Michael Weiss: Perp Walks and Counteroffensives

In my administration, I’m going to enforce all laws concerning the protection of classified information. No one will be above the law. We also need to fight this battle by collecting intelligence and then protecting protecting our classified secrets. We can’t have someone. In the Oval Office who doesn’t understand the meaning of the word confidential or classified.

One of the first things we must do is to enforce all classification rules and to enforce all laws relating to the handling of classified information. We also need the best protection of classified information. This is a person that’s running for president. Service members here in North Carolina have risked their lives to acquire classified intelligence to protect our country.

That was Donald Trump in twenty sixteen. Words to keep in mind as he gets his second perp walk this afternoon in Miami. Good morning, and welcome to the Bulwark podcast. I am Charlie Sykes. We are joined by Michael Weiss, currently senior correspondent for Yahoo News and the host of the podcast for an office, author of ISIS inside the army of terror and under forthcoming history of the GRU Russia’s military intelligence service.

So first of all, Welcome back to the podcast, Michael.

Thanks for having me back, Charlie.

Well, I think that we can walk and chew gum at the same time. I wanna talk about what’s going on in Ukraine, but obviously, As has so often been the truth over the last few years, Donald Trump is just sucking all the oxygen out of the room this remarkable remarkable scene that can I just remind people that it is not normal to have a former president of the United States charged with thirty seven felonies? After being charged with thirty four felonies after being found liable for a sexual assault by a New York federal jury and who is still running for president of the United States. This is just not usual. So Michael, before we get into your pertise in the brilliant stuff you’ve been doing on Ukraine.

Tell me about what you thought when you read the indictment that was unsealed on Friday night?

So I come from a family of of lawyers. My dad’s been practicing for, gosh, almost sixty years now. He’s just turned eighty three and my brother’s a lawyer. I have other lawyers in the family. And none of them has ever read criminal indictment quite like this in the sense that, you know, Jack Smith is a clever guy and and essentially, he not just puts forward the complaint and the evidence, but he hoists Donald Trump the defendant on his own petard.

Right? I mean, you just played this clip of Trump campaigning on the fact that Hillary Clinton was sloppy with her emails and had secret or classified materials on server or whatever and that this was as a huge problem in this country and he’s gonna be the guy to fix it. And in the in the indictment, you know, there’s extensive extracts to this effect. But then I mean, you know, it’s kind of extraordinary that this guy behaves in this manner after a coming down, you know, with all manner of scandals in the last several years. But then, you know, also suborns his own legal defense team into committing crimes.

Right? He’s telling his lawyers I mean, my favorite bit is where you know, the complaint describes Trump using a plucking motion to indicate removal of any materials that might be of a criminal nature when, you know, presenting this stuff to the FBI and then handing it over to Narrow or whatever it was. It’s weird. You know, I’ve been watching BetterCall again. Because I I’ve run fantastic.

Which is an amazing show. And, you know, I think this is something that slip and Jimmy might found a little bridge too far in terms of unethical legal practices or flagrant violations of law. I say all that whilst still maintaining, this isn’t really all that surprising to us. Right?

See, I mean, that’s the point, isn’t it? Because it is consistent with everything Donald Trump is, and everything we’ve known about him for years.

And well, exactly. And, you know, look, Charlie Sykes live and have lived for most of my life in Queens. New York, which is sad to say where Donald Trump comes from. His his old high school is just down the road from where I am. And look, I understand the milieu, and I understand sort of some of the more colorful culture that can create a creature like this.

The consummate grifter, the fast talking, Slee’s merchant, the guy who, you know, he’s got no time for political correctness, he’s got no time for everything from parking violations to federal crimes. It’s all a racket. It’s it’s all a big conspiracy. Right? And I don’t know.

I mean, I just in my mind, the headline for all of this is queens’s man arrested. You know, it will never change for me. The fact that this guy had control of nuclear weapons, the fact that this guy could command the world’s largest military into action. He’s still a guy from Queens. He’s still a low life from Queens.

You know, that’s his consummate character to me. And I think he’s now really landed himself in the soup. I mean, you’ve seen his allies, Bill Barr came out and said he’s toast you know, so I’ve defended the president on other things including Russia conspiracy and blah blah blah. But reading this indictment, I see no viable defense for him. The one question I would love to know from lawyers is what are the odds that he beats every single one of them?

Right? You know, like, if he was charged with five, counts of something. I could see him being acquitted of all five. But sixty some I mean, like and counting. Right?

