The Peter Zeihan Podcast Series - From the Frontlines in Ukraine to Truth Social || Peter Zeihan

Episode Date: March 8, 2025

There's a lot going on in Ukraine right now, so let's do a quick update on the military and diplomatic developments.Join the Patreon here: https://www.patreon.com/PeterZeihanFull Newsletter: https://mailchi.mp/zeihan/from-the-frontlines-in-ukraine-to-truth-social

Everybody, Peter Zane here coming to you from Colorado. A lot of you've been asking, with good reason, for update on what's going on in Ukraine. Let's split into what I know, and then just what else. What I know is what's going on in the front, which is weird, because usually that's the hard part. The Ukrainian's ability to jam the glide systems for something called glide bomb has really gotten good. Now, if you go back about a year, year and a half ago, one of the things I was really worried about is that the Russians were dropping these massive, in some cases, over a thousand kilogram bombs with glide kits on them. Glyde kits like what the United States has been using with our J-DAM system since the first Gulf War

back in the early 1990s, which was giving them a range of 20, 30 miles beyond the point that they drop the weapon, and the mig that drops, it just veers off, and it's safe. And then you get a blast radius that sometimes is like a third of a mile. It just absolutely demolishes any sort of fixed fortification and stuns the hell. out of the defenders, and then the Russians would come in with one of their meat assaults. And in doing this, they were able to take over the Fortress City of Avidivka last year, and we were closing on Pekrovsk this year. And if they had seized Percrofk, and they were just a few miles away,

that would have basically broken the Ukrainian line and the Donbos. It's the middle of a series of fortifications and its logistics hub. So with Pekroft, they can go north and south up the line. Without Pekrosk, they have to go back a few dozen miles to get to another line to transport things up and back and forth. For the Ukrainians, they try to keep this war as a war of movement because they have fewer troops and better troops, whereas the Russians are more a stagnant fighter,

and so they can engage in more points, just not as well. So if the ability of the Ukrainians to move had been inhibited, it would have been a real problem. The jamming seems to have made the tactic that the Russians were using for the last year less and less effective. That's kind of piece one. Piece two is the Ukrainians have using not necessarily new technology, just applying a little bit differently, determined another strategy for mucking up with the Russians' logistics,

not just going after things like fuel supplies or ammo dumps and things like that, but they look for an important intersection that the Russians have and they take out a couple vehicles there. And then a couple days later, they take out a few more, a couple days later, a few more. And eventually you get this carcass field of vehicles that the Russians are forced to send out things like tow trucks, and then you hit the tow trucks. And so you just get this ever-mounting line of vehicles. vehicle depree that forces the Russians to detour ever further around. If they go through the fields, they might have to deal with the mud season that Ukraine is so

famous for in the fall and in the spring. And in the other seasons, eventually it gets so chuked, they have to use the transport options altogether. These two things together have basically stalled the attack on Procrosk and even the Russian counterattacks on Kursk. And in the case of Percrosk have even allowed the Ukrainians to counterattack a little bit, Not saying that the danger is past, but it's a different kind of fight now. So that's the military look at the moment.

Diplomatically, everything's all over the place. Let me show you this little thing from Truth Social. That's Donald Trump's personal version of social media. This is what he posted last week about Zelensky when Zelensky said that Trump was living in a Russian disinformation bubble, which is. And it's proven by this document here. Everything that's highlighted in red is something that is an oldly but goody from Russian propaganda going back the last three years. These are the points that Russian propagandas have been hitting on month after month after month after month. The yellow ones, those are things that were new.

When Trump was reelected or elected the second time, probably a better way to phrase that, the Russians changed the tenor of a lot of their propaganda to appeal to Trump personally. Basically, they took Trump's lies and they made some of those integrations. with their own. And these yellow parts are some of the newer propaganda. But what really had the Russian salivating when this truth social post comes out or the bits I've circled? Because these are Trump's words. These are not things that were plucked wholesale from Russian disinformation. Instead, they're places where Trump has, they're places where Trump has taken Russian disinformation and put it in his own words. Whenever Trump uses quotes or all caps, that's him channeling himself.

by guns. Anyway. And so the Russians see this and they're just giddy because getting a foreign leader, any sort of foreign policymaker to use Russian disinformation is always a win. But when the foreign policymaker is using the updated stuff and putting in their own words, that's kind of the gold standard for espionage, basically getting the other side to do things your way for you, but them thinking it's all their idea. So when this came out, I was kind of like, what the hell is going on? I mean, I know that Donald Trump has gutted the upper echelons of the the Defense Department and the CIA and the FBI, and he's appointed someone who's a Russian agent to basically be his premier intelligence filterer. But the idea that he would just be so out of it as to just wholesale garble down and then regurgitate back Russian propaganda had me really worried. And then on a week later, on Thursday, Donald Trump, when he was, when somebody asked him about what he said in this specifically, Zelensky being a dictator, he says, Did I do that? I don't think I said that.

He just kind of moves on. So the number one thing to remember about Trump, there's a track record means nothing. Consistency means nothing. Whatever comes out of his head or goes through his head, comes out his mouth. There is no consistency. He changes his mind all the time. I don't mean to say that this is a good thing,

but it means that no matter what you think about what Trump is or what he says, it'll change tomorrow. The Ukraine war to this point has been one of the most dynamic conflicts in history. I never expected the Ukrainians to do so well. I never expected the Russians to do so bad. I never expected the Europeans to get involved. I never expected the Americans to get involved. This war has been one surprise after another,

and that's before you consider that the technology of the conflict is evolving so quickly as we move from the industrial age into the digital age and the rise of drones and probably in the not too distant future AI systems. Courtesy of Donald Trump, the diplomatic side of the Ukraine war is now just as dynamic. And so everybody, no matter whose side you're on, buckle up. It's about to get a lot rockier and a lot weirder. Quick addendum. On the 28th of February, that's Friday, Zelensky, the president of Ukraine, was in the White

House to meet with Donald Trump. And it ended with Donald Trump basically condemning Ukraine and saying that Zelensky wasn't ready for peace and blah, blah, blah, whatever. What was more interesting to me is that these weren't behind the scenes negotiations, but instead were held in the White House live in front of the press corps. And Trump changed U.S. policy probably five times in the conversation. So I really don't think we're done with this at all. It's just simply how the United States makes policy these days. and your guess as to what is next out of the Trump White House is as good as mine, which of course is a problem for anyone on the other side of the Atlantic

who actually has to plan the future of their nations around what comes out of Washington.