The President's Daily Brief - PDB Situation Report | March 28th, 2026: The Most Dangerous Phase of the Iran War Yet & Ukrainian Forces Gain Ground Against Russia

Episode Date: March 28, 2026

In this episode of The PDB Situation Report: The war with Iran reaches the one-month mark, as U.S. and Israeli airstrikes continue and tensions center on the increasingly volatile Strait of Hormuz. We’re joined by Steve Yates of the Heritage Foundation to break down where things stand and what could come next. After months of grinding stalemate, Ukraine seizes the momentum in the south, reclaiming more territory than Russia for the first time in years. George Barros of the Institute for the Study of War joins us to assess what’s driving the shift and whether it can be sustained. 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 Ethos Life Insurance: Protect your family’s future with fast, online life insurance from Ethos—get your free quote in minutes at https://Ethos.com/PDB DeleteMe: Get 20% off your DeleteMe plan when you go to https://joindeleteme.com/PDB and use promo code PDB at checkout. Sundays for Dogs: Upgrade your dog’s food without the hassle—try Sundays for Dogs and get 50% off your first order at https://sundaysfordogs.com/PDB50or use code PDB50 at checkout. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

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on the world stage, and what a stage it is. All right, let's get briefed. First up, the war with Iran hits the one-month mark, time flies, as U.S. and Israeli airstrikes continue and attention shifts to the increasingly volatile Strait of Kormuz. We'll be joined by Steve Yates of the Heritage Foundation for more on that. And then later in the show, after months of grinding stalemate, Ukraine pushes back in the south, taking more ground than Russia for the first time in years. We'll be joined by George Barros of the Institute for the Study of War for those details. But first, today's situation reports spotlight. Well, we're now one month into the war between the U.S., Israel, and Iran, and the air campaign shows no signs of slowing. U.S. and Israeli strikes continue to target

Iran's military infrastructure and leadership, while Tehran continues to respond with missile and drone strike attacks against Israel and its Gulf neighbors. At the same time, there are mixed signals of a diplomatic track, public talk of off-ramps paired with continued military pressure. And increasingly, the focus has shifted to the strait of Kormuz, where the risk to global shipping and energy markets is becoming harder to ignore, as tensions play out along one of the world's most critical choke points. For more on this, let me bring in Steve Yates. He's the former Deputy National Security Advisor to the vice president

and senior research fellow at the Heritage Foundation, and also, might I add, a great friend of the show. Steve, great to see it again, man. Thank you, Mike. Thanks for having me back. Absolutely. Well, I didn't have any say in the matter. Why?

That's always great to... But thanks for not vetoing. I don't have that authority. I can't veto anything. All right, Iran. Good God. Where do we start? I tell you what, where do you want to start?

Well, I mean, we're in the middle at the moment. So I think we're in one of those situations where things could break in ways that are very risky. But in many ways, I don't know how you see it, Mike. But, I mean, I don't think we could have asked more of our military in terms of the major military operations. They're doing all the things that should be done. We don't live in a world of perfection, but they've had a pretty high success rate in establishing air dominance, sea dominance. signals, dominance, the interaction with Israel, division of labor with Israel, I think is historic. Again, I don't know how you see it, but I've never seen the United States this seamlessly

work in joint capacity with an ally. And if I'm an ally around the world, there's a lot of chatter about that these days. We hear it all the time. But if I'm an ally in the United States, I'd say, I'd like to have a little bit of that Israel situation going on if I'm ever facing hardship. These guys have the technology and the U.S. is definitely standing with. them in this. So there's some glass-half-full parts of this, but as I would acknowledge, I talked with a friend this morning, 20 years ago, we're at the beginning of the Iraq stuff, and after major military operations, it looked pretty darn good, and we found a genius way to lose the peace for a better part of 10 years. Yeah, that's a great way to put it. I guess it depends

on what your metrics are when you're talking about defining success, right? And I agree with 100% from an operational perspective, right? If we're talking about the military's ability to seriously degrade Iran's military capabilities, then I don't see how you don't look at this as an operational success. If you look at it, as you pointed out, there are some areas where the glasses have full, and I think we need to address those. Let's talk about the straight of Homoos. Let's talk about its importance. And let's start with this. I'll tell you the truth. I've been somewhat surprised that it appears. I'm sure that I'm wrong here, but it does appear this way. And perception is important that the White House has been surprised that the

straight became the leverage point, that the straight became the focus here. are, am I wrong? Did they draw up scenarios that said, okay, as soon as we start doing this, the only thing the Iranian regime can do is to create this chaos and blockade this straight because they can't go toe to toe with the U.S. and Israeli military. Yeah, I can't say you're wrong, but maybe I'm a little too optimistic about this. I think they did know that this is a point of leverage. This is going to be a challenge.

