The President's Daily Brief - PDB Situation Report | January 31st, 2026: American Firepower Gathers at Iran’s Doorstep & The Cost of Putin’s War

Episode Date: January 31, 2026

In this episode of The PDB Situation Report: American military power is gathering at Iran’s doorstep, as U.S. warships and air assets move into position across the Middle East. Mike is joined by Richard Goldberg of the Foundation for Defense of Democracies to break down what Washington may be preparing for—and what signals this deployment is sending to Tehran. Later, we examine a sobering new study detailing the human cost of Russia’s war in Ukraine. Seth Jones, one of the study’s authors, joins us with insights on battlefield losses and what they mean going forward. To listen to the show ad-free, become a premium member of The President’s Daily Brief by visiting https://PDBPremium.com. Please remember to subscribe if you enjoyed this episode of The President's Daily Brief. YouTube: youtube.com/@presidentsdailybrief Cardiff: Get fast business funding without bank delays—apply in minutes with Cardiff and access up to $500,000 in same‑day funding at https://Cardiff.co/PDB  Nobl Travel: Protect your gear and travel smarter—NOBL’s zipper-free carry-on is up to 58% off at https://NOBLTravel.com Joi + Blokes: Go to http://joiandblokes.com/PDB and use code PDB for 50% off your labs and 20% off all supplements Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

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Welcome to the PDB Situation Report. I'm Mike Baker. Your eyes and ears on the world. world stage, and yes, still struggling with a hoarse voice. All right, let's get briefed. First up, well, American military power is gathering at Iran's doorstep, of course, with U.S. warships and air support now in place across the region. We'll talk to Richard Goldberg of the Foundation for Defense of Democracies about what Washington may be preparing for. Later in the show, we break down a new study detailing the human cost of Russia's war in Ukraine, and it is significant. Seth Jones, one of the authors of the study, will join us for more. But first, today's Situation Report Spotlight.

U.S. military power is now masked just off Iran's doorstep, with American warships backed by aircraft and missile defenses, taking up position across the region. The deployment gives President Trump a full menu of military options as pressure mounts on the Iranian regime. The buildup is designed to send a clear message. Washington is prepared to act if the mullahs and the IRGC aren't willing to cut a deal.

Joining me for more on this is Richard Goldberg. He's a senior advisor at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies. Richard is also a former director of the White House National Security Council and a former Navy Reserve Intelligence Officer with experience on the joint staff and in Afghanistan. Richard, thanks very much for joining us here on a Situation Report. Great to be here. Excellent.

Well, and you're going to have to suffer through this hoarse voice of mind. Let's start from 30,000 feet. Is Washington planning a military operation on Iran? Well, Washington has certainly built many contingency options for a military option against Iran. That is certainly the case. We have gone from three guided missile destroyers in or near the Arabian Sea, Persian Gulf area, and the Red Sea, to now up to seven, I would say. destroyers as of as of this week, seeing three coming with the carrier strike group,

Lincoln coming from the Indo-Pacific, now on station, three that were already there, and another one that just transited via the Suez, plus many fighter squadrons being flown in, other support aircraft. That's a lot of firepower if you're just coming to say hello to the Supreme Leader.

Yeah, no, well, point taken. I guess it's not really a perfect, analogy, but we saw a very large buildup in the Caribbean, which was outsized, if all the way of doing, was a counter-narcotics operation. And then, of course, they conducted a military operation, captured Maduro. But with Iran, it's, look, it's been, I don't know the exact number of days, but it's been a couple of weeks since President Trump made that comment that help is on its way, you know, even encouraging, in his words, for the protesters to seize institutions. Now, In your estimate, I mean, is that, was that just off the cuff?

I mean, obviously, he can do that in his comments. But that's a very hopeful statement to give to protesters losing their lives on the streets to the Iranian regime. I think a couple of things happened here. Number one, the president did want to see what would happen if more and more people came out. Was this regime teetering? Would people open fire? would actually something happened that pushes this regime into collapse. They must have seen the Intel, the Wall Street Journal then reported on a bank collapse inside the country,

five other banks apparently teetering on collapse, the currency and free fall, water crisis, a power crisis with rolling blackouts for several weeks, all of this leading up to this national uprising. And then slowly but surely, the information coming forward, and I think they were a bit slow on being able to validate this. Opposition sources were saying, we have more people in the streets than you had in 2009 during the Green Revolution, and certainly more throughout the country at that point. By the time we could validate that,

and then also understanding the violence that was being committed, initial reports were saying a few dozen, a couple hundred. Opposition were saying, we're dying by the thousands right now. By the time all that was validated, people had already been mowed down in the streets by the tens of thousands. And the president had obviously made his statements drawn a red line and said, help is on the way. He's now in a position where he did draw a red line. Barack Obama drew a red line over Syria and chemical weapons use back in 2011.

