The mud season was the number one reason I didn't think Russia was going to invade last year. It made no sense to me that they would invade right before/during the mud season. It's like they forgot their own history. Still boggles my mind. I guess it just fits into the idea that the Russians expected Ukraine to roll over and not fight back.
and now they are launching another offensive that looks like it will end up culminating at around the same time as when the spring mud season arrives. They don't even learn from last year, why would they learn from their history?
I think this was pretty much their assumption: that Zelensky, nothing more than a clown in their understanding, would just run away, and that the Ukrainian government would crumble making the reaction to invasion inviable. That´s how I see it, but I could be wrong.
They invaded then because they had to beat the Ukranians to the punch. The huge Nato constructed and backed Ukrainian army was all set to smash into Crimea any day.
*edit, thank you to everyone that supports Ukraine. We appreciate this, we appreciate that lots of people have their heart in the right place. And by no means we take this for granted. Ukrainian here. I have 2 friends, one fought for 9 months and came back home; second fights for 9 moths and stays at the frontlines. Both of these guys are more concerned about actual war stuff than what is happening back home. They have family and kids. It's simply not as bad as it *can get. Basically, if we lose the frontlines, Ukraine is over as a country. Everyone will either lose their life, their business, their freedom or all of those together. I'm saying this as someone who speaks russian and has russian relatives. That country (russia) went 100% ravenous for blood. I think (and I want to believe) that most people are morally ready for what is going to happen next: long, bloody, grinding war. I'm writing this from an IT office that is using diesel generators to function. I regularly lose electricity in my apartment but we'll get through this sh*t. It's not the first time in the history of Ukraine that odds are not in our favor.
At the start of the invasion I heard a podcast with a Russian born American. He put it like this: ... they don't know what they started, the toughest people I know are all Ukrainian. There's no way Russia can win."
As long as you continue to get supplies from NATO members Ukraine will continue to put up a fight Once NATO or the majority of United States and its allies back off their support to Ukraine, Ukraine is going to have a much harder time staying a nation on the map
I think ruzzians have culled their best for so many generations they are feral now Like the opposite side of the silver fox experiments but they did it to themselves Ferals cannot be saved
I live in rural nw Ohio...this past fall as the corn and beans were being harvested, the farmers were slamming wheat into the ground as fast as they could. It seemed like more bean fields were rotated, probably because of minimal or no tillage needs. If this happened all over the country then wheat shortages could be somewhat mitigated, but with fewer beans/corn available. We shall see.
@@DieNibelungenliad Our farmers are dis-incentivized to grow wheat beyond a certain point, so that the price stays high enough that we don't just import all of our wheat. Corn is subsidized because of it's versatility. Ukraine is the bread basket of Europe. The midwest region of North America is the breadbasket of the world. If we entered into a situation where economic gain was no longer the primary motivator, we could replace the Ukranian grain shortage almost without effort. I would be willing to bet that Kansas and Nebraska could do it by themselves. *edited to say that this will never happen. The United States does not combat hunger by interfering in markets on behalf of the hungry. The United States fights hunger with free bags of soy/corn porridge.
Right! No interstate highway system. The US interstate system was built with military specifications to be used in national emergency. This includes sections long and straight enough to handle military aircraft
I saw you on Rogan and I've been fascinated, honestly. I had a much more cynical view on the world and you've really calmed me down from the dystopian future I saw. Thank you for your insight and opinions :)
@@geopolitiikkajasota4404 at least some countries he reckons will be OK, not most, but if live one them and I thought we were as fucked as most of the world
Zeihan claimed Putin's age to be "in the mid 60s" on the show - a pretty serious mistake for someone who's supposed to be an expert on strategy. He made a couple of other similar mistakes and questionable claims, so I'm starting to question his credibility. For example, the Kerch bridge *isn't* destroyed.
@@iboughtathing2001 Zeihan glows with the brightness of a thousand suns. Everyone talks about his much-hyped "research team", without any apparent awareness that their "research" seems to mostly be acting as middle-men for the see eye aye.
We kinda lucked out with bumper harvests in other parts of the world and of course there's a certain amount of grain in storage. We are gambling that weather and geopolitical factors will not cause further complications to an already tight market.
As a prepper I have had two significant realisations in the last few years. 1. The world is never that far away from catastrophe 2. Things take longer than I imagined to deteriorate. Its been an eye opener appreciating that many of the things in the world are a fragile web of interconnected relationships that can very easily be disrupted or destroyed. But it has also been a lesson in timescale. In movies disaster hits, forty eight hours later there are fires in the streets. Real life however lulls you into a falls sense of security because many crisis play out in economic and medical timescales, so its seductive to assume things aren't as bad as predicted, when the reality is, the train has left the previous station and its inevitably on its way to your station, where the train wreck will play out in good time. Peace and quiet is NOT reassurance that there are no problems working their way steadily through the system, and are set to cause calamity later. Our excess death issues took over a year to become truly apparent, the start of our food crisis go way back to the Russian export ban on fertilisers just before the invasion, and our supply chain woes go all the way back to the global lockdowns. I think a lot of people get caught out because lots of causes are quick or instantaneous, but the effects playout over years. Its like boiling a frog in a pan of water
Rome took 100ish years to collapse and was sacked multiple times in the process. In the next 100 years we will be facing demographic and economic collapse, that many don't seem to see coming.
While you were worrying, US fertilizer plants have re-opened. Huge potash operations in the middle of nowhere Utah and California is in the process. It was cheaper in Russia but all those plants were originally here. You want chips? Huge factories being built here in the US. Many factories coming back here after the supply chain debacle. Record numbers even. Despite all the bad news we hear, things are going quite well for us here, especially for the future. Not perfect, but better than most anywhere else. Don't defrost your deep freeze yet, things aren't going to collapse here anytime soon.
The fact that global problems happen on a long time scale is the very reason why they tend not to end in complete disaster at all. Countries, companies, and individuals have agency, so they take actions to mitigate the problems and ensure that society survives, even if things are tough for a while. We know what we're facing and have modern-day technology, so the odds the US collapses like Rome are pretty slim.
Most seem to play out over decades. While being prepared is a good idea, remember that there were thousands of nuclear bomb shelters built in the early 60s.
@@Rjsjrjsjrjsj I mean, Peter predicts billions will likely starve over the coming decades so no matter if you're American, Canadian, Australian, or any other country he predicts will be alright. Billions will be starving and that will lead to wars and refugees and humanitarian crises on a scale we haven't seen in a long time. That's depressing.
@@jwiegraffe6290 I don’t think we will starve in America as we are net exporters of food. We will still have food available. But prices will go up. So no. We certainly won’t be unaffected.
@@jwiegraffe6290 What's depressing is that the places starvation will occur didn't put in place appropriate population control measures that could have forestalled it.
Interesting fact : The Allies literally sided with the perpetrators of the Holodomor and like that wasn't bad enough already at the end of WW2 after they " Liberated " Europe the Allies handed Stalin half of the Continent on a silver platter ( Poland Included ) they also had no problems with Gulags , Mass Deportations , Mass Theft ( especially of Resources ) but wait there's more ! After USSR felt The same nations that formed the Allies forced Ukraine to give up its nuclear weapons thus making them an easy target which you guessed it lead to the recent events .
@@who167 Not true. The Poles, one of the 3 original Allies, knew about Holodomor from the very beginning, giving that there were countless Ukrainian refugees fleeing USSR at that time and coming to Poland through the border, which Polish authorities interrogated about what's going on in Ukraine (as Timothy Snyder explains in his series of lectures about the making of Ukraine). From Poland news of Holodomor were reported to the West well before the start of WW2. The Allies knew about it, they just didn't care and were not interested in it.
Let's have some context here. The USSR was never more than an ally of convenience against the Axis powers, and it was never an easy alliance. In fact, until Germany invaded Russia, Russia was an ally of Germany. It was only after Germany invaded that Russia became an ally because Germany at the time was a FAR greater threat. Russia had enough troubles invading Finland, after all, a country that was a fraction of its size. At the end of the war the allies were devastated. Allowing Russia to capture Berlin and then to maintain their influence over Eastern Europe was primarily because they did not want to engage in a third world war. And not everyone was on board with allowing Russia to keep eastern Europe. Winston Churchill specifically wanted to drive Russia out of eastern Europe, but he was overruled by his allies. It was he who coined the term Iron Curtain, and the 6th book in his World War II memoir (highly recommended) is titled Triumph and Tragedy, the tragedy being that fact that Russia was allowed to keep eastern Europe. As for nuclear weapons, that's also contextual. There were a LOT of nuclear weapons in Ukraine. And the Ukrainian government at the time of independence was very corrupt. There was a lot of fear that someone would sell a nuke to terrorists, and that fear had some justification. The Ukrainian government today is far less corrupt than it was in the 90's, and it's still got a decent amount of corruption.
He's right, I looked at the data just now. Everyone in Egypt needs to see this and start preparing right now. It's just insane to me how the news is talking about political wedge issues when this kind of thing is about to happen and it takes 2 seconds to look it up.
Peter, great analysis, but one thing: I get that Russia can mobilize many troops, since they are bigger. But can't UA match those numbers by just mobilizing a larger % of their people? It's their *survival* at stake after all, for Russia it's just "fighting another country" (and I know Russia sees this war also as their "survival", but they're not getting invaded like UA is, so motivation should be lower, right?)
Don't be ignorant and fall for Zeihan's claptrap. "Ukraine" never existed before the breakup of the USSR. Before WW2, there wasn't any "Ukraine" - there was just Eastern Poland + Western Russia in its place. The people living in the eastern part of Ukraine are Russians who have always lived there. Kiev tried to wipe them out, and so Russia invaded. So Putin isn't the hardliner in this case - the Russian people actually think Putin is a wimp for not pounding Ukraine harder. So certainly there's no shortage of Russians queuing up to go fight. It's not "another country" for them -- you're just badly misinformed thanks to fools like Zeihan, and that's why the war isn't going how you imagine it should. Echo chambers are dangerous things.
There's a few problems with that idea (of calling up larger numbers quickly): As the Russians have proven, untrained and improperly equipped troops are very ineffective and arguably cause more problems especially when you're trying to be precise and need to rely on their success. Second, you'd be amazed how high a percentage of the population is not fit for military service. Health issues, mental issues, etc. Further, many of those men/women may already be performing critical tasks that you need them to continue (such as people constantly repairing infrastructure). It's easy to put a lot of bodies on the field but it's harder to keep them supplied, effective, and winning... and without everything continuing to support them (such as food/supplies continuing to be sent which stops if everyone at home can't help), they will start to lose the ability to fight.
Unfortunately, the UA MoD has already suggested that adding many more men would be very difficult. There just aren't enough men of fighting age/health who haven't already been drafted or fled. This is, IMO, largely because there is another consideration; if Ukraine drafts another 500k, who will be left to till the fields or rebuild the power infrastructure etc.? Regarding morale... well, Russian morale hit rock bottom six months ago, then grabbed a shovel to try and dig further down in September. That's not liable to change much anytime soon.
@@draelon Yeah that's a good point. They *might* have already reached max mobilization capacity. But, I will disagree on the logistics - they have the backing of NATO countries (training facilities/ instructors, guns/ supply trucks and logi gear) They could draft also *women* - that's the one un-tapped potential they have (lots of women voluntarily serve, but it's like 1 woman per 10 men, so there's high potential) I'm no feminist, but women can be pretty effective fighters, equal to men (since driving, shooting, piloting drones and walking/running is a thing women are capable of doing)
Not to nitpick Peter, but didn't you say the same thing about 2022 at the start of this war? The whole "there goes 13% of the world's calories?" What your educated guesses fail to account for is people (and politics) adapting.
