A Canadian Officer Resigns to Join Belarusians Fighting for Ukraine, Part 3

Join us for a firsthand account of life on and near the battlelines in Eastern Ukraine by Dave Smith, a former Canadian infantry officer who resigned to fight for Ukraine. This is the third episode in our multi-part series where Dave explores the evolving tactics and motivations that define the conflict. He offers listeners a deep dive into the experiences of soldiers and citizens that’s brimming with insights into how the geopolitical climate —including the election of former American President Donald Trump and the arrival of North Korean troops in Russia’s Kursk region — shape Ukrainian optimism despite the war weariness.

J. Alex Tarquinio (https://x.com/alextarquinio) and Frank Radford, our hosts in The
Delegates Lounge, (https://x.com/delegateslounge) had three conversations with Dave Smith. The hosts spoke from New York, while Dave spoke from Ukraine via web conference in July and October, and from London in November.

References
In a background briefing by the U.S. Department of Defense in October, the Pentagon estimated that Russia had sustained at least 600,000 casualties, including killed and wounded, since launching its full-scale invasion of Ukraine in February 2022. Some estimates range much higher.
https://www.defense.gov/News/Transcripts/Transcript/Article/3932364/a-senior-
defense-and-military-official-host-a-background-briefing-on-russias-wa/

The Pentagon estimated in November that 11,000 North Korean troops had moved into Russia’s Kursk region.
https://www.defense.gov/News/News-Stories/Article/Article/3968230/north-korean-troops-enter-kursk-where-ukrainians-are-fighting/

Radio Free Europe published an article last year citing some Russian contract soldiers and their families claiming that the state hadn’t honored payments or pardons promised in their contracts. A Reuters photo in the article was reminiscent of the Squid Games drama.
https://www.rferl.org/a/russia-systema-investigation-contract-soldiers-pay-pardons-promises-broken/32676712.html

We shared some of our guest’s bylines with listeners in the show notes for the first
episode in this mini-series. Here is his latest essay about his life in Kharkiv for the online magazine Merion West.
https://merionwest.com/2024/11/27/at-home-in-the-war/

Credits:

Music: Adobe Stock

Photo: Dave Smith

Episode Transcript

J. Alex Tarquinio (00:08):
Welcome to the Delegates Lounge.
Pull up a chair.
I'm Alex Tarquinio, ajournalist based at the United
Nations here in New York Cityand your emcee for this podcast
featuring some of the mostinfluential minds in the world
today.
Settle in for some rivetingtete-a-tete, available wherever
you listen to podcasts.
Welcome back.

(00:41):
Today we're bringing you thefinal episode in our mini-series
with the Canadian volunteer onthe Ukrainian battle lines.
As returning listeners willknow, dave Smith walked away
from his career as a major withthe Canadian Armed Forces to
become a volunteer fighter withthe Belarusian units supporting
Ukraine, known as the KalinowskiRegiment.
If you're just joining us, weinterviewed Dave in July as he

(01:02):
was rotating back into battlewith the regiment for the fourth
time, and again at the end ofOctober as he was preparing to
return home from Ukraine.
Part one in this miniseriesintroduced listeners to Dave's
story and motivations forleaving a secure military career
.
Part two featured Dave'simpressions from the battlefield
, focusing on the human aspectsof warfare, such as fighting

(01:24):
conscripts, capturing prisonersof war and receiving medical
care for a shrapnel wound.
Geopolitical events are movingat such a rapid clip that
shortly after we spoke inOctober, the Pentagon estimated
that about 11,000 North Koreantroops had moved into Russia's
Kursk region.
We spoke with Dave about thissignificant development a few

(01:44):
days after the election offormer American President Donald
Trump.
It should be noted that ourthird conversation happened well
before the lightning-fastdownfall of Bashar al-Assad in
Syria, a geostrategic shift ofsuch importance that it might be
viewed in the future as aturning point in multiple
conflicts, with Russia losing abastion of support in the region

(02:06):
.
During our first twoconversations, dave spoke with
us from Kharkiv in easternUkraine.
In November, he spoke fromLondon, where he was en route
back home to Canada.
This third and final episode isa compilation of Dave's musings
on geopolitics and the militarylessons he's learned the hard
way in the unforgiving school ofwar.

(02:27):
Frank, what did you find mostcompelling in Dave's take on the
new tech and tactics that areevolving on the front lines of
Russia's war in eastern Ukraine?

Frank Radford (02:38):
As Dave mentions, he and his fellow Belarusians
encountered Russian meat waves,which describes the daily,
persistent and often haplessRussian infantry assaults
against Ukrainian defences.
It is the key component ofRussia's modus operandi.
The meat is recruitedthroughout Russia by the coaxing
or coercion of civilians intosigning military contracts with

(03:01):
the promise not always kept ofbig payouts should they be
wounded or, even morelucratively, killed.
Once inducted, these rawrecruits receive barely minimal
training and are rushed to thefront to fill the ranks of the
lead assault elements.
These waves are normallytactically small in scale, but
when executed across a widefront, they can at points

(03:22):
dislodge or even, on occasion,overwhelm Ukraine's defences.
Fortunately not Dave and hisBelarusian comrades.
As Dave points out, it is amethodology based on the
acceptance of attrition as aviable military doctrine.
Each meat wave is a targetedand desperate sprint to make it
to the other side of no-man'sland.
They resemble a cross betweenthe South Korean drama series

(03:43):
the Squid Game and Hitchcock'sthe Birds.
The Korean idea is not lost onRussian recruiters who seem so
inspired they copy it.
See the show notes.
Once the meat wave is orderedforward, there's no escape Play
dead and the drones the birds,as Russian soldiers call them
will find you and make sure youare.
Survival depends on innateDarwinian instinct rather than a

(04:05):
regimen of expensive NATO-styletraining.
Casualty rates are high butnonetheless, if the attack is
successful and at the momentmany of them are it is relative
to a NATO army doing the samething cost-effective.
A Russian recruiter for thispurpose may cost $50,000 or
$60,000 if killed, whereas atrained-up NATO soldier employed

(04:26):
the same way perhaps one day bynecessity, as Dave warns would
cost her anywhere from half to afull million dollars.
Ironically, the North Koreansmay be the next contestants in
this real-world squid game.
Only expect the payouts to godirectly to Kim Jong-un.
Expect the pass to go directlyto Kim Jong-un.

(04:48):
Cynically, as Dave points out,putin has so far conducted an
attritional war without theircasualty rates, triggering a
call for a potentiallyregime-toppling general
mobilization.
This crypto-mobilization,although expensive, is hidden
from and demands no sacrifice ofblood by the Russian majority,
only their treasure.
It impacts the undesirables,the marginalized, the desperate,

(05:10):
in other words, the voicelessin Russia, and is therefore no
great loss to their influentialfellow citizens.
Dave describes the repressionused to keep Alexander
Lukashenko's grip on power inBelarus.
The repression used to keepAlexander Lukashenko's grip on
power in Belarus, which hiscomrades feel intensely.
Even before Russia's full-scaleinvasion of Ukraine, many of

(05:31):
Dave's comrades were alreadyopponents of Lukashenko, who
they believed had lost the 2020presidential election in Belarus
to Svetlana Tukuniskaya.

J. Alex Tarquinio (05:39):
Incidentally, we interviewed Svetlana at
NATO's Washington Summit andlisteners can find that episode
in our playlist.
During this episode you'll hearDave refer to the KGB when
talking about Belarus.
As I'm sure our listeners areaware, after the collapse of the
Soviet Union, the RussianFederation renamed its National
Intelligence Agency and theacronym changed from KGB to FSB.

(06:01):
But Belarus kept the old,unreformed name of its
intelligence agency.
So it's still called the KGB toFSB.
But Belarus kept the old,unreformed name of its
intelligence agency, so it'sstill called the KGB.

Frank Radford (06:07):
One last thing that needs to be pointed out,
and that is there's a commonmilitary acronym that Dave uses
throughout the interview, andthat is TTP, which stands for
Tactics, techniques andProcedures.
These are guidelines that areconstantly under development,
that are followed by NATOsoldiers so that they can
accomplish their missions.

J. Alex Tarquinio (06:26):
Dave spoke eloquently about the incongruity
of his daily life in Kharkiv, afrontline city that he
described in the previousepisode as the last stop before
Mordor.
In recent months, he's dividedhis time between the frontlines
and a rented apartment that heshared with a comrade from his
regiment that was only 34kilometers, or around 20 miles,

(06:48):
from their position on theZero.
Line.
We'll include a link to Dave'smost recent article in the
online magazine Marian Westdescribing the rhythm of life in
Kharkiv.
In the show notes for thisepisode, we started our third
conversation by asking Daveabout the lessons he had learned
fighting in Ukraine.
He focused on the big picturefirst, so that's where we'll

(07:08):
begin.

