- 4/12/2025
Col. Daniel Davis returns for a hard-hitting Deep Dive into the widening gap between battlefield momentum and Western paralysis.
🇷🇺 Russian forces continue their methodical advance, gaining ground while NATO and Western leaders appear frozen — caught between rhetoric and reality.
🧠 Davis exposes the uncomfortable truth: strategy is missing, and the West is reacting instead of leading.
From Ukraine’s front lines to Washington’s war rooms, this analysis pulls no punches and asks the questions few dare to voice.
📉 Time is running out, and the implications are global.
#DanielDavis #DeepDiveAnalysis #RussiaUkraineWar #MilitaryRealism #WesternParalysis #NATOLeadershipCrisis #Geopolitics2025 #RussianAdvance #UkraineConflict #StrategicFailure #ColDanielDavis #DefenseAnalysis #WesternDecline #UkraineUpdate #RussiaNews #MilitaryBalance #UkraineWarUpdate #GlobalSecurityCrisis #RealityCheck #BattlefieldTruth
🇷🇺 Russian forces continue their methodical advance, gaining ground while NATO and Western leaders appear frozen — caught between rhetoric and reality.
🧠 Davis exposes the uncomfortable truth: strategy is missing, and the West is reacting instead of leading.
From Ukraine’s front lines to Washington’s war rooms, this analysis pulls no punches and asks the questions few dare to voice.
📉 Time is running out, and the implications are global.
#DanielDavis #DeepDiveAnalysis #RussiaUkraineWar #MilitaryRealism #WesternParalysis #NATOLeadershipCrisis #Geopolitics2025 #RussianAdvance #UkraineConflict #StrategicFailure #ColDanielDavis #DefenseAnalysis #WesternDecline #UkraineUpdate #RussiaNews #MilitaryBalance #UkraineWarUpdate #GlobalSecurityCrisis #RealityCheck #BattlefieldTruth
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NewsTranscript
00:00the russian federation continues its march westward it continues to increase its pressure
00:07almost all along the front lines the ukraine army for its part continues to fight valiantly
00:13but continues to lose ground nearly everywhere a couple of places they have gone on local
00:18counterattacks and have gained some territory but then like is the case in every situation
00:24they then lose it meanwhile on the western side you have leaders continuing to make lots of big
00:31proclamations but not followed by any action in fact nothing seems to happen at all other than
00:37the passage of time which continually worsens the ukraine's position and continually increases and
00:43strengthens the russian side to try to see if we can make some sense out of this and kind of
00:48catch the nuances here we have uh larry johnson back with his former ca analyst and friend of
00:54the show uh larry first of all just welcome back i'm glad to be here danny uh well listen uh yeah
01:00i don't know you've you've been to russia a few times you've met with some of the senior officials
01:04uh uh recently sergey lavrov which was a pretty amazing opportunity to actually have a conversation
01:09with him not many in the west ever get that opportunity uh so you have i think a better
01:14understanding from both the united states and the russian side of kind of what's real and what's
01:20fiction so we're really eager to have you on today and in fact you know this as some of the news has
01:25come out just in the last couple of days uh this out of the uh the ukrainian media it's saying that
01:30yeah russia's continuing to go forward uh and their operations reportedly intensify across the entire
01:36nearly 2 000 kilometer front line do you think that the russia is uh is running out of steam despite
01:42some of these headlines oh no no in fact um there's much talk about a big offensive coming up uh i
01:50maintain that the offensive has already started russia's put is operating all along the line of
01:57contact and not we're not talking you know uh platoon size or company size elements uh we're talking much
02:06larger than that and coordinated and really combined arms operations uh some of them are designed to
02:15uh force the ukrainians to relocate forces and the problem the ukrainians are now facing is
02:21they don't have enough strength to respond to all the points so uh in in the south and zaporizia in
02:28particular the russians have made significant progress over the last week uh they're moving into sumi
02:34which is up north at the very northern end of that uh let's call it the arc uh you know think of it
02:41like a moon half moon shape uh so at the top of that arc is sumi right next to the sumi is kursk
02:50so and then right in the middle sits uh donetsk and luhansk um previously the russians position was
02:59uh and their demand to okay you want to negotiate an end to this ukraine you've got to withdraw your
03:05forces from zaporizia and kerson and the donetsk and luhansk pull out and then then once you the
03:15the military activities stop then we can talk about how to bring an end to this but until then we're not
03:22going to stop uh now i think we're looking at the very high likelihood russia is going to take sumi
03:31uh they're going to push all the way to the dnieper river every bit of territory that is east of the
03:39dnieper will now be incorporated into russia they'll ultimately i think have a a referendum
03:46in each of those uh uh oblasts and give them a chance if they want to join russia then they'll
03:52be allowed to join russia and i suspect the majority here this is this is sumi right up in here i'm
03:58showing on the screen here now i think this is uh uh chernaheve uh district if i'm not mistaken
04:03right this this area up here right um and then just for people's understanding when you say the dnieper
04:09river that's the river that runs down uh approximately this this zone right here so
04:14this whole area right now which is ukrainian side uh you argue could become red that no i'm saying it
04:22will become red i don't say could my it will become red that's where this is headed because um putin um
04:32we've seen putin adjust the peace offerings over time back in march and april of 2022
04:42when this uh whole thing kicked off you know just three months after kicking off in february
04:48putin's offer was hey just allow the people of uh the donbass luhansk and donetsk to
04:58have the russian language and to be able to uh have some measure of independence and we'll pull all of
05:04our troops out and you know said no hell no we're not going to take that okay so they then that was
05:12in april by september russia then holds referendum not just in donetsk and luhansk but in zaporizhia
05:21and in kherson and the and the referendum question is do you want to rejoin do you want to leave ukraine
05:28and rejoin russia the the vote was overwhelming and people say all that you know the russians were
05:34cooking the votes no they weren't because the vast majority of people that live in those areas
05:39have grown up speaking russian as did zelinski he doesn't even speak good ukrainian so you know they