that geography, the waterways in the Gulf of Arabia or Persian Gulf, whatever your point of view is on that name. But that geography is confined. Of course, the Strait of Formos is even more confined. And then the state of Vermont is another area. And Iran has a ton of shoreline along that area and some offshore islands that are vital to the processing and flow of oil and natural gas. theirs and others. And they've been using some of those islands as choke points to check off whether people have paid the piper, whether they're permitted to go or not. I basically see a layering of this going on. The Trump administration has been very clear they want allies who have skin in the

game to put some things on the table. This should not be an America-only kind of thing for maritime security in that area and freedom of navigation on the high seas is not an America only kind of objective. Some of our allies, I think, get that. I think some of our older allies have some soul searching to go through to figure out what they're going to play by way of a role in the world, and they might not play much of a role in the world if they don't figure it out soon. But if you look at the UAE, Saudi Arabia, Japan, they see skin in the game and they're going to step in and play some roles. And the administration in going through this more protracted period of risk is ensuring some of that. Does that make it genius or by accident? We don't really get to

know and historians will write it after the fact. And of course, they'll be right and we'll all be wrong. But for now, I do see some of those shifting tectonic plates that help shape what post-major military operations would look like. And America's still going to have to play a role, but it's not going to be the only role and definitely not the only financier of this. And so I'd say in another two to four weeks, we should see a different reality in the movement of vessels and the Straits of Moose. How we get there, we have fog right now. I think we just have to acknowledge that we don't have perfect visibility. And for all we know, the administration doesn't have perfect visibility, but it's better than going in Iraq style and saying, we're going to do it all ourselves and we're

going to run this show. Yeah, no, I, but we could back that up and say, then perhaps we should have set the table a little better with our key partners, our key allies, because there's a sense of, hang on a second, you know, nobody talked to us about this, right? And that straight is incredibly important. You know, you look at Europe in terms of LNG, right, and what that straight means to them in terms of, you know, free passage. You look at Asia, our partners there. And so the other, the flip side of that is perhaps you're setting the table with better coordination right up front, knowing, again, you would think, you would think, knowing that the Strait of Hormuz is going to be the issue and it's going to cause these sea changes in the global energy markets.

I filled up my truck yesterday, Steve, 102 bucks, right? Yeah, Tesla's looking better every day, isn't it? Yeah, Chesh, yeah, exactly. Well, look, you know, politically, the White House has to solve this, right? I would argue that they're going to have to figure out a way to declare victory in some fashion. And I think if they had stated up front that the objective here is to massively degrade the military capabilities of the Iranian regime. Right. But I think it, to use your word, it was foggy, right? What are the objectives? So look, if they're talking about naval escorts, right, for sheep getting an international naval force in there, as the president's talked about, that's well and good. But you've still got the same regime. And they've shown amazing resiliency, unfortunately, for the people of Iran. but that only lasts as long as it lasts, right?

So what are you talking about? In definite period of time where you've got an international naval force escorting tankers through in sort of this clumsy effort, which is still going to slow things down. Because as soon as you stop, you've got the same Iranian regime and they can continue to harass and as soon as they fire off one shot, the insurance and shipping industries do the same thing, which is say, nope. And then you've got this same problem. So I guess that was a very long-winded way on my part, and I apologize, for asking you what happens?

How do you resolve this from your perspective? Well, I don't have great answers to how you resolve it, frankly, just because this is a hard and complicated thing. Global energy markets are a big, important factor. People don't want to admit it. It's not only about the flow of energy and the flow of money, but whether you like it or not, that's the oxygen that allows the world to live. And so it does matter. We have in the past gone through periods of big uncertainty, high prices.

During the Biden administration, we did that by policy choice. It wasn't by taking on a major challenge that was going to get resolved. In previous administration, we've also had shocks that have come about for various reasons. It's not sustainable for it to go long term. And so the administration is going to have to do some things. I think they have policies and strategies in mind that they think will begin to move things. Secretary of Bessent has hinted at those. The Trump administration has a perfect record of keeping their cards close to the vest.

And then after things start moving, they begin to disclose and articulate. That's very frustrating for those who might be friendly on the outside that would like to understand and explain and maybe help calm some jitters. that are out there. So we're dealing with a very different information environment. When I lived in the Bush administration 20 years ago, there was a lot of information that went out. The problem was that the actions on the ground didn't endure to the point of holding up that rhetoric and that vision. We have the opposite challenge now where we have less going out by way of explanation, but some facts on the ground are building somewhat of a foundation, but we're going to live with this uncertainty.

Politically, what emerges in Iran? What kind of coalition of forces kind of mow the grass in this region? So we're not the daily maintenance manager of what's happening in the broader Middle East. We're going to have to have Saudi Arabia, UAE, Israel, others that are trusted allies, step in in some pretty important ways. And Japan, I think, is emerging in a very different new global role. and they're good with what has happened so far. Of course, they'd like to be informed and in on the earlier conversations,

but they're good for now. Prime Minister Takehi had a good summit with the president. And as long as they see some kind of de-escalation coming in the, say, two to four-week period with some defined landing place, maybe a maintenance plan going forward, they want to see resources back in the Indo-Pacific, too, to make clear that there is an adventurism there, where we pay a price for what we've tried to handle,

whether it's in Europe and Ukraine or this broader Middle East challenge, the Venezuela and Western Hemisphere stuff, we've got a lot of cans open at the moment. Yeah, we absolutely do, Stephen. It's very interesting, and there's a lot of layers to this, right? It's, you know, it's, how does this impact the Ukraine conflict, our ability to, you know, provide support there and our allies' ability to provide support there. Yeah. And so there's so much here to continue talking about. But first, Steve, you know what I'm about to do, right? You got to stay right where you are. We got to take a quick break. And then we'll be back with more from Steve Yates here on the Situation Report. So don't go away.

