Joining me now
is retired Army Major Mike Lyons.
Obviously, Alex, down here,
you saw the destruction inside Odessa,
including in that cathedral.
And Major, we're talking about what
Ukraine has now
claimed responsibility for drone attacks
in Moscow and also Crimea.
And we do have video
of the damage from the drone
strike in Moscow.
Why is it that you think that Ukraine
is claiming credit for this?
Because for months and months and months
there'd be attacks like this.
Ukraine would would try to maintain
plausible deniability.
This time they're saying,
no, we did this.
Yeah, I think a couple of things.
I think, first of all, six weeks
into the counteroffensive,
they have to show some kind of progress.
And at this point,
it shows that they can
it shows
that they can take a drone,
get it through
Russian air defense systems
and get it into Moscow.
So I think that's the primary reason.
The second one, though, is for Crimea
in particular,
they have to threaten Crimea.
They have to
go after those ammunition dumps.
They have to make that the place
where that
that if they can say
that they could actually take Crimea.
Then the Russians
then come to negotiation table.
The Crimea part, I understand
I do understand
the strategic value of that.
But when you look at the pictures
and compare
the drone strikes on this building,
yes, windows are out.
But compare
that to what we were seeing from
Alex Marquardt of the federal.
And then the damage in Odessa
to the grain,
you know, grain for this nine day.
I mean, what the Russians are doing to
the Ukrainians is nothing
nothing compared
because what the Ukrainians are doing to
the mass in Moscow was like a scratch.
Yeah.
And what they've done in Odessa
is all about trying to cut off the food
supply there.
It's about again,
what they can do
from the Russians perspective,
that they had left Odessa alone
for the past few months.
They had been focused
more on the tactical side.
This is Russia
amping up, amping up the stakes
with regard to what they can do.
Now, one other new development
that happened overnight
and we can sort of see where it took
place on the map here
down here
on the Ukrainian border
with Romania is the Danube.
The Russians hit
a river port
on the Ukrainian side of that border,
but that's not far from Romania,
which is a Nadeau country.
So the Russians are now
attacking somewhere
that's literally within eyesight
of a Nadeau nation.
And here's why,
because that's
where the Ukrainian government
has over land taken
that grain that they have to ship
from their revenue.
They need that revenue perspective.
And they've used the Danube
they've used into Romania to do that.
So it's Russia
sending a signal
that they're going to go after it.
Now, potentially
We could talk about
NATO's ships coming into the Black Sea.
Turkey
would have to get permission to do that.
But right now,
they're using the Danube River
in order to use
that have the grain go overland.
And it's more expensive
and it takes a lot longer.
So, again,
if you look at the map here,
I can clear up where I circled there
in yellow and it's very faint.
You can hardly see it.
And the reason for
that is there's not much land,
but these little gains in yellow here
and then in here,
these are the areas
where the Ukrainians
have taken back territory
in the counteroffensive
which has been slow.
Yeah. Six weeks in right now.
I wouldn't say it's a failure.
But again, three reasons.
Number one,
they have not synchronize combat arms
and they've not been able
to bring all things together
of the equipment they have.
It's a very difficult mission to do that
for really a non-NATO country.
Just because we've given them
the tools to do
that doesn't mean
that they can actually do it.
The second thing is these trenches
that exist here in
in the defensive
lines, they're way more significant
than the Ukraine military had planned.
On.
They don't have the equipment
to take those out as well.
And then the last thing comes down
to air superiority.
Russia still has tremendous
close air support.
That's what's happening right now.
So these helicopters
and we have a picture of now
a Russian helicopters.
I keep hearing from people on the ground
in Ukraine, including you, people
associated with Ukrainian troops saying
they've got no defense
against these Russian helicopters.
These Russian helicopters
can stay far enough behind the lines.
So they're not threatened at all,
but they can shoot.
You can see the weaponry they have
and they can hit whatever they want.
On the Ukrainians. Yeah.
The Stingers that they have
on the Ukraine side can't get to them.
And they have tremendous mobility.
So any time the Ukraine military
can organize
some synchronized fight
and bring artillery
and bring maneuver together,
these show up on the battlefield.
And they are difference makers
similar to what we do
with our Apaches and our helicopters.
Okay.
So if everyone knows the situation
now, which is relatively static,
how can Ukraine achieve a breakthrough?
Well,
they're going to have to continue
to try to probe
and try to find weaknesses
in these systems here.
And use the artillery
that we've given
with the cluster munitions.
And there's a little bit of hope here.
The hope is that
the Russian morale will decrease,
and there's the hope
that some of those units will surrender.
That's not necessarily a great plan,
but it just tells me that this is going
this war of attrition
and this grinding
type operation
is going to go on for months.
All right.
Retired Army
Major Mike Lyons,
thanks so much for helping us understand
the situation on the ground,
the changing situation. Appreciate it.