Daniel Davis Deep Dive

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:00):
A twenty nine on a Tuesday. It is that time
of week. I always look forward to it. I know
you do too as well. To retired Lieutenant Colonel Daniel
Davis for the alliteratively titled Daniel Davis Deep Dive. Find
him online wherever you get your podcast, look for Daniel
Davis Deep Dive. You'd be glad you did, because he
has a great He does a great job explaining the
complicated realities of war, which we've been out a roll

(00:22):
on this one. Daniel Davis, Welcome back to the fifty
five KRCY Morning Show. My friend, always a pleasure.

Speaker 2 (00:27):
God with the morning. Tell you Brian, good to see you.

Speaker 1 (00:29):
Hey, I can see you, and the technical issues have
been resolved. I see Joe Streckers back where he belongs
to the production boost. So those details ironed out now.
I mean I was doing Dealer's Choice last week. We're
a pick a topic. I just wanted to start on
the rush of Ukraine situation this morning because I saw
a couple of articles and headlines I kind of wanted
to bounce off you and get your reaction. First Off,

(00:52):
you've documented, explained many many times the precarious situation, the
Ukrainians are in relative to the strength of Russia's military.
Ukraine's running out of soldiers, warm bodies, They're short on equipment,
They're begging the world for assistance and help, and YadA, YadA, YadA.
I saw this article, and while the article does acknowledge,

(01:14):
you know, it's like the fog of war. The numbers
are a bit fuzzy, but a lot of Ukrainian soldiers
are deserting. And the one article I read was Ukrainian
prosecutors handling more than three hundred thousand desertion cases. The
number of people deserting and the number of people deserting
within any given time frame, regardless of the overall number,

(01:34):
is pretty substantial. That this is a part of the
problem they're facing that I wasn't even aware of. I
get the concept of desertion, but if you can't get
your own citizens to fight against the Russians, I mean,
this is just another domino falling for Ukraine. Do you
think these figures are accurate? Is that kind of your

(01:54):
understanding of what's on the front lines in the battle.

Speaker 2 (01:58):
They are accurate, And I can tell you I have
firsthand knowledge from a former cabinet official in the first
couple of years of the Zelenski administration out of Kiev,
and they said that the situation is generally worse than
what's being reported because they try to put a cap
on all the bad news. You have a combination of
several things working together that are fatal to the Ukraine.

Speaker 1 (02:21):
Side.

Speaker 2 (02:22):
Number one is the desertions you mentioned like that. I
think that they're working three hundred thousand. They've had one
hundred and sixty one thousand between January first and October
thirty first. I don't know what the numbers are for
the month of November, but it was one hundred and
sixty one thousand. Then at the same time you had
approximately two hundred thousand men of between the ages of

(02:42):
eighteen and twenty two flee the country.

Speaker 1 (02:45):
They left.

Speaker 2 (02:46):
You have somewhere around seventeen thousand force mobilizations per month
that they bring in, and then there's the it's still
a state secret, but some huge number of casualties per month.
And when you see the number of men that are
force mobilized then come up and get wounded, of those
that fight, then the number that flee because of that
they left the country, and the desertions, you see that

(03:08):
they are literally physically shrinking by a substantial portion every month,
while the Russian side continues to grow every month because
they recruit, not force mobilized, but recruit more people than
they lose through all means every single month. So while
they're getting bigger and stronger, the Ukraine side is shrinking.
And it's just a mathematical certainty that at some point

(03:30):
math will take its effect and you will see a
collapse somewhere of the front. We're starting to see early
signs of that in multiple places along the front line.
Vladimir Putin had a press conference last night where he
announced several cities had had followed, etc.

Speaker 1 (03:44):
Pikrovosk was one that he claimed to be captured. This
the Russian proclaims final victory over Key City Pokrovosk on
eve of Putin Witkoff peace plan meeting. Timing is everything,
So they're going in with what arguably is yet another
in their cap on the front lines to negotiate a resolution,

(04:04):
which of course is going to require some land concessions,
which sounds like the land concessions are going to be growing.