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Protect your family with life insurance through Ethos. Get your free quote in minutes at ethos.com slash PDB. Again, that's ethos.com slash PDB. Ethos.com slash PDB. Application times and rates may vary. Welcome back to the PDB Situation Report. Steve Yates joins us again, senior research fellow at the Heritage Institute. I almost couldn't pronounce heritage.

Well, Steve, I think we've almost solved the whole Iran situation on the first segment. But let's see if we've got anything left on the table. Here's a concern, I guess, because you have to game these things out, right? We have to think about this. And I appreciate what you're talking about, a timeline of two to four weeks, and we've got more clarity. perhaps we've got more involvement from regional partners. You know, there have been reports that the Saudis, MBS in particular, has been, you know, quietly encouraging the White House to continue this effort.

I think all those players out there are concerned that if we, for whatever reason, possibly political reasons and rising gas prices at the pump, we decide to declare victory and call it a day. They're left with a more hard-lined regime. in Iran, which still has capabilities, and they'll have to deal with it. And that's the reality. I think if we're going to be pragmatic about this, it doesn't appear as if the regime is looking to make any significant changes. They're not going to become more moderate, perhaps. Who knows? Maybe we get a miracle here. But at some point, we'll end up dealing with them again.

And so I guess a success would be if that time frame has been extended, every administration just kind of put a lipstick on this pig and hope that the next administration might be able to deal with it. Maybe what we've got to here is a success because we now pushed it further down the road to the point where we have to deal with it again. Yeah, well, I mean, there's a couple of ways if you want to paste markers for optimistic outcomes. I'll just, I'm not naturally an optimistic person. I'm just playing one on your program today. But if you're going to try to place some of these markers out there, you'd say, okay, we were living with a scope of a threat that really was underappreciated in some ways minimized by a lot of people.

But the very fact that the remnants of this regime launched two long-range missiles out in the direction of Diego Garcia proved that they had a long-range missile. that was better than assessed by a lot of different services around the world and could strike targets much farther. And as you know, you don't have that kind of long-range missile development capability unless there's something you want to put on that tip that is not your average boom-boom device. And so that, I think, legitimized in a way a lot of the conversation that I think erroneously, and I would say slanderously was saying that the Prime Minister of Israel was dragging President Trump by the nose into this effort. There is a global security problem that was percolating under the regime in Iran that was bigger and closer to doing terrible things. So the authors of October 7th in Israel, not that long ago, the backers of assassination campaigns in the United States,

and that bled out a lot of our troops in Iraq and other places, they were closer to disastrous capabilities than we assess. So at least at that measure, that has been degraded much more profoundly than the strikes last summer could have done. Then, you know, generally, yes, there could be remnants of this regime that are not good, shiny, happy people going forward, and it might not be a kumbaya moment for the people of Iran who are long suffering and deserve a better future, deserve to celebrate a Persian culture, not an Islamist theocracy. All those things remain true. But if we are in that middle ground, Venezuela like, where we have remnants of a regime that is odious to our morality in some ways our strategy, but is behaving in ways that

are more contrite in the coming period, we are net better off. Then you do cost benefit analysis of was that worth it? And then if it pops back up and we have to do something similar again, is that better or worse, more expensive or less expensive than taking the Iraq model or other things, or the Obama approach of, I'm going to send pallets full of cash and I'm going to try to buy the threat every so many years. Those are basically the bad options that a responsible commander-in-chief and global power has to face. I think what we're muddling through now is better than what we've gone through in the past so far. And so I would accept this measure of risk. Don't claim perfection on anybody's part. But I think that's kind of the muddle that we have.

On balance, though, if it tips the scales and the people of Iran get a better transition, that's freaking historic. And we're in a completely different Middle East. Israel, Saudi, Iran, the UAE, others, we're just in a different ballgame. Yeah, look, I don't think there's any doubt that, you know, certainly from the Israeli perspective, they consider a win to be a change in the regime, right? That's what they clearly have in mind. That's what they, you know, look at as a primary objective, right? I think that was maybe secondary for the U.S. perspective. And a lot of Iranian Americans agree with that. Yeah, right. If it happened, it happened and, you know, great. But you've also got the regional players,

the Saudis and others who, you know, I think would love to see the Iranian regime. gone. But, you know, for the past few years, I think they tried to play nice with them. They tried to detente and now I think they realized that that doesn't work. But you still end up with this issue. You know, we really don't know who's in charge. It does appear as if the Revolutionary Guard Corps, the IRGC, has cemented their position at the top of the food chain. It It looks like Massoud Posseschi and the president is marginal at best. You've got a political group there that probably is secondary to the IRGC. And I would argue the clerics have probably figured out they're not running the show, right?

