The Team House - Conflict In Ukraine Deep Dive | Aaron Schwartzbaum | Ep. 135

Episode Date: March 5, 2022

Today we're going to do a deep dive on the Ukraine conflict with Russia analyst Aaron Schwartzbaum. Aaron Schwartzbaum is a Fellow in the FPRI Eurasia Program, and is founder of the FPRI’s BMB Russia. He now works with the BMB team as an advisor and columnist. Aaron received an MA in International Relations from the Johns Hopkins School of Advanced International Studies (SAIS), with concentrations in International Political Economy and International Economics. Prior to starting at SAIS, he worked at Eurasia Group as a researcher for the Eurasia and Global Macro practices. Aaron holds a BA in International Relations and Russian from Haverford College, and has completed the Overseas Language Flagship program in Saint Petersburg, Russia. If you want to help Ukraine you can donate here or directly to the central bank of Ukraine. https://razomforukraine.org/ Follow Aaron here: https://twitter.com/aaron_schwa?ref_src=twsrc%5Egoogle%7Ctwcamp%5Eserp%7Ctwgr%5Eauthor Today's Sponsors: 👇 Ten Thousand Apparel  https://TENTHOUSAND.cc Top tier training gear designed and made for and by athletes. Use the promo code “TEAM” for 15% off your purchase. The Ridge Wallet Check them out at  https://RIDGE.com/team10  for 15% off your purchase and to let them know we sent you! Get your wallet game right with the Ridge! Thank YOU for supporting the companies that support the show! For all bonus content including -2 bonus episodes per month  -Access to ALL bonus segments with our guests Subscribe to our Patreon!👇 https://www.patreon.com/TheTeamHouse Team House merch:  https://teespring.com/stores/my-store-10474963 Social Media Links:  The Team House Instagram: https://instagram.com/the.team.house?utm_medium=copy_link The Team House Twitter: https://twitter.com/TheTeamHousePod Jack’s Instagram: https://instagram.com/jackmcmurph?utm_medium=copy_link Jack’s Twitter: https://twitter.com/jackmurphyrgr?s=21 Dave’s Twitter:  https://twitter.com/dave_parke?s=21 Team House Discord: https://discord.gg/wHFHYM6 SubReddit: https://www.reddit.com/r/TheTeamHouse/ Jack Murphy's memoir "Murphy's Law" can be found here: https://www.amazon.com/Murphys-Law-Journey-Investigative-Journalist/dp/1501191241 The Team Room Reading Room (Amazon Affiliate links): https://jackmurphywrites.com/the-team-room-reading-room/ Intro music by https://www.youtube.com/user/RemixSample Want to sponsor the show? Email: 👇 [e-mail] #Ukraine #RussiaUkraineWar #theteamhouseBecome a supporter of this podcast: https://www.spreaker.com/podcast/the-team-house--5960890/support.

Being a parent can be really challenging. It's normal to feel uncertain about whether you're doing the right things to raise healthy and happy children. That's why Child and Family Resource Network focuses on connecting pregnant parents and those with kids under the age of five with free support services to help them build confidence in their parenting journey. Everyone deserves to have someone they can turn to for support with parenting. Visit child and family resource network.org today. Being a parent can be really challenging. Child and Family Resource Network focuses on connecting pregnant parents and those with kids under the age of five with free support services to help them on their parenting journey.

Everyone deserves someone they can turn to for help with parenting. Visit child and family resource network.org today. Hey folks, I just want to take a minute to ask you to go in rate this podcast, let the Team House know how you think we're doing, go and rate us on whatever platform you're listening to this on, whether it's iTunes, or Spotify or whatever else, those ratings really help us out, and we really appreciate the feedback to let us know what you like and what you don't like. And if you do like the Team House and you'd like to support us, go check out our Patreon page, and you can actually support the stream

as well as get access to our bonus segments and bonus episodes. Yeah, if you're going to give us a great review, please do. And if you're going to give us a not-so-good review, why don't you just send us an email and we'll talk about it. covert ops espionage the team house with your host jack murphy and david park hey everybody uh welcome to episode 135 of the team house i'm david park uh with co-host jack murphy um we are uh tonight joining us is uh aaron shortsbaum um a specialist in russian politics political risk and the economy with the Policy Research Institute. So, first off, thank you very much for joining us tonight, Aaron.

You know, we're kind of a last minute thing, and we really appreciate you stepping in. Yeah, thanks for having me. Yeah. So Jack and I are both kind of comic nerds. And one of the things we always like to ask people is, what is your origin story? Like, you're a Russian specialist. How did that happen? So I guess two parts of this story.

So we'll go way, way, way back before I was born. My mom's parents are from Poland, and my mom's mom and grandmother during World War II fled into the Soviet Union from Poland after the invasion. So was indoctrinated heavily into Soviet propaganda, was all over the country up in the far north through Ukraine to Azerbaijan for the duration of the war. So she is still very interested in a lot of Russian poetry and literature. So grew up a little bit around that, not the language. My kind of actual interest in the language is another story from high school where I used to do fencing. And I had a coach from Moscow. And kind of the long story short is that it's Stockholm syndrome.

I had grown up having American coaches, oh, try that a little harder. Like, you got this. And he would just be like, no, not good enough. Smack me with the sword. And then like, want to know what he was yelling. It worked. So I went, started college and started learning Russian, and kind of the rest is history. So it started with, I mean, the interest, but did it sort of start with the language and then you started delving more into the politics of it and things like that?

So I've always been a pretty big history nerd. Would definitely as like a kid, kindergarten, like prefer history channel to cartoons a lot of the time. World War II documentaries were my kind of bread and butter. I mean, that's all they used to show, frankly. So that was kind of my jam. And, yeah, so I knew I would be doing something related to, like, politics, international relations. But the fact that it would be Russia-specific, kind of discovered a little bit further down the road. Yeah.

And so what did that look like for you in your undergraduate and then graduate and things like that? Yeah. So kind of starting, so just by coincidence, I happened to go to an undergrad program with a, a pretty good Russian department. So it was kind of a combination of like heavily intensive language studies and then my political science degree, which was focused at the time when I first started international relations with a focus on focus on security matters, counterinsurgency specifically, or my thesis about Russia's counterinsurgency strategy, rather, excuse me, in the Chechen Wars. And then, yeah, the Russian was my freshman year had about eight hours a week of language classes, intensive programs in the summer, and then time abroad.

So I've lived in St. Petersburg about a year and a half total. Some pretty wild stories from there. Incidentally enough, both times I was there and there was a good year and a half break in between them, some sort of major political instability broke out. So the Russians were kind of amused by that coincidence and had questions about what I was really doing there, which for the record was studying the language. Nothing too shady. We'll have to get one or two of those wild stories on our bonus segment for our Patreon subscribers. Yeah, so, you know, let's kind of get into the meat of it. I mean, people know that like the general public right now knows that there is an invasion.

Russia is invading Ukraine. can you give us a little bit of background on it? And we can go all the way back to, you know, wherever you'd like to start. Yeah. Yeah. Whatever you think it starts. Well, I mean, going all the way back to this start would take us to about like the

900s AD with the Kiev in Rus and the formation of basically the kingdom and empire around Kiev that would lead to the birth of Russia. So it starts in Ukraine. Kiev is kind of the ancestral birthplace, kind of a good way to put it, of Russia as a political power. And then Russia wound up essentially emerging, overshadowing the ruse. The ruse kind of fell apart. But yeah, the ruse is the same. You can hear that word, ruse in it, the fact that it's called Russia.

These are interrelated. So, yeah, it begins a long, long time ago. But to this specific war now, kind of bringing us up to date, I think the real story is the fall of the Soviet Union, bringing us back to about 1990 and Russia and Ukraine too, as it were, I'm having a really, really rough go in the 90s, kind of falling into economic Myers, stagnation, depression, worse than stagnation. And the implications that had, I think, well, Ukraine certainly spawned and gave way to a lot of corruption and stagnation that the country really only had, until very recently, just started to make some headway on, although baby steps. And in Russia, kind of this lingering sense of embarrassment, of lost empire, of, you know, glory days past. insecurity because of it. And that translates, kind of translates down from your elites,

from, you know, someone like Vladimir Putin, who kind of watched his country fall apart from Germany, down to regular people. And Putin himself, actually, I think, put it pretty nicely. He said, and I'm paraphrasing here, that, like, anyone who wants to return to the Soviet Union doesn't have a brain, but anybody who doesn't miss it doesn't have a heart. Not exactly that.

There's some nostalgia, if not for the lack of consumer goods or all of the nasty things that the Soviet Union did and kind of material wealth that lacked. There's some to this day nostalgia for like being a great power and being a critical voice in the world. I believe it was one of the Soviet foreign ministers who said that like Russia needs to be present for any major global decision. And, yeah, I think I wouldn't say Putin has necessarily dreamt of recreating the Soviet Union, but he has dreamt of and thought about restoring Russia's power, making it kind of an indispensable player in the world. He's made comments publicly, hasn't he, about shifting to a multipolar system? Yeah, so that kind of vector kind of stirring in his thinking goes back to the Munich Security Conference. I want to say 2007, because I think it's been 15 years since that where he talked about how Russia won't accept the further expansion of NATO East and talking about his view of, you know, coming multipolarity.

So I think if we want to start zooming into like why the conflict is happening now, I think there's a few reasons. but if you ask, among the Russian elites, basically view Ukraine as like a core security interest. I'm not saying whether this is right or wrong. I can share my own thoughts on the matter down the road. But if you ask them, they'll say that Ukraine is a core security interest. And they couldn't accept the accession of Ukraine to NATO. That would be a critical threat. A lot of this has to do with A, kind of the historical link I mentioned,

with the Kiev-V-V-N-Rousse and Mother Kiev is kind of the birthplace of Russian civilization. It has to do a little bit with Russia's history and geography. You have the central European plane and Russia, you know, starting in Ukraine and Poland and heading east from there, there's basically no natural defenses. So Russia has always sought to have a couple of buffer states to its west, you know, from players, you know, Napoleon, Hitler. So that's part of the insecurity. and they viewed NATO's, or would say they viewed NATO's open-door policy,

saying that Ukraine and Georgia in this case, may not be joining yet, but we can't allow that to happen. So that's what they would say is the reason that this conflict is happening. And are those thoughts sort of paranoid, or from his viewpoint or from their viewpoint from the Russian elite, are those legitimate concerns? So here's the difficulty here. The answer is like yes to both.

So if you look at the kind of former Soviet countries, and I want to be specific, I don't mean Poland, I mean like countries that were in the Soviet Union, Baltic states, I think would be the best example here, who have joins NATO. If you look there, they're NATO members. I don't think NATO's ever deployed anything too menacing in those regions. You have like the Baltic air police force.

