It is significant,
but it's also desperate. He is losing,
and the battlefield reality he faces is,
I think, irreversible.
In other words, over the last seven months,
President Zelinsky and Ukraine have
mobilized vastly better than has Russia.
In other words, Ukraine has recruited,
trained, equipped, organized and employed
forces incomparably better than Russia has.
And the reality facing Russia now
is that Ukraine country of.
3rd the size of Russia has a bigger,
much more effective army on the
ground and other assets as well.
All of this of course supported
by the arsenal of democracy,
the United States now up to $17 billion,
over another billion announced
this week in military arms,
ammunition and materiel,
and also supported by the other
NATO countries and other Western
countries around the world.
So he faces a situation that
I think again is irreversible.
There are no amount of
shambolic mobilization,
which is the only way to describe it.
No amount of annexation,
no amount of even veiled nuclear
threats can actually get him out
of this particular situation.
He announced the annexation,
and he's already lost a really
critical element in that,
a critical city that would have
been a very key supply hub had
they been able to go farther.
And that's just going to continue.
He's going to continue to
lose on the battlefield,
and at some point there's going
to have to be recognition of that.
At some point,
there's going to have to be some
kind of beginning of negotiations
as President Zolinsky.
Has said will be the ultimate end.
And at some point by the way as
well I strongly agree with the idea
of Ukraine becoming part of NATO.
Although as Senator Rubio noted
let's make sure that the battlefield
goes well
for but by irreversible you
mean that Russia cannot they
cannot. There's nothing he can
do at this point again to even
the losses have been staggering.
They they have been they have been
many multiples in seven months what
Russia lost in nearly a decade in
Afghanistan many many multiples.
And again, they're losing on the
battlefield and it's going to continue.
The only question really is when do
you start to see not just individual
soldiers or small units surrender,
but when you start to see larger
units crumble,
crack and perhaps actually collapse?
And I think that will be coming.
And then the questions for President
Zolensky will be do we retake that
little part of the Donbass that was
controlled by the separatists since 2014?
And what about Crimea?
And when do we have some kind
of negotiation with Russia?
And of course, by the way,
in response to this annexation,
Russia got hit by 100,000 more individual,
personal and other sanctions
showing that the West still has
more that can be done to Russia.
It can still get worse
for Putin and for Russia.
And even the use of tactical
nuclear weapons on the battlefield
won't change this at all.
And and do you take the threat?
I mean, you have to take,
you have to take the threat seriously.
And we talked about a precedent
set by the United States.
You have to take that seriously.
And Jake Sullivan?
Has publicly stated that the US has
communicated to Russia what would happen
in response to that and what would happen?
Well, again, I have deliberately
not talked to Jake about this.
Yeah, I mean, just to give
you a hypothetical,
we would respond by leading a NATO,
a collective effort that would take
out every regional convention,
conventional force that we can see
and identify on the battlefield
in Ukraine and also in Crimea and
every ship on the in the Black Sea.
So it would bring America and NATO
into the war and it would be an
Article 5 situation basically,
not an Article 5 because they're not
part of NATO. Well, it would be,
it would be a US and NATO response
to something that is absolutely
the argument made.
The radiation would would,
would extend into NATO countries.
That effectively would
be an attack on on NATO.
Yeah. And perhaps you can make that case.
The other case is that this is so
horrific that there has to be a response.
It cannot go unanswered.
But it doesn't expand. It doesn't.
It's not nuclear for nuclear.
You don't want to again.
Get into a nuclear escalation here.
But you have to show that this
cannot be accepted in any way.
Well he he's trying to cast this in
any way that he can in a in a way to
appear threatening to be threatening
to try to get Europe to crack.
He's he thinks he can out
suffer Europe if you will.
You know the Russians have out suffered
Napoleon and the Nazis and so forth.
But I don't think he's going
to out suffer Europe Europe's
going to have a tough winter.
There's going to be a very reduced.
Flow of natural gas,
but they'll get through it,
and I don't think they'll crack on
the issue of support for Ukraine.
I mean, does Putin have to
worry about opposition? And
he does. This is why he didn't declare even
the partial mobilization until just now.
He was hesitant. And of course,
now it's too late because he can't
generate enough capable replacements and
forces and and units to plug the gaps.
They're just going to continue to try to
reestablish new defensive lines in the East.
They're going to lose hair salon
in the South, and eventually
you're going to see some puncture.
In Donetsk's operation in
the center South as well.
So again, they're in a very,
very difficult situation.
Reportedly,
more Russian men have left the
country than have actually been
conscripted or or brought back
in this problem we've seen.