For optics, you know, they're still there. But, you know, it does appear that we end up with a scenario where the IRGC is fully in charge, the security apparatus. and I don't know that, you know, that's a happy result. But to your point, you know what, if we've degraded their military capabilities significantly and they're not able to create the same level of instability in the region for a number of years because we've also gone after their manufacturing capabilities for munitions and other things, you know, you have to look at that and say, okay, that's as to success, because they've been the

primary blocker to long-term peace and stability in the region for decades. And if we come out of this, they don't have a monopoly on security in the Arabian Gulf, as I'll call it, and then, then, you know, basically the ability to immediately go back and either by way of terror or coercion, try to force markets to move or powers that have to back away and make concessions to them. That's a net forward progress. It's going to be very, very hard, I think, to get to a place where those that were sent into exile for 40-plus years and those who have been waiting out for all this time,

a different day, I think that the emotions, but justifiable desires of a lot of those people, are going to be hard to meet in the immediate term, even though I would greatly wish that we could get to that kind of a place. But for the Saudis and others, I think we're in range of what's manageable. We're all going to have to invest, and we're all going to have to be more honest about what the division of labor and the work is in this region. Yeah, I think when the regime comes out early on in this conflict and tells their own people that if you come out in the streets, we're going to kill you. It's some pretty powerful incentive for them not to come out in the streets because they've just seen thousands of their own slaughter. coming back around to the straight because I think it all ultimately it all meets there, right?

And by there, I mean, essentially what we pay for fuel at the pump, right? Because politically, it's just not tenable. And so from the White House perspective, if they're concerned about how the Republicans do in the midterm, for example, they've got to wrap this up. They've got to figure out a way to stabilize that. They've got to figure out what to calm the insurance and shipping industries sufficiently. That means, you know, probably not long-term seasoned occupy operations in the straight. Even though they're putting out the Marine Expeditionary units and the 82nd Airborne and we've got a lot of assets, obviously, an occupation in some fashion.

You know, I'm not saying the Iranian regime. I'm the first person to say the Iranian regime should be, they deserve to get their ass kick. Yeah. And they should. I'm talking from an operational perspective here, setting all that aside, you know, an occupation in that area is not going to calm the markets. And a naval escort operation is going to have short-term, you know, abilities to do the same, to calm the markets. It's not sustainable over a long period of time. So they've got to cut a deal here.

And by all accounts, it looks like the Iranian regime is saying, hey, look at this, we're going to come out of a steal with complete control of the strait. You know, one of their demands reportedly is that they're going to expect the international community to say, yes, you've got a sovereign right to control the strait of Hormuz. Yeah. Maybe set up these tolls, you know, pay for safe passage. Well, I think we've got some divisions inside the remnants of the IRGC and the Iranian regime. We have part of them that either are channeling their inner North Korean or Baghdad. Bob, and there's other parts that are allegedly talking with the president and his team. I can't know who they're really talking to. The president seems to think he got a down payment

on sort of earnest money that the person he's talking to or the people he's talking to could do something by getting safe passage of like 10 vessels under a Pakistan flag to move. That seemed to be a demonstration of ability. Is that enough? Hard to say. But I do think you're right in the immediate term. You've got basically a month and at the longest two months to have demonstrated that there's some downward pressure on prices. There's some de-escalation feel in terms of the flow of goods. And this is an important case study for people. America does not rely on that region for our oil. But that oil and gas affects global markets. And those global markets affect all of us. It affects China. And they're learning that too. They are not a

superpower and they are not independent. And it affects our allies, including, as I would differentiate good allies. I don't see all allies as being just like everybody else, but our good allies, they're affected too. And so there is a limited period of time. I think they're looking at those islands that are around the hormones. And so I would expect maybe if the first best option is whoever the president is talking to, there is some kind of a deal that actually proves to work in coming weeks. That may be a Hail Mary. It may be reasonable. I can't tell at this point. But if that isn't delivering fruit, then they're going to have to do something that fundamentally shapes the reality around those islands. And I don't want America to be the only one involved in that.

I do want it to be a shared operation, at least with our Arab allies, and be able to make that a sustainable reality. But I think that that's basically the fork in the road that, hits us in the next two to four weeks at the very least. Yeah, I think that's a really solid assessment, Stephen. I think what we will see in Europe from our allies there in Europe, I think they will get on board. They're in an interesting situation, right, from a population perspective, right? A lot of the folks there are in Europe are not behind this idea, but what they are behind

is not paying outrageous amounts of money, maybe $10 a gallon for few. fuel. So from a political survival point of view, at some point those governments are going to have to say, we got to get it on board. Otherwise, we're just going to get, you know, kicked to the curb here because of the economic realities. Even if the population isn't crazy about the idea of supporting the conflict, they'll be likely supportive of the idea of de-escalating, right, and creating some stability and certainly lower prices. So I think that will be likely supportive. all come into play. The regional partners, you could almost argue, are far more important in this whole scenario. And Steve, I'll tell you what, it's always a great conversation. Well, what you say

is a great conversation. I'm just filling in a gap. I appreciate you, Mike. Yeah, listen, Steve, you're a senior research fellow at the Heritage Institute, Matt. It's always a pleasure. I'll look forward to the next conversation. Take good care. Take care, man. All right, great guy. Now, coming up next, there are new signs that Ukraine may be regaining momentum. That's right, for the first time in quite a while. With recent gains in the South raising questions about Russia's position, we'll be joined by George Barros, a great friend of the show.

