Speaker 1: A twenty eight to fifty five car see talk station.
Speaker 1: Happy Tuesday extra special always because you get to hear
Speaker 1: Daniel Davis with a Daniel Davis deep die from the
Speaker 1: former retired lieutenant colonel talking. Of course we'll talk to
Speaker 1: Ukraine and Russia. Welcome back to the program, my friend.
Speaker 1: It's always a pleasure to have you on the show.
Speaker 1: Always great to be here, Brian, looking forward to it.
Speaker 1: Another day, another missile strike. It's depending on which article
Speaker 1: you read. Russian missile strike attack kills four in Kharkiv.
Speaker 1: And then there's another one says five killed, twenty four hospitalized,
Speaker 1: and the missile striker and Kharkiv again the fog of war.
Speaker 1: You never can't quite get a clue on how many
Speaker 1: people have been injured or killed or died. But another day,
Speaker 1: another missile strike. What's is the landscape changing since we
Speaker 1: talked last tesday? Daniel? Are we still where we were?
Speaker 2: Well, there hasn't been a whole lot of ground action.
Speaker 2: There's just continue with the creeping a east or westward
Speaker 2: movement by the Russian forces that hasn't stopped. But Russia
Speaker 2: seems to be spending a lot more time hitting these
Speaker 2: these missile strikes deeper into the Ukraine heartland, especially in
Speaker 2: the u the Kharkivrea, as you mentioned, there going after
Speaker 2: energy and electric production facilities, which keeps on limiting their
Speaker 2: economic capacity to sustain the war. But there's also been
Speaker 2: a recent upturn upturn in the use of specific drones
Speaker 2: deep inside of Ukraine, and that's been a bit of
Speaker 2: a change and we'll we'll have to wait to see
Speaker 2: what it portends, but they've been using a lot of
Speaker 2: these fiber optic drones deep inside behind the lines, which
Speaker 2: either implies that the range of these things has been
Speaker 2: significantly increased or that there are Russian partisans operating behind
Speaker 2: the lines in larger numbers, and especially in two specific
Speaker 2: areas around the Kupiansk and in the Sumi region of Ukraine.
Speaker 2: It's just been devastating as you've spend one drone after another,
Speaker 2: and if you're not familiar with these fiber optic cables,
Speaker 2: they can't be jammed, so if they fly, they will
Speaker 2: kill something and so far the Ukraine doesn't have an
Speaker 2: answer to it, and the Russians are starting to use
Speaker 2: more and more of them. And if you weaken the
Speaker 2: lines behind the lines, then that means that at some
Speaker 2: point you're going to weaken the fabric up at the
Speaker 2: front line.
Speaker 1: Are you're talking about something along the lines of it.
Speaker 1: Used to be the tow missiles they had a.
Speaker 2: Exactly the same Yeah, told me so, which has a
Speaker 2: tiny of like a hair fiber optic cable or the
Speaker 2: missile flew into it. Well, now they've used it the
Speaker 2: same technology.
Speaker 1: In the drones. Wow, because obviously at least in the
Speaker 1: early days I think those came out well, like in
Speaker 1: the eighties or something like that. I mean, they're they
Speaker 1: were limited in terms of the distance because of course
Speaker 1: the limitations of having a fiber optic cable connected to
Speaker 1: the missile. That's exactly right.
Speaker 2: Yeah, you have to have a spool that it unspools
Speaker 2: as it flies, and you can barely see it. I
Speaker 2: mean you can obviously you can see it when you're
Speaker 2: on there, but you know, I mean even ten feet
Speaker 2: away you have a hard time seeing it's that thin.
Speaker 2: But it's enough to get the the signals so that
Speaker 2: the thing can be driving on target and you literally
Speaker 2: have something like HD video on the on the drivers
Speaker 2: i mean on the operators handle and obviously you know
Speaker 2: you have some issues obviously you can't fly around trees
Speaker 2: because then it gets tangled up, but you can get
Speaker 2: it on target. It's been very just devastating effective in
Speaker 2: the Sumi region especially now.
Speaker 1: Are these and I'm sure everything has some sort of
Speaker 1: military target benefit like power plants and that I get
Speaker 1: all day long, But when you're hitting buildings with these
Speaker 1: where they just civilians are there, and coupled with the
Speaker 1: point that it's further and further inland within the interior
Speaker 1: of Ukraine, are these designed to be more of psychological winds,
Speaker 1: like you know, posing the the real genuine existential threat
Speaker 1: for the Ukrainians. And oh my god, the Russians really
Speaker 1: are advancing. Look how far in they got with that
Speaker 1: most recent missile strike.