Learn Your Facts. The Kerch bridge was NEVER taken out - especially the train side was not down more than a couple of hours. The ROAD part was damaged (but up for one line use within a day or so, iirc), the train part was pretty much operational without interruption.
@@dammitdan106 ukraine doesnt give up because they're not allowed to give up by orders from USA. western nations WANT TO BLEED UKRAINE DRY just to tear down russia.
The people who conducted the holodomor are the people running Ukraine today, and sending their kids into the meat grinder to die while not negotiating peace. The USSR was not run by ethnic Russians genius. Ukraine is not run by Ukrainians today.
Are the US and Canadian farmers poised to plant massive grain crops this Spring? That could certainly help avoid famine in other areas, depending upon how much spare capacity we have.
Look up all the mysteriously exploding grain elevators and food processing plants. There's countless videos on that topic. Also the government pays for destroying food at the farm already! It's gonna be a global holodomor.
I dont know how often that this guy is correct about all his predictions and I have not seen any of them happen yet but I appreciate the candour and the more realistic talk from all the cheerleading that we hear from all the other channels. An injection of realism is what we need to hear.
He predicted that Russia would defeat Ukraine in days and was much more pessimistic than most. He was totally wrong. Watching wildly inaccurate Zeihan EV and renewable energy rants made me question everything he says. Maybe he's been wandering in the woods too long. Most likely he's carrying water for the big money fossil fuel cartels and other old school moneyed interests.
Uh he was cheerleading nato for the last year and a half... he's only turning the narrative now because it's obvious that he was wrong. Look at his covid vaccine predictions they are terrible, weak American propaganda in retrospect. His bitcoin prediction is another one that has and will contjnue to go terribly wrong. He's a mouthpiece for the US Establisment.
You've got to be careful with Peter, at times he's really balanced, telling the good and the bad but be aware at least 1/4 of his content is aimed at feel good, "the catastrophe is going to miss you people who've paid a shit ton of money for me to talk to you" content consumers.
Starting to doubt the South offensive will be "quick" for Ukraine. Russia has established defensive positions. Several smaller rivers create natural obstacles, even if traversable. Lastly the indiscriminate use of both anti personal and anti tank mines from Russia makes advance hard if you are trying to limit casualties. Worse still with all the chaos in their army, even the Russian's might not know where exactly Russian mine fields are.
@@christopherharmon2433 problem is Ukraine is doing the advancing. If Russia is advancing they just get prisoners or new conscripts and say "Forward march" towards the mine field.
True. Usually it emboldens people to fight as it basically is seen as survival. Even if Russia successfully took Ukraine, I foresee terrorism and ambush attacks happening on Russian occupiers for years to come.
OP is correct, Perun made a really good video on this. You can cause other issues with strategic bombardment, but it has never once directly resulted in outright surrender in modern times.
The prediction of a food crisis in the Arab world and SE Asia is overstated. We heard the same predictions a year ago that never materialized. This is the same guy who predicted an energy crisis in Europe this current winter that would collapse the entire economy and support for the war that never materialized.
An exceptionally warm winter has helped Europe dodged a bullet but they're still Industries and fertilizer manufacturing not occurring because of gas shortages, and as for food shortages for huge price increases it sounds like you're just privileged enough to live somewhere where there isn't any so you think it doesn't exist. Peter as always spoke of this being a multi-year problem multi-year permanent problem just because things didn't materialize as you interpreted they would in a few short months doesn't mean Peter is wrong perhaps your interpretation is wrong.
@@PolishBehemoth Food prices ended 2022 lower when they started per global index, fertilizer is cheaper now than the beginning of last year and the same is true for natural gas. Oil prices are now cheaper than when the war started. All of this benefits the agricultural sector. So again, this guys hyperbolic and extreme predictions of a second Holodomor are to be taken with a grain of salt. And if you listen to him enough, he is very repetitive. As the saying goes, his knowledge is a mile wide but an inch deep.
@@TK-en2hq no blessings required. Finland in the Winter war had a 9:1 KD ratio even though they lost. The US has had KD ratios over 10 or 20:1 since Korea. Weapons, training, leadership, coordination and a plan is all anyone needs.
Our host lied about the weather in Calgary. January has been very warm, largely above 0 Celsius. Nevertheless, I wonder why he is hanging out in Calgary lately.
Just a recent listener to your reports sir. Very informative. Thank you for your information and the work you put in....You are a most excellent speaker as well as very intelligent.....subscribed....
Hi Peter - question; do you think Russia can economically last another year? I understand that they have started drawing down from their National Welfare Trust to fund the war, and I don't small money, it was something like 34B USD.
Russia can last for much longer than a year as far as basic necessities go; it's a massive country with lots of people who are familiar with hardship, perhaps even self-imposed. North Korea and Iran have been sanctioned for decades and those regimes still stand, although it does limit their collective futures.
@DolphinsWIthIgloos I agree, but at least for Russia, Putin does seem to enjoy more support from the general public than what could be enforced; they like their "strong man" leaders.
@@bjkarana True. As russian I can confirm that every single piece of hateful western propaganda helps him. Every time some mentally challenged person upon internet "dances on the bones" of some dead russian soldier it adds up into massive support of Putin.
@David I didn't vote for Biden, but I don't understand why some people see him as such a threat, but I never understood why certain dems saw Mitt Romney as such a threat either. Of course this has nothing to do with autocracy/theocracy unless you're deep into a bubble... 🙄
Peter, In a scenario that starts to suggests a Russian victory, do you see the West stepping up their efforts to prevent it? Does eastern Europe really want Russian borders to be that close? Does Germany really want to start militarizing their eastern border and the spending that ensues? What are your thoughts on the West's next steps if it's their intention to stop Russia? Thanks for the channel!
I'm not sure if NATO is all that concerned at this point given the war is in a bit of a stalemate. If the Russians start making meaningful gains, I'd think NATO's focus quickly sharpens and more drastic measures take place. I don't think giving up Ukraine to the Russians is an option. I also wonder if the Chinese would like to see a weakened Russia given their "expansionist" tendencies when it comes to the Russian far east?
@@wattsupwiththat1463 LOL... ok, or perhaps it needed to remain as it did to counter Russia's current invasion of an independent country that posed no thread nor provoked Russian into doing so. Russia's justification: Nazism? What a load of BS! And it's just ridiculous for them to even suggest it! Russia is only proving that NATO is more relevant than ever 30 years after the fall of the Soviet Union. I've heard it stated time and time before and it's 100% accurate: "Never trust a Russian! Ever!"
Germany is already re-arming at a rate faster than they did in the run up to WWII. A Bundeswehr that is actually capable of defending Germany is years away, but it is inevitable at this point. How Europe reacts to this development will be mighty interesting.
I find no small irony in Egypt not having its own food crops on the Nile; anciently Egypt was THE breadbasket for Athens and then later, Rome. Their foods were exported all over the Med and the Middle East for centuries. This wrinkle in their food supply would mean they need to quit growing sugar cane, cotton, and tobacco and get back to growing edible crops instead.
Peter is WAY to "optimistic" about Russia's ability to field additional soldiers and successfully carry out offensive actions: 1) They've already been scraping the bottom of the barrel to get additional soldiers (prisons, those that weren't smart enough to leave). Given the almost 1 million that have fled the country and the 3 million already in the military, plus those in defence industries and medically unfit, it's hard to see where they could scare up an additional 500,000 out of the 7 million that are in their twenties. 2) Even if they could get additional soldiers, they sent the training experts to Ukraine months ago, so they'd have to bring soldiers way from the field to train the additional troops. It would take tens of thousands of experienced soldiers to train half a million civilians to the point where they were worth something. Untrained troops aren't worth much, as we've seen in the Russian attacks over the last few months. 3) Even with more poorly trained conscripts, it's clear that the officer corps of the Russian military is pretty useless. Without leadership, these men will be like a poorly maintained rifle that is more likely to blow up than hit its target. 3)j The Russian logistics of today can't support the current number of soldiers in the field, much less the additional half a million soldiers that Peter refers to. And the Ukrainians are focusing on destroying the Russian supply capacity (e.g. bombing the Kerch bridge) 5) If the US sends the Ukrainians the GLSDB, with twice the range of their current HIMERS (about 150 km) the Russian logistics situation will get much worse almost over night. At that point it will be difficult for the Russians to defend what they currently hold, much less carry out offensive actions.
0:47 -- let me give you some advice about russian numbers. just because they give some dude from the steppe a rusty AK and mismatched camo suit, does not make him a soldier. just because russia puts 300k people into the field, does not mean 300k soldiers, or 300k well organized people in divisions and companies. or 300k with adequate logistic support.
A critical question to answer is whether or not the Russians have the logistical capabilities to supply an army of 500,000 men. If not, the Russian offensives will be piecemeal, localized and uncoordinated.
@@scotttyson607 it'll be like the bakmut push 1 mile in 30 days and even then the Russians will find themselves cut off and surrounded eating artillery from all sides.
@David wow 3 responses from you. Your making sure to get all of those rubles arnt you commrad? Btw totally original American name. Did you come up with it or your handlers in Moscow?
Big fan Peter but you are mistaken on Calgary weather. It has been freakishly warm here for a month and above zero everyday since Christmas. I would guess it was at or above freezing at the time of your recording.
There have been multiple reports about sanctions crippling the Russian rail system due to lack of wheel bearing cartridges for the heavy railcars. Rail problems are the key to crippling the R war machine.
I believe PZ has some strong political and cultural beliefs. He could with his towering gifts present them and deeply piss-off those with opposing views. He should be celebrated for keeping those to himself. By doing so his information, evaluation and influence and our attention to and evaluation of his observations on current geopolitics and geo strategy would suffer … and his views are very valuable.
The US and Brazil turn a massive amount of corn into ethanol. (?)_Would selling food corn to Egypt be more profitable than downgrading our fuel with ethanol? If we could go back to growing food corn this would also lower feed costs for chicken and cattle and lower food cost in the U.S. I'm pretty sure New Zealand could greatly help with the wheat shortage.
Blows my mind we turn corn into ethanol when Hemp is 10x better per acre for making it. Plus grows way faster. Seems silly but eventually it will catch on.
Not really, Egypt isn't set up to mill and bake corn based flours. It's the same reason the US had to ration wheat after WWI to send to Belgium; we had lots of corn then too but the Belgians then like the Egyptians now can't really make use of it.
Peter says a pile of stuff with confidence and his delivery is persuasive. However, like everything the devil is in the details. As a Calgarian I can from confirm from Environment Canada that the temperature has been above 0 Celsius (and thus 0 Fahrenheit) twelve of the past fourteen days, contradicting his statement that the temperature hasn’t been above 0 is thirty days. My point is Peter sometimes is fast and loose with facts, assumptions and predictions. That doesn’t prevent me from subscribing to his channel and I do respect his analysis but I also think for myself.
Ukraine has Western weaponry and well trained military personnel. Actually Ukraine is probably Europe's best trained army now. Poland, the UK, the US and NATO generally can't allow Ukraine to get crushed by Russia. If for nothing else other then that were Ukrainian military personnel were forcibly integrated into the Russian army, God forbid, that would present too big a threat to NATO countries. We are all in now, until Russia collapses.