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Just help when you need it. Shop up to 50% off site wide. Huge savings on special buys, plus a free professional measure now during the Spring Cyber Monday sale. restrictions apply. Welcome back to the PDB Situation Report. With the war in Iran dominating the headlines, it's easy to forget that the most devastating conflict in Europe since World War II is still grinding on in Ukraine, thanks to Putin's invasion. And there have been some notable developments. Over the past two months, Ukrainian forces have launched counterattacks in the South, recliming more territory than

Russian troops have captured for the first time since 2023. Now, that's a meaningful shift, obviously. And while there's been some focus on disruptions to Russian access to systems like Starlink, the bigger story may be Ukraine's improving operational planning and execution on the battlefield. For more on this, let me bring in George Barrows. He's a good friend of the show and the director of innovation and open source tradecraft at the Institute for the Study of War. George, thanks very much for coming back on the Situation Report. Hey, Mike, thanks for having me once again. It's always a pleasure to see you. I appreciate that, man. Likewise. Listen, George, I was talking the other day with Constantine and Francis, who run the

Trigonometry podcast. It's a great show. And their last question for me was, what do I think should be on people's radar screen? What is something happening in the world that we're not paying enough attention to? And my response was the Ukraine conflict, because we've all shifted focus. Past month, it's been all Iran 24-7. If you could, walk us through the most recent important developments in the conflict. Yeah, absolutely. So February 26th was a very interesting month for Ukraine,

and there were some major inflections and some of the battlefield trends that we've seen there as we study that war. In February of 26th, the Ukrainians actually managed to liberate more territory of occupied Ukraine than what Russian forces managed to seize across the theater. And this is the first time that there's been a net positive territorial gain in favor of Ukraine since Ukraine's counter-offensive in 2023. So it's been over two years since we've seen this pattern. And that's a really big deal. And I think we could have a wonderful discussion on some of the underlying causes behind that. But the bottom line up front is that the war is maturing. I think we're on the precipice of a new

phase of this war. And a lot of the fundamentals are actually working in favor of Ukraine as Ukraine has matured operational concepts, matured some capabilities, figured out how the Russians are fighting this war and finding vulnerabilities that they're exploiting. So we could start to talk about that. But suffice to say, the war is not dynamic, or the war is dynamic. It's not a stalemate. Okay, so two parts to my question. The first part is from your perspective, what's the most critical element that's contributed to this success recently by the Ukrainian military. And the other part is when you say it's entering a new phase, what do you mean by that? Sure. Let me start with the second question first. What I mean is that it seems that we're starting to leave the last days of the

war that was dominated by positional warfare. And after the counteroffensive of 2023, when the Ukrainians attempted a very sort of by the books, NATO style, well, minus the air component, but basically, crudely speaking by the books, breaching of a prepared enemy defense and depth mechanized equipment. And that failed. We've basically been in a position of warfare where the lines change very little. It's difficult for forces to achieve mass. There's no operational breakthroughs. And basically, the lines are more or less static, crudely speaking.

The Ukrainians are now experimenting and achieving ways to actually get armor to the front at the small tactical level. And they're now actually being able to achieve elements of surprise. despite persistent drone overwash at all times. So that's really interesting. And I think we're going to see more dynamic moves on the battlefield in 2026 and 2027. So that's the answer the second question. For the first question, underlying causes. Biggest reason is maturation Ukrainian operational planning.

I will say that the Ukrainian military has grown tremendously over the past four years of full-scale war. And up until about year three, maybe three and a half, the Ukrainian forces were, for the most part, primarily focused on tactical level problems. You know, how do I kill the Russians that are in my brigade's immediate air of responsibility when they come within 15, 20 clicks of our front lines, right? But one of the things that has happened is that the Ukrainians, through maturation of command concepts by the development of this new core echelon that sit on top of brigades with

command staff there, they're now thinking about critical vulnerability. of the Russian operational machinery. They actually now are doing what we call in the U.S. military center of gravity analysis and seeking to find sort of the systems that the Russians rely on to sustain their concepts of operations, to sustain their campaigns. And the Ukrainians are beginning to systematically study and attack those centers of gravity. And we can talk about the tactics of that of what that exactly look like and how it manifested with the successful counterattacks in February,

but that's really what's happening right now. Okay. And so let's kind of expand on that if we could. And what, you know, from, again, from your perspective and what you're seeing, what are they going after primarily? Are we talking about, you know, command and control? We talked about communications facilities. What are we talking about when you discuss this advance that they're making

