The President's Daily Brief - PDB Situation Report | November 1st, 2025: Putin’s War Economy Is Collapsing & Inside America’s War On Narco-Terrorists

Episode Date: November 1, 2025

In this episode of The PDB Situation Report: The U.S. military expands its campaign against drug traffickers, launching a new series of strikes in the Pacific that killed fourteen suspected narco-terrorists and left one survivor. We’ll break down the operation—and what it reveals about Washington’s growing war on the cartels. Later, Russia’s economy is feeling the sting as Western oil sanctions cut deeper into the Kremlin’s finances, threatening to drain Putin’s war chest. We’ll speak with Reuben Johnson from the National Security Journal for insight into how Moscow is scrambling to cope. 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 Debt Relief Advocates: Learn what debt reduction you may qualify for. Go online and visit https://DRA.com TriTails Premium Beef: Build the kind of tradition your family will remember. Visit https://trybeef.com/pdb American Financing: Call American Financing today to find out how customers are saving an avg of $800/mo. NMLS 182334, nmlsconsumeraccess.org APR for rates in the 5s start at 6.196% for well qualified borrowers. Call 866-885-1881 for details about credit costs and terms. Visit http://www.AmericanFinancing.net/PDB. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

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All right, let's get briefed. First up, the U.S. military expands its campaign against drug traffickers, launching new strikes in the Pacific. They killed 14 and left one survivor. We'll be joined by Amin Blair from the Texas Public Policy Foundation for more on the fight against narco-terror networks. Later in the show, Russia's economy is feeling the strain as oil sanctions start to bite, cutting deep into the Kremlin's war chest. We'll be joined by Rubin Johnson of the National Security Journal for more on that. But first, today's situation report spotlight. The U.S. carried out three more strikes in the Eastern Pacific this week, hitting four vessels tied to narcotics trafficking. Defense Secretary Pete Hegeseth says 14 suspected traffickers were killed and one survivor was recovered.

Mexican authorities assumed responsibility for the search and rescue. These strikes bring the total death toll the administration's Caribbean and Eastern Pacific campaign to more than 50, part of a push to choke smuggling routes and the criminal networks that bankroll them. But the question remains, what, if any impact are these strikes having on cartel operations, and specifically the flow of drugs into the U.S. For more on this, let's bring in Amman Blair. He's a senior fellow at the Texas Public Policy Foundation with over a decade of experience as a U.S. Border Patrol agent and more than 20 years of service in the U.S. Army. Amman, welcome very much to the show, and we really appreciate you taking the time here on the Situation Report. Yeah, thank you for having me. Oh, of course, man. Of course.

Listen, I want to start kind of from your perspective as both a former Border Patrol agent and also a member of the military. This is a fairly broad question. I realize that, but what's your take so far on the attacks that we've been seeing in the Caribbean and now the Pacific on the narco-trafficking vessels? Sure, it's about time. To be honest, that the Mexican cartels and the cartels in the Western Hemisphere have been foreign terrorist organizations for now over a decade. If we were to assess them as the military would, we would make the same claim that even

Hillary Clinton made over a decade ago that they were an insurgency in Mexico. So right now, because of the FTO destination and also President Trump's statement that we are now in a non-international armed conflict with these enemies, that we are now actually going after the enemy instead of the commodity itself, which is that narcotic. The cartels are utilizing that narcotic as they are in a proxy warfare with China as kind of their puppet master, as well as other adversarial states like Venezuela and other countries, to inundate our communities and destabilize it through the use of a chemical weapon, and that is going to be narcotics. And so, So this is finally, like I said before, finally we are recognizing the cartels as an actual enemy

instead of from a law enforcement lens. Why do you think it's taken so long to get to this point? I mean, I'm old enough that I was engaged in the war on drugs back in the mid-late 80s, early 90s, and this just didn't happen. And I'm wondering why successive administrations failed to kind of move to this point. What do you think? Yeah, sure. There's a couple of reasons.

First is ideology. Look, the debate on the Mexican cartels as foreign terrorist organizations has been going on for over a decade, I mean, over decade, ever since even Felipe Calderon declared war on the cartels in 2006. And so one of the reasons is ideology. Many claim that the Mexican cartels do not have an ideology like our foreign terrorist organizations in the Middle East. However, they actually do. If you look at the training camps inside of Mexico, and you look at their process from which they take young men, young boys, a lot of them, U.S. citizens on the border, and make them into Sigadio, as you will see, if you go and compare and contrast what the ISIS does to their cubs,

raising them to be jihadists to what the cartels do to raise them to be Sigadios. That ideology is almost completely the same. They may not be Muslim or of the faith of Islam. However, they do worship the patron saint of death, La Santa Verte. And then if you are seen in lower cartel or others, you're also worshipping like La Verde or others to bring it in a form of religion into this attack on the U.S. And so, first and foremost, in the very beginning, it would be ideology.

