And we have a new report
tonight from the Dossier Center.
It's an investigative group
that tracks criminal activity
associated with the Kremlin.
It says that since
the start of the invasion,
Vladimir Putin has for the most part,
stopped using his private airplane.
You see it there, right?
He used to do it.
You know,
the whole warhead of state
walked down the stairs.
No.
Now, this is his preferred mode
of transportation,
according to the dossier group,
which is run by Mikhail
Khodorkovsky, an opposition leader.
Putin is traveling mostly
in this armored train
equipped
with a special communication system.
Why the train?
Well, earlier
I spoke to Ilya Roaster Svenska,
a reporter with the Dossier Center,
and he told me that the
Russian president is afraid
the psychological
reason of using this train
is that he's scared.
He's scared that he can be tracked.
That his plane can be tracked
and that his plane can be shut down
by NATO air forces
or by the air forces of Ukraine.
A wise missile,
some kind of a missile
that he's Ukrainian, British
or anything like this can happen.
So he's scared
and he believes that it is
a more secure
way to travel,
that nobody will know where he is going
and nobody will understand
that he's inside the stream.
No one will know because Roger Penske
says it looks like
a normal passenger train
that gray with the red stripe.
That's the Russian passenger train.
Make no mistake, though,
this particular train
is not like the others
There are like three locomotives.
Putin's train has three of them
because it's really heavy.
It's armor.
And so it's hairy
and it needs more locomotives.
This train,
it has some kind of special equipment
for special communications.
He wants to communicate securely.
He needs some special lines to
to communicate
with his prime minister
and other officials
and to be sure that he's not listened
by some foreign intelligence.
And he can see part of this part
of this equipment
on the roof, off of the cars.
You can see part of it from the roof
and it's heavy, it's armored.
So it takes three
locomotives to transport it,
not just one.
General Hertling, in this context,
because as Steve mentioned,
Khodorkovsky in
is his group,
the dossier group,
that has done all this.
This research is painstaking research
on the train, Putin's train.
So the reporter there, Ilya, explained
why Putin is using this train.
Here he is again
He's scared.
He's scared that he can be tracked, that
his plane can be tracked,
and that his plane can be shot.
Down by NATO air forces
or by the air forces of Ukraine,
a wise missile, some kind of a missile
that he is Crimean, British
or anything like this can happen.
So he's scared
and he believes that it is
a more secure way to travel,
that nobody will know where he is going,
and nobody will understand
that he's inside history
and nobody
will even try to do something
with this train.
General, on a certain level,
it's kind of a stunning thing
to say, right?
Train goes 50 to 70 miles an hour.
Train has to stick to tracks.
Everyone can see when train is moving.
It is a pretty stunning thing to say that
this is, you know,
that Putin is so worried
about being his plane being shot down
that he's resorted to train
something done in the era of Stalin
or by the likes of Kim Jong un.
Yeah, Erin,
what I'd
say is President Zelensky, by
comparison, is getting around
the battlefield pretty well.
He's been to all the front lines.
He's appeared on camera
with soldiers on the front lines
in the trenches.
He's been there multiple times
in all of this situation.
If Putin has this great army that Mr.
Lukashenko just talked about,
is he really that concerned
that he's got to move
from Moscow
to Saint Petersburg
to Minsk on an armored train?
That I would suggest
and maybe Steve can talk more about this,
that can be readily picked up
by signals communications
and aerial observations.
He is afraid, as a reporter
said, from the dossier,
that he's going to be killed.
And this is what autocrats do
when they're in really bad times
and don't trust their people
and don't trust their armed
I mean, Steve,
what does this say,
Putin's use of this train,
which is, you know,
like we said, you know, where it is
and when it's going there.
What does that say about his mind?
Yeah, if this
reporting is accurate
and of course, we do have to remember,
it comes from another Cub Scout
who has a bone to pick with Putin.
So it benefits him to show him is scared.
But if it's true
and of course, Stalin did this
so it could be true.
And of course, the North Koreans do it.
So this isn't this isn't unprecedented.
But, you know, there's
pluses and minuses.
You know, planes are easy to spot
in one sense.
There's an electronic signature
they take off and landed at airports.
There's tail spotters.
There's all sorts of ways
that you can find airplanes.
You know,
there might be certain
circumstances under which trains
are a little harder to spot.
I mean, there's less communication.
You can't see them flying through the air
if you're a tail spotter.
But if they've got that special
communications package
that they're talking about,
then they are emitting
something that is noticeable.
It's like wow,
this is an interesting train.
And by the way, it's pulled
by a lot more locomotives
and it seems to be different
from other trains.
So, you know, there's pluses and minuses,
but I wouldn't say that
it's perfectly safe
to be traveling on a train,
but it does reflect
if it's true
what Putin you know, Putin's
mindset is he's really into
And I'd say one more thing
if I could hear
the train has to stay on a track.
It can't deviate from that track.
So there's not a whole lot of capability
to evade being targeted.