and their ability to be more strategic if you want to put it that way? Sure. So the Ukrainians conducted a series of counterattacks in February that liberated, you know, somewhere in the ballpark of 330 to 400 square kilometers of terrain. And the, what I'll tell you, let me tell you the sort of like the common story, the narrative that currently surrounds that, then I'll go ahead and maybe issue my little corrective. So the story of this is largely that, you know, as you know, Elon Musk, the CEO of SpaceX, shut off the Russian action. access to Starlink on February 1st. And the common telling of the story is that the Ukrainians that exploited that cutoff, they went and attacked into Russian forces that were in disarray

with all of their comms bugged up because of that rugpole. And the Ukrainians therefore made all these gains. And that's not quite exactly right. Well, what actually happened is that the Ukrainians began what we call shaping the battlefield in late 2025. They began conducting, as you, exactly as you said, strikes against logistics, strikes against command posts, targeting and getting the Russians to basically, you know, make some silly mistakes that made them vulnerable, potentially allowed the Russians to advance too far, too fast with the intent of cutting them off at a later date, so creating kind of like a salt lick, and shaping the battlefield for a protracted period before actually committing to the ground phase of the, of the

operation. So the ground phase began in late January and early February, which then coincided in space and time with the SpaceX Starlink rugpole. And simultaneously, the Russians also I've been throttling the messenger app telegraph, which the Russian military used for command and control purposes, but that's for political reasons. And so we had sort of these degradation of command and control that sat on top of what was a planned Ukrainian undertaking. which served as a sort of happy, unexpected catalyst, but nonetheless helped it be successful. And also, the Ukrainians discovered a tactic to achieve drone dominance in a very narrow sector of the frontline. So within a tactical sector where there were doing these attacks,

they managed to be able to have just tactical drone dominance with a little strike at PPs. Yes, there were Russian drone crews there as well, but the Ukraine space and time massed effects and were able to have drone dominance with a depth of 20, 30 kilometers and made it very hard for the Russians to be able to stick their necks out. And because of that, we actually had Ukrainians using armored personnel carriers and infantry fighting vehicles up to 20 kilometers behind where the Russian lines were assessed to be, which was quite astonishing. And so it's sort of thinking about how to mask these effects in space and time after shaping

the battlefield for a projected period. The Starlink cut was a great catalyst for that as well. and it resulted with these successes that we've seen here. With that loss of connectivity with communications from the removal of Starlink, and they were essentially, correct me if I'm wrong, they were essentially piggybacking off of this, right? They had a system, they'd figured out how to get their hands on some terminals. And so they were essentially riding off of the Starlink capabilities that had been provided to Ukraine. But what are they doing to try to fill that gap now?

Yeah. So the Russians are now trying to establish their own Russian-controlled sovereign Starlink alternative. So there's a Russian company, private space company that's now actually just last week did a launch that put into low Earth orbit, I think 16 satellites that are supposed to become the basis for a sort of sovereign Russian equivalent of Starlink for space-based communications. Now, what I'll say is that this is the system, you know, its efficacy is to be determined. They're not going to have global coverage for a long time. It's unclear whether they

put these particular spacecraft into geosynchronous orbit to study Ukraine or if they're trying to piecemeal and put together a global constellation the way Starlink has. But it's not going to, yeah, this is going to be a strategic long-term undershaking. And it's probably not going to be as good to Starlink. If I had to wager just knowing the limitations on the Russian space industry and it pales in comparison to that level of excellence of the American companies have achieved in this domain. Right. Well, and the resources that they're able to throw at something like that have to be relatively limited given their four years of their invasion into Ukraine. And Starlink's operating thousands of these low Earth satellites. So if the Russians have put up what

16. Yeah, they've got a ways to go, I would argue. George, if you would stay right where you are, being mindful of your time, we have to take a quick break, and then we'll be back with more from George Barros, the Institute for the Study of War, right here on the Situation Report. You know what I'm about to say, right? Stick around. Hey, Mike Baker here with a message for dog lovers everywhere. Now, if you like me, dogs are an important part of family life, right? We've got two, our golden retriever hand rink, He's a good old boy now in his 14th year, and Monty are very cute but dim-witted King Charles Spaniel. As you probably know, when it comes to your dog food, well, there always seems to be a compromise, right?

