April, maybe even early April, depending on the rain. And winter. If it's a cold enough winter, you know, thanks for roll on that. But during the other times, right. Yeah, you can't go through. Now, but that's one issue. That's one issue. The biggest issue, and it was an issue back in 1944, too, is the Donbos is a huge, very deep and very long agglomeration of settlements. You break out of one settlement and then two, three kilometers, you're in another settlement. And that's only gotten, as you had urban sprawl, you know,

you get Danyetsk, the next settlement, it's like in the U.S. And you've been in the U.S. You leave one city, but it never stops. You know, the urban sprawl just keeps going for another 20, 30, 40 kilometers. It's just built up and going out of any major city. It's the same thing. So it forms a natural barrier because, again, you have to fight house to house. And the Ukrainians since 2014 were reinforcing, trenching, bunkering, I mean, they were pouring hundreds of tons of cement, reinforced cement. They were putting in elevators in areas to put artillery pieces underground. They could push them up and open fire, machine gun posts, the same thing. So it was an extremely difficult to rate.

44, the Germans that prepared defenses there too, but they didn't have that much time to prepare the way that, Ukrainians have had. But the Red Army in 43 and the 43 began 44 was also difficult breakthrough. But once they got through it, it was just a run to the Niepper and then even on the other side of the Nepper, the Germans weren't able to hold. So basically looking at the same thing. Now with Pekrovsk, Pekrovsk makes a whole different reality because everything to the northeast of Pekrovsk, that entire front line feeds off of Prakrovsk. Now the southern branch of Pokrovsk main artery has already been taken and cut off. Going back to Dnieppe Petrovsk from Pokrovsk or Krasnarmes, that rail line while still active is under

direct fire. So it's under, it's basically under a tactical siege. So getting anything into Pokrovsk is already much, much more difficult. And thus feeding the northeast becomes almost impossible. It's still working, it's still working, but it's already, uh, much lower volumes, which is why they're fighting so hard for Pekrosk, because if, well, when, not if, when, not if, when Pekrosk falls, that entire line up to Svatova is cut. There's no supply. And then those forces either have to very hurriedly retreat west toward Haikov or face being cut off, being rendered without fuel, ammunition, and being basically effectively being non-combatting.

Why are the Russians putting so much focus on advancing south of Pakrovs, southwest of Pakrovs? We've had reports over the last couple of hours that they've been pushing, that they've captured a village, apparently it's an important village called Zaporozia, not to be confused with the city of Zaporosia. Are they heading to the Dnieper? Is this, or are they looking to establish a long front line to outflank Pakras from the south? which is a lot of what people are saying. I mean, is it the NEPA that they're moving towards, or are they looking, as I said, to cut off Pachrosk because Pachrowski itself would be a difficult place to capture?

Short answer is yes. This opens up. Well, it's a possibility. It's called opening of a flower, right? Because you take a position and then you can open up in different directions, like a plant or flower going in different directions. If you're heading toward the Nepper, and you're heading even southwards, you start to outflank those southward positions, those Chassev yards, those, and going all the way rolling up toward the actual Zaporosia. Because Zaporosia, what defends Zaporosia in those areas well is that it's absolutely flat terrain.

And this, it's difficult to hide. So the fight over Rabotina, the Russian forces held the high terrain. Robochina was in the low terrain, and we're not talking gigantic hills here, but 100 meters is 100 meters, right? And it was very difficult to fight uphill. The Ukrainians held Rabochena strictly out of political because it's absolutely pointless as a strategic point. And there wasn't a town left. There were basements, basically. They were fighting out of basements. I mean, that small village of three parallel streets was wiped off the face of the Earth, turn, the 23 fighting in the summer.

But moving forward is difficult because it's such open terrain, it's so flat. If you're starting to cut them off from the north, you're starting to outflank that entire area, putting it all under threat. And there's only a limited amount of bridges across the Njeper in that area that can actually feed that entire conglomeration of forces around Zapporoz. So this gives added weight. It expands the front while cutting communications, making it that much more difficult for an already-frogy. strained force to be able to maneuver, to be able to supply, and to be able to hold, because, again, Russia has the forces. The Ukrainians don't.