Another one is, if you recognize who the cartels are, that means you then have to recognize that Mexico must be a state sponsor of these foreign terrorist organizations. You must recognize that the reason why they're able to grow, while they're able to go into to 65 other countries worldwide is because they are in a sanctuary in their country of origin, which is Mexico. Therefore, you would have to implicate that in Mexico, from the federal government all the way to the subnational government, is also part in with the cartels. They are working in a symbiotic relationship.

And so that is one reason. And so a lot of the people also for open borders, if they recognize that that is a threat, If they recognize that the cartels operation control both sides of the border, if the cartels are conducting human trafficking, that would stop all of the invasions worldwide or in the western hemisphere or the mass movement of illegal aliens into the United States. It completely shut down the entire border. And so you go against their agenda. So there's multiple reasons why the cartels have never been designated as foreign terrorist organizations or have seen as such. There's no doubt that corruption has been a significant issue, a problem. It's endemic in Mexico, whether they're talking about within law enforcement or, you know, elements of the government.

You know, I don't know that you could, I don't know you could take the argument that Mexico is a state sponsor of, of narco terrorism, you know, to a logical conclusion. I think you've got, you know, you're battling corruption amongst certain elements. Now, you could argue, I suppose, at Amlo's time in office when, you know, he went to the hugs, not guns, doctrine, because they were, you know, basically trying to get away from the violence that occurred anytime you'd take on the cartels. You know, that could be considered a state policy that would coddle the cartels. Look, I guess with the attacks that are taking place in the Caribbean and the Pacific, One is sort of a political issue for the U.S., which is, I think if the White House were better at messaging, better at providing more information about their targets to the degree that they can, then they could take away some of the steam from the argument on the other side that says, oh, my God, these are unconstitutional actions. So I think they need to provide more information. The other part of it is more of a logistics and operational issue.

that I've got based on a fair amount of time spent dealing in counter-narcotics is I don't know that we're going to see any significant difference here. I like the fact that they're actually creating a war on drugs now, so we actually are treating it like a war. I think that's the good thing. So you and I are an agreement on that. I'm just very cynical that we're going to see anything even in terms of a change in price on the street or the amount of gear that's warehoused. They've proven themselves over the years to be incredibly good at adapting. And I just worry that, you know, unless you can do something about the demand issue on the U.S. side, I don't know that ultimately, even though I think this is about time, as you say, I don't know that it's going to have an impact.

What say you? Yeah, that's an amazing analysis. I would say that why I said that Mexico is a state sponsor of cartel terrorism is if you look at how the cartels were, the cartels currently today, how they were really created. If you look back in the early 1990s when you said that you were in counter-narcotics, really the country of Mexico was under one-party rule, the PRI. When they started losing that one-party rule at a sub-national level in like 1988, and into the 1990s,

and they started losing the gubernatorial races across Mexico, the cartels started to become informant insurgency, meaning that they did not just try to subvert the local government and federal government in terms so that they can move narcotics. No, they sought to control all aspects of society. And so you saw them control the agricultural trade. You saw them control every form and facet of every aspect of society.

Today, they now have control over the cyber systems. They have control over a lot of the Internet around all the resources, roads, you name it. The cartels are now control over all forms and facets of society. And when you look at the data from last election cycle in Mexico, and you'll see that the majority of all the assassinations, because there were 37 of them, and there was over 500 attacks on elected officials, you'll see that a majority of them are at 80 percent of at the local levels of the mayor. The mayor is one of the deadliest jobs in Mexico right now. And that is because the cartels are seeking to control all forms of government, not just place

them in elected positions, but also be in that elected position. And so, though, there's a deputy director for the Morana Party, which is the current party in charge in Mexico that came out two weeks ago instead that 70% of all local governments are now controlled by the Mexican cartels. So when you look at this, when you look at the situation in Mexico, if we do not separate, if we do not also go out to the cartels, which is the, I mean, we're going after the ones in the Caribbean. However, when you look at the entire organization as a whole, those that are transporting the narcotics are really at the bottom of the rung. They're the ones that are moving, just like at the border, the guys that are the low drivers, the guys that are the scouts, those guys are at the bottom of the rung.