You have, and this is before this war started. You have like air policing, as I said. You have rotational detachments that rotate through. But you're talking about maybe, you know, five to ten thousand Western soldiers, some planes. So really not nearly enough to be threatening to Russia in any meaningful sense of the word. But if you look at like, Estonia to St. Petersburg that's only a couple hours away. So I'm not saying it's a legitimate worry. But from the Russian perspective, like, if NATO did ever deploy troops in mass in these places, and if Ukraine were to join NATO, you know, firing a missile from like Kiev to Moscow

would take maybe half an hour. Again, nothing like that has ever happened, deployment-wise, but they worry that that would be a possibility. I've seen in Russia, you know, in tabloids, people talk about like America's desire to, like, or the West's desire to take over Russia and use its natural resources. I never really figured out like what we would do with Russia in that situation, but, you know, didn't want to challenge anyone on that. Yeah, I mean, that does reach a certain level of paranoia that this idea that, you know, American main battle tanks are going to roll across the steps to Moscow or NATO is going to invade. Russia, I mean, that's like not our game plan. It never has been the game plan. So I get that they have security interests in their, you know, periphery, but it does seem to enter an era of paranoia

somewhere along the way. So there's two things I would kind of comment here. So as far as like the legitimacy of Russian concerns, one thing I will say, I think NATO in the wake of the Cold War got out a little bit ahead of its skis, in the sense that at its initial founding, NATO was not really an idealistic organization about democracy promotion or a set of ideas to hold the West together. It was very focused on security.

And you had some pretty unsavory characters in the organization, Greece at the time, dictatorship. So it was really about these security considerations. Right. And in the 90s and into the 2000s, it grew into an ideological organization where you would see NATO, I mean, NATO intervening in a place like Libya, Western powers or Afghanistan, which is, I mean, justified perhaps from a moral angle, but like, is that North Atlantic security anymore? Right. And that's, I think, a fair question. And so what the issue became is the organization started to, I think, in part, view itself as more of like a democracy promotion as an ideological organization and dangling membership, this open door policy to Ukraine, to Georgia, dangling membership, but not, as we see this week, not with the kind of inherent interest in actually being willing to protect those countries.

Like Moscow is more willing to fight for Ukraine than Washington or Berlin is. And we're seeing that, we're seeing that now. Right. Now, are there economic or military interests in, aside from the threat of democracy, isn't there like a rare earth or like there are military assets that Ukraine provides that Russia doesn't want to be closed off to? I'm asking because I don't 100% now. Yeah, so traditionally what Ukraine's biggest contribution to the Soviet Union was is agriculture, kind of the black soil and some of the most fertile land in the world.

It's going to be a big problem in the global economy now with Ukrainian wheat exports and because of sanctions Russian wheat exports not being shipped out. But that's what Ukraine is perhaps most famous for. But it also had some pretty advanced industries during the Soviet Union, rocket motors, for one. Russia had to do some shifting around after 2014 to actually procure engines for its missiles, for its ICBMs. Ukraine had, when the Cold War came to an end,

one of the largest nuclear arsenals in the world, not because it was hoping to have nuclear weapons, but it just legacy of the Soviet Union and through the Budapest memorandum, agreed to give them up in exchange for security guarantees from the United States and Russia. And some might say, dare I make too much of a hot take, that was looking back, maybe not the best idea. And, you know, that was something that I was actually going to ask later on. But now, since you brought it up, it's a good point.

What does this say to other countries who we are trying to, you know, when we ask them to get rid of their nuclear stockpile? Don't do it. That's the takeaway. The way to guarantee your independence is to have nuclear weapons. And that's, I don't think that's a good thing for the world, but that is like the pretty unambiguous takeaway. If you're a small state with a powerful neighbor, no offense to Ukraine. Ukraine's not a small state. Ukraine is what, like the size of Texas has 44 million people. It's like very large, second biggest European country outside of Russia. But yeah, that is the kind of unambiguous takeaway that if you, you give away your nukes, you're going to be vulnerable. Yeah.

It's really interesting because they had agreement with both Russia and the United States that there would be protection if they did. And now neither one of those countries are really, I mean, the U.S., I guess, is helping in some ways, but they open themselves up. Yeah, essentially. I mean, I understand the desire at the time. I'm sure it came with economic benefits.

Sure. But one thing I want to turn to with the paranoia, because I talk about Russian elites. And people say, and it's true, Russia has gone to war with Ukraine, has invaded. But the question is the decision-making here, because this is, I think, a particularly interesting kind of case peculiar, that it's not by all reports the Russian elites who opted into this war. This seems to have originated pretty definitively with Vladimir Putin.

And a lot of the issues that Russia is having now in this war, which we'll get to, seem to be because many players, both in government, in kind of mass media and in the military, were not in the loop about Putin's actual intention here. So Putin has harbored these, you know, views coming from like the spy world back when, suspicion of the West, suspicion of things out of his control, free market economy, democratic politics. But what's really changed is, incidentally enough, I think COVID, where he has been reading a lot of alternative history and really like wacky, wacky literature. I mean, he wrote an article, I want to say in the middle of this year, basically like,

questioning Ukrainian nationality is a legitimate idea. The term I used on Twitter is that he's basically high on his own supply. Like, he has bottomed in fully into his propaganda. So during the COVID time, Putin kind of became like, you know, that aunt or uncle of yours, that quarantined and read Q&N posts on Facebook for the duration of the quarantine? Absolutely. Yeah, and you see, I mean, some of his speeches are scary, to be honest, his speech is about like in the ramp up to the war when he's declaring war saying they're going to recognize,

recognize the independence of the separatist republics in eastern Ukraine. didn't even read as like patriotic, you know, rah, ra, like we are a strong nation and we cannot permit NATO so we are for us. I mean, he was kind of ranting. It seems a little deranged for lack of a better word. Like he, it didn't sound healthy or typical, which was, yeah, concerning to a lot of people. Do you have any idea where this inspiration, I mean, I kind of facetiously brought up QAnon, but I mean, are these like the things he's reading? Is it like the Alexander Dugan? Is that the guy's name in Russia who's like neo-fascist?

Him and others. But I think it's a combination of that, the combination of the facts that he over the last, probably since the last election cycle has basically purged all opposition to him. And I think that's true as far as opposition parties go, but also internally. There was this video of him and his security council

discussing actions. And it was Putin sitting at this table and then, like, 30 feet away, an array of chairs where you had the Sergen Aririskin, who's like the head of SVR, if I remember correctly, you know, international or foreign spy agency, get up in front of Putin. And like, the guy was like stuttering in terror, like making mistakes with his Russian that I sympathized with having learned the language, like mistakes I would have made a couple years in. So the implication there is very clearly that like nobody around him, is telling him, hey, like, no, that's a bad idea. That's not true.

So confirmation bias from everyone around him and then also what he's what he's been reading. And he's been very isolated. That's the other thing. Like he hasn't, especially since COVID, been out in the world. He was very, like, reticence to go talk to voters or do kind of public politics, pop politics, to like shake hands with people, even before COVID. But since then has really been essentially bunkered up, hunkered down, and not meeting with people. And you see it's become kind of a meme. Like the length of the tables he meets leaders at.

They're like 20 feet long tables. It looks ridiculous. I mean, I don't know if they do polling in Russia. But is there an indication about, because at one point in time, was he a fairly popular figure in Russia? And has that declined, increased or stayed the same? Yeah. So talking about his popularity, it's a great question. So except for when he first started, he's always been popular. And popular, I mean, in comparison to the West. Let's just say, for example, not making this about U.S. politics, if Joe Biden, for instance, or George W. Bush or whoever had a presidential approval rating of 55 percent, that would be like a really, really strong approval rating. That would be like very, very popular leader.

Putin has essentially since, or for most of the last few years, been consistently in the low 60s. And that said, it's vacillated. So last time I was in Russia, incidentally enough, there was some, or I guess the first time I was in Russia, 2011, there was falsification of parliamentary elections. to give United Russia, that's Putin's, he's not actually part of it, but it is the kind of the leading party in Russia, falsification to secure their victory in parliamentary elections. And Putin's approval rating started to go down into the 50s, which again, it always remained high. This is the kind of the running thread, versus then after Russia seized Crimea, skyrocketed, I want to say almost hit 80% for a time. So it was really, really up there and then began to come down to Earth for a couple of reasons.

The kind of the saying or the aphorisms that you can only eat patriotism for so long and Russia's economy was sputtering. The people, Russians, voters kind of came back down to earth, hey, like, this is not an 80% approval leader. We're back to being a 65% approval leader. And then Putin also took a measure to reform Russia's pension system that was very, very unpopular. And that also kind of brought him down from that stratospheric level. But, yeah, only back down into the 60s. Now, the question is, what value does polling have in Russia? It's a very good sociologist, statisticians.

And I forget who said this, but the joke, and I think it's like very, very illustrative, is that, you know, polling about Putin's popularity in Russia is, like, asking people in the pickle store if they like pickles. Like, you can't, the polls are not comparing him to any, like, meaningful opposition or actually, like, actual possibility someone could, like, run against him meaningfully. So it's, it's not truly indicative. At the same time, I'd be really hard pressed to say there was any, like, threat to, threat to Putin now that, like, necessitated him. Like, whoa, we got to distract the public. We got to go into Ukraine because I'm going to lose power, if not. Yeah, it reminds me of, you know, walking around Damascus and asking people if they support President Assad or not.

I mean, everyone knows what the right answer to that question is. There's not a whole lot of, you know, the left and right limits are, you know, it's just part of the social norm. They know what the right answer is to give you. The question is, and this is like particularly interesting to me is the why now. Because, and that's the thing that there's not a good answer here. It's baffling to a lot of people. Like, Russia wasn't under, like, a particular threat. You know, I could see if Ukraine tested a ballistic missile that it had developed domestically.

Like, that's the reason, okay, like, they're going to field this soon. We need to go in before that's a possibility. Or if we really were going to admit Ukraine into NATO, but they weren't even eligible as long as he's holding Crimea and parts of eastern Ukraine. So, I mean, that wasn't a possibility. No diplomatic moves at all in that capacity. So nothing there. Then there's like the possibility of like Ukraine had gotten some new weapons.

You're kind of the birekitar Turkish drones. He was working on an anti-ship cruise missile, the Neptune is called. But like those are kind of tactical innovations. Like none of those are enough to like actually constitute a meaningful threat to Russia in any way. So then the question is, okay, was there something? Was there something about the West that like made it like, made it him think, made Putin think he had an opportunity and like, yeah, COVID, some protests in Western capitals kind of malaise that like maybe would, maybe would like prevent a meaningful response

to spill the tea. And we were just talking about streaming slang. But the kind of the rumor intelligence, and this is completely unfounded. But people are saying that it may be because Putin is sick in a significant way, and it feels like he has a limited amount of time to achieve his aims. But even if that's not true, maybe for personal reasons, he's trying to step back from politics, generally, maybe slowly. And he viewed this as kind of his last unsolved question that, like, he needs to resolve the Ukraine question and do it now,

potentially before, like, the military balance, you know, started to disresolved. swing against Russia, although, again, nothing in particular was really happening on that front. So, yeah, why now is a great question. I don't think we have a good answer to it. Do you, how much did, like, China's kind of recent, you know, like in February, the recent ties with Russia, like, do you think that that influenced this at all or gave, you know, do you think there was a wink in a non, like, yeah, like we got you or anything like that? So it depends what you mean. Like, at least as far as, I read China actually asked Russian leaders to delay the invasion until after the Olympics.