There are more investigations still pending. As it the probe into his Georgia election interference, there’s the January sixth insurrection. I mean, the only way he can do this apparently is to kick the can down the street, defer all of these criminal proceedings, then get elected and, I guess, pardon himself. Is that the kind of country we’re in though now? Because that sounds to me we’re now grading beyond your classic definition of authoritarianism.

Right? This is entering into the theater of the absurd. Right?

And what comes after a banana republic?

In a banana republic, you would, like, kill the prosecutor and the judges. Right? He can’t do that even though he’d probably like to.

Yeah.

So he’s just gonna, you know, muck up the legal system, slow down the process of all of these criminal proceedings, then in his mind hopefully get elected, and then just exonerate himself with the full power and authority of the office of the presidency.

And that seems to be his binary future. He either wins the presidency or he goes to jail. I mean and — Right.

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and think about how that raises the stakes for for him, for his supporters, for with the country when you realize that that the only way for him to save himself is to get back total power. His redemption is through the Oval Office. And by the way, I mean, there’s so many things to talk about. I I do think that we shouldn’t gloss over what he did yesterday. The reiteration of the I am your retribution.

Right. The problem, Michael, you you know this, that in the Trump era, there are things that happen that would have dominated the new cycle for six weeks that now barely are mentioned, this bleep that he put out on true social, where he rather explicitly vows to go after either the Biden family in retaliation. He, you know, he said, I will appoint a real special to go after the most corrupt president in the history of the USA, Joe Biden, the entire Biden crime family, and all others involved with the destruction of our election, borders, and country itself. So as the independent said, it’s a stunning declaration that throws the future for America’s justice system into question. And such a move would wholly eliminate the independence and integrity of the Department of Justice should he be successful?

Well, no kidding. And you can’t say we have not been warned at this point.

No. And, you know, you also can’t say that this guy isn’t going to this time around, appoint people who would know how to mantle the institutions of checks and balances and tried to get across the line that which he was held back initially in his first term for the simple fact that a lot of the people advising him and who he had appointed didn’t know what the hell they were doing. Right? Don’t discount the possibility that he might learn how to select more competent and more sinister characters for his second term. Right?

There is a learning curve here. And also, frankly, now he’s really out for blood. The first time around what? He he decided to run for president because Barack Obama mocked him. Made fun of him.

Yeah. Made ton of him. Right? So his amour propre was wounded now. He’s declaring war essentially in the United States government.

And half the country, which he sees as the enemy. Right? That is incredibly deeply worrying. As is the fact, frankly, that nothing that happens to this guy. There is no scandal that could befall him.

I mean, he was found guilty and civil court of sexual assault and then got up on stage in a town hall at CNN and basically said, I never met this woman. I didn’t know this woman. And oh, yeah. She she tried to make out with me or confer sexual favors in a broom closet or something like that. And everyone laughed.

It was

it was a moment of tittering and celebration. Yeah. So now, you know, he has stolen classified materials, kept them on a ballroom stage in his private residence or his his grand hotel, whatever it is. In a shower, in a bathroom, and is found to have essentially bragged about the fact that he had these materials and to have disclosed two vested interests including political action committee operatives that, oh, yeah. By the way, I I could have declassified this stuff when I was commander in chief, but I didn’t Well, there’s your crime right there.

You know? And again, his poll numbers do not go down, and he is still very much the front

And will be, which goes to the question of, okay, in the second term, if you appointed all of these these deplorables with the senate confirm them. And I guess you have to believe that somehow, you know, Republican elected officials would behave differently with him back in power than they have been with him out of power. It is interesting. And I I think I’m gonna write a piece about this, kind of the the escalating demands on the base, all of which they’ve complied with. In twenty sixteen, Republican voters decided that, you know, grabbing women by the pussy was was okay.

That was not disqualify. Even after the Shambala first term and all the scandals and everything that happened in Charlottesville, republican voters decided that, okay, we’re gonna give him a second term. But then think about what support for Trump is after that. I mean, it’s one thing to have imagined that he was going to grow into the office before twenty sixteen. It’s something else to think that he ought to be given another term after his first term.

Mhmm.

But up until now, to support Trump is also to support someone post January sixth who tried to overthrow the government who incited a riot. I mean, think about that. And yet, republican voters went along with it. But as of today, Trump’s support now is not only swallowing all of that, but to say, yeah, he might have stolen these documents and bragged about it and disseminated them. He might have admitted felonies, but you know, we don’t regard that as disqualifying.

In fact, we like him even more. Think about that. There have been some vibe shifts over the last twenty four hours. I wouldn’t read too much into even Nikki Haley and Tim Scott are suggesting that, yeah. You know what?