Okay, the Ukrainians actually have about a million men in the armed forces. About 500,000 of those are on the front line. Of those, of those, there's maybe a third that are combat worthy. The rest are mostly people that have been pulled off the streets. The rest of the force is either a guarding key areas like the Belarusian border in Kiev or be press-ganging as many men as they can off the streets. What about the drones? Because we hear so much about drones.

I read, by the way, an account that now Russia is up reducing Ukrainian drones, five to one, supposedly five million drones, Russians, one million drones to the Ukrainians. But when he's an awful lot about the fact that the drones have changed the cold character of the war, that artillery isn't as important as it was, or isn't it are important at all, that it's the drones that are making the Russians work more slowly. Is there any truth in this? You know, a drone gives you pinpoint accuracy, but it's still limited. Just so you understand, the videos you see, that's about 20% of the drones.

The other 80% of the drones don't make it to any targets. Plus, a lot of the drone operators get killed off. Because the drone operators, especially operating those areas, they usually get taken out of artillery or fobs or aviation. You can track a drone operator backed by the signal. There's equipment for that, too. Drones, by the way, you can block all the drone signals too. I mean, you can't obviously off of anything off of cable.

optical optics, but you can't offer the signal. There's man packs that allow you to fully block out all the signals. So you can't, your own drones won't fly, but the enemy drones will fly. The problem of the man packs is the moment they discovered there's an absolutely dead zone, that's where the artillery starts hit. Because they know, okay, there's, there's drone, anti-dron systems in play. and it's a big backpack full of a block with batteries doing basically white noise. And they'll start shooting artillery in that area. The drones, even with one hit, you rarely can kill a tank with a drone. I mean, you really, unless the hatches are open, you can't kill a tank with one hit for the most part.

You can damage a tank, you can do a mobility kill on a tank. tanks are usually finished off with artillery. Artillery, yeah, once a tank's not moving, what's in a mobile tank, it's a bunker. It's an artillery target. That's what we used to say. So that's exactly what it becomes. And they start hitting that artillery target until they destroy it.

APCs are much easier to destroy, obviously. But again, it's usually more than one drone that has to hit them. I've seen videos of a tank that a T-72 that was rushing in, Maybe, you know, its guardian angel was defending it. It had to be because it took five drone hits and it kept going. It was an amazing sight. They came in. They put direct fire down range, took out a bunker and charged back out,

freed up the infantry. But they took five drone strikes. And you see the drones are hitting, hitting, and the tank keeps going. So even then, even with direct hits, you're not seeing, it's not necessarily one hit, one kill. Yeah, I mean, if you hit an infantryman with a drone, you're going to kill him, obviously. You're going to rip him the pieces.

But, yeah, that's a pretty big waste of drones. But they use them for that too. And, you know, when I served, oh, God, I've been down there about seven times. It'll be my eighth time going. And, you know, how should I put it? You can't put it mildly. You're not that far from the front.

And in the evening, you've got to go out. Take a, you know, nature calls. And you're wondering, is something going to hit me upside the head? Well, I'm behind a building or behind a tree doing what I'm doing. In the old days, unless there was a sniper or, you know, if you were out of artillery range, you didn't have to worry about that. You could, okay, I got to go do my night. Got to do my nature's duty.

I'll go do nature's duty. And I don't have to worry that somebody's going to drop something on my head. Now, you know, you do. And the problem with satellites, everybody decided to try to call the same time. The problem with satellites, too, which if there is ever a world war, there won't be any satellites. That's one of the first things on both sides that will be destroyed. But with satellites presently in this war, everything's open. The moment, I mean, in real life, you're getting images of what's going on.