But China has business interests in Eastern Europe. And I don't think China was like goading by any stretch, goading Russia into attacking Ukraine. I think this is a Russia-centric move, Putin's decision personally. And China's, I mean, tried to maintain, they still have a very strong shared interest in, reducing the United States as kind of a relative influence worldwide. I wouldn't say China's been like cheerleading what Russia's done. And I mean, abstained from the Security Council resolution condemning, condemning Russia's action.

So yeah, I don't think they initiated by any stretch this premise. And I don't think it has came from like Russian military elites or Russian political elites. I think this is like Putin himself's brainchild. And it's it's funny saying that because I've said for so many years with so many things in Russian politics that, like, one of the kind of memes in Western analysis and understanding is that Vladimir Putin is personally controlling, like, everything that happens in Russia, every decision that gets made, every law that's passed, is Putin behind the wheel. And I would always say, no, that's not sure there's a team, there's technocrats, there's

ministries, but like this time, it genuinely seems to be the case that this was actually Putin's initiative. for for you and other russian analysts was there was there a consensus about whether he would or wouldn't invade like what was was there a general thought about that um i think the answer is yes and the answer is that most uh most people were wrong um i was interesting by the why i think well i didn't think it was going to happen there's a human there's like a human like cognitive bias against like thinking about horrible things i mean you see these these newspaper articles come out about how in trouble the world is with a global warming.

Like, oh, like, here's what's going to, I scroll past it. I don't want to read that. That's scary to think about. So, like, A, people don't consider things they don't want to happen. I think what you see, though, is the two people who did get this right, or two of the more well-known people who got this right, who I will name drop. So Mike Kaufman and Rob Lee, who you can find on Twitter, both saw a right. Russia over the course of this year, and then especially in late in the winter, dramatically ramping up a military deployment on three sides of Ukraine, putting the armor, the material on the ground to really do something expansive.

They saw it coming. They saw the military buildup. I think a lot of the Russia community focuses more on Russian culture, Russian politics, and we're viewing this through the lens of, okay, well, this doesn't make sense for Russia's interests. as a country. Being a parent can be really challenging. It's normal to feel uncertain about whether you're doing the right things to raise healthy and happy children.

That's why Child and Family Resource Network focuses on connecting pregnant parents and those with kids under the age of five with free support services to help them build confidence in their parenting journey. Everyone deserves to have someone they can turn to for support with parenting. Visit Child and Family Resource Network. Today. Being a parent can be really challenging. Child and Family Resource Network focuses on connecting pregnant parents and those with kids

under the age of five with free support services to help them on their parenting journey. Everyone deserves someone they can turn to for help with parenting. Visit child and family resource network.org today. And just thought that there would be some kind of wily play by Putin to get, to get concessions. And we were not focused. We're not focused on kind of the, I think, pretty clear in retrospect.

military picture on the ground, kind of the Chekhov's gun, I guess is a relevant, relevant case where like you don't deploy 200,000 troops and thousands of tanks to your neighbor's border for a concession. Like that's a very serious statement of intent. Yeah. There's also sort of the practical matter of when you invade a country like the Ukraine, you kind of have a tiger by the tail. It's not like you're going to easily subdue the population, you know, in the military. Before we move on, I want to give a quick shout out to one of our sponsors on the show. I'll tell you guys about 10,000 clothing. You can find them at 10,000. They make workout clothing. I use it. I use their shorts and their t-shirts. I do a lot of

high-intensity training with kettlebells and dumbbells and things like that. And yeah, these are my favorite workout shorts that I've actually ever owned. So I highly recommend them. Yeah, they've got great T-shirts, workout shirts, hoodie. I mean, anything you want. They have a number of different styles. They have like their tactical short with yield to combination of durability, mobility, and versatility, and their interval short, most versatile for short, perfect for any workout. They're really good clothes, guys. We're really hot quality. We really like them a lot. And you guys, our listeners, can go there and go to 10,000.cc and use the promo code team to get 15% off your first order. That's promo code team for 15% off your first order at 10,000.

The brand believes better than yesterday. No zero days, right? So, Aaron, we've kind of talked about the, as best as we're able, some of the political machinations and sort of the psychology between President Putin and the run up to this recent invasion that has just kicked off a week ago. I was sort of significant military buildup. Do we want to, is there anything else we need to cover as far as the drivers of the conflict before we dive into the war itself?

I was just curious in terms of, was 2014 kind of a prelude to this? Was their, you know, encouraging their invasion of Crimea, a prelude? That's a great question. So I think, like, with hindsight, and there's a lot of people have suggested, like, this is what Putin wanted all along. Like, everything has been a buildup to this, to this point. And I think that's, like, very easy to say in hindsight. And more importantly, I don't necessarily.

think that's true. Putin has very traditionally been kind of great, until recently, great at improvising, great at the tactics, great at playing the games. And so 2014, kind of the very short story, revolution in Ukraine, Putin's thought that was orchestrated and carried out by the West. It was fun to be in Russia at the time for that. People started to call me a State Department, who they thought had plans that. Not CIA, interestingly. But yeah, that's what they called me, Gosteep in Russian. But, yeah, I thought that that was like an effort to really start profoundly kind of impeding on Russia's stomping grounds. And there was a crisis in Ukraine, new government in chaos, and he had an opportunity.

And they had a very well-run operation to very quickly seize Crimea. And then Putin, it seems, got a little bit ahead of himself and thought they could replicate that in eastern Ukraine, Donbos, the region. called and rolled in and met more resistance than he anticipated. But to say that was a prelude that he had, you know, kind of his eyes on seizing more all of Ukraine. I'm not sure that was necessarily true. I think he did have an interest in defanguing the issue and hoping to like neutralize Ukraine as a potential threat. But I don't think that when he took Crimea, that was like his first step in seizing the whole country. Or at the very least, we don't really have evidence of that. Do you think that the fact that our response wasn't super strong at that point in time,

that that sort of gave him an idea, right, that this also, that we wouldn't respond strongly to this? I think possibly. It doesn't necessarily mean that the response we had in 2014 was necessarily wrong, mind you. But yeah, I think he has a knack for kind of pushing and finding. limits and using Russian, again, until recently, like using Russian force very judiciously, what Putin did in Syria, given that Russia has a fairly limited capacity to project power far away from Russia to like meaningfully intervene into conflict and not suffer too many casualties in the process, like he is great at kind of finding those, again, was great at, we'll get there,

great of finding those opportunities. So, yeah, it seems like he had quite an appetite to keep pushing and pushing and wasn't seeing a lot of resistance. I mean, like, Russia deployed nerve agents in public in the UK to, you know, target, target a screpo. And, like, didn't really receive that much by way of a pushback for, like, a pretty flagrant violation. Well, I mean, they used polonium, which was like intentional to signal who did it. I mean, it's leaving their calling card to say, we did this in, you know, the UK and what are you going to do about it? So, yeah, again, like, I don't know if there was, would have been a way we could have escalated enough in 2014 to actually make Putin reconsider. The sanctions that were passed in 2014 didn't really bite Russia, I think, in the way.

that in the way that many people were hoping they might. It was the fact that oil prices dropped markedly, kind of coincidentally, that really her, Russia. So, yeah, hard to say whether if we had responded more forcefully, it might have stopped him now. But possibly, I think there's, I would probably come down on the side of, yes, had there been a stronger response, he may have considered a different course of action now. And I mean, what's ironic, too, is that because of 2014, NATO did go in.

into Ukraine and start the process of modernizing their military. Yeah. But I think the issue and turning, I think, to more recent events, I think the issue now is because Putin, no one had really stood up to him before, because political consensus hadn't formed in the West, he just, I think, decided it wasn't going to happen. And I think that is the kind of critical error that we've seen. So over the summer, there began this, the troop buildup on the border.

The intelligence community became concerned with what was going on there. Some of the people in your profession start taking notice as well. Could you walk us through sort of that buildup over the last six months or so? What we've seen that's kind of brought us to this point? Yeah, so it was under the kind of guise of exercises, starting last spring. And basically the way it would work was saying, hey, nothing going on here, but we're just going to move a lot of material and assets. Predominantly from kind of the farther away parts of Russia from Ukraine, kind of the eastern military districts, central military districts. We're going to move those to the west.

Say we're having exercises and then maybe move some material back, but start to make a stockpile, start to leave those tanks there. And this process, so there's a kind of a flurry of activity in the spring and then starting again in the fall really building up. And then the way it worked is that it was mostly just the material. And then in the kind of the week and a half preceding the invasion, you saw the actual manpower kind of be dropped in on all of the prepositions hardware and gradually move closer and closer to the border while at the same time Putin and Russian leaders were denying that any invasion was on the cards. And then at the same time, you have this really unprecedented disclosure and declassification coming from the U.S. government. We talked to Mark Palomaropolis about this when he was here a few weeks ago, basically trying to undercut Russia's position, trying to blow some of their invasion plans. What did you make of those series of disclosures that, you know, invasion is imminent? It's coming.

you know, sometimes very specific information being put out there. So it was really interesting to see people after February 16th passed, which was the kind of initial date that the invasion was supposed to start, said that, oh, once again, US intel was wrong. This is like Iraq. They're just trying to, you know, warmonger and war scare. With that really contending with the facts that the intelligence, I mean, look, the date may have been wrong.

But the intelligence said that Russia had the capabilities in place to kind of launch on the go order, that there wouldn't be any kind of time between that order and the time tanks could start rolling. And that was the truly concerning part. So people, yeah, criticize it like, oh, they got the forecast wrong, but in the big picture, we're exactly right about it happening.

I also think looking at it as just a forecast, it's not a political prediction. It is politics in itself to publish that. to, A, get Ukraine to take this threat seriously, to build consensus among U.S. allies. And then to put Putin off balance a little bit, it seems to have been very good intel. I imagine that made more paranoia second-guessing. How do they know that? How is that possible?

So, yeah, there were politics involved. And reports were that, again, hard to know if this is actually true, but rumors that were that Russia did intend to invade earlier, but the kind of disclosures may have bought more time for Ukraine because, you know, to, after all the fervent denials to invade on the day the U.S. said Russia would not have been good optics. That and some of the disclosures were warning of some sort of false flag attack that would precipitate an invasion. And that may have taken that tool off the table for him too, because when the invasion did

happen, Putin had this really, like, lame. half-assed statement like, well, we're going to denozy the government of Ukraine and everyone's kind of like what? Like, it doesn't even make sense. I think one of the really interesting things about kind of the run of this conflict is a lot of the kind of myths about Russian military capability and like Putin's good at have been like completely shattered. And it was supposed to be that he's this extremely agile,

you know, judo fighting chess player who, who like is unbeatable at information. wars and can just outplay the West time after time. And Russia has, I don't think it's even close as far as information, the information space is concerned. It's basically now ceded the field, just cut itself off from the world as far as communications and news go, just lost completely.