Dave Smith (07:17):
I would just like to thank you guys once again for
inviting me back, and I can'ttell you how happy it makes me
to talk to you again.
I know for a fact that my momand my wife both listened to
your podcast because they bothmessaged me to point out how
Alex was on their side regardingthe seriousness of my fake
shrapnel injury.
So I can tell you that there'sat least two listeners that you

(07:40):
gained from the last podcast.
The first thing I would say andit's not really Ukraine
specific is this is just thecontext that I'm coming from for
the rest of our discussion.
It's a Ukrainian phrase and itgoes.
It means I am just a soldier,and it's what you say when
someone asks you a question.
You don't know the answer to myexperience in Ukraine.

(08:00):
It gives me some perspective onwhat's going on
geostrategically, but thatperspective is extremely limited
.
So here's a very simple way tothink about strategy.
You wake up in the morning, youlook out the window, you look
at the world and you askyourself two important questions
.
The first thing you ask is whatdo I want this world to look
like?

(08:21):
How do I want it to change orhow do I want it to stay the
same and how you answer thatline of questioning is your
strategic end state.
It's your objective, it's yourNorth Star, it guides all your
decisions.
The second question you have toask yourself is how am I going
to bring that new world about?

(08:41):
What do I need to change andhow am I going to cause that
change to happen so that Iachieve my strategic end state?
You'll hear this called thetheory of change or the theory
of victory the free world.
Right now we have no strategy.
We know generally what we wantOur leaders, our presidents, our
prime ministers.
They recite platitudes aboutfree and fair elections or the
rules-based international order,territorial integrity and a

(09:03):
bunch of other jargon that noone understands or even cares
about.
I can tell you from firsthandexperience no soldier ever ran
out on the battlefield and diedfor the rules-based
international order.
It means nothing.
But we've never articulatedwhat we want to change or stay
the same to make the world morefree.
Then, on the flip side,dictators.

(09:24):
They're looking out the windowand they know their strategic
objective.
It's destroy the free world andthey're quickly figuring out
how to make that happen.
And I would say what's happenedfrom the time that I left
Canada to when I'm coming homenow is a year and a half ago.
I actually thought we had achance to stop them, and now I'm
just convinced we don't like.
They're winning.
It's like 1938, except thatwe're facing half a dozen

(09:47):
Hitlers and all the Hitlers areworking together, and the rest
of the world is run byChamberlains and we're
pretending there is no war goingon.
And this is what I mean when Isay the free world is being
strategically defeated by theunfree world, and we all see the
same world, and that world isbecoming more the way they want
it and less the way free peoplewant it to be.
So that understanding ofstrategy is the context for all

(10:11):
my answers to your questions.

J. Alex Tarquinio (10:13):
Maybe you can start by telling us about your
journey from Kharkiv and all themachinations you had to do to
get safely out of Ukraine.

Dave Smith (10:21):
So my journey from Kharkiv to here was about two
weeks long.
I left Kharkiv it was the daybefore the US election, it was
November 4th, so I went back toKiev on November 4th.
It was sad, to be honest,leaving my apartment in Kharkiv.
I lived there for about fourmonths with my Belarusian

(10:43):
comrades.
The hardest thing to explainit's just what it's like living
in a place that's at war,because people have asked me
questions like what do you eat?
They just assume we're in a warzone all the time.
They don't really realize we'reactually in a functioning
country.
And where I lived in Kharkiv, Ihad a points card to my
favorite grocery store.

(11:03):
I had a gym membership.
There was a post office I wentto regularly enough that they
knew my name and they knew myaddress.
So living there was really oneof the unique experiences of
being in the conflict, theoccasional missile strikes.

J. Alex Tarquinio (11:23):
You arrived in Kharkiv not long after
Ukraine's successfulcounteroffensive in late 2022.
How have you seen Kharkivchange over the last two years?

Dave Smith (11:32):
So, first of all, the people that are there.
You could evacuate the city.
Russia could come back likethey're never going to leave and
even when the city was going tobe evacuated last spring, very
little of the remainingpopulation left.
And I will say the city isscarred, like it is wrecked.
There are bombed out buildings.
It's a hipster paradise Likethere are cafes and tattoo

(11:55):
parlors everywhere.
When I walked right outside myapartment, there was like a
skate shop that sold likeAmerican skater apparel and that
never closed.
You walk two blocks away andthere's a building that's
literally just, it's a shell ofa building because it's been
bombed so many times.
So it's normal in that.
You know the.
You know the, that meme fromWorld War II the Brits had keep

(12:17):
calm and carry on.
That kind of encapsulates theattitude in Kharkiv.
But it wouldn't be keep calmand carry on.
It would be keep calm, killinvaders.
Do you need a hipster coffeewhile you're waiting?

J. Alex Tarquinio (12:29):
Have you spent much time in Kyiv and have
you noticed any changes there?

Dave Smith (12:33):
Things have definitely changed in Kyiv.
I made a conscious effort totalk to as many Ukrainians as I
could, and Belarusians as well,about the US election, trump
winning and everything, and Idefinitely get the impression in
Kiev the civilians are justworn out, they're tired.
Everybody's actually quitereluctantly happy that Trump won

(12:56):
, because whatever happens mightbe cuckoo banana pants insane,
but at least something's goingto happen.
You know what I mean, and it'sthe indecisive nature of what's
been going on, especially sincethe counteroffensive started
last year.
That's really what's grindingpeople down, is the
indecisiveness of it.

J. Alex Tarquinio (13:15):
Well, we're speaking after the presidential
election in the United Statesand, for listeners, we're
recording this on the day thatBiden and Trump are meeting.
So Biden is a lame duck.
Is there anything you wouldhope for before he leaves office
in January?

Dave Smith (13:30):
One would hope a Biden administration or an EU
would have a strategy to affectthe kind of change that I was
talking about earlier.
When I look out the window, Iwant the world to be more free
and I say, how could we achievethat?
Well, we definitely got to getall the Russians out of Ukraine
for starters.
Well, how do we go about makingthat change happen?
Okay, let's develop a theory ofchange and then work towards it

(13:51):
.
Right, the West has had two anda half three years almost, and
they haven't done it Like theyhad no one.
No one has had thatconversation.
They've done lots of virtue,signally support for Ukraine,
but nobody's had an actualstrategy.
Now Trump's going to show up andhe's very good at bending the
world to his will and making ithow he wants.
I don't think he's like amaster military strategist or

(14:14):
anything.
To quote the great strategistTony Soprano, a bad decision is
better than indecision, andright now the free world is run
by indecisive leaders andtherefore can't have pursuable
strategies.
Donald Trump's lots of things,but he's not indecisive.
He's going to show up in hisfirst week, get briefed and be
like here's what I want tohappen, and he's going to make

(14:35):
it happen and you know the restof us are just going to have to
deal with it.

J. Alex Tarquinio (14:41):
Are you worried about whether Trump will
enforce NATO's Article 5 in theevent that any NATO allies were
attacked?
I mean, there's the campaignquote by Trump saying that if
countries didn't pay up,whatever that means, then he
would encourage Russia to doquote whatever the hell they
want.

Dave Smith (15:00):
That statement by Donald Trump.
I've thought about it a lotsince it happened because on the
surface of it it's so easy toagree with him.
I actually would say I do agreewith him.
It's like if you join a gym andyou don't pay the dues to the
gym, they tell you you're notallowed in the gym.
I think what was so shockingabout him saying it is and it's

(15:20):
kind of obvious from his firstterm the guy is just opposed to
alliances.
And it's kind of obvious fromhis first term.
The guy is just opposed toalliances.
Everyone watching could tellhe's just out to destroy this
alliance relationship.
He's not trying to effectivelymanage the alliance, he's trying
to tear it down.
I think that's where the realfear of him not supporting
Article 5 comes from.
Is that you can kind of sensethis attitude coming off of him

(15:44):
right, because the secret oftheir power is alliance
management, and it has been for80 years or longer.
The Russians had like an avowedpolicy, like the goal was to
keep Turkey and Hungary and allthese NATO countries
destabilized in the NATOalliance, so that an Article 5
reaction couldn't be triggered,at least since 2014, but since
long before then as well.

(16:04):
Well, now it's like the onlyguarantor of the European
security umbrella seems kind ofquestioning the mandatory nature
of an Article 5 trigger.
So it's like they've basicallyachieved what they want.
At least the seat of doubt isthere.