So the moment you're starting to prepare for any company to battalion-sized offensive, unless the weather is really bad when you're doing it, so the cloud cover breaks up any images and the drones can't fly because the wind's too strong, that's the only time you can really attack or heavy, heavy, heavy fog. Any other time, the moment you start pumping up enough units, enough even company-level units in one area, it's going to get noticed. and something's going to come flying its way. Either it's going to be Haimars from the West,

or maybe attackers, but the attackers have run out, or it's going to be Iskandars or aviation fobs, something from the east. Either way, you really can't get that many tanks together. It's been done a few times, but you have to work around that issue. So that's a very, very big problem. And that modifies the movement and how big of a force you can concentrate for any kind of movement. I've heard this say many times, actually, that this is an extremely strange and artificial type of war in the sense that satellites function, which they wouldn't.

The United States is able to gather intelligence on an enormous scale, which you would not be able to in if this was a... you know, a world war between the Americans and the Russians. I mean, you know, the Russians are not shooting down American reconnaissance aircraft over the Black Sea, for example. So that this is all very, very artificial. Does this, how did the soldiers feel about this? Does this, because they must be aware of this. I mean, are they frustrated by it?

Do they ask why does Putin not authorize, you know, more direct, action against these, you know, surveillance assets that the Americans have, are the complaints about this? What is the general sentiment about this in the military? Well, I'll tell you, of course, everybody wants everything to move a lot fast. And the truth be, if a major breakthrough on a division to a core level occurs, drones, enemy drones will become a much more minor problem, Simply because if the front's moving fast, drone operators have to be pretty close to the front, and they become very, very vulnerable to being overrun, being destroyed by mobile artillery, being destroyed by infantry, that's moving fast.

And they just won't have as much time set up. So the more stationary to the front or the slower the front's moving, the easier it is for the drone operators. If there's ever a World War conventional level World War, just to understand what's going to happen, Everything's going to go back to, within two weeks, everything will be on the level of World War II minus aviation. Because the reality of it is, first of all, the S-500 and the S-550 in particular, can take out low-flying satellites, spy satellites. You know, most of your spy satellites are not in high orbit. They're in low orbit. And yes, they can read the license plate of a car.

They can't. But they're not going to exist for very long. Satellites aren't maneuverable. They have a very limited amount of fuel. They have a very limited amount that they can maneuver with. And it's basically it's compressed air. You just put a push, pump out the compressed air. It'll spend the satellites on new orbit.

They can't do that very often. And it's a very predictable orbit. So no matter what, they're going to get destroyed. So that's the first thing it's going to happen. Or even if you toss up a tactical nuclear device in low orbit or medium orbit, the wave will take out most of satellites in that hemisphere. So, okay, satellite are basically gone. We'll begin with that.

Never mind, there's ground-based laser systems that can hit satellites. There's a lot of stuff out there, really. Aviation, the state of, particularly on the Russian side, the West has shown that its air defense systems are outdated, extremely outdated. The U.S. discovered it can't take out a weather balloon. why was the weather balloon that well if it was a Chinese weather balloon why was it taken out over the ocean not because they were afraid it's going to fall on somebody that's a Kakamini story the problem is the weather balloon when the heat goes up it pushes the weather balloon up right so the heat going off the ground is much stronger than

the heat going off the water so once the heat off the water started uh once it got over water it actually went down and now it lowered its altitude enough that the FQ 22s could come in and take it out. There was no system in the U.S. that could reach the stratosphere to take out that weather balloon. So that is already a very big hole in U.S. air defenses. So what happens then? Well, ground recon, maybe drone warfare to find the enemy, first of all, and move out

to contact. Any kind of maneuver like that is going to be, again, you're going out there and you're going out there and you're feeling your way forward to see where your enemy is. Basically, World War II, minus the aviation. What about these Ukrainian counter attacks that we're hearing around Chassev Jarsifiyar, Toretsk, or Juergensky, if you prefer? What is all that about? What is this attack on Belgarod, these attempts to capture these border villages?

What are the Ukrainians trying to achieve by this? And are they going to succeed, whatever it is that they're trying to achieve? shape? Well, I think they're trying, in Russia, it's called magyllization. Magyla is grave, mobilization. It's a combination of grave and mobilization. Gravelization. They're sending a lot of good men to die. I mean, you're dealing with very small, relatively speaking, tactical level offenses. Now, on a active battlefield, you could do that to take back a position, some key point, grab a key point from the enemy to try to deny them high ground, for example, or a key artery choke point. But these are very small level tactical position.