05:46opted to join russia okay that now became the next offer in june of 2024 those four provinces now ukraine
05:56get out you don't get to have those anymore and then uh just about a month ago uh putin signaled
06:04that look uh if they don't take this offer that's been on the table since june then we're we're looking
06:12at basically nova russia and nova russia new russia refers to that area that is basically east of the
06:19dnieper as well as some of the territory along the west bank which includes kiev or kiev you know
06:27however you want to pronounce it so um i think where i think where this is headed is russia's going to
06:34win it on the ground militarily there are other no rush they're certainly under no pressure uh the the
06:41economy is not crumbling and just you know despite cavoli's attempts uh a week ago general cavoli the
06:49european commander uh to pretend that oh yeah russia's suffering catastrophic losses but as he conceded
06:57yeah but they replaced them all and their army's grown to 1.5 million right right and in fact that
07:03since you bring that up with cavoli uh in addition to what you said uh or what you cited there he also
07:10tried to say yeah russia's kind of doing better but not really when he said this russia has been
07:16throwing a lot of troops and taking a lot of casualties particularly in the last month or two
07:21has that stalled across you know you were from harkiv down to herson basically the front
07:25or are there places where russia's making progress so russia has stopped making progress in kursk
07:33right now they haven't been able to dislodge the ukrainians um if we come all the way down the
07:39front along um chassev yard in the towns of lugansk if we go down to pokrovsk in in donetsk the russians
07:47attacks seem to have petered out they've decreased in the last couple of weeks significantly in number
07:53but the size and scope of the attacks seems to have petered out as well the ukrainians are in good
07:58positions they're in good defensive positions um they've improved some of their readiness and
08:02manpower situation um they are indeed producing large numbers of russian casualties um in a couple
08:10of minor places the ukrainians have actually gained some ground back but um but i i do not see the
08:17ukrainians being in imminent danger of collapse i do see the russians struggling to make the kind of
08:23gains they were making last autumn so if you just listen to that right there you think wow i i guess that
08:29we've reached some sort of uh frozen conflict and now then the ukraine side has picked up the the
08:35russian side is is weakening and they're running out of gas so wow this is probably a good time to
08:39make a negotiated settlement what say you he's a liar he he comes from a good long tradition of general
08:46west morland of vietnam we got the vietnamese on the run lights at the end of the tunnel
08:52the only thing they didn't realize was that light at the end of the tunnel was an onrushing train that
08:58was going to run their ass over and you know for cavoli to sit there and say that i mean it's just
09:07it's it it's not a matter of interpretation that just in terms of the amount of fires that are brought to
09:16bear on the battlefield even cavoli in his testimony admitted russia is producing more artillery shells
09:27than the united states and europe combined can produce yeah but we gave them the m triple seven
09:35yeah the m triple seven no longer is in production and when you shoot those barrels those barrels have
09:42to be replaced except we don't have any more in production i mean this the the the idiocy of this
09:50is is staggering but it explains it explains why we didn't win the war in iraq it explains why we
09:58didn't win the war in afghanistan why a bunch of goat herders with side arms and rifles beat our rear end
10:07after 20 years so yeah you know i was i was about to make that comment that what what he said there
10:14sounded uncomfortably similar to david petraeus who in congressional testimony wearing his uniform with
10:21all the medals on there just like cavoli when he told everybody that things were getting better in
10:25afghanistan the the afghan army was getting better we were we were starting to you know reverse the
10:31the momentum you know all those kinds of things which was all a lie at the time and now here this
10:37he's saying the same thing despite what we see on the battlefield now that that would be a great video
10:42to superimpose you know to play and contrast and then go back and pick up you know i don't know if
10:48there's any good video footage of westmoreland out of vietnam oh yeah i guess all these guys take that
10:53class at west point how to lie your ass off the college you know it's it's ridiculous yeah gary's
11:01an amazing guy i bet he'll before the show's over he'll probably come up with all three of those men
11:06uh but uh you know that it's it's not just cavoli because uh and i almost hesitate to use it but i'm
11:13going to do it anyway uh because uh ben hodges is being ben hodges again and he has a talk about
11:19that interpretation he sees things somewhat different than you do after 11 years of war
11:25russia still only controls about uh 20 percent of ukraine even though they had all the advantages
11:32and numbers uh and even though the united states uh especially recently has failed to uh provide
11:39the intelligence and capabilities for uh ukraine that we should um russia still cannot defeat ukraine
11:46they cannot knock ukraine out of the war and i think reports that somehow russia is gaining that's
11:52that's just not accurate i mean it's been eight months since uh ukraine went into kursk and only now
11:59is russia finally getting closer to pushing ukraine out of course but there still are ukrainian troops
12:07inside course and ukraine has now moved into belgorod so i think what we're seeing is a determined
12:16resistance by ukraine forces uh their defense industry is growing while at war uh russia meanwhile
12:23has enormous economic problems and i don't know how much longer they can keep doing what they're doing
12:30okay a number of things i want to talk about there but the the first one is uh he says yeah they've now
12:36gone into belg uh yeah belgorod okay this little you see this little white dot here that's that's where they
12:43were in belgorod they've now been pushed out so uh that was uh a just a pointless effort and then
12:50he's talking about there's been no operation up in curse but you see you know there's just a couple of
12:55very small uh fields uh little forest belts here and here that are left i think all the villages that
13:02they'd once held are now gone so that's that's only a matter of time before uh that's completely pushed
13:08out and then all of the casualties and i think i think you you were saying somewhere around 75 000
13:13ukrainian men died in this area for absolutely nothing and who knows how many died here so when
13:19he's saying russia isn't advancing but i mean just look at all this area here i think that's