If you do not attack the network, the entire network as it stands, then you're right. We're not going to see much change. We're going to see the exact same thing that happened in 2019. Remember the Mormon family that was brutally massacred in Mexico, and then we decided we didn't do anything really about it and instead chose the USMCA trade agreement. If you look at right now in terms of trade with Mexico, we are now at such a massive trade deficit inside of Mexico, I mean, from Mexico, that we can't even feed ourselves. Our American farmers and ranchers can't even compete with not only foreign imports, but foreign imports

that are controlled by foreign terrorist organizations to cartels. So when you look at that, and you look at this trade deficit and this understanding, not just at the tactical level, but holistically in this actual war campaign, you'll see that we're at such a disadvantage. And that you're right, if we just continue to only attack the cartels in the Caribbean or go after a mass migration inside the United States, MS-13, you're right, we are not going to win this. We're not going to really move the needle. And after Trump gets out, they're just going to go right back to moving federal across the southern border. Yeah, yeah, I don't want to be misunderstood. I support these attacks. Again, you know, as long as we've done the targeting properly. that we've gathered the intel, we've identified and we've confirmed the targets we're going after. I think, you know, it's a good move. I'm just, you know, I agree with you. This has got to be a multi-layered approach. Otherwise, we're, you know, we're just playing whackamol, unfortunately.

And we've seen that over the years in the past, and it hasn't worked. Ammon, listen, if you could stay right there, we had to take a quick break. And then we'll be back with more from Amman Blair on the PDB Situation Report, so please stick around. Hey, Mike Baker here. Let me take just a moment of your time to talk about personal finances. So let me ask you a question. Do you owe $10,000 or more in credit card debt or personal loans? Look, with credit card debt at all-time highs, debt relief advocates is notifying consumers of debt relief now being made available and it's designed to aid consumers with their out-of-control credit card debt. Look, those who qualify and roll for this relief program may only have to pay back a fraction of what they owe. It's not bankruptcy

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Welcome back to the PDB Situation Report. joining me once again is amman blair senior fellow at the texas public policy foundation amman thank you for sticking around um i want to kind of pick up where we just left off um and you know i'm afraid we're both sounding i guess a little cynical by the time we finished um in terms of you know what you know what simply the sort of the current level of uh targeting the impact that it will have overall where do you think we're headed with this campaign from the Trump administration? I mean, obviously we've, you know, we've got, what, some 50 deaths of alleged narco traffickers, a number of boats, you know, blown out of the water. I would assume they're making the same calculations and being

advised in the same way that we're talking, which is that this is good, but it's not by itself going to change the game. So where do you think the administration may be heading? Yeah, I think it's really placing in, or not placing in, but allowing Venezuela to have a democratic state and actually elected official that wasn't done by corruption. I think right now, the current administration understands that there's a multitude of countries that seek to toward the United States through asymmetric means. And that's going to be Cuba. You now have Colombia a little bit. You have Venezuela. And also there are ties to Iran, Russia, and China. Really, Venezuela has been that hub, whether that's foreign intelligence assets, whether that is to embark on all the other

operations in the Western Hemisphere. Venezuela has been that key node to distribute. It's shifted from Cuba to Venezuela. So I see them going after, just like in 2019, 2020, Trump at first targeted Mexico, but then shifted and went to after Maduro in Venezuela. I think that's going to be the same thing here. Kind of like he's going after, once again, Cuba, Venezuela, trying to make sure that there's an actual democratic state within Venezuela and going after them as if we were going after any other adversary in the world, especially ones that are so close to us.

I can imagine there's going to be, you can imagine the pushback. Look, having come from the CIA, the concept of regime change, you know, gets people a little squirrelly at times. And obviously, that's what, that's what Nicholas Maduro has been crying about of late with the fairly large buildup of U.S. forces off his shoreline. But, you know, and people, will buy into that, right? So people say, oh, my God, look, the U.S. is back at it. You know, it's all about regime change. That's what they're doing. I mean, if you're talking about states that have been condoning, either because it's a internal policy or because of just a level of corruption and control that cartels have been able to exert, you're right. It's not just