One of the biggest talking points about the evisceration of U.S. power and deterrence in the world came from that moment in time when he took that stroll around the backyard of the White House with his chief of staff and decided not to enforce his red line. And a lot of things followed from that in a very bad way for the last decade or more. The president knows that. He's not Barack Obama. He prides himself on not making decisions like Obama or Biden. He wants to make sure that Putin and she knows he will enforce his red lines. But he also sees millions of people came out in the streets. The regime is obviously fearing for its life right now, its existence, if they would commit

the sort of maximum violence like you've never seen before since the revolution in 1979. and all those economic factors remain, President has some options. And by the way, even if you couldn't actually collapse the regime by military force from outside the country, you could continue to severely weaken all of the external and internal threats that the regime faces poses, like its missile program, its drone program, the IRGC, Navy,

and then, of course, the internal security forces command and control. All of that gives the people more chance to succeed the next time around. Yeah, but look, the people don't have the guns. It's not like there's an insurgency, an armed insurgency within that opposition out on the streets. They're going out on the streets and getting killed and nobody. I mean, this is me just talking, right? You know, this, I'm not necessarily forming a question here. It's one of conversation.

Nobody should have been doubting how brutal the Iranian regime was going to be in shutting this series. of protests down. We've got enough case studies. And so the idea of waiting to see whether the people would be able to fight back against the regime, the militia, the IRGC, and the army that they brought in to suppress the protesters seems like a fairly naive way of looking at it. And so I guess my question, oh, look, I did form a question. My question is, you know, do you think that the White House believes that the protesters themselves without actual outside support in some fashion would be able to overthrow the regime. I think they're pretty well aware now that that's not the case.

I don't know if somebody thought that, you know, if millions of people stay in the streets and the president just threatens military action that somehow the mullahs would not open fire in the streets. You saw the president make a statement to the press. He was asked on Air Force One flying back. Do you think they believe you? Do you think that they actually believe you're willing to do something on this red line that you've drawn? And he was flipping in the response.

I think it was a CNN reporter. And he said, you know, stupid CNN, you know, what do you think? You don't think they saw the B2 bombers last June? You don't think they just saw what happened to Maduro? You think that they don't realize I'm willing to use force? Have I not proven that already? And in fact, two things can be true. They have in fact been proven by him that he's willing to use force.

and they're also a crazy maniacal radical dictatorship that is trying to keep control will not just go peacefully into the night, is not just going to call up Putin and say, can I have the condo? And they're going to mass murder 35,000 people are more in the streets in 48 hours on a level we haven't seen since World War II. So this is the reality of the president now faces. Well, you build up that sort of force, right? They're on Iran's doorstep.

obviously they've put together their, you know, their target packages. You would assume, look, and again, I get it. You know, where I'm not talking about the U.S. has to get engaged in regime change directly, right? But I think, I guess my point is, I find it hard to imagine that without something, whether it's a strike, a military strike on pick the targets, the military basis where the units that have been suppressing and killing the pro, protesters are housed.

The Navy, you know, destroy the Navy like we've done in the past so we can set aside their constant threat to close the Strait of Hormuz. Totally. Those sort of things, I suspect, would then, to your point earlier, give the protesters the courage to come out in larger numbers and to maintain that resilience, even in the face of more violence. I'm sure it would be more violence. I think you're hitting a very critical point here.

And by the way, if the inter-security forces still have machine guns in the streets and APCs and whatever else and are willing to just gun down a little 10,000, people will have learned their lesson already and are not just running back into the street into the machine gun fire just because some base 30 miles away got hit. However, there is a long game here in addition to the short game. And in the long game, if you prioritize all of the external third, The most severe external threats that deter the United States or deter the West in some way from continued pressure, from isolation, from coercion. They were at the very top the ability to cross the nuclear threshold. Okay. That threat was the number one extortion tool and it was taken away from them last June.