That happens. That happens on a tactical level in any battle, counter-offensive to try to take back a key point. And that's to be expected. Normally, when you take a key point, especially a built-up objective. The first thing you do, unless you have enough, the force that takes it, they usually dig in. They prep for a defense. Now, they may be holding that while another force, a follow-on force pushes through them

and goes takes the next objective. But sooner or later, you run out of steam on that local little area and you dig in waiting for the counteroffensive. Because once the enemy's been pushed off, usually what happens is if it's a key point, a very, very needed point, They'll do a counterattack to try to take it back.

I mean, you expect that. That's on a tactical level. Belgrade is a PR level. Kursk was a PR level. And I think Kersk, in my personal opinion, Kersk was a trap from day one. It was an ideal piece of the border that had almost no forces on it except conscripts. It was just like that big piece of cheese. And there's a Russian saying, the only free cheese is in a mousetrap.

And they went for that cheese. Oh, look, there's a nuclear power plant, too. That's not that far off. We can do this. We're going to grab it. It was the easiest and most lucrative piece of the border. And once they got in there, you couldn't keep forces anywhere close to the border. You had to keep that trap baited.

Now, once they get in there, there were enough forces that were pulled up relatively quickly that any attempts for that nuclear power plant were zeroed out relatively fast within three days. They had no chance of getting that to anymore. Any of their flying columns, their flying columns that were going in, they were only effective until the front on those roads stabilized. Because you're dealing with forests, a heavily forced-ed swamped area. Once they stabilized, those flying columns were just exterminated on contact because they had no heavy armor.

And once they hit entrenched infantry, they were destroyed on the spot. And that happened about around the fourth, fifth, sixth, seventh day. and that stopped after that. And then you started going more to positional warfare. So, but Russia had no interest in closing the Kersk front pocket. It had no. It's not a, it was a strategic for Russia. Never was.

The only thing that was maybe strategic was making sure they didn't grab the nuclear power. It wasn't strategic for Russia, but it became strategic in a PR sense for the Ukrainians. So you continued pushing on it to create that pressure with that. taking too much, and the enemy kept pumping troops in there, kept pumping troops in there, can pumping troops in there. And a lot of very veteran troops were going in there, which accelerated the move on the east, obviously, because they were pulling off.

The units that they pulled off the east were your fire brigades, like a 42nd motorized brigade is a prime example. And what a fire brigade is, for the viewers that don't know that, it's a firefighting brigade, basically, is what you call it. Wherever the enemy breaks through, you have a mobile brigade in a certain amount of frontage, their job is, to run around and plug holes. Stabilize the front, then they get pulled back,

and they go stabilize the front somewhere else if needed. And they keep running back and forth, running back and forth, running back and forth, running back and forth like that. Now, those brigades got pulled back, and they got shoved up into this Cursed adventure. So the moment they're gone, any hole that's breached in your line,

you have nothing to plug it with. You're grabbing everything in everybody you can. This happened, by the way, in Artyomovsk. Why there wasn't an effective second line after Archeomovs? They gathered 2,000 construction workers, lots of construction equipment,

and then Sirsky threw them into the battle. He mobilized them, gave these construction workers rifles, threw them in there, and they all died. And relatively within two days, because these weren't combat-ready soldiers. They weren't soldiers. For them of civilian construction workers,

they were there to build the next line. Whoops, no next line. Lots of equipment. lots of dragon teeth lined up but never put out and so on and so on. So idiotic decisions like this, idiotic decisions. And this was the same thing. They went in there when the curse pocket was closed. And if you saw it, it was closed fast.