Venezuela. I mean, look at Honduras, right? You know, Mel Zelaya down there, this family has allegedly been engaged in an association in support of narco trafficking for years. And he was run out of town. And now his wife is supposedly the president of Honduras, right? So you could argue what's old as new again. And as an aside, as an aside, and I love this story. When she was elected in Honduras, I know you're saying, where is he going with this? But when when Mel's wife was elected as president in Honduras, during the Biden administration, the Biden administration was like, oh, yay, look, a female president, yay. There was no due diligence done on who basically she was, the connections allegedly

between the Zelaya family and narco traffickers, and they sent Kamala Harris down there to attend her inauguration. And you think, we don't often seem to put two and two together. at times. So anyway, my point being is there's a number of countries in Central and South America that, you know, again, whether it's policy or whether it's just the sheer weight and brute force of the cartels, they've been able to insert through corruption and violence. We've got a work cut out for us. And, you know, the problem is sometimes, I guess, you're coming around to the idea of multitasking. Can the U.S. multitask well enough to create a cohesive, coherent, counter-narcotics policy that finally for once in all these decades can kind of resolve the problem,

if possible. Again, that doesn't even speak to the demand issue. Again, I realize that is a massive problem. Yeah, I agree with you. It's going to take more than just the United States. So look, Canada, the Mexican cartels have completely taken over Canada, both sides on the West Coast and the East Coast. I was just in Canada a couple weeks ago up in Ottawa talking to their elected officials and also talking to the First Nations, the Mohawk Nation in terms of how prolific the Mexican cartels are at completely taking over actual territory within Canada, along with the CC-back triads. And so it's going to take like Canada, the U.S., and all the other, all of our other allies within the Western Hemisphere to then after take this and address

the situation as a global problem. And that's why Donald Trump came out and said that they are in a non-in international armed conflict when he was discussing them inside the Caribbean. But if you look at it globally, or if you look at it just in the hemisphere, they're actually in a international armed conflict. If you say that that arm is a chemical weapon to narwhatever, you're actually narcotics. And if you look at that as opposed to whether that's going to be an overdose and overseen by the CDC, but if you look at it as a poisoning, or if you look at it as drug warfare, just as Mao did, and just as the British Empire did to China, and you look at what it's happening here is the exact same thing in just a century later. I think that that's going

to be the way forward is establishing key allies, especially in Canada. as well as like Argentina and other countries on the Western Hemisphere to also go out for them. So it can just be a U.S. versus everyone and then leave everyone else to hunt. Yeah. Well, I mean, I agree. It's an enormously complex problem. It sometimes gets distilled down to something very simple because of the sort of the nature of the news cycle and how everything gets thrown into, you know, three-minute bite-sized pieces of story.

And so people imagine it's all about, okay, we're shooting a, a narco vessel out of the water, right? But there is. There's so much more to this. Let me ask you one final question. I want to be mindful of time here. But from your experience, again, being in the military, then working for a decade in Border Patrol, how would you assess or can you give us any insight into the targeting process, right?

Now looking at what's been going on in the Caribbean and the Pacific now, can you talk about that briefly just to give us some sense of that targeting process? Yeah, great question. In the very beginning, we actually kind of lost that aspect. Maybe you knew from your previous years in working counter-narcotics, but US Northcom really hasn't been very proactive in terms of targeting or even understanding the threat. Really, the last report that they did was through asymmetric warfare group in 2011, where they looked at the Sinaloa cartel in the Zetas, and they did a center of gravity assessment with Johns Hopkins University, a war game effort to figure out how to try to target the networks and nodes so that they can go after them. So right now they're in that rebuilding phase.

They're rebuilding their intelligence collection portion. They're humant, their sigant, all forms of intelligence analysis. instead of just open source intelligence. Look really under the Biden administration and through the previous years before that, we've been heavily relying just on OECENT, whether that is from Twitter, whether that is from telegram chats, whether that's through other sources, instead of actually going in boots on ground, human intelligence. And I think that's really what it's going to take.

It's going to take that opportunity to get boots on ground, utilize our intelligence community, now that they're designated as FTOs, utilize the military's intelligence capabilities, and all the other non-kinetic capabilities within the military to gather that targeting process. Because, as I said before, U.S. Northcom has somewhat been pretty much absent since its creation. And then U.S. Southcom really hasn't taken these threats as serious as they should have. Final question, Ammon, yes or no, do you think that the next time you and I get together to talk here on the Situation Report, and hopefully that will be soon, that the,

U.S. military will have been in the process of putting boots on the ground in various locations to go after some of the facilities or to target high value members of the various cartels? No. I think, I think Ford diplomacy is going to override the decision for boots on ground in certain areas. Okay. All right. That's great.

