Military Expert Explains What’s REALLY Going On In Ukraine

Added: 2026-05-14

[00:00:00]Joining us is Colonel Daniel Davis. He's the host of the Daniel Davis Deep Dive program on YouTube. And uh I wanted to ask the Colonel some questions about what the latest news is out of Ukraine.

[00:00:13]But more importantly, I wanted to offer a different perspective than what you've heard on this show in regard to the leadup to the Russian invasion into Ukraine. So let's actually start off with the most recent news. So where are we, Colonel, today when it comes to the Russia Ukraine war? Um, there's supposed to be a ceasefire, but the New York Times reported just today that four Ukrainian civilians were killed on Tuesday and eight more died in strikes early Wednesday. The fighting on the front carried on without having paused at all during the ostensible ceasefire.

[00:00:46]Uh and the whole point of this piece was to make uh you know draw some attention to the fact that the conventional meaning of ceasefire has been upended during the Trump administration because even when there clearly isn't a ceasefire, it's being referred to as one. Nonetheless, what is the latest news?

[00:01:03]>> Th this this ceasefire, it's important to to identify exactly what it was. It was supposed to be a 3-day ceasefire for the purpose of the May 9th victory day in Russia. in this the same I forget what they call it something close to the same thing in Ukraine because they were all part of the Soviet Union that won World War II, what they call the Great Patriotic War. And so President Putin tried to get one of those last year uh and it ended up not working. They kind of had a unilateral ceasefire and it kind of held a little bit. Then they went back to fighting. So there was never any anticipation this would do anything more than just the three days uh the day before the the day of and the day after that uh that May 9th day. So it was always expected as soon as that period ran out that they would turn back on. It generally held at the strategic level because the Russians I think within three hours of the end of that ceasefire period launched started what turned out to be a number of waves and like I think 800 drones and missiles ended up being fired from Russia back into Ukraine and Ukraine did the same thing uh on a smaller scale but but pretty robust into Russia. So, uh, and then as you pointed out on on the front lines when you're talking about a 700 mile front line, uh, there's going to be some skirmishes and there's going to be some breaking, but nothing big involved because there hasn't been any big tactical movements uh, for for a few months now actually. So, uh, in that regard, a lot of lot of fire was exchanged back and forth across the line, but uh, nothing of any real significance. So, that's kind of where we are right now in terms of what's happened in the last few days.

[00:02:29]>> Interesting. So you mentioned that there hasn't been any major, you know, military operations over the last few months. Like where where is this headed?

[00:02:38]I mean, is this a quagmire or is there any any movement on the Russian side to maybe put an end to this?

[00:02:46]>> Yeah, there there has been and it hasn't gotten any media coverage at all here.

[00:02:50]And I I've been really surprised because a lot of the stuff is on is open on the Russian side. I talked a minute ago about in the in the Iran war, you got to listen to the Iranian side and the American side and the Israeli side to try to figure out what's actually going on. Same thing here. You got to listen to the Ukrainian side, but you also have to listen to the Russian side. And the Russians are furious at Putin. And they have been uh growing up for a number of months now because he hasn't been pushing hard enough. Because when when this came to the you know, we crossed over the four-year mark here not too long ago in February. Um and and that exceeded eventually exceeded the period that the Russians were in World War II.

[00:03:27]And a lot of them were going, "Hey, hang on a minute." You know, our greatest generation won our war in in whatever the the total number of days was 1,300 something like that. And they said, "Now then here we are. We've passed that in, you know, against one country, not against the whole Nazi empire. Why can we not win this? And why aren't you trying harder?" And and Putin is very riskaverse. So, he hasn't been wanting to push hard, but now that he's starting to take pressure, even at the troop level, I've gotten some some sources who have direct connection to people at the front line. Um, and then others at the at the strategic level, and they're all getting angry at Putin, and it's starting to become public. So, that's putting pressure on him to do something different and to take more of a risk.

[00:04:10]And now then there's a guy named K Caranov uh who came out along with a couple of others has been saying you know what it's time to change the dynamics here. We have been you know it's just Russia against Ukraine on the ground but it's Russia against 50 nations from the United States and and all the European nations and a bunch of others from Asia etc. And they say we're tired of this. It's not just one-on-one.

