The President's Daily Brief - PDB Situation Report | September 6th, 2025: Inside Russia: How Putin’s Economy Is Collapsing & Beijing’s Weapons Parade

Episode Date: September 6, 2025

In this episode of The PDB Situation Report: The war in Ukraine continues, but the battles aren’t confined to the front lines. Inside Russia, sanctions, propaganda, and exhaustion are reshaping everyday life. Russian expat Konstantin Samoilov of Inside Russia joins us to share what he’s seeing from the ground. Meanwhile, China rolls out its newest military hardware at a massive parade in Beijing—showcasing weapons meant to send a pointed message to the West. Brandon Weichert, Senior National Security Editor at The National Interest, joins us to break it all down. To listen to the show ad-free, become a premium member of The President’s Daily Brief by visiting PDBPremium.com. Please remember to subscribe if you enjoyed this episode of The President's Daily Brief. YouTube: youtube.com/@presidentsdailybrief CBDistillery: Visit https://CBDistillery.com and use promo code PDB for 25% off your entire order!Jacked Up Fitness: Get the all-new Shake Weight by Jacked Up Fitness at https://JackedUpShakeWeight.comGuests:Konstantin Samoilov - https://www.youtube.com/@INSIDERUSSIA Brandon Weichert - https://x.com/WeTheBrandon Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

USAA knows dynamic duos can save the day, like superheroes and sidekicks or auto and home insurance. With USAA, you can bundle your auto and home and save up to 10%. Tap the banner to learn more and get a quote at USAA.com slash bundle. Restrictions apply. Welcome to the PDB Situation Report. I'm Mike Baker, your eyes and ears on the world stage. All right, let's get briefed. First up, the conflict in Ukraine rages on, and world leaders scramble for a solution.

but the war isn't just being fought on the front lines. Inside Russia, daily life is being reshaped by sanctions, by propaganda, and a growing sense of fatigue. We'll be joined by Constantine Samoilov of Inside Russia for some insight into that. Later in the show, China rolls out its latest military hardware at a massive parade in Beijing. Did you see that? Did you go? Did you get an invite? Showcasing weapons designed to send a message to the West. Brandon Weikert, senior national security editor at the national interest, joins us to break down what we saw this week. But first, today's situation report spotlight. As the war in Ukraine grinds on, with frankly no end in sight, efforts by world leaders to bring it to a close, well, continue to be stalled.

The recent summit in Alaska between President Trump and Vladimir Putin produced no breakthrough, and on the battlefield, while the fighting only has intensified. But while the headlines focus on missiles and troop movements, the conflict is reshifted. shaping life deep inside Russia. Sanctions are squeezing the economy. Propaganda dominates the airwaves, and an undercurrent of fatigue runs through daily life. For many Russians, this war has become an ever-present backdrop, affecting everything from what they can buy to what they can say. Joining us now is Konstantin Samoyov, a Russian expatriate, who left in 2022 when Putin declared mobilization. He now lives in Uzbekistan, and you can find him, and I suggest you do, on YouTube,

at Inside Russia. That's YouTube at Inside Russia. Check out his work. Constantine, welcome back to the Situation Report. Thank you so much for having me. It's fantastic to be back. I want to start from the Alaska Summit, the much publicized Alaska Summit with Trump and Putin. What was the response? What was the reaction to that from inside Russia? I mean, right? We saw what state media said about it. We saw what, you know, the U.S. and Western media were saying about it. But, you know, can you talk to us about what the average person on the streets in Russia thought about that meeting, or did they know much about it at all? A lot of Russians certainly are aware that the meeting took place. And the reason why they're aware is because the meeting was made a big show in Russia.

