- 6/1/2025
In this explosive episode, Lt Col Daniel Davis breaks down how U.S. Senators have now become key adversaries to Vladimir Putin’s strategy on the global stage 🇺🇸🇷🇺. As diplomatic tensions escalate and Washington pushes more aggressive policies, Moscow is taking notice—and preparing countermeasures ⚠️💼.
What does this mean for the future of U.S.-Russia relations? Are we approaching a new Cold War 2.0 or something even more dangerous? Dive deep into this critical geopolitical analysis with Daniel Davis, revealing how American lawmakers are shaping the next phase of confrontation 🧠📉.
#Putin #USSenators #DanielDavis #RussiaUS #Geopolitics #ColdWar2 #DeepDivePolitics #USRussiaTensions #VladimirPutin #SenateVsPutin #ForeignPolicy #WorldPolitics #MilitaryAnalysis #UkraineCrisis #EastWestConflict #PoliticalShowdown #NATO #USLeadership #GlobalConflict #WashingtonVsMoscow
What does this mean for the future of U.S.-Russia relations? Are we approaching a new Cold War 2.0 or something even more dangerous? Dive deep into this critical geopolitical analysis with Daniel Davis, revealing how American lawmakers are shaping the next phase of confrontation 🧠📉.
#Putin #USSenators #DanielDavis #RussiaUS #Geopolitics #ColdWar2 #DeepDivePolitics #USRussiaTensions #VladimirPutin #SenateVsPutin #ForeignPolicy #WorldPolitics #MilitaryAnalysis #UkraineCrisis #EastWestConflict #PoliticalShowdown #NATO #USLeadership #GlobalConflict #WashingtonVsMoscow
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NewsTranscript
00:00If Vladimir Putin thought he had to worry about a lot in his war with Ukraine,
00:05with the Ukraine army as his main enemy,
00:07or maybe with the NATO alliance and all of the support from the European countries,
00:12if he thought maybe that was really his biggest enemy,
00:15no, as it turns out, he has an even bigger one
00:17and something that should be having him quake in his Russian boots,
00:22the United States Senate and the U.S. Congress writ large.
00:25At least that's the claim by a couple of U.S. senators who went to Kiev yesterday
00:29and that was Senator Richard Blumenthal and our favorite Senator Lindsey Graham.
00:35Yeah, I think a lot of our favorite viewers here, you know where this one's going to end up going,
00:39but it's going to go in some directions that even you may be surprised about.
00:43But I'll tell you somebody who's not surprised and that is Vladimir Putin.
00:47And what troubles me about this and one of the reasons we're highlighting this today
00:51is this just continues a very long and sordid track record of failure on the U.S. part,
00:57which is saturated in arrogance and presumption and remains blind to the results of that arrogance
01:05and can't see how it never accomplishes the objectives with which it's being applied
01:11and evilly blind, maybe more so to the cost it imposes on us and our allies
01:18to keep going down this path of too much hubris.
01:22And let's just jump right into it here.
01:23This is, I'm going to show you, first of all, something from Senator Blumenthal.
01:28And listen, this is going to be, this is cringeworthy here just on the surface of it
01:32because he's going to be going down a path here that is, you know,
01:37violates one of the things we love to throw in everybody's face internationally all the time.
01:41We are a rules-based country.
01:43We govern ourselves by the rule of law, the international order,
01:49all that kind of stuff that we talk about all the time.
01:51The rules-based order, I think, is the phrase they use all the time.
01:54And we want everybody to stick with that and to do what we say
01:57because that's the right thing to do.
01:59And then there's this.
02:01What are we going to do?
02:03Seize Russian assets.
02:05$300 billion in European banks, most of it in Belgium.
02:12Use it to pay for military arms for Ukraine.
02:19Use the Reconstruction Fund that's been negotiated just recently.
02:23The revenues and royalty rights from minerals that are part of Ukraine's natural resources
02:33also to pay for increased military aid.
02:38Now, let me put that in English for you.
02:40We're going to steal Russian money because they're in Western banks
02:43that we have access to and we can.
02:46There's a reason why now we're well into the fourth year of this war.
02:50Why that hasn't happened so far is because as much as we demonize Russia,
02:54at least up to this point, the West has recognized that it's illegal
02:59and we don't want to set a precedent of going and stealing the sovereign funds
03:03of someone who trusted us by putting their money in Western banks.
03:07Because so far, we have realized that to do that is, number one,
03:12it just undercuts all the moral arguments we always claim about following the rule of law.
03:16And then secondly, it cuts confidence by people in nations all over the world.
03:22It's like, hey, don't put your money in a Western bank because if you do
03:26and you run afoul later on of whatever's popular in these Western capitals,
03:31they can just take it.