Speaker 2: I don't think so, because Russia has a relatively I mean,
Speaker 2: they've ramped up production, but it's still comparatively limited, and
Speaker 2: so these things are very valuable and they don't just
Speaker 2: spend them for I think psychological effect very oftentimes, at
Speaker 2: least what the Russians are claiming, and there does seem
Speaker 2: to be some justification for it that some of these
Speaker 2: buildings they hit are where the Ukraine side is housing
Speaker 2: troops or where they were in some cases recently there's
Speaker 2: been Western trainers and some of these Western people who
Speaker 2: have been fighting for Ukraine have been stationed where they
Speaker 2: think they've been safe in the rear to have this,
Speaker 2: you know, civilian buildings be used to house these people,
Speaker 2: and all of a sudden, Russia is saying, yeah, actually
Speaker 2: nothing's safe. And by the way, that's also another product
Speaker 2: of the growing number of Russian partisans on the rush
Speaker 2: on the Ukraine side of the line of contact. And
Speaker 2: as I had on a show last week with a
Speaker 2: former NATO officer at Switzerland, he said that there is
Speaker 2: growing belief that there could be a rise of an
Speaker 2: actual partisan conflict in some of the rear cities like Odessa,
Speaker 2: like Kharkips City, and then other these areas in between,
Speaker 2: like where some of these missile strikes are coming. So
Speaker 2: that's a big problem for the Ukraine side, and they've
Speaker 2: actually conducted a thousand raids to try to find some
Speaker 2: of these, but it's starting to be a real problem
Speaker 2: in the rear well.
Speaker 1: If that is a growing concern and more and more
Speaker 1: folks are moving over and embracing sort of the Russian
Speaker 1: side of the equation, that presents a major intelligence problem.
Speaker 1: For the Ukrainians because someone's going to ferret out to
Speaker 1: the Russians where these soldiers are hiding.
Speaker 2: Well, clearly, that's that's exactly what's going on right now.
Speaker 2: That's the only way you can get these even the
Speaker 2: drone strikes with the fiber optic tables deep behind Ukraine lines.
Speaker 2: Almost the only way you can do that is either
Speaker 2: have partisans tell you where they are, or you are
Speaker 2: the partisans themselves are operating the drones. So it's you're right,
Speaker 2: it's a real problem.
Speaker 1: Well, also a corollary problem you and I talked and
Speaker 1: I have talked about before in the past, but I've
Speaker 1: just seen, you know, since our last comeration more reports
Speaker 1: Ukraine soldiers deserting their posts.
Speaker 2: Yeah, and there's a new category also that was also
Speaker 2: revealed in since you and I have talk last, is
Speaker 2: that there are and the quote was, hundreds of thousands
Speaker 2: of Ukrainian men just refusing to fight. So when they say, hey,
Speaker 2: like we want to conduct this this defensive counter attack
Speaker 2: here against the Russians in the in the po Krowsk area,
Speaker 2: actually over the last twelve hours, many of them are
Speaker 2: just refusing. They're saying, no, we're just not going to go.
Speaker 2: So it's just a compounding problem because listen, I mean,
Speaker 2: how are you going to be motivated to risk your
Speaker 2: life on an attack when you can see on your
Speaker 2: own news feed that Trump is aggressively trying to figure
Speaker 2: out how he's gonna end this war. Is he going
Speaker 2: to take the you know, as payment the rare earth
Speaker 2: minerals from the Ukraine side and all that. So you
Speaker 2: see used to get ready to talk to Vladimir Putin,
Speaker 2: you know that the war is effectively over. You're just
Speaker 2: figured out how it's going to end. You don't want
Speaker 2: to be one of the last ones to die for
Speaker 2: a war that's already over and we're seeing the results
Speaker 2: of that battlefield.
Speaker 1: Well, and isn't it an interesting reality that Donald Trump
Speaker 1: and the United States alone might have that impact. What
Speaker 1: about all of the other countries who have been pushing this,
Speaker 1: I mean, Britain was pushing arming Ukraine and the rest
Speaker 1: of the NATO country are the ones that were being
Speaker 1: so alarmist about the encroachment by the Russians And they're
Speaker 1: going to be in our back door and oh my god,
Speaker 1: this is an existential threat to the existence of the
Speaker 1: European Union. Or whatever, and you and I have pointed
Speaker 1: out that that's just it's not within the realm of possibility,
Speaker 1: at least you and I perceive it to be that way.