You know, I've talked to quite a few people in the West. And they talk about the reaction. What is the reaction? Well, the thing is, before we talk about the reaction, there was a pre-show. As soon as Putin and Russian propaganda learned that he was going to visit Alaska, unthinkable, really. Then they started making this show of President's visit to the United States of America to reignite relations with the United States

between America and Russia. And they sent about 500 reporters and support group to Alaska a couple days prior, and they were filming a lot, and they were showing Russian heritage in Alaska. And it was probably the biggest show of the summer in Russia. So by the time the meeting ended, most Russians knew about it, most Russians watched, most Russians were fed propaganda about it, you know, the mines were engineered in a certain way.

Now it's been quite some time since that meeting took place and Russians consider, regular Russian people considered a victory of Russia, the country over the United States and a collective West. Complete another victory. And they also considered Putin's personal victory. Putin scored so many political points, support points with Russians inside Russia at that meeting. He's elevated his status. Some column Vladimir the Great after that. It's interesting. I think there was a general mood here in the States.

You always had to factor in the politics in the states, right? So, you know, sometimes you get the impression, it doesn't matter what Trump does, right? There's going to be a considerable, you know, pushback from the media, a large part of the media, and obviously from the Democrat side, regardless of what he does. So I think a lot of people in the States approached this summit with Putin in kind of a skeptical manner, right? they didn't necessarily anticipate there would be any breakthroughs because, frankly, Putin hasn't shown any willingness to have meaningful negotiation. So I think the end result of this summit, apparently there appeared to be no real breakthroughs, didn't surprise a lot of people.

Shifting off the summit briefly, I kind of want to visit this narrative that has taken hold, I think in parts of the Western media. And it talks about the Russian economy, sort of being on the break of disaster. It talks about fatigue of the Russian population over the war in Ukraine. And from your perspective, how much of that is accurate and how much do you think is wishful thinking on the part of Western media and others? Most of it is accurate. I've been following very closely what Western media says about situation.

and Russia, Western media's position changed last November, because before they had been saying that Russian economy was going strong, circumventing sanctions, and, you know, sanctions weren't affecting Russian people's lives and so forth. And then just like that, they switched. In November, they started saying, oh, the sanctions are working after all, you know, Russian economy is under a lot of pressure. Russian economy is collapsing. That is my point of view. I am following it closely.

Russia is spending so much more that it's earning. And it was earning primarily from selling two breadmakers, natural gas to Europe and oil to different customers all over the world. and it's not selling it's lost the best customer Europe and it's not selling oil to anyone pretty much except for China

and India and it's selling at very low prices so it earns so much less and it spends so much more and it's been going on for past two and a half years and the reason Russian economy is still alive is because

it had accumulated an incredible amount of reserves. By doing just that, selling oil and natural gas for two decades, was very smart economic policy of taking some of the profits and saving them. And that's what basically fed Russian economy, war economy, fed military industrial complex for, you know, since the start of the war. But guess what? The money is gone. They've spent it all. And right now, the budget deficit is historically high. And things are happening on the ground in Russia that are not pretty.

What about the general mood of the public in terms of their attitude towards the war? Let's divide into economic mood and political mood. Okay. Economic mood is everyone is, everyone is suffering now. There are certain number of people in Russia who are war profiteers. For example, who work at the war factories and earn so much more now than before, who supply products to Ministry of Defense, who are subcontractors. My estimate, from 10 to 15 million people who are earning lots more money now than before due to the war.

I call them the war profiteers. The rest are suffering. Their lives are, the living standard is dropping. Prices are going up. Their salaries are staying low. Sometimes the salaries get caught. So general mood in Russia, economic mood is life is getting more difficult. And there is not much hope, despite what the propaganda,

is telling Russian people, it's been telling for three and a half years, and now they just simply don't believe anymore because it's really hard to believe when you hear something from TV and you go to a store and you see a different picture, okay? So that's economic mood. Political mood, the more people support the war now and support Putin more than what done before. The support has grown, and Russians now realize, well, think, not realize, but think that they are at war with Ukraine. Before it was more like, well, it's just some kind of a misunderstanding. We're not fighting with Ukraine. We're fighting with the collective West, led by the USA, and they're just using Ukraine as proxy. And Ukrainians, poor guys, they're being used, you know.

