The Peter Zeihan Podcast Series - Russian Partisans Attacked the City of Belgorod || Peter Zeihan

Episode Date: May 26, 2023

A group of ethnic Russians opposed to Putin's government joined forces with Ukraine and launched an assault across the border into the city of Belgorod. There are three main takeaways from this cross-border attack. Full Video and Newsletter: https://mailchi.mp/zeihan/russian-partisans-attacked-the-city-of-belgorod

Hey everybody, Peter Zine here coming to you from Scottsdale. Today we're going to talk about something that went down on the Ukrainian-Russian border, specifically a group of people who consider themselves partisans, identifying that their ethnic Russians opposed to the government of Vladimir Putin, were joining forces with the Ukrainians, and they launched an assault across the border into the city of Belgarod in southwestern Russia. Damage was relatively limited. We're really talking about a couple of buildings like the FSB,

office hit they got burned down but the Russians redistructed some forces and over the course of the next two or three days managed to push them all back into Ukraine according to Russian propaganda they were all killed who knows we don't even know how many men were involved in the first place now this is important for two reasons well three reasons number one it shows that the Russians didn't even bother to garrison any of their logistical centers that are hard on ukraine's border That is something that is definitely going to be relevant moving forward as the Ukrainians, get ready to push the Russians out of more land. Second, in the war of propaganda, the Ukrainians, of course, are saying these people are

unaffiliated. The Russians are saying that they're all Ukrainian. The truth is somewhere between. Obviously, they're getting supplies and equipment from the Ukrainian forces and are probably specifically managed by the Ukrainian forces. But the third most important thing is these are ethnic Russians from Ukraine. And even in the Russian response, they admitted that these are ethnic Russians that are fighting Russia in Russia. So whether or not that was a propaganda hiccup or an admission that the single most inviolable bit of propaganda that the Russians have been pushing,

that they are completely in there to save ethnic Russians, that's going to be a big problem moving forward. One more thing I forgot. Belgarad is a really important city for any number of reasons, but the most important one is it serves as Russia's primary logistical point in launching off for assaults against the city of Kharkiv, which, if you remember, was one of the first places that the Russians attacked earlier in the war

and were there until they were kicked out in last year's summer offensive. The Russians are going to push this war, until they can't. And that means that at some point, if Ukraine is going to emerge victorious, they're going to have to cross into Russia proper and neutralize the Belgrade. The partisans indicate one of the ways that that might happen. So we may be seeing the beginning of a multi-vectored strategic policy here, and the Russians have proven that they haven't bothered to even put basic defenses in the city.

I'm sure they're going to work on correcting that now, but there's a lot on the Russians' plates. Okay, now I'm done for real. Bye.