Listen, Ammon Blair, I got to tell you, this has been fascinating. I got a lot more questions for you. So I do hope you'll come back. And first step is always when you see our number come up on your phone, don't ignore it. Please pick it up because we really appreciated this opportunity, Matt. Amad Blair, the Texas Public Policy Foundation. Thank you again for joining us today here on the Situation Report.

There is a lot there. It is an incredibly complex and at times enormously frustrating problem, this war on drugs, counter-narcotics. I have years of watching and seeing and dealing with situations where you think you're making progress and it just doesn't seem to make a dent in, again, whether it's how much is warehoused, you know, the price on the street, their potential to bring in new recruits into their cartels and other organizations. But it doesn't mean you shouldn't be tried.

So I'm glad to see that's happening. Up next, Russia's economy is showing new signs of strain. as oil sanctions cut into the Kremlin's war chest. Uh-oh. We'll be joined by Rubin Johnson of the National Security Journal for his analysis. Stay tuned. Hey, Mike Baker here. Now, you probably notice this already, but fall is here, right?

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The result is a growing cash crunch for the Kremlin. It's the latest sign that Russia's wartime economy, which has been resilient for the past three years, may be reaching its breaking point, as energy profits dry up. To help us unpack what this means for Russia's military and its broader war effort, we're joined by Rubin Johnson. He's the senior defense editor at the National Security Journal and director of the Asia Research Center

at the Kassimir-Pulaski Foundation. Rubin, thanks very much for joining us here on the Situation Report. Thank you for having me. Before we get tucked into some of the issues of the day, I think our viewers would find this story fascinating. You were actually held prisoner by the Russian military early in the invasion. Is that right?

That is correct. It was almost about two weeks altogether. And it was, well, as you can imagine, a terrifying experience. But what happened is we were trying to get to a train station and driving down a road where there was nothing on the road. There was no sides of anything, but there was a. There was a trailer, a tractor trailer, not the actual tractor, but the trailer, you know, the empty trailer blocking the row. We tried to go around it and suddenly the Russian army popped out from nowhere and they didn't say stop. They didn't say, wait a minute, they just started firing.

So they fired automatic weapons at the car, destroyed the car and I don't know how I'm still alive, to be honest with you. and stole everything that we owned, absolutely everything. So when I read today articles that say the Russian army has now become a massive criminal gang, I'm like, well, it kind of already was from the very beginning. It's a matter of degree. Yeah. But it was in the area right near Butches where we were. So I think we're the only people who are still alive.

who got taken by the Russians there, and then was taken someplace else into a middle of a forest where it almost froze to death, and then taken and put in an underground bunker for a couple of weeks at Gastomel Airport, which the Russians had tried to take, but couldn't fly anything in, and then eventually driven out through the radiation zone of Chernobyl and dropped by the side of the road and was told Belarus is that way you should start walking. But absolutely, no possession to return, not at all, nothing. Everything was stolen. This, I've never seen a more depraved, an absolutely barbaric group of people.

I mean, I mean, these people could give Attila a hunt or run for his money. With the people that had picked you up, did there seem to be an obvious chain of command? Was it more like a loose band of thugs? Well, there was one officer who came to talk to us who seemed rather reasonable, and he said, you have to understand. He says, some of these guys are here because they came here in what are called military units, but they're just here to steal. He says, but it's not any of my men, but that's what some of them are.

And he seemed almost embarrassed to admit it. There did seem to be a chain of command, but, I mean, this whole invasion, as you know, I could go through it. We don't have enough time to go through all the granular of the level. This whole invasion has been a clown show. I mean, they sent huge long columns of vehicles to go to Kiev, and they broke down along the way. And, you know, they had vehicles that aren't properly maintained, tires that fall apart and so on. And if General Breedlove, the former Supreme Allied commander, has talked about this a lot,

he said those vehicles sitting on that road, they were sitting ducks. If the Ukrainians had had any air power, they could have killed 40% of the army. They've been fighting the last three and a head years. Yeah. Yeah. I think, yeah, a lot of people probably remember some of the footage from that. It was rather shocking. But, well, you made it out.

Did you have to, I assume, did you have to walk all the way to Belarus? We walked all the way into Belarus and then you have a problem getting across the border because I'm an American. I didn't have a visa or anything, but they had a provision. I could be in the country for 48 hours, transit. And then we're taken by the Red Cross about 200 kilometers to another city. And then from there on a train to the border with Poland and then across the border, I don't want to go into all the details, but yeah, it was a nightmare. Yeah. Good God.