Now that mood is vanishing. That point of view is vanishing. Now it's more like, okay, it's Ukraine, we're fighting Ukraine, they're hitting our facilities, oil refineries, railroads, apartment blocks with their drones every day now. They took part of Uruk province, and then we fought hard to drive them back. So it's the Ukrainians. There's no question about that.

And the support is growing. Russians want they're tired. Fatigue is also growing, of course. They are tired of the war, but they want the war to stop on their terms. They want to be victorious. They don't want to give up territories and so forth. That's the mood that I'm feeling in Russia right now.

Constantine, I want to pick up from this point, and I want to talk about in the next segment, I want to talk about the success of Ukrainian efforts to strike inside Russia and what that may mean for the population in terms of their attitude towards this war. But Constantine, Samolov, if you could stay right where you are, don't go anywhere. We have to take a quick break, and then we'll be back with more on the PDB Situation Report. So you know what I'm about to say. Stick around. Hey, Mike Baker here.

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Taxes and fees extra. Seeful terms at mintmobile.com. Welcome back to the PDB Situation Report. Joining me once again is Constantine Simoilov. You can check him out and you should, I insist that you do on YouTube at Inside Russia. That's YouTube at Inside Russia. Check out Constantine's work. Hey, thanks very much for sticking around here on the Situation Report. I want to pick up from where we were.

Talk to me, if you could, about the impact or the success, if you want to call it that, of Ukrainian efforts to take the war into Russia, to attack in particular the energy infrastructure over the past, say even the past a month or so. The Ukrainians have been successful, that's for sure. They had taken a different approach to attacks, and I started noticing late spring. A couple particular areas they've targeted and they've targeted successfully. One is the airports, they really wrecked havoc over summer months in, and Russian airports in Moscow and St. Petersburg in other cities, they disrupted the usual normal

life of Russian people. A lot of people, see, a lot of people in Russia is still living in bubbles, informational bubbles. They have built those bubbles to feel safe, to feel normal, because knowing that you are at war with another country is very painful, it's very scary. I know, I know. I started feeling it on the very first day because I didn't build a bubble for myself. I realized what my country started doing to Ukraine, but a lot of people don't want to be bothered, to be stressed, to be, you know, to be heard. So they just pretend that life is normal, business as usual. And if someone tries to tell them the news, ask them, you know, talk about, you know, get them to talk about what's going on. They shut them down. Like I tried so

many times to reach out Russian people and they talk with me about anything but the war. Okay. As soon as I start telling them, please stop. We don't want to hear about that. That's, we're going to go crazy. That's too much. That's too painful. So we don't talk about that. We don't watch the news. So a lot of Russians are still living like that. And Ukrainian strikes in the summer, they bursted many of those informational bubbles, personal bubbles. Because Russian people felt how it is to be living under constant threat of attacks when the attacks disrupt your normal routine and so forth.

They were attacks on drones fly near airports, disrupting airports, flights, airports operations. And also on a few occasions they disrupted railroad transportation. They hit railroad trucks in the south of Russia. And that also created chaos because so many people travel by railroads. these days. And then of course the latest and the most effective strategies hitting oil refineries in Russia, I'm just going to give you one number. As of August 26, Russia lost 17% of oil refining capacity. So it's producing 17% less of gasoline and diesel. No, this isn't

insane. The number is imagine a country, you know, live in normal life and you just take 17% of its oil and diesel. And what happens? Well, shortages happen. The price is skyrocketing. That's what happens. For the first time in 35 years since the collapse of the USSR, well, we saw the shortages of gasoline at the gas stations. Some gas stations, some gas stations, do not sell gas to people only to commercial trucks, commercial vehicles, to businesses. And some provinces introduced ratios, rationings. In the USSR, we called it rationings, and a person would get a special paper, talon, like a check.

and then the guest was only sold by checks. This is 2025, Mike. That's unbelievable. In Russia, they brought the checks back, alone they are back. I mean, we've been hearing reports of shortages, of long gas lines, increased prices in the east of the country. It sounds as if they're trying in a way to insulate Moscow and sort of the main urban centers from these problems, right?