03:32So it's not very safe.
03:33And then perversely, what he doesn't realize is that this just gives more and more impetus
03:38to the BRICS and their alternative economic arrangement
03:41or arrangement that they're trying to put in as a counterweight to the West.
03:45Because their claim, the BRICS countries, China, Russia, Brazil, India, etc.,
03:51they're all saying, hey, put your money here because we're not going to take the stuff.
03:56We're not going to tell you how to do your business.
03:58We're about economics.
03:59We're about just having deals with various people, having good trade relations,
04:04win-win outcomes.
04:05They talk about all that stuff.
04:06And your money's safe here.
04:08Now, certainly since World War II, the Western economic model has been the bulwark
04:14of global advancement.
04:16And so countries all over the world have eagerly put their money into the West
04:20because they have trusted it.
04:22And many have benefited because of it.
04:25But now in these days, they're seeing more and more red flags.
04:29And more and more countries are seeing this.
04:31That's why BRICS is growing as it has,
04:33even with some European countries now wanting to get involved,
04:36even with some NATO countries wanting to get involved,
04:39Turkey being the most recent one.
04:41And the more these kinds of things happen,
04:43and then especially if Blumenthal makes good on this threat
04:47and the rest of the European countries back it up,
04:51and they literally steal against our own laws,
04:55their sovereign fund here,
04:57and then just use whatever pretext they want to.
04:59It doesn't matter what they say.
05:00We're not at war with Russia.
05:02We claim we're not at war with Russia.
05:05We say, everybody, we're not at war with Russia.
05:07We're just helping Ukraine.
05:09And that's what we're trying to do.
05:11But the fact is, and well, even on that fact alone,
05:14if you are true and you're not at war with Russia,
05:17you have no justification to steal their economic funds.
05:20You just don't.
05:21There's nothing in international law that will allow that.
05:24And anyone who wants to try and twist a law into saying something else
05:27is really wasting a lot of time.
05:29Because if you're going to twist a law, there is no law.
05:32It's just whatever we say.
05:33And you have the capacity that the West can do it.
05:37They can take that money, but at a potentially great, great cost,
05:43far more than just, I think it's around $300 billion U.S. dollars.
05:47It's just not worth it, folks.
05:49You've been right not to do it up to this point.
05:51Don't go any further.
05:52Okay, well, Blumenthal wasn't finished there.
05:56Now then, he turns around and tells that Putin better be quaking in his boot
06:01at 82 U.S. senators.
06:03He doesn't understand what 82 senators coming together from both sides of the aisle
06:08mean in terms of practical import.
06:11And these sanctions will cripple his economy.
06:15They will be bone-crushing to a nation that is basically, as one of our colleagues once
06:24said, a gas station with nuclear arms.
06:28A gas station.
06:30I mean, let's just insult Russia left and right and just talk about how we're the king
06:34of the hill and they're these little guys and all that.
06:38I mean, that's one of the oldest pejoratives against Russia.
06:41They're just a gas station with nukes.
06:43That's what I've heard that for many years, especially before this war started.
06:47Don't know that you want to be making that argument now, because not only are they growing
06:52economically, not only are they growing diplomatically and engaging around the world and growing
06:59in respect and admiration even in some quarters of the world, especially in the global south,
07:05but their military itself is far, far stronger than it was in February 2022.
07:122022, when this war started.
07:14So to have that demeaning comment there that, yeah, Putin better be afraid of 82 U.S. senators.
07:21He has no idea what he's talking about.
07:23That's not validated by the facts on the ground.
07:27And, you know, this whole thing about bone-crushing and crippling sanctions.
07:32We're going to get to that in a minute.
07:33But they just have this arrogance and this presumption.
07:37That's why I talk about this hubris that underlies.
07:39He actually still believes that we can get that done.
07:42And, of course, he's not alone.
07:44His partner in crime there, Lindsey Graham, wanted to throw his own accusations at Putin
07:49and his own threats.
07:51Ukraine doesn't have good cards.
07:54Well, Russia's much bigger and has a lot more people.
07:57I get that.
07:58But the world has a lot of cards against Russia.
08:01And one of those cards that we have is about to be played in the United States Senate.
08:08In America, you have more than one person at the card table.
08:13We have three branches of government.
08:15And the House and the Senate are poised to act.
08:20But what would change our mind if Russia came to the table, agreed to a ceasefire, and earnestly sought peace?
08:30There'd be no reason to proceed.
08:33So, out of the good graces of his heart, Lindsey Graham is going to say,
08:37but I tell you what, Vlad, we don't have to go down this path.