Yes but if we were truly all in we would be expediting the tanks and training and also provide the F-16s. More long range missiles. Get it in gear and get it done instead of all the clownass politicians dragging feet and fiddling around a trickle here a trickle there. Longer it drags on better position Russia is in. I just fear it will turn out to be too little too late.
He keeps mentioning the Scooby-Doo doo busses full of ammo hitting bumps, is there videos of this somewhere? I can't find anything online about it. Are they exploding?
If you're right, that means the Europeans need to get massive numbers of air defense systems, leopards and even F16's to Ukraïne now. If you're wrong, the Europeans still need to send massive numbers of air defense systems, leopards and even F16's to Ukraïne now. This grim vision of the future can only be avoided by Russia's defeat - like they suffered in Grozny. And a following boom in the arms industry, because Russia will try again.
russia's defeat? that will only happen when the US sends in troops. short of that, ukraine is going down. what will the western side do when they sent 100 billion to ukraine & lost anyway.
100 Bln are not much compared to all NATO countries combined military spending, a little more than a rounding error. On the other hand, Russia power projection capabilities are weaker than ever, and they're grip over their allies is shrinking. China will think twice attempting any invasion. So yeah, Ukraine may or may not ein, but Russia lost already
@@apc9714 A 100 billion appropriations bill in the US is just another Tuesday. In fact, it sounds like the decimal point is in the wrong spot. Usually, we don’t even get out of bed unless there’s at least a trillion on the line.
The population of Ukraine prior to the war was around 43 million, they quickly restricted men from travelling abroad who could be mobilised, the number which fled is more than offset by the Russians who fled mobilisation and the war, a lot of women and children (8 million) emigrated to neighbouring countries, reducing the dependency burden for Ukraine, they are "thankfully" being fed and watered by others, the U.K. population was around the same for the start of World War 2 and some 3.5 million men and women were placed into the army, while the factories and food production still continued to work despite extremely heavy bombing, Ukraine's industrial needs are taken care of by the West and it's air defence's by Spring/ Summer should mean that it's a no fly zone for aircraft and it should achieve 80 to 90% success on missile attacks. Yes it's tough on Ukraine, but it is achievable, and to finally release the shackles of Russia's murderous ambitions after hundreds of years is surely worth the sacrifice, no more Holodomors!?!
It would make sense that these predictions are what's motivating the US to step up Patriot and Bradley (and now possibly Abrams) deliveries at this time. Increased mobility and firepower at the front, protection for infrastructure in the interior.
Also the talk about delivery of the GLSDB munition for HIMARS and MLRS for the purposes of targeting ammunition storage and command structure which can be used now and during more mobile offensives.
@@morganholsomback4851 Which agreement are you talking about? On Minsk NATO said they were the ones that lied to deceive Russia. Learn to read you may learn something :)
@@comatoseps1382 And they re-opened several ferry lines to carry the extra load. Clearly the damage to the bridge is causing problems, but I really don't see it as the catastrophe for Crimea Zeihan is claiming. Ferries are more expensive, slower and less flexible, but it seems to me alongside one fully operational rail line operating alternate bidirectional traffic they have significant capacity.
The Russian "strategy" will be akin to the open scene on Enemy at the Gates when they were crossing the river. They will simply attempt to use the strategy of throwing bodies into the muzzles of machine guns and rifles until Ukraine runs out of ammo. Problem is this will not only be something that Russia can try ONCE (since they don't have a replacement generation of men), but it will fail because Ukraine isn't fighting with WW2 era tech
Enemy of the Gates was a myth. The Soviets produced far more materiel than Germany did in WW2. 5 tanks for every 1 German tank. History is found in books, not movies. The Soviets outmanoeuvred the Germans with one of the most brilliant operations in history, Uranus
Your numbers are funny. The Russians entered the war with 170-190k, the have mobilised 300k but only about half of them are in Ukraine. So all up, if not a single Russian soldier died, then they would have 320k in Ukraine. The Ukrainians had stated in the middle of last year that they had 950k mobilised. So yes one side is severely outnumbered. But it's not the Ukrainians. Your casualty figures are funny as well, not even the American and British figures state that, they say losses are about equal.
@@moon_knight8578 Yes, this is true for both sides. It's hard to say what the true strength is, best estimates are what we see on deployment maps but they are hard to find and have issues.
Here's a "cheery note": we should have reelected Trump and all those children would still be attached to their limbs, all those women unraped and this entire mess avoided. Electing a president who had accomplished nothing in life led to the first Russian invastion; then electing a man whose faculties are obviously seriously impaired led to the second. It was great for the unelected bureaucrats who run the country now and then but very bad for US Citizens and for the world at large. Trump would have had oil and gas flowing, preventing war; and if he stepped back into office he would immediately increase grain production. But we are more concerned with melanin levels, pronouns and personal sexual proclivities. I say this because Mr. Zeihan cannot or he will lose his clerisy card.
Trump sent 59 armed Tomahawk missiles to a Russian base in Syria at the beginning of his term. They exploded on contact. Vlad took no territory for 4 years.
@@msimon6808 Damned Right. He AVOIDED war; now we have and are COPING and "trying not to escalate" a genocide taking place before our eyes by the same group that genocided them once before! But you know this administration appoints people with the correct biological markers and sexual leanings SO THERE!
We did reelect Trump. Bit of a problem with the vote counting. Otherwise I think you are basically right, but with one possible question. If Trump were president and Russia still invaded, which is possible if not as likely, then I am not sure if our response would have been as decisive. He might have listened to the wrong Republicans (he has before) and might have thought of it as an opportunity to show off his negotiating skills. I detest Biden and the Democrats, but you have to give the Devil his due-he did step up to the plate on this one. Can’t stand anything else about him, but he scored a solid base hit. Not sure about Trump, and I voted for him. As for Zeihan, I like him, but military analysis doesn’t seem to be his strong suit.
It doesn't look like they are very well armed or equipped - but as Ret. General Ben Hodges says, Quantity is a quality all it's own. And as Peter has said multiple times, Russia is perfectly content to throw bodies at a problem, and it has worked for them in the past. Russia (USSR) took losses in WWII of between 20 and 27 million people. They think differently than we do.
@@StormyDog Yes and no. Peter can be glib sometimes, and he's certainly charismatic and charming, but he does know his stuff. I've been following him for about a year now. Understand, this is what he does for a living. I've seen him speak (available on RUclips) before one of our military academies so even the military takes him seriously. I knew when I first came across him I'd either dismiss him as not worth my time, or become a fan. He sometimes misses on the details, but he gets the broad strokes right. And yes - I love Ben Hodges. My kind of guy. He too knows his stuff and he dispenses it in a way you want to know more. I follow him too.
There is nothing stop Ukraine calling up more troops if it wants to, but it actually cancelled the last annual mobilization so clearly they think they have enough already.
It may not be that Ukraine thinks it has enough already but that Ukraine can’t actually mobilise anymore. They may not have enough rifles, uniforms, barracks, trainers etc to bring in anymore troops. They may also feel that they couldn’t pay, feed or supply another 50,000 troops right now without further foreign support. Or it could be that anyone who would be a good soldier is already in uniform and anyone left is either militarily incompetent or would take to long to train up.
They have volunteers still waiting to get processed and sent to bootcamp. That's why some countries are announcing that they're sending instructors to train Ukrainian men in NATO bases.
@@maxpower3990 Fair to ask the question but I don't think so. Sourcing small arms etc within the months of warning we've had is an insignificant task for domestic and foreign suppliers. For context, about 2000 pieces of heavy equipment were announced by the allies this January alone.
Really? Because he's saying pretty much the opposite of what I personally want to hear. Now, whether he's right or not is an entirely different question.
@@D0pam1n yeah, conspicuously absent from basically any of his predictions is climate change. He also just seems to say the same things over and over. I'm still waiting for China to collapse, any day now!
@@sonofdamocles He offers some absolutely interesting facts and statistics BUT he's also usually preaching to the choir and his conclusions tend to coddle whomever he's presenting his books, I mean predictions, to. He's not an academic but a self-described strategist, so he wants the ears of industry and political deciders. I remember a talk at a conference with energy or transportation industry people and when climate change came up he quickly dismissed THEIR industry to be an important factor but farming or whatever. And that IS a big factor but come on...
Peter is the only western personality who is even close to calling this war down the middle. Been watching all his videos throughout the war and you can clearly observe a pivot that it's not looking good for Ukraine.
What pivot? He started off saying it wasn’t looking good for Ukraine. If anything he’s backing off that mantra. Too slowly, and too little, but backing off.
History is ambiguous. After the 1914 campaign defeats in Prussia, the Russian army retreated home. The Czar was overthrown and Sovietsy kept the wounded Russian army out of WWI. Early in WW2 after both Soviets and Nazis agreed to devour Poland, Germany launched a massive campaign to conquer Russia. After tremendous early blitzkrieg success, the resolve, size and productive capacity of Russia counterattacked and defeated Germany in the brutal Eastern Front. Which Russia does Ukraine face? WW1, bloodied and bruised retreating into self-destruction. WW2 Russian, first bloodied and withdrawn, and returning a giant, well-equipped and well lead single-minded berserker craving German blood? Putin thinks it's the latter.
yeah... in the first 1-2 weeks. did you hear about any issues since? because I didn't. and it's now been around 3 months. exactly the time needed to train conscripts. so I'll expect around 270k conscripts hat have not been deployed so far but were in training since the beginning of the mobilization to show up on the battlefield for a major offensive
@@SebastianHaban It was certainly longer than just 2 weeks of issues. However your talking about 2x the amount of people on the battle space. I think we haven’t heard anything about equipment issues because besides bakhmut there is little movement. I personally think it’s not feasible unless done over at least a 6 month time frame if not more. But we will certainly see what happens.
Strategic bombing of an opposing civilian populace in order to demoralize them into surrender has literally never worked a single time in the entire history of warfare, because people tend to resent being bombed and end up stubbornly fighting back even harder as a result. It's not a smart plan for winning a conflict purely in military terms. Perun's channel has a really good video on this.
I fully agree. I don't think his comment in strategic bombing of civilian targets (electric) has worked, the seem to have stopped it and it was vastly outweighed by the good weather and the repairs that the Ukrainians put in to get it back online. Russia was petitioned very hard and lots of pressure put on them (loss of allies even) to accept the grain transport safe passage deal. I dont see the reason to take it out. It's fairly small in terms of economic value, but HUGE in terms of political backfiring. It's russia of course, so anything is possible regardless of reasons or reality, but I just don't see it. And with the relatively poor training and mostly older equipment the ukranians have I don't see an 5:1 k/d ratio. Most of the tdf arent very trained, as the Ukrainians didn't do a lot of training on them it seems, at least in the first 8 months of the war. Very Serious stuff indeed.
@@simianinc The compromise assessment is; you can kill masses of people by bombing, but you cannot subdue them. The leadership is a different story. I suspect that intercontinental precision-guided munitions, plus real-time leadership tracking, will have an effect. Zeihan has said that Putin personally would be at risk, if he went nuclear.
@@simianinc dropping two nuclear warheads on major cities is vastly different than the conventional bombs Russia is currently using, so not an apples to apples comparison.