Frank Radford (16:20):
Once NATO becomes a paper tiger, then how can you
possibly draw up a strategythat is even plausible?
I mean, once he undermines thedeterrence effect of having a
NATO, then it percolates down tothe even, to the tactical level
.

Dave Smith (16:39):
Just to be clear.
I think the world order thatwe've already moved into is
scary and frightening.
But it's not scary andfrightening because I don't
think Donald Trump will honor anArticle 5 trigger.
It's that he probably is goingto end wars.
There probably is going to be aceasefire in Ukraine within the
next three to 12 months orwhatever, because of Donald

(17:00):
Trump, of Donald Trump, andmaybe he'll have some sort of
impact on the Middle East.
But if those wars end and theyend because of deals that he
brokered they're not going toend because of the rule of law,
because of some sort of liberal,democratic understanding of
justice that we've all agreed to.
You know what I mean.
If you attack one of ourfriends, we're all going to come

(17:23):
to their aid.
There's going to be a worldorder based on fear, because
Donald Trump is going to saylike I will guarantee the world
order, but it'll be the worldorder that I and America want it
to be and it will be imposedthrough fear.
And I think the other thing isAmericans rightfully there
really are.
I think there is an awakeninggoing on in Europe and in the US

(17:44):
.
There really are.
I think there is an awakeninggoing on in Europe and in the US
.
America either can't or won'tdefend the global order the way
it has for the last eightdecades, and I actually think
Trump's more of a symptom ofthis than a cause, right?
I think it's just the luster ofglobalism has really worn off,
and anyone who thinks that 2% ofGDP is the absolute maximum
they should have to pay to livein a secure, free world is

(18:07):
delusional.
And there are literallycountries in Europe that will
pick slavery over increasingmilitary spending.
They will default to no, wedon't want to spend more than 2%
.
And whatever if Russia invades.
If you start at the Baltics,what I just said doesn't apply
at all, and as you march West,it becomes more and more true.

J. Alex Tarquinio (18:27):
Do the Ukrainians feel that Biden
should make any changes betweennow and the end of his term on
January 20th?
For example, do they think thathe should remove restrictions
on using attack and missiles tohit targets inside Russia?

Dave Smith (18:41):
Yes, absolutely.
The general consensus and thiskind of goes for military people
as well is Biden is a cowardand Putin called him on it, and
they knew that if Harris won, itwas going to be more of the
same.
It was just going to be thestatus quo of the same.
It was just going to be thestatus quo.
Here's the weapons, but youcan't use them to strike targets
that matter, and the fightingwas just going to go on

(19:02):
indefinitely until Ukraine hadbled enough soldiers that they
had to admit defeat.
That's been the status quo foralmost two years now, since
December of 2022.
So average citizens, tired, wornout, they want the fighting to
stop.
They want there to be aceasefire.
The further west you go, theless they care about territorial

(19:24):
integrity, right, like peoplein Kiev don't care about Donbass
.
The military dudes are justsick of going on pointless
missions, knowing that itdoesn't matter what we do.
It's not going to affect thebattlefield, and that goes for
my Belarusian regiment, but Ithink it also goes for the
Ukrainian units that I'vesupported as well.
Everyone is just sick of notbeing able to change the

(19:48):
behavior of their adversary,which is the point of warfare,
like, not pointless.
For me personally, I was like Idid everything that I could,
but I mean I wish my actionscould have had a greater effect
to the big picture.
I don't think they did.
The world isn't a much worseplace now than when I got here.
You know, I talked to a coupleold dudes, one who is the
landlord at the flat I wasstaying and he was animated.

(20:09):
He made a lot of good points.
He said Russia's playing thislong game.
There's going to be a ceasefire, they're going to rearm,
they're going to try this againin five years or two, whenever
they're ready to do it again,they're going to go for it again
.
The Ukrainians know that iscoming and they need a break.
They don't have the bodies tothrow at this that Russia does.
They also just don't have thephysical resources.

(20:29):
Developing drone technologytakes time.
Ammunition takes time,especially now that Ukraine has
pretty much accepted that theyhave to build it all themselves.
And I would also say the otherthing that I have noticed more
and more people talking about,which I don't see being
reflected in the Englishlanguage media, is Ukrainians
know how nuclear technologyworks and their citizens are

(20:50):
more than willing to be like weshould just build our own
nuclear weapons.
It was a mistake to give awayour nukes and the idea that we
can survive as a country withoutnuclear weapons is ridiculous.
It doesn't matter who wins thisphase of the war.
We need nuclear weapons,otherwise we'll never be safe.
They could probably have anuclear weapon in like six
months to a year, and I don'tsee any policymakers talking

(21:12):
about that taking that seriously.

Frank Radford (21:14):
I do have another line of question what is view
of the belarussians in your unitregarding belarus?
Has it changed at all?
Are they just waiting for theday that this war ends and then
they're going to?

Dave Smith (21:26):
yeah, no, it's.
Oh, man, I, I could talk aboutthis, uh, for days as well.
So the belarus is the thedeciding factor in this war in
Eastern Europe, in the fightagainst totalitarianism in
Russia, because it is like theland bridge from Russia to

(21:49):
Europe.
That's how it is the threatvector and Belarusians, I think,
naturally understand that, butWesterners do not.
I think naturally understandthat, but Westerners do not.
So they really do see theirterritory as occupied territory.
They consider it part of thesame war.
It's the exact war that we'rein now and Ukraine is.
We call it gray zone.
It's contested and I would saysince 2020 and the revolution

(22:13):
happened there.
The repression apparatus inBelarus like to say that could
they have another revolutionthat will overthrow Lukashenko.
It's like they're not upagainst the same regime.
The repression apparatus andthe punishment system and the
concentration camps andeverything that's going on in
Belarus is so much worse thanfour years ago.

(22:33):
I know you guys have hadSvetlana Tsikhanouskaya on your
show.
The challenge she's up againstnow is way worse than four years
ago.
I know you guys have hadSvetlana Tsikhanouskaya on your
show.
The challenge she's up againstnow is way worse than four years
ago.
I think a lot of the guys thatare fighting here.
They know full well thatLukashenko and his KGB have
their sights set on the guysfighting here, because they know
these guys are like actualthreats.

(22:55):
Dudes with guns are an actualthreat.
These guys are like actualthreats.
Dudes with guns are an actualthreat.
Protesters waving flags andsinging patriotic songs like
they were in 2020.
That's not a threat anymore.
That's not going to happen.
They've neutralized that.
So the dudes that are herefighting as partisans it's a
small group relative to theamount of people that fled

(23:16):
Belarus after 2020, but theyknow that they're being hunted
and my best friend, like he,can't talk to his parents
anymore.
His parents have been threatenedby the KGB.
Everybody has stories like thatGuys that have kids who they're
pretty sure they'll never seeagain.
So it's quite bleak and I thinkthe dynamic of the conflict is

(23:37):
really hard to explain to peoplethat haven't spent a lot of
time looking at a map.
But if you look at a map youbasically see there's freedom on
one side and unfreedom on theother, and in the middle there's
a box with three compartmentsthe Black Sea, ukraine and
Belarus.
The Soviet religion, which iswhat the Belarusians call it,
still controls Belarus and theireyes are quite open to how bad

(23:58):
it is there now.

Frank Radford (24:00):
So this is tragic , but are the numbers being
replenished?
Belarusians and volunteers ingeneral?

Dave Smith (24:08):
I mean no, the numbers are down and they're
continuing to go down, like thelonger the war drags on, the
less volunteers there's going tobe.
I think the hard part forattracting Belarusian volunteers
is all the ones that wereinternational outside of Belarus
when the invasion of Ukrainestarted.
If any of them that were goingto come here, they've all come

(24:30):
here, so the only guys left thatyou could get guys and gals,
because there's femalevolunteers as well you would
have to get out of Belarus, andI think it's becoming much
harder to get out of belarus,and I think that so many of
those people are compromised,like so many of you know your
partisan protesters that wereout waving flags in 2020 that
you could convince to come learnhow to be a soldier in ukraine.

(24:54):
Like they know, they'recompromised.
They know that the government'sfollowing them, tracking them,
threatening them.
I think the entire protestmovement in 2020 existed on
Telegram.
In Belarus, telegram is theFSB's app, so I think the odds
that you're going to get themout of that country are really,

(25:14):
really low.

Frank Radford (25:16):
Did you get medals for actions?

Dave Smith (25:18):
I got two from my regiment, yeah.