Speaker 2 (04:10):
Well, here's the issue. It's number one. There's no question
that Russia announced that on the eve of Woodcoff's meeting intentionally.
The fact is they basically already had it almost ten
days ago. There was just a few outlying neighborhoods that
they had to clear, and I guess they were waiting
on this. I don't know, but I was wondering why
they haven't announced it, because they have had effective control

(04:31):
over it for nearly two weeks now. So that was Pokrovsk.
Now that there are about two thousand additional Ukrainian troops
that are physically surrounded in the sister city Mirnograd, there
are now no more possibility of them escaping. In the
Zaparisha area, there is another settlement that on the way
to the city of Zaparision now putting that at risk.
There is Krasny Leman has been seeing Russian advances. And

(04:55):
then one of the biggest ones is up in the
Kharkiv area, in a place called of Chansk has now
also been completely captured by the Russians. And then one
of the most important things Putin said that we didn't
know yesterday was that they now have plans to capture
the province of Nuper Krools start it's the city Denipro.

(05:15):
They now are going to add another oblast that they're
going to conquer and clear. That's news, and I'm sure
that's gonna have a big effect when WHITCOF gets to town.
But the bottom line for Russia is, y'all, I don't
know why y'all are talking about security guarantees and coalition
to the willing and stuff. He goes, because there's nothing
you can do that's going to stop us from taking

(05:35):
what we want on the battlefield. So you either have
a negotiated settlement on the terms we're willing to contemplate today,
or we will continue to go in at least up
to the Danepa River. And I don't see anything that
can stop the western side.

Speaker 1 (05:48):
And these regions you're referring to either captured or maybe
will be captured up to the Never River. Are they
Russian dominated? In other words, in early on we talked
about Crimea. I mean, it was logical for Russia to
want it was built made of primarily Russian sympathized leading
individuals that just happen to be in the Ukraine border.
I understand conceptually that are we starting to see the

(06:12):
Russians get into areas that are devoutly shall I say,
patriotically Ukrainian.

Speaker 2 (06:18):
No, no, they're not even close to that yet. Really,
when you look at demographically everything up to the Danepa
River is primarily ethnic Russian, and pretty substantial portion of it.
The further west you go from the Danepa River, then
the percentage just drop off perceptuously, and then it becomes,
you know, furthest to the west it's you know, anti
and violently anti Russian in the Ukrainian going forward. But

(06:41):
you're talking about the cities of Kharkiv and Odessa, which
are the two jewels that are still in Ukraine control.
Those are heavily Russian population, and of course they claim
historically they're Theirs, et cetera. But now then you see
that they're moving towards that one in the Kharkiv in
the north, because now they're into what's called the operation
space of the Kharki Obelist leading right to the city.

(07:03):
And then because of these shots that the West has
been doing through Ukraine to take out their two of
their big tankers in the so called Shadow Fleet, many
in Russia are now saying, all right, that's the last straw.
Now then the only way we can stop that is
to take Odessa. And so this this may open up
a new path to where they and they're going to
be on go beyond the Daneper River in the south,

(07:26):
even all the way to Danepper eventually. I don't know
how long it might take, but that seems to be
in the crosshairs now.

Speaker 1 (07:31):
Well, maybe the delay in negotiating a peace resolution is
they want to capture all of the regions that they
can claim are made up of these sort of Russian
loyalist people.

Speaker 2 (07:42):
And look, let's just be blunt here, take the emotions
out of it for a moment. Militarily, it makes a
lot of sense for the Russians to say, hey, why
do I want to worry about thinking about twenty eight
points or nineteen points and give you this, then i'll
take that. You can take this thing over here, when
they can say, we'll just keep going like we are
with the status quo until we don't have to negotiate anything.