@@bltsandwich567 Even Hiroshima and Nagasaki weren't examples of successful terror bombing so much as they were effective means of permanently degrading an enemy's war-making ability at scale. Up to that point, strategic bombing runs against valuable assets like factories entailed enormous costs and their effects could be undone in weeks. That the US was suddenly capable of consigning irreplaceable industrial assets to oblivion was probably a lot scarier to the Japanese military than the civilian casualties. In other words, strategic bombing works only to the extent that it functions as tactical bombing against bigger targets. Since then, the US has learned this lesson and found lots of ways to effectively consign strategic assets to oblivion at minimal risk /without/ high numbers of civilian casualties (some of which they've taught Ukraine). Meanwhile, Russia's takeaway from the history of nukes is that the best way to make an adversary back down is to hold the maximum number of people's lives at risk. It's pretty clear which interpretation is more effective at winning wars!
Good news is defensive advantage usually allows for 3:1 casualties for the attacker. However, the Ukrainians still need to get better at minimizing losses. Not to mention if the Russians start to learn how to use their Wagner group to full efficacy.
@@stevecooper7883 Except it's not the Ukrainians that are in a defensive position at this point, as Zeihan even mentioned in this video. The Ukrainians need to capture territory or they'll face a complete defeat. They're unable to advance because the Russians have been allowed to dig in. I mean, the Ukrainian general was pretty clear that in order to get a victory and to see progress they need a ton of equipment. The West has sent them barely anything since he said that. I wouldn't be too optimistic about how these next few months ago. If Bakhmut falls, it'll be the beginning of the end.
Turkish edition ''Hürseda Haber'' published ''Mossad'' data on the losses of the parties in Ukraine as of January 14, 2023: Russia: 23 aircraft, 56 helicopters, 200 drones, 889 tanks, and other armored fighting vehicles, 427 artillery systems, 12 air defense systems, 44,500 wounded, 18,480 dead, and 323 prisoners. Ukraine: 302 aircraft, 212 helicopters, 2,750 drones, 6,320 tanks, and other armored vehicles, 7,360 artillery systems, 497 air defense systems, 234,000 wounded, 157,000 dead, and 17,320 prisoners. The West: 5,360 dead mercenaries, 2,458 dead military personnel of the armies of NATO member countries, and 234 dead military instructors of NATO. This boils down to 10: 1
So you accept the holodomor as a genocide would you ever accept Iraq 2003-present, Afghanistan 2001-2020 and libya 2011-2013 as siege and military genocides perpetrated by the American, British, and French states as genocides?
The numerical imbalance reminds me of the American Civil War. The Union almost always outnumbered the Confederates. The war lasted so long because Robert E Lee was a genius at maneuver. As President Truman said, “The only things we don’t know is the history we haven’t read.”
I´d like to ask: what would a defeat for Ukraine mean for the future of the world? What would ruZZia advance towards the west mean for global security? And, most importantly, WILL this be allowed to happen?
The defeat in Ukraine would mean that NATO now physically borders Russia it would mean that aggressive military action to remove a nation from existing is allowed by the international community, and would be looked as inspiration for many other nations who want territory China and Taiwan, China and India, China and Bhutan, Ethiopia and Eritrea, Ethiopia and Egypt, Morocco and Algeria It would also mean then a lot of nations would lose faith in the ability to be protected by fellow NATO members and would likely seek alternatives
@@rejvaik00 It could mean a lot more than that. Russia may decide to go for broke meaning they could try and conquer all of Europe. What would the rest of Europe do if Russia was to invade Poland?
And sadly the vast stockpile of cluster bombs that we'd otherwise have to pay to decommission. Got masses of Russian troops who's leaders would be even more cruel? Better to stop them there than in Poland, Estonia, Moldova etc.
Russia left Kiev wayyyyyy before it was muddy. They were over extended across the entire front. They fell back to control the 4 regions they already made progress in.
Grain shortages aside, this has to be the most pessimistic outlook on the war itself I've heard in many months. Russia does not have unlimited bodies to throw. They have almost no artillery left, and few allies to buy from. Ukraine is getting resupplied with modern stuff regularly, their army is motivated. I too wish the UA had been able to conduct another "thunder run" during a hard freeze, but overall, Ukraine is going to win.
They don't have unlimited soldiers, but it is a fair point that Ukraine can't afford to lose too many of their own dudes before they start running into issues. A brutal war of attrition still favors the Russians because of the sheer gap in the body count, and I'm sure Putin knows this. He seems more than happy to chuck a few hundred thousand guys into the meat grinder in order to maintain his grip on power.
Take it all with some skepticism. Have multiple sources. Make your own judgements. Be prepared to be surprised and wrong. It’s tragic/comic soap opera with real bullets.
even though many civilians have died, it’s crazy to think that the Americans killed more Iraqi civilians in 3 months in Iraq than all civilians killed in Ukraine one one year 😳
President Bush’s invasion of Iraq in the gulf war was a disaster for the world, the Iraqis, and the United States. Much of the civilian death toll, estimated at 276,000 to 305,000, from 2003 to 2019 (I know estimates vary)was a result of sectarian violence that was unleashed when Saddam’s regime was removed. Ukraine does not have the same internal division of intermixed factions that an occupying military (American and Coalition forces) could not keep separated from each other. Iraq’s continued inability to form a stable government and ongoing civil strife, long after the US has left the country, illustrates how the killings were not all committed by the US even if the invasion let loose the circumstances that ultimately let it happen. But i would be happy to have Bush, Cheney, and Rumsfeld (dig him up from the grave) facing charges for war crimes if Putin and his top generals also are arrested and faced the same. If Russia were to take and occupy Kyiv or other major cities, the civilian death toll would likely jump up dramatically. We’ll really only know what the real numbers of civilian deaths are only once the war is over and a real reckoning is made.
The mud season was the number one reason I didn't think Russia was going to invade last year. It made no sense to me that they would invade right before/during the mud season. It's like they forgot their own history. Still boggles my mind. I guess it just fits into the idea that the Russians expected Ukraine to roll over and not fight back.
The often repeated hypothesis is that China pressured them to do it after the Olympic games.
@@ChucksSEADnDEAD Doubtful
and now they are launching another offensive that looks like it will end up culminating at around the same time as when the spring mud season arrives. They don't even learn from last year, why would they learn from their history?
I think this was pretty much their assumption: that Zelensky, nothing more than a clown in their understanding, would just run away, and that the Ukrainian government would crumble making the reaction to invasion inviable. That´s how I see it, but I could be wrong.
They invaded then because they had to beat the Ukranians to the punch. The huge Nato constructed and backed Ukrainian army was all set to smash into Crimea any day.
*edit, thank you to everyone that supports Ukraine. We appreciate this, we appreciate that lots of people have their heart in the right place. And by no means we take this for granted.
Ukrainian here.
I have 2 friends, one fought for 9 months and came back home; second fights for 9 moths and stays at the frontlines.
Both of these guys are more concerned about actual war stuff than what is happening back home. They have family and kids. It's simply not as bad as it *can get.
Basically, if we lose the frontlines, Ukraine is over as a country. Everyone will either lose their life, their business, their freedom or all of those together. I'm saying this as someone who speaks russian and has russian relatives. That country (russia) went 100% ravenous for blood. I think (and I want to believe) that most people are morally ready for what is going to happen next: long, bloody, grinding war. I'm writing this from an IT office that is using diesel generators to function. I regularly lose electricity in my apartment but we'll get through this sh*t. It's not the first time in the history of Ukraine that odds are not in our favor.
At the start of the invasion I heard a podcast with a Russian born American. He put it like this: ... they don't know what they started, the toughest people I know are all Ukrainian. There's no way Russia can win."
May you see victory. This war is brutal. Thank you for your bravery and sacrifice. Slava Ukraine 💪🏼
As long as you continue to get supplies from NATO members Ukraine will continue to put up a fight
Once NATO or the majority of United States and its allies back off their support to Ukraine, Ukraine is going to have a much harder time staying a nation on the map
I think ruzzians have culled their best for so many generations they are feral now
Like the opposite side of the silver fox experiments but they did it to themselves
Ferals cannot be saved
Man, Russians care of saving the ethnic Russian from Balck sea coast from Kiev Oppresion, as they did in Georgia!
I live in rural nw Ohio...this past fall as the corn and beans were being harvested, the farmers were slamming wheat into the ground as fast as they could. It seemed like more bean fields were rotated, probably because of minimal or no tillage needs. If this happened all over the country then wheat shortages could be somewhat mitigated, but with fewer beans/corn available. We shall see.
It may help with aid programs but it will not be enough to off set the eastern food collapse.
Are farms in the States all taking aid from the gov or is this just a rare thing?
@@DieNibelungenliad the most subsidized crop is corn, so….
@@DieNibelungenliad Our farmers are dis-incentivized to grow wheat beyond a certain point, so that the price stays high enough that we don't just import all of our wheat. Corn is subsidized because of it's versatility. Ukraine is the bread basket of Europe. The midwest region of North America is the breadbasket of the world. If we entered into a situation where economic gain was no longer the primary motivator, we could replace the Ukranian grain shortage almost without effort. I would be willing to bet that Kansas and Nebraska could do it by themselves.
*edited to say that this will never happen. The United States does not combat hunger by interfering in markets on behalf of the hungry. The United States fights hunger with free bags of soy/corn porridge.
@@f0rdgamer no, rice is the most subsidized crop (as in the percent of value), followed by cotton, sorghum, wheat.
I notice that he said "vans" and not "Scooby-Doo vans". That darned Velma series has damaged more than I expected.
Yeah, I was thinking please don't say that again, he's repeated it so many times.
Right! No interstate highway system. The US interstate system was built with military specifications to be used in national emergency. This includes sections long and straight enough to handle military aircraft
When Eisenhower saw the autobahn in Germany, he thought 'we need one of those'. He got it approved by calling it 'The National Defense Highway Act'.
@@christopherharmon2433 Motivations mean less than results. The highways are still a strategic asset.
Comment removed, posted to wrong thread.
@@nunyabidness3075 not our business
@@christopherharmon2433 yup!
Does Peter Zeihan have tour t-shirts? He tours more than Iron Maiden did in the 80s.
@ZeihanonGeopolitics_ wow please I want merch so bad :D
@@Ephrones it's a scam-bot
Thanks for the laugh😊
the geopolitical grift is real! profiting off of other peoples suffering is big business!
Kudos for holding your hand up for 8+ minutes.
I saw you on Rogan and I've been fascinated, honestly. I had a much more cynical view on the world and you've really calmed me down from the dystopian future I saw.
Thank you for your insight and opinions :)
@@geopolitiikkajasota4404 at least some countries he reckons will be OK, not most, but if live one them and I thought we were as fucked as most of the world
he's had the opposite effect on myself. prior to 02/24/22 had you heard of him?
I guess you must live in the US lol.
Zeihan claimed Putin's age to be "in the mid 60s" on the show - a pretty serious mistake for someone who's supposed to be an expert on strategy. He made a couple of other similar mistakes and questionable claims, so I'm starting to question his credibility. For example, the Kerch bridge *isn't* destroyed.
@@iboughtathing2001 Zeihan glows with the brightness of a thousand suns. Everyone talks about his much-hyped "research team", without any apparent awareness that their "research" seems to mostly be acting as middle-men for the see eye aye.
Very much appreciate your content. Sending vibes from Nebraska.
Many people were making the same dire predictions about grain for last fall
We kinda lucked out with bumper harvests in other parts of the world and of course there's a certain amount of grain in storage. We are gambling that weather and geopolitical factors will not cause further complications to an already tight market.
The starvation was mostly in Africa
Ukrainians have over 700k military.
Ruzzian's 500k mobilized have been already partially dealt with.
So numbers are ok.
As a prepper I have had two significant realisations in the last few years.