13:24kind of evidence that russia is advancing somewhere yeah uh live map ukraine live map you i think that's
13:31what it's called uh all you do is do a time lapse there and the russians have been steadily moving
13:37forward now one of the reasons they're not launching what uh people like hodges thinks
13:42should be uh attempted a big arrow offensive with mass the forces and because the russians are
13:49minimizing casualties i heard that directly from one of the retired generals that uh um that i spoke with
13:56while while in russia i mean and he was you know he looked like he'd been cast out of hollywood as a
14:02general you know just a big imposing square square cut jaw and you know but uh and he spoke good english
14:09too which helped um but you know russia is trying to minimize their casualties and they're not conducting
14:16a war what what i find just outrageous coming out of hodge's mouth so russia is fighting nato
14:26who's using ukraine as a proxy russia is fighting uh an army that's equipped with artillery that's got drones
14:36that's got tanks that's got armored vehicles that's got full intelligence support from all of nato
14:46and has been progressing steadily to the west united states by contrast
14:55spent 20 years in afghanistan fighting guys that didn't have artillery that didn't have tanks
15:03that didn't have air force they didn't have fixed wing or rotary wing capability they didn't have
15:09overhead satellite and they kicked our ass we like to pretend oh we beat them yeah you beat a bunch of
15:18farmers with side arms and and and we want to sit here and critique russia over their lack of progress
15:28i mean it is we are so full of ourselves danny in this side of the ocean we are so damn blind we don't even
15:38see ourselves as we are we keep we imagine ourselves to be this big mighty power by god we're going to go
15:46into iran we're going to bomb and wipe out their nuclear program uh why is it that it's been 16 months
15:54with the houthis and you can't stop the houthis yeah yeah yeah i actually want to talk about that
15:59here in a few minutes uh but there was a couple of other things that are as a subset of what both
16:04he and cavoli said they both implied that the ukrainian army is actually getting better and that the
16:10russians running out of space but i want to show you something so you remember that the the original
16:15commander-in-chief for the ukrainian armed forces was uh zeluzhny and then he got he got replaced
16:21after allegedly not being successful enough they brought in serski well you may recall this from
16:25last uh last july where serski says i know how we will i know we will win and how and he's talking
16:33about turning the tables against russia that was last july and then now then the news here a couple
16:38of days ago from the same guardian is oops actually now that the ukraine's military chief must go a high
16:46profile former ukrainian commander has called the head of the country's military to step aside
16:51accusing him of a lack of strategic imagination and putting ukrainian soldiers lives at risk with
16:56borderline criminal orders uh bodan kratovich uh who quit as the chief of the azar brigade that's an
17:04interesting fact by itself in february partly so he could speak out says he believed that armed
17:08forces commander general oliv olexander serski must go and ukraine's military leadership must be shaken up
17:15now that's it's interesting that he says he must go because he hasn't had any success anywhere he's the
17:20one that led the kursk offensive that cost 70 000 lives that went into belgorod that tried to stop
17:26the russians all along the western the eastern front haven't had success but instead of replacing
17:31the commander how's about just stopping the war yeah yeah i mean this is uh this is reminiscent in
17:39a way towards the end of world war ii uh basically uh after the battle of kursk uh which took place in
17:49the summer of 43 the the german army was defeated there was no way it could recover the power it needed
17:57uh to to push the the soviets back and from then on it was just you know constant movement uh to the west
18:07ultimately with uh berlin being captured uh it should have ended really in into 43 start of 44 but it
18:16went on because there there's a bureaucratic inertia here and uh that that keeps going until it's just
18:23it's snuffed out so that's that's what i say the the the hopes to end this thing through negotiations
18:30it's not going to happen it's going to it's going to end on the battlefield and it'll end with uh ukraine's
18:35defeat russia's victory and uh see up to this point russia has not been fighting it as a war
18:41they've not mobilized on a war footing they're handling it as as it is described as a special
18:47military operation and you know i want to i want to comment on that point because we had uh andrei
18:52martyanov on our show earlier this week and he he made that same point he said and he explained the
18:59difference to western audience in ways that i hadn't really seen put so clear uh he said that
19:04you know we think it's just wordsmithing oh you're just calling it a special military operation
19:08instead of awards obviously that he said no there is a profound significant difference he echoed or
19:13actually i guess said the same thing you did about how russia is operating an smo they call it
19:19by minimizing casualties and minimizing target civilian casualties on the other side by
19:25right only going after military targets but he said if they turn this into a war if this goes into
19:30a full mobilization he said two big changes would happen number one we would no longer care about
19:37what got hit on the other side we would just go after what we needed to with much bigger
19:41casualty counts on the ukraine side and he said we would also lower our threshold for
19:47friendly casualties so we would take more risk that way in order to big swing this through i i'm pretty
19:53sure that you agree with those those definitions but my question to you is though do you think
19:58there's any risk that russia might adopt those inside ukraine as opposed to if they ever went in and
20:04fought nato uh i i think if they continue on their current trajectory no uh i don't see them right
20:13now mobile they don't need to mobilize they're again they're winning on the ground and they are uh what
20:21they have become is more aggressive on the perimeter and encountering nato isr uh you know they've had
20:29a couple of incidents last week where they went after a french a plane that was doing some collection
20:35and they hit it with some electronic warfare turned off its its guidance system so they had to the
20:41pilots of that aircraft had to navigate by geographic features to get back to their base
20:46um but at this point uh the russia has a they have a lot of cards they have not played and such as you