So, yeah, I think to hear his, to hear his denials, the fact that ultimately there was an uptick in violence, in eastern Ukraine before the war started that he used as like a reason to, to not annex, not quite, but to kind of declare the legitimacy of the two separatist republics in Dunbass, recognize them. That's the word I was going for. Recognize them. And then once the violence continued, said, okay, we need to neutralize the, you know,

quote unquote Nazis in Kiev. And then the invasion itself does kick off. And it definitely was not the well-planned, competently executed and almost bloodless operation that he launched in Crimea. It's like night and day. And to the point that it makes you wonder what happened between 2014 and 2022 with the Russian military or with Putin in his inner circle. because this invasion that has just happened, it seems like the most half-assed, ridiculous thing. I mean, we were talking to the guys earlier,

and I was saying they're performing at the level of like Saddam Hussein's army. Like, it's embarrassing. So, yeah. A couple of things to say there, because that's been, I mean, almost to the points that people in the fields and people who know about Russia's military way better than I do, it's not even like, oh, like, that's a setback. People are baffles, like what on earth is going on here.

you see, I mean, like Russian forces trying to, I mean, I think honestly, like Putin was, was counting on his like, his, you know, Baghdad 2003 Desert Storm moment. You see these, you know, Russian paratroopers trying these like, like, Thunder Run. We're just going to have like a lightly armored column. We're going to drive straight into a city. And the results are grisly. It's not going well when they, when they try that. And it's happened again and again.

So, yeah, I think there's a couple factors at play. So talking about, like, the internal politics, what's going to be. going on in Putin's circle. Putin, as I said before, getting high on his own supply, I think genuinely convinced himself that the propaganda was true, that Ukraine had been enslaved by this Western backed Hunter that was taken the country by force and abusing everyone, which is not the case,

and that Ukrainian forces like they did in Crimea would throw down their arms and greet Russians as liberators, and not fight with the kind of tenacity that we've seen. I think the other thing is that this is, Putin's big kind of calling card and foreign policy had been like small victorious wars. So Crimea relatively bloodless. Dunbos, a little bloodier,

but could kind of keep that at arm's length with the separatist republics and soldiers on vacation. Syria, Russia, you know, stabilized the situation for an ally without taking too many casualties. did well there. Ukraine is, let's even assume Ukraine's military was not super motivated. Ukraine's a, it's a big country. It's 44 million people.

This is like a truly like interstate war. This is not, you know, big guy versus little guy. Right. But yeah, he miscalculated in a lot of ways. I think one of the other critical things that he convinced himself of is, especially in Eastern Ukraine that Russian speakers in Ukraine would, you know, felt oppressed that, you know, they couldn't speak their native language and, you know, would, you know, join in the, join in the fray on perhaps on Russia side or not resist. And there's always been kind of this

regional divide in Ukraine between East and West, where the West is more pro-West, East is more pro-Russia. But an anecdote, actually, for my last time in St. Petersburg, not after Crimea, which they felt very ethnically Russian and went along with the invasion, I think, without too much resistance. But after the events in Donbos, I was tutoring a kid, probably like five or six in English, to make some pocket change over there,

and talking with his parents, who had both spent some time in the States, they were both pretty forward-thinking. And one of them shared that he was talking with a friend of his in Kharkiv, Kharkov, in Russian, one of the cities currently under siege in eastern Ukraine, talking with a friends there. This is 2014.

This is not now. An ethnic Russian, Russian speaker who said, like, I'm ethnically Russian. But if Russia comes to my city in what's going on now, I'm going to take up arms. 2014. So very early precursor of what we're seeing now, an indication that Putin miscalculated, I think, catastrophically. I even had once upon a time, I had a source. who is a Spetsnaz guy.

And we kind of, I haven't heard from him since 2014 politics and everything. But I mean, I remember him posting on Facebook at the time in 2014, like, I don't care about about invading Ukraine. Like, let them be Ukraine. Let them have their peace. And he was an elite soldier in the Russian military. And this dude had no interest in invading that country. So the kind of the traditional, like the Russian minds and what people,

and said there's the term braskin arrods like a brotherly people yeah so there's not really a history of animosity from russia towards ukraine now ukrainians have a different story to tell you especially in light of kind of the famine slash genocide of the 30s um maybe some more animosity you know back the back the uh the other way around um we go with the zoom yeah continue i'm sorry Okay. So, but yeah, Putin kind of spoke to like a lack of Ukrainian agency or lack of like Ukrainians aren't a real people, just kind of a state but not a nation. And of course, the irony here with all the divides in Ukraine is that by launching a war against the entire country has, if there was any doubt that Ukraine was like a nation, not just like a political boundary, but like one

people, he just gave the entire country a common history. He is certainly, cemented Ukraine as a nation, not just a state. Well, I mean, but that, I mean, that was something that I thought was interesting. He said nationalism cannot be the basis of a state. Was he talking about Russia? Was he talking about Ukraine and that? I believe talking about Ukraine and like Western Ukrainian nationalists, kind of these quote-unquote neo-Nazis.

I mean, I want to say the hysterical irony because nothing is funny. about this at all, but Ukraine's president is Jewish. And the quote-unquote neo-Nazis in power have not tried to remove him, oppose, or kill him. So, like, yeah, it would be hard to argue that that's a meaningful kind of trend in Ukrainian politics. There are some neo-Nazis, no more than anywhere else in Eastern Europe or Russia. So, yeah, I think that's what Putin was kind of playing to the idea that like Russian-speaking Ukrainians were oppressed and denied equal rights and kind of their fair place. He's pretending, or not even pretending, maybe genuinely believed that that oppression was happening and therefore he could step in to

protect Russians. Of course, the irony now that he is, you know, cities like Chernihiv or Khadiv, Russian speaking, bombing them, you know, into oblivion. Yeah. Well, you know, you have that. You have what you guys were talking about, like the Russian casualties. But then we also have this really interesting sort of social media. It's not even really social media warfare. But it's just a byproduct of, you know, we watched some Ukrainians driving around, you know, in a Russian tank. You see the farmer burning the, you know, the $11 million piece of equipment. Like, how is that all playing? I assume the Russian public isn't getting a lot. of this because a lot of their social media is cut off right now. But how is that influencing what's going on? So I think that is one of the things that has been really interesting to watch is the political mobilization that's happened in the West, how fast it is. And so we'll talk, we'll talk about the kind of the propaganda and the kind of the view of the war specifically in a sect. But basically before now, Russian or sorry, Western politics had been very much

decided at the elite level. Most people didn't have a strong opinion one way or the other. You know, we get our guests from there. They have bears and vodka. Think of your stereotypes to people thought. Not really like a meaningful, like tangible feeling of like what it means to deal with Russia, which means that the elites could, you know, slap Russia on the risks. We're going to put some sanctions on you because of this nasty thing you did in Ukraine.

But, you know, business lobbies for, you know, energy, for luxury goods in Italy could lobby lobby presidents and keep the sanctions, keep the sanctions from biting too hard. Similarly, you see these populist parties in Europe on the left and right being pro-Russia. And the reason they could is because it's a way to show opposition to kind of the traditional consensus, didn't really cost anything. It's tough, Putin's strong man, and didn't really mean anything to be pro-Russia because it's just for show. But now you see, because of the coverage and I think in large part because of

Ukraine's conduct of the information war, just a real groundswell of Russia means something now to the minds in the U.S., sure, but especially in Europe, that's the biggest shift. And so when politicians in the West are saying we have to oppose Russia, they're not doing it because they've had a change of heart, it's because the voting public has had a change of heart and is demanding a stronger line. And you see, I mean, the public polling data, I've seen, in Germany is, I would have to say the craziest thing I've seen in public polls where, like, the country has decided to rearm itself and had been dead set against it for 30 years. And in the span of a week is like, okay, Russia's the threat to European security. We need tanks again. And just snap, done.

So there, I mean, that's a huge implication for Europe, Germany, being a military power again. Sweden and Finland talking about joining NATO, even Switzerland getting on board. Yeah, you're right. You're seeing politics shift dramatically right before our eyes, as you said. As far as the Information War goes, though, so yeah, Ukraine has kind of captured the kind of Western imagination with these videos of farmers dragging tanks away. I think there's going to be kind of a reckoning. I would, I think Ukraine has taken some pretty severe casualties, too.

We just don't hear about that. Right. Not that they're doing anything wrong militarily. I mean, they're just in the subject of intense and indiscriminate fire. Ukraine has a very popular president who's, you know, well-spoken, a young guy who has, again, emerged as kind of ironically, he was a comedian before all of this, did sketch comedy. There's a famous sketch of him and another member of his comment.

troops playing piano with a part of your body you don't normally play piano with. Again, like this is maybe like 10 years ago. And then as presidents, a lot of Ukrainians didn't take him seriously, but has become this national hero who's rallied the country around him. But at the same time, he's, you know, one security slip up away from getting killed by Russia. Right, right. And he's going to hit home that like this is a serious war. Yeah.

But he's already sort of established himself in the collective memory as a martyr, you know, unlike President Ghani of Afghanistan who disappears in the dead of night. This guy seems like he's willing to go down with the ship. Yeah, and I think that makes a huge problem. I mean, Russia's long game here is, isn't really really bad. He's leading effectively, but if you kill the guy, then you have just made a national martyr. And I don't think at this point is going to reduce the fight. spirit of Ukraine. I wanted to go back then and something that I noticed that, I mean, clearly you picked

up on too, is that we have imbued a lot of, in my opinion, magical qualities upon Russia because I guess we're over here on this side of the Atlantic. They're this far away country and we insert our tropes and our stereotypes to kind of fill in the blanks and our knowledge, right? But we constantly describe Putin as this chess master, this guy who's playing three-dimensional chess and is outmaneuvering us. The Russian military is seen as this strong, robust sort of military that doesn't give a shit about civilian casualties and we'll just level cities and do whatever it takes to win, right? And some people wrongly, in my opinion, admire a lot of this nonsense. But that said, I feel like we've seen a lot of that mythology just sort of dissolve before our eyes over the last week.

As we're seeing these armored vehicles stuck in the mud, we're seeing the soldiers run out of fuel and abandoned tanks. We're seeing all this kind of crazy stuff going on to the point that, as you said, even people were experts on this subject are kind of bewildered. Like, what the hell are we even seeing here? Yeah, I mean, great questions about this. I think one of the best summations I've seen on this was on Twitter, not my line. I'm forgetting who said it. So if you're watching, they can take credit. But it's that Russia has a large modern army.

But the problem is that its large army isn't modern and its modern army isn't large. There's really two armies. There's the kind of elite core, mostly contract soldiers that's about, I don't know if I have the number. I want to say about 40 to 60,000. and then a much larger body using a little more antiquated equipment that's a lot more conscripted. And it's that army by virtue of the fact that Russia is ostensibly trying to seize a country the size of Texas that has 44 million people. It is using its big army, not necessarily its modern army. And you can see that it's, yeah, equipment is not really performing to as advertised.

