OUTFRONT now, retired U.S.
Army Brigadier General Peter
Slack, former US senior
defense attache to Russia, and Steve
Hall, former CIA
chief of Russia operations.
Good to see you both tonight.
Jim, if I could begin with you.
As Ben,
we heard from what Ben laid out
there, Ukraine's gains
so far
have been small, somewhat incremental.
Now Ukraine is talking about these
more than 180,000 men.
Russia has moved to the front lines.
How do you think this will impact
the counteroffensive
First, let's dissect that.
180,000 reported.
They are look to be
out of their reserve formations
that were not stood up long ago
and also the storm Z companies
which are groups of convicts
and things like that.
So these are not elite
first string troops
that they're committing.
I have a suspicion
a lot of the reserve forces
that are being pulled out
are probably not particularly motivated
to be there though
they're considered voluntary citizens.
You've got that most of the
300,000 of last last fall
have been committed.
And so it's serious.
Their numbers
quantity has a certain quality
of its own, as Stalin would say.
But these are not elite guys.
But it is a factor.
But it also also may put stress, Erica,
on the Russian people and the regime,
the battle itself, the grinding
Ukrainian offensive.
These are probes they're big probes.
They're hard probes.
We're looking for for weakness.
They've not committed
their main force brigades
that are looking.
And we have to have tactical,
operational patience
for this to play out.
And everyone said,
including Ukraine's Ukrainians,
this would be hard and ugly.
While and as we as we watch,
to your point,
hard and ugly
and could take a while longer at that.
Steve, I want to play another part.
If I could have Erin's new interview
with President Alinsky.
Take a listen to this moment
Mr.
President, you know,
you recently said that you have dealt
and I'll quote you the way
the way it quoted
with different Putin's
it's a completely different set of traits
in different periods.
Now, of course, he's faced a rebellion,
an attempted coup from Evgeny Prigozhin.
Have you seen any changes in in
how you think he's acting in his behavior
since the attempted coup
in March?
One that actually, yes,
we see the reaction after certain
Wagner steps.
We see Putin's reaction.
It's weak.
Firstly,
we see he doesn't control everything
in Wagner's
moving deep
into Russia
and taking certain
regions shows how easy it is to do.
Putin doesn't
control the situation in the regions.
He doesn't control
the security situation.
What he pointed out there
that he believes he no longer controls
the security situation.
So this mutiny by Prigozhin in Russia
how much of a lasting impact
do you think it has
had in terms of changes on Putin
and even the power that he still does
or perhaps in some areas does not hold
Yeah, Rick, I think that's
the question that probably everybody
is asking at this particular point.
There are those Russia watchers
who sort of say, look,
we can't know a whole lot
about what's going on
behind the walls of the Kremlin
because it's such a Byzantine place.
That's absolutely true.
But there's also some stuff
that's happened on the ground
that I think is irrefutable.
The first is
how did the
how did the Wagner guys get
as far as they did?
I mean,
I think everybody
could probably have sat back
and said,
wow, this production thing
doesn't look like it's going to go
well for the Kremlin.
I mean,
if we can see that in all we have
access to is general reporting,
you can't tell me that
the Russian intelligence services,
specifically the internal service,
the FSB, either didn't see this or
somehow didn't
send it up the line to the.
How do you explain that?
So that's
that's either a lack of focus
or a lack of or an increased focus
on something else
to the detriment of Putin's
regime, which is, you know,
that's job number
one for a lot of France,
is to stay in power.
And so I think
we're looking at a weakened Putin
The question remains is how weak
and what will his response be?
Because he's going to try
to show that he's, of course,
not weakened.
That's going to
you know, we'll see how that turns out.
Right.
And there are a lot of concerns
about what that could look like,
understandably, generals lack.
You heard President
Walensky in that interview with Aaron
talking about Naito,
about whether Ukraine
would be allowed to join Naito.
Talking specifically
about President Biden, Zelensky
said he knows that depends on him.
It will be his decision.
What do you make of that take?
Clearly, there's a message in there.
He talked about what a good relationship
he and President Biden have.
But that particular
wording was interesting.
Prisoners
Alinsky is a master of the narrative.
And
I think it going directly
to President Biden.
I can understand that
because there is strong
American influence,
obviously NATO toward that decision.
But we have to remember
it's an alliance of 31 nations
and it just takes one or two that does.
So I think President Biden
is acutely aware of the issues.
How I think that the intent
we're reading
all around is more and more,
not just in our own nation,
but also in our allies
that there will be a day
where Ukraine is worthy of NATO's.
Certainly,
I think the narrative
that how the president there
put some pressure on him
is
that this is really, really hard.
I think, though, that
the Ukrainians have deserved it.
They are certainly in the pipeline.
But Article five,
an attack on
one is Attack of All
and Zelensky to his credit did not
mention that
you can
respond and talk
about the intent to bring
Ukraine in NATO,
but not a full invitation at the summit
for the reasons we talk about
as we watch and see what develops there.
See, today,
the US ambassador to Russia
was able to meet with the detained
Wall Street Journal reporter
Evan Jurkovich.
This was the first time
since April 17th
ambassador Lynn Tracy said Evan
is in
good health
remains strong despite the circumstances
he's facing espionage charges in Russia.
The US has refuted those
of course called them baseless.
But I wonder, based on what
we were just talking about
in terms of the recent issues in Russia
and how Putin is in this moment,
is it more or less likely
that we could see
something happen with Evan Herskovitz
because of recent events
Yeah.
First of all,
let me
let me reiterate
what you correctly said,
which is the charges of espionage
against this journalist,
against really probably
any Western journalist for sure.
Are absolutely false.
This is something that the Russians do.
It's hostage taking.
It really has nothing to do with,
you know,
a real police force
and a real rule of law
and real prosecutors
they've got all the trappings.
They've got,
you know, courtrooms and stuff.
But that's not what's going on here.
He and all the other Americans
and Westerners
who are being held in Russian
jails are simply pawns
caught up in the game.
And unfortunately,
because of what
we were
just talking about
in terms of how Putin is going to respond
to the challenge by Prigozhin
and perhaps some of his own generals,
I think the outlook
for these imprisoned Americans
is even worse
because it would look weaker
for Putin right now to say, well, yeah,
okay, I'll do the West a favor
or I'll do the United States.
What it wants.
It wants these these people released.
So I'll go ahead and do that.
That would look weak.
And that's not something that group
wants to do.
We want to do the opposite
to appear more strong
in the threat
that you just recently face.
And so I'm afraid
it's probably looking worse
for these imprisoned Americans
rather than Steve Hall.
General Jack, good to have you both
with us tonight. Thank you.