And kind of like what they did with conscription, kind of force that out into the farther regions and provinces. Moscow is not Russia. Moscow is a country within itself, okay? And no matter what happens in Russia, Moscow is going to be better off. St. Petersburg pretty much the same. The rest of Russia, it gets it tough. I don't think that they tried to isolate Moscow so much.

I think it's just the logistics of oil refineries that were hit, is that allowed for certain provinces to go without gas or with smaller amounts of gasoline and diesel fuel. Not just in the East, the problems. In the West, in Crimea, they actually introduced the talones, I don't know what's the right word, those tickets, ticket system. In Rastov province, that's where I'm from, I originally from, long lines. My friends sent me pictures.

I saw that with my own eyes, through videos and through pictures. So it's not just in the east of Russia. It's in the West as well and the problem is growing. Another interesting thing to know is that when initially the shortage is started, information blew up all over Internet. You know, it was even in state media a little bit here and there and definitely in Telegram channels. They've been trying to hide it.

It's much more difficult. to find information about the shortages right now. If you're talking about 17%, right, imagine that 17% hit to the energy sector, and then you put on top of that the secondary sanctions that the White House leveled against India, right, which is the number two foreign consumer of Russian energy. What do you think about what appears to be a reluctance? to put those same sanctions on China, which is the number one consumer of Russian energy. Under the theory that the only way perhaps, this is just one theory, but to get Putin to

actually meaningful negotiation is to make him feel pain, and the way to do that is through the economy, does it surprise you that the White House hasn't been more aggressive? They've threatened extreme sanctions. They've threatened secondary sanctions on China, but they've been doing that for some time. Does it surprise you that that's been the position of the White House? Absolutely does. Well, I'm surprised by immunity of China from the sanctions, let's put it this way. But I am surprised by also by the bigger picture of all the threats that we've heard starting March when Donald Trump first started realizing that Vladimir Putin is not so eager to stop the war. And, you know, he started threatening Russia with different sanctions. We don't know

who the sanctions are, but with threats. He started sending Russia threats. But as far as I understand, none of those threats have materialized. You know, I'll see what I can do in two weeks. It's going to take me one week. If one week, if in two weeks Vladimir Putin doesn't stop the war, and he's going to regret about that and all of that. I've heard it a dozen times now. And that's shocking because America six months ago had an upper hand on Russia. The sanctions started working

and the Russian economy started collapsing. It ran out of money. And that's what America needed to do. It needed to play tough on Russia to force Vladimir Putin to start seeking negotiations, seeking peace. Instead, you know, they stopped the sanctions, whatever they were, sanctions were working, they stopped enforcing them and they started appeasing Vladimir Putin. So I'm amazed by that. With the China situation, right, with the idea that they

haven't put secondary sanctions on China, you have to almost assume that that's because they're in these ongoing difficult trade negotiations with China. So they're probably looking at it from a U.S.-centric position at the White House saying, okay, well, yes, it would be effective if we slapped secondary sanctions on China as the number one consumer. And basically, you know, the primary reason why Putin's war machine continues to take along is from support from China. but I think the trade negotiations that they're engaged in keeping them from taking that step. Leave China alone. I understand that the United States has very specific relationship with China, okay, interdependent relationship.

Forget about China. Don't touch China. The USA can do so much even leaving China alone. target India, Indian oil refineries, target Greek ship owners who have been helping Russia to ship oil. There are so much the USA can do even without China that just would completely crush Russian economy and would force Putin to, well, to change what he's doing in some way, okay, even. like at least to start negotiation, like real peace negotiation process. So I'm not paying much attention about China.