Okay. Check. That doesn't mean they're not reconstituting. It doesn't mean there's additional sites we couldn't take out to make sure they can't reconstitute. they might pursue a crash program, you know, rent a bomb instead of building a bomb, all those things we should be concerned about. But for now, as far as what we can see, that primary extortion tool is off. But they have at least two or three others. They have a missile program that still remains that we can do a lot of damage to. They have a drone program that remains that we can do a lot of damage to. And they have this, you know, by the way, when we call it a Navy, let's not think of the U.S. Navy here. You know, it's a bunch of fast boats, swore.

you know, type boats with machine guns on the helm and the ability to mine the Gulf and the Strait of Hormuz. You take out as many of those you can see. You take out the bases, the command control. You take out every underground facility that stores missiles. Take out every launch site. If they launch, defeat that through missile defense and take out the launchers dynamically. You can do all those things.

And now you've started moving down all the list of ways they extort us that they deter. us and at some point they don't have any deterrence left whatsoever. And that point, you can just park the Navy there and say all these ships coming out of Carg Island with oil on them aren't going forward. Or we can hit Carg Island without fear of what happens in the oil market and what they'll do to the strait or what they'll do to Saudi oil infrastructure. You have more tools. And then finally, if you actually hit the command and control of the regime of the Revolutionary

Guard or the besieged forces in the streets, or do things that for, these people off the streets, these security forces, if people fear that they're being targeted, those who have machine guns in the streets targeting civilians, and they run away, now you have an opportunity for people to come back out of their homes. No, no, that's, that's very well said. I guess what I'm concerned with is that just based on the current international community and their reaction, aside from what the U.S. is doing, the U.S. is obviously showing a great deal of force how they use it. Well, it's an open question.

But I'm just concerned that, you know, we may just be looking at yet another cycle of protests. It's sort of a very lukewarm reaction from the outside world. Obviously, everyone's, you know, outraged, but, you know, there'll be some memos written. And then nothing changes, right? So I guess, having watched that for a long time, I guess that's why. I may be sounding very cynical right now about all of this. Richard, if you could stay right where you are.

I apologize, we've got to take a quick break, and then we'll be right back with more from Richard Goldberg and the Foundation for Defensive Democracies here on the Situation Report. Stick around. Hey, Mike Baker here with an important message for every small business out there. Look, small businesses face an uphill battle with big banks

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Hey, this is Mike Slater. I have a podcast called Politics by Faith. I would love for you to listen. We take the news of the day and we run it through the Bible. What does the Bible have to say about this? Because there's nothing new under the sun. You read the headlines, everything's all crazy world's coming to an end. It's all in the Bible. And after every episode, hopefully you leave with a proper perspective and a biblical piece. Please join us wherever you listen to podcasts. And we also have a YouTube page as well. YouTube.com slash at Politics by Faith. Welcome back to the PDB Situation Report. Joining me once again is Richard Goldberg, senior advisor at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies.

Richard, thanks very much for sticking around. How would you assess the current strength of the Iranian military? Obviously, on their nuclear capabilities, they've been cut down a size. Their actual missile forces, which are deployed ballistic missiles and cruise missiles. missiles. We don't have an accurate number in the public domain of their estimated inventory. Remember, they had about 3,000 estimated medium to intermediate range ballistic missiles according to Central Command a few years ago in testimony. Then we saw them lob 100, you know, plus in 2024 at Israel. They lobbed hundreds during the 12-day war last summer. And then there was some unknown number

that were hit by the Israelis and the ongoing strikes while owning the airspace over Iran. But if you just look at the sheer number that were fired and you subtract from 3,000, you don't know how many the Israelis actually hit, how many launchers they hit as well, but there is some large number of missiles in their inventory left,

and we don't have any good count on the cruise missile side as well. So missile threat, definitely there, have to be accounted for, and you would hope we've done pretty good intel assessments on that. And if they have storage facilities where you can take out 500 in a deep underground bunker that only a B2 can hit, hopefully that's on the target list. But remember, a lot of their systems are mobile. They've invested a lot in the solid fuel missiles. That is actually what China's been helping them rebuild from the last war with certain components that you need in order to make that solid fuel. You then have a drone program.

We've seen those drones operate a fairly long range. You've seen some of these drones that they have provided to the Houthis operated at similarly very long range. So this is a threat that would, of course, in 2024, they launched those drones as part of their combined strike on Israel a couple of times, taking ballistic missiles, cruise missiles, and drones and launching them all at once in sequence at Israel. So these are threats to U.S. forces and our ships and bases. As far as actual ground military forces, I mean, they have one, they have a traditional military and they have the Revolutionary Guard Corps. You wouldn't want to get into a ground war with Iran. That would be strategically insane for the United States.