J. Alex Tarquinio (25:20):
And these are medals particular to the
Kalinowski regiment.

Dave Smith (25:24):
I was pretty honored to get them.
Man, it's pretty dope.
One is like the regiment'smedal and then the other one is
from the chaplain.

J. Alex Tarquinio (25:31):
From the chaplain.

Dave Smith (25:32):
Yeah, the regiment has its own chaplain and he has
his own official medal that hecan give out.
So I got one from him for beinglike a team builder or whatever.
It's funny that you ask thatbecause when I was going across
the border like I had all mygear with me and I was literally
the only guy on the bus whothey searched my luggage,
because I'm an obvious army guythey have to inspect you because

(25:55):
they're very worried aboutpeople like stealing equipment
and leaving or fleeing themilitary or anything like that.
And the border guard who wassearching me the first thing he
opened was my rucksack and italso had my medals and he looked
at them and then he took hisphone out and showed me a
picture of him getting his medal, because I guess he's like
National Guard or something, andwe shook hands and hugged and

(26:18):
then he just went through themotions of searching the rest of
my stuff.
I was really worried aboutcrossing the border with my
Kevlar and my helmet andeverything, but he just packed
it all up and then helped mecarry it back to the bus.

J. Alex Tarquinio (26:30):
Can we step back for just a moment on your
story?
This is your fourth tour inUkraine.
Can you tell us how you spentthose four tours?

Dave Smith (26:38):
in Ukraine.
Can you tell us how you spentthose four tours?
Yeah, I was in Bakhmut,chernihiv, kupyansk and Kharkiv,
but those are a bit misleading.
I would say I was in thosedirections.
So I was in Bakhmut direction.
By the time I was actually onthe ground, it was falling and
we were doing like our lastmissions in there, where

(26:59):
Progozhin was basically takingit over.
So I spent most of my timesouth of the city, in an area
called Klishchivka.
There's a really importantcanal that divides that area
north and south.
I was on the side of that canalwith 3rd Assault Brigade when
the counteroffensive started inthe spring of 2023.
And then in the middle of thesummer, progozhin had his little
insurrection, march for justice, whatever he was calling it.

(27:20):
When the dust settled on that,he was going to Belarus.
That was what.
So obviously my regiment, whichis the Belarusian regiment,
thought that was really big deal.
So we actually came off the lineand went north in Chernihiv to
kind of like, if you look at theintersection of the borders
between Russia, belarus andUkraine, we're sort of right in
there doing some stuff that washighly unpublicized, in my

(27:43):
opinion, not really thateffective, because it was kind
of like the Russia didn't reallyhave the A-team up there, so
they weren't really trying anymaneuvers of the border, even
though Putin and Lukashenko liketo make it seem like there's a
huge threat to Ukraine emanatingfrom Belarus.
I've never actually seen it.

(28:04):
It was like our C team fightingtheir C team up there, because
you could tell they don't haveany intention to launch
offensives, and neither did we,because we don't want to cross
that border and start anotherfront.
That was kind of end of summer,early fall 2023.
Then we went to Kupyansk and wewere there for two or three
months when the weather startedto get really horrible.

(28:24):
It's bisected by the OskilRiver, which is a very natural
boundary that the Russians weretrying to push to before the
winter, when was this.
Early or mid-October of 2023.
And then we were there right upuntil about Christmas.
It was all defensive thehorrible videos that you see on
social media of doing defensivesin the mud.

(28:45):
We were doing that.
It was cold.
There was very little maneuveror action going on, it was
mostly just dodging mortarrounds.

J. Alex Tarquinio (28:54):
I'm sorry to jump in here, but there's
actually some reporting now thatthe Allies, particularly in

(29:17):
the European Union, which haspledged to produce a lot of the
155 millimeter artilleryammunition, may actually not
have as much capacity asoriginally estimated and
deliveries have been slow.
Are you feeling that at thefront?

Dave Smith (29:23):
Yes, 100% it's terrifying when we
were in Kupiansk I remembergoing on a mission where the
fire's officer who was Ukrainiancalled me over to his desk and
he's like, Canadian, come lookat this.
And he pointed at thewhiteboard where they track,
like the rounds they have andthe rounds they used.
And we were going out on like afour or five day mission.
And he pointed at the columnwith the rounds they had and it
was, if I remember correctly,the number was 48.
And I was that's for today,right, and he's that's what we

(29:46):
have, and I was.
But you're getting more, right,because I mean for our infill,
just to get to the zero line,they'll probably spend 20 or 25
rounds and then when they'rehunting Russian guns that are
shooting at us, that could takeeasily in the morning, you could
use 20, 25 rounds.
So he's telling me we're goingout with 48 rounds and there's

(30:06):
more coming, right?
He's like I don't know.
So we got on the back of thepickup truck and drove out there
and I was in my mind.
I was thinking we might onlyhave mortar cover for half a day
, maybe, you know, maybedaylight hours while we're out
there, and then it will spendthree, four days just getting
shelled by Russia and there'snothing we can do about it.
And that's terrifying, as asoldier, just knowing this is

(30:28):
not like a big theoreticalpolitical debate.
When are they going to get theammo there?
It's no dude.
Dudes are dying becauseEuropean capitals can't figure
out how to produce mortar roundsthat Napoleon figured out how
to produce.
Yeah, it's terrifying.
In

J. Alex Tarquinio (30:43):
the last three months to fight in
eastern Ukraine.
What's changed?

Dave Smith (30:47):
I'm still kind of processing it
myself.
I was in Kupyansk for quite awhile and then I went on leave
and the unit went and didanother rotations somewhere near
Kharkiv, but I forget exactlywhere.
And then I came back, we wentinto a training cycle and we
knew that the next rotation wewere going into it was going to

(31:09):
be much bigger, because we knewwe were going to Kharkiv and
Russia was signaling that theywere going to start another
massive offensive towards thecity.
So we actually spent a longtime in training and the
infantry guys we actually stayedin training for considerably
longer than everyone elsebecause they deployed the
headquarters and the drones andthe mortars and all the enablers

(31:31):
.
They were actually neededpretty quickly by the Ukrainian
brigades that were there becausethey really really felt like if
you remember back to April, mayof this year, putin and Lavrov
were using the phrase sanitaryzone or sanitation zone all the
time.
They were really telegraphingthat they wanted to pretty much

(31:52):
reform the international borderthrough Kharkiv Oblast.
So everybody internationalborder through Kharkiv Oblast so
everybody, including theUkrainians, the Western media,
decision makers and all thecapitals really thought that the
offensive was going to make arun for Kharkiv again and the
last one was a vacation comparedto this one we just finished
north of Kharkiv.
I think there's a couple ofobservations I could make.

(32:16):
The war is not static.
There's a couple ofobservations I could make.
The war is not static If youtook a snapshot every three or
four months.
It's a dramatically differentwar.
Each side is adapting and theiruse of drones, compared to six
months ago, a year ago, is justastronomically better, whereas
in the fall of 2023, I don'twant to say move around the

(32:40):
front whenever we wanted orwhatever, but there wasn't this
idea that, like the moment Istep outside of the vehicle,
there's going to be 30 dronestrying to kill me.
And now there is that feelingand those drones have thermal
cameras and they're droppinggrenades on us and they're
literally tracking our everymovement.
So it's a dramaticallydifferent style of soldiering

(33:04):
that you have to do, becauseyour camouflage and concealment
from the air is so much moreimportant, to a degree that I
couldn't even explain If I hadto go back to Canada at the
infantry school and tell themyou're going to be doing
assaults in ghillie suits.
For your listeners, ghilliesuits are like what snipers use
to sneak around the battlefield.

(33:24):
We're doing assaults.

J. Alex Tarquinio (33:25):
So a type of camouflage suit.

Dave Smith (33:27):
Yeah , Imagine you know the movie
Predator with ArnoldSchwarzenegger.
It's like if I could haveghillie suit, like Predator had,
where I basically just meltinto the forest.
That's what all of us would bewearing.
We spend so much time makingoverhead cover for the trench.
What we're doing now is moreserious than world war one.