20:57know turning off all the satellites they the you know their s5 550 system is a satellite killer so they
21:05they could they could turn the lights off immediately for western intelligence and they'd be blind number one and
21:12their ability to target weapon systems would be curtailed as well because they're dependent upon
21:18a lot of that data flow from uh from satellites um they've now mobilized you know their army's already
21:24up to 1.5 million and they're still recruiting an average of 30 000 per month and all of those those
21:31troops are going through training they they get a full year of training before they're you know shoved
21:36into any kind of combat role uh but they also have enough manpower that they're rotating forces in
21:44and out so that you know the new forces come in they get hooked up with some experienced forces
21:49they get experience they get combat time the the guys have been there for a while get pulled out they
21:55get to go back and uh rest and recuperate you know it's actually russia's this is as you know
22:03that's the best school you can go to when you get to do it for real you know you don't have to do
22:09training exercises you're doing it you're doing it real world and uh the learning that takes place
22:15there is you can't match it uh i'm going to shift gears here just a little bit in a second to take a
22:22look at uh some of the current u.s uh actions here and where we're trying to go with this which is
22:27kind of part of why i call the uh the title here the western leaders paralysis uh but before i do one of
22:33our guests is asking a question here which i think is relevant to where we're about to go anyway
22:37and he said what do you think about the so-called chinese troops fighting for the russians i wanted
22:41to get your thought on that i figured that's how it was oh my god uh you know they they figured it's
22:48the same guys that they were calling north koreans before you know say you know these asians they all
22:53look alike you know it's sort of racist in that regard it was just a quick side story when i was in
23:00honduras we had a nurse from kansas that said how do you tell these hondurans apart they all look
23:05alike and i said well once you get to know them they don't they they're very distinct so one day i
23:11walked in on a group of hondurans that i was working with on a agricultural development project
23:16and they were all laughing and then they saw me they got real quiet so i knew they were talking about
23:20me and i said what's going on and they go promise you won't get mad i said no no they go
23:26you north americans you all look alike so i've heard that this this chinese thing's a fabrication
23:36i i don't know where they got these two guys from but you know the chinese are not sending their
23:41troops there to fight uh that's not a chinese thing the chinese are not uh they're they're not a bunch of
23:49warriors is the reality you know the last the last war that they attempted with vietnam they got the rear end
23:55kicked in 1979 so the chinese is focused more on industry manufacturing building ships uh but uh
24:06they're not about to go get involved in the war that way because russia doesn't need them right
24:11right right that's what i was going to say that china doesn't want to get involved they want to
24:14kind of stay balanced russia has said that they've said the same thing that china is is actually balanced
24:19he said the there may be some individual in persons come over and volunteer or something but
24:25that's nothing on the chinese uh official side because that's not what china wants but according
24:30to uh state department spokeswoman tammy bruce uh the chinese are involved to a degree china is a major
24:39enabler of russia in the war in ukraine china provides nearly 80 percent of the dual use items russia needs to
24:49sustain the war 80 percent comes from china as president trump has said continued cooperation
24:58between these two nuclear powers will only further contribute to global instability and make the united
25:04states and other countries less safe less secure and less prosperous i think that's an understatement
25:12is that an understatement is that an overstatement let's deal with the facts which of the three countries
25:19are responsible for killing over two million people over the last 60 years
25:25it's not russia it's not china i mean if you stack up the bodies in vietnam and the bodies in afghanistan
25:34the bodies of civilians uh in uh syria in iraq hell in gaza which we're enabling in libya you know somalia
25:46the only country that's really been a danger to the world unfortunately is us the united states
25:54we can't keep our damn hands to ourselves and yet we always project onto russia and china
26:00the kind of imperial meddling that we is well it's what we do the number of countries that were
26:06involved with overthrowing and interfering in their elections you know let's stay home and clean up our
26:13own cities let's educate our own children let's have some decent health care that's available to
26:20every american before we think we're going to go out and fix the world instead of breaking it no i just
26:27you know i i used to you know have some measure of respect for tammy on when she was you know saw on
26:34fox what a hack she's as bad as anything that joe biden had up front there yeah she doesn't look like
26:42count chocula but you know yeah i i was i was actually talking with gary before uh before we
26:50went on the show here today and we were kind of making that same comment we we'd said actually the
26:54same similar thing that you did i'm like you know some of the spokesmen for the biden administration we
26:59just kind of rolled our eyes is like what are you even talking about and you know and now here
27:05in the trump administration the same kind of thing now i think that there is i because i've heard from
27:09multiple sources that china is providing dual use uh capabilities for russia that they need etc
27:15um you know it's most civilian stuff that russia repurposes for somewhere else i have no doubts that
27:20that's that's true russia's china is not getting involved militarily because they don't want to they
27:24don't think they need to russia doesn't want them etc uh but the but it's a
27:29funny though just say that comment out there and it's just you know this over the top it's
27:34but a threat to american national security to global security etc and then just kind of say anyway moving
27:39on to the next question it's like wait if you believe that then why are you doing nothing about
27:43it and if you're doing nothing about it do you actually believe that that's a big threat to it
27:48whereas i see it as just that's just commerce well let and let's look at it from the russian standpoint
27:53you the united states are supplying m triple seven yeah artillery high bars attack us and
28:01patriot missiles and on top of that f-16s and targeting data and you're attacking us and you're