Reading the indictment, it is kind of serious. You do have Bill Barr out there saying that that he’s toast, but I I think that Philip bump in the Washington Post just kind of has this this reality check. He said, look, there is no voice that could convince Trump’s most energy supporters of the idea that he willfully violated the law. There never has been. Anyone who tries to present the reality of the situation to his base However, close they were to Trump at the outset is immediately exiled, the truth has no place in Trumpism.

So he just says, okay. Just remember, there’s no voice that’s going to change this. Nobody from within the dark heart of Trumpism itself, even Bill Barr is not gonna make a difference here. And I think we ought to acknowledge that reality.

We should. And, you know, I think his unique selling point and, I mean, dare I say in in this sort of strange, nihilistic, post modern era we inhabit, his talent. Is that he is without shame. He cannot be cowed. He cannot be scandalized.

He takes you know, sort of the momentum of the opposition and uses it against them. Right? If you’re a woman in particular, he’ll call you nasty, he’ll denigrate you in misogynistic terms. If you’re any opponent facing him, whether it’s Chris Christie who did fairly okay job last night as far as I can tell or Nikki Haley or I mean, Ron DeSantis Jesus Christ. I mean, he will steamroll every single one of them.

And he has done. And, you know, again, this is how he builds his constituency. I am one of the world’s most recognizable oligarchs. I have, you know, hundreds of millions, if not billions of dollars. I live like a combination of Hugh Hefner and Augusta Pinochet, and you all envy me and and we would like to replicate my success.

But I’m the perennial victim. I’m the victim of this vast conspiracy of CIA, state department, Democratic party operatives, half the country is is ranged against me and you, the other half, you need to carry me to victory by means, list it or otherwise. Right? Go line the streets, go set things on fire. You know, wink, wink, nudge, nudge, go after the black prosecutor trying me in in New York, mountain insurrection if you have to.

But put me back in the Oval Office, and I’ll bring the country down to your level, which is what you’ve always wanted. Right? This cultural Rosenta Mont that seems to be now almost a new ideology onto itself in American politics. You know, this is this is what Tucker Carlson taps into. I mean, used to tap into on a nightly basis now on Twitter.

And yeah. I mean, it’s not something that I thought I would experience in my lifetime and frankly, I travel a lot from my work as you know. And I go to Europe a lot. And obviously, Europe has dealt with very successful and very lethal populist political movements throughout its history. And, you know, one of the old criticisms I remember hearing years ago, and this was like the George w Bush Barack Obama era as well.

You know, you Americans, what’s to choose, left and right, Republican Democrat. It’s really all the same. You’re gonna all inhabit that, you know, sort of like one micrometer of of the same piece of the spectrum of neo liberal blah blah blah blah. You know, it’s like, at least in Europe, we’ve got real options. I said, yeah.

You’ve got Stalinism, you’ve got Hitlerism. You have this sort of new wave of the neo populist kind of Italian and Hungarian and and French models. That’s not something we want in America. And and our consensus has sort of been our saving grace. Well, now look at that.

I mean, the consensus is gone. Isn’t it? You do have sort of many Hitler and many Stalin’s inhabiting the political realm these days even if they would absolutely deny it being anything like that. And, yeah, it’s terrifying.

I find myself reading a lot of Hannah Arrent lately. By the way, you you mentioned you’re watching better call Saul. I I have a TV recommendation for you. You’re probably way ahead of me on all of this. But you ever watched Babylon, Berlin?

No. But it has been recommended to me.

It is fantastic This is one of those shows, and I have a long track record of waiting, you know, many years and having people say it is outstanding and being skeptical about it and then watching it. And of course, you know, anything that takes place in nineteen twenty nine, Berlin, you you just are thinking, like, it’s not overtly political. Okay. That’s all my recommendation. So, you know, what you’re describing though, there is Trump, but there’s also something that’s happening to the country.

And and I understand that he’s tapped into this anger and this resentment and this sense that they are, you know, people are being threatened by playing the victim card, which is very effective. And the woman who’s most effective lines is they’re not coming after me, they’re coming after you. I’m I’m the one standing in the way, which is a great line that he uses — Yeah.

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the plays to this. So people are angry. They’re resentful. They’re outraged. They feel threatened.

But there’s something also and I think we gotta acknowledge this. There’s something about Trump, his transgressiveness, his shamelessness, that is exciting to people

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Yes.