(33:48):
In world war one, your trenchhad to have some overhead
protection because mortar roundsor artillery rounds might send
a fragment up into the air thatcame down onto your trench.
But now it's beyond that.
If you are exposed at all,you're going to get hit, and
both the Ukrainians and theRussians have turned into

(34:10):
absolute snipers with theirmortar rounds.
They don't need a humanobserver anymore, right, they
have a drone to do theobservation for them.
You don't need a forwardartillery officer looking at a
target anymore.
You have 24-7, 365 dronecoverage on any potential target
that's in the battlefield andtheir mortarmen are on both

(34:35):
sides, are absolute snipers atthis point, like if they find
your trench, they can get aroundright into it.
It'snot an aerial weapon, you don't
need a person, but someone isstill looking through the lens
of that.
Looking at it from the op centerthrough a camera on a drone is
way different than being aforward observer, where you have

(34:56):
to be within visual danger ofthe target

Frank Radford (35:00):
it sort of begs the question,
though, that, based on whatyou've explained about where you
were the tree line and that youwere actually engaged in an
offensive action, what motivatesa soldier today?
What form of command style willget them across that no man's

(35:20):
land?
and that's a hard sell.
Nato has that mission commandwhere it's.
It's almost like everybody sitsdown for a powwow and then says
let's do this, whereas thevagna method is okay, you don't
go across that no man's land andwe'll put a sledgehammer to
your head.
It's also, from the recruitmentpoint of view, not very

(35:44):
inspiring to think that this isnot just worse than a World War
I, it's almost guaranteedsuicidal if it's not done to
perfection.
You know, with the wholecombined arms thing working like
clockwork to the second.
So I don't know how youexperienced that or how the

(36:05):
Belarusians overcame thattrepidation.
I get the impression thatyou're all highly intelligent
actually and that you know thatthis has to be done.
But for a NATO army to instillthat, that's tough.
How do you as an officer, ordertroops to cross no man's land

(36:27):
and what is the incentive?

Dave Smith (36:28):
So I think you're really hitting on
the crux of the issue, like whywe fight.
The reason I joined theBelarusian unit is because I
knew they have a why to fight.
Their why is so strong?
And the other foreign fighters?
I don't think not all.
There's lots of good, there's arange of foreign fighters.
Lots are really good, lots havea really strong why.
You know your motivationevaporates the moment artillery

(36:52):
starts falling on you oranything like that In the
situations I've been in on thebattleground here, everybody
knows what the point is.
The point is get the Russiansout of Eastern Ukraine.
So when we go and we're tryingto clear a tree line, the point
is push the Russians back to theRussian side of the border.
And many of the dudes I workwith are extremely intelligent.

(37:12):
There's one guy who's a doctorin my unit.
There's dudes that did IT.
There's all these guys frombackgrounds that aren't military
who are extremely intelligentand because they know why
they're fighting and they knowwhat they're trying to achieve,
they arrive at really goodsolutions Like how do you cross
no man's land and kick theRussians out of their trenches

(37:34):
and then take their trenches andcontinue to pressure them to
cross back to the other side ofthe border out of their trenches
and then take their trenchesand continue to pressure them to
cross back to the other side ofthe border?
Well, that's an that's aquestion that has an answer.
There is a solution to thatproblem.
We sometimes have to learn itthe hard way, through injuries
and deaths and casualties andstuff, but we do learn it
because everybody knows whatwe're trying to do.

Frank Radford (37:54):
But did you feel in your particular
rotation, your operation,operation with the Belarusians,
that they were part of a largerscheme?

Dave Smith (38:01):
Yeah , absolutely.
A lot of it has to do with thedeath toll.
We were working with two otherGore units that are quite elite
and then a ZSU unit, our regulararmy brigade, who were there
when we got there and definitelythe level of coordination
between the four units was thehighest I've ever seen.

(38:21):
I would say because of thenature of the terrain we
definitely were doing stuff thatwas like battalion level
operations, but the individualobjectives themselves in this
wood line you couldn't reallyattack them with more than like
a platoon minus, just because ofthe nature of the terrain.
The coordination and thesynchronization in particular

(38:44):
was really really good becausewe were like canalized into this
area where it's like, well, weneed the artillery to fall in
this one particular spot infront of us while we advance
forward.
And we can only advance in verysmall teams and we're, you know,
working with Ukrainian teamsthat are also really well oiled
and we've had lots of time towork with them and learn how

(39:05):
each other does business andexchange lessons learned.
So I would say it's like wewere doing a battalion level
operation, but the tip of thespear was usually like section
or squad size.
So I definitely did feel thisrotation.
It was the most time I haveseen like our team leaders
working with team leaders fromother units and it was the most

(39:27):
time I spent in other people'strenches.
And just to sorry, just to giveanother shout out to that medic
that treated me so just knowingman, I got injured and some
regular army Ukrainian unitmedical staff was that close to
me at the front and gave meimmediate treatment.
It's an organizational feat.
We all worked together and itreally worked out.

Frank Radford (39:48):
Did you work with the mech units?
Did you see armor or

Dave Smith (39:52):
I don't know who the M113 unit was
, but they were definitelymeched and they were definitely
supporting us.
Because they were definitelysupporting us because they were
saving our guys' lives left,right and the center.
So they were there.
I didn't see any mech assaultsor anything, though, but we were
in absolute light infantryterrain.
It's not that there weren'tmech units around.

(40:13):
There were, but they weren'tdoing what I was doing, because
what we were doing you had to dodismounted.
Basically, I felt like I was ina simulator on a career course.
It was exactly the way theytold me it would be when I was
in training as an infantryofficer.
There is one thing if there'sany Canadians in uniform
listening to this, or even justNATO soldiers generally, but
especially Canadian Armed Forcesmembers I was over-prepared for

(40:37):
this war.
Canadian Armed Forces members,I was over-prepared for this war
.
Everything I was trained to doI never I was scared.
I was.
Definitely.
There was shit going on allaround me that was intimidating,
but I never didn't know what todo from every level.
From when I first joined theRussian speaking unit.
I was the only English guythere, and they just plopped me
in the forest outside Bakhmut,and they were like okay, this is

(40:59):
going to be our fightingposition.
And I just started digging atrench with some Belarusian who
only spoke Russian.
I knew exactly what I was doing.
I was like okay, we got to digthis to level one so that it's
defendable.
And then we got to put someoverhead concealment up because
there's going to be droneslooking for us.
And then, as I progressed alongand you know, they started to
realize I wasn't just like anoob and they gave me more

(41:22):
responsibilities and I startedgetting invited to planning
meetings and stuff, the planningand the whiteboarding.
And, like I told one of theRussian speakers and the
Ukrainians, whiteboards win wars, like that's my mantra
Whiteboards win wars.
We should do everything on awhiteboard.
And then they all hadwhiteboards all of a sudden and
we would literally sit in frontof a whiteboard with
interpreters and try to work outplans together.

(41:45):
And I was literally just doingexactly what I was taught on my
captain's career course.
I was just doing it with guysthat didn't speak English and
didn't have the same training asI did.
Granted, I was only in theCanadian military, but I think
mission command is really goodat training junior leaders
junior, you know, your younglieutenants and your master
corporals and sergeants.

(42:06):
It's really good at trainingthem to explain the why we have
sorry, I'll drop someterminology here but we use
commander's intent statements,we use mission statements, we
give main efforts right, likeanytime you get orders for a
mission, you are told what themain effort is right, because
they want every soldier to know,right down to the no-hook

(42:26):
privates, what is the mostimportant thing, what's the
vital ground that we have totake here.
So we're really good at takingthe why we fight and turning it
into a process, delivered,shared reality.
If you will across the ranks,right right from the generals
down, everybody knows what thepoint of the operation is.

(42:47):
But the Canadian army, likeover, prepared me for this, for
this conflict, and I feel likethere's so many people in the
West right now who are likesoldiers, that are seeing what's
going on, and they're like, ohmy God, we would get annihilated
on the first day of this war ifwe were doing what the
Ukrainians are doing.
And to them, to them I wouldsay, man, trust in your training

(43:07):
, we're not as ill prepared forthis as you think this is.
This is exactly the fight thatour that our militaries have
been training us for.

Frank Radford (43:16):
But one would hope that a major from an
infantry background would beprepared for what you went
through.

Dave Smith (43:24):
Most of the time I was not doing stuff that an
infantry major.
I was an above average riflemanat best a lot of the time.
And I know in my army there's alot of young corporals and
master corporals that could showup here and totally be rock
stars just absolutely knowexactly what they were doing.
Their navigation skills, theirshooting skills, their field

(43:46):
craft are beyond the level ofthis battlefield.
And it's not because I was amajor.
I would actually say a lot ofthem would be better than me.

Frank Radford (43:54):
Well, again going back to our previous interview,
you made some remarks about theoperational level of war.
As I understand, the Ukrainiansmay have done pretty good in
Kursk.
Are you noticing that kind oflevel of expertise now at the
staff operational level ofplanning?