And, you know, it's, but I'm lucky. I'm one of the ones who's still alive. As far as I know, my home in Kiev is still intact, but I know plenty of people that the home they lived in all their lives is gone and they have nothing. Yeah. Let's switch gears. Thank you, by the way, for talking about that incident. No, that is a mark. Thank you for asking. Appreciate your asking. And, oh, no, of course. But let's switch gears. If you could, give us your take on the current situation on the battlefield.

We hear all sorts of things. And it's very difficult to understand to what degree the information you're getting is credible or not. But from your perspective and all the experience you've got in covering this conflict and the region before that, you know, talk to us about where you think the situation is right now. Well, the Ukrainians suffer from a chronic shortage of just not having enough people. And this is to no fault of their own. There's just many more people in Russia, period, large population. So what the Russians are doing is that they are attacking in all sorts of unorthodox

Manor on the battlefield, particularly in Donbass, in the eastern Donbass region, and they're doing so without regard for casualties. I see reports of some unit attacked and 95% of the unit was killed in their very first action. I see reports that paratroopers, which are supposed to be some of the most capable and well-disciplined soldiers, terror troopers surrendering on the Russian side because of they say the orders they've been given are insane and they've already suffered tremendous losses. They don't want to lose everybody. So the leadership, the morale, everything on the Russian side

just appears to be a total disaster, but they keep sending people and people keep getting killed. But it's getting down to desperate measures where they're taking soldiers that have HIV, tuberculosis, and hepatitis, and putting them together in groups and sending them out to be killed as cannon fodder. I suppose on the rationale is, well,

they're probably going to die anyway of these diseases. The treatment of the troops on the Russian side is horrible, it's brutal, but the Russians have more of them, and they right now in some areas they actually have more drones, although the Ukrainians have been far more inventive about how they use drones. But it's the most horrific front line we've seen since the First World War. And I can only imagine, I think when this war is finally over, we're going to see a new definition to what PTSD means. And people who will need very serious, not only physical, but mental health care after this is over.

And how does it, how does it end? I mean, you know, what do you think that that looks like at this stage of the game? Well, the, let's say that things can continue on the trend that they are now, where the Ukrainians keep hitting Russian oil reduction and refining facilities. And the West continues its determination to limit Russia's ability to sell oil, you're getting rid of or seizing or sanctioning the rest of the shadow fleet, making sure that nations disconnect. If that happens, then Putin loses his war machine. The second thing that could happen is Russia's economic situation just keeps getting worse.

If those trends continue, the Russians simply won't be able to continue to sustain the operations they have now. And the Ukrainians have said a long time ago, they said, we know they've been. got more people. So our campaign is what we call, is called disruptive. It's a campaign to disrupt the infrastructure that the Russians have. They may have more people in the field, but they won't be able to feed them. They won't be able to provide them with ammunition until they won't be able to move them. They won't be able to communicate. It's strategic disruption. Provided all that happens, eventually at some point, either the Russians give up due to exhaustion,

or there is some, as we call, you know, black swan event that takes place either on the battlefield or back home in Moscow. And there's plenty of voices in Moscow saying they just, that people are afraid that this could spin out of control. Yeah, it is remarkable. When you look at the current state of the Russian economy, when you look at the suffering, the casualties that they've taken, It's remarkable that Putin has managed to maintain a grip on power and to continue this effort. Ruben, I need to take a quick break, but if you say right there, don't go anywhere. We'll be right back with Ruben Johnson here on the BDB Situation Report. Thanks very much. Stick around.

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Welcome back to the PDB Situation Report. Joining me once again is Ruben Johnson. He's the senior defense editor at the National Security Journal and director of the Asia Research Center at the Casimir Pulaski Foundation. Ruben, thanks very much for sticking around. You know, we were touching on the issue of how long can Russia keep this up? Talk to me about the significance of the recent sanctions, particularly those of on Rosneft and Luke oil.