08:40There's a hard way, but there's also an easy way.
08:42All you have to do is surrender from a position of strength with all the dominant position militarily,
08:51economically, industrially, diplomatically, all those things.
08:55All you've got to do is surrender, and we're not going to put any sanctions on you.
08:58We don't have to go down the hard way.
09:00Do yourself a favor.
09:02That's what he's saying.
09:03And you've just got to wonder, what is in your mind?
09:07What can you conceive is on the other side of this equation, on the receiving end of your words from the Kremlin?
09:15What do you think that Russia, President Vladimir Putin, is sitting there thinking?
09:19Is he going, darn it, those U.S. senators, especially the congresspeople, they're at a table.
09:25They get to play cards here.
09:26It's not just me and Putin or me and Trump.
09:28It's also those darn congressmen, and they scare me.
09:32I mean, does he think that?
09:34Or is this just for a domestic audience?
09:37You can be tempted to think this is just for domestic audiences.
09:41Maybe it is.
09:42But what worries me more is that maybe it isn't.
09:46Maybe, at least to some degree, he actually thinks that they have that kind of power that's going to cause the leader of the country
09:53with the largest nuclear weapons stockpile on the planet is going to actually go weak in the knees
10:00because of something that the U.S. legislative branch has to say.
10:06I mean, that branch that can't get hardly anything done, that everybody in America knows is just almost this feckless group.
10:13Clown show seems to be the most common pejorative I see applied to the U.S. Congress in the last number of years
10:19because of how little they get done domestically.
10:23And then he's thinking that maybe that Putin will be bamboozled and that he's going to go down this path.
10:29And, you know, and you talk about Blumenthal is talking about seizing assets and these sanctions that Graham's talking about.
10:37And, you know, who's the recipient of that money, first of all?
10:42They want to say it's Ukraine.
10:44We're going to use it to weapons.
10:45But he said to buy weapons.
10:48Now, where do you suppose that money is going to go?
10:51That's going to go to primarily American arms manufacturers.
10:55So we'll get more deals, sell more bombs, more bullets, more missiles, all that kind of stuff.
11:01That's the one right there.
11:03Those that they're still that's from, I think, December 23.
11:06They're still smiling.
11:07I don't think their smiles have gone by when they saw.
11:10I bet you if, you know, if you got all those guys together and they were watching the Lindsey Graham's comments,
11:14that's probably the identical picture that would be painted again today.
11:17They would all be big smiles and talking about, yay, let's go and spend more money, make more money rather for us.
11:24And who really cares what happens to the Ukrainians?
11:28Yeah, we're not worried about that.
11:31But then if we stop the video right here, you would just have to maybe not even just roll your eyes because it would be worse than that.
11:39You'd say, what is wrong with this guy here?
11:41Well, unfortunately, there's one more thing to watch because now he's going to take into the crosshairs China.
11:48The game that Putin's been playing is about to change.
11:52He's going to be hit and hit hard by the United States when it comes to sanctions.
11:59China, the game you're playing with Russia is about to change.
12:04If you keep buying cheap Russian oil to fuel Putin's war machine, there will be a 500% tariff on all of your products coming into the United States.
12:14By the way, if you like this kind of analysis and stuff that you just don't get on any other channel, be sure and like and subscribe really helps us out a lot.
12:23Let's take the comment here about China is now going to be upset because these sanctions that Lindsey Graham is talking about, the Blumenthal and some in the House are talking about, is if this you may recall early this week, Trump said something about maybe within two weeks.
12:39I'll know if I'm being tapped along and then I may take different actions.
12:42Well, Lindsey Graham is ardently and passionately pushing for some of those actions to be a new round of sanctions, one of which is a 500% tariff on anybody who does business with Russia, especially in the area of oil.
12:57So he's trying to say, let's put a 500% tariff on China.
13:02By the way, that would also include our good friend India.
13:05Not sure what he's going to do with that one.
13:08Not sure how eager the Indians are going to be to have this tariff put on them as well, because they do get oil and gas and other things from Russia as well.
13:17So what he may find out is that there's not a lot of people willing to engage in that.
13:24And what you're going to end up doing is driving us away.
13:27But let's just look at the surface of it.
13:28Let's just say that it it did.
13:30He did put those sanctions into apply.
13:33Trump did sign the law and it went into effect.
13:36Now, Trump has been having just hell on wheels time to try and figure out all these tariffs and the tariffs on tariffs off, up, down, middle, somewhere else, out, and then back up and then back off.
13:47All kinds of chaos going on with that already.
13:49During the time when we had 145% tariffs on China, it had significant ramifications already with supply chains, with equipment, with things that were being bought, certain things that were manufactured in China by American companies that were manufactured over there.