It would pit their strengths against our weaknesses on their territory. But you can do a lot of damage to their command of control, communications, their ability to move around. And we talked about that Navy, the IRGC Navy, not the traditional Navy, where they have ports, They have command of control. They have small boats. They can go out. They can harass. They can try to explode.

They can try to board. They have some, let's call it, spec ops, style ops that they've run on the waters. You've seen some of these videos where they seize tankers by helicopter landing along with fastboats alongside. So they have these asymmetric warfare capabilities that they've developed to be able to harass, extort, threaten the United States and others in the Gulf. But we have pretty good targeting solutions for a lot of it, I would expect. Things that are mobile, things that are already dispersed will be harder. That'll be dynamic targeting. You probably have to see them shoot first and then hit them very quickly, which we obviously

have the capability to do. With the carrier strike group out there, other assets and beefing up missile defenses in the region, what's your impression of the reaction so far from the other players out there in the region? I'm thinking the Saudis, Jordanians, UAE, Cutter. How would you describe what they're seeing and how they may be reacting and what they may be saying to the White House? Yeah, I think it's a mixed bag here. So you never really know, especially from the Saudis or Emirates, what they're going to say behind the scenes. We see reports and leaks claiming that they're opposing it trying to talk the Trump administration out of anything.

certainly that would be the public stance for all of these governments, right? They don't want to be the target of retaliation. They don't want their energy infrastructure hit, whether it's because the U.S. hit Iranian infrastructure, and the best way to disrupt the market would be to go take Saudi oil offline very quickly. So the Saudis have a reason to say, hey, we're not a part of this. You know, nobody's using our airspace. Don't look over here. Just keep it with Donald Trump, not us, because they may know something is coming and they want to try to distance themselves.

whether that would work or not, you know, TBD. But at the same time, there is something to be sort of questioned of if you are yourself a dictatorship, you happen to be allied with the United States and partnered with the United States, you know, going back to pre-Cold War and during the Cold War for strategic reasons. And it's a good relationship, but it's still a monarchy. And it's a, you know, pretty tough rule dictatorship with, you know, not any dissent tolerated. you know, there might be one thing to see your nuclear extortion threat taken off the table, maybe some missiles taken off the table, but to actually see a regime toppled by the people,

that spreads. People see that, even if you're a Sunni dictatorship instead of the Shia dictatorship. So there could be some strategic reasons why they want Iran weak, but not gone. They can at least understand what they have there. you know, a lot of times the strategic view, the national security viewpoints. And by the way, the Israelis are unique as a democracy and sharing in this as well. Very realist, real politic kind of view of a dictatorship in Egypt is better than a Muslim Brotherhood elected government, as we saw after Tara Square, where it's like, at least I know what the dictatorship and the military Egypt are going to do. And I can depend on that for my strategy, my future, instead of, oh my gosh, what's going to happen here with music. chairs of other branches and other radicals. That could also be something that the Saudis have in mind is they just say, I know this enemy.

As long as he has less capability to hurt me, I'm okay. I know how to operate my regime here. That's a really interesting point. Yeah, because you think about it, you think, look, none of them on a personal level, none of them would be probably upset or sad to see the Iranian regime go. but from a pragmatic, realistic, geopolitical perspective, yeah, the idea of the instability in the region and what that could bring is, so it's a very good point you bring up.

Can you talk about China's support of Iran? You touched on it briefly in terms of their assistance with helping to rebuild the missile program. I've been fascinated lately by thinking about what the Chinese. regime may be thinking, maybe how they're processing developments like in Venezuela and the removal of Maduro. And obviously that has an impact on China. So talk to me a little bit if you could about that relationship between China and Iran. I think Iran, not totally dissimilar from Venezuela.

Iran is a featured sort of headquarters for a continent, for a region. for the Belt and Road Initiative. It is the, you know, the foothill into a larger strategic push. Venezuela had become the incredible basing ground to launch into the rest of Latin America for the Chinese in the Belt and Road Initiative. So too, Iran has become this hub for the broader Middle East strategic objectives there. And also, they are able to depend on. on the Iranians to be a thorn in our side and to ensure that the threats, the capabilities

that the Iranians pose deter the United States from ever shutting down the Strait of Hormuz, from which the Chinese get half. So let me say that again, half of their imported oil, which comes through the Strait of Hormuz. It's not all from Iran, though. Iran is the discount gas station as all their oil is sanctioned, but the Iranians continue to import between one and two million barrels per day. That's not nothing for them. But you combine that with Saudi oil and other Gulf coming through the Strait of Hormuz. That's 50% of China's oil. If the United States Navy can control 50% of their oil import at any moment in a conflict over Taiwan or long-term strategic competition, that's very bad for the CCP. So you can understand why access to the