There was some really interesting discussions today about what has happened to Russia's Air Force, which was able to be a very effective, a very effective tool in Syria and launching a precision raids and imprecise raids too on civilian targets. But like being unable to wondering, like, can Russia's Air Force even run operations to like launch mass air attacks? And there's like a lot of questions about like the tactics. that Russia has done. I mean, like, even like the Russian pirate troopers,

the de, they're supposed to be these invincible brutes who are just the elite, the creme to the crem, and they've been wiped out. There's like videos of pretty grisly stuff of, again, trying to like drive their light tanks just down city blocks without meaningful infantry or armor backup and being absolutely shredded to bits. So, like, a lot of these kind of tropes,

are being questions pretty, pretty heavily. Yeah. Well, we were talking about that earlier, and Jack had brought up a really good point that, you know, Ukraine has a really robust drone program right now, and, you know, there should be no way they could field this many drones. Yeah, how do they not have air superiority at this point is bizarre? It's, and this is the question.

Like, yes, the fact that, that, what is it, over a week, like nine days into this war that the airspace is still content. And this is not even like Ukrainians with finger missiles shooting down planes. These are, you know, running Ukrainian Air Force running sorties against Russian, against Russian troops, succeeding at hitting targets. That is a really, really big question here. And I think tells us something interesting about what was happening. So Zelensky in the run-ups of the war in a couple of weeks was saying, I haven't seen the intelligence. I haven't.

I think there's no reason to panic. Everything's going to be okay. Russia wouldn't attack us. Very curiously, in the initial wave of Russian strikes, seemed not to have reduced Ukraine's combat power very much. So I suspect that while he was saying that publicly, Ukraine's military was very, very quietly dispersing itself around the country away from these concentrated points and getting ready.

So, yeah, So the other thing that you've seen from captured, he's captured Russians coming up a lot in the video with these conscripts. And in other reports that the fact that the invasion was coming didn't really percolate down the chain of command until very, very recently before the invasion actually happened. So you have these horrible, like logistical snarls. And, you know, Russian soldiers, you know, their food getting captured that expired in 2017.

It seems like Putin thought this will be really quick. We're just going to roll in in a couple days. Seas power. We don't even need enough food. I just didn't plan for this. Now, I think it's also worth noting, like, there's definitely half the equation, like the Ukrainians employing their assets very, very carefully. I think as far as planning goes, like Ukraine's general staff has been planning for one scenario

since 2014. That is, I'm sure, all they have been thinking about. So, you know, it's not just the tenacity of regular Ukrainians. Ukrainian soldiers. I think the country has very seriously planned for this contingency for a very long time. How much do you feel, what do you feel that the United States, NATO response has gotten right? What do you feel that they've gotten wrong? Do you have criticism of some of the things that they've done? Yeah. So great question. I don't want to, you know, rub anyone feathers the wrong way. I think this.

given a lot of calls for a more aggressive intervention. And I think it's going to get increasingly political challenging, but the fact... Being a parent can be really challenging. It's normal to feel uncertain about whether you're doing the right things to raise healthy and happy children. That's why Child and Family Resource Network focuses on connecting pregnant parents and those with kids under the age of five with free support services to help them build confidence in their parenting journey. Everyone deserves to have someone they can turn to for support with parenting. Visit child and family resource network.org today. At Bakers, no matter where you order free pickup, you get the same great deals as you'd get in

store so you can save when you order during band practice or at the dog park or wherever. Start your cart with the Baker's app and save from wherever today. Bakers, fresh for everyone. $35 order minimum restrictions may apply, subject to availability. you can save an extra $10 when you spend 40 or more on a great selection of participating items. Just look for the signs and save at Bakers. That we're like shooting down, talk of like a no-fly zone or putting ourselves in a position to directly fight against, directly fight against Russia, I think is prudent, despite pressures to the contrary. And I think it's also been prudence that we've kind of signaled that to Russia very carefully,

that it's, okay, we're going to give Ukraine lots of weapons. They're going to kill lots of your troops, but we're not going to be pulling a trigger. We're not going to be intervening in any direct way. You also saw Russia, I think, blustering, talking about changing its nuclear stature. And we saw, I want to say, there was a supposed to be ICBM Miniman test

at like Vandenberg that we canceled just to indicate, like, that we're taking this seriously and that there's kind of limits to how this, Western support will look. So yeah, I think it's been managed. I would have good things to say about Western governments so far. Yeah. So this, I mean, this kind of jumps ahead of the gun, but because you brought up nukes,

like, what is the risk of the results if Russia actually does succeed? And what is the risk and the results if Putin actually fails? So I think what I would say is that Russia, at least the way of looking now, now the question is how we're defining success. Can Russia take Kiev? I think it would cost, you know, thousands and thousands of Russian souls to do that. It would destroy the city. I think Russia could do it if there's the political will. I think it can and will happen. Is Russia going to hold Ukraine easily? I mean, you are already see unarmed protesters in Russian occupied cities. And like, if that doesn't scream indication that an insurgency is likely, I mean, that's all the signal I need. People are are not happy about this at all. So as far as, like, Putin utilizing nuclear weapons, like, I mean, a couple of scenarios have been floated. Okay, like he detonates one in a remote area to say next one's Kiev, you need to surrender.

I don't know if that would make Ukraine surrender. They're fighting for their existence as a country. Also, I mean, as far as that goes, Putin really can't lose. He's kind of gone all in, but he does want to take large chunks of Ukraine. And whatever chunks he occupies, the West is not going to pay for restoration, rehabilitation of those areas. So, like, he ostensibly is going to be on the hook. So I don't think he wants to cause too much collateral damage.

The risk is that he just really cornered maybe domestically, maybe not about what's happening in Ukraine. Maybe if there's pressure against him because of the economy and sanctions that he wants to try to make a quick end to it. But I'm not super, I'm concerned about a lot happening. And I think the potential for an accident to lead to an escalation with the West is certainly there and that's very concerning. I didn't grow up into Cold War and you know realizing what it feels like to, you know, have like, you know, a plane flies, a couple, you know, couple feet in the

wrong direction could like end the world. That's kind of like a scary thing to live with and just I mean, I did grow up in Cold War, you know, and I mean, I remember like an elementary school in junior high, like we would do bomb shelter drills, you know, where, you know, you would, the whole school would go to a bomb shelter because of the threat of nuclear war. Yeah. You know, and I hope that, you know, we all hope that nobody ever has to go through that for real. Guys, let me give a quick shout out to the second sponsor for the show tonight. It is Ridge.

These guys make wallets. Actually, you got one there, Dave. So, yeah, so they make these really nice front pocket wallets, actually. They're metal with these nice elastic straps on them. They come with a little screwdriver where you can loosen it up for your cards. And then basically just, this is pretty tight because I didn't loosen it. But you just basically can pop your cards in and out. It's got either a money clip or a pocket clip, whatever you want to use on the front.

But, you know, it's a nice change from sitting on your wallet. It's nice and fine, too. Yeah. It's very compact, very convenient. If folks want to go check this out, go to ridge.com slash team 10. And you use the coupon code, Team 10. When you go in there, Dee, what does that get you when you use the coupon code? 15% off.

You made it extra confusing. Team 10 for 15% off. Yeah. And we just got these in. That's why we're not using it. But we're going to give them a try because I do want to get rid of my wallet, my back pocket. Yeah, it looks really nice. And hey, you know what, Aaron, I'll mail this one to you since we have a second.

Well, thank you. Yeah. At least what we can do for spending some of your Friday evening with us. Happy to do. when you could be out partying and living the high life doing cool stuff uh you're implying i'm not currently partying and living are you drinking with us tonight um not currently um but i i might i might make a move for the scotch collection over there in a event okay let we have some questions real quick um john pierre thank you very much was this war diplomatically avoidable

really interesting question um so here's the thing thing. It seems as though if you look at Russia's Ministry of Foreign Affairs, that advisor, Sergei Lavrov, who is a professional diplomat. He's got chops, but he's basically since 2014 been completely neutered. The kind of Russian, Russia's diplomatic corps has not been calling the shots in any meaningful sense of, in any meaningful sense of the word. And then if you look at, if you look at the demands Putin, made to the West before the war and seems to have stuck to like the denazification of Ukraine, calling for NATO to remove all forces from like former Soviet states from like West Germany.

I mean, that's the kind of demands you make if you have Russian tanks in Berlin and you've like won World's War III, not after nothing happened. So yeah, even I think, and if you look at Putin's aims here, Like, I think there was appetite in the West to say like that. I mean, Ukraine was not going to join NATO. I think there may have been appetite at least tacitly or at least for like 15 years to say, okay, we're going to delay this. We're going to even close the open door. I happen to think, this is my personal view, that Ukraine and Georgia should not have been

allowed into NATO and that should have been more explicit. We're not, as we can see, willing to defend either. But, yeah, Putin's aims, I mean, seem to be. Imperial may or may not be the right word, but I don't think we're necessarily just about NATO. I think it's about Ukraine, too. Interesting. David A, thank you very much for the very generous donation. Thank you, Michael.

Please explain the veracity of the neo-Nazi claims presence and how deep that goes or doesn't go in Ukraine historically and currently. Thank you. Yeah, okay. So let's start with the history and then we'll bring it up to the present. So in World War II, there was a, and I think before World War II, leading up to it, there's Ukrainian faction called the Ukrainian People's Army, led by a guy Sepan Bandera, based in Western Ukraine, nationalists. So the kind of the positive side, I don't think highly of the guy, but he was like a Ukrainian nationalist would view him as like a hero of the nation for fighting for an independent Ukraine. That just happens to be on the side and cooperation with Nazi Germany. And in addition to fighting, again, I understand Ukraine, Ukrainian's grievance against the Soviet Union leading up to World War II. I think the famine that occurred there is horrific crime against humanity.

But yeah, sided with Nazi Germany, we're responsible for a number of pogroms and horrific atrocities against Poles, Jews, folks in the area. But yeah, resisted Soviet authority. It's kind of been a venerated in Ukrainian nationalist circles. Since then, you can see their flag is red and black, if you ever see that at a rally. That's the People's Army flag. So you have that. And then you have, again, following the fall of the Soviet Union, again, yeah, some new Nazis around, no more than Eastern Europe. I think what Russia harps on a lot is the Azov Battalion, which is a far-right.

far-right group that fought in the Donbass conflict starting 2014 was ultimately subsumed into Ukraine's National Guard. And they are basically accused of your Ukraine's government has been accused of, you know, providing cover for this, for this Nazi, neo-Nazi regiment. But to say that it's pervasive in Ukrainian politics, I mean, Ukraine has had free and fair elections after the revolution. revolution of 2014, had free and fair elections in 2019. Neo-Nazis don't hold any seats in parliaments. Full stop. There's a right-wing party, radical party. They're pretty far right, but they're not neo-Nazis.

So I think that would be the measure of kind of their lack of influence in Ukrainian society. And again, Ukraine's president is Jewish. And you see, I mean, you see now in Ukraine, I mean, Ukrainian Jews on the front lines, There's a picture today of like a rabbi, Manning, you know, a sandbag emplacement. So like I would be very hard pressed to say that this is like a meaningful. Heck, there's a large, very religious Jewish population in Ukraine that's still there. And I haven't heard incidents of, you know, skinheads giving them, you know, meaningful problems, at least with state backing. Well, not only skinheads, but you don't see any government program rounding them up or or persecuting them in any way.