Dave Smith (44:16):
So, first off, we didn't have anything to do with
Kursk.
I didn't even know Kursk wasgoing on until five days after
it started.
Regardless of how it turned outor what Dave Smith thinks of
its strategic significance, someserious planning went into that
.
That was definitely aflawlessly executed operational
level to the point where, Ithink, the Russians were so

(44:40):
stunned I think it took themdays to even figure out that it
had happened or what washappening.
So it was good that way.
But I'd say, if you don't havea strategic objective that
changes your adversary'sbehavior, it's almost, it's a
rehearsal, it's practice, it'straining.

(45:00):
Yeah.
Okay, you did a divisional leveloff.
That was dope.
What was the point?
Because if the point was todraw Russian forces away from
the Donbass axis, it didn't work.
But both sides are so good atthe information operations side
of the conflict that it's kindof shocking to Westerners

(45:21):
because we're so unequipped forit.
Making sense of, like vehiclelosses or ground gained and lost
or whatever, is easier thanfiguring out the psychological
or cognitive effect thatparticular battlefield actions
have on the adversary's civilianpopulation.
Me, dave Smith, military guy,looking at Kursk, I'm like this
is stupid.
I don't know why they're doingthis, but you know guys like

(45:44):
Sersky and Budanov, you knowthey look at it and be like no,
no, no, we had to scare theRussian population and this
worked for what we wanted it for.
Or we wanted to derail one oftheir narratives about Russian
victory being inevitable, and itworked.
So there are objectives Ibelieve they're pursuing.
They're not obvious toWesterners and they're
definitely not obvious toWestern military folks like

(46:05):
myself, because we've just neverthought that way.
In fact, we kind of think it'sungentlemanly To psychologically
affect the civilians of youradversary state how
ungentlemanly, whereas theUkrainians are like, are like,
no, dude, we're definitely doingthat.
That's like that's the point ofthe mission okay.

Frank Radford (46:22):
So it sounds like that there is a learning curve
that the ukrainian staff areovercoming and honing skills and
getting better progressivelyabsolutely faster than the
russians.

Dave Smith (46:38):
I think definitely faster than the Russians.
But I would say the tendency inthe English language world is
to seriously downplay how muchthe Russians are learning and
adapting to we, the democraticworld.
We still want to believe thatthey're like the nincompoops,
that they were three years ago,and it's not true from the the

(47:00):
media.

Frank Radford (47:01):
There is a formula for the way they conduct
an offense.
The contemptible term of usingmeat waves, etc.
Is associated with them, but itis quite clearly getting
results yes, they do seem tohave integrated not just mortars
but glide bombs, and I thinkthey're killed.

Dave Smith (47:24):
whoa, hold on one second.
I like okay, I'm so glad youbrought this up.
They're not integrated.
They use them, but they are notintegrated.
They like their air power andtheir indirect fire is not
integrated with the meat waves.
The meat waves are real.
The meat waves run at us, wekill them, they die.
It's great.

(47:45):
The meat waves don't have whatyou and I would think of as
combined arms operations orjoint operations.
The glide bombs come out, themortars fall and we do get by
them, but it's not like a bunchof mortars hit me and then an
assault ran over me, like amortar hit me and the meat wave
was somewhere doing something,getting ready or whatever.

(48:08):
So they're not integrated.
They're still not there yet andI actually think that I've been
here a year and a half now.
I haven't actually seen theRussians do anything integrated,
other than if you considerwe're going to send out aircraft
to drop.
We call them Cubs I'm not surewhat the Russian acronym is, but
big bombs like the equivalentof a JDAM.

(48:29):
They come out and they do dropthousand pound bombs on us, but
then nothing like it doesn't addup to anything.
It's not like they have a fireplan where they've decided okay,
like at H minus 10, we're goingto drop these huge bombs to
stun this trench system.
Then we're going to steamrollover the trench system with a
dismounted attack or an armoredattack.

(48:49):
I have not seen that happen yet.
So they are getting betterindependently.
The meat waves are gettingbetter and the air power is
getting better and the indirectfire is getting better, but I
still haven't seen them do whatlike NATO would consider a joint
operation.
Does that make sense?

Frank Radford (49:07):
That absolutely does.
Yes, so yeah, that applies totheir most elites as well.

Dave Smith (49:13):
Well, that I don't know, because you got to
remember, the infighting in theRussian military system is so
huge that, like, their elitesare pretty much severed by
tribalism, essentially.
So if you think, like, wagnerwas definitely the most elite uh
founded light force that theyhad here and wagner imploded.

(49:35):
We weren't fighting the elitesthis summer.
I can tell you like we, we tooklots of prisoners.
I saw them.
These guys were conscripts,they had no idea what was going
on.
They were not elite by anystretch of the imagination.
But in the Western context youwould think the more elite the
unit, the more assets they getright.
So if you're a special forcesunit or if you're some kind of

(49:58):
soft unit, you get betterindirect fire support, you get
better aircraft, you get all ofthe kind of toys to play with.
I don't really think Rush isthere, man.
I think the VDV and Spetsnaz orwhatever, they're probably
really good at what they do.
The same way, wagner was verygood at what they do.
But the idea that you're verygood at what you do, so we're

(50:20):
going to give you the best ofthe best air support, I don't
actually think they're there,because that requires a level of
cooperation and coordinationthat I just don't think a
totalitarian army can achieve,because they're so divided all
the time.

Frank Radford (50:35):
As we've spoken before.
You pointed out that Clausewitzemphasized the defense is
stronger than offense.
Yeah, now you were engaged inan offensive action.
Engaged in an offensive actionand despite the fact that Russia
is taking exorbitant casualtiesin men and materiel, they are
nevertheless conductingsuccessful offensives, even

(50:59):
though they're not breakthroughs.
They are what seems to bebattalion tactical groupings,
generated quickly and withwhatever they've got available
in terms of manpower andequipment, they send it forward
across a broad front.
It's difficult to handle forthe Ukrainians even though they
are inflicting heavy casualtieson the Russians, they

(51:22):
nevertheless have to retreat andit seems that counterattacks
are not effective.
Now, you were involved in anoffensive action.
The thing which was mentionedis that the ability to integrate
the combat multipliers that youneed to make sure that your
element gets across the no man'sland, whereas the other side,

(51:45):
as you pointed out, is somewhatinept at that.
Although the problem may be incommand style, they they force
them across the no man's land,whereas on your side, because
your people were intelligent,they could discuss and get it
done in a different way I woulduse a different word than
command style.

Dave Smith (52:06):
I would.
The word I would use ispsychology.
Like the r, the Russians acceptthat attrition is a viable form
of warfare.
They just think if you havemore numbers and you can mass
force greater than your enemy atthe objective that you're
trying to take, their casualtytolerance is higher.
They's a forbidden word.
It's like it's what you avoid,right?

(52:32):
We want maneuver, not attrition.
And the Russians don't havethat psychological block.
And I would say the only reasonmy colleagues and I and the
Ukrainians generally take a moremaneuverist approach, it's not
necessarily that they'repsychologically more committed
to it.
It's just they have no otherchoice, like they're outnumbered
and outgunned.
The Russians, if they werefaced with a similar situation,

(52:53):
maybe they would maneuver moreas well.
But because they have suchoverwhelming manpower and
especially such overwhelmingfirepower, I would just say
their ability to sacrifice humanlives to achieve what is, in my
opinion, a relatively minusculeobjective is incredible.
Whatever you've heard in themedia, it's understated Like
they'll literally just throwbodies at it until they get it,

(53:20):
if that's what the chain ofcommand wants.
So I think it's more of apsychological difference than
necessarily a, you know, commandstyle difference, or a
tactician's difference.
It's more of a mentally.
They've just accepted what weconsider to be the unacceptable.

Frank Radford (53:29):
The 700,000 casualties that they've
presumably taken.
I consider to be theunacceptable the the 700 000
casualties that they'vepresumably.
I mean that's that's 70 britisharmies.

Dave Smith (53:35):
I I don't trust any numbers that come out.
I'm sure it's, it's insane.
So, whatever it is, it's nothigh enough in dave smith's
opinion.
And, and the other thing is,both sides are so good at
narratives to suit theirpurposes the information
operations side of the conflictwell,

J. Alex Tarquinio (53:55):
when you say that, whatever the
casualties are and I I hear youabout not trusting figures on
both side but when you say thatthey're not high enough on the
russian side to affect therussian mentality, they are
putting different people intothe fight.
Obviously, there was all theprisoners you talked about the
conscripts last time.
There are people from theregions these are not the sons

(54:17):
of the elite in Moscow or StPetersburg who are going.
So what do you mean exactlywhen you say that the casualties
aren't high enough to influencethe decision making?