natural resources, access to the oil, a foothold into Asia, Europe, Middle East, everywhere through Iran, is really interesting to them, future military port access potentially in the Gulf. But also, the fact that you have this middling power that uses asymmetric tools to threaten the United States to keep those sea lanes open for them while they still develop a more advanced Blue Water Navy makes a lot of sense strategically. And I would think from their perspective, Venezuela just fell. That was both an energy resource, but more importantly, a Belt and Road initiative in our Hemisphere resource and the future military platform potential.

If Iran falls out of their sphere, that's two major setbacks for the CCP and on the oil side, really, really, really dangerous for their future. That's really interesting. But then I guess the question is What could they do about it? I mean, is there a play that China could make? There's roomint. There's roomant, I will tell you.

We have seen some, you know, these flight trackers. Everybody's into the OScent flight trackers, right? Everybody's got one. And oh, I just saw a flight take off. Oh, I just saw a Chinese flight, you know, what's going on? And there were some flights that came in. Traditionally would be IRGC related that flew in from China right when Iranian airspace was originally shut down when we thought the president was going to

launch the strikes but then seemed to have delayed. We don't know what are on some of these cargo flights that come in from China. They could be military assets. The roomint, of course, is that for months since the 12-day war last summer, the Chinese had been negotiating to provide their own potential air defense augmentation, anti-ship missiles, hypersonics, things of that nature. None of that's confirmed. There's been a lot of talk for a long time.

We've seen some public evidence of the U.S. Navy interdiction of Chinese transports to Iran in the last few months. You can Google that one. We assume that's the planetary mixer is another components that were coming for the missile manufacturing base that we talked about earlier on the solid fuel. But if they actually are transferring to these more advanced weapon systems, hopefully the intel community knows about it. And we are preparing those contingencies in case they have any sort of assets that would endanger our forces more than we believe at this point in the open source. Yeah. I think it's always important to expand the conversation outside the country or the region because I'm sometimes surprised by people who imagine that the world is somehow not connected. That, you know, we can, as a nation, we can live in a bubble and something that happens on the other side of the government.

globe doesn't impact us. But it's a very small world. It's shrinking probably even as we speak. And we're all so interconnected. It is fascinating to look at China's position right now in terms of the events that are happening. And then you've got, of course, their own Belt and Road initiative. And there is some talk about countries looking to back out of past agreements because maybe

they've realized it's usury debt. Look, Richard, fascinating. Thank you very much for taking the time and putting up with my voice and all the questions. I hope that when we call you next time, you'll be willing to come back on a situation report. Richard Goldberg, Senior Advisor, Foundation for Defense of Democracy's, great insight. Well, coming up after the break, a new analysis reveals the staggering human cost of Russia's war in Ukraine. Seth Jones, one of the authors of the study, joins us to break down what the numbers really. mean. Stay with us. Hey, Mike Baker here. Now, BDB listeners know that I'm constantly traveling. In fact,

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Nearly four years into Russia's invasion of Ukraine, a new study is showing the staggering human cost of a war defined by attrition. The brief, published by the Center for Strategic and International Studies, fines of Russian and Ukrainian military losses have reached levels not seen for a major to power since World War II, with combined casualties now nearing 2 million. What makes a total even more striking is how little territory has changed hands. It's World War I all over again, with enormous sacrifices, producing only marginal gains on the battlefield. For more on this, let me bring in Seth Jones. He's the president of the Defense and Security Department and the Harold Brown chair at the Center for Strategic and International Studies and one of the authors of this study. Seth, thanks very much for joining us here on the Situation Report. Hey, thanks for having me on.

It's a real honor. Well, give me, if you could, for the sake of our viewers and listeners, a quick overview of the study, right? We've touched on it, but give us sort of a brief summary. And then my follow-up question to that, which I'm just going to give you right. now is how surprised were you by the results? I mean, in many ways, surprised. I mean, what we wanted to do is take a look at how the Russians were actually performing on the battlefield.

There's been a lot of talk about that the Russians are either doing well or doing poorly. I mean, if you listen to President Putin, he makes it sound like Russia is marching to some kind of inevitable victory. So we looked at a couple of indicators just to give us a sense of how the Russians are performing. And the data was just stunning. If you look at casualties and fatalities, Russia has suffered since the war began, the full-scale war began in 2022, roughly 1.2 million casualties.