Speaker 1: But where's everybody else? I'm sort of asking, well.
Speaker 2: This I also yesterday afternoon you had to Keir Starmer
Speaker 2: meet with not just Deeltenberg, Mark Rutcha, the new NATO
Speaker 2: Secretary General, and they're still talking like it's the second
Speaker 2: or third month of the war. Yes, we're gonna uk said,
Speaker 2: We're going to give more support, ammunition, training, and everything
Speaker 2: else to Ukraine in twenty twenty five than in any
Speaker 2: other year of the war so far. And it just
Speaker 2: boggles my mind. What are you trying to accomplish when
Speaker 2: you have Donald Trump sitting there saying we're doing the
Speaker 2: exact opposite, trying to wind it down, and you're talking
Speaker 2: about send it up now. If his thought is well,
Speaker 2: we'll just do this to keep the pressure on Putin
Speaker 2: so that he'll make a better deal. I mean, that
Speaker 2: train left the station a long time ago. That's not
Speaker 2: gonna happen. There's no pressure you can bring to Putin
Speaker 2: that's gonna bear, or it would already have been done.
Speaker 2: And yet we seem disconnected at the highest levels in Europe,
Speaker 2: even from what Trump's doing much less battlefield reality.
Speaker 1: Well, on the heels of our moments ago discussion about
Speaker 1: how the Ukrainian soldiers aren't even fighting and they can't
Speaker 1: replenish the front line troops. Who in the hell are
Speaker 1: they going to apply this training to? Daniel? I mean,
Speaker 1: who are you gonna train?
Speaker 2: That's exactly the disconnect I'm talking about.
Speaker 1: Oh my well, pivoting over Tulsa Gabbart, Cash, Mattel, where
Speaker 1: are you on these? And good, bad, indifferent? How are
Speaker 1: we looking on this?
Speaker 2: Yeah, Tulsi Gabbert in particular is in my view, the
Speaker 2: best cabinet level pick that Trump has made, bar none,
Speaker 2: and I mean all of them. And she's also facing
Speaker 2: the most fierce resistance of any of them, precisely because
Speaker 2: she's the most qualified, meaning that she will actually faithfully
Speaker 2: do the job, which she said in her inner statements
Speaker 2: that she's gonna faithfully tell the president what the intelligence
Speaker 2: assessments actually are, meaning she's not going to swear it
Speaker 2: and bend it because of a perceived bias that she
Speaker 2: wants or that the you know, the establishment in Washington,
Speaker 2: which almost always reflectively wants whatever the d n I
Speaker 2: says to the President to be Yeah, we have to
Speaker 2: use military force here. That's what's happened quite frankly most
Speaker 2: of the time in the past, and what the industry
Speaker 2: in Washington really wants. And so they have just brought
Speaker 2: out the knobs against her. It doesn't look like it's
Speaker 2: going to succeed. There's been a couple of key senators
Speaker 2: and just in the last twelve or twenty or eighteen
Speaker 2: hours that have come out and said out of the
Speaker 2: intel community, they're going to vote for her, because it's
Speaker 2: just it's an eight to nine vote just to get
Speaker 2: her out of committee, to get her into the the
Speaker 2: overall Senate vote, which apparently is supposed to happen today.
Speaker 2: If she gets through that, and then I think that
Speaker 2: it's likely that she's going to be confirmed, but it's
Speaker 2: it's going to be a tight one. But it's one
Speaker 2: that I think Trump will will benefit from more than
Speaker 2: any other.
Speaker 1: So what I'm hearing is then she is not someone
Speaker 1: like we've had before, married to the military industrial complex
Speaker 1: and seeking to perpetuate it.
Speaker 2: She is an arms length distance from them because she
Speaker 2: doesn't want to be swayed by that her whole career.
Speaker 2: I mean, she she took all kinds of heat from
Speaker 2: the Democratic Party because also she is not anybody's tool.
Speaker 2: She's not anybody's puppet, as she said before, and that
Speaker 2: got her kicked out of the Democratic Party. She was
Speaker 2: a rising star in the Democratic Party, but she was
Speaker 2: also an honest broker. And they don't want an honest broker.