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That's 50% off your first order at Sundaysfordogs.com slash PDB 50, Sundays for dogs.com slash PDB 50 or just use the code PDB 50 at checkout. Welcome back to the PDB Situation Report. Joining us once again is George Barros, director of innovation and open source tradecraft at the Institute for the Study of War. and that is a new, if I'm not mistaken, and impressively lengthy title, as Director of Innovation, I want to take just a moment to ask you, what does that mean? What are you looking at right now? So in my new role, and don't worry, I'm going to still be studying Russia and Ukraine. I've been doing

that for 12 years professionally, and I'll continue doing that. But in my new role, what I'm looking to do is to improve our workflows and our processes. So as you know, Mike, you know, when you have an intelligence workflow and your persistent collection analysis, synthesis, exploitation, dissemination, right? There's a whole data pipeline and infrastructure that actually supports those workflows. And so we can work with technologies like knowledge graphs. We can work with large language models to import the data. And what I'm looking to do here is work with private technology companies for knowledge

management solutions, make our workflows more robust and introduce more rigor. Go work with some of the private space companies that are collecting phenomenal types that they acquire. and still keep using how it into our unclassified and elephant's work, that sort of thing. And excellent. Well, congratulations on the new gig over there, but you can count on us continuing to call you for insight into the Ukraine conflict because we always appreciate it.

And speaking of the Ukraine conflict, let's turn our focus back to that. A lot has been made of the manpower discrepancy between Russia and Ukraine. And if you could talk about that just a bit in context of these successes that Ukraine's been experiencing over the recent past. Yeah. So the manpower shortages that the Ukrainians face are not yet solved. And so far as, look, there are still frontline units that don't have enough people. There are still companies and battalions that are a fraction of what their doctrinal end strength are supposed to be. there are still holes in the lines, so to speak.

I mean, actually, when I talk about the theater in Ukraine, I don't like to use the word lines because the front is actually not a continuous series of lines. It's a pointless front line where you have sort of these strong points that are occupied by a small number of Ukrainian soldiers who will then be responsible for hundreds of meters of frontage. But then they're constantly being surrounded, not surrounded, bypassed bypassed by Russian infiltrators who will then establish these non-continuous, contiguous strong points in front of them, behind them, to the left and right of them.

And so it's sort of a point to this front line where these strong points are interspersed. And they make up for that with the use of drones. So it's been very interesting. And it's really not like what we think about when we think of the lines from World War I or World War II because it's just very lightly manned on both sides. And that's an interesting characteristic of this war. Now, the persistent ISR and the use of drones, unmanned systems, not just in the air, but also for UGVs, for logistics, UGVs with guns on them to shoot to shoot people. I mean, Ukraine last fall, they did their first ever combined arms of salt that actually contained a UGV assault elements that went and cleared terrain.

So infantry go to get a very interesting innovation there. It's actually helping offset the manpower shortage, but I don't want to say that the manpower shortage. is solved. But I'll also say that the Russians are really fighting this war quite stupidly because they continue to believe in the cult of the offensive, and they continue to marshal between 30,000 to 50,000 troops per month into this massive complex roboticized kill zone. And the casualties of they racked up are astounding. And the gains that they make are very small and I would argue not worth the strategic cost. The numbers, I'm sorry for interrupting you guys.

The numbers sometimes seem a little bit all over the map, right, in terms of casualties on both sides. From what you've seen, what are the most credible numbers? Yeah, it ebbs and flows depending on a couple of different factors. So weather is a big part of it because actually when it's cloudy or rainy or foggy, the drones don't work. And so you'll actually have decreased casualties in some of those conditions. And that's also when Russians will try to do their offensive pushes because they know the drones aren't up.

So sort of it ends and blows. But ballpark Russian casualties are in the neighborhood of 30,000 per month, give or take. I know in late 2025, the Russians are trying to make all of their end of year goals before the New Year's. And the casualties were closer to 40 or 50,000 in that month. But the average is basically about 1,000 casualties per day that's killed and wounded. So it's about 30, but I think it's a little bit higher recently. How long can they sustain that? They can sustain it.

They can sustain it for a long time. Look, the current mode of generating these forces is doing very bad things to the Russian economy, but thanks to the war in Iran and the boon on oil and the U.S. decision to grant Russia some exception. for oil export, the Russian economy is now making a lot of extra money, so that's giving them some breathing room here. But even if the money were not a living factor, which it is, but not decisive, the Russians maintain the option to go mobilize our population. And we've been collecting indicators that show that the Russians have been slowly changing their strategy for fourth generation. The previous mode used to be attracting guys with this massive payouts. Now they're starting to do

rolling mobilization of reservists who signed up to be a reservist under a social contract. That was, I only get mobilized if there's an official declaration of war or the Russian homelands attacked in some apocalyptic way. And the Russians actually modified the laws quite sneakily to now. Actually, now we can mobilize reservists under the threshold of us officially being at war. And some of those mobilized personnel have begun deploying the training centers and that sort of thing. So that's a different way to go about these pools. But it's going to cause political problems for the Russians. And Putin makes bad decisions when he's faced with political dilemmas. He constantly throughout the course of the last four years of war makes

militarily strategically questionable decisions for politically expedient answers because, you know, that's just dictator psychology. So, you know, yeah. It is a fascinating example, right, of how, you know, the world is so small and so connected, right? When you talk about oil prices, for example, and we have the Iran conflict, not to get off on a tangent, but I think I'm about to, but you have the Iran conflict, which, as you pointed out, has created these rising prices on the global energy markets, which basically, you know, pours more dollars into the Russian war machine. So you've got that as a consequence.