And to what degree you view that as a significant change? This is a very significant change. And one is those are the two largest oil companies in all of Russia. And they're responsible for the majority of the oil that gets exported abroad and turned into revenue. And so now those companies will find it. very, very difficult to operate and they're going to have to sell operations abroad and all such all sorts of other emergency measures. And it also means that countries who have been buying

Russian oil will have to stop doing so or face secondary sanctions. And this is not a small thing because I've been interviewed on this Indian television network and I've literally had listened to people screaming about this is so terrible for them that they're now no longer going to be able to sell oil at huge profits because of this. So it's a pretty substantial blow. Yeah. Yeah, I know China and India have really benefited from discounted oil, you know, by their willingness to work with Russia on this. You could argue that China in particular, but both of them have kept the war machine chugging along. What about this issue? When we were talking earlier about the idea that the economy is obviously on shaky ground. Look, they're doing a

variety of things. We talked about this on the PDB that a lot of the regions are cutting their enlistment bonuses that have been very valuable and attracting new volunteers, recruits, however you want to refer to them in Russia. And a lot of the regions are saying, you know, we can't afford it. They're not actually saying that that's the implications. They can't They're saying that, well, we're cutting the bonuses because we've already reached our quotas. So you can maybe perhaps believe that or not. But when we look at what's been happening inside Russia, to what degree do you think there's any meaningful dissent within the command structure of the Russian military or even within Putin's government? Well, let's go back a little bit more than two

years, okay? So it's June of 2023, and I'm at Frankfurt Airport, and I've just left, I've just been at Paris for Le Bourget, a big annual air show. And suddenly the news comes out that the Wagner group, the private military company, is marching on Moscow. And people in Moscow start panicking. And what happens while the Wagner people are marching towards Moscow, they get to Rostovnaudanou. First of all, no one's tried to stop them. No one's in the street with signs or flags saying, you can't do this, you're insulting our sacred president.

The people, the locals, the civilians, they're taking selfies. They're feeding these Wagner soldiers, D, and biscuits. They're like, let's see how this turns out. This could be interesting. Then you have the Roscoordia, the Russian National Guard, which is supposed to prevent this sort of,

thing. And Victor Zolatov, who's a psychopathic killer and who's been Putin's bodyguard since the 90s as the commander, he's on the phone. He can't reach a single Roscovardi or regional commander. They've all made themselves unavailable. They've been, you know, they've either checked into a hospital or, you know, my dog ate my phone or something, but they don't want to refuse an order, but they don't want to be untactable so that they can receive an order. So no one is supporting. This is more than two years ago. And if I can take everybody back even further, I can go back to the Soviet times, the end of the Soviet Union,

whether all these demonstrations breaking out, which were illegal. Spontaneous demonstrations were not allowed under Soviet law. And I saw this interview with the commander of the Internal Affairs Minister. And they asked him, well, what are you going to do about all these demonstrations? And he said, well, if it's a thousand or less people, we'll try to break it up. If it's 10,000 people or more, we'll watch it. And if it's 100,000 people or more, we'll join it. And I think that's where we're heading.

I really do. You know, it's kind of that same question that gets asked in a variety of locations, right? You could talk about Iran and say, okay, at what point do the people get? fed up with the mullahs and the IRGC. You could talk about Venezuela and say, look, I mean, how much more evidence do you need that, you know, Nicholas Maduro does not have the best interests of the Venezuelans at heart? So there's,

I think sometimes in the West, particularly in the U.S., you know, we look at this and go, well, of course, I mean, people are going to rise up. It is going to, you know, it's got, I always get a little skeptical only because over the years, you know, the, it just doesn't work out that. And so I'm wondering, I guess, whether there's been any indication of significant dissent within the military that could result in a change of leadership. No, no. I mean, we're already seeing some of that. I mean, this is why you see Putin changing the leadership in different, in the upper levels at different points. That's why you have a new defense minister than the one who started the war. This is why you haven't seen Gerosimo much anywhere.

And it's also why he's been running around talking about these wonderful doomsday end-of-the-world weapons that were first announced seven years ago, and they're now testing them. And it's why in a very public bit of shamelessly, shamelessly public event, he decorated a junior sergeant of a special. elite reconnaissance unit, Spetsanaz unit, in Moscow at the most prestigious elite military hospital. This is a hospital, which is so

a reserve. I mean, you've got to be a 20-star general to get into this place. And yet here they are treating a junior sergeant from his wounds and all of his mates that they're around in. And it's a big public display of how much Putin loves the military and they're supposed to love him. These are signs of desperation.

Yeah. I take your point because it was, I think it was just last week when they were running a nuclear drill. And, you know, the footage had Putin in military fatigues sitting in the command center with his chief of staff and a couple others. You brought up the question of these new weapons, the bird of veterans. the what is it the burr-ovesnik nuclear power of yessna. Yeah, Bresnick. And then the Poseidon torpedo, you know, I'll be honest with you, Rubin. I didn't see radioactive tsunami coming.