There's so many other ways pressure can be applied. Yeah, no, I agree with you 100%. I think also, you know, the top line here is if Putin doesn't feel more pain, if there's not more pressure, he doesn't see an upside to sitting down and having any sort of meaningful discussion. He's been very clear, it seems, about his demands. And now the West is talking about this coalition of the willing. And Britain and France jumping in saying, we'll put troops on the ground in Ukraine as part of this security guarantee.

Well, it doesn't matter if Putin refuses that as an option, you know, to create a peace deal. If he's not going to sit down and have a peace deal, the West can talk about a coalition of the willing all they want. It doesn't mean anything. So I think, you know, they're perhaps slow to the game in exerting more pressure on him from an economic perspective. So I agree with what you're saying there, Constantine. Listen, I wish we had more time. And I do hope that, you know, when we call you, you'll pick up the phone and come on back

because I don't think this is going to end anytime soon. Unfortunately, I think so too. Well, Constantine, thank you very much. Constantine, Samuilov, again, you should check him out. on YouTube inside Russia. You get there, read his work. Thank you very much for joining us again on the Situation Report, man. I hope to see you again soon.

Thank you for having me. Thank you. All right. Complex. That's an understatement, isn't it? Well, coming up next, China's military parade this week wasn't just about pageantry, but, ooh, there was some pageantry. Beijing used the moment to showcase some of its most advanced weaponry,

sending a pointed message to the world. We'll break it all down with Brandon Weikert. He's a senior national security editor at the National Interest. Stay with us. Hey, Mike Baker here. Now, you've heard me talk about the great company Jacked Up Fitness, right? And they're amazing all-in-one home gym. For Home Fitness, it's a game changer.

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pretty clear. Beijing wants the world, and especially Washington, to know, and to see just how sharp its teeth have gotten. To help us cut through what's real and what's theater, we're joined by Brandon Weicker, senior national security editor at the National Interest and host of the National Security Hour on IHeart Radio every Wednesday night at 8 p.m. Eastern. Brandon, thanks very much for joining us here on The Situation Report. Well, thanks for having me, as always. It's good to be here. Let's start from the top. Did you see anything during the course of this big fancy military parade in Beijing that surprised you? I think one of the key takeaways is the fact that the Chinese are clearly not,

at least they're not displaying the same level of Russian military-based technology that they used to at these types of parades. That for me is a major takeaway. It indicates that Xi Jinping's indigenization program over the last decade is actually taking effect. And it indicates to me that the Chinese are basically, you know, hardening themselves at the industrial level to not have to be as reliant on foreign components for their weapons. And it also means they will probably be much more competitive on the global arms market if they create their own ecosystem of defense industrial products, which they clearly have done. Talk to me about the still. I mean, I understand what you're saying. They've moved away from, you know, overreliance on, say, Russian technology

or supplies. But, but even still, what is that relationship like? How much of a back and forth is there? How much of a weapons technology transfer exists between the two countries? You know, how important is the Russian military industrial complex to China right now? Well, it's still important in the sense that the Chinese would rather be reliant on Russia than, say, the United States or the Europeans for certain kinds of military technology. But again, I think the key takeaway here is the Chinese are starting to build their own stuff from scratch, which indicates they've switched away from being mere imitators to being innovators, which tends to be how these things go.

You know, for a very long time, we used to criticize rightly that Chinese as being, oh, they're just copycats, they're just imitators. But I think what we're seeing here is a real growth in their own. innovative capability. And even when they're not necessarily being innovative, their capability to mass-produce systems, that still remains a real key benefit for the Chinese military. They can go to scale with many technologies that we would love to go to scale with, but our defense industrial base here in the United States cannot do that anymore. And so there are certain capabilities that the Chinese have that make them very unique.

and very well poised to be very competitive with the United States in the weapons department. Yeah, why can't we do that here in the U.S.? Well, because we sent away most of our mass production manufacturing capabilities to places like China 40 years ago. Thank you, Wall Street and Jimmy Carter. And people don't remember, but Jimmy Carter actually presided. It wasn't Nixon. It was Carter that presided over the great beginning of the deindustrialization craze. And they convinced themselves back then that this was going to lead to the knowledge-based economy,

and that we would always stay ahead because of that. And what we're finding, actually, is China's competing with us, not just for those manufacturing jobs, but they're competing with us quite well for those white-collar knowledge-based jobs. And so the Chinese have really been able to keep a pace with us, largely because of the boost we gave them with the industrialization. and that's playing now out in the arms development industry. Yeah, it's interesting what you were talking about earlier about sort of innovators because you're right.