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to basically to be liberated from any sort of standard to be able to indulge that id, to let that freak flag fly, people do get a dopamine hit. From watching I think, you know, in the beginning was that people thought that some of his character traits were, well, people were supporting him in spite of that because they like the policies, you know, as opposed to the behavior. I think at this point, it’s not about the policies anymore at all. Is it Michael? There are people who are just sort of excited by the raw bravado, the strength, the defiance, and the threats, and and that sense of strength and violence behind it.

Yes. People are getting a tingle at their leg, and I think that’s as worrying as any aspect of this.

And there’s always been a strain of that in sort of American culture. I mean, you mentioned Hannah Rent. I think another sort of lodestar here is Alan Bloom. Mhmm. He was closing in the American mind.

You know, one of the he was very excited about excited in a a negative way that is about some of the intellectual philosophical currents that had wafted over to the United States from the continent. I remember he has this long exegesis of the song Mac, the knife. Do you remember that in his book? Mhmm. And this is based on Machineser, which is like a a German, you know, kind of Vodvil song from Weimar, Germany, I believe.

Which is all about a serial killer. And he kept how comes it that, you know, American popular music is extolling the lyrics that are based on murder. Right? And this is something, you know, we all are titillated by. We all are drawn to in sort through the the dark recesses of our own psyche.

And, you know, it’s funny you mentioned, I remember knowing when I was really, really worried about trouble. So when he was running for the nomination in twenty sixteen, and everyone, the conventional wisdom had it that oh, yeah. Great. Like, Republicans should nominate him, you know. It’ll be a complete route.

Hillary will be president fine. And he was on stage with at the time, it looked like what a dozen or more than more than a dozen other candidates including Mark Rubio and Jeff Bush and all the rest of it. And then the moderator asked him, you know, you’ve said some horrible things about women. You’ve called them pigs. You’ve called them such as his response was only Rosie O’Donnell.

I remember watching TV. Oh, man. And my wife is a dyed in the wool Chicago Democrat. She, you know, she met Barack Obama when he’s senator from Illinois and it was the highlight of her life. She wanted to volunteer for Hillary Clinton, and she detest Donald Trump.

But she was watching TV with me. And she couldn’t help but laugh. And it wasn’t a laughter that was affirming, meaning that she agreed with him. It was a laughter of you know, the excitement of being scandalized, the unbelievableness of what was just said. In a way, it it’s almost like watching a kind of burlesque unfold, except that this is in the form of wicked entertainment, even though that’s kind of how it’s sold in American politics.

This has real world consequence. And it gotten darker over time. Exactly. That’s what worries me is I think people are whether they care to admit it or not, they are drawn to this in some way. It’s a spectacle.

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I don’t think you can understand Donald Trump for what’s happening right now without understanding his absolute fascination. With some of the worst actors in the world, including Vladimir Putin. And one of the red lines of of twenty twenty four will be the question of will we continue to support Ukraine Donald Trump has made it clear that he is going to side with Vladimir Putin as he has done over and over and over again. And I have to tell you, Michael, you are one of my most important sources about what is fighting in Ukraine. So let’s talk about that.

What is happening right now? I think we can walk and chew gum at the same time, you know. Talk about Donald Trump and his purple Bulwark, but also talk about the sort of the front lines of of the west. Right now. So let’s talk about Ukraine and about the counter offensive.

And I wanna start with this though, your thoughts on the dam that blew up. Who blew up the dam? And why.

I literally have open on my screen. A piece that James Rustin and I are writing now. And the tentative headline is how we know Russia blew up the Kukovuk dam. So there’s a a welter of evidence here, Charlie, that this was the Russians. One, I’ll start from the more kind of abstract and conjectural and move down to the evidence base.

One, the Russians have boasted about possibly doing this for quite a long time. In October two hundred and fifth motorized rifle brigade, which was one of the units in control of the Khokovka dam. This is a dam in Herzon, which was occupied by the Russians in March of twenty twenty two. Half of her son was liberated in a counter offensive last year, but the other half remains controlled by Russia including the dam. In October, the two hundred and fifth motorized rifle Rugate of Russia, one of the telegram channels they control posted this long advisory, which said we have begun mining and undermining the dam.

And here’s what residents of Urson should do if the dam blows up. Right? Meaning, we we’re gonna blow it. So that’s and that was pointed out by Alexei Danilov, who’s the chairman of the Ukrainian National Security Council as one of the indicators that this was Russia. Two.

