ep 54 audio

The host of the Bill Kelly podcast discusses the ongoing conflict in Ukraine and the dire circumstances faced by the country. The gains made by Ukraine in the early stages of the conflict are now being halted, and Russia is making advancements. The Ukrainian army requires military reinforcements and advanced technology to push back against Russia. The average age of Ukrainian fighters is over 40, indicating a lack of enthusiasm and a sense of resignation. The situation is further complicated by the uncertainty surrounding the U.S. presidential election and the potential impact on NATO. The host emphasizes the importance of political support and resources to help Ukraine regain momentum and push back against Russian forces. There are concerns about the possibility of Russia attacking another European country, and it is attributed to Putin's desire to maintain power and make Russia a global player. The host suggests that NATO and its allies need to be prepared for a more aggressive appro Welcome to the Bill Kelly podcast, critical discussions in critical times. Here's your host Bill Kelly. Welcome to the Bill Kelly podcast, I am your host Bill Kelly, great to have you with us here today. As we, on this particular show, acknowledge an anniversary of sorts, something I'm not too sure too many of us were going to be talking about, in the third year now of the Russian invasion in Ukraine. I don't know that anybody thought that this conflict was going to last as long as it has. I'm not sure where we're going on this. There's certainly some rather dire circumstances that have occurred lately. And to get some perspective on this, we're so pleased to welcome back to the show, Dr. Robert Hewish, who is an associate professor with the Department of International Development Studies at Dalhousie University. Robert, a great pleasure to have you back on the show. Thanks so much for the time today. My pleasure, Bill. Always great to chat to you. You and I started talking about this, well, just the day after the invasion, of course, now just over two years ago, just a couple of days past the second anniversary of this. And I don't want to get too, you know, mundane about this and say, well, did you think it was going to last this long? I don't think Vladimir Putin thought it was going to last this long. I think it was easy peasy, I'll be a key by the end of the month and everything's going to be just the way we want it to be. Something went wrong in that master plan, and, you know, the resolve of the Ukrainian people, of Vladimir Zelensky and others, I think is well documented and remarkable still to this day. But where do you see it now? Where are we and where are the people of Ukraine right now? So it's dire times in Ukraine in this very moment, coming to the third year of this conflict, in particular because some of the early gains, some of those surprise moments of, you know, repelling back the Russian military, reclaiming territory, basically setting up an entire shipping corridor in the Black Sea for Ukrainian vessels, all of these gains now seem to be coming on hold a little bit. And this is what we see with a war of attrition in this way. You know, after the first few months of fighting by the Ukrainians against Russia, this quickly turned into something where it wasn't going to be quick for either side. It would be a war of attrition. And now we have to start thinking about where is the exit strategy in these terms. And right now we're seeing in Ukraine that the gains aren't being made, especially in the last month, right? The political opponents, like Navalny, was killed in prison. We see that there's been territory lost by Ukrainians, by Russians pushing further in. Russia's munitions production is up five times now what it was a year ago, so that's showing some defiance against sanctions as well. And right now what Ukraine really, really needs more than sanctions against Russia, more than any good wishes, is they need military reinforcements. They need the good technology at hand that we've seen in this conflict that's allowed, you know, teams of two or three soldiers to go out there with some drones and some rockets and destroy entire tank columns. That's the only way that we're going to see that being pushed back. And it's grim. One of the things that we see also is that the recruiting or conscripting of men in Ukraine to fight, there's now some more resistance to that. There's a radio station that broadcasts, quote-unquote, the weather report the night before at 1 a.m., sort of pirate radio goes out across Ukraine telling you where it's going to be snowing or raining and this sort of thing. It has nothing to do with the weather bill. It's about where the conscriptors are going to be going and looking for men of fighting age in Ukraine. So we're not seeing the enthusiasm by Ukrainians today in February of 2024 that was there only up to six months ago. Troubling fact I read over the weekend, I'm sure you saw it too, Robert. The average age of the fighting people in Ukraine right now is over 40, which is frightening. I mean, is there a sense of resignation that this is over and it's just a matter of what? I mean, I can't see that in the Ukrainian people. But it just seems as if, as you say, those that were rushing to the front, I mean, people from all over the world with Ukrainian heritage were going to say, I need to fight for my country. That was two years ago. That doesn't, it's not happening now. No. And, you know, I don't think it's the end of it. I think it's time for Zelensky and some of the world leaders in NATO to really rethink about what they need to do to get the job done. You're right. There's older soldiers on the Ukrainian side and they are facing very young conscripts and now international conscripts on the Russian side, right? We've now got evidence that Russians have been sending out recruitment of mercenaries from places like Cuba, Nepal, other former places where the Wagner Group worked in Eastern and Central Africa as well. So it's not just Russians