I think for some time now the narrative has been that they've spent so many years aggressively essentially stealing and reverse engineering that they kind of skipped over a generation or two of engineers, right? They were very good at sort of the copycat, at again, back-ending and reverse engineering this technology, but it's worrisome if what you're saying is that that's no longer the case. I believe that's becoming the case. And I think that the Pentagon and our friends at CIA and the intelligence community are still clinging on to this notion that China's merely imitator. I think that's not true anymore. I think that this parade demonstrates a real capability for indigenous

innovation. And when you marry that to their mass production capability, that's a real problem for us. if their technology isn't as advanced as ours, they can just beat us with quantity, whereas we're still dealing with a handful of systems. They have the ability to mass produce these things. Yeah, well, you would have to assume that at some point, right, I mean, whether it's a Chinese or anyone else, anybody who's in that boat, anybody who says, look, we're going to get to a certain point on the food chain by avoiding the heavy cost of research and development and all that. We're just going to hoover it up from other people and then let our engineer,

is figure it out, right, and then recreate it, at some point, you are going to level that playing field and you will then get to the point where you now, now you're getting ahead of the game, now you don't need to necessarily steal because you've taken so much already. That's right. What, at this parade, which makes it sound really festive, right? I mean, it's a, you know, but there was, there were no, there would, I didn't see a single Shriner display. You know, there's little mini cars that they drive, you know, synchronized drive.

There was none of that. As far as parents go, kids would have been disappointed. But so, too, for what you saw, what was displayed there, were there, it was there any hardware that gave you pause for thought that you said, oh, didn't know that they had that? Well, I'm trying to remember now if there was anything I didn't know they didn't have, I think it was really the quantity and the at least an appearance complexity of three systems in particular. The directed energy weapons are very worrisome to me, and they have those clearly in abundance, at least that's what they displayed. The hypersonic weapon that they displayed is very impressive looking. And the drone systems, particularly the UUVs, the underwater unmanned vehicles, as well as the helicopter drones,

those are three systems, Mike, that really, really give me pause. and partly because we don't have, particularly the DWs, the directed energy weapon, as well as the hypersonic weapons, we don't have those. We're trying to get them. We've been trying to get them. Hasn't really worked out. And the fact of the matter is the Chinese not only have these systems and abundance where we don't, but we don't even have any defense against these systems.

And that should give every American pause. Yeah. For the benefit of viewers, can you give us an overview when you say directed energy weapons? What are we talking about? Well, basically it would be laser weapons without it looking like something from Star Trek. They basically look like two giant binoculars. And what they do is they will fire up energy, EM energy, add an incoming weapon. and they can literally fry an incoming missile in theory

or definitely an incoming drone. They can fry the electronics by directing very concentrated energy, a laser, not necessarily one that you can see like you would in Star Trek in a battle, but that's what it's doing. It's it's directing a directed energy beam at a target, in this case a drone or an incoming missile and frying the onboard circuitry

so it doesn't operate or hit the target it's intended to. If you could stay where you are, just for a second, because we're going to need to take a quick break. And then we'll be back with more from Brandon Weikert here on the Situation Report. Stick around.

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Download today. Welcome back to the PDB Situation Report. We're joined again by Brandon Weikert, Senior National Security Editor at that National Interest. Brandon, thanks very much for sticking around. We've been talking about China's military parade, ostensibly to celebrate the you know, the defeat of Japan in World War II. But there was more to it than that, right?