1. The world is never that far away from catastrophe
2. Things take longer than I imagined to deteriorate.
Its been an eye opener appreciating that many of the things in the world are a fragile web of interconnected relationships that can very easily be disrupted or destroyed. But it has also been a lesson in timescale. In movies disaster hits, forty eight hours later there are fires in the streets. Real life however lulls you into a falls sense of security because many crisis play out in economic and medical timescales, so its seductive to assume things aren't as bad as predicted, when the reality is, the train has left the previous station and its inevitably on its way to your station, where the train wreck will play out in good time. Peace and quiet is NOT reassurance that there are no problems working their way steadily through the system, and are set to cause calamity later.
Our excess death issues took over a year to become truly apparent, the start of our food crisis go way back to the Russian export ban on fertilisers just before the invasion, and our supply chain woes go all the way back to the global lockdowns.
I think a lot of people get caught out because lots of causes are quick or instantaneous, but the effects playout over years. Its like boiling a frog in a pan of water
Rome took 100ish years to collapse and was sacked multiple times in the process. In the next 100 years we will be facing demographic and economic collapse, that many don't seem to see coming.
While you were worrying, US fertilizer plants have re-opened. Huge potash operations in the middle of nowhere Utah and California is in the process.
It was cheaper in Russia but all those plants were originally here.
You want chips? Huge factories being built here in the US.
Many factories coming back here after the supply chain debacle. Record numbers even.
Despite all the bad news we hear, things are going quite well for us here, especially for the future. Not perfect, but better than most anywhere else.
Don't defrost your deep freeze yet, things aren't going to collapse here anytime soon.
The fact that global problems happen on a long time scale is the very reason why they tend not to end in complete disaster at all. Countries, companies, and individuals have agency, so they take actions to mitigate the problems and ensure that society survives, even if things are tough for a while. We know what we're facing and have modern-day technology, so the odds the US collapses like Rome are pretty slim.
Most seem to play out over decades. While being prepared is a good idea, remember that there were thousands of nuclear bomb shelters built in the early 60s.
Perun got a good video about that. The resilience of a system is impressive.
Love your latest book Peter. So depressing but so interesting and insightful, saying hello from australia. You’re not wrong about our housing market…
I’ve read Disunited Nations but not the latest one. I still need to
Depressing? Where do you get that? Looks real good to me. Oh, just noticed, you're Australian. Even so it shouldn't be too bad at all.
@@Rjsjrjsjrjsj I mean, Peter predicts billions will likely starve over the coming decades so no matter if you're American, Canadian, Australian, or any other country he predicts will be alright. Billions will be starving and that will lead to wars and refugees and humanitarian crises on a scale we haven't seen in a long time. That's depressing.
@@jwiegraffe6290 I don’t think we will starve in America as we are net exporters of food. We will still have food available. But prices will go up. So no. We certainly won’t be unaffected.
@@jwiegraffe6290 What's depressing is that the places starvation will occur didn't put in place appropriate population control measures that could have forestalled it.
Interesting fact : The Allies literally sided with the perpetrators of the Holodomor and like that wasn't bad enough already at the end of WW2 after they " Liberated " Europe the Allies handed Stalin half of the Continent on a silver platter ( Poland Included ) they also had no problems with Gulags , Mass Deportations , Mass Theft ( especially of Resources ) but wait there's more ! After USSR felt The same nations that formed the Allies forced Ukraine to give up its nuclear weapons thus making them an easy target which you guessed it lead to the recent events .
The allies largely did not know of the Holdomor before the fall of the USSR
@@who167 They did know but they didn't care. FDR was a communist.
@@who167 Not true. The Poles, one of the 3 original Allies, knew about Holodomor from the very beginning, giving that there were countless Ukrainian refugees fleeing USSR at that time and coming to Poland through the border, which Polish authorities interrogated about what's going on in Ukraine (as Timothy Snyder explains in his series of lectures about the making of Ukraine). From Poland news of Holodomor were reported to the West well before the start of WW2. The Allies knew about it, they just didn't care and were not interested in it.
Let's have some context here. The USSR was never more than an ally of convenience against the Axis powers, and it was never an easy alliance. In fact, until Germany invaded Russia, Russia was an ally of Germany. It was only after Germany invaded that Russia became an ally because Germany at the time was a FAR greater threat. Russia had enough troubles invading Finland, after all, a country that was a fraction of its size.
At the end of the war the allies were devastated. Allowing Russia to capture Berlin and then to maintain their influence over Eastern Europe was primarily because they did not want to engage in a third world war. And not everyone was on board with allowing Russia to keep eastern Europe. Winston Churchill specifically wanted to drive Russia out of eastern Europe, but he was overruled by his allies. It was he who coined the term Iron Curtain, and the 6th book in his World War II memoir (highly recommended) is titled Triumph and Tragedy, the tragedy being that fact that Russia was allowed to keep eastern Europe.
As for nuclear weapons, that's also contextual. There were a LOT of nuclear weapons in Ukraine. And the Ukrainian government at the time of independence was very corrupt. There was a lot of fear that someone would sell a nuke to terrorists, and that fear had some justification. The Ukrainian government today is far less corrupt than it was in the 90's, and it's still got a decent amount of corruption.
He's right, I looked at the data just now. Everyone in Egypt needs to see this and start preparing right now.
It's just insane to me how the news is talking about political wedge issues when this kind of thing is about to happen and it takes 2 seconds to look it up.
Peter, great analysis, but one thing: I get that Russia can mobilize many troops, since they are bigger.
But can't UA match those numbers by just mobilizing a larger % of their people? It's their *survival* at stake after all, for Russia it's just "fighting another country"
(and I know Russia sees this war also as their "survival", but they're not getting invaded like UA is, so motivation should be lower, right?)
Don't be ignorant and fall for Zeihan's claptrap. "Ukraine" never existed before the breakup of the USSR. Before WW2, there wasn't any "Ukraine" - there was just Eastern Poland + Western Russia in its place. The people living in the eastern part of Ukraine are Russians who have always lived there. Kiev tried to wipe them out, and so Russia invaded. So Putin isn't the hardliner in this case - the Russian people actually think Putin is a wimp for not pounding Ukraine harder. So certainly there's no shortage of Russians queuing up to go fight. It's not "another country" for them -- you're just badly misinformed thanks to fools like Zeihan, and that's why the war isn't going how you imagine it should. Echo chambers are dangerous things.
There's a few problems with that idea (of calling up larger numbers quickly): As the Russians have proven, untrained and improperly equipped troops are very ineffective and arguably cause more problems especially when you're trying to be precise and need to rely on their success. Second, you'd be amazed how high a percentage of the population is not fit for military service. Health issues, mental issues, etc. Further, many of those men/women may already be performing critical tasks that you need them to continue (such as people constantly repairing infrastructure). It's easy to put a lot of bodies on the field but it's harder to keep them supplied, effective, and winning... and without everything continuing to support them (such as food/supplies continuing to be sent which stops if everyone at home can't help), they will start to lose the ability to fight.
Unfortunately, the UA MoD has already suggested that adding many more men would be very difficult. There just aren't enough men of fighting age/health who haven't already been drafted or fled. This is, IMO, largely because there is another consideration; if Ukraine drafts another 500k, who will be left to till the fields or rebuild the power infrastructure etc.?
Regarding morale... well, Russian morale hit rock bottom six months ago, then grabbed a shovel to try and dig further down in September. That's not liable to change much anytime soon.
@@draelon Yeah that's a good point. They *might* have already reached max mobilization capacity.
But, I will disagree on the logistics - they have the backing of NATO countries (training facilities/ instructors, guns/ supply trucks and logi gear)
They could draft also *women* - that's the one un-tapped potential they have (lots of women voluntarily serve, but it's like 1 woman per 10 men, so there's high potential)
I'm no feminist, but women can be pretty effective fighters, equal to men (since driving, shooting, piloting drones and walking/running is a thing women are capable of doing)
@@karunama3771 ...won't be a need to till fields if Ukraine doesn't exist (If fields are owned by Russia, then it's Russia's problem)
Not to nitpick Peter, but didn't you say the same thing about 2022 at the start of this war? The whole "there goes 13% of the world's calories?" What your educated guesses fail to account for is people (and politics) adapting.
I live in South Western Ontario and our winter had been the same so far this year. Cold at night, warm during the day. Mostly rain, barely snow.
When I was up there, in Chatham, I was surprised how hot it could seemingly get because of the humidity.
Learn Your Facts. The Kerch bridge was NEVER taken out - especially the train side was not down more than a couple of hours. The ROAD part was damaged (but up for one line use within a day or so, iirc), the train part was pretty much operational without interruption.
The remembrance of the 1st Holodomor is one of the main reasons that Ukraine won't give up.
lol
@@Oscar-ds2vb He's right you know. "Grandma made great liver pie" is a phrase interpreted two ways one of which is quite instructive.
@@dammitdan106 ukraine doesnt give up because they're not allowed to give up by orders from USA. western nations WANT TO BLEED UKRAINE DRY just to tear down russia.
@@dammitdan106 youre wrong for that one. >_>
The people who conducted the holodomor are the people running Ukraine today, and sending their kids into the meat grinder to die while not negotiating peace. The USSR was not run by ethnic Russians genius. Ukraine is not run by Ukrainians today.
Are the US and Canadian farmers poised to plant massive grain crops this Spring? That could certainly help avoid famine in other areas, depending upon how much spare capacity we have.
Look up all the mysteriously exploding grain elevators and food processing plants.
There's countless videos on that topic.
Also the government pays for destroying food at the farm already!
It's gonna be a global holodomor.
We already do plant massive grain crops in the U.S. We just need to stop selling it to China and India.
Trudeau is straight up doing everything he can to destroy western canadian ag business and farms so no .....we are screwed
Not with Trudeau in power
Trudope is actually going after farmers and making it more expensive with his fertilizer ban he has planned
Always with the warm and fuzzies with this guy, amirite? Lol, great vid as always Peter
Nothing like a war propagandist finally admitting he was wrong! So steamy!!!
It is important that this information reaches as many people as possible.
Why? This info is mostly wrong
@@pragmaticparadox5981 let em enjoy their boomer cope :)
Why
I dont know how often that this guy is correct about all his predictions and I have not seen any of them happen yet but I appreciate the candour and the more realistic talk from all the cheerleading that we hear from all the other channels. An injection of realism is what we need to hear.
He predicted that Russia would defeat Ukraine in days and was much more pessimistic than most. He was totally wrong. Watching wildly inaccurate Zeihan EV and renewable energy rants made me question everything he says. Maybe he's been wandering in the woods too long. Most likely he's carrying water for the big money fossil fuel cartels and other old school moneyed interests.
He did predict the Kerch bridge was going to be attempted blown up
Uh he was cheerleading nato for the last year and a half... he's only turning the narrative now because it's obvious that he was wrong. Look at his covid vaccine predictions they are terrible, weak American propaganda in retrospect. His bitcoin prediction is another one that has and will contjnue to go terribly wrong. He's a mouthpiece for the US Establisment.
He is good, I would say around 80% of his prognosis is true, especially when it comes to things that have more to do with strategy than tactics.
You've got to be careful with Peter, at times he's really balanced, telling the good and the bad but be aware at least 1/4 of his content is aimed at feel good, "the catastrophe is going to miss you people who've paid a shit ton of money for me to talk to you" content consumers.
Peter, previously you predicted food riots in Africa to have started a month ago.