(08:04):
We'll simply take by force of arms what we want.
The cost will be high, but they have the cost,
They have the resources to pay that, both in blood,
treasure and ammunition. They can do it. And so from
that perspective, because Russia is thinking long term. They're not
thinking just get to the end of the year or
just get to the end of this war. They're thinking
established security, you know, going forward for decades, et cetera.

(08:26):
And for them to pay that process is not that
high because the payoff for their country, as they see it,
is high. That's the problem that I don't think we've
come to grips with yet at the negotiating table.

Speaker 1 (08:37):
Well, and I'm sure that they're really looking forward to
say so they can call something a win in the
wind column after so many gimming the Soviet Union foul,
they lost a lot of regions and provinces, they things
move western. So I think they're in it for a
you know, a moral victory as well as the land
acquisition victory on top of everything. Would it would serve

(08:57):
as least incentive for the patriotic Rush want to continue
to fight this fight, unlike the Ukrainians who are apparently
fleeing the battlefield.

Speaker 2 (09:05):
Yeah, and Brian, it's stronger than that because it's not
just the ay of moral victory against Ukraine. It is
a massive victory against NATO. And that's how they would
see it because NATO has done everything in their power,
fifty nations, all the stuff that we've given, everything that
we've tried with training, with weapons, ammunition, the intelligence, support, targeting, support,

(09:26):
long range. If all of that fails, it won't just
be a paper victory. It will be a pretty substantial
victory that many around the world will observe and go,
holy smokes. Everything NATO tried to do failed. So it
is a big deal. And one of the reasons why
I think that we should say, let's don't get to
that point. Let's have an ugly negotiated deal now, so
that we can prevent them from getting all that kind

(09:48):
of a victory, at least a full one, because otherwise
it'll just look like we could do nothing and we
could not stop the Russians all the way up to
the border.

Speaker 1 (09:56):
Take your wins where you can get them. Apparently, one
more thing I have to ask in you know, moving forward,
in the aftermath of whatever this war leads to, whatever
solution negotiated or not. The breadbasket of the region Ukraine
talked about the fields, the grain, the abundance of all
these resources. Who in the hell is going to be

(10:18):
there to farm the land? Daniel Davis.

Speaker 2 (10:21):
Yeah, you know, there's plenty of people that will farm
it because it'll it'll just be under the Russian control,
but the people themselves will will still farm it. The
bigger problem, though, Brian, is that the amount of ordinance
that had been expended there and bombs and unexploded ordinance,
bomb fragments, et cetera, is so massive it's going to
take I bet more than a decade, probably a lot

(10:43):
more than a decade to get all that taken out.
And you're talking mines as well, so a lot of
that some of the best most fertile territory is sowed
with mines and unexploded bomb fragments, et cetera. And you've
got to get all that stuff cleared out before you
can even start to work in and no matter who
controls it. So that's something that's going to be negatively
affected for a long long time to come.

Speaker 1 (11:04):
It sure is. But given the gravity of that problem,
I would like to think some you know, international body
of folks, maybe like the Baby Blue Hats, could go
in and start solving that problem on behalf of humanity
given all the unexploded ordinance.

Speaker 2 (11:18):
Yeah, I mean, we still have people doing d mining
operations in Visa. There's no question did a lot of
people want to do that, but we've got to have
a security environment to allow it. That's the problem.

Speaker 1 (11:28):
Daniel Davis, retired Lieutenant Colonel. Find him where you get
your podcast, Daniel Davis Deep Die. Find him every week
here at eight thirty beginning on Tuesdays here in the
fifty five Case Morning Show. Very informative, very enlightening. I like, yes,
telling it like it is. You don't sugarcoat anything, Daniel.
We all need a healthy dose of that man to
really come to grips with what's going on.

Speaker 2 (11:49):
But we got to have a healthy job that's still
that we can get to something that actually can sustain
and be good for the outcome. If you don't do that,
then you're going to be left with whatever's left over.
Stop the Death's year and my goal I think in
the long run, Daniels. Until next week, have a great week,
my friend, my friend, Thanks for your time. Eight forty
one fifty five KRC