And somewhere around on the high end, about. 325,000 deaths. So those casualties are both wounded and killed. The deaths will obviously be just those are just that percentage that have died. But I mean, those are more casualties and frankly deaths than any major power has lost in any war since World War II. We also looked at a couple of other areas just to gauge how the Russians were doing. One of them was we looked at average rates of advance on the battle. how quickly or slowly they were moving. And they were advancing anywhere from 15 meters per day on average to 70.

That is lower than almost every war offensive campaign we looked at over the last century, including the bloody Battle of the Somme during World War I. And then we also looked at the war economy, noting how little productivity is going on, within the Russian economy, obviously other than just oil and gas, one area that we looked at is tech companies. You know, the top 100 tech companies right now, Russia has zero right now. US has 60, the Navidias and Googles and Amazon's. They've got zero.

So, you know, just struggling on multiple fronts is what we came away with. Now, you had a lot of experience. You've been studying this issue and working this for some time. But at the end of the day, once you put together the results, to what degree that did it exceed your expectations? Were you starting this out expecting that it would be a staggering number? Or was this something well beyond your expectations? Well, I've been to Ukraine. I spent a lot of time when I was in the U.S. military and special operations in places like Afghanistan and,

and Somalia. So I spent a lot of time on battlefields. But having been to Ukraine, this one, it's a war of attrition. This is, it's a different feel from any of the wars I've ever been involved in. So I'm not surprised that there were, you know, there were going to be high numbers. But I think when we looked at $1.2 million in a roughly four-year period, I think that surprised me. and then when you looked at it compared to other major powers in the last 100 years or so. And even the Russian performance in Chechnya or Afghanistan in the 1980s, yeah, it surprised me.

It surprised me how poorly they're doing and how much their military is suffering. It's also shocking. There's a tremendous museum in London, the Imperial War Museum. and they have a World War I exhibit. And when you walk through that, which I did just the other day, again, you're kind of, you have to step back and think, oh, my God, we're doing it again. It's another major land war in Europe where they're gaining meters at a time perhaps, maybe not even that.

They're digging trenches. They're just stuck in and vast numbers of people are dying. We're just doing the same thing over again. Yeah, one of the striking parts for me was when we actually looked at some of the timelines, even compared to where the Soviets were in World War II. So if you start the timeline at when the Nazis invade the Soviet Union, what's Operation Barbarossa in 1942, and then you fast forward 1,0003,000, 394 days, the Soviet Red Army against the Vermacht and the Luftwaffe, are in Berlin.

They've won. And if you take the same timeline, the Russians today, if you start that clock when they invade in 2022, and then you come to, you know, 1,000s, 394 days later, that's December of last month, and they are barely in Prokrofts. I mean, they're still a long way away, 500 kilometers away from Kiev. I mean, it's just the Red Army was much more proficient and better during those times. It shows you also how far the Russian military has come down. And to what's agreed to do this new technology play a role in how this war has developed

and the numbers of losses and also the lack of ground gains? I mean, let's just look at drones. What's your assessment there? Yeah, I think some of the technology has contributed to those high rates, but it's probably been a few other things, too. Ukraine is on the defense. And when you're the defender, you're digging trenches, you're laying minefields. So that's helpful.

And it's certainly from the Ukrainian perspective and certainly not helpful from the Russian perspective. I think also from the beginning of the war, if you think, about the U.S. and the Gulf War in 1990, 91, the U.S. was able to integrate its joint forces, so firing from aircraft and then supporting those forward-deployed tanks, so doing fire and maneuver pretty effectively. The Russians are just so poor at combined arms. They're poor at joint warfare. And I think we've seen things like corruption start to manifest them. in logistics problems.

So I think there are a range of things from technology to the defense on the Ukrainian side to just poor Russian strategy operations and tactics that are leading to those high numbers. Did you, during the course of this study, did you also look at the command structure of the Russian military? We did. And we've been tracking that since the beginning of the war. they have certainly evolved actually the brigade and battalion levels.