They were, it wasn't so much a gathering to say, hey, look at that, we won all those years ago. This was more about a forward-looking message to the West, do you think? Absolutely. And this was, if you remember, this was paired with the Tianjin meeting of all the Shanghai cooperation organization leaders. and which really a disturbing evolution in relations between India and China appeared to be underway. India, of course, was a rival of China, but now for a variety of reasons related to U.S. foreign policy and trade policy, India seems to be, at least for now, pivoting into a friendlier position with China and Russia, which is a huge problem for us.

This was clearly a message. I keep referring to this as the ideology of resistance. And so basically, China is the nominal leader of this budding alliance. And it's a very loose alliance. It's not like NATO where there's this mutual defense pact. It's very loose. It's a typical Eurasian war party where it's allies of convenience, but they're aligned on one single issue. They want to resist what they are saying or perceived to be American and Western imperialism in the global south. And so that ideology of resistance is what's uniting these countries.

countries, notably Russia, India, and China against the United States. And you throw in Turkey to some degree, you throw in Iran, you throw in North Korea, and some others. And you're seeing a really dangerous evolution. And China is at the center of that. And this parade was just one other data point that Xi Jinping was putting out to the world for everyone to see that the age of American dominance or unipolarity certainly is over. And at the very least the dawn of the tripolar world order trending toward multipolarity is here. It was interesting because, look, obviously, Putin's presence and Kim Jong-un's presence from North Korea kind of ate up all the oxygen. That's what most people focus on. Look,

look at this. She and Putin and Kim sitting next to each other, standing next to the parade. But when you looked at the other attendees, you're right. It was kind of an interesting gaggle of individuals, leaders. It was a strange mix, right? I mean, it was a strange mix, right? evil legal meable. You had Nicaragua in there. You had, oddly enough, you had a couple of former ministers from New Zealand and Australia in attendance. It was just a strange mix once you started looking at the group photos and realizing who all was there. Yeah, well, the New Zealand and Australian connections do not surprise me. Australia and New Zealand, and I would throw Canada as well in terms of being

five-eyes partners are not as reliable as they once were because at the very least the left wing of those three countries have been mostly co-opted by the Chinese through covert means and in my opinion Australia and

New Zealand in this case have a large and growing pro-engagement group in their respective countries with China and they're not in power right now necessarily but they are in the wings waiting to take back power politically. And so that's what I think that was about.

Yeah, I think you're onto something there. The issue with China and Russia, right, when you talked about sort of a marriage of convenience concept, right? And I agree in the sense that I always look at China as being sort of the world's foremost practitioner of pragmatism, right? And that's not a compliment. What I mean by that is everything they do in a very mercenary fashion is based on what's in their own best interests. There's never a moment where they think what's best for the community of nations. It doesn't exist there.

So, I mean, I'm talking about the regime. I'm not talking about the people, you know, great culture, great history, all those things. But so I want to look at the relationship between China and Russia. do you think there's anything to the concept that in part, China's in this business of supporting Russia because at a relatively low cost and a benefit to them, obviously, in discounted energy purchases, they get to stand by and watch Russia kind of bleed the death. Well, it's not just Russia bleed to death. It's NATO as well. It's the United States. But I agree with you. But what I mean is, you know, people talk about this.

oh my God, there's this romance going on with Russia and China, and everybody's worried that they're joined at the hip and what does this mean for the world? I mean, you're right. Of course, anything that antagonizes the West, obviously, the Chinese regime is all about. But I'm talking about, is there something underlying this relationship between China and Russia that, you know, perhaps from the Chinese perspective, you know, isn't in Russia's best interests? Oh, I think absolutely. I think ultimately China, it's a tripolar system we're in now. And in such system, one party is going to constantly try to get the other two major powers to duke it out to weaken those two competitors so that that other party can basically have a free hand

in the part of the world. It covets, in this case, the Indo-Pacific. And I think this is working out brilliantly. It weakens Russia and also it's forcing Russia under Putin to be more desperate and to seek greater ties with China. Remember, the Russian Far East, the Pacific side of Russia has a lot of untapped mineral wealth. It also is sparsely populated. Putin is aware of this as well, by the way, but ultimately, and the Chinese covet that part of Russia.

