The Peter Zeihan Podcast Series - The Russia Coup Part 1: What the Hell Is Going On? || Peter Zeihan

Episode Date: June 24, 2023

An attempted coup is in progress in Russia. The mercenary group Wagner, led by a one-time confidant of Vladimir Putin, Yevgeny Prigozin, is attempting to overthrow the Kremlin. The implications for the Ukraine War are…massive. Full Newsletter: https://mailchi.mp/zeihan/the-russia-coup-part-1-what-the-hell-is-going-on-and-the-ukraine-angle

Hey everybody, Peter Zion here coming to you from Marshalltown, Iowa. This is my old middle school behind me. I was trying to bind my own business and have some personal time and attend a birthday party here at my hometown. But apparently there's a coup going on in Russia, so no rest for the wicket. Short version. It was over the course of the 23, 24th, and 25th. A guy by the name of Kriozan, who is the leader of the Wagner paramilitary group, who has been an unofficial arm of the Russian military now for, several years, has launched an arm in its direction. His troops have left their positions in Ukraine. They have moved into Russia proper. They have captured the city of Rostovandan, which has a population

about one million. They're attempting to flip Russian troops to their sides. And the Russian government Vladimir Putin himself has declared Progosen to be a traitor and has called upon the military and security services to crush him. Progozen has said that the president is misinfore. but it's okay because we're going to have a new president soon anyway. As someone who very vividly remembers duck-and-cover drills and is very aware that the Russians have been aiming nuclear weapons at us my entire life, there's something just deeply hilarious about this. The trick here is to not blow anything too much out of proportion

because there's a lot we don't know. So let's start with what is certain. Rostov-Adn is the primary logistical and communications point for the Russian military in the entirety of the Ukrainian war. So first and foremost, the Ukrainians are making a lot of popcorn here and are getting very serious about their counter-offensive. Now, until this point, at least until the 23rd, the counter-offensive was not going particularly well.

in any battle where the Ukrainians are facing off against the Russians. And the Russians only lose three times as many troops as the Ukrainians do. That's a battle that the Ukrainians have lost. They're at a huge material and demographic disadvantage. And they just haven't been able to achieve breakthrough. There are multiple lines of defenses that the Russians have built over recent months. It starts with minefields and as you get further back, it's anti-tank barriers and trenches. And for the most part, the Ukrainians haven't been able to get through the minefields.

So I don't want to call it a failed offensive. I don't want to call a stall defensive. But it's definitely not been going as much as well as they'd hoped. But on the 23rd, we saw two things. Number one, a change in military strategy. The Ukrainians had gone from targeting commanding control bunkers to targeting ammo dumps, which is something you usually do before a big push.

And the Chughar Bridge in Crimea was hit by a few missiles to make the rail system completely impassable until repairs are done. Now, the Russians do have the technical capacity to do that, but it's going to see something that takes weeks, which means that there was this window in Western Ukraine where the Russians in the western half of the front, from Militipol West, were not able to function. And that provides an opportunity for Ukrainian forces. Now, I'm going to put all of that together now in a video from something that I was originally planning on posting before the coup started. So here's the Ukrainian section of that, and then we'll come back to the Russian section. We're now well into the third week of the conflict, and the Ukrainians haven't achieved any sort of breakthrough.

There's two main lines of defense that the Russians are trying to hold. The first is a series of minefields, and the second is a series of more strategic defensive emplacements like dragons teeth and trenches. And the Ukrainians haven't really been able to get past the minefields to get to the real defense. defenses yet. And what that means is they've just kind of been balked down in a traditional fighting. And because the Russians have an order of magnitude more industrial planter reserves and at least a factor of three more population, any battle in which the Ukrainians are duking a mono-a-mono is not one that they're going to do well. And in fact, any battle where the Ukrainians only kill three times as many Russians as they lose in their own troops is a battle

they've lost. So instead of seeing the dramatic breakthroughs that we saw in Kirsten in Karkiv last summer, it's been a slug fest and it hasn't gone well. That said, a couple things. Number one, we're still early in the offensive. They're still probing for weaknesses. They're still going after command and control. And then second, in the last 96 hours, a few things have changed. First of all, three, four days ago, Ukrainians shifted from using their missiles to target command and control systems to going after ammo dumps. And you would do that when you're getting to the next phase of the operation. You feel like you've broken up their ability to react,

and now you're trying to not just to trip their forces, but make sure that the forces cannot actually get meaningful supplies. But the real issue happened with the morning of Thursday, the 22nd of June, when the Ukrainians put some serious holes in a few supply bridges that are critical for Russian forces. And to understand the significance of that targeting shift, we need to look at a few maps. Here's our first map of the Ukrainian space.