14:05You know, it was already started to raise prices.
14:08It's already happening still.
14:09They're trying to negotiate some things when they've lowered the tariffs from that big rate.
14:14But in different categories, there's still some substantial tariffs on there, which are having still ramifications for American businesses right now.
14:22I think the bottom rate is 10%, but there's some categories that are higher, some as much as 50%.
14:28And then now, last night, actually, Trump said he's going to put a 50% tariff on any imported steel, which could have additional problems coming in from China, et cetera.
14:40That's something that already has negative implications for us, for our population.
14:45Now, you want to blow 145% out of the water with a 500% tariff?
14:51I mean, that's just insane.
14:53We're the ones that are going to be hurting from that.
14:56We're the ones that that's going to be causing a lot of problems, too.
15:00And let's get back to at least what he claims is the purpose of this, to bring Russia to its heels, to force Putin, because this is something that Zelensky has been saying ad nauseum for many weeks now, is that we need to force Russia with sanctions and other pressures so that he'll accept a just and lasting peace,
15:19i.e., back to what Blumenthal, I think, said earlier, basically just surrender and everything's going to be cool.
15:24And that's just not going to happen.
15:26And so you don't have to take my word for it.
15:27Let's look at the historical record.
15:30Let's go all the way back to March.
15:32I don't know if it was March the 1st, but it was March of 2022, where President Biden made very, very similar claims.
15:39We're also taking a further step, abandoning imports of goods from several signature sectors of the Russian economy, including seafoods, vodka and diamonds.
15:49And we're going to continue to squeeze Putin.
15:51Putin is an aggressor.
15:53He is the aggressor.
15:54And Putin must pay the price.
15:57He cannot pursue a war that threatens the very foundations, which he's doing, the very foundations of international peace and stability, and then ask for financial help from the international community.
16:08And as I said, at the beginning of all these steps, we're going to hit Putin harder because the United States and our closest allies and partners are acting in unison.
16:18The totality of our sanctions and export controls is crushing the Russian economy.
16:24Yeah, boy, that's going to scare Putin.
16:28It's crushing the Russian economy.
16:30It's going to cause them all kinds of, hmm, how did that work out?
16:35Here is the latest full year economic performance in 2024.
16:40We find out that, in fact, the European Union grew by an anemic 1% in 2024, and the Russia's GDP growth is at 4.3%.
16:52And, by the way, I don't know if you know, Radof fans, if anybody can just throw in the comments there.
16:57What was America's economic performance in the first quarter of this year?
17:01Oh, yeah, negative growth.
17:03We shrank.
17:03Now, you want to be talking about we're going to cause the Russian economy to cripple when you have now three and a half almost years of examples to where the Russian economy grew four times faster and four times better than the Europeans.
17:22And all of these bounce back or rebound sanctions or the rebound effects on these sanctions have harmed the Western European countries.
17:30Our own economy is that there potentially could be in an official recession when the next quarter has come out.
17:37If it comes out with negative growth again, then by definition you have one.
17:40But it's anemic at the very best.
17:42And you want to talk about how you're going to crush them.
17:45And, you know, and this just shows over and over how Lindsey Graham has been so wrong.
17:50One of the things that bugs me more than anything on mainstream news, medias, et cetera, is that they're keen to put mics in the guy's face like Lindsey Graham and Senator Blumenthal here.
18:01This is, I want to say, the ninth or tenth visit that those two guys, at least Lindsey Graham specifically, has made to Ukraine.
18:08And they always make all these big, grandiose statements.
18:11But how come it is that when they made these statements here, there weren't reporters in the pool who were holding those microphones that says, um, about the past.
18:22I remember on these dates you said this and that and the other thing, and none of those things happened.
18:27Why should we listen to you now?
18:30Put the mic back in.
18:31No one does that.
18:32And, Fed, they just let them speak.
18:34They just regurgitate what's said and we move on.
18:36So, anyone who's watching who doesn't watch a show like the one you're watching here, so you're about to know, because you've seen us do a lot of that anyway.
18:45But now I'm going to put it all in context here.
18:47So, let's go back to the same month that Biden made that comment there in March 2022 and see what Lindsey Graham said in March of 2022.
18:56If Ukraine falls to Putin, it will set in motion dire consequences for us as a nation.
19:06China will get the signal that they can take Taiwan.
19:10The Iranians will believe that we have no will to stop their nuclear ambitions.
19:14The converse is true.
19:16If the Chinese see the world rally around Ukraine and the rule of law being applied to Putin's war crimes, maybe they won't go into Taiwan.
19:28The only thing I can say when it comes to Putin, it needs to be personal.