Nope. Yeah. I mean, that would honestly, I guess, be like somebody invading the U.S. saying that we need to denotified because we have, you know, the far right, you know, neo-Nazis and whatnot here, right? I mean, they're not a significant portion of our population or I'd argue an influential one, but. Yeah, I mean, I would say that's a very, and again, like to say, oh, Ukraine is, you know, full of neo-Nazis and anti-Semitic. not to draw broad stereotypes, but it's Eastern Europe. Like, yes, there is anti-Semitism in Eastern Europe. Like, go figure.

I'm not justifying it. Don't get me wrong. Right. But, yeah, it's not a meaningful kind of stride in Ukrainian society at all. And I don't think, I think that's the convenient excuse for Putin and his defenders to argue. But it's not really about that. But, you know, if you like you said, if he isolated himself and, like, you know, especially during the Trump administration, a big message from, you know, his opponents was, you know, about, you know, anti-Nazi neo-not, you know, all this stuff. And so if that, if that's what Putin thinks is the rhetoric that will allow him to do this because it's, it's common verbiage right now, or it was, right? Then it makes sense it would be something he would grab hold of.

Yeah. So first of all, World War II as like a thread in, in Russia. society is it's a huge huge deal. I mean, the advice going over to this study was basically like never discuss World War II with Russians. They will tell you that America doesn't understand Russia's contribution. I don't think that's actually an unfair thing to say. I think a lot of Americans don't. It just so happens.

My grandfather was like liberated in Poland by the Red Army. And my birthday is Victory Day. Another fun fact. So like I'm pretty well familiar. But yeah. So that's like a huge thing. to argue that neighboring countries full of fascists who are bent on invading Russia, that's not just like a modern threat.

This is, I mean, that touches a nerve in a big way for, for, you know, your average Russian. But the second thing is, as far as, like, mobilizing the population and prepping them for a major interstate war of this scale, it didn't happen. I mean, there was talk about, oh, like the banderites, the Nazis in Ukraine, but not that, not like weeks or months of preparing Russians for. And we have an existential fight on our hands and sacrifices are going to need to be made. And I think a lot of Russians,

I mean, even talking to my friends, just like the shock over this, like, is not expected. Nobody thought this was actually going to happen. And a lot of people, I mean, if they're not saying it publicly, just don't stand for this. I don't think people actually believe that this was actually a threat

in any meaningful capacity. to Russia. And again, a lot of Russians view Ukraine as, you know, brotherly people. This is fractricidal. Yeah. Zach Agar, thank you very much. What do you envision is going on in the Russian Treasury this week? How long before sanctions impact the war machine soldiers on the front line? Okay. So great question. The Treasury, so Russia's economic policy makers tends to be very educated, very, I don't know if necessarily pro-Western, but like very professional. And I can't imagine they're happy this week. Russia is, to say in deep trouble is an understatement.

So when I was in Russia last in 2014, you could get probably about, give or take, $33 rubles for the dollar for the last couple of years. you would get, give or take, maybe 70 to 75 rubles to the dollar. As of today, I want to say it's about 125 rubles to the dollar. And this is just a change that's happened literally in the last week. So, I mean, crushing devaluation of the currency. But it goes, I mean, so much further than that. You have companies like Boeing, Airbus, you know, no longer providing

support to Russia. Planes being seized because a lot of Russia's civil aviation fleet is not owned by Russian airlines. It's least. So like Russia is not going to have a functional civil aviation sector, international flights in like the next couple of weeks. They're going to run out of spare parts to use. There's going to be, I mean, right now with sanctions and what Western governments have done,

there's people complying with sanctions. We're not going to deliver parts that are military. in nature to Russia. There's also a phenomenon called overcompliance, which is like think of playing hot potato with like a hand grenade, where you have these, you know, cargo shippers, oil shippers, oil exports haven't been banned from Russia, but no one wants to fill an entire oil transport full of oil

that may be sanctioned at any time. You're stuck with it. You just eat that cost. So Russia is selling oil, but no one is buying it right now. Not that it's illegal, just no one is taking that risk. So yeah, Russia is in deep trouble. I believe the question was about the military.

So I think there is political will and the ability to keep fighting. And I think Russia can keep doing that. They're moving more assets and reserves in from, you know, deep in eastern Russia. It's the question of like what is the long-term impact. So like Russia's already running out of precision guided weapons that you need. You need semi-conductors, advanced optics to build, already running out just because of how long the war has gone on. It's not going to be able to replenish those. As far as Russia's programs for advanced military capabilities, you know, it's stealth fighters that is developing.

That's going to be a really, really painful, painful hit. And I think one of the things that people have said, oh, like Russia is just saving forces is going to fight NATO next. Russia's bugged. Russia can't fight NATO. right now. I mean, nuclear weapons, sure, let's hope not. But its military is so bogged down and is not going to be able to replenish itself. I mean, it's really bad. There was a video of a financial analyst or a fund manager who went on like Russian business TV with pretending it was vodka. Yeah, with sparkling water and give a toast to Russia's capital market. It's that nice knowing you. It's dead. So yeah, Russia's in deep trouble. And I think in the coming weeks as like shipments of,

of goods start to slow down. Once Russia reopens its stock market, it's going to sink in just how bad it's going to get. That and that we're sanctioning the oligarchs and really going after the elite class, I mean, is that going to put increased pressure on Putin and the Russian policy, essentially? Not in the least bit. And I think that's, yeah, we think we're hitting Russia really hard in that capacity. Like the traditional oligarchs have been kind of lacking a political power for years and years. It's not been like a meaningful class that can influence Putin. And I mean, I'm sure if you ask you average Russian, they said, hey, like, we're seizing Roman Abramovich's like yacht in, you know, wherever it was found. They'd be like, hell yeah,

like, seize more yachts. Like these guys are like rich bastards who've like expropriated all of our wealth. I don't think they minds. I think they'd be in favor. So I don't think that's, I don't think that's where the impact is really going to be. I think it's going to be. I think to be more on consumer goods. I mean, I think the most, I can tell you, based on my interactions with Russians and friends, like the currency is going to hurt, the flights are going to hurt.

The fact that you can't buy an iPhone in Russia anymore, that's going to really touch a nerve. I've been asked by multiple Russians traveling, you know, back and forth back in the day. Hey, can you bring me an iPhone? Bring me an iPhone. I want an iPhone. It's the sudden disappearance of

sudden disappearance of all of these kind of goods and luxury items that Russians have become accustomed to over the last 22 years that are not going to become slowly unavailable. It's gone. No IKEA anymore. And that's going to hurt really bad. And the joke I've made on Twitter is that what Russia is doing right now is like a speed run of the Soviet Union,

except it starts in the year 1980, and there's no binding ideology. It's just you're starting. Yeah, you're just started. It just, there's no beliefs in anything and you're starting and things are already bad. So, yeah, it's going to get worse. It's going to get a lot worse. Now, you said that the oligarchs don't, like they, they don't have any influence on Putin.

I can definitely see how that would be. How much influence will they have on the people surrounding Putin, though? Like, could they make Putin? can they can they can they can they threaten him existentially you know if if their wealth is at risk no and their wealth is at risk and they're unable to i think that like the only people who could meaningfully remove Putin i don't think they're going to yes are the kind of the sileviki they're called kind of your security elites your shogu um xolotov who runs um uh russia's National Guard, Vasqvaria, are the only ones with like enough political capital to

meaningfully do that. I mean, the big problem now is that Putin is all in. He like horrifically miscalculated and any step back now other than some meaningful victory, which he has failed to achieve as of yet, is going to be, like he's going to lose a already has, but it's going to lose a ton of credibility that like Russia's military lost a war to its neighbor, he has to have something to show for it. The problem is I don't know how what he thinks he can get at this point. Right. So I, I hesitate to make any more predictions because I was wrong about the invasion. And I also thought, you know, okay, now that this has happened, the Ukrainian military has like 72 hours to get wiped out. Clearly, that hasn't happened. They've managed to hold out longer than I definitely thought.

But now my thought process is, well, at this point, he has to bring in the big guns, artillery. and just start turning some of these cities into rubble. Maybe I'm wrong about this one as well. Where do you see this going next? Where do you see this conflict heading next? What are the next few steps for the Russian military in Ukraine? Because a coherent strategy does not seem to have presented itself as of yet. So I want to talk about two things here.

The first is about maps and the way the conflict is being depicted in the West. you see these map of Ukraine with like this like red swaths over over like chunks of it that Russia has occupied and I think that's a highly unrealistic depiction of how Russia has actually gone about its operation where it's kind of advanced along like three main axes south north east but it's doing it along like major roads a lot of Ukraine especially further north and the east now is too muddy they can't even get into fields but they have haven't like pacified foot by foot acre by acre as they've advanced along. They're kind of bum rushing major cities. And that was a huge mistake. But it's also left them very vulnerable as far as supply line goes. Basically there's an article. I want to say in Wall Street Journal, you have like Ukraine special forces just running around blowing up convoys.

And one of their operatives said, since the war started, he's lost two guys and they've killed about 60 Russians. Take that with a grain of salts. You can say whatever he wants. But yeah, a lot of vulnerability there. So what's next? There's the, there's the kind of the old Soviet joke. This is like, don't mean to be glib, but like the Russian, the Russian pessimists said like, man, things are horrible.

Like they couldn't get any worse. And the Russian optimist says, of course they could get worse. So it's only bad things to come. Putin's frustrated, Russia's military is frustrated, and it's not going to spur a more humane, humane approach. The problem with that is that being more inhumane is not going to make Ukrainians back down and it's not going to make the West be more conciliatory. Like the only way for Russia is to keep digging, but that's going to keep mobilizing public opinion against Russia

and opinion to keep supporting Ukraine. So one of the things I'm looking for as far as like next steps, yeah, like Russian artillery, trying to take a major city, it's going to be an absolute bloodbath. And again, And I say this talking about the kind of political analysis. This is, there's nothing like fun or nice about this. This is going to be like horrific atrocity. The other thing I'm looking for is the beginnings of any like insurgent activity. If we haven't seen yet because Ukraine still has a standing fighting army, there's no reason for there to be insurgents yet.

But looking for, yeah, partisans begin to emerge. And I think we're going to see it. And I think we're going to see it in places Putin wasn't expecting. like Ukraine's national divide between East, West, Russian, Ukrainian has just completely evaporated. You see people speaking Russian yelling at Russian soldiers, people speaking Ukrainian yelling at Russian soldiers, doesn't matter anymore. There's just no distinction at this point. With the forces seeming, I mean, as far as like even blue on blue tank battles with the Russians, like with the Russian seeming disorganized, do you see any type of? counter offensive on the part of Ukraine.