There’s a Norwegian seismology firm called NOSAR, which indicated that they picked up large seismic activity at two fifty four AM on June sixth, and all their readouts suggest this was a big explosion. This wasn’t something caused by mother nature. This wasn’t, you know, perhaps the dam just deteriorating and collapsing. This there was a bomb that went off. They also detected earlier than that, about twenty minutes earlier, lesser explosions.

This conforms with what eyewitnesses told journalists and indeed posted of their own accord to social media around the same time, big blasts have gone off. Now residents of her song can tell the difference at this stage in the war between artillery shells, cruise missiles, and something new. They all indicated that what had gone off with something new. You’ve got two New York Times articles, I’ll bring to your attention. One, querying, structural engineers, and people whose job it is to build dams, who said this certainly looks like a bomb went off not the result of what’s known as overtopping where the water level gets too high and the pressure can basically bring the dam down.

And then two, more significantly, US spy satellites detected an explosion from inside the dam. Now what boggles my mind about all of this is the US has been very reluctant to come out and attribute culpability. Right? John Kirby has said, including on Christian Amanpour’s show. We don’t know yet who did it.

But really, we do. Because if it was an explosion and it was from inside the structure itself, there’s only one party capable of doing that. The Ukrainians do not have access

So why the reluctance to say that?

The reluctance, I believe, I spoke to a very senior European intelligence official. Two days ago. And I said, you’ve conferred with the Americans. Yeah. He said, yes.

I said, and who done it? He’s like, who do you think? I said, so the Russians. Right. I said why aren’t the Americans saying anything?

It beats me. And then I posited. Well, you know, the same day this happened, the Washington Post came out with this story. Based on the discord leaks. You know, the intelligence that the twenty one year old National Guard, airman, Jack Texara, posted the Internet.

Indicating that the CIA had advanced warning that Ukrainian actors, including those who would be connected to Valeria’s Delusigny, the commander in chief of the Ukrainian forces, were looking to blow up Nordstrom two, the pipeline, the Russian pipeline, which indeed was blown up. And so the the working hypothesis is my hypothesis, which this European intelligence source said sounded plausible. I think that the American I see has got a case of cold feet. They don’t want to come right out and say, the Russians did this. Because they’re worried that God forbid their intelligence assessment is in copper bottom.

And who knows? It was some mysterious group of Ukrainian rambos that managed to smuggle themselves in, you know, James Bondlike. Sorry to mix my metaphors or pop culture references there. But you know what I mean? Like, I think they’re a little bit nervous about assigning blame before they can.

Another aspect of it or factor could well be that you know, in intelligence matters, declassifying things is tricky and complicated for the simple fact that you don’t wanna give away to the enemy how you know what you know. Right? So if their signals intercepts, if the US has human sources on the ground who have reliably told them, It was the Russians. They don’t wanna burn those data collection methods. I’m just guessing as to why we haven’t heard from Uncle Sam yet, but from what I gather and I I did talk to one US diplomat and somebody very well up in the Biden administration who was like, yeah.

You know, isn’t a mystery. You know, this source also could not understand the sluggishness of attribution. And unfortunately, that sluggishness has only contributed to Russia’s information operation about this. Right? So if you look at the Russian response, which is itself indicative of Russia’s own responsibility.

It’s been a combination of the Ukrainians did it. And also, we did it, and let’s blow up another one. Right? State media actually had a guy come up who seemed so befuddled, it was talking such nonsense that other propagandists told him to shut up and they said, you know what? Let’s not rely on any official lines coming from Moscow.

Let’s just listen to what Tucker Carlson says. I’m not making that up by the way. They’re deferring to Tucker on this.

Oh, for Christ.

So, you know, I would say there is an aggregate of evidence and information, both circumstantial and less circumstantial, including SBU intercepts of Russian soldiers, saying we blew up the dam by the way.

So let’s accept that the Russians blew up the dam. Why? Why did they do it? What advantage do they get from doing it?

Well, there’s two hypotheses for that. Number one, they didn’t mean to blow the whole thing. They wanted to blow part of it or conduct some kind of kinetic operation that they could then used to blame the Ukrainians for shelling the dam or just use it to terrorize the population of her son. I’m actually less inclined to think that. I think they went full bore, and they wanted to destroy the whole thing.

Why? Well, flooding eighty plus settlements in Hassan on both sides of the Nipro has had a deleterious effect on Ukraine’s ability to mount its counter offensive. It is diverted resources away from the front. You’ve got Ukrainian rescue workers now working night and day to rescue man and beast alike. Those rescue workers are being shelled by Russian artillery, by the way, which is itself a war crime.

Mhmm.