Dave Smith (54:30):
You're talking more like influencing
the populace psychologically.
I was talking like influencethem capability wise, like
they're still force generatingsoldiers.
The conversation we're havingis how are you going to
influence the will,understanding or capability of
the Russian general staff andthe Russian military to continue
to conduct offensive operationsin eastern Ukraine?

(54:52):
Well, if the planning is toaffect their capability by
diminishing their ability tosend soldiers there, it's not
working and it doesn't seem likeno matter how many you kill,
it's going to work.
So they're like the bad guyfrom the video game you kill him
and he comes back.
There's two of them and youkill both of them and then
there's three of them.
That's how Russian soldiersappear right now.

Frank Radford (55:11):
Right, but it's axiomatic that if you're going
to succeed at some point, you'vegot to take the offensive.

Dave Smith (55:16):
Yes.

Frank Radford (55:16):
Even if it's a counterattack to retake ground
that was lost.
And.
I'm getting the impression thatUkraine is not able to do that.

Dave Smith (55:25):
They're not no, especially in particular sectors
of the front.

Frank Radford (55:29):
So what's you know?
You said it right there thatattrition seems to be a dirty
word in NATO.
Yeah, as well.

Dave Smith (55:40):
There's actually sorry to interrupt, but because
there's actually a few sacredcows that have been knocked down
while I was here.
One is attrition is acompletely legitimate form of
warfare, like it absolutelyworks.
And NATO's the way.
Nato kind of indoctrinates itsofficers, and I use that word
like that's what they call it.

(56:01):
They call it indoctrination I'mnot using that as a pejorative
Like they told me I was in indoc, like I was being indoctrinated
.
You know the fact that theyjust tell you like maneuver good
, attrition bad, even if you'renever going to do it.
It's extremely limiting in howyou think about your enemy,
right, if you think thatobviously maneuver is the best
way to go in every possible caseand you suddenly are confronted

(56:23):
with an adversary who's likethat I do, I do attrition right.
Well, now you've never had to gothrough his thought process,
you've never had to think likehim.
I think teaching juniorofficers and then majors and
lieutenant colonels in staffcollege, teaching them that
attrition is like this dirtyword that we never talk about,
is debilitating, right, becausenow you can't understand an

(56:44):
enemy who thinks that way.
So that's one sacred cow andthe other one that I would say
is like siege warfare is still athing, the Russians and the
Ukrainians.
They regularly pick a town or avillage and just decide they're
going to siege it like it'smedieval times.
And when I say siege, I meanBakhmut was a siege battle.

(57:04):
There was no maneuver, it wasnot an attrition battle, it was
just block by block, inch byinch, seize everything and
destroy it if you have to, whichpredates, clausewitz and
everybody.
But Russia has proven a fewtimes now it works.
You destroy everything, butthen you control it.

Frank Radford (57:22):
Well, one thing that's noticeable is that they
can extemporize a force notadverse to attrition.
Extemporize a force not adverseto attrition?
Yeah, in fact they.
They use it as part of part oftheir success mechanism, in a
way, so their brigade staffs canthrow together whatever's
available into a battaliontactical grouping attack vector,

(57:45):
with, you know maybe 100 guyswho don't want to be there and
vehicle drivers who also don'twant to be there, and they can
actually have the authority toorder soldiers into a situation
that the survival rate is so low, and they know it.
Now.
That is a technique which isjust totally alien to NATO.

(58:09):
How do you tell soldiers thatthis is where your start line is
and that's where your end lineis, and there's no ands, ifs or
buts.
That's where you've got to go.
But, as you pointed out,attrition works, but the fact
that they can generate this soquickly and to use this kind of
outflanking effort, whatever thestronghold is, whether it's

(58:29):
Volodar or Chassivyar orwherever they've successfully
done this, and it's very hard torespond to it, especially if
you've got a command style thatrequires everybody to get, as
you pointed out, the main effort, what we're doing, and every
soldier to realize that this iswhy we're doing it.

(58:50):
They don't have the, why theydon't even bother with it.
It's like you know, we need toknow you to follow down.

Dave Smith (58:56):
I wouldn't go that far.
You got to remember having anobjective that's understood,
even if it's ridiculous orinsane, is much more effective
than not having an objective.
The simpler your objective is,the more likely it is you are to
achieve it.
There's also just somethingdifferent in the Slavic psyche

(59:17):
about suffering this attitude oflike, yeah, I'm going to go do
it, I might die.
It's pretty normal here.
It's normal amongst theUkrainians as well, less so than
the Russians, but I think that20 years of the global war on
terror really really did damageto NATO.
It's made us so risk adverseand so casualty adverse.

(59:40):
If you can't prove that everysingle dude is going to come
home safe, you don't get to godo the mission.
And that only works when thecombat is optional, like when
you don't have to go assault binLaden's compound.
You're just doing it becauseyou can.
Your risk calculus is way outof whack compared to
conventional warfare.
Conventional warfare is likeyou don't have a choice, like,

(01:00:01):
yeah, you're going to takecasualties, figure out how to
minimize them and move on.
Take the objective.
And because NATO has gottenitself into these weird missions
for the last 20 years, if youtalk about, like Afghanistan
post about 2005, 2006, or Iraq.
The whole time we were there,nobody knew what the hell the
end state was.

(01:00:21):
Nobody knew what the maineffort was.
There was no unity of effort.
You couldn't coordinate vastgroups of people because nobody
knew what it was they weretrying to achieve.

Frank Radford (01:00:33):
You were a relatively high-ranking former
NATO officer, okay, so it is avery rare phenomenon for a NATO
officer to have been throughwhat you've been through.
You've experienced real combat,peer-to-peer.
Now you say that NATOunderstands combined arms in

(01:00:53):
theory, right, but they've neverreally had to practice it in
this kind of environment.
So would it be fair to say thatthe Russians are ahead or on a
par?
Or if something was to happensuch that there was an armistice
or a negotiated peace andUkraine was in a holding pattern

(01:01:15):
for the next offensive, is NATOready for a Russian action on a
large scale?
I mean, that's a hypothetical.
I know that some of EasternEuropean countries are
suggesting something like that.
Do you think there is anadvantage that the Russians have
at the moment over NATO?

Dave Smith (01:01:34):
I think, oh man, we could have a three-hour podcast
just about this one question.
So I'm just going to stream ofconsciousness some of the things
that my mind has changed sinceI got here.
Rather, I can't give you astraight up answer to your
question.
So the first one is my respectfor NATO has skyrocketed since I
got impressive.

(01:01:55):
I spent four years as a jointterminal attack controller,
which is like an army guy thatcalls in airstrikes from the Air

(01:02:17):
Force, and I can tell you I didhuge NATO exercises.
I worked with in the doubledigits of NATO countries doing
that job.
We have like standardizedprocedures.
I was embedded with a, aninfantry platoon from the Czech
Republic, for three weeks on anexercise about 10 years ago and
I was an infantry officertalking to airplanes and they

(01:02:39):
were an infantry platoon and Iknew exactly what they were
doing all the time.
They understood what I wasdoing all the time because we
had the same doctrine, the sameTTPs and even if we didn't have
the same TTPs, we had the samepoints of reference.
I could say like, hey,doctrinally this is the way I
was taught to do this, but Idon't always do it that way.
What do you guys think andthey'd be like oh yeah, we have

(01:03:01):
the same doctrine, but we don'tdo it that way either.
We do it differently than thedoctrine and differently than
you.
So so I feel like that sharedapproach to warfighting is kind
of the secret sauce that makesNATO so threatening, and it's
why totalitarian dictators areterrified of NATO, Iran, Russia,
North Korea they all want thesame things.

(01:03:21):
They want to overthrow us, killus, take our stuff.
They're never truly going tohave a joint doctrine that is
multinational, because theynever trust each other, Whereas
me and my counterpart from theCzech Republic because they
never trust each other, Whereasme and my counterpart from the
Czech Republic army, we trustedeach other.
So we had the same doctrine.
And I would definitely say,being a former NATO officer
watching Ukraine fight Russia,the analogy I use all the time

(01:03:44):
is I feel like a jock watchingtwo nerds fight.
It's like two dorks from thedrama club are fighting each
other and I'm the captain of thefootball team and I have to
watch it and be like, oh man,you guys really don't know what
you're doing.
And the reason for that is,like you know, former Soviet
countries other than the onesthat joined NATO the reason they
don't know how to do combinedarms operations.
They haven't actually figuredit out yet, they're just not

(01:04:06):
there, and a first year captainfrom any NATO country could plan
a better invasion than theRussian military planned in
February of 2022.