It's like, well, if we drive into Russia, let's see what they do. Yeah. Like, I mean, is it possible that they could win this thing conceivably? And this is, I think, where, like, the picture of the war we're getting is, like, a little slanted. Like, Russia has, I think, failed in all this objective so far. It's been horrifically mismanaged. Russia was supposed to have fixed its command of control problems after the war in Georgia

in 2008. where there were a lot of issues with like blue-on-blue incidents and they were supposed to have fixed and it doesn't seem to have been fixed at all. But Russia's still like, Ukraine can contest its airspace. Russia, I wouldn't say have air superiority, but certainly has like a better,

I'd rather be a Russian pilot than a Ukrainian pilot right now. I would rather be neither right now, but I would, if given the choice, but yeah, people are saying, oh, like Ukraine should march on. And once you start getting in, to like mobile warfare with like tank columns. Like while Russia is bottled up on roadways,

I think that takes away Ukraine's advantage, which is fighting in, you know, hardens positions in cities and places that knows really well. And because Russia is all buttoned up, like letting special forces run around and kind of behind the front and causing havoc, that's working perfectly well.

And it's not an enviable place for Russia. Every, you know, every day they fail to make progress. progress is another day for Kiev to dig in more, to plan their defenses street by street, to move. It's funny because you read on Twitter, it's frustrating. I don't know if it's funny. On Twitter you read these arguments that just are like completely agnostic to logistics, where

it's like, oh, the West can intervene easily. All you have to do is secure these air bases and then put Western fighters there. And it's like, you can't just do that. So the case I'm making here, though, is that. moving these like anti-tank weapons and stingers to Ukraine. Right. It's the size of Texas. We're dropping them off at the western border.

It takes time to move them to where they need to go. So the longer it takes for Russians to achieve their objectives, the more ready defenders will be. The more fallback lines they'll have. The more stingers they'll have. Right. So it gets harder. Yeah. And you mentioned like the, uh, the Ukrainian special operations or special forces soldier

who mentioned the 60 casualties, but, but that's nothing. to the material and supply damage that they could be doing, like 60 soldiers, you know, not to be callous about it, but 60 soldiers in the view of the war is nothing. But there's very real supply issues when it comes to that, when somebody can reach in your back lines or your supply lines and strike them with. We're seeing, I mean, Russian tanks are running out of gas and they're being abandoned. and Ukraine's got their hands on some really, really, like, advanced Russian equipment. I am sure somebody in a certain three-letter agency around here in D.C.

is going to try to get their hands on some of this equipment because these, like, advanced Russian, you know, points defense systems, the Tor, short-range anti-aircraft system. I've been reading threads and articles about how Ukraine, with the right technical know-how, can, like, hack Russia's identify friend's network for the entire. entire kind of theater of operations. Yeah. But as far as I think there's a lot of observers in the West, honestly, myself included, a lot of Ukrainians who would like salivate over like a doolid to like send one Ukrainian mid-29 to like drop a bomb right in the middle of Red Square, not even hurt anyone, but just to like demonstrate we can hit back.

And I think, I think Ukraine understands the limitations of its forces as well. And there has been talk of casual attacks. Supposedly, there was a Kajur attack in the East against our pushing out from Kharkov today. We haven't heard or seen evidence of whether this happened or how that's done. But I think Ukraine's kind of command structure understands its advantages and disadvantages. And pushing into Russia, I think preserving manpower material is the priority here, holding out as long as possible. Because, like, Ukraine has to not lose. Russia has to win.

And that's the favor is Ukraine. So losing hundreds of tanks because you want it to go on the attack, I don't think is a good tactic. I also think that it comes with managing, like managing public opinion, right? Like, you don't want to give the Russians a reason to want to go to war. If you roll through a Russian town and bomb the shit out of it, all of a sudden, it does become a national issue for Russia. Yeah. What are going to be the political costs if they do roll into Kiev with artillery, and maybe the Air Force shows up finally.

And they try to do a Syria reenactment and make that city look like Homs or Aleppo. As you said, Kiev is like the spiritual birthplace of Russian civilization. I mean, can they do that to Kiev? Is it even politically feasible? They're already doing it in other cities, I think maybe as a warning to Kiev. I guess the question is like politically feasible for who? I think Putin has the will. I think Putin has now,

Russia's locked down any, like, coverage of the war effort. I don't think Russians would be happy to see that kind of footage. There's something really powerful psychologically. These are not, these are not, like, foreigners to Russians who are look different. I mean, look, race plays, like, a big role. Like, the fact that the West is so up in arms about this.

Like, part of that, and it'd be remiss not to note, like, Ukrainians are white. That is just the fact of the matter. Ukraine or the West wasn't up in arms about Syria, is up in arms about, same things are happening. But, yeah, having a victim that looks like you seems to make people take a different, different approach.

But it's going to certainly politically among the West, I mean, I'm sure we'll inflame people. And it's not going to make Ukrainians stop fighting. And I think that's the problem that's the problem that Russia has is just underestimated, A, has driven people to be more nationalist or patriotic in Ukraine, but also just everyone, Russians and the Westerners are just completely underestimated. So credit to the men and women of Ukraine who are, I mean, the tenacity with which they're holding out is is beyond heroic. I mean, it's, they really have their backs of the wall and they're doing better than,

the war has already gotten on like, what, three times as long as it was anticipated to have. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Ian Hutchinson, thank you very much. I find a little funny that even in Russia, the conversation has degraded to everyone calling each other Nazis. Jake, well, thank you for both those donations. I don't know if you had a question along with that,

but, and I think, oh, and in Aaron's opinion on this, please, the Russians have a huge morale problem because their conscripts do not wish to be invaders, a Doolittle raid makes them defenders in their own minds. Yeah, we just kind of talk. Yeah, yeah, absolutely. Yeah, yeah. Speaking of the word donation, if I could plug some humanitarian causes,

because this is as good time as any, just because it's not just strategy on paper. This is, you know, the humanitarian crisis. So if you're looking to help out two places you can go, believe it or not, Ukraine, if you look up a central bank of Ukraine, is taking donations to use for a bunch of ends. but for more humanitarian aims,

there's the Razum Center for Ukraine, R-A-Z-O-M, so Razum for Ukraine. If you look that up, you'll be able to donate there. I'll post it in the chat. Yeah, if you want to help some folks out. They really, they really, really need it. Yeah, this is, it has been horrifying. And, you know, like I know,

know somebody who has friends in Ukraine. And so, you know, of course, we have a Ukrainian in America. and community here in New York City. So, yeah, it's close to home for a lot of people. Yeah. That covers all the viewer questions. Yeah, that got the viewer questions.

Okay, cool. There's one more that just came in. Oh, what was it? From Ian Hutchinson. Oh, we just raised this. Oh, sorry, by bad. No, it's okay. Okay, so how would you gauge or assess the American response?

I mean, I think we talked a little bit about it and about the West. And we were talking a little bit here today. From my point of view, it seems like America is for the first time kind of fighting back in a consistent, cohesive way that we're waging political warfare using a whole of government approach that includes information warfare, economic warfare, overt military aid and covert action programs in some instances. I was having a conversation with someone yesterday when he was telling me that in order to wage political warfare, it takes a president acting as conductor, but we're also fortunate that we have a DCI and a DNI right now that seem to be very much on the same sheet of music. Yeah. I think that certainly from Washington has been managed well.

I think the real sea change, though, is, and I think the kind of the change that's going to have the biggest political implications going forward is not in the United States at all. It's Europe. Seeing a consensus emerge very rapidly that European leaders, A, as far as military spending is going, but also even like their statements saying that like our partnership with Russia can't be centered around trade anymore. Like, trade is good, business partnerships range, and I think we'll continue to play a key role. Interesting, you have the chancellor of Germany, Olaf Schultz. Part of, he's responding to political pressures domestically, but part of what he reportedly said is that he felt that in the negotiations and the run up to the war, that Putin personally lied to his face. And look, there's domestic politics. There's a lot of factors in international relations, but personal relationships,

really matter. I mean, look at Clinton and Yeltsin. There's a million and one examples. And the fact that Putin has torpedoed his relationship with the German chancellor is one. You've still seen Macron in Germany, or sorry, in France, trying to keep lines open to kind of maintain the image of Europe's diplomat and, you know, key leader in that capacity. But yeah, the fact that Europe has taken a hard line has more ability to hurt Russia economically than anything America could do just because of geography, proximity. Yeah. What do you think countries, you know, like Kyrgyzstan, Uzbekistan, you know, these former

Soviet countries, how do you think they're sort of view in this whole thing right now? With, they're not happy about it. And there's nothing they can do. They're very dependent on Russia economically and kind of tethered to, I mean, the sinking ship may be too dramatic, but tethered to a country that is going to have a ton of hardship They were very shortly. Their currencies are related to how the ruble does because of the economic, you know, binds between them. You know, a country like Kazakhstan, Turkmenistan, they have a little bit of leeway because they can produce, you know, oil, natural gas.

That will help a little bit. So they need to pretend to, like, be friendly with, pretend to be friendly with Russia to go along. Armenia, I saw it may or may not be true that they actually had sent. some soldiers to Ukraine. I don't think there's any bad blood between Armenia and Ukraine, but Armenia is wholly dependent on Russia as a security protector. They don't have a choice. I don't blame them for what they're doing in their position. Maybe some of the Central Asian countries will start to look more towards China as a more reliable partner. That's a little more judicious about how it uses force, playing a long game, not trying to kick off interstate wars on a large

level and get you know get them into trouble because of it but yeah they're going to they're going to have a hard time too no you know sorry please i was just going to oh go ahead please sorry sorry sorry there's like a lot of central asian migrants in in russia who some of whom have russian passports and the kind of advice is being you need to leave the country now you get drafted wow so aside from the economic issues do you think that they worry about sovereignty issues in the sense that they worry about sovereignty issues in the that Putin is maybe doing this as building a new, you know, a new, not a new Soviet Union, but a new empire.

I think, I don't think that's like on the cards yet, but I think especially in Kazakhstan, which is kind of northern territories has a fairly large ethnic Russian population. You saw an article in like the Russian news about how like there's issues in Kazakhstan too with the Russian minority, how, you know, they made better rights, something along that line.

I think that's the particular worry for Kazakhstan. And I think it just opens a can of worms in a way that, like, you, or Pandora's box may be a better metaphor, like you can't close that. And the similar way that, again, not making this about value judgments on U.S. politics, but like when Trump floated the possibility that U.S. might not play a key role in NATO, even though, you know, he was voted out, like that, that possibility, you can't close that box. Europe heard that, and that is now something that could happen. And now Kazakhstan, you know, Russia has invaded a neighbor, a large country with an ethnic Russian population with the intent of potentially conquering and annexing large chunks of it.

And that's that's never going to go away. That is now something that is like believable and possible. that's fascinating. Let's see here. Hassan said we missed his previous question. I didn't see it. Did you guys see it? No.

Yeah, we'll find that. We'll find that son. Zach, thank you. If Putin needs to create a diversion elsewhere in the region to pull our eye away from the U.K.R, what are the most likely places he'd go? Bosnia and Herzegovina. with the Serbs. I think he has an ally and the leader of,

it's like a binational republic. I'm not a Balkan specialist, but there's a leader there, Dodec, who has tried to basically break up the federation and turn the Serbian half of the country. I don't know if it's half and half. Don't quote me on that, into its own state.