28:08killing our people that's not just dual use you are committing an act of war frankly that's what i think
28:16the russians should be saying should put us on notice and say basically cut it out or there will
28:22be a war you can't the united states wants to have it both ways because russia and china have a trade
28:30relationship but china is not providing russia with targeting data and russia is not providing uh china
28:37is not providing russia with any significant weapon capability because russia makes its own
28:43yeah i just that moment i love from cavoli he was talking yeah the russians have lost all these
28:48tanks and they've lost all these vehicles but yeah they've replaced them all and yeah the russians
28:54build 1500 tanks a year and we build 50 abrams and you go what and and actually we don't build them what we
29:04do is we take the old frames and and trick them up it's like taking you know your 67 mustang hey we're
29:12going to put new paint on it new wheels you know hey some flashy lights for god's sake man acknowledge
29:20that russia's light years ahead of us on the industrial production of military equipment yeah
29:25that's a fact um i want to go back to uh to tammy bruce here for a second because uh really to your
29:32point uh that you just made there about kind of what she's not saying that was one level at least you
29:37had some information in that one yeah what you're going to hear in this one here this is a little
29:41bit longer of a clip but i intentionally made it because it gets a little uncomfortable about
29:45how long it goes because of what she's not saying it took the preparation for this uh her statement
29:50here she was asked by a reporter that hey rubio said a week or so ago that we would know within a
29:57matter of weeks not months if russia was serious about wanting to have a negotiated settlement and he said is
30:02that still the case here's how she answered he had a press conference at the end of nato where he did
30:08go into very specifics when he was asked about the timeline is that we would know within a matter of
30:14weeks if russia was serious about peace he said not months not a year but a matter of weeks he said we
30:22would know uh and i i think that this goes to the argument that they've made even in the beginning of
30:29the the talks that some of the summits with russia in the first summit was as the secretary noted was
30:36to determine if they were serious these are active men with a a a term in which to get this done and
30:45we've been plus the lives affected don't we don't have time every day every week that goes by affects
30:52the quality of people's lives and and some people who are alive now will not be alive tomorrow so it is
30:57it is held with urgency it will be a matter of weeks and you of course you mentioned the attack on
31:04crevy re which is the uh i guess the hometown of president zelinski uh it is uh was a russian
31:12a federation ballistic missile strike in a residential neighborhood of that town uh it is further
31:19underscores president trump's uh urgent call for peace uh and he's uh affected by this uh it's
31:28long time to stop the death and the destruction and end this war all right i'm going to get to the
31:32corovia re part in a second because i know you have something to say on that uh but that whole first
31:37section she was asked is the steel situation that you're going to know within weeks if russia
31:42is serious or not implication if not what are you going to do etc and all she did was spend about
31:48a minute reiterating the question and then never even answered it but very demonstrative and so and
31:54and it just is like a waste of time what why are you even entertaining the questions if you're not
31:59going to answer anything and i wish the reporter had said the questioner had said um anyway like that i
32:04ask is it still uh what what do you make of her answer on that part well they're not listening to the
32:10russians it's real simple um the russians translate from their language into english and they say it in
32:19english which is we're not going to agree to any ceasefire the way you want if you want to bring it
32:25into this conflict deal with the fundamental causes number one that nato has been relentlessly expanding
32:33to our borders and that's got to stop you got to pull nato out of your bases and places like
32:40poland and romania that that's ultimately what's got has to happen stop it stop attacking us stop
32:48conducting your military exercises on our border that's number one stop using ukraine as a proxy
32:57stop arming it equipping it and then giving it a basically battle plan so they can attack us that has
33:03to stop that's number two and you know we're not going to agree to a ceasefire until those things
33:10are settled russia has been clear on that it's you know there's no mystery hey they they agreed uh okay
33:17yeah we'll we'll put a 30-day pause on attacking uh electrical infrastructure which russia claims that
33:24they've abided by and ukraine certainly has not they've been launching attacks uh then uh russia said okay
33:30will agree to allow the flow of grain and fertilizer out of the black sea but that was contingent upon you
33:37the united states getting the banking sanctions withdrawn so that the one bank that handles the
33:42agricultural uh commerce can process payments and the europeans went hell no we're not doing that
33:50so everything that russia has agreed to the united states has been unable to deliver on and yet they're
33:55saying oh russia's dragging its feet russia does not care that's what people need to understand
34:05russia's not sitting there you know wringing its hands and oh my god i i hope donald trump's not mad at us
34:12oh i i hope i hope we're still on his good buddy list no you know putin's been very they've been very
34:20direct and and you've heard both from uh lavrov and ribkoff uh the deputy foreign minister and
34:26over the course of the last week where they said hey you know we have yet to see any workable
34:33reasonable proposal out of the west we're waiting but we we don't have anything meanwhile though
34:40talks continue about normalizing diplomatic relations that's the good news yeah let's talk i i actually want
34:47to bring gary in on this because i i know he's got a lot of things to say he's he actually uh worked
34:52for a period of time with with tammy bruce if i'm not mistaken yeah uh so gary when you see stuff like
34:59this when you see these kind of comments that don't seem to be even including a lot of the facts that that
35:06larry just talked about i mean what what do you make of that well i make of it you know guys it's it's not
35:12often that you get to see somebody learn how to tap dance in real time yeah it was it was really quite
35:19something actually how she avoided the very thing that was right in front of all of us like that but
35:24uh you know she's she she did what she she uh what she thought she had to do and uh it's it's embarrassing