19:33He could care less, in my view, about his own people and certainly could care less about the Ukrainian people.
19:40Oh, snap.
19:43Speaking of not caring less about the Ukrainian people and speaking of that, there it is again, the international rule of law, which we will follow when it benefits us and we'll throw it in the trash when it doesn't.
19:56So, stop with this nonsense about talking about international law because you could care less about it.
20:02Stop talking about caring about the Ukrainian people because you don't.
20:06Because you heard him there.
20:08He wants to make it personal.
20:09It's a personal issue with him and Vladimir Putin.
20:12So, he'll do whatever he thinks he can to harm Putin and it doesn't matter who pays the cost.
20:18And I've said this many, many times here and it is really appropriate right here to point it out that the actions of Lindsey Graham and the others that support him, certainly President Biden before, and although Trump has the ability to turn this off.
20:31And I certainly hope he does, at least through four months of his term, he hasn't done anything to change the calculations, that you are harming the Ukrainian people by enabling them to continue fighting, but that there's no capacity.
20:44It doesn't matter how much stuff you give.
20:46They're never going to be able to win for so many reasons we've recounted in the past.
20:51So, by doing that, you cause Ukraine people to die by the tens of thousands every month.
20:57And, I mean, the numbers are stark and they're cruel and they're unquestioned.
21:04That's the case there.
21:04So, I don't want to hear any more about, you know, you're talking about you care about the Ukraine people.
21:10The other thing that he mentioned there, which was, I mocked this at the time because it was self-evidently untrue.
21:16He's regurgitating the domino theory from the Vietnam War.
21:20If Vietnam falls, then we're going to have all these communists are going to spread all over the world.
21:25Okay, the communists did win.
21:28Nobody, nothing else was spread.
21:30Everybody understands now that the conditions that exist in various countries exist for those countries.
21:35And that's exactly the same thing we have today.
21:37The idea that China and Iran and North Korea are going to be watching what's going on with the Russia-Ukraine war,
21:45and, man, if Putin ends up winning, then we're going to launch off over here.
21:49That's stupid.
21:50I'm sorry, I'm a little impolitic here, but that's what it is.
21:55Because the Chinese are going to make whatever decision the Chinese are going to make based on the conditions in the South China Sea,
22:01between them and Taiwan, and the balance of power in the Asia-Pacific area.
22:06They're going to be watching what's going on over here, and I'm sure they find an interest,
22:09and they're learning things about military, et cetera.
22:12But they understand that the conditions over there are the conditions over there in Europe.
22:17And the calculations and the cost-benefit ratios, et cetera, of all the various players has to do with that place.
22:23They don't carry on over here.
22:25There's a whole different set, number one, of players, and there's a different set of cost-benefit factors and calculations.
22:32So those two don't go together.
22:33I don't know if he doesn't understand that or if it's just a rhetorical tool that he wants people who also don't know to just believe him and trust him because he's a U.S. senator,
22:43and there's always a microphone in his mouth.
22:45Maybe that's what it is, but I don't know.
22:48But if you're watching Daniel Davis deep dive, I can tell you for a fact that he is dead flat wrong, and he has been proven wrong.
22:55Because none of the stuff that's happened over here has had anything to do with over there.
22:58China, by the way, as we're going to talk about it in a show tomorrow, actually, there is a lot going on over in the South China Sea and in the Asia-Pacific area,
23:08and it has everything to do with the conditions on the ground there, as you're going to see.
23:12So something to pay attention to has nothing to do with what's going on over here.
23:17Well, that's not the only time he was wrong.
23:19In fact, I don't have time to give you all the things he was wrong,
23:22but I'm going to show you a handful of when he has been just catastrophically wrong on some of the most important issues here.
23:30And again, for any of our media colleagues who may be watching this,
23:33and I know that there's starting to be a few, ask these questions the next time you see Lindsey Graham.
23:38Say, why should we listen to you here when you were wrong in 2022 on this whole domino theory thing?
23:44And by the way, you're wrong in 2023.
23:47And in this case, you may recall the Bach move.
23:50We talked about that a lot here.
23:52You know how that ended, so a little spoiler alert.
23:55He's going to talk about that.
23:56And then this is in May of 2023, so before, one month before the start of the Ukrainian offensive.
24:04One quick note to point here.
24:06In the same month, and actually also in April of 2023,
24:10I wrote in the publication in 1945 that it would be a disaster if Ukraine launches an offensive because it's not going to succeed.
24:18I pointed out all the reasons why.
24:19They were clearly evident on the ground that it was going to be a disaster.
24:23Yet, here's what Lindsey Graham said.
24:25I expect in the coming days and weeks for the Ukrainian counteroffensive to yield results.