[00:04:34]It's one on 50. and it's time for us to change the dynamic and start firing missiles into European cities, into European military facilities that are supporting us against this. And they said if they if that doesn't deter them from stopping any further, then we need to escalate to tactical nuclear weapons.

[00:04:52]They're saying this out loud and it's not getting any kind of coverage. I had John Mirimer on my show this afternoon uh and we talked about this extensively and showed some of the video from it.

[00:05:02]There's been another one since that time I found on the on Russian media and they are getting very serious about this and I I'm just really alarmed that we haven't been paying any attention. So, I have a friend named Greg who um he's been just nudging me to cover this. And I I have to be honest with you, part of me felt like maybe he's being a little bit hysterical because he really believes that pretty soon Europe is going to engage in a kinetic war with with Russia and it could lead to the use of nuclear weapons. And he's like, Anna, you got to dig deeper. You got to dig deeper. But based on what you're telling me, there's a likelihood that that could happen. But Russia would be uh would be the one taking the first, you know, take carrying out the first strikes.

[00:05:50]>> What what the Russians are saying uh in this uh Kaganov is is his name uh is has been saying this for for literally a long time. He he was an early proponent of this, but he was a kind of a fringe guy. But now then because it's dragged on so long it's moved into the mainstream and a lot of people are saying yeah we think this is going to be the case. It's been fed by I mean really all the way through and it's continued on from the European leaders very foolishly continuing to threaten Russia and they have moved German troops into the Baltics for example. They keep talking over and over about we have to have this rebuild Europe that we have to have this $800 billion advancement and we have to get ready to fight Russia by 2030 or 2029 even. So they're all trying to grow their forces. They're trying to they're saying let's all add 5% of GDP.

[00:06:36]Let's go up to a wartime footing. So the Russians are hearing all that and they're thinking well we're not just going to be sitting on our hands and doing nothing especially when we're just nibbling at the front lines here. So that's why they're saying we got to do something different. And so they're saying instead of all these 50 countries supporting the killing of Russian troops on our front lines, how about we take the fight to them for the first time because they say we're already effectively at war, how about we make them pay some of the price, too, and not just our side. And that's the danger that we keep talking on the Western side about all this coming war with Russia and now then they're starting to believe it and now then they may be ready to take some action on it. Now it all goes down to President Putin. How much risk is he willing to take? and how much pressure can he resist on the inside because they may strike military targets in Europe and of course that's that's an article 5 trigger right there that's going to definitely trigger that but how much appetite is there going to be from our weakened military Anna because we have spent four years emptying out our arsenals to give them to Ukraine to go and try to kill Russians but now we don't have the industrial capacity to replace that so we're now at a very weakened position while Russia is the opposite they are now busting at the seams with all kinds of missiles and drones, uh, artillery shells, everything you need to fight a modern war. They have been stockpiling this stuff while they're fighting here. We can't find fight a conventional war or, god forbid, a nuclear strike. We just can't do it or it could be destroying of everybody. But Russia is feeling like they're in the increasing powerful position because they've been preparing for it and mentally whereas all we do is talk a lot of stuff and then deplete our arsenal.

[00:08:15]So, it's bad situation.

[00:08:17]Okay. So the the underlying disagreement, the big debate is what the intentions of Vladimir Putin is like what the Russians want to accomplish.

[00:08:29]Right? So if you speak to anyone in the Western world, they are absolutely convinced that the whole point of all of this is to rebuild Soviet Russia. Not not in terms of communism, but in terms of, you know, the land grabs and the expansion, the empire.

[00:08:46]Uh so that's what the Europeans believe.

[00:08:48]That's what the United States believes.

[00:08:49]Russia on the other hand has uh consistently made the argument that the reason why this happened is because of the security risk or threat to Russia imposed by NATO. What is the truth? What is the reality?

[00:09:04]>> Yeah, this stuff that they're trying to rebuild the Soviet Union and trying to get ready to advance on the grounds towards the the the West is complete fiction that we created. Uh this goes back to 2007.