I think the challenge that we found in the organizational structure was more actually how they were trying to take territory. A lot of dismounted infantry moving into what they call the no man's land and then exploiting essentially criminals that have been released from prison or what they're the Russians will also do is bring in a number of people and use them for those purposes from Siberia and the Far East or down in the North Caucasus. So Chechnya and Dagestan, not sort of your white Russians. So for them, they're expendable for Putin. And they've also used North Koreans for that as well. So there's a little bit of also how they're fighting

along those lines and who they consider expendable. Yeah, we've talked a lot about that on the PDB about the North Korean troops that Kim Jong-un is sent in, along with his other support, hardware and elsewhere. But I think it is interesting. At the very beginning of this war, obviously there was an expectation that this was not going to take very long, certainly on Putin's part. But I think the West also felt as if this could be a very short effort on the Ukrainians side. But it did become pretty clear pretty quickly that there were a number of issues, right, in terms of their supply chain management, their logistics, their intelligence on the Russian part, I mean. And so it looked not too soon after really the invasion started that their military structure, their leadership and all these other issues, the things that support an invasion were kind of shot through with holes. And I think that the thing that continues to surprise me is how the Russian average rates of advance have just not changed dramatically.

I mean, they were able to take some territory and a chunk of territory right at the beginning of the war in late February of 2022 and then into early March. But since then, most of the offensive operations, they're just, they're grinding away. And they just haven't gotten better. I mean, we have seen in some previous wars, militaries evolved. They, the strategically operationally, tactically, to figure out how to do fire and maneuver, joint warfare, you know, forward deployed forces, getting fighter aircraft to strike targets. So it really allows them to maneuver on the ground. And we just haven't seen those kind of improvements in the Russian military.

Look, I've got another page of questions here. I've got to throw at you. But we also have to take a quick break. So if you could stay right where you are, we'll be back with more from Seth Jones. Right here are the Situation Report. Stick around. Hey, Mike Baker here. Let me ask you a question.

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Buy your car today on... Carvana. Delivery fees may apply. Welcome back to the PDB Situation Report. Joining us once again is Seth Jones of the Center for Strategic. and international studies. Seth, the numbers that you used in this assessment, how credible are they?

Did you have trouble trying to pull together data on casualty numbers? In the middle of a war, it is always difficult. I mean, just going back to my time within the U.S. military, especially spending time years, the years I was in Afghanistan, it was hard to assess Taliban casualty and fatality rates. So what you do is you look at a number of data points, you pull together numbers, essentially drafts, which is what we did. And then we went a little bit on a roadshow, looked at all of the assessments and there are numbers that come out of a range with different, research organizations. We went to U.S. intelligence and military analysts. We went to the British government, the polls, and a number of other European countries that are tracking it. And so I think

what we ended up coming down with is estimates that we felt were, you know, generally within the range of what was likely. Had to be particularly careful about looking at Ukrainian. and Russian estimates themselves, what they put out publicly, and just have a tendency, I think, to either go too high or too low, depending on whether they're reporting on themselves or others. But I think we felt as we, and then we had a few people review our numbers. Mick Ryan, for example, retired two-star Australian general, who's been to Ukraine six times, took a look at all of our data.

We thanked him at the end of the report. So we had a bunch of people take a lot of. look at it. So I think at the end of the day, we felt like we were in the ballpark, and then every briefing we did to U.S., British, and other government officials generally confirmed that their estimates were kind of in the same area. So, you know, it's not an exact. It's a little bit more of an art than a science, but I think we were in the ballpark. Were you able to, to any degree, pull out conscription numbers or, you know, things such as hospital records or, or I'm just wondering, was there a way to correlate from a variety of sources and come up with these numbers?

We did look at a number of sources that did pull up hospital records for Russian casualties. We did look at Ukrainians as well. That is helpful to some degree. But, I mean, at the end of the day, Russian hospitals are not providing or not being transparent on the numbers of Russian soldiers. So there were a few places that we were able to pull out some data sets, but they were generally on the very low side. And, I mean, I just don't think you could pull a comprehensive report together without actually having visited Russia and going to these hospitals and getting. getting them to give you data that they're not going to give you. So, but we did get access to everything we could.

MediaZona, for example, has a data set of Russian soldiers that have been killed partly by hospital data. We also were able to look at some obituaries. But even there, we've noticed that the Russian press has been asked to not report on, you know, not place obituaries in newspapers and report. port on funerals of Russian soldiers. So there's a lot of hiding this in the press. Now, Seth, if you could, talk to us about the Ukrainian side. I mean, I don't mean just the credibility of their numbers for casualties, but the manpower differences between the two