anymore. They're having trouble themselves trying to get people to go to the front line to achieve their ends. But what's particularly important about the Ukrainian Army in this case is that so few people can create such big impacts on the Russian military infrastructure. And that's always been a point throughout this conflict is that on the Ukrainian side they've been able to use a lot of strategic weaponry, like the drones that are able to just sort of hover above a tank column, can't really see, I'm not sure if they're there, and then they'll strike when they're ready. It's about precision attacks by Ukraine against Russia to minimize civilian deaths on that side. We haven't seen that kind of allotment from Russia going back into Ukraine. They are more than willing to put missile attacks and artillery shells into civilian areas. So I think what we need to see here is that it is possible for Ukraine to get back on its track, to have the NATO technical advisors and the munitions to come in and really push the Russian forces back away. It is possible, but it needs momentum and it needs political support with all of the NATO allies. And I think NATO itself is a little apprehensive at the moment to say what its future is going to be. And that's entirely dependent upon the U.S. presidential election coming up in November. Well, and I know Zelensky mentioned that, and I know that as we're recording this on Monday, Zelensky's going to be on ABC, CNN, he's doing the interview circuit right now. It's as if he has to, and he's not the first time he's done this, he's had to basically go around and drum up support, especially in the United States. And we can talk about the Canadian situation, because the Prime Minister was over there, of course, this past weekend. I can see Zelensky looking at the political situation in the United States right now. It was bad enough that you had a Donald Trump that obviously has, you know, cast his lot with Biden or Putin. We knew that. I think we've known that since day one of a Trump presidency. But now the return, and he's talked quite frankly about NATO. There's a great fear that I wrote over the weekend in the New York Times among some that if Trump is reelected, he's basically going to pull the United States out of NATO, which is certainly going to have an impact on that body that's been basically trying to keep the peace in Europe since World War II. We're on the precipice of a very, very difficult time, and things can go sideways pretty quickly here. Oh, yeah. And, you know, make no mistake that when it's election time, Americans are going to be thinking about their own domestic interests before any international commitments when those votes get cast. That's for sure. The thing is that, you know, not only has Trump sort of mocked NATO to a certain degree, he said he would actually encourage Putin to invade another area. So if you're Finland, if you're Poland, if you're Lithuania, Estonia, that's a real big smoke signal right there to say, look, the trouble is brewing. There's even talks right now that there could be some advancement for Russia to attack another member in Europe. That's something that Putin sort of hinted at in the last couple of weeks, and it's not something that should be dismissed. And I say that because right now, the way that we can sort of look back in the last two years and try to figure out why this war has taken place in Ukraine, when it occurred, I mean, in the months leading up to, a lot of people said, oh, geez, this isn't going to happen. It's not going to be that crazy to do this. And here we are into year three. And part of that is grounded in the way Putin reflects his own view about Russia itself. You know, he's aware that Russia is not competitive in the world in terms of, it doesn't have the economy to be competitive with the West. And so as a sort of way of holding on to power, because he doesn't want to open Russia to the West, he doesn't want to change things up, the only way he thinks he can do it to make Russia a player in the world is by changing the world around it. And that means in this case that there will be, as long as Putin's in power, somebody is going to be attacked. Right now it's Ukraine. It could be somebody else down the road. There will always be an excuse invented for this, too. And this is sort of like the all-in, like the total war mentality that Germany kind of ran with at the end of 1918 towards the end of World War I, that once you realize, okay, they're going for it, they're never going to stop this aggression, then NATO and the Allies need to realize that this isn't going to be a mild scrimmage. Borders are going to be realigned. New political opposition will take over one day. It's not going to happen. So we need to make sure that the political commitment and the resources are going to be present to push these guys back in their place. And that's something that NATO hasn't been very equipped with either, because, you know, who's the opposition inside of Russia right now? Well, they're all becoming revenants. They're all ghosts that haunt. You just go through the list of suspicious deaths of Vladimir Putin's opposition, and they just amount up. And Navalny is just the latest case in that. There is anti-war movements inside Russia. There's a movement called Putdomy, which means the way home, and it's led by the wives, it's led by sisters, mothers of the mobilized conscripts who on the weekends go out and they lay flowers at tombs of unknown soldiers. The Russian government hasn't cracked down on them, but they have been persecuting the media that covers them. So, you know, that's a frailty, and I think that we need to think about how this third year and albeit a fourth year is going to go forward is going to be one that's going to require the fracturing of the system that Putin has put in place, and that's one that runs on fear, it's one that runs on corruption, and it's one that's incredibly fearful of people who are brave enough to stand up to it, and particularly the