[00:09:16]2007 at the Munich Security Conference when uh Putin was first invited for the first time uh because they were trying you know this was in the the euphoria the shortlived euphoria after the end of the cold war and we said hey let's have a Europeanwide security architecture and so Putin was invited to Munich to have a conversation and he said listen um about this NATO expansion and he said something which and and I've written on this extensively before the war started.

[00:09:41]I said, "Listen, what sense does it make for I think it was 16 members of NATO to stand against the this totality of the USSR and the Warsaw packed countries in you like 50,000 tanks and I forget how many tens of thousands of missiles and planes and all that and and we we stood up against them and we stared them down during the Cold War and then they ended up falling. Now, what sense does it make once they disintegrate that we need to expand that NATO? If 16 stopped all of that and now that they've disintegrated, you shouldn't even you don't even need it anymore, much less to expand it. But it's like we took advantage of that and it wasn't collective security anymore.

[00:10:19]It was advancement and to keep Russia down. And then it kept going on and on.

[00:10:23]And so in 2007, Putin said, "Hey, who is this expansion directed against?"

[00:10:27]Because you say it's not us, but there's nobody else out there. It's only us. And if you keep going, there's going to be problem. in 2008. Then NATO took a step that says, as a matter of fact, it's not just the the Baltic countries and these others. We're going to expand into Georgia and to Ukraine. And Russia says, "No, you're not." Because it's one thing for the Baltics, which we don't like, but that's militarily defensible for us.

[00:10:48]There's a lot of reasons why that's not that hard of a task to defend. But Ukraine, that's like right down the plains that has a a a path leading straight to Moscow that twice Western powers uh Napoleon and then Hitler used to invade Russia in the past. And so they say, uh, no, that's not happening.

[00:11:07]If you do that, and this was eventually told to Jen Stolenberg, the former NATO secretary general, if you put NATO into Ukraine, there will be war. But if you just take that off the table, there won't be any war. and and Jen Stolenberg mocked it and said, "Ha, nobody tells us what to do. They will come in." And then Putin said, "Then you're going to have war because there's no way in God's earth we're going to let your military alliance come up to our border like it's happened twice in the previous two centuries like we would do, Anna.

[00:11:36]There's no way on God's earth we would ever allow China or Russia to move into a military alliance with Canada or with Mexico or or Cuba, for example. We would never allow any of that." or Venezuela, which you've seen. So, >> I mean, we think, and when I say we, I mean our government, our government thinks that uh chance, just simple chance against America means that there's a security risk and we should go to war against people chanting that in a in a foreign country that doesn't even have weapons that can reach mainland United States. But I I totally agree with you in regard to how the US would react um very similarly if not even more aggressively if uh a similar you know alliance uh had reached our borders uh and threatened our security. Can you talk a little bit though about Crimea because you know the argument the counterargument to what you just said is well Russia annexed Crimea in 2014. How do you justify that? Like what was what was that about? You know, nearly everything that I've described here from 2007 forward, actually everything we initiated first, Russia reacts. We want this situation. We love it to where we can do whatever we want and you can do nothing about it except for say yes sir and just suck it down. That's the case here in 2014. In late 2013, early 2014, you had Ukraine whole to include Crimea.

[00:12:58]Now, Russia had a military base. It's place called Sevis Doyl on the Black Sea at the at the bottom of Crimea, which was part of Ukrainian territory, and they had for a long time since the 1990s when when Ukraine became independent from the USSR. They had a deal that there would be like a 99-year lease for the the Russian Black Sea fleet there.

[00:13:16]That was something they all agreed to.