And he's been making moves that way. And if I were Putin and looking to cause trouble, distract Europe in the Balkans, particularly, would be where I would do it. Great. And hold on. Sorry. Thank you, British Guy, 101. Do you think that Western governments will be willing to recognize arm and support a Ukrainian government in exile?

Interesting question. And I would just like lead that off because I don't point out that But from a legal standpoint, we are now arming and supporting the lawful, legitimate elected government of Ukraine. If that government collapses, now we're moving from one thing to another. And really we'd be moving into Title 50 covert action entirely. There'd have to be like a presidential finding and all sorts of stuff to then sponsor an insurgency. But what do you think, Aaron? So, I mean, you can look at that from like the broad perspective, like the Hall of NATO,

but it doesn't even have to be the Hall of NATO. Let me tell you, if I could think of a group of people who would want to stick it to the Russians, even without France and the U.S. going along, Poland is right there on the border. They've got a lot of bad blood, and I think would be fairly overt about it. I don't think they'd even need to do it. I mean, covertly to sneak across the border, depending on who's controlling what. I think the future, like, what does Russia want to keep? What is Russia going to do with Ukraine if it takes all of it?

It's an open question. But I think Poland would fairly openly have no qualms about sponsoring government in exile, funding an insurgency whatsoever. And I think, I mean, part of the issue now that Putin has is that, yeah, people were operating, oh, my God, Russia's military is going to come for us. Now we're seeing the full effect of that after a year of planning not being very effective. And I think that's lost Russia credibility to like scare states in this neighborhood about, about you know the consequences of funding and insurgency.

Even if Russia wins, they kind of lose in this because they're going to be saddled trying to govern and run a country that absolutely hates them. Right. Yeah. And that a country they will have blown large chunks, large chunks have blown into pieces. Right. I actually missed quite a few questions. Thank you, Leon.

What about the accountability for weapons that are being sent to UKR, like, and law stingers, etc.? Seems like these could disappear pop-up in other places. Possibly. I think there's less of a risk for now, just because there is still like a command structure with Ukraine. It certainly is a possibility. I don't want to discount that. But I don't view that as like a particularly concerning risk for now.

And like people that are saying, oh, foreign fighters are coming to Ukraine, but these are not like Afghan Mujahideen here. Right. They're not going to like a guerrilla or insurgents, a guerrilla force or an insurgency. They're going to a formalized military. You do have Chechens against the leadership of Chechnya, with a very hard insurgency history turning up in Ukraine to fight against other Chechens who do support. That works, guys. Yeah.

Yeah. So they're there. But yeah, I don't like it's possible. I just don't think of that as like a particularly proximate risk. In Technic, thank you. Jack, what happened to that bet that Putin wasn't evaded? Did it go double or nothing? What double? I owe my friend a pretty expensive bottle of scotch. Pablo, thank you very much. Where do you find the war footage? Everything I've seen like Ghost of Kiev is fake. It seems the war with less footage than. Vietnam. Yeah, that's a great question. I'm just looking at my phone for a second. There's an account. I have to maybe have to find it later. But on Twitter, if you're looking for news, there's a lot of war footage that is not just like rumors that you actually can see what is happening. The one thing is that, and I will make this caveat that we're not seeing like war footage from

the Russian side and then like the videos of drone raids that we saw in Syria, I think, because Russia was hoping to like be soft at first and not turn too many Ukrainians against them. But yeah, we haven't seen that like propaganda effort. But yes, all over Twitter, Reddit slash combat footage. If you're looking, they have stuff there. So yeah, it's around. And it's not just rumors. It is the real thing. I wrote an article this week. I can bring up the title for you, but I think it's just inside America's javelin program to arm the Ukrainian military. And I spoke to someone who was involved in that program from an office in the U.S. government. But anyway, kind of got an inside story on that.

And, yeah, the javelin systems are over there. They're being used. And then when I posted the article, because I had some estimates that a source gave me of their performance. 90%, right? Combat. that. Yeah, the estimate was about 280 hits out of 300 fired, which in the De Beka passed in 2003, I'm sorry, third special forces group fired 19 of these systems for 17 hits. So like the statistics aren't out of whack. I mean, it's a very effective system.

But then, of course, people get into the comments. The open source intelligence people debating amongst one another, like, oh, if, and I went through this with Syria, too, there are people out there who believe if you don't have a video of a rebel shooting a tow missile, then it didn't happen. And I think there's a role for open source intelligence, absolutely, and I don't discredit that off the cuff. But as you point out, we're not seeing all of the footage, right? We're not, there's a lot of things happening on the Russian side that we're not seeing. There's a lot of things happening behind enemy lines we're not seeing. And it is possible that on social media, we create our own little echo chambers. And a lot of the cheering on we've done of the

Ukrainians and their heroic fight while that's warranted, we may be looking through, you know, rose-colored glasses there too. A little bit, but it is also, I mean, interesting to see all these, you know, those frustrating, these military comparisons. What if, like, one missile was fired at one tank? Like, how would the war go? And it's like, that's not how wars are fought. But, like, we are seeing that Western, you know, anti-tank systems, like, can be. do the job against most of the tools that the Russian military has. And I think there's people in Moscow were probably concerned to be seeing that. It's not just like a hypothetical matchup anymore.

And again, with all of the Russian hardware being, not even like taking out and hostile action, just like left on the field. Again, I'm sure there are people done here in my neck of the wood salivating to get their hands on some of this armor, some of this tech. Aaron, you mentioned Twitter. Where can people find you on Twitter? because I know you've been falling the war quite a bit. Yeah, and tweeting about it incessantly.

I need to get off. I need to take some time off after all this. But it's Aaron underscore S-C-H-W-A. So just the first few letters of my last name. And that's where you can find me. Aaron S-C-H-W-A. So Aaron underscore S-C-H-WA. Okay, great.

That's me. Hassan, I found your question. Thank you. Inevalidity, the so-called bio-lial. labs producing bioweapons and giving Putin more another reason to evade or just more internet propaganda? More internet propaganda. Okay.

We got Ian's. All right. Yeah. If we got most of the questions, I think our Patreon users had some questions, but we do that for the bonus segment. Yeah. For, yeah, for Paul, thank you. Does it seem like Sweden and Finland will join NATO?

If so, how is Putin likely to react? He's not going to be happy. There were some meetings today with Biden. I want to say it was the Finnish president was in town, and they talked about security guarantees between, like, the U.S. and NATO and Sweden and Finland. I get to sense, first of all, this change in public opinion is new. I think they probably want to have like a referendum on it or some more formal public indication that the public wants it to make it look legitimate. I suspect I have no reason to believe this, that Biden,

told, made it clear that like they're considered. And I think as far as you're like European defense architecture and NATO defense architecture, they're pretty closely tied in. They're coming to the NATO meetings now as observers, but they're there. I suspect Biden told them like, we don't want to antagonize Russia more than we need to right now because we can just give them a huge bloody nose in Ukraine. But maybe to hold off for a while while we will extend the security kind of guarantee like you're basically part of the alliance it's just we're not going to make too much noise about that i suspect i don't have any evidence to to suggest it but my hunch and let me see um i don't know if anything else is coming in um yeah a lot of a lot of people very interesting

this stuff um so we got that uh michael thank you very much for the donation he says hey everyone happy to be here and crack into beer with the team house Thanks, Michael. All right. So, Aaron, any final thoughts before we wrap up here? If it's cool, I'll ask you to stay for like 15 minutes for the bonus segment. Yeah, of course. Thank you, man.

I really appreciate all of your insight here that we're able to have sort of an adult conversation in a longer format about this conflict, which is, it's really important to have those conversations right now. And, you know, you lending your expertise is super helpful. Yeah, happy to be here. And again, Ukraine Central Bank, if you're looking to help out. Again, let's not lose sight of the humanitarian implications here. We can help out and make a difference.

We're going to throw all the links into the screen. Yeah, we'll put the links down in the description. Yeah. And I did put some link in the chat. There's one last question from Pablo. I don't know if this is in your wheelhouse. What do you think of Biden buying oil from Iran? instead of U.S. going energy independent?

So, yes, I think there's the kind of two factors here. So, like, the oil market is global. So it's really just that you get the prices for different kinds of blends. You have your, like, West Texas intermediary, Brent, Urals as Russia's blend. So if Iranian oil comes back onto the market, if there's a deal in Vienna in like the next, I believe, week, that will bring down global prices, which I think will be good for a lot of countries.

I think this does have implications for, well, some implications for the U.S. We were not importing a ton of Russian oil to begin with. And I think the march towards energy independence is going to continue regardless. I think it's good politics now for Biden. Joe Manchin wants to do it, and Biden is inclined to make Joe Manchin happy. it's for Europe where that's going to really, really matter. And the fact that Europe is realized, okay, like the fact we depend on Russian energy for hydrocarbons, oil and gas, that's a huge political liability.

And we need to turn that dependence off as fast as we can. So that's where I'd be really keen to see. I know Europe's going to be releasing a strategy about how they're going to wean themselves from Russian energy. But that's the big implication here. Do you feel as though there are, are pitfalls with, you know, not necessarily depending on for anybody, but for utilizing Iranian energy, or do you think that it's kind of, it can be a carrot for Iran in order to

sort of maybe bring them more into the world stage and normalize relationships with it. So caveat that I am not an Iran specialist. Sure. I would probably not call myself a hardliner on Iran, particularly. I don't have any love towards the government's there, but I just don't view it as, you know, and as threatening a capacity. I think, well, this is just completely my political opinion.

This is, you know, not academic here, but I think the U.S., and I think, interestingly, okay, keep talking about this, there's so many more topics that can emerge here. Some of the Gulf states, you know, Saudi UAE have been like a little more conciliatory towards Russia through all of this. I think because they view the U.S. is playing less of a role in the Middle East, I don't think that's a bad policy for us to be doing.

But, yeah, I don't take a ton of issue with allowing more Iranian oil back on the market. I think the pressure that's going to be against sanctions in the West is because energy prices are going to rise, and people are going to be unhappy so if we can keep energy prices down and pressure on Russia up, that's kind of the ideal politics from a Western standpoint. Dave, could you pass me that book laying down there? For next episode, we're going to have journalist Matthew Cole here talking about his book Code Over Country that just came out about Seal Team 6. I've been going through here making copious notes, and there is a lot of very spicy content in this book. Next episode is going to be interesting.

It'll be spicy. Yeah. So check out, Aaron. Check out the charities he mentioned. We're going to put the links down. the description. There's also a link down there to our Patreon page. If you guys want to support the show, we really appreciate that. And that's it. I hope everyone has a good Friday. Check out 10,000 clothing and the Ridge Wallet. And Aaron, again, thank you so much for taking some time

out of your Friday night to talk to us tonight. Absolutely. And for those of you who are members of our Patreon, you get to hear some of Aaron's crazy stories in Russia or maybe something else. I don't know. But anyway, yeah, hey, We want to thank you all, A, for watching, B for liking and subscribing. Please do that if you haven't. Hit that little bell for notifications. And especially for our Patreon supporters, you guys keep the lights on and keep us in the booze. So we definitely appreciate you guys.

But we love you all.