24:35And I'm here to tell you that the last chapter of the Battle of Bagmut is yet to be written.
24:42I'm here to tell you that the Russian military is about to have holy hell unleashed upon them.
24:53Holy hell unleashed upon them.
24:55How did that turn out?
24:56Exactly the way any sober and military analysis would have told you before it happened, that they broke their teeth on the first line.
25:05And just real quick to recap why, to show you how self-evident it would have been if you had had your eyes open and knew anything,
25:12is because Ukraine had insufficient engineering assets.
25:16They had insufficient training on combined arms operations.
25:20They had insufficient ability to understand how the, especially in offensive operations, the drone issue was going to be.
25:27And because they didn't have engineering support, they were unprepared to breach minefields.
25:32And then maybe most of all, they didn't have air defense and air offense capacity.
25:36So they're trying to take these complicated breaching operations with not enough engineers to get rid of the mines,
25:42almost no air defense or very little, and no positive air force to go and put pressure on the Russian side there.
25:49It was doomed to failure, and it did.
25:51At a great cost to Ukraine, they got two, the first to five Russian defensive lines, broke their teeth on that,
25:59didn't even fully penetrate that one line, and then it was spent.
26:02That's just the bottom line.
26:03That's a fact.
26:04And if you watched our show yesterday, I showed you a graphic that showed that the Ukraine side did capture some territory
26:12because it was a very broad-based offensive.
26:15It just inched along, and I want to say it was four months' worth.
26:18And by September of 2023, that's the last month that they actually gained any territory back from Russia.
26:24From that point and to this day, everything has been going in the negative direction.
26:30They have been losing all of it.
26:32And that's just where we are today.
26:34And in that same month, in the same month when the offensive culminated, we can now tell you conclusively when that was.
26:42It was September 2023.
26:43You had Lindsey Graham go back out one more time and talk about what a great deal this is for the United States.
26:50People ask me, is it worth it?
26:53Here's what we've gotten for our investment.
26:55We haven't lost one soldier.
26:58We've reduced the combat power of the Russian army by 50%.
27:02Not one of us has died in that endeavor.
27:05This is a great deal for America.
27:07You've previously said that it's the best money we've ever spent.
27:11That's still true?
27:11Since we helped Churchill stand up to the Nazis.
27:14That is just bizarre in any way you want to characterize it.
27:19This isn't even about a bad projection.
27:22This is with the wreckage of all the stuff that he had been highlighting in May behind him, still smoldering on the battlefield, a complete and utter disaster.
27:31He has the audacity to say, best money we've ever spent.
27:34And then flat out lies and said, we have reduced the Russian capacity by 50%.
27:39It wasn't that you hadn't reduced it by 50% at that time because Russia had been suffering losses without question, but they had also already started by that time rebuilding their forces and to start sending in even more capabilities, producing more ammunition, more armored vehicles, more aircraft, more helicopters, all that kind of stuff that had already started by that time.
28:01So it wasn't really reduced by 50%.
28:03Today, Russia is 50% bigger than they were when the offensive started in February 2022, just by the numbers, despite all the losses that they've had.
28:16And there's been a bunch of reports that were out today that claims that Russia has lost maybe a half a million men altogether, killed and wounded.
28:24I don't have any idea what the actual number is.
28:26I know it is substantial because we've heard about it from some of the Russian people that we've talked to on this very show.
28:31They say they are suffering casualties.
28:33Don't know what the number is, but it is high, whatever the number is.
28:37But despite all of that, and let's just for the sake of argument, use that number.
28:41It's a half a million.
28:42That means that Russia is now half a million bigger as its armed forces on active duty than it was in February 22, which tells you that they have probably recruited about a million people to replace the losses and then build up on top of that so that now the net net is a plus half a million.
29:03That's the fact.
29:04You want to brag about that?
29:06Secretary Austin, also former Secretary of Defense early in the war, said one of our objectives is to weaken Russia.
29:14That's what it is.
29:14We wanted to harm them.
29:15Biden was talking about we want to harm their economy, et cetera.
29:18And we see what happened.
29:19The economy has grown.
29:21Ours has shrunk.
29:23The Russian military has grown, and it's not just in numbers.
29:26It's not just in terms of how many people they have, but in their capacity as well.
29:31I've seen a couple of good interviews here of late, one by Dmitry Symes, Jr., and he was interviewing a Russian journalist who was also somebody who either had fought or now fighting.
29:43I can't recall the sequence of there, but somebody who's been basically on the front lines in one form or another since 2014.
29:49I think first as a journalist and now as a fighter.
29:51And he was very candid in his efforts.