Nothing too exciting here. The red line is roughly where the front is. The Russians occupy the territory to the east and south of that line. And the yellow bars are where the Ukrainians have put their primary thrusts. Now, the one on the left there, that's the Zapernice the front. The Ukrainians have been expected to go in that direction. since the very beginning of this conflict, because if they can push down to the Sea of Azov, they can basically isolate the entirety of the Southwestern Front and Crimea, because not only

would there no longer be a land bridge between Russia proper and Crimea, but the Ukrainians would be able to target the Kerch-Strake-Strake bridge directly, but they've had more success going further into the east because there are fewer defensive works. But still, in all these cases, you're talking about advances in the single digits of kilometers. No sort of strategic breakthrough where mobile Russian forces, excuse me, where mobile Ukrainian forces and get him behind the Russians and isolate them and break them up and enforce strategic retreats and routes. Okay, here's a zoom in on Ukraine. The single most important thing here is, of course, the Kerch Bridge, an attack, unclaimed

attack, we don't really know who did it, but either of the Americans, the Ukrainians, took out one of the spans of the Kerch Bridge last summer. Now, the Kerch Bridge has three lines to it. Two two-lane road connections and one rail connection. The Ukrainians, Americans, whoever it happened to be, were able to take out one of those two-lane road connections and start a series of fires on a rail car that was going by on the rail bridge at that time, which warped the bridge and made it impossible to handle cargo. So no more trains in and out of Crimea from this route, and he used to be the primary route,

and only two of the four road lanes. So everything has to go on truck, and when they do have convoys coming or going, they have to shut it down to other traffic. So that was a big hit, and it forced the Russians to shift their supply route over to this area, to the land connections that go into Crimea. So let's zoom in there. Now, first thing to understand about this area is a lot of this is not land. This entire zone here is a series of brackish lakes, which obviously you're not going to be running cargo across.

In fact, there's only really two ways to cross. On the left, you've got the proper land connection, which is an all-land route that goes through southern Ukraine. It is the furthest connection from the front. It's not that the infrastructure there doesn't work. It's just that it's not great. However, if you go to the yellow era, the one further to the right to the east, you're looking at the Chanhar crossing. Now, Chanhar has a rail connection and a road connection. And it's these connections that the Ukrainians put some holes in.

They use a special kind of warhead, which I'm not going to go into detail because it's not my focus. But it blew all the way through the concrete, blew all the way through the rebar, put a giant hole right in the middle of the thing. You're not taking trucks across that. You're not taking rail across that. until such time as these are repaired. Repairing it is not beyond the capacity of the Russians, but keep in mind that it's been months since Kirch had that hole put at it and the rail connection there has still not been rebuilt.

One of the many, many downsides of the Soviet dissolution is we've had a simultaneous education crisis and demographic crisis now decades in progress. The technical education system in Russia collapsed back in the 80s, and their demographics, they've had a death rate that's been higher, than the birth rate for 30 years now, which means that the youngest suite of people who have the full skill set to be technical experts,

they're in their 50s right now. They'll turn 60 this year on average. They still haven't replaced the span and courage. They still haven't replaced the rail system. There's a question as to whether they can. Now, the Chonar Crossing is not nearly sophisticated. Instead of being a high elevated suspension bridge, it's a low block bridge, it's not blocking navigation or anything.

This is not a navigable waterway system. They probably can do it, but it's going to take them a few weeks, which means in the meantime, any cargo going to and from Ukraine has to come from that western bridge. And this means that the soldiers in Ukraine, the Russian soldiers in occupied Ukraine,

are facing a double bind. Back to this map. Notice the city of Miriel. Basically, any Russian, troops that are west of that zone have basically been cut off from supplies that come from Russia proper off in the east. They got everything they needed from Crimea, which is, you know, more difficult to support now. And now with the China Bridge offline, it's going to take about a week for the Russians to reroute everything further west to then cross a larger distant

chunk of territory. That would suggest to me that the Ukrainians are as ready as they can possibly be to make a push in that direction. Now, coming down, from Zepernicia, it doesn't really matter where they penetrate as long as they reach the Sea of Azab. It could be east of Miripal, it could be west of Militopol, it could be anywhere in between, any way that they can cut that land bridge forever and then have the range in order to hit the remains of the Kerch Bridge direct. If we're going to see an attack, if this counteroffensive is going to really manifest as something, these are exactly the circumstances you would expect the Ukrainians to shape,

and now they've done it. and since there's going to be a window before the Russians can redirect supplies further to the west, the troops in the Melitable area are now completely cut off, vulnerable, they're not going to get reinforcements, they're not going to get fuel, they're not going to get artillery shells and ammo. Now would be the time. Now, that's the strategic picture that we're seeing right now. Okay, now back to Russian side of things with the coup.

Rusty von Donn is the primary jumping off point for Russian forces into Crimea and the southern front. And as long as Rostovandan is offline, it is impossible for any Russian forces, anywhere in the Crimea or an occupied Ukraine, to reinforce, to get more troops, to get equipment, to get fuel. So this is beyond a golden opportunity for the Ukrainians to give the Russians a serious dropping. The question is, how long will it last? While there have been many, many, many reports saying many, many things, there is no sign of direct large-scale fighting between, Wagner forces and Russian forces at the moment, but the Wagner forces are definitely in command of the logistical train on which the entire Russian army in Ukraine depends. And in that sort of situation, wonderful opportunity for the Ukrainians. Okay, next chunk, we're going to go into

some of the stuff that's going on in Russia proper.