militaries and the impact this is having on Ukraine. I think if you look at what the Ukrainians have suffered, I mean, our estimates were that the Ukraine has lost somewhere between 500,000 and 600,000 casualties. So that's killed, wounded, and then missing. And out of that five to 600,000, they have lost somewhere between 100,000 and 140,000 fatalities. And that again, that's between February of 2022 when the full scale invasion starts and then December of 2025. So two interesting things come out of that for us. One is that if you project current rates of Ukrainian casualties plus Russian casualties, those combined numbers, they will likely hit, again, if the current trends stay the way they are, 2 million by the spring of 2006. Actually, if you continue with

the trends as they are today, be April of 2006. The second thing that's of interest is, is the ratios. So we see about a ratio of 2.5 or so Russians killed or wounded compared to every one Ukrainian. So that's interesting because the Russians have a much bigger mobilization capacity than Ukraine, but they are getting wounded and dying at a much greater rate. But as you look into the future, Ukraine does have a numbers challenge. And its conscription is still around 25 years of age. Remember, during World War II, was down 18 in the United States.

I think the Ukrainians have some very difficult choices if this war continues on dealing with some of the defectors, because they've had a number of young men in particular that have defected and not served, but also probably going to have to rethink the conscription age because they need bodies. Yeah. Now, this is going to seem like a lot question, but let's say Putin sits down with a glass of vodka and your report, and he goes through this information. This is all speculative, I realize that, but I'm just curious about your opinion. Do you think Putin looks at those numbers and says,

oh, you know, that's not bad. You know, we're winning. Let's keep up the effort. Or does he look at those numbers and go, oh, my God, you know, maybe I do need to find an exit ramp. Yeah, well, first of all, the Kremlin did come out earlier this week and comment on the report and said that the only reliable numbers were not from us or any other Western organization, but was from the Russian Ministry of Defense. So they did denounce the report, which means some people in the Kremlin anyway have read it. But I would just say more broadly, I think the answer to the question depends on what President Putin thinks the U.S. is going to do. If the U.S. were to impose additional sanctions on Russia as a number of members of Congress on both the Republicans, a democratic side have been pushing for and or continue to provide some aid and intelligence to the Ukrainians along with the Europeans. And that's the future that he's got to face. You know, that's a tough pill to swallow year after year to lose the numbers that he's talking

about. But if he does believe that support for Ukraine is likely to decrease, including from the U.S., I think he'll be willing to continue for. the foreseeable future. And I mean, at the end of the day, I think Putin considers most of the people that are dying or being wounded as expendable. I mean, again, they're from largely the Far East or the North Caucasus, not the politically important areas that would be meaningful for him, like St. Petersburg or Moscow. So, you know, there is another big question, which is what kind of pressure is he likely to continue getting from the nationalist spectrum within Russia? Because, boy, when you take a look at how orly performing his military is right now,

and then when you look at the shell of an economy other than oil and gas that Russia has, just its declining productivity, President Putin is driving his country into the ground. And, you know, he may get increasing pressure from the nationalist side of Russia that just cannot accept the bleak future that they're leaving. But I think as far as 2026 is going, I think he looks at this data and says, I think if the West remains weak and I think we can stomach it for at least another year. Yeah, I don't disagree with your assessment on that. It's kind of a frustrating and sad thought, certainly for the Ukrainian people. But, yeah, I think you're probably right on the money. Seth, look, I got a lot more questions, but I don't have any more time.

And we should probably finish this interview before my voice completely gives out, right? Otherwise, yeah, that's just bad interviewing technique. So I hope that you'll come back next time we give you a shout. but Seth Joe's Center for Strategic International Studies. I just want to say thank you very much for everything you're doing, for the work you put into this study, and for your insight. Really appreciate you. Hey, thanks for having me on.

Really appreciate the work you're doing and look forward to the next time. That's all the time we have for this week's PDB situation report. Now, look, if you have any questions or comments or humorous anecdotes or you have any home remedies for this voice of mine, well, please reach out to me at pdb at thefirstdb.com. month, you know what we do with your best questions and comments. We pile them into an episode that we like to call Ask Me Anything. Another one is making its way to the launch pad. Finally, to listen to the podcast of this show ad-free, you can do that, and it's very simple. Just

become a premium member of the president's daily brief by visiting pdbbpremium.com. I'm Mike Baker. And until next time, well, you know the drill. Stay informed. Stay safe. Stay cool. Starting a business can seem like a daunting task, unless you have a partner like shopping. They have the tools you need to start and grow your business. From designing a website to marketing to selling and beyond, Shopify can help with everything you need. There's a reason millions of companies like Mattel, Heinz, and all birds continue to trust and use them. With Shopify on your side, turn your big business idea into... Sign up for your $1 per month trial at Shopify.com slash special offer.