I had no idea that that's where we were heading with this. But, you know, from your perspective, you got a lot of experience covering the defense industries. You know, are these things legit or do you think it's just kind of, propaganda at best. These are programs that he first, there's six of these crazy doomsday programs. He trotted them all out in 2018 and talked about all the horrible things they could do. And then we didn't see too much about it.

We saw some attempted tests at the Bureau of Yestek, where some people were, in one test, people were actually killed. And the point that people miss about all this is that these nuclear weapons programs, in large measure are not, they are not being, the programs aren't being run by the MOD. They're being run by Ross Atom, the Russian atomic energy company. The person who sits at the top of the board of Ross Atom is Sergei Kyrienko, who got his career started off as a prime minister under Boris Yeltsin, became buddies with Putin. He now runs the presidential administration in Moscow, which is one of the most powerful positions in the country.

So there's tons of money flowing into his company to run these nuclear weapons programs. And in Russia, what that means is that a bunch of it's being stolen. So these are wonderful mechanisms for stealing money, which I believe is most of the motivation for continuing to let them run. Okay. That's very interesting. I guess, you know, I'm a little skeptical about the concept of destroying entire coastlines with a radioactive tsunami, but, you know, hey, I too have seen Austin Powers.

I know what Donner Evil is capable of. So I'm a little concerned, I guess, at the end of the date. So last question, I guess, would be this. And again, being mindful of time, but where do you think we are? I know this is completely speculation, I get that. But where do you think we are? And let's pick a date. Let's go six months from now.

People have been saying this could be over by February of next year, over in the sense that the shooting would stop and the killing would stop at least temporarily. Where we go once the shooting stops, it really depends on how much real adult leadership there is in Europe and in the United States. I mean, are the Europeans just going to go back to sleep and say, oh, gee, all those weapons we were going to build? I guess we don't need them anymore. If they do that, that's a disaster. And what will the Chinese do? I mean, you know, that's another subject. You know, things aren't so great with Chairman Xi.

He just fired nine of his top admirals and generals a week or so ago. And they keep talking about, you know, oh, we're going to take Taiwan back. We're going to take Taiwan back. Well, that's fine for them to talk about it. But if they try and they fail, if they have a result similar to Putin and Ukraine, that's the end of the Communist Party and they know it. So there's, but I'm, I'm terribly afraid that once this conflict in Ukraine sort of slows down or shuts down, we've still got plenty of things to worry about, not just China, but North Korea. And then you mentioned Venezuela. I don't know if you've seen the reports or not,

but yesterday a big Russian military cargo aircraft blew into Venezuela with a bunch of Wagner soldiers from the old Wagner group and a lot of military equipment there to prop up Maduro. Yeah. Yeah, I know that is a whole different day for us to get together and talk about what's yesterday. in the U.S.'s' own backyard. But, I mean, I take your point, look, this, I guess what I'm trying to figure out is what gets Putin to the negotiating table in a serious way, where he's not just stringing people along. And it sounds like, you know, if there's enough economic pain and they simply can't afford to continue the war, then maybe that's what happens, or if he feels like he's losing his grip,

ultimately anybody like Putin, a Maduro, the Mullahs, you know, what do they want? They want to retain power. So sometimes it comes down to self-preservation, I suppose. These regimes are very repressive and they have all sorts of, you know, horrible mechanisms at their disposal. But by being very repressive, they're also very brittle. I mean, the slightest little thing can set off a chain reaction. And the next thing you know, you've got a revolt on your hands. Yeah, that's a great point.

Ruben, listen, thank you very much. We've got a lot more ground we could cover, but we have no more time. And I know it's late where you are. So it's got to be at least martini time that I'm hoping. And vodka martini time, yes. Okay, excellent. Ruben Johnson, senior defense editor for the National Security Journal. Listen, thank you very much.

I look forward to our next conversation. So that's all the time we have for the PDB situation report. Listen, if you have any questions or comments, just reach out to us. You can contact me at PDP at thefirsttv.com. And you know what we do with your comments and your questions and your postcards and your Western Union telegrams? Once a month, a select team of our PDB executives. And we also bring in the interns, right? They gather around our very expensive Mahogany conference table.

And it's actually, it's pretty posh. You'd be very impressed with it. They gather around and they smush together all the best comments and all the really good questions. And we put that into a monthly episode that we call Ask Me Anything. We've got another one sitting on the launch pad ready to go here shortly. So keep your cards and letters coming. To listen to the podcast of the show ad free, well, it's simple, become a premium member of the president's daily brief by visiting PDB Premium.com. I'm Mike Baker.

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