Starting to doubt the South offensive will be "quick" for Ukraine. Russia has established defensive positions. Several smaller rivers create natural obstacles, even if traversable. Lastly the indiscriminate use of both anti personal and anti tank mines from Russia makes advance hard if you are trying to limit casualties. Worse still with all the chaos in their army, even the Russian's might not know where exactly Russian mine fields are.
It is all about Ukraine having their missiles within range of those Russian positions and their artillery.
When have the Russian's ever been concerned with casualties?
@@christopherharmon2433 problem is Ukraine is doing the advancing. If Russia is advancing they just get prisoners or new conscripts and say "Forward march" towards the mine field.
Not once in the history of war has strategic bombardment broken the will of the people
Uh...? But military defeat has.
True. Usually it emboldens people to fight as it basically is seen as survival. Even if Russia successfully took Ukraine, I foresee terrorism and ambush attacks happening on Russian occupiers for years to come.
The siege of Paris during the Franco-Prussian War
OP is correct, Perun made a really good video on this. You can cause other issues with strategic bombardment, but it has never once directly resulted in outright surrender in modern times.
Hiroshima and Nagasaki
Love your work Peter!!
“When city busses loaded with artillery shells hit a bump, things get a little exciting” 😂 Zeihan’s delivery on that joke was awesome
He's delusional. The sarcastic jokes are his psychopath coping methods. War wasn't necessary. People like him backed Russia into a corner.
Well, the Ukrainians are having to be creative at times too.
I had my bingo card out, waiting for him to say 'Scooby Doo vans'.
Though I'd imagine they'd be transported without the fuses.
This is the second time he used this joke. I think he mentioned it before using a truck/van as the example though
The prediction of a food crisis in the Arab world and SE Asia is overstated. We heard the same predictions a year ago that never materialized. This is the same guy who predicted an energy crisis in Europe this current winter that would collapse the entire economy and support for the war that never materialized.
An exceptionally warm winter has helped Europe dodged a bullet but they're still Industries and fertilizer manufacturing not occurring because of gas shortages, and as for food shortages for huge price increases it sounds like you're just privileged enough to live somewhere where there isn't any so you think it doesn't exist.
Peter as always spoke of this being a multi-year problem multi-year permanent problem just because things didn't materialize as you interpreted they would in a few short months doesn't mean Peter is wrong perhaps your interpretation is wrong.
@@coachmen8508 He's predicting a second Holodomor. This guys hyperbole is way off the charts.
As one reviewer of his book said You have to take much of what he says with many grains of salt.
This was a ridiculously warm winter in europe. But yeah, technically he was dead wrong on that, but not for the reasons you think.
@@PolishBehemoth Food prices ended 2022 lower when they started per global index, fertilizer is cheaper now than the beginning of last year and the same is true for natural gas. Oil prices are now cheaper than when the war started. All of this benefits the agricultural sector. So again, this guys hyperbolic and extreme predictions of a second Holodomor are to be taken with a grain of salt. And if you listen to him enough, he is very repetitive. As the saying goes, his knowledge is a mile wide but an inch deep.
5 to 1 K/D is tough to achieve even in video games. Idk how a country is gonna do that.(edit: I do hope they pull it off)
superior training, superior equipment, superior motivation.
Ukraine has or will have all that.
@@QuizmasterLaw I imagine to pull off 5/1 you'd need all that and the blessings of at least one diety.
@@BOBBOBBOBBOBBOBBOB69 lol yeah this isn't CS:GO
@@TK-en2hq no blessings required. Finland in the Winter war had a 9:1 KD ratio even though they lost. The US has had KD ratios over 10 or 20:1 since Korea.
Weapons, training, leadership, coordination and a plan is all anyone needs.
@@QuizmasterLaw superior intelligence
Our host lied about the weather in Calgary. January has been very warm, largely above 0 Celsius. Nevertheless, I wonder why he is hanging out in Calgary lately.
The Minsk Agreements should have been adhered to. All the people that die in this stupid conflict are a sad, tragic waste.
"...when a city bus loaded with artillery..."
Ah I see you've been to Chicago
Your ability to hold that phone steady is impressive
So is his ability to talk BS. This guy is a joke.
Just a recent listener to your reports sir. Very informative. Thank you for your information and the work you put in....You are a most excellent speaker as well as very intelligent.....subscribed....
Hi Peter - question; do you think Russia can economically last another year? I understand that they have started drawing down from their National Welfare Trust to fund the war, and I don't small money, it was something like 34B USD.
Russia can last for much longer than a year as far as basic necessities go; it's a massive country with lots of people who are familiar with hardship, perhaps even self-imposed. North Korea and Iran have been sanctioned for decades and those regimes still stand, although it does limit their collective futures.
@DolphinsWIthIgloos I agree, but at least for Russia, Putin does seem to enjoy more support from the general public than what could be enforced; they like their "strong man" leaders.
@@bjkarana True. As russian I can confirm that every single piece of hateful western propaganda helps him. Every time some mentally challenged person upon internet "dances on the bones" of some dead russian soldier it adds up into massive support of Putin.
@David I didn't vote for Biden, but I don't understand why some people see him as such a threat, but I never understood why certain dems saw Mitt Romney as such a threat either. Of course this has nothing to do with autocracy/theocracy unless you're deep into a bubble... 🙄
Peter, In a scenario that starts to suggests a Russian victory, do you see the West stepping up their efforts to prevent it? Does eastern Europe really want Russian borders to be that close? Does Germany really want to start militarizing their eastern border and the spending that ensues? What are your thoughts on the West's next steps if it's their intention to stop Russia? Thanks for the channel!
Europe put their border up against Russia not the other way around. NATO should have been disbanded in 1991 when the Soviet Union broke up.
I'm not sure if NATO is all that concerned at this point given the war is in a bit of a stalemate. If the Russians start making meaningful gains, I'd think NATO's focus quickly sharpens and more drastic measures take place. I don't think giving up Ukraine to the Russians is an option. I also wonder if the Chinese would like to see a weakened Russia given their "expansionist" tendencies when it comes to the Russian far east?
@@wattsupwiththat1463 LOL... ok, or perhaps it needed to remain as it did to counter Russia's current invasion of an independent country that posed no thread nor provoked Russian into doing so. Russia's justification: Nazism? What a load of BS! And it's just ridiculous for them to even suggest it! Russia is only proving that NATO is more relevant than ever 30 years after the fall of the Soviet Union.
I've heard it stated time and time before and it's 100% accurate: "Never trust a Russian! Ever!"
What did Angela Lansbury solve over the past twenty years? Is this the pudding?
Germany is already re-arming at a rate faster than they did in the run up to WWII. A Bundeswehr that is actually capable of defending Germany is years away, but it is inevitable at this point.
How Europe reacts to this development will be mighty interesting.
I find no small irony in Egypt not having its own food crops on the Nile; anciently Egypt was THE breadbasket for Athens and then later, Rome. Their foods were exported all over the Med and the Middle East for centuries.
This wrinkle in their food supply would mean they need to quit growing sugar cane, cotton, and tobacco and get back to growing edible crops instead.
Peter is WAY to "optimistic" about Russia's ability to field additional soldiers and successfully carry out offensive actions:
1) They've already been scraping the bottom of the barrel to get additional soldiers (prisons, those that weren't smart enough to leave). Given the almost 1 million that have fled the country and the 3 million already in the military, plus those in defence industries and medically unfit, it's hard to see where they could scare up an additional 500,000 out of the 7 million that are in their twenties.
2) Even if they could get additional soldiers, they sent the training experts to Ukraine months ago, so they'd have to bring soldiers way from the field to train the additional troops. It would take tens of thousands of experienced soldiers to train half a million civilians to the point where they were worth something. Untrained troops aren't worth much, as we've seen in the Russian attacks over the last few months.
3) Even with more poorly trained conscripts, it's clear that the officer corps of the Russian military is pretty useless. Without leadership, these men will be like a poorly maintained rifle that is more likely to blow up than hit its target.
3)j The Russian logistics of today can't support the current number of soldiers in the field, much less the additional half a million soldiers that Peter refers to. And the Ukrainians are focusing on destroying the Russian supply capacity (e.g. bombing the Kerch bridge)
5) If the US sends the Ukrainians the GLSDB, with twice the range of their current HIMERS (about 150 km) the Russian logistics situation will get much worse almost over night. At that point it will be difficult for the Russians to defend what they currently hold, much less carry out offensive actions.
0:47 -- let me give you some advice about russian numbers. just because they give some dude from the steppe a rusty AK and mismatched camo suit, does not make him a soldier. just because russia puts 300k people into the field, does not mean 300k soldiers, or 300k well organized people in divisions and companies. or 300k with adequate logistic support.
A critical question to answer is whether or not the Russians have the logistical capabilities to supply an army of 500,000 men. If not, the Russian offensives will be piecemeal, localized and uncoordinated.
They don't they could barely support the 200k they sent in last year.
@@santorizzuto7360 Precisely, I predict that the Russians will suffer tremendous casualties with little gains to show for it.
@@scotttyson607 it'll be like the bakmut push 1 mile in 30 days and even then the Russians will find themselves cut off and surrounded eating artillery from all sides.
It is always better to not under-estimate the enemy.
Don't be like Putinists.
Like Zeihan said, Putin's Russians WILL try again.
@David wow 3 responses from you. Your making sure to get all of those rubles arnt you commrad? Btw totally original American name. Did you come up with it or your handlers in Moscow?
Big fan Peter but you are mistaken on Calgary weather. It has been freakishly warm here for a month and above zero everyday since Christmas. I would guess it was at or above freezing at the time of your recording.
Maybe he was in yyc the one day it snowed in the last 30 days lol
he gets many basic things wrong this isn't anything new or suprising.
There have been multiple reports about sanctions crippling the Russian rail system due to lack of wheel bearing cartridges for the heavy railcars. Rail problems are the key to crippling the R war machine.
Welcome to Calgary Peter! Thanks for your visit.
I believe PZ has some strong political and cultural beliefs. He could with his towering gifts present them and deeply piss-off those with opposing views. He should be celebrated for keeping those to himself. By doing so his information, evaluation and influence and our attention to and evaluation of his observations on current geopolitics and geo strategy would suffer … and his views are very valuable.
lmao
@@SailingAway-h4v he's talking about starting a culture war using peters misinformation and conjecture as a centerpiece
Peter, you are glowing
In the /pol/ way or in the sun? 😎
The US and Brazil turn a massive amount of corn into ethanol. (?)_Would selling food corn to Egypt be more profitable than downgrading our fuel with ethanol? If we could go back to growing food corn this would also lower feed costs for chicken and cattle and lower food cost in the U.S. I'm pretty sure New Zealand could greatly help with the wheat shortage.
Blows my mind we turn corn into ethanol when Hemp is 10x better per acre for making it. Plus grows way faster. Seems silly but eventually it will catch on.
Correction: Brazil turn a massive amount of sugar cane into ethanol, not corn.
Not really, Egypt isn't set up to mill and bake corn based flours. It's the same reason the US had to ration wheat after WWI to send to Belgium; we had lots of corn then too but the Belgians then like the Egyptians now can't really make use of it.
Appreciate your insights.
Peter says a pile of stuff with confidence and his delivery is persuasive. However, like everything the devil is in the details. As a Calgarian I can from confirm from Environment Canada that the temperature has been above 0 Celsius (and thus 0 Fahrenheit) twelve of the past fourteen days, contradicting his statement that the temperature hasn’t been above 0 is thirty days. My point is Peter sometimes is fast and loose with facts, assumptions and predictions. That doesn’t prevent me from subscribing to his channel and I do respect his analysis but I also think for myself.