Frank Radford (01:04:15):
That's a more positive outlook from our last
conversation.
You were saying that the dronepotential of the Russians would
possibly take out an entirebattalion and that would be a
wake-up call for nato

Dave Smith (01:04:31):
I do still think that is gonna
have to be the price we pay,unfortunately, like I'm sorry to
say it, but a whole bunch of mycolleagues back in the nato
militaries are gonna have to getutterly murdered before anyone
wakes up and realizes not onlyhow far along the totalitarians

(01:04:52):
are but how motivated they are.
I don't want to diminish theexperience the Russians have,
right.
Like they are learning throughblood, sweat and tears and
especially a lot of blood.
They're learning lessons thatare going to give them an
incredible advantage in anyconflict in the future that we
in the NATO countries don't have.

(01:05:12):
And I still I hate to soundpessimistic, but I still think
the NATO countries are going tohave to learn those lessons in
blood as well before they learnthem.
Like they're not going to learnthem through a lessons learned
campaign, unfortunately.

Frank Radford (01:05:25):
But I think what you're saying is
that, nevertheless, the NATOcountries are a well-oiled
machine waiting to be kickedinto gear, as it were.
But it's a time factor.

Dave Smith (01:05:39):
I would just say divide that
politically and militarily.
Like militarily, yes, I agreewith what you just said.
Politically, no.
NATO as a political alliancesucks.
If you put Estonia or Poland incharge of everything, maybe it
would work, but you know, ourproblem right now is not like do
we fight better than they do?
Yes, we do fight better.

(01:05:59):
Nato fights better than Russiadoes, but Russia has the will to
fight and NATO doesn't.
You know what I mean.
So Russia produces moreartillery rounds than the entire
free world combined and Russiaproduces more tanks than all
NATO countries combined.
Russia can call up their evilfriends like North Korea to be
like hey, we want even moremunitions, can you give us that?
And they're like yeah, ofcourse we can.

(01:06:20):
We'll never cooperate with you,but in this one specific
transactional instance we willgive you stuff.
So NATO as a political allianceis an utter failure.
No-transcript, really good atcooperating, coordinating,

(01:06:55):
fighting according to commondoctrine or whatnot, and just
really bad at having thepolitical will to do anything,
forget fighting.
They can't even have thepolitical will to manufacture
munitions.
I honestly think Estonia couldbe invaded tomorrow, and until
regiments of Canadians getannihilated the way they did in

(01:07:17):
World War I, canada won't wakeup and realize they need a
military-industrial complex.
It's great that NATO is thisincredibly functional military
alliance, but if you don't havethe political willpower to
employ your military and to usethem to achieve policy aims, you
have the greatest military inthe world.

(01:07:38):
If the politicians can't figureout how to employ it, it
doesn't matter.
And this idea that the fightingis going to stop and somehow,
like the Russian military, willgo back to sucking the way they
did three years ago, that is apipe dream.
That's not going to happen.
It's going to get worse.
It's fair to say that they willcapitalize on the lessons that
they've learned 100%.

(01:07:58):
The Russians also the thing wedon't really give them credit
for.
The way they integrate militarystrategy into their political
strategy is just so much betterthan the way Westerners do.
Like they know, as long as theykeep the fight going.
Westerners are so terrified ofescalation.
They're invading anothercountry and genociding its

(01:08:20):
people.
Like how much more escalationcan there be?

Frank Radford (01:08:23):
Right.
But a fear I've had, and thatis that what we're seeing with
the North Koreans is just thetip of the iceberg and that what
really is going to happen isyou look at NATO on one side,
particularly during the Cold War, there was a Warsaw Pact.
On the other, it is notinconceivable for the Chinese to

(01:08:46):
send 10 to 20 brigades to theRussian NATO front as a part of
their pact, their ShanghaiCooperation Organization Back in
1904, Mackinder, when he wroteabout the heartland, saying that
whoever controls the heartlandcontrols the world.
You've got Russia and Chinathat are connected, and so is
North Korea.
They have interior lines.

(01:09:06):
That's a huge advantage.
To get from Europe to Asia, youjust cross via the Belt and
Road.
I mean, obviously you can fly,but that's very expensive.
As some in East Europe aresaying, the likelihood of Russia
doing something is notnecessarily 10 years from now,
but rather in three.

(01:09:27):
And we're talking the same withXi Jinping.
Now, if that is done, with ageostrategic plan that is
somewhat coordinated with Putinand Xi Jinping, you've got a
problem.
If you're a NATO, because forcetransference is a huge issue,

(01:09:48):
and if the United States isgoing to pivot even more to the
Pacific and relegate to NATO toits own actions, and even though
you're correct in saying thatthe dictatorships don't work
together when it comes toultimately wanting to win.
They may go that far, and thatis what we're seeing with these
North Koreans.
I think this is just a portentof things to come.

Dave Smith (01:10:11):
I would say two things about that.
Number one for China and NorthKorea.
Their militaries are blackboxes to them.
They don't know how they'regoing to perform.
If you remember, russia had apretty exercised military in
2022, and they grosslyunderestimated what they were
getting themselves into.
And they've been fighting warsconsistently since the end of

(01:10:31):
the Cold War.
They've done Chechen Wars,georgia, syria, ukraine the
first time, and they reallydidn't know what they're doing.
North Korea to my knowledge,they haven't conducted a single
military operation since like1953.
So they're going to suck.
You might be correct in thatChina and North Korea could
seriously reinforce Russia'sWestern flank.

(01:10:53):
I really do think one of thereasons Xi Jinping hasn't taken
military action in anymeaningful way yet is he knows
his military is completely greenand doesn't know what they're
doing.
The problem is, once you act,then everyone has a data point.
His big comparative advantageright now is everyone's afraid
of him because of the mystery.

(01:11:14):
They don't know what's going tohappen.
I don't think the fear is likeif you came to a head-to-head
fight between NATO and call itthe Eurasian Alliance or
whatever.
I don't think that's all thatscary and like yeah, nato
soldiers don't have combatexperience like you would get in
eastern ukraine.
But they are very mentallyprepared, like they're well
trained, they have betterdoctrine, they have better

(01:11:37):
equipment uh, they're used toworking together.
So they are.
They're mentally more prepared.
If I could make a really finedistinction that I hope you'll
understand.
They're mentally prepared,they're just not psychologically
prepared, but the other side'snot either.
And they also also suck rightLike just in military, in like
sheer military terms like NATOwould just fly circles around

(01:11:58):
them.
To end on on a hopeful note here, I would say I spent a lot of
time in a NATO military.
I think NATO militarily is thegreatest alliance, the greatest
force history has ever known.
But as a political allianceit's a completely dysfunctional
mess and the best thing militarypeople like myself can do.

(01:12:21):
If we do have to go to war,it's like, okay, the politicians
finally sorted their shit out,let's go be the rock star
military alliance that we are.
In Ukrainians we have thisgreat term.
I love it.
I use it all the time.
I'm thinking about getting ittattooed on me.
It's pretzlium razum.
We work together In NATO likepretzlium razum.

Frank Radford (01:12:38):
So is there a prospect of you possibly getting
back into uniform?

Dave Smith (01:12:41):
My absolute dream would be if they'd let me rejoin
the Canadian army and just bethe chief instructor at the
infantry school and just tellyoung soldiers I went to World
War III and it was exactly theway the sergeant majors told me
it would be.
So take this stuff veryseriously, because digging a
trench and learning how to useoverhead concealment will save

(01:13:03):
your life, and the fightabsolutely is coming and I don't
want my country's nextgeneration of young men to get
slaughtered, which unfortunatelyright now I think they would.

Frank Radford (01:13:12):
People must appreciate what you've done.

Dave Smith (01:13:14):
Yeah, yeah, thanks, phone the chief of defense.
Tell her that you said that.

J. Alex Tarquinio (01:13:18):
Dave Smith.
Thank you so much forgenerously making time to speak
with us three times.
I'm certain that our listenerswill really benefit from your
many insights.
Yes, dave.

Frank Radford (01:13:27):
We're indebted to you for the time you spent with
us.
And yes, dave, we're indebtedto you for the time you spent
with us and it's been aprivilege, and those medals they
speak volumes.
And good luck.
And that's it from theDelegates' Lounge.
We'd like to thank our esteemedguests who have graciously
allowed us to share theirhard-earned insights into what

(01:13:49):
really matters.
And then there's you, ourlisteners, who we hope are
sufficiently edified to clamorfor more of the same.
Do drop in for a weekly episodeon Thursday, or from time to
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(01:14:11):
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Until next time, keep calm andcurious.