29:53He didn't sugarcoat anything, talked about their losses, talked about the horrendous things of war.
29:59So there's a lot of validity to this because what he said, again, lines up with what we can generally see on the ground there.
30:04But one of the things he really pointed out to, he said that the Russian and the Ukraine armies right now are the best in the world.
30:11They gave props to their opponent because, obviously, they're fighting ferociously.
30:15And even though Russia's continued to advance because they have the capacity, dwarfs all the things that the Ukraine side does, they still fight ferociously.
30:24But he said all the Western armies, all the any other armies in the world, for that matter, don't have the experience.
30:29They haven't done gone under fire for for how these battles are fought.
30:34And until you're underneath that withering artillery fire and the drones that are constantly over your head, blowing up stuff left and right, missiles going in the deep.
30:44You have no idea how that would work and how you need to fight on that.
30:48It's it's not a theoretical issue is very, very hard to to figure out thanks to Lindsey Graham's efforts.
30:55Those are what's continuing on to this day.
30:57So the balance continues to go in the wrong direction for us.
31:01If that was your objective before, it's now going the other direction.
31:04More of the stuff you do here is going to continue to move that balance in the wrong direction on our side.
31:10OK, so one more on this, and that is in August of 2024.
31:15So there's like one per year that we've chosen could have been a lot more, unfortunately.
31:19But this is in August of last year when the Ukraine side had launched its ill fated Kursk operations.
31:27As you may recall, we have repeatedly told you did at the time that they're dead man walking.
31:32It has no chance to succeed.
31:34All it's going to do is get a lot of people killed in the event.
31:36It's going to be driven out and it's going to be as though they were never there.
31:40Well, it turned out to be a little bit worse than that.
31:42But Lindsey Graham, showing his military prowess, said this.
31:46What I think about Kursk, bold, brilliant, beautiful.
31:52Keep it up.
31:53Putin started this.
31:55Kick his ass.
31:57Bottom line is to the administration.
32:00I appreciate your support.
32:01Let these people fight.
32:03Give them weapons they need to win a war they can't afford to lose.
32:07He was so happy that day.
32:09I mean, he's grinning ear to ear.
32:12He just said, yeah, kick his ass.
32:13Yay!
32:14Russia got hurt today.
32:15Again, because he's made it personal.
32:17He made it personal.
32:18So when he saw that Russian territory had been invaded and that the Russian people were now suffering the ravages of war,
32:25that thrilled him beyond measure because it is personal with him.
32:29But as I said earlier, he is completely undeterred and unmoved by the cost to the Ukraine side.
32:35Because at least 75,000 Ukrainians were killed.
32:40Could have been more than that.
32:42Again, the numbers are no one's going to know for probably years until all the files are opened up in the future.
32:48So we don't know.
32:49But it's a large number.
32:50A large number on top of that were wounded.
32:52Thousands of combat vehicles of various types were destroyed inside that Kursk operation there.
33:00So there was a tremendous cost to the Ukraine side.
33:04And as a consequence of that, on the eastern front, where the Russians were continuing their press,
33:11because the Ukraine side had to withdraw forces from there to be able to maintain the offensive up here,
33:16more Ukrainians died here.
33:18So their casualties went up here because the density of their manpower continued to shrink.
33:24Well done, Lindsay.
33:25Good job.
33:26You talk about you want to make it personal for Putin.
33:29I think that to a certain extent, Putin may be laughing about this and saying, cool, keep it up, Lindsay.
33:35You're one of my best assets.
33:37You're helping Russia more than you can even imagine.
33:39You're harming Ukraine worse than anybody else because you facilitate a war that can only lead to the death
33:45and destruction of the very people you claim to champion.
33:49That's just the reality of it.
33:50You can see it graphically playing out.
33:52Not hard to figure out here.
33:55And yet he wants to try and just continue on with his same nonsense and this arrogance,
34:00this hubris on display on the cameras yesterday.
34:04And people keep putting those those microphones in their faces.
34:08And it's just really, really disheartening.
34:10And, you know, you talk about just the seventy five thousand dead.
34:13But now we're looking at what's going to come next instead of doing what makes sense, what's rational.
34:19And ending this war, taking the ugly deal that's on the table today, which the Russians to this day still there's there's supposed to be a meeting on Monday.
34:28There's supposed to be a meeting in Istanbul, which as of airtime today, I still haven't seen confirm whether or not the Ukraine side is going to accept it.
34:36But the Russians said they're going to show up in Istanbul on Monday and hopefully the Ukraine side will.
34:41At least they're talking.
34:42I mean, let's find any positive you can on that.
34:45The only wise thing to do, the only sane thing to do, if you care about Ukraine, is to reach a negotiated settlement on whatever terms you can get.