Ukraine has Western weaponry and well trained military personnel. Actually Ukraine is probably Europe's best trained army now. Poland, the UK, the US and NATO generally can't allow Ukraine to get crushed by Russia. If for nothing else other then that were Ukrainian military personnel were forcibly integrated into the Russian army, God forbid, that would present too big a threat to NATO countries. We are all in now, until Russia collapses.
Nope. The only forcible integration will be Ukrainians forcibly integrating Russians into Hell. But you’re right: we’re all in.
Yes but if we were truly all in we would be expediting the tanks and training and also provide the F-16s. More long range missiles. Get it in gear and get it done instead of all the clownass politicians dragging feet and fiddling around a trickle here a trickle there. Longer it drags on better position Russia is in. I just fear it will turn out to be too little too late.
Welcome to Alberta, weather has been excellent but get ready for that to turn around quickly as the polar vortex destabilizes again later this week
When I was young we called it a north wind.
Damn, man, your videos make me very glad I live in the United States.
You can go volunteer
@@jeebusk
not our war.
Sorry but not sorry.
cheers Bloke, big fan, love a work
And so Peter's pivot begins..
He keeps mentioning the Scooby-Doo doo busses full of ammo hitting bumps, is there videos of this somewhere? I can't find anything online about it. Are they exploding?
It is not that they ARE exploding, it is every bump convinces the vehicle occupants that it IS exploding.
Well whole mess can always get worse.
Or better.
If you're right, that means the Europeans need to get massive numbers of air defense systems, leopards and even F16's to Ukraïne now.
If you're wrong, the Europeans still need to send massive numbers of air defense systems, leopards and even F16's to Ukraïne now.
This grim vision of the future can only be avoided by Russia's defeat - like they suffered in Grozny. And a following boom in the arms industry, because Russia will try again.
russia's defeat? that will only happen when the US sends in troops. short of that, ukraine is going down. what will the western side do when they sent 100 billion to ukraine & lost anyway.
100 Bln are not much compared to all NATO countries combined military spending, a little more than a rounding error. On the other hand, Russia power projection capabilities are weaker than ever, and they're grip over their allies is shrinking. China will think twice attempting any invasion. So yeah, Ukraine may or may not ein, but Russia lost already
Russia does not need to be defeat just held out until a point that they decide to partially or fully retreat.
@@apc9714 A 100 billion appropriations bill in the US is just another Tuesday. In fact, it sounds like the decimal point is in the wrong spot. Usually, we don’t even get out of bed unless there’s at least a trillion on the line.
The population of Ukraine prior to the war was around 43 million, they quickly restricted men from travelling abroad who could be mobilised, the number which fled is more than offset by the Russians who fled mobilisation and the war, a lot of women and children (8 million) emigrated to neighbouring countries, reducing the dependency burden for Ukraine, they are "thankfully" being fed and watered by others, the U.K. population was around the same for the start of World War 2 and some 3.5 million men and women were placed into the army, while the factories and food production still continued to work despite extremely heavy bombing, Ukraine's industrial needs are taken care of by the West and it's air defence's by Spring/ Summer should mean that it's a no fly zone for aircraft and it should achieve 80 to 90% success on missile attacks. Yes it's tough on Ukraine, but it is achievable, and to finally release the shackles of Russia's murderous ambitions after hundreds of years is surely worth the sacrifice, no more Holodomors!?!
Corn is really good for heating, too.
It would make sense that these predictions are what's motivating the US to step up Patriot and Bradley (and now possibly Abrams) deliveries at this time. Increased mobility and firepower at the front, protection for infrastructure in the interior.
Also the talk about delivery of the GLSDB munition for HIMARS and MLRS for the purposes of targeting ammunition storage and command structure which can be used now and during more mobile offensives.
Fools and madmen who forgot the cold war abound.
@@nunyabidnez5857 🥶😓😰
Minsk agreements sure look like a good deal now...
Agreements with Russia are hot air, useless.
@@morganholsomback4851 Which agreement are you talking about? On Minsk NATO said they were the ones that lied to deceive Russia. Learn to read you may learn something :)
The train line on the Kerch bridge was back up and running within a few days. Only the road bridge was significantly damaged.
One of the two rail lines was still ok..
@@comatoseps1382 And they re-opened several ferry lines to carry the extra load. Clearly the damage to the bridge is causing problems, but I really don't see it as the catastrophe for Crimea Zeihan is claiming. Ferries are more expensive, slower and less flexible, but it seems to me alongside one fully operational rail line operating alternate bidirectional traffic they have significant capacity.
Very interesting analysis as always
It was -35 for a week in Calgary between December/January. Thank goodness Ukraine has been abnormally warm this year!
The Russian "strategy" will be akin to the open scene on Enemy at the Gates when they were crossing the river. They will simply attempt to use the strategy of throwing bodies into the muzzles of machine guns and rifles until Ukraine runs out of ammo. Problem is this will not only be something that Russia can try ONCE (since they don't have a replacement generation of men), but it will fail because Ukraine isn't fighting with WW2 era tech
Bro… go outside or something
it did work in soledar . the ukrainian defenders ran out of ammo because wagners were coming wave after wave.
Enemy of the Gates was a myth. The Soviets produced far more materiel than Germany did in WW2. 5 tanks for every 1 German tank. History is found in books, not movies.
The Soviets outmanoeuvred the Germans with one of the most brilliant operations in history, Uranus
@@juliantheapostate8295 thank you
Your numbers are funny. The Russians entered the war with 170-190k, the have mobilised 300k but only about half of them are in Ukraine.
So all up, if not a single Russian soldier died, then they would have 320k in Ukraine. The Ukrainians had stated in the middle of last year that they had 950k mobilised.
So yes one side is severely outnumbered. But it's not the Ukrainians.
Your casualty figures are funny as well, not even the American and British figures state that, they say losses are about equal.
Fake numbers for stupid followers. How would idiots know the difference or even care?
we lowball the rusian kill count.
You are commenting on the channel of a guy that gives speeches to the US military, he is quite literally the definition of a shill.
not every one mobilised goes to the front. many will be required for logistics
@@moon_knight8578 Yes, this is true for both sides.
It's hard to say what the true strength is, best estimates are what we see on deployment maps but they are hard to find and have issues.
Here's a "cheery note": we should have reelected Trump and all those children would still be attached to their limbs, all those women unraped and this entire mess avoided. Electing a president who had accomplished nothing in life led to the first Russian invastion; then electing a man whose faculties are obviously seriously impaired led to the second. It was great for the unelected bureaucrats who run the country now and then but very bad for US Citizens and for the world at large. Trump would have had oil and gas flowing, preventing war; and if he stepped back into office he would immediately increase grain production. But we are more concerned with melanin levels, pronouns and personal sexual proclivities. I say this because Mr. Zeihan cannot or he will lose his clerisy card.
Trump sent 59 armed Tomahawk missiles to a Russian base in Syria at the beginning of his term.
They exploded on contact. Vlad took no territory for 4 years.
@@Alexandra-zp3gr Biden interfered in Ukraine - and boasted of it. Trump got impeached for what Biden did.
@@msimon6808 Damned Right. He AVOIDED war; now we have and are COPING and "trying not to escalate" a genocide taking place before our eyes by the same group that genocided them once before! But you know this administration appoints people with the correct biological markers and sexual leanings SO THERE!
We did reelect Trump. Bit of a problem with the vote counting. Otherwise I think you are basically right, but with one possible question. If Trump were president and Russia still invaded, which is possible if not as likely, then I am not sure if our response would have been as decisive. He might have listened to the wrong Republicans (he has before) and might have thought of it as an opportunity to show off his negotiating skills. I detest Biden and the Democrats, but you have to give the Devil his due-he did step up to the plate on this one. Can’t stand anything else about him, but he scored a solid base hit. Not sure about Trump, and I voted for him. As for Zeihan, I like him, but military analysis doesn’t seem to be his strong suit.
7:00 Holy shit this prediction was absolutely spot on
Less and less clear spoken and concise channels out there: I'm so glad you're not one of them: subscribed.
Half a million Russians is one thing, but they also have to be armed and equipped...
It doesn't look like they are very well armed or equipped - but as Ret. General Ben Hodges says, Quantity is a quality all it's own. And as Peter has said multiple times, Russia is perfectly content to throw bodies at a problem, and it has worked for them in the past. Russia (USSR) took losses in WWII of between 20 and 27 million people. They think differently than we do.
@@Michaelw777.52 Hodges is someone to listen to, Zeihan not so much. He's basically an actor playing to his audience.
@@StormyDog Yes and no. Peter can be glib sometimes, and he's certainly charismatic and charming, but he does know his stuff. I've been following him for about a year now. Understand, this is what he does for a living. I've seen him speak (available on RUclips) before one of our military academies so even the military takes him seriously. I knew when I first came across him I'd either dismiss him as not worth my time, or become a fan. He sometimes misses on the details, but he gets the broad strokes right. And yes - I love Ben Hodges. My kind of guy. He too knows his stuff and he dispenses it in a way you want to know more. I follow him too.
@@Michaelw777.52 I believe that saying was originally coined by Stalin
@@juliantheapostate8295 It sure looks that way! And it makes sense too. Goes back to WW2
It's all about the military industrial complex.
There is nothing stop Ukraine calling up more troops if it wants to, but it actually cancelled the last annual mobilization so clearly they think they have enough already.
It may not be that Ukraine thinks it has enough already but that Ukraine can’t actually mobilise anymore. They may not have enough rifles, uniforms, barracks, trainers etc to bring in anymore troops.
They may also feel that they couldn’t pay, feed or supply another 50,000 troops right now without further foreign support. Or it could be that anyone who would be a good soldier is already in uniform and anyone left is either militarily incompetent or would take to long to train up.
@@maxpower3990 also,you cant completely deplete the civil society of workers.
They have volunteers still waiting to get processed and sent to bootcamp. That's why some countries are announcing that they're sending instructors to train Ukrainian men in NATO bases.
@@maxpower3990 Fair to ask the question but I don't think so. Sourcing small arms etc within the months of warning we've had is an insignificant task for domestic and foreign suppliers.
For context, about 2000 pieces of heavy equipment were announced by the allies this January alone.
@@ChucksSEADnDEAD They would ramp up their training pipelines if they thought there was a need to.
Yep, I've been thinking about Holodomor ever since this war started.
Haven’t been to Calgary for many years. Really a nice city, hope you’re enjoying the fine Alberta beef
this guy says exactly what you want to hear and makes it sounds good.
Really? Because he's saying pretty much the opposite of what I personally want to hear. Now, whether he's right or not is an entirely different question.
Well that's his business model. Just take the useful details and factoids and leave his analysis and predictions with a mountain of salt.
@@D0pam1n yeah, conspicuously absent from basically any of his predictions is climate change. He also just seems to say the same things over and over. I'm still waiting for China to collapse, any day now!
@@sonofdamocles He offers some absolutely interesting facts and statistics BUT he's also usually preaching to the choir and his conclusions tend to coddle whomever he's presenting his books, I mean predictions, to.
He's not an academic but a self-described strategist, so he wants the ears of industry and political deciders.
I remember a talk at a conference with energy or transportation industry people and when climate change came up he quickly dismissed THEIR industry to be an important factor but farming or whatever.
And that IS a big factor but come on...
@@D0pam1n no arguments here.
Its Space Invaders but with Russian soldiers.