When it was time to close it, when these negotiations, they were going to try to use it actual for negotiations. The pocket was closed relatively quickly within a couple of days, really. they had lost killed and this has been admitted in the west 70,000 70,000 dead Ukrainians that's a big question of how many heavily wounded that can no longer come back to service so probably quite a few of the wounded died without being able to be evacuated so we'll say probably another at least 30 40,000 that are no longer combat capable they're heavily injured and another 10,000 or so have been destroyed

have been eliminated in the last two weeks. They're holding on to those little pockets, and they're being surrounded, and a good chunk of that borderline Sumis being surrounded by Pinser movement. And they're still being fed by one road. So it's relatively easy to interdict the supply line. So, yeah, they've got a lot of problems,

but the whole thing was PR. Anybody that got to the point where you saw that your line of advance has been cut off, you have no chance to get to that nuclear power plant, you really have no chance of holding, you know, they had, I think, up to 100 settlements. But to understand what a settlement is, most of those settlements are crossroads, two, three, five, ten houses. That's not a built-up position you can hold. And they're not beside each other, so you don't have a continuous line.

They can be walked around, separated, encircled, hit from different, direction. So it's not a solid front you can build on, and you don't have time to build on it. Especially in heavy-forced areas where the enemy can just as easily filter through your own lives. That's a point where they should have said,

look, we could do it. Now we're going to leave really, really quickly. But that would have been bad headlines. And we're all, you know, we're fighting a unique war in that luckily the enemy, in the Ukrainians, they are fighting for headlines, not necessarily

for victory on the battlefield, but for headlines. One very last question, Sajlav. Lots of talk going around about a Russian offensive coming. Do you think this is likely? And if it is coming, what do you think is likely to achieve? I mean, is it going to be the knockout blow? Oh, I very much hope it's coming. I've been a cheerleader of that since quite a long time.

ago. And yes, the warfare that's going on right now is not how I was taught. And then that was, you know, and honestly speaking, most Russian officers that grew up in our Soviet Union were never taught this way of warfare either. So it was extremely alien to everybody. It's not even, it's a mix between World War I and like Vietnam, you know, these types of very hard. to understand. The big knockout blow, the capability is there. I think the political will wasn't there. McGregor was very right, and I had been saying this on the Russian side from day one.

And McGregor, Colonel McGregor had said it several times on the U.S. side. The government in Russia was afraid of spooking NATO by making too fast a move, and then NATO would be forced to deploy and come in hard. At least that was the fear on the Russian side. But the reality of it, not understanding Western mentality was you were having the exact opposite effect. If the Russian army had come in hard like it did at first, NATO would have run away from that war really quickly.

There would have been no supply. They would have been let's talk peace. But the moment they noticed, oh, they're moving slowly. Oh, they're incapable. Oh, we're going to take them. Oh. And every time, every day just built. up that ego trip. Oh, we can take them. Oh, they're incapable. Oh, they don't know what they're

doing. Oh, they're crappy soldiers. And then the propaganda kicks in. Oh, they're selling their tanks for $1,000. They're on their bicycles running back, which, by the way, a lot of the Merks from the West that came in at first, that's what they were being taught. You're going to go on a safari to kill Russians. This is going to be really cool. They're all running away. We're just going to chase them right over to Moscow. When they got there, it was a little bit the other way. No aviation, no artillery, and the Russians had everything. So yeah, that was welcome. This is not Iraq.

This is not Afghanistan. It's quite the opposite of it. That was something that hit very hard. And for NATO, they're watching a slow and cautious approach. If you're slow and cautious, that means you're incapable for a lot of these NATO generals. And McGregor was saying that on the American side. And I've been saying that for the last two years. If we won a World War III, we're taking the exact correct approach for it.

Because we're building up the ego on the NATO side. and they're thinking Russia is incapable. We're running out of washing machines and dryers for our missile systems. You think it would be actually telephone at least it has a navigation system built into it. But reality is I think the political will on the side of the Kremlin has always been, we don't want to overstep it because we still want to have negotiations. But I think finally it has just become absolutely clear. you know, there cannot be any negotiations.