34:56And they'll be ugly.
34:57There's no question about it.
34:58But they can be had.
34:59Because if you don't, then you're going to get the alternative.
35:04And again, don't take my word for it.
35:06There's no analysis here.
35:07This is just a repetition.
35:08You've had the ambassador for Russia at the UN Security Council a couple of days ago point blank say we will either achieve our objectives in negotiations or we will decisively win on the battlefield.
35:21He said it straight up.
35:23No ambiguity there.
35:24No diplomatic language.
35:26As blunt as you can be.
35:27That is where we are.
35:29The Russians now are openly safe.
35:31They're not even trying to hide any of these things.
35:33It's open and they're doing it.
35:34They're having this offensive operation.
35:36The other big consequence of this Kursk operation is it invited Russians into the Sumi province.
35:41Before that, they weren't in there.
35:43Now then, they're rolling south toward the city.
35:45They've taken a number of villages here in the last few days.
35:48More and more territory is continuing to move south, and by all accounts, that's going to accelerate in the Kharkiv area.
35:55That's going to accelerate in several others, too, possibly even the Chernihiv region.
36:00So that's going to a whole northern front is already open, and the eastern front continues to move as well.
36:05Everything is going in the negative direction for the Ukraine side.
36:07And instead of recognizing that, you have the likes of Lindsey Graham, Senator Blumenthal, continue to advocate for things that just make no sense whatsoever, that had been proven to be utterly failed on the battlefield.
36:22And again, don't miss this.
36:24If the Russian side, which started disastrously in 2022, were able to overcome all those mistakes, were able to improve their forces, were able to offset the losses,
36:36and continue to grow, and then now then they're on the offensive all over the place, and the Ukraine side doesn't have the manpower, the economic potential, or the production capacity to even match with this.
36:48The only thing they can do is they match the drones, and that's substantial, but it's not enough.
36:53It's like one out of six of the main areas.
36:56All the other five are decisively on the Russian side.
36:58So if you stick with what Lindsey Graham is saying, if you listen to him and all the people that are many of them are on his side,
37:07and God help us all if he convinces President Trump to do this in a couple of weeks and to put on these new sanctions
37:12and to not compel the Ukraine side to reach a negotiated settlement or just withdraw all of our support and leave it up to them to do whatever they deem best at that point,
37:22that's the only thing that's out of mercy, that's the best thing they could do for the people of Ukraine.
37:28It remains to be seen whether that's going to happen, but this is the course that it's set before us right now.
37:33This is what we have achieved.
37:35This is what passes for elite thinking in the Western world, especially in the United States,
37:42celebrating things that are disaster, oblivious to the fact that their proposals have no chance of success
37:49and a high probability of utter failure, and it's worked out that way.
37:52Now you have a huge track record of performing of all those things coming to pass,
37:58and that doesn't slow down the nonsense that we saw in Kiev yesterday.
38:03And obviously, Zelensky is loving it because he's detached from reality as anybody can be,
38:08so this just feeds him.
38:10Literally, it's like an intravenous drug into Zelensky's arm when Graham comes over and says those kind of things
38:16because that feeds his delusion, and it just continues to feed the meat grinder at the front lines
38:22because Zelensky will just keep sending men to certain death.
38:25That's just how it is.
38:27It's ugly.
38:27It's unpleasant, but that's where we are, folks.
38:30And I think that you need to know the truth because we're unintimidated and uncompromised
38:33to tell you whatever the truth is, no matter what it is, that's where we're at.
38:37But we do have to hope, and I do hold out some hope, that at least President Trump is still in the decision-making process,
38:45and he has signaled that he's going to do something in a couple of weeks.
38:49We'll see if he does.
38:50I think that whatever comes out of this meeting here in Istanbul, assuming that it happens on Monday,
38:55could go a long way towards pushing him into a decision-making process.
38:59I don't think he wants to just stumble along and drag it out and do nothing and let events take over.
39:04I think he's going to try to take some action pretty soon.
39:07And if he sees and if his advisors tell him about things that we've talked about here today
39:12and he sees that if he stumbles along or does what Lindsey Graham is going to have,
39:16then he's going to have his name all over the failure,
39:19that might prompt him to do what we've suggested that he withdraw and says,
39:24you guys are on your own now and finally does the walk that he's been talking about here.
39:28We'll see how long that happens.
39:29You can count on Daniel Davis' deep dive to continue to bring it to you as it happens,
39:33and if anything happens in between now and then, we'll bring that to you as well.
39:36And in the meantime, have a great Saturday.
39:37We'll see you next time on Daniel Davis' deep dive.