[00:13:17]Everything's fine, good to go. Well, now all of a sudden with this one of the reasons why Russia said they're not going to allow NATO into Ukraine because that's where their base is is in the what then was Ukrainian territory and then uh now all of a sudden here we have the the big Maidon of late 2013 early 2014 when we and everybody knows now we helped orchestrate a coup that overthrew the legally elected government that was leaning towards Moscow. We didn't like that. We wanted one that was leaning towards Europe. And so when the guy who was in charge, I think it was Yanukovich, was leaning towards towards Russia, then we said, "Yeah, we can't do that." So there was a protest and instead of putting the protest down, we allowed the protesters to to run this government out that because then there was alleged this is part of the the gray part. There was then turned violent in the capital city. And there was some claims that it was the the the Russian dominated government was killing protesters and others said no this was actually infiltrators in the in the crowd to actually shoot the crowd to create more chaos to make it look like that it was the government so that they could come and drive them out etc. That's in the gray zone. What's not in the gray zone is that Russia EU uh and Ukrainian authorities got together in on I want to say it was the 20th of March 20 20th of February uh not 2014 and they came up with a solution. They said all right tell you what we'll have early elections. Russia agreed to this and they said in May, so from February to May we'll have early elections and if your guy wins then your guy wins, we'll have early elections and and Russia said they knew that they would lose the election because the the sentiment had turned against them. But instead of allowing that to happen, we supported the the crowd running the Yanukovich out and then they just took power. And of course you you may be familiar with uh uh what's her face Victoria Nuland with that famous interrupted intercepted phone where we're deciding who's going to be the next leader of Ukraine and we're talking about all these different people. We put our handpicked person in there because we didn't want there to be an election. We just wanted to choose who was in charge. In response, Putin said, "Okay, then I see how this is going. There is we agreed to elections.

[00:15:23]we aren't going to agree to a coup and we're now going to take Crimea, which is 95% ethnic Russian anyway. So, it was in reaction to what we had helped facilitate inside of Ukraine. That's where that came from.

[00:15:37]>> I could talk to you about this for the rest of the show, but unfortunately, we're going to have to wrap up soon. But I have one more question for you that I think is important, and this is something that I myself uh was naive about and wasn't fully informed about.

[00:15:49]talk to me about how ethnic Russians had been treated in had been treated in Ukraine under Zilinski.

[00:15:58]>> Uh yeah, I mean there was the one one of the most infamous uh was during this Maidon period when it expanded out from the capital later in 2014. It got down into Odessa and there was a number of pro-Russian folks there. A lot of ethnic Russians because you know of course during the Soviet Union you had all kinds of ethnic Russians and Ukraine.

[00:16:15]They were mixed all over the place.

[00:16:16]There's a lot of history that I won't bore you with right now that imported a lot of different Russians in over the decades prior, but the people the Ukrain pro- Ukrainian people that were the pro- neo-Nazi folks turned against a lot of the the ethnic Russian people and they ended up burning them alive in in a in a a building. Uh I can't remember what the building was, but it was uh uh just a horrific scene. It's it's on people can Google it. and still on YouTube where they surrounded all the people, these pro- Ukrainian folks, and then they barricaded them in there and they set the building on and burned them all to death. And that's been one of the worst things in the Russian. But that's the thing, they said, you know, you're going to outlaw the Russian language. They're going to outlaw the uh their their ethnic religion. I mean, all all these kinds of things. So, they kept pushing them down so that they made them uh not equal citizens in their own country. I'm talking that were people that were citizens of Ukraine from Russian ethnic heritage.

[00:17:12]It's incredible. And honestly, you know, whether you're talking about the Victoria Nuland phone call, whether you're talking about the way uh ethnic Russians had been treated in Ukraine, this is the kind of stuff that we're not really getting in-depth reporting about from certainly not legacy media. I'm sure there's independent media that has been covering it, but you know, their their coverage tends to get buried, but um Colonel, thank you so much for taking the time to explain this to me and to our audience. Um, I think the story is a lot more complicated than the very clean narratives that we've been seeing in places like the Washington Post or the New York Times. So, I appreciate >> By the way, I I don't want to give you the impression that, you know, the Russians are clean. They're not. I mean, there's a lot of plenty of bad things going on all over the place. Bottom line is nobody's hands are clean. This is just, you know, two sides that are using a lot of difficult tasks, especially, but the Ukraine side is not this innocent side. That is important to say.

[00:18:02]>> Yeah, I I agree with you. I think it's a lot more complicated again than than what we've been led to believe. So anyway, uh thank you again, Colonel Daniel Davis, host of the Daniel Davis Deep Dive on YouTube. Everyone, please check it out. Please subscribe. And uh thank you for being so generous with your time, Colonel.

[00:18:18]>> Always my pleasure. Thanks, Anna.

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