Speaker 2: They want somebody who was going to play the game. Well,
Speaker 2: there's on the Republican side a similar kind of constitution.
Speaker 2: And see, they want someone who's good, but only if
Speaker 2: they can control them, and she can't be controlled, and
Speaker 2: so that scares a lot of them, so they don't
Speaker 2: want her in there. Uh. And that's why we need
Speaker 2: her in there, because she'll just tell the truth, even
Speaker 2: if it's if the truth is the intelligence says we
Speaker 2: need to use military force, she'll tell him that. But
Speaker 2: if it says no, this won't succeed, and the intelligence
Speaker 2: says that this is not a good place to go,
Speaker 2: she'll tell him that too. That's what we need in
Speaker 2: that position, all right.
Speaker 1: And pivoting over to cash Betel.
Speaker 2: Honestly, I don't have a lot of knowledge about him.
Speaker 2: I I've got limited bandwidth, and I just haven't been
Speaker 2: able to focus much on that when I go there.
Speaker 1: You know, that's quite all right. And I just got
Speaker 1: out on the heels of a conversation about our southern
Speaker 1: border and Pete Hegseeth is considering maybe launching military strikes
Speaker 1: against the cartels in Mexico, And you know, being the constitutionalist,
Speaker 1: I am uh and I I understand the value of
Speaker 1: easily eradicating evil actors in the world. But you know,
Speaker 1: if if an evil actor is in my country and
Speaker 1: some other kind of decides to start launching missiles into
Speaker 1: my country, as good intentions as that may be, I
Speaker 1: might view it as an act of war. What's your
Speaker 1: take on doing that? Because we've you know, we've blown
Speaker 1: up targets literally in the four corners of the world
Speaker 1: with rockets and just sort of random attacks out of nowhere.
Speaker 1: I've always been sort of suspicious of our ability to
Speaker 1: actually do that.
Speaker 2: Well, our ability to actually take out a target anywhere
Speaker 2: in the world is substantial, yes, and we can. We
Speaker 2: have the capabilities, We have the technical capabilities, intelligence capabilities
Speaker 2: and all that. But I am with you on this one,
Speaker 2: and I know that there's a lot of different views
Speaker 2: on Some of my close friends and colleagues have different
Speaker 2: views than I do. But I am a staunch defender
Speaker 2: of defending the border. Let's defend our border, let's prevent
Speaker 2: anybody from coming in. If we have nefarious actors, we
Speaker 2: should use law enforcement or military whatever to take out
Speaker 2: that threat to our country in our country. But going
Speaker 2: into another country, I think is a legal issue. It's
Speaker 2: an international rules based situation because exactly what you said,
Speaker 2: I don't ever want a president where some China, Russia,
Speaker 2: any of other country can say, well, there was a
Speaker 2: bad actor of ours in your country, so we just
Speaker 2: took them out. We don't want that and we would
Speaker 2: never tolerate it. So I don't think that. I think
Speaker 2: that we should not do that tier. But there's a
Speaker 2: bigger issue to me. You go after the cartails, you
Speaker 2: make it a war in the cartels, they will bring
Speaker 2: the war back to you. And as bad as a
Speaker 2: lot of the stuff is right now, it's not been
Speaker 2: open warfare. And just look in Mexico what the cartels
Speaker 2: can do when they get mad and they start trying
Speaker 2: to strike back. We don't want that to happen on
Speaker 2: our soil.
Speaker 1: Well, and Lord knows what the open borders we've been
Speaker 1: dealing with, and the ten to fifteen million people, a
Speaker 1: lot of whom were members of various gangs. They're firmly
Speaker 1: entrenched in our country. They could start launching terrorist attacks,
Speaker 1: and you know, I can see the reprisals coming, and
Speaker 1: it does indeed concern me. Daniel Davis Deep Dive. Find
Speaker 1: him online. You'll find his podcasts and we'll always find
Speaker 1: it here in fifty five k see the talk talk
Speaker 1: station every Tuesday beginning at eight thirty. Love the conversations, Daniel,
Speaker 1: I help you have a fantastic week, My friend.
Speaker 2: Same to you and Lis see you next Tuesday.
Speaker 1: Take care Brother eight forty two at fifty five KRC,
Speaker 1: the talk station. How he can stick around. Phone lines
Speaker 1: are open, feel free to call. We got a little
Speaker 1: bit of time between now and the end of the
Speaker 1: program to talk, so if you've got something you want
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