And then you've got the easing of sanctions so that you can deal with a problem of supply within the global energy markets, which benefits Russia. And now you've got the easing of sanctions on Iran, of all things, in order to try to keep prices down for political reasons. It is fascinating. You've got these layers. We sometimes, I think, get lost in the conversation about the battlefield because it is so important. But then all these other things happen.

It's a reason why I point out when some folks, I've got a lot of friends who are libertarians, and I get it, or isolationists, and I get it. I understand that that would be a lovely world to live in, but I'm always fascinated by how they imagine that something, you know, you can draw the curtains around your country, and you won't be impacted by things that happen outside of those curtains. So anyway, I'm back off the soapbox. George. What's something coming up related to this conflict that you think could in the short term have a major impact? I'm very concerned about the Ukraine energy grid. The Ukrainian

survived the winter. They survived the Russian campaign that sought to destroy the Ukrainian energy grid and break the back of it and basically morselize it into a Western Ukrainian energy grid and Eastern Ukrainian energy grid. But this, they survived a winner, but the fight's not over. The Ukrainian energy grid is in a very bad place. I'm not going to sugarcoat it. And exactly connected to your previous statement, Mike, you know, now that every single spare Patriot interceptor that didn't exist and there was a shortage of this going, when I

said rightfully, going to protect Americans in the CENTCOM area responsibility, you know, Ukraine's no longer receiving Patriot Interceptor. And that's a big deal for Ukraine because it is the only system in the country that is effective at intercepting Russian ballistic missiles. And actually now what we've been seeing is ever since the operations in the Middle East kicked off, and we started firing off tons of patriots and Ukraine stopped receiving them. The Russians actually modified their daily strike packages against Ukraine. They now contain a larger proportion of ballistic missiles than before and more of them are getting through. And we think the Russians are trying to exploit that vulnerability, that gap to try to get in free hits while I can. So it is not impossible that they collapse the Ukrainian energy grid in the coming months.

So I'm looking at very closely. And what I'll note for you is that collapse in the Ukrainian energy grid will not have an immediate effect on the front lines. It makes life terrible for the civilians. But I'm concerned with it those for defense industry because Ukraine now manufactures more than 50% of its defense articles in country. Yeah, that's not something that gets out there in the public, I think, very often. But that's a fascinating statistic. Yeah. And as you know, to have a factory, that's a very energy-intensive undertaking.

I visited a factory in Ukraine earlier this year, actually. And they had a whole bunch of silent diesel generators to power when the power goes off because it happens regularly. But if they collapse the energy rate in its entirety, I mean, this generation will get you so far, that would be a big deal. So, all right, last question, George. All right, so we have the successes that you've highlighted here for the Ukrainian military. You've got the potential for this energy crisis. And you've got what appears to be a building spring or early summer offensive by the Russian military. This is a very soft science question.

Are you optimistic? or pessimistic in the short term for the Ukrainian military. This is the most optimistic that I've been in a year and a half. You know, the lines are solid. The data is pretty clear. The operational concepts are coming clear. Last year, there was a whole bunch of uncertainty about what will happen if the Western or American aid to Ukraine is cut off.

Would the Russians be able to have a breakthrough? But I'm telling you now, we looked at the data, spoken with soldiers and commanders in Ukraine, including guys that I talked to on a regular basis over the years who are usually giving me a pessimistic forecast. But as of February, the mood is like, yeah, it's hard. The situation is bad because, you know, it's ever great when you're never rosy when you're in wartime, but they're like, we got this. Like, we're not going to fold. The fortress belt is going to hold the Ukraine heavily fortified cities that are the front line now. The Russians, their level of innovation is quite low. They really have not been doing a whole lot much differently to try to make

their gains other than brute forcing them. The Russian gains in 2025, which was a difficult year, on average, was only about 15 square kilometers per day for the cost of about a thousand people killed and wounded. That's a very bad tradeoff. And now we have this trend where because of superior Ukraine operational thinking, going after the intermediate rear in a much more intelligent way, thinking about the Russian center of the gravity, we actually now started to see the Ukrainians making gains for the first time in over two years. So again, this I think I want to be cautiously optimistic, but this is the best the troops on the ground have felt in two and a half years, and it's the best that, you know, as a person, looking at the data very close, I felt.

So we'll see how this continues to mature. Great assessment. George Barras, Institute for the Study of War. Listen, man, always a great conversation in the I look forward to the next one. But thank you very much for being here on the Situation Report, George. Oh, thank you so much for having me. Really appreciate it. And I hope you have a wonderful rest of your spring. Well, that is all the time we have for the PDB Situation Report.

If you have any questions or comments, maybe you've got a joke or a humorous anecdote you want to pass along. Just reach out to me at pbbb at thefirsttv.com. And as always, you know what we do, right? We take the best comments and questions. We mash them all together once a month into an episode that we call. call, ask me anything. We got another one on the launch pad. It's coming out here. So, stay tuned. I don't know who they is, but they sometimes say stay tuned. But anyway, keep your postcards and letters coming if you write postcards or letters. To listen to the podcast

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