And I think Hannah Maliar, who’s a spokesman, for the Ukrainian military has pointed out in quite granular detail how this has allowed the Russians to redirect their military assets in Hassan to other positions along the contact line where Ukraine is is pressing its counterfeensive. So in other words, it did have both a psychological and a military effect on Keith, which Look, the Russians don’t care about Ukrainian lives. They certainly don’t care about critical infrastructure. They have blown dams in the past. They just blew another one, by the way, yes day or the day before that as part of their defensive campaign here.

So, yeah, I heard a lot of theories, oh, they wouldn’t do it. It doesn’t behoove them nonsense. They would.

So clearly this is related into the counter offensive, which is apparently under way talk to me a little bit about how that counter offensive is going and how you are watching it and how we evaluate whether or not it is a success. So, you know, the first day or couple days became a sensationalistic

headache because the Ukrainians lost a bunch of armor in Zaporizhia, including, I think it was two leopard tanks provided either by Germany or other European countries. A bunch of infantry fighting vehicles including Bradley’s provided by us. And, you know, as is the want of people who are terminally online and who think that war can be measured in hours or days or even weeks. You know, you saw a lot of hysteria and nervousness. It’s over look, it’s it’s a complete route.

The Russians have dined out on this. Right? Because destroying Western armor for them is great. In itself, but also even better as a way to press their propaganda efforts to try and get the west to stop providing security assistance for Ukraine. So I’ve seen the same images of the same bits of kit circulated by Russian state accounts.

But in the last several days, particularly starting at the weekend, I began to notice in southern Ukraine, both Zaporizhia and Danetsk areas that the counter offensive was starting to pay dividends. Now slowly, grudgingly, gradually, but dividends nonetheless. And at last count, I had seen yesterday Anamalia again spokesman for Defense Forces said that seven settlements had been retaken and I think the figure given was about ninety square kilometers. Now, that’s pretty good. And I’m seeing even more tellingly than that panic and a great deal of discombobulation on Russian social media.

You know, one of the key markers for understanding the war actually comes from the enemy, not the Russian government or the Ministry of Defense, but are known as Russian military bloggers

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Mhmm.

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who

they don’t really tell the truth, the full truth. But when shit hits the fan, if I may say, you know it because they’re the first ones tell you things are going sideways. Right? Despite what you hear from Moscow, you know, this settlement has not been defended. Our counter counter offensive has not succeeded blah blah blah.

So right now, these guys seem quite nervous and that betokens something good for the Ukrainians. And also, look, they’re not quite yet at what’s known as the Sortoviken line, which is gonna be the main line of Russian defense. This is where the trenches and the minefields and the the so called dragon’s teeth impediments to stop Western armor, that’s where all this stuff is. But they’re inching closer to it all the time. And look, Charlie, they don’t have to take all of Southern Ukraine.

They have to breach that line of defense. And if they do it in the direction, it looks like they’re doing it. They could very well cut off the direct line of communication from Russian Federation territory to occupied Crimea. And I was in Kiev seven weeks ago now. And all of the juju I was getting from Ukrainian officials, including top intelligence officials, was Crimea is going to be a priority.

Whether or not, it’s retaken with Ukrainian infantry, or it’s just, quote unquote, neutralized in the sense that the Russian military presence there and the Bulwark sea fleet presence at Sevastopol, is spent or gone or they have to skedaddle across the line through the Church Bridge. They see Crimea as a higher value to Ukraine right now than occupied Don Boss. They also think they can take it a lot more easily than Don Boss, which flips the script in terms of what you’re hearing from the America inside which is you’ll never take Crimea and don’t even try. That’s Putin’s final red line if they do that game over. Well actually it’s game over if they do because Strategically, that will be a definitive defeat for Russia.

Crimea was the prize in twenty fourteen. If Russia loses the prize, they’ve lost you

You shared an assessment that right now, we’re seeing the Ukrainians in a probing and shaping operations and that there’s going to be a major attack in the next few days. So Again, how will the rest of the world know that the main counter offensive has begun? What should we be looking for?

Well, I

would say we’re beyond probing attacks. I look, I’m not a military expert in these definitions. One thing seems to to grade into another quite seamlessly because, you know, they’re on the attack. And I know where they’re going. You can see the axes that are being, you know, sort of lit up at the moment.

But I guess the definition for the main counter and here I defer to General Ben Hodges, who wrote a very good analysis at SIPAA the other day. Wait for the big tanks to come in. Right? Like, two Leo’s, whatever. That’s not that’s not something to write home about.

