Transcript
A (0:06)
You ladies and gentlemen of the press have been less than honest according to the American people. What's going on in this country? We're dealing with Hitler revisited.
B (0:15)
This is the Scott Horton Show.
A (0:18)
Libertarian foreign policy, mostly. When the president does it, that means that it is not a liberty. We're gonna take out seven countries. They don't know what the they're doing.
B (0:29)
Negotiate now.
A (0:31)
End this war.
B (0:33)
And now, here's your host, Scott Horton. All right, y', all, introducing Danny Davis, former lieutenant colonel in the army, host, of course, of the Daniel Davis Deep dive on the YouTube, analyzing all the wars and particularly Iran right now. Welcome back to it. How you doing, Danny?
A (0:54)
I'm doing well, Scott. Thanks for having me back. Always a pleasure to be here.
B (0:58)
Great, man. Good to talk to you again. And, you know, we got to talk about some Iran stuff, but, you know, I just got off the line with Larry Johnson talking Iran stuff, so maybe I should start with asking you some Ukraine stuff. Are you up to date on at least more or less the battle lines in the east, and, and can you tell us how much they've changed over say, the last couple of months or not and what difference it makes?
A (1:25)
Yeah, there, there was, and there's some debate about the causes of it. But when you just look at the, the graph, the chart that shows how many square kilometers of territory Russia gained going back into, I want to say, late 20, 23, early 24, somewhere around there, you have a steady progression, and you see it goes up. And I think it would be like 794 square kilometers is the most they got in a single month. And that happened during the spring or summertime. And then you see a dip when the weather gets bad. And then the January, February, March time frame, the last two years ago of this graph that I'd seen showed a dip in that period of time. Then they get in the spring, the weather gets better, things start going back up. This year you had about the same December that you've, that they've had in the past. And then all of a sudden in January and February, maybe it was, I'm sorry. No, it was January was the same then. February, March. It's like Russia just stopped fighting. I don't know what they had done. I don't know what happened there because honestly, I've been so focused on the Iran war. But when you look at the amount of territory they actually lost, 37 square kilometers, which is in terms of a whole country, it basically means almost nothing changed any hands. And then they, they, I think they gained 25 in the month of February. So basically a net over two months of nothing. It was almost a wash. But there's still a lot of fighting going on, a lot of people being killed, drones flying back and forth on the same side. But it's unclear exactly why all of a sudden there was a stop. Since April has started back then, Russia's back on, on its offensive again. They're starting to make some moves and so now they're starting to pick up territory and inflict casualties. But the Ukraine side, one of the things that's partially responsible for this, I think in February they launched a couple of fairly sizable counter attacks in the, in the Donbass area. One around, let's see, I think it was several Donetsk area or. Yeah, I think it was around that period. That area somewhere in the center, basically in the middle of the zone. And they went on a couple of pretty sizable offensive operations and they gained back some territory, which is why we saw a dip there. But like all these others, everything that they've done, whether you're talking about the foray into K you a year and a half or so ago, the operation to cross the DPA river in Crinky, these things and, and what they did in, in Kans six, five or six months ago, those things have temporary success, but they're always temporary because they don't have the manpower to hold anything. They have and they definitely don't have the manpower to cause any kind of a general offensive to where they'll just start rolling the lines back in the other direction. They, and that's exactly what we've seen happen here, is that the gains that they made over that two couple of month period have now been largely lost already. And Russia's now back on the offensive again. And all indications are that there's going to be another big push here in the late spring or early summer. A lot of signs about assets being built up, etc, it looks like Russia is going to make another big push. And like all these, it's going to matter what the, the personnel is and what the personnel situation is on the Ukraine side, which continues to be what really bad morale is low because they still keep grabbing people off the streets. In fact, they're having to do it in greater numbers because they just can't, you know, come even close to offsetting the losses by normal recruiting methods. So that's the only thing left to them. One other benefit, a couple of benefits on the Ukraine side that is also responsible for the slowdown on the Russian side, is that they after, when this offensive period began in 2024, it exposed a lot of the, the corruption on the Ukraine side that many of these fortifications they