comedians, right? Navalny was a good joker, and Zelensky, that was his former career, and it's almost like the real enemies of Putin are those who can, who are the comedians, who can take a swipe at them. And, you know, for those that are asking, well, how can Putin get away with this, because he can. And that, which I guess segues us right into the United States political system, because you can't have a discussion about this without talking about what's going on politically there. And, you know, you talk about, you know, the Russian people that want to push back against Putin and those sorts of dictators. There's NATO, I get that, but I mean, let's face it, the big dog has always been the United States. And U.S. presidents historically, from Eisenhower to Kennedy to Johnson to a certain extent, but even the, you know, the Republican, well, it's Reagan, right down the list, they've stood up to Russia, and they've basically said, this is the enemy. And you look at the political circumstance there right now, you've got not just Trump, but the Republican Party embracing Putin openly, you know, I mean, there's some whack jobs like Tuberville and others that just say, you know, you know, they come up with these outrageous ideas. But the consensus among the Republican Party, at least the ones that they're, you know, they're speaking publicly about this, seem to be, what's the big deal? So what, you know, we'll, we'll get a peace pact there. Probably Russia is going to take half of Ukraine back. But that'll be it. Which sounds very much to me like Neville Chamberlain, you know, let's give them what they want. And they'll be happy and they'll stay away. And you know, and I know, and I think, you know, smart thinking people understand that that's not where Putin is going to end up. He's going to continue, this will embolden him, won't it? Oh, absolutely. This is, this is something that, that Mr. Putin's regime can only now exist in a state of war, right? He doesn't have big support inside. It's not a functioning democracy by any means. It's not representing the interests of its people. It's a nation deeply divided and deeply repressed when it comes to any sort of expressions of freedom. So by, by continuing a state of perpetual war, that's exactly how he's going to maintain power. Because in Putin's world, either you're, you're three things. You can be bought, you can be intimidated, or you can be conscripted. That's the ordering of society right now. And I just think back, you know, I mean, the Republican Party of all the organizations, right? Where is, you know, where's the voice of Ronald Reagan, right? Who was, who was the one who would, he would, he had, again, he had the, just a way of sort of piercing the mentality of dealing with Russia in the 1980s that, that was just so laser focused. And one of the big things that, that we're seeing today that, that, that, that is just lacking is calling out the sort of deeply problematic system of governance in, in Russia today that, you know, Reagan and the crowd back in the day would so easily do. This was a party, Republican Party was all about embracing freedoms and about ensuring that people had their civil liberties. But some of the recent speaking points that we hear from the party itself, from Donald Trump and the news outlets that tend to support their, their cause is that, oh, Russia's not so bad, right? It's, hey, it's just a little bit different. Maybe they do things that, that is, maybe we can take a lesson from. That's frightening. That, that I don't know, in the history of the U.S., something like that could be, could be tolerated or accepted by, by the voting public. The, the Tucker Carlson interview is a perfect example of that, right? He's praising their subways and their shopping carts, you know, as being just so much better than America. Well, there's a lot more to the character of humanity and the character of a country than shopping carts and subways. Yeah, but he made a big deal about that. You know, he has a great idea, like you, you put a coin in there and then the buggy comes out. We've had that in Ancaster for the last 40 years. I mean, Tucker doesn't get out of the house very often, does he? But that kind of, of, of opportunity from people like that and Matt Gaetz and others, you know, they were all, of course, at the CPAP convention this past weekend, which is basically a Disneyland for, for right-wingers. And some outrageous things were being said there. And all predicated on the fact that Putin's a pretty decent guy and, and, you know, we can get along with him. And it's, it's such an about face. And I could understand this, you know, we're talking about Reagan and some of the other past U.S. presidents. There was a time then where I think there might have been a glimmer of hope with Gorbachev and to a certain extent Yeltsin to say, hey, maybe, maybe we can find some common ground here. Putin's a criminal. He is acknowledged international criminal. He's not like those guys. I mean, he's, he's going all the way back to the days of Stalin. And I can't believe that the people in the Republican Party don't see that. And they're looking at this as a political opportunity right now. There may be something more sinister than that, that they may recognize just the very points that you've made there, but they may see that that agenda is somehow useful to their agenda. That there's a, there's a vision that they want to try to, to, to project through the next election that's going to go hand in hand to some degree. But it's, it's going to be a real, like that sort of leadership is really going to put the U.S. in a, in a very vulnerable position. There's something, like, with dealing with Putin over the long term here, right, he's been a problem since 2004, if not before, and we've seen the response from the West as being one where, ooh, that's bad, ooh, that's offside, but we really don't want to, to take direct action on it. And so for the last 20 years, any sort of offense by Putin has often been responded to with soft power. So