But ultimately, as long as America is fighting Russia in Ukraine, the Russians will constantly subordinate their fear of China to the greater fear of NATO and America. This is one reason, and this doesn't make me very popular, but this is one reason I've been saying we've got to end the Ukraine war, because I guarantee you, if we end the Ukraine war and get a negotiated settlement, suddenly the bromance between Xi and Putin becomes a lot less appealing to the two sides. That, I mean, that does make sense. I'm always fascinated in looking at this because we've seen this over decades, right? Decades. I'm unfortunately, or fortunately, old enough to, you know, to look a fair ways back into history, modern times. And the relationship between Russia and China has

always been, yeah, I, you're telling me. It's not the years, it's the mileage, Brandon. But it's the, it's this, this idea that it's always been this marriage of convenience. And we're seeing it again now, right? But I tend to actually worry more about this relationship with. with Russia and North Korea, particularly in terms of the weapons technology transfer. Talk to me, oh, yeah, where that relationship is and what you saw from this recent gathering in Beijing between those two countries. Well, you're right to be worried about the North Korea thing, because the North Koreans have really made out like bandits because of this relationship with Russia.

Basically, Russia went to Pyongyang about a year and a half ago on their knees in many respects because they needed the industrial capacity of the North Koreans. They needed the extra manpower to use as a meat grinder, cannon fodder. And then the North Koreans said, fine, we'll do that, but you got to open up your vaults, basically, and give us advanced systems, weapons that we can use. And you're seeing now, North Korea has hypersonic weapons. We don't have hypersonic weapons. The South Koreans don't have them. But the North Koreans now do. But the North Koreans now do, and that's particularly because of their relationship with Russia.

They're getting advanced submarine technology. I have heard through the grapevine that Russia was so desperate about a year ago they gave the North Koreans advanced submarine propulsion technology, which is something that the Russians are experts in. They're a real

problem for the U.S. Navy is Russian propulsion technology, and ultimately, ultimately they're giving it to the North Koreans, because they need what North Korea is giving them to help them fight and win the Ukraine war. So this is a big problem. And by the way, there will be no reliable peace deal between the U.S. and North Korea so long as the Ukraine war is going on because North Korea is just making out like bandits right now.

So they want that war to continue. And so until that war is over, that's another issue we're going to have on a resolve is the issue with North Korea. Yeah, I think you're exactly right. And that's why we're not seeing Kim say anything about President Trump's latest efforts to say, hey, we could get together and I'm willing to meet with Kim. And it's been absolute silence from their side in North Korea. Last question, Brandon, who's winning the hypersonic weapons race? In terms of practical applications, the Russians are hands down. China's right behind them. We've got a couple of systems in the pipeline that look promising notably. I think it's the

the La Rasm cruise missile that's being developed for the B-21 and the B-2, but ultimately Russia has hypersonic, working hypersonic weapons in abundance. The Chinese are right behind them. We are still in the development stage. So that is not a good place to be because we don't have any active defenses against hypersonic weapons. So this is a problem. Yeah, I couldn't agree with you more.

And then we need to be able to talk about that the next time. I really would like to spend almost the entire time. The next time you're willing to come on board, the Situation Report, we should spend that whole time talking about hypersonics. People need to understand just how important. You say the word and I'll be here again. All right, then. All right, listen, Praternoyker, senior national security editor at the National Interest.

You know, we love you here at the Situation Report. That's all the time we have for this week's PDB Situation Report. He's a great guy. Definitely check out the work that he does. It's very worth your time. If you have any questions or comments or humorous anecdotes, and I hope you do, right? I mean, send them along, reach out to me at PDB at thefirsttv.com. We talked about this before, and you know what I'm going to say here, right?

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