But when you start seeing whole columns pushing in, then you’ll know. And by the way, on the Russian side, it must be said, they haven’t committed the full brunt of their forces either. Mhmm. You know? I mean, the guys who are holding the line in these settlements north of the sovietan line, they don’t have reinforcements.

They’re not getting air support whether because the Russians are holding back or as was suggested the other day, the weather conditions are such that it’s it’s not possible to fly in in clear skies and and counter attack. So, yeah, we haven’t seen the full curtain rise if you like yet, but it’s coming soon. And it’s coming soon because You just have to read the way that the Ukrainians are talking about things, including Kirriela Budanov, who’s the head of military intelligence. Who did a video yesterday, the day before, it was thirty seconds of him sitting in silence. One of the tropes is our operational security as such, keep your damn mouth shut.

Don’t talk about

a problem.

And that usually suggests something big. Is going to happen.

Well, and we’re not done providing aid. They’re expecting a new package maybe today to provide up to three hundred and twenty five million dollars in more military aid to Ukraine. You also shared very interesting footage of Vladimir Putin in the Edmonton Moscow with his defense minister. Yes. And you pointed out the the body language where Putin is deliberately turning his back on Shoygu.

So what’s going on there? Why would Vladimir Putin got out of his way to humiliate his own defense minister who’s still in office? In the middle of the war.

Well, I mean, you’ll recall before the war when Putin had that pre filmed sort of come to Jesus

—

Mhmm. — you know, and and also declare your complicity in what I’m about to do, meaning, he dressed down rather starkly the head of his foreign intelligence service. Sergei Narichkin and said, you know, remember he barked at him. Speak plainly, sergei. So, you know, this is kind of a classic method of of all czars.

You know, you play one minister or boyar against the other and, you know, the backdrop on the Russian side to what’s taking place. Particularly since their war went sideways, is a kind of war of clans or a war of various actors and and interests And on the one side, you’ve had the Evgenipuragossian who is the financier and architect of the Wagner group. Wagner group is a mercenary outfit almost ten years old. Sanctioned by the United States, the EU declared a transnational criminal organization, declared in nonbinding resolutions across Europe as terrorist organization. But the Ukrainians will tell you these guys fight well.

And actually, these guys are the most formidable opponent we’ve got on the battlefield. Conventional Russian military, they don’t really rank them highly, but Wagner, they rank highly. And Progyny has capitalized on this to seemingly declare a kind of future political project for himself. And depending on who you ask about this, he’s looking to either become president himself or to overtake and annihilate other vested interests such as Defense minister Sargay Shoygu, chief of the general staff, Alerie Gurasimov. He’s denounced them by name.

He he recorded a video saying Shoygu, Gurasimov. Where’s the F and M Unition? Showing a whole field of Wagner operative corpses, right, in bach mode. So Putin I mean, you know, here’s the thing. Kremlinology is almost impossible to do we’re just all kind of grasping at light switches in the dark at the moment.

Yeah. But one thing that seems fairly obvious, fairly clear is Putin is trying to play one side against another. He’s not satisfied clearly with the direction this war has gone. He evidently is micromanaging a lot of the war. And the people who will take the blame if this war is a complete failure, if it’s a strategic loss, if Crimea is recaptured by Ukraine.

The first people on the chopping block are gonna be the defense minister and the chief of the general staff. Right? The war cabinet. Pregosian, I mean, he’s doing some very bold and daring things. He’s he’s announcing Putin not by name, but in all but, right, describing him as a befuddled grandpa figure and all this stuff.

And yet, it’s exaggerating the extent to which Vogner is not being supported by the Russian state. So, it’s not true that they’re not being armed or given ammunition. They are. They are the Vanguard paramilitary force of this war effort.

Mhmm.

I’m not sure exactly, you know, if this is kind of a bit of theatrical sort of exercise with, you know, almost prescripted if you like, or people are just kind of winging it and trying to see who can get the attention of the boss. But, yeah, that video you don’t need to be a body language expert to realize that there’s quite a bit of daylight between Putin and his defense minister. And his defense minister, I should say, at one point, not so long ago, one of the most popular figures in all of Russia. Right? He was the guy who was gonna build this bright shiny new army.

He was, if anything, seen as just at the popular level in terms of his poll numbers, a potential successor to Putin. I think that ship is sailed. I think Shagoi’s career is is all but finished.

So this is one of the most fascinating subtext of the whole episode. What Progyny and the Wagner group are doing, Is it going too far to say that Vladimir Putin is afraid of Progyny or is concerned about Progyny? Why does he tolerate the kinds of things that he has been doing, why doesn’t he step in? Is he too valuable? Does he, in fact, pose a long term political threat to Putinism?