were supposedly have built and paid for were just basically people stealing money. And a lot of the equipment was just piled up somewhere in a corner. Never got turned into anything. Well, they got that apparently fixed because now on the, some of the fortifications they have since built are, are like world class. I mean, from some of the things that I've seen video of, it's really, really good. The big, the big problem for the Ukraine side is they don't have enough men to man them and to make the, the maximum benefit from them that they can, because you can have the greatest fortification in the world. But if you can't keep fire on them and you can't keep them covered from multiple angles, then the other side can breach them. And especially if they find a place where you can't cover it. It's, it's, it's pain taking. It's, it's the hard work, but you can do it. You can get through. And once you break through now that it's hard to get that recovered. So that's part of the reason for the slowdown on the Russian side. But now then, like I say, they're starting to pick that back up. And bottom line is we remain in a war of attrition to where the much bigger Russian side is going to continue to have its, its way on the, on the Ukraine side. And they just can't match the numbers. And no matter how heroically they fight, no matter how great some of these counter attacks are, they don't have staying power. This just, it just doesn't exist. So in a certain sense, maybe it's like, hey, you can either die sitting in the trench or you can die offensively. Maybe better to die on your feet charging the enemy than die just waiting for a drone to fall on your head. I don't know. I'm totally just speculating there because I haven't heard anything on the Ukraine side. But what we can see is that they do things that militarily just are not going to make any difference. And it's just, it's just a slow grind. And for, for various reasons, some of which are evident, some more opaque, Russia has chosen not to really put the foot on the gas. And they're apparently content to just the slow grind down, even though some of the public opinion in Russia is actually starting to get a little agitated at the Russian side. This is something we haven't seen Much of as far, at least in the first four years. But something happened, Scott, when they crossed over that threshold. I think we're at like day 115, 26, if I'm not mistaken, something like that. When they crossed over the number of days that the USSR won World War II, from the time the Nazis invaded in September 1941 until Berlin, and I think it was April 1945, people said, Hang on, our greatest generation won this great military. And it took all this time and, and then now here, after the same amount of time, we're at war and we still don't even have all of the don boss. And so people are starting to grumble a little bit, and that is eed into some of President Putin's overall approval numbers. But you got to keep it in context. You have Putin at, I think it's like one poll that had it as low as 65, others is around 80, which is down from 87 than it had been before. So it's come down a little bit, but it's still, I mean, in the stratosphere to anything anybody in the west is ever even dreamed about. So you got to keep that in context because too many people in the west are going, look, he start, he's, he's, he's proven he's human. Putin, he's going to start losing support and now maybe we can win the war. No, you're not going to win the war. People are agitated, but they're not like we're losing the war. They're just mad that you're not pushing harder and eventually you're going to end up winning because there's nothing is going to save the Ukraine side. Let's understand that whatever happens with morale or anything else, nothing is going to change the situation on the front line in the, in the, from the, at the point of the spear for the Ukraine army, because you just don't have enough, you don't have enough ammunition, etc, and they are getting better at the drones. I'll say this is part of this normal process of, of action, counteraction, reaction, you know, and then you just keep on iteration, going through with, you know, one side comes up with a new drone, other side comes up with a way to defeat it, and then they have their own. And then the other side, it works for a while and so forth. And so we've gone through like several iterations of this. And the Ukraine side has gotten really good at drones and the Russian side, I did interview one on my show not long ago, who was fighting in There and they, they say it's no joke. They definitely have some skills in that. But of course the Russians do too. And the Russians have mass. So even if you got great technology here and the other side can even come close to matching it, but then they can, you know, substantially double it, even possibly in volume, then it's not going to matter what you can do. And that's why this remains a lost case for the Ukraine side. And the longer the war goes on, the greater the eventual cost for loss will be the Ukraine, the greater number of dead men that they will have, that they can never recover and the greater the destruction on the land. Other than that, it's going great.