there's Putin enacting hard power, goes into Crimea, goes into Ukraine, random acts and belligerence, and then the West responds with soft power. And we're seeing that, you know, you can sanction as many people as you want in Russia, I think there's 16,500 sanctions-ish against Russian firms, and they're upping production of material. So that's not what works. That soft power response is not how you deal with, with Putin on the inside. The, the one moment, though, in the last couple of years where I thought, oh, it's going to be over tomorrow and probably replaced by something even more nasty, is when Pergosen was, was riding his, his convoy up to Moscow, right? He, he, he was up there and then suddenly he just made a left turn and then went, went into Belarus. And no one really understands why that was. But what we do understand is that nobody resisted him, right? The entire Russian army just sort of let that happen. So I think the way that if, if, you know, Democrats in the U.S. want to take this seriously, Canada wants to take this seriously, and NATO. Back to what I said earlier, that, that change in mentality, realizing that this isn't going to end, this is a total war for, for Putin's, for Putin's agenda. The only way he stays in power is through war. If those are the terms that we're up against, let's start building a response package that can, that can meet that head on. And it, it will probably need to be the inclusion of more equipment, more people, more consultants or whoever else that can support the Ukrainian army at this time. Because even though they were so outnumbered with the support they received over the last couple of years, they basically held this bear off, right? And, and now if that starts to wane, that starts to break, we'll see, we'll see that progression of Russian troops into Ukraine and probably another target in Europe to follow pretty soon after that. Just a couple minutes left here. I want to ask you about your, your impressions of the Prime Minister's visit over there this past weekend in Kyiv, then making some, some speeches over in Poland after his visit with Zelensky. Canada's been lambasted, and I think they've really turned up the heat on Canada over the last six or eight months, especially about our military commitment to NATO. You know, the guideline is 2%. Some suggest that's a hard and fast policy. Others are saying it's a suggestion. Fact is that whatever it is, we fall woefully below that. I think we're at 1.3% now. The Prime Minister said over the weekend that Canada needs to do more. The U.S. ambassador to NATO and to the United Nations basically called out Canada. I mean, it's one thing when Trump does it, but now all of a sudden other U.S. leaders, including people in the Biden administration, are looking north and saying, guys, you got to step up. There's still no commitment there from the Canadian government as to what they're going to do specifically. You know, and, you know, platitudes are one thing, and that's what the ambassador said, saying you want to work towards that is not going to do anybody any good. Where is that pressure going to come from, and how does this government react to say, you know, because even the countries that are not at 2% yet have said that their hard deadline is 2025, 2026 to get up there. We're not getting any kind of a commitment from the Canadian government about that. No, no, we're not. And this is actually something that is kind of an inherent problem to the integration of Canadian politics to the actual public policy structure, where you can have the politicians go and take the mic in a country, and it can be the red team, blue team, orange team, green team, doesn't matter who. They'll get up there. They'll say, we are going to commit. We're going to do this. They're going to lay out the budget percentage that they're going to put towards it, and when that actually gets put into the machinery, that winds up going into programs that don't really get boots on the ground or munitions to the front line. They'll go into other things. They'll go into development, research, technical assistance, all these sort of things that tend to fan out and keep the real needed entities at the front, where Britain, Germany, and the U.S., for example, when they say, we're going to send torpedoes, we're going to send missiles, we are going to send drones, that's what shows up. So I think that we need to have a key industry, a product that we can get in the hands of today Ukraine, tomorrow Poland. Lithuania is probably next on that list. So it actually serves a purpose. If NATO commitments are going to translate into repairing our Arctic fleet or putting new paint on boats or upgrading a weapons system on a northern patrol ship, that's not what we need right now. We need to make sure that we don't lose it in the budget, get things right on the front lines. And there are so many issues that dovetail into this, including whether or not we should join ARKIS. I mean, the Prime Minister was pretty dismissive of that a year or so ago, saying we don't want to get into nuclear submarines. Well, maybe you better rethink that, too, given what's going on. And just as a comparator here, even though the Prime Minister says, yeah, we need to do more, he hasn't identified or committed to that, we are still at 1.3 percent. Poland, on the other hand, 8 percent of their GDP goes towards military. And the obvious reason is it's happening right on their doorstep, because they know that if Ukraine falls, Putin is going to be eyeing Poland again. Exactly. I was in Poland actually in December, Bill, and I was in the western part of Poland, a town called Wroclaw, which used to be part of Germany before the Second World War. Even there, away, fairly distant from Ukraine, from Kaliningrad or anything like that, the military presence is overwhelming, right? It's military trucks in the streets. They are boarding up and fencing up ports and airports and strategic locations. They're getting ready for something, and they're not entirely sure