Vagner is beyond just being a, I mean, psychopathic paramilitary organization. It’s also a cult. You know, the Ukrainians have been doing these sociological projects or exercises where they’re they’re querying people on the other side, including Wagner fighters. And one thing that’s telling about almost all the Wagner fighters is they think that if you are a Mobic or, like, mobilized soldier or you’re working for the Ministry of Defense as a just a regular army grunt that you’re a mug, you’re an idiot. You’re fighting for no glory, certainly no fortune because the pay is lousy.

Whereas Wagner, pay is good, they’re prepared to die, in Ukraine on the battlefield and then have their families inherit the fortune. There’s all the glory in the world and most important. They bow down before Batya. Which is Russian for dad or father, and guess who dad and father is, Prigoshan. So Russia has allowed Kyrgosian.

And also Russia has because Wagner, its connections to the Russian state, particularly the military industrial complex and the GRU, I think are fairly well established. These guys go around the world including Africa, signing arms contracts with local governments. Right? You can’t do that unless you you have a buyer leave from Moscow. But Wagner has turned into the sprawling apparatus of It’s a mercenary core on the one hand.

It’s also a group of political technologists on the other. You know, they’re helping candidates in Mozambique and the Central African Republic and Libya run for office. They’re doing consultancies. They’re doing information operations and influence campaigns, including recruiting assets in Europe. In Germany, I’ve tracked their activities extensively.

This is a monster that’s been created, and the real question is when these guys come home assuming they survive because a lot of the conflict sounds they’ve thrown into are meat grinders. When they come home,

they

are going to form a constituency. They are going to form a political movement unto themselves. And my friend and colleague, Crystal Grozdev, at Bellingcat, who has talked to Wagner directly for many years now, he was saying that these guys will tell you now that we outnumber the members of the FSO, which is Putin’s presidential Praytorian guard meant to protect him. Right? This is a guy Putin who is fundamentally paranoid about one thing, assassination.

Right? He’s got food testers. People have to, you know, provide fecal samples before they visit him. We’ve all seen the very long tables. He’s a germaphobe, which has prompted all sorts of speculation, if not conspiracy theories about what kind of illnesses he’s got, etcetera, etcetera.

But a guy who was actually an officer or captain in the FSO defected recently and described his daily routine as a cross between late Stalin and Howard Hughes, you know, self isolation, farmer train, transportation, just absolutely terrified of being taken out. Now when you ask me, is he afraid of Pragotian? Well, Pragotian, the man may not be the problem because you know, you could remove Pragotian. But the problem is you’re still gonna have Wagner, and you’re still gonna have a bunch of military aged males. Many of them convicted criminals many of them with a real taste for blood — Yeah.

—

and sociopathic behavior. I mean, remember, Vogner punishes people who get captured by their ranks and then traded back by bludgeoning them with sledgehammers. The sledgehammers become the symbol of Wagner’s proposed at fortitude and machismo. All these guys are gonna become real problems for the Russian Federation at the societal level but also at the political level at some point. And, I mean, I just published a report today for the Free Russia Foundation on the use of ultra Jonathan Last neo Nazis, fascists, and cultists, in the spearheading of the first invasion of Ukraine in twenty fourteen.

It’s a kind of a whole little most likely cantina scene of weird religious eccentrics, millenarian nut bags, but also people who were formally working for the KGB. And fostered by the KGB as a kind of internal opposition in the late Soviet period. Wagner is that on steroids. Right? And they’re not the only game in town anymore.

There are other private military companies. I’ll be at none as prominent or as formidable as Wagner. But, yeah, you know, this is I think Putin has fashioned a rod for his own back. You know, the irony here is somebody who’s that worried about being taken off the chessboard is basically, you know, positioning all the pieces there for exactly that contingency. Right?

And he’s done it through his obsession with taking over Ukraine. Going back now almost ten years. It’s all about Ukraine. I would say, the last ten years of his presidency.

Extraordinary. Michael Weiss is senior correspondent for Yahoo News, the host of the podcast foreign office, also the author of ISIS inside the army of terror and a forthcoming history of the GRU Russia’s military intelligence service Michael. Thank you so much for coming back on the podcast on this extraordinary day. Really appreciate it. And thank you all for listening to today’s Bulwark podcast.

I’m Charlie Sykes. We will be back tomorrow and we’ll do this all over again.

The

Secret Podcast is produced by Katie Cooper, and engineered and edited by Jason Brown.