@Apsoy Pike he means line up the untrained ill equipped mobiks like toy soldiers and kill them off
which is more or less what is happening.
@@QuizmasterLaw and they overwhelm you with numbers, even if you kill thousands of them. That's the problem.
@@dodgeplow landmines..
use landmines.
@@QuizmasterLaw that helps, always does with defenders, but won't be enough. And if you want to retake ground, they won't help at all.
Peter is the only western personality who is even close to calling this war down the middle. Been watching all his videos throughout the war and you can clearly observe a pivot that it's not looking good for Ukraine.
What pivot? He started off saying it wasn’t looking good for Ukraine. If anything he’s backing off that mantra. Too slowly, and too little, but backing off.
yeah right and pigs will fly
@@nightspore4850 some of his November videos were very bullish for a Ukrainian victory.
History is ambiguous.
After the 1914 campaign defeats in Prussia, the Russian army retreated home. The Czar was overthrown and Sovietsy kept the wounded Russian army out of WWI.
Early in WW2 after both Soviets and Nazis agreed to devour Poland, Germany launched a massive campaign to conquer Russia. After tremendous early blitzkrieg success, the resolve, size and productive capacity of Russia counterattacked and defeated Germany in the brutal Eastern Front.
Which Russia does Ukraine face? WW1, bloodied and bruised retreating into self-destruction.
WW2 Russian, first bloodied and withdrawn, and returning a giant, well-equipped and well lead single-minded berserker craving German blood?
Putin thinks it's the latter.
I don’t see how you think they can equip half a million we already saw issues with the last mobilization
yeah... in the first 1-2 weeks. did you hear about any issues since? because I didn't. and it's now been around 3 months. exactly the time needed to train conscripts. so I'll expect around 270k conscripts hat have not been deployed so far but were in training since the beginning of the mobilization to show up on the battlefield for a major offensive
@@SebastianHaban It was certainly longer than just 2 weeks of issues. However your talking about 2x the amount of people on the battle space. I think we haven’t heard anything about equipment issues because besides bakhmut there is little movement. I personally think it’s not feasible unless done over at least a 6 month time frame if not more. But we will certainly see what happens.
Strategic bombing of an opposing civilian populace in order to demoralize them into surrender has literally never worked a single time in the entire history of warfare, because people tend to resent being bombed and end up stubbornly fighting back even harder as a result. It's not a smart plan for winning a conflict purely in military terms. Perun's channel has a really good video on this.
Hiroshima and Nagasaki beg to differ with your assessment
I fully agree. I don't think his comment in strategic bombing of civilian targets (electric) has worked, the seem to have stopped it and it was vastly outweighed by the good weather and the repairs that the Ukrainians put in to get it back online.
Russia was petitioned very hard and lots of pressure put on them (loss of allies even) to accept the grain transport safe passage deal. I dont see the reason to take it out. It's fairly small in terms of economic value, but HUGE in terms of political backfiring. It's russia of course, so anything is possible regardless of reasons or reality, but I just don't see it.
And with the relatively poor training and mostly older equipment the ukranians have I don't see an 5:1 k/d ratio. Most of the tdf arent very trained, as the Ukrainians didn't do a lot of training on them it seems, at least in the first 8 months of the war.
Very Serious stuff indeed.
@@simianinc The compromise assessment is; you can kill masses of people by bombing, but you cannot subdue them.
The leadership is a different story. I suspect that intercontinental precision-guided munitions, plus real-time leadership tracking, will have an effect. Zeihan has said that Putin personally would be at risk, if he went nuclear.
@@simianinc dropping two nuclear warheads on major cities is vastly different than the conventional bombs Russia is currently using, so not an apples to apples comparison.
@@bltsandwich567 Even Hiroshima and Nagasaki weren't examples of successful terror bombing so much as they were effective means of permanently degrading an enemy's war-making ability at scale.
Up to that point, strategic bombing runs against valuable assets like factories entailed enormous costs and their effects could be undone in weeks.
That the US was suddenly capable of consigning irreplaceable industrial assets to oblivion was probably a lot scarier to the Japanese military than the civilian casualties.
In other words, strategic bombing works only to the extent that it functions as tactical bombing against bigger targets.
Since then, the US has learned this lesson and found lots of ways to effectively consign strategic assets to oblivion at minimal risk /without/ high numbers of civilian casualties (some of which they've taught Ukraine). Meanwhile, Russia's takeaway from the history of nukes is that the best way to make an adversary back down is to hold the maximum number of people's lives at risk.
It's pretty clear which interpretation is more effective at winning wars!
At least 1000 Leopard tanks is what Ukraine needs to overcome 5:1 assault
At this point any Leopard tanks at all would be good lol
Poland spending 12
@@apsoypike1956 will last few days, great
Leopard tanks cannot be hit with anything they have
Scariest report yet....
Good news is defensive advantage usually allows for 3:1 casualties for the attacker. However, the Ukrainians still need to get better at minimizing losses. Not to mention if the Russians start to learn how to use their Wagner group to full efficacy.
@@stevecooper7883 Except it's not the Ukrainians that are in a defensive position at this point, as Zeihan even mentioned in this video. The Ukrainians need to capture territory or they'll face a complete defeat. They're unable to advance because the Russians have been allowed to dig in. I mean, the Ukrainian general was pretty clear that in order to get a victory and to see progress they need a ton of equipment. The West has sent them barely anything since he said that. I wouldn't be too optimistic about how these next few months ago. If Bakhmut falls, it'll be the beginning of the end.
Turkish edition ''Hürseda Haber'' published ''Mossad'' data on the losses of the parties in Ukraine as of January 14, 2023:
Russia: 23 aircraft, 56 helicopters, 200 drones, 889 tanks, and other armored fighting vehicles, 427 artillery systems, 12 air defense systems, 44,500 wounded, 18,480 dead, and 323 prisoners.
Ukraine: 302 aircraft, 212 helicopters, 2,750 drones, 6,320 tanks, and other armored vehicles, 7,360 artillery systems, 497 air defense systems, 234,000 wounded, 157,000 dead, and 17,320 prisoners. The West: 5,360 dead mercenaries, 2,458 dead military personnel of the armies of NATO member countries, and 234 dead military instructors of NATO.
This boils down to 10: 1
So you accept the holodomor as a genocide would you ever accept Iraq 2003-present, Afghanistan 2001-2020 and libya 2011-2013 as siege and military genocides perpetrated by the American, British, and French states as genocides?
The numerical imbalance reminds me of the American Civil War. The Union almost always outnumbered the Confederates. The war lasted so long because Robert E Lee was a genius at maneuver. As President Truman said, “The only things we don’t know is the history we haven’t read.”
The consensus seems to be that Lee was brilliant at defense but subpar on offense. I'm not American so I have no horse on this race.
@@ChucksSEADnDEAD I wouldn't describe Lee's performance at 2nd Manassas or Chancellorville as "subpar" and he was on the attack in both cases.
It’s hard to know how much of what Peter is saying is or maybe true only time will tell.
Time doesn't tell, it just illustrates.
True but that just doesn’t roll of the tongue as sweetly🤣
I agree. Numbers seem solid, but the audience seems to be the bureaucrats who will hire him for a conference to hear what they want to hear.
when you're a self righteous douche you don't have to actually ever be right, just come off like you are.
So much for the expected russian demise, then..
great content thanks
I use a weather app on my phone to check conditions in Ukraine, still pretty warm.
I´d like to ask: what would a defeat for Ukraine mean for the future of the world? What would ruZZia advance towards the west mean for global security? And, most importantly, WILL this be allowed to happen?
The defeat in Ukraine would mean that NATO now physically borders Russia
it would mean that aggressive military action to remove a nation from existing is allowed by the international community, and would be looked as inspiration for many other nations who want territory
China and Taiwan, China and India, China and Bhutan, Ethiopia and Eritrea, Ethiopia and Egypt, Morocco and Algeria
It would also mean then a lot of nations would lose faith in the ability to be protected by fellow NATO members and would likely seek alternatives
@@rejvaik00 nato already physically borders russia
@@rejvaik00
It could mean a lot more than that. Russia may decide to go for broke meaning they could try and conquer all of Europe. What would the rest of Europe do if Russia was to invade Poland?
Eggs double in price yet again.
@@Alexandra-zp3gr indeed it does you also forgot Norway in that list
but if Ukraine falls it would border it moreso than it already does
Give them some Vietnam era hovercrafts!
And sadly the vast stockpile of cluster bombs that we'd otherwise have to pay to decommission. Got masses of Russian troops who's leaders would be even more cruel? Better to stop them there than in Poland, Estonia, Moldova etc.
Russia left Kiev wayyyyyy before it was muddy. They were over extended across the entire front. They fell back to control the 4 regions they already made progress in.
When you see a Toyota truck with a 50 caliber machine gun bolted to the bed, you know you're in trouble.
Grain shortages aside, this has to be the most pessimistic outlook on the war itself I've heard in many months. Russia does not have unlimited bodies to throw. They have almost no artillery left, and few allies to buy from. Ukraine is getting resupplied with modern stuff regularly, their army is motivated. I too wish the UA had been able to conduct another "thunder run" during a hard freeze, but overall, Ukraine is going to win.
The tanks and the jet fighters, along with combined arms operations. That's where we need to be headed and fast.
They don't have unlimited soldiers, but it is a fair point that Ukraine can't afford to lose too many of their own dudes before they start running into issues. A brutal war of attrition still favors the Russians because of the sheer gap in the body count, and I'm sure Putin knows this. He seems more than happy to chuck a few hundred thousand guys into the meat grinder in order to maintain his grip on power.
Take it all with some skepticism. Have multiple sources. Make your own judgements. Be prepared to be surprised and wrong. It’s tragic/comic soap opera with real bullets.
The Holodomor was worse than the alleged holololol.
Fite me, bankers, and media producers.
Did nazi that one coming
Why the antisemitism?
Uhm what?
even though many civilians have died, it’s crazy to think that the Americans killed more Iraqi civilians in 3 months in Iraq than all civilians killed in Ukraine one one year 😳
President Bush’s invasion of Iraq in the gulf war was a disaster for the world, the Iraqis, and the United States.
Much of the civilian death toll, estimated at 276,000 to 305,000, from 2003 to 2019 (I know estimates vary)was a result of sectarian violence that was unleashed when Saddam’s regime was removed.
Ukraine does not have the same internal division of intermixed factions that an occupying military (American and Coalition forces) could not keep separated from each other.
Iraq’s continued inability to form a stable government and ongoing civil strife, long after the US has left the country, illustrates how the killings were not all committed by the US even if the invasion let loose the circumstances that ultimately let it happen.
But i would be happy to have Bush, Cheney, and Rumsfeld (dig him up from the grave) facing charges for war crimes if Putin and his top generals also are arrested and faced the same.
If Russia were to take and occupy Kyiv or other major cities, the civilian death toll would likely jump up dramatically. We’ll really only know what the real numbers of civilian deaths are only once the war is over and a real reckoning is made.
This guy said the russians lost 200k men, a week later the bbc said it was 20k. Dunno where he gets his info but it was waay off
I'm an Independent Latino. Thank you Zeihan!! You are KING!!... Rogan, Bryan Callen Podcast and Patrick Bet-Davis PBD brought me here.
Hard to fight a war of attrition when your enemy has 10 to 20 times as many guns as you do. And also doesn't care about casualties too much.
Not if you are defending from fortified positions and executing guerrilla warfare non stop
If the Russians didn’t care about civilian casualties Kiev would have been flattened already.