It has been one year since the Russian invasion of Ukraine and
things have not developed the way.
For instance, Vladimir Putin and the Russian military might have hoped.
It seems plausible in the opening days of the war that
they would have toppled the government and
taken over basically the centers of power within the first week.
At the very least, that obviously did not happen.
And the war has shifted in different places around Ukraine,
mostly seems to be focused in the eastern portion right now.
Although, there are attacks that that strike much deeper into Ukraine.
As a result of that, we do want to catch you
up on what we believe to be the best data for loss of life thus far.
So, apparently up to about a week ago, the first year or so of the conflict,
the U.N. Office of the High Commissioner for
Human Rights recorded over 8000 civilians killed and over 13,000 injured.
That is their official log, no one obviously knows the actual number and
basically everyone disputes all of these numbers,
believing them to be massive undercounts.
In part because a lot of the civilian casualties are caused
by explosive weapons with wide area effects, shelling from artillery,
multiple launch rocket systems, missiles and air strikes.
So that makes it difficult to know exactly how many people have died when it comes to
civilians.
And the fact that there's very good evidence that at least tens of thousands
of Ukrainians particularly the young have just been carted off to Russia.
Who knows exactly who is dead, who has been kidnapped,
who perhaps fled to another area.
It makes it difficult to know for sure.
In terms of soldiers, though, Western officials have estimated
some 100,000 casualties among Ukrainian troops.
It's difficult to say, obviously we have better information about that.
When it comes to Russia, we know that it's got to be at least 40 to 60,000
some combination of armed forces, private military contractors, paramilitary forces.
And potentially, hundreds of thousands of other casualties,
including those wounded in action.
So, we don't know exactly what the numbers are, but it's devastating on all sides.
And I will remind you, as I always do, literally none of this needed to happen.
There was no pressing need for Russia to choose to launch this invasion.
But it's been convenient from the very beginning that for Vladimir Putin and
his biggest backers, they're never at risk, 200,000 more Russians could die.
It's no skin off their back.
So that's convenient the way that, that works out.
>> Yeah, I think we learned a couple things from this war on this one year
anniversary.
But I'm not sure where it's gonna end.
So, what do we learn?
First of all, the big Russian bear.
My God, their military is so amazing, turns out it's more like a cocaine bear.
and they went on a wild rampage and then petered out.
And so, they've lost tons and tons of soldiers there as you saw in the numbers.
And it turns out their military solely incompetent, is it because the Russian
soldiers know they're like everyone else, it's the leadership.
The leadership apparently was lying to Putin about how great his military was.
They are unprepared, it's been a total disaster for them.
Now, it's been a bigger disaster for the Ukrainians, not in how they fought back,
they fought back valiantly, heroically, unexpectedly.
And they've basically battled the Russians to a stalemate,
which is, was previously unimaginable.
So a lot of people are gonna take away that they did an amazing job here,
including Zelensky, but at the end of the day, their country is devastated.
It was just John pointed out, obviously the number one problem here,
it was the original invasion.
And people keep trying to put blame on Republicans or Democrats or this or that,
no, there's one person to blame.
It's obvious, it's Vladimir Putin, and saying anything else is counterfactual and
ridiculous.
And so, but what we don't know is what's gonna happen from here.
It looks like they're fighting back and forth, back and forth.
I can't tell if in the four regions that Russia tried to annex.
They have the upper hand or they're gonna lose those regions,
it's super hard to tell with the information that we have.
And most depressingly, given how much of a stalemate it's turned into,
I see no end in sight at all.
>> The closest comparison in my lifetime, even albeit I was
very young at the time was Vietnam where these kinds of war.
Like these slogs, they get bogged down in years of fighting, no one wins these wars.
Neither side wins these wars.
This feels and looks like World War I.
This is trench warfare where the Russians are really just taking feet every day.
And trying to eke out some kind of winnable solution to what is a resistance
that's not going to let them just basically sweep and take the country.
I mean, in other words, we have to find a piece for
this because that's the only way this is going to end,
is basically with both sides agreeing on some kind of peace.
Because it's very clear that this could go on for
a very, very long time and just decimate people and
geography, and territory, and lives for years to come.
I don't know if this Chinese peace plan or
anyone who can broker some kind of peace here can make some sense of this,
but we know by history that this is going nowhere now.
>> It's just like you try to imagine
what the best case scenarios are supposed to be.
I mean, like best case scenario obviously for Ukraine.
You get them the hell out of the country, and then,
they can try to recover over the next 10,
20 plus years trying to repair all of the infrastructure that's been devastated.
Try to reunite families, try to start some sort of legal process to get
the many children that have been kidnapped and sent to Russia back.
From the point of view of Russia, what's the best case scenario here?
You finally are able to kill all of the senior members of the government and
then you get to rule over what used to be Ukraine.
Whatever is left of its population, whatever you haven't killed at that point,
and they'll despise you for the next 500 years.
What is the point of literally any of this?
It's just maddening.
>> There was a point, but that's the silver lining that I want to end on.
So first, more disastrous news.
The part of the reason why we're so despondent about the potential for
peace is, neither side is really budged.
They both have listed demands and none of their demands match each others.
And if you think about it, it's very hard to resolve because Russia's now says,
I annex for other parts of Ukraine.
Ukraine can't give those parts up, Russia can't leave without having them,
otherwise it's a complete and utter failure that Putin can't stomach and
the Russian people can't stomach.
Which leads to the other point,
which is that 82% of Russians still back Vladimir Putin.
So every once in all you'll see in western press like protests and stuff and
you get just encouraged.
My God, the Russian people are gonna topple Putin or they're against, but no,
they're not, no.
So, he's still very, very popular in Russia.
So he hasn't lost any base of support.
So, he's gonna keep going unless he's gonna keep going.
So that's all the bad news.
The silver lining is, look,
if you're anywhere near a rational world leader, and I know that's a big
stretch most of our world leaders unfortunately appear to be nuts.
And they got there by being sociopaths and so hungry for power.
And that's why so many of them starts so many wars, right?
But if you're anywhere near rational now,
it looks like territorial conquest has come to an end on this planet.
America got its ass kicked in Vietnam and Iraq and Afghanistan.
Russia has now gotten its ass kicked in Afghanistan and Ukraine.
And these are the most powerful militaries known to mankind,
in the history of mankind, right?
And they just cannot win a war, they can't do it.
And so, every time anybody tries to take any kind of land, they wind up in Guerilla
warfare in a morass that destroys their military, their finances and their people.
So, unless something dramatically changes, which of course can happen at any time.
But overall, the trajectory of history is showing,
trying to win land in the modern world is a fool's errand.
And Vladimir Putin, in this case is the fool and
he has now learned that lesson the hard way.
I hope that other world leaders learned that lesson and don't go down this path
cuz it ends in certain disaster, not just for others, but for themselves as well.