We're looking at, I mean, realistically, you know, copium is a drug that goes around everywhere. It's not just limited to the West. I've seen a lot of experts on this side snorting up copium in quite large numbers when it comes to the Germans. Oh, German rearmament, it's going to take 20 years for them to put an army in the field. Well, no, gentlemen. Actually, if you open up the textbooks and you read, a little bit of history. Hitler came in 33. In 39, they had an army. The German economy in 33 was in much, much, much, much worse shape than it is right now. Tank production in Germany was almost

non-existent. As in there weren't any facilities to even build tanks. In World War I, Germany built 47 tanks. They were giant, they had a crew of 11 people, there were 47 tanks. The French and the English, including tankettes, which is essentially, a little tank with two men in it, a driver and a machine gunter, but including tankettes, the Western Allies built 4,000. The Germans just decided we don't need tanks. We can do it with a direct-fire artillery, we can do it with direct artillery, we can do it with direct artillery, we don't need tanks.

So the tank, in the Soviet Union, up to 1934, they were practicing tank maneuvers. They were learning from the Soviet, from the Red Army. but there was still a very small military force, but a very small industrial base for that kind of production. By 39, they had tank armies. Now, Hitler wasn't ready in 39. I think you were to prefer it in 41 or 42, but the inflation rate in 39 was already over 19%. Germany was facing hyperinflation because the mass investment that was going in. So it was either now or never, basically.

Well, we're looking at the same thing with Mirz. So he's got up to a trillion euro he's going to pour in. He's got the pension funds he's going to pull in, which is another $500 billion. You're going to look at the same thing. And they can put an army in the field within four years. And they can't pump up manufacturing very quickly within four years. Just last year, the military industrial sector in Germany grew over 40 percent, while the rest of the economy was dying off.

Now, you've got Volkswagen that said, you can take our manufacturing facilities. Plus, I've been here from experts I've never worked in heavy industry. I spent a lot 15 years in heavy industry supporting oil and gas services industry and supply chain. So I've been up and down all these different manufacturing facilities

all over the Western world. And when people tell you, oh, you can't retool an automobile plant to make tanks, you're talking to people who have no knowledge of reality. Of course you can. It may take half a year to do it to do a tank.

And if you're doing wheeled vehicle, it's going to take much, much less time than that. But of course, you can. Most of the automobile plants were built on a dual-purpose track. Right now, we're making civilian cars. Tomorrow we may be making tanks or trucks for the military or what have you.

They can all be retooled. In three to four years, the Germans, we may be looking at the fourth right if they're following through with this, if nothing happens to knock Mertz off of his pony. And the best thing for them is, They don't have to worry about the Western Front this time around, at least not right now.

The French establishment, and it doesn't matter whether it's Front National or it's Macron's party, they're all for this war. They've all Front National sold out a long time ago. They don't want to send troops, or they're happy to send everything else. So you've got this very different geography in this case that you didn't really have before in World War I or World War II. So the Germans are something that may have to be dealt with If they continue plus you got the polls on their side So that is a threat that is a actual possible threat Maybe not in the short term but in the medium term

The very short medium term Now for all of them they've got to keep the Ukrainians in the field to buy time That's what Ukrainians are They're buying time with their lives So their betters and their owners can arm up for a one They don't have to fight. But the mentality of the political class in Europe is gone. It's that they are, they're warped.

I don't know how else to put it. These people are extremely warped at this point. Stanley Slav, we could talk for hours, but that has been incredibly informative. We're going to come back to you, obviously, as events develop. I think we are going to see us being offensive. By the way, I think Putin basically, gave a clear hint that money's coming. So what I would just say is thank you for coming on our program

and providing all that really important and useful information. And as I said, take care and keep up and we'll be very interested to hear what you learn when you go to the front lines again. Be careful, by the way. Stanislav, one more time. Where can people find you? Like I said, I've got a YouTube channel, Mr. Slavicman,

that's Slavic with a K, all one word. I've got two channels in Telegram. Stas was there. That's the English one. I mean, I'm sorry. Yeah, Stas was there. That's the English language one. Stas to die Abratna is the Russian language one.

If you speak both, I'm for both. There is different content to agree. So slightly different content. And I will have that down below. linked up. Thank you, Stanislav. Thanks.