35:33because uh you know i think uh donald trump deserves more than that and she could have been more forthright
35:37but she wasn't so i think that also says something that uh as she approaches her job
35:44yeah and it's it's it's unnecessary because i mean there's there's nothing wrong with telling the
35:49truth uh i mean you know what trump says he wants to end the war i mean uh larry i mean if he wanted
35:56to end the war that we could do that pretty quickly don't you think to turn off the spigot stop you
36:02know stop the flaw of intelligence and withdraw all your american personnel that's almost it's
36:08almost verbatim what doug mcgregor has said on our show several times and the war will be over
36:12larry yeah larry you said that um that the russia could uh shut down uh the uh the power grid basically
36:18for um uh for uh ukraine are you saying that that and that would that include what the uh uh what
36:25elon musk is providing with starlink they could shut that down also interfere with it well i shut down
36:29the satellite system so yeah oh okay okay yeah but take down yeah take down starlink and its ability
36:36to be used oh really as a tool for communication and coordination of military operations right
36:44so one of the one of the questions i have is that in you and both uh uh andre marty on off both said
36:51the same that russia is prioritizing uh taking care of their or minimizing not not eliminating but
36:56minimizing their friendly casualties or so but isn't there isn't there an issue to where
37:02if you go slower you allow the ukraine side to continue reinforcing and to continue even if it's
37:10forced mobilization to get people on you allow the west to keep the spigot open going on so by
37:14delaying and slowing down this methodical move it could you can argue that it actually costs russia more
37:21to gain as opposed to saying all right we're going to go with a genuine big arrow and try to punch
37:25through a big hole here why why do you think that russia calculates that's not in their interest so let
37:30let me draw a parallel have you ever been down to miami florida i have okay and then drive the driven
37:38north up 95 towards west palm i did actually once and it's what do you see there you see you go from
37:45uh miami north miami hollywood fort lauderdale boca raton pampano beach delray beach yeah boca
37:55raton it's community after community after community after community even though they're separate places
38:04that's donetsk that's lahans so and i didn't really appreciate this at the outset of the war i thought
38:10that would i like you i thought man they're going to move they'll go through this like a hot knife through
38:15butter well what what happened in from 2015 through 2021 the ukrainians were able to go into each of
38:23those various cities you know abdivka bakhmut solidansk slavians kramatorsk and they would build up these
38:32incredible fortifications underground fortifications fortified reinforced concrete and so what the russians
38:42faced was faced was very they were not they could take him quickly and suffer massive casualties but
38:50they didn't need to do that so that's why it's been so slow moving through the donbass and the luhansk
38:57you go back to may of 2022 they took mariupol as a major city in six weeks because mariupol did not
39:05have the same kind of fortifications that are embedded there in the donbass the donbass historically
39:13has been this industrial center so it has all these deep coal mines salt mines uh other other
39:22a variety of different mines for a whole other minerals and products and so that's that's what we
39:28failed to understand on the west to appreciate what they're up against and that that has guide that's
39:33been one of the major considerations and the tactics they've employed that it's easier to you
39:39know basically to shut them down now the one thing i don't understand is why they have not blown every
39:45bridge across the neeper and cut them off logistically uh but you know i'm not on the russian general
39:53staff and i think those guys probably have a pretty good reason for why they haven't done that yet
39:58yeah i guess we'll see how that's going to work out one other thing i'd like to ask your opinion
40:04about uh is uh in terms of the uh the movement in their area of pokrovsk which is kind of in the
40:10center of the eastern front uh and from i guess maybe about august uh up through maybe november early
40:17december russia had some significant i mean they were making one and two and sometimes three kilometers per day
40:24in that whole area and they were driving through making these big and everybody was afraid that
40:28okay pokrovsk could fall very soon uh etc but then somewhere around december it kind of started going
40:35into a crawl and it's really for the last almost two months has been a static situation uh ukraine
40:42tried a couple of counter-attacks to try to pinch off part of the uh the western portion of the russian
40:46advance that's been moved back out but it hasn't gone any much forward from that what do you attribute
40:51that to because cavoli cited that is they have stopped rampagross implying that it's the ukraine
40:56that had prevented russia from going forward he's not he's not paying attention to the maps what's
41:00happened is they're moving out on the flanks they're encircling farther out because they say
41:06why why waste all of our effort trying to fight over one particular geographic point
41:11where we basically can go out and cut off their their lines of communication so that their ability to
41:17resupply will be curtailed that's what they're doing i read uh i don't know if you follow marat
41:23karulin uh he's uh that's for me with that okay i'll send i'll send you some of his articles thanks
41:29he's a frontline war correspondent yeah he's a buddy of andrei martianovs of all things okay
41:35and that's where i first met uh marat and he's got he's got a much better handle on
41:40you know the the movements tactically what's taking place so um you know you know again i'm always a
41:48the the western the western military critics and pundits you know the petraeus the hodges
41:54uh these cats uh it is always uh entertaining to hear their views on how russia ought to be conducting a
42:03war a war that neither of them have ever fought in a war that neither of them have ever commanded in
42:10you know none they they have zero experience actually fighting a combined arms against a pier
42:19because the truth be told is you know you and your whistleblower days pointed out they lied their
42:26asses off about what was going on in afghanistan and afghanistan and even then afghanistan didn't have
42:33the luxury of being backed by china and russia who were supplying weapons and no
42:39china and russia stayed out of it it was like oh you know let let the americans knock themselves out
42:46yeah that's uh that is uh something that is not lost on me that we couldn't even get the the guys
42:51who were in bedsheets and flip-flops as we used to say with rifles with had no major power proxy behind
42:59it whereas and we did because we had nato was all involved with that but anyway i digress i don't want to get
43:04into that uh right now i'm still a sore point for me um you know danny i think you know what it also
43:10appears to me is is that uh russia is conducting the the peace talks and the negotiations slow
43:17methodically just what they're doing on the battlefield they're in no rush they they have
43:21been just as larry said they they've been explicit as to what they want what they're aiming for what
43:26their bullseye is they're not going to be deterred from it and they're happy to go so methodically to
43:31reaching that point just what they're doing on the battlefield that's what they're doing in the uh in
43:34the board on the boardrooms in the uh in the negotiation that's a good point i hadn't actually
43:38thought of it in those terms actually is their diplomatic and military philosophies do seem to
43:42be aligned in there and they seem immovable on that uh larry i wanted to ask you one more tactical
43:48question before we move on here uh at the end of that uh tammy bruce comment there she brought up the
43:53issue of korovi re and the claim has been from zelinski especially uh that it was just a civilian town
43:59that's my hometown and y'all just want to stick a finger in my eyes so you blew up some civilian
44:05places a hotel and some other stuff all civilian casualties it's just just a horrible it's just
44:10another war crime by the russian side what do you say well the uh the russians claim it was a meeting
44:17of nato and ukrainian military officers and that they hit the hit them when they were gathered for a
44:22meeting and killed them so that's the russian version we got the ukrainian version
44:27um i think we now know based upon other evidence that's come out and there recently was a
44:35presentation at the united nations by russia but it was documented and that the the allegations
44:43about russia committing war crimes in bucha that it killed all these civilians uh they had a french
44:49aid worker who was one of the ones testifying before that u.n session that was he was actually
44:57in bucha that day and he saw the ukrainians driving in with trucks full of dead bodies
45:02taking the bodies out and placing them on the road this was four days after the russians had already
45:07left the area so the russians have been able to document the claims of war crimes and atrocities
45:13attributed to them are in fact by ukraine and i simply note ukrainians are nazis they are nazis
45:22they were the symbols they got the signs they got the the doctrine i don't trust the nazi myself but
45:29you know yeah and yeah you know i i've never been to ukraine so i i can't say anything about firsthand but
45:34i can tell you that a couple years ago uh i met with a uh spanish from spain uh reporter who said he was
45:42also on the ground at the time and he says that version that you just described about how it wasn't
45:47real he said it's exactly what he saw but he was not allowed to report on it yeah so uh that's uh
45:53that that's um you know more evidence because this guy certainly wasn't by any stretch a pro-russian
45:59person so uh i'll just take that at uh at face value yeah um before we let you go though i want to
46:05shift gears uh onto a separate topic and i know you have some expertise in and that is on the potential
46:10for russia i'm sorry potential for the united states to join with israel in a war against iran
46:18um i want to show you a couple of clips here because they show i think some uh the mindset
46:23of the trump administration this first one is on 7 march where trump was pretty emphatic about what
46:28he intended with iran you know we're down to final strokes with iran that's going to be an
46:33interesting time and uh we'll see what happens but we're down to the final moments we're at final
46:42moments can't let them have a nuclear weapon it's an interesting time in the history of the world
46:48but we have a situation with iran that something's going to happen very soon very very soon you'll be
46:58talking about that pretty soon i guess and hopefully we can have a peace deal you know i'm done
47:03i'm not speaking out of strength or weakness i'm just saying i'd rather see a peace deal than the
47:08other but the other will solve the problem so that was on 7 march and he said that we're you know in
47:13the last times here where the last hours we're running out of time we have to have a deal and then
47:18exactly one month later on the 7th of april three days ago was sitting next to benjamin netanyahu he added
47:25this we're having direct talks with iran and uh they've started it'll go on saturday we have a very
47:35big meeting and we'll see what can happen and i think everybody agrees that uh doing a deal would
47:41be preferable to doing the obvious and the obvious is not something that i want to be involved with or
47:49frankly that israel wants to be involved with if they can avoid it so we're going to see if we can avoid
47:54it but it's uh getting to be very dangerous territory and hopefully those talks will be
48:01successful and i think it would be in iran's best interest if they are successful we hope we hope
48:07that's going to happen okay so first of all just a lot of people claim trump doesn't actually want
48:14to go to war with iran he just wants them to negotiate a better deal what do you say to that
48:18it but if uh if you don't have a basketball and i come to you and say danny you've got to negotiate
48:27that you don't have a basketball you go well i don't have one so okay you got a deal you know
48:37that's what's going on here iran does not have a nuclear device iran is not building a nuclear device
48:44they said that in 2003 but through their ayatollah khamenei the u.s intelligence
48:50community has held that judgment now for the last uh 22 years but more importantly on january 17th
48:57iran and russia signed an agreement an article 46 of that agreement i believe dealt with the issue of
49:05nuclear proliferation and they agreed that they were going to work on non-proliferation why is that
49:13important because russia is not going to sign an agreement like that with iran if iran's building
49:18a new it's that simple and so you've got uh iran now with the guarantees not only of russia but of
49:26china that it doesn't have a new so if that's all trump is looking for they'll be able to go in and say
49:32okay basically we need to uh restart jcpoa uh that that agreement that trump walked away from
49:42actually controlled put all of iran's nuclear facilities under international inspection
49:49imposed limits on how much could be processed and had an actual system that they wouldn't be building
49:54a weapon well they're not building a weapon now anyway because they've got something better they
50:00have a defense alliance with russia and with china and they don't need them so you know if the united
50:06states is stupid enough to launch an attack on iran i just like somebody you armchair generals
50:13out there you military geniuses explain to me why we're going to be so much more effective against
50:18iran who's 10 times the size of yemen who has advanced air defense systems who has combat air
50:25who have missiles of all sorts well we're going to be more effective against them than we are with the
50:30houthis because we've only been battling the houthis now for 16 months and they've only shot down 18 of
50:36our predator drones three in the last week oh is it that many i didn't know it was that many yeah three
50:43in the last week when you think about it and that's at 30 million a pop so now they're up to like 440
50:49million dollars yeah we're showing those houthis by god we can kill civilians with bombs and no
50:56problem but we can't stop the missiles you know and danny you know why they're using the predators
51:01because the predators can fly out and in real time spot a mobile launcher and hit it that's why they're
51:10flying them because our other isr methods have a delay built in like oh the satellite's got it
51:16pinpointed at you know x y and z and you relay it through and then finally get the launch and you just
51:22send out and by the time it gets there it's gone but with the predators you got some hope that you
51:27can actually hit a mobile launcher except it looks like the houthis have developed a tactic
51:34of putting their missiles out there as bait so the predators fly over and then they shoot one of them
51:39down oh wow yeah they're not stupid we are but they're not so um do you have i think i emailed you
51:48earlier in the week and i don't know if you've had any time to see anything different there was a a
51:53true social video posted by trump i think it was on sunday that uh that they claimed that they had
51:59killed a bunch of houthis getting ready for uh military operation of some sort he said oops now
52:04that they're gone and no one's going to attack our ships etc uh but looking at that video uh and the
52:09people that were on the ground there looks really similar and strikingly so to other religious events out
52:16the open what what do you know anything more about that yeah just that i mean i talked to pepe escobar
52:21who was had just been in yemen he was he left before that happened but that's a traditional tribal
52:28meeting how they gather to meet as a community and make decisions they they weren't gathered around
52:34a launcher there were no visible uh offensive weapons in sight apart from people carrying you know an ak-47 or
52:43something but you know what when you if you go out in west virginia with a bunch of rednecks you're
52:49going to find them carrying shotguns and ars yeah i've got a concealed carry permit myself so yeah
52:56yeah that's the one right there yeah so you see that just does not look like a military action to me and
53:02uh you know i said this actually only the day that it came out i was like you know what what we typically
53:07uh do in those kind of situations is you have to you know have it cleared and you have to have some kind of
53:12reason to think that that's a military target but these guys know that i mean you just talked about
53:18how they're they're deceiving us into maybe flying over and end up shooting down some of our missiles
53:23if they're going to do military training they know our satellites are out there know our eyes are
53:27they're not going to meet in a large group of 80 some odd people like that uh if they think that that
53:32they could be killed for military purposes it was you know we committed a war crime it's that simple
53:38yeah nobody's come out with anything on that yet i haven't i've been a little surprised there
53:45hadn't been any comment at least it's gotten into any of the press that i have access to
53:49uh from yemen or so i don't know if that's coming later but uh it just it just doesn't look right i'll
53:54just say it like that uh but so what do you think uh about if if trump does make good on this
54:02and and you say that you know if trump just wants to keep them from getting nuclear weapon well they
54:06don't have a basketball as you put it but that guy sitting next to him in there he said i'm he
54:11actually looked over at him once he said i don't think he wants to go the hard way either and i'm
54:15like yeah but does he because i'm not sure that that is the right i think that he does want to go
54:19and i think netanyahu actually wants trump to do this dirty work yeah they may be foolish enough to do
54:25that uh i i do not discount that at all um i i have spoken with uh uh with a good friend that's uh
54:32had several meetings with trump and he he said i asked him directly i said how is how are trump's
54:38critical thinking skills not good that was a i'll leave it in the charitable just not trump's not a
54:46good critical thinker he's street smart in some areas um and he's um but he's emotional and he often
54:55lets his emotions overcome his good judgment i mean we're seeing that with the tariff stuff right now
55:00that's a whole nother discussion yeah but uh yeah no i think i think they're ultimately going to do it
55:05personally but we'll see i hope i'm wrong i hope i'm wrong man do i ever hope you're wrong as well
55:12uh but that's that's where my gut tells me and i'm just uh holding my breath and praying that uh you
55:18know some of these saner moments do and some of these better advisors do get that in there to keep it
55:23from something that would happen bad but uh we'll have to wait and see how it works out but uh
55:28in any case really appreciate you coming back on today and uh love your shirt uh everybody
55:33love i there was some guessing by the way i want to ask somebody suggested on the in the chat earlier
55:39and actually before we went on the air that they said your your middle initial c uh they speculated
55:44that was apparently a french word that means shirt no it's a it's it's calvin
55:50i'm gonna i'm gonna i'm one of the few white calvins you ever meet
55:55oh that's good yeah i don't think calvin means shirt in france so i think they may be off on that
56:02but uh what else i've been called some other c words but those aren't for polite
56:08we'll leave that one off all right well listen thanks for coming on today look forward to seeing you
56:15back real soon yeah and we appreciate you guys coming on too and just to let you know we got
56:22to three o'clock this afternoon about an hour from now uh alexander mercurius of the durand is
56:27going to be our guest zone he's going to be saying how russian realism and european dreams equals a
56:32ukraine defeat we'll be talking more about that never want to miss alexander mercurius always has
56:37some great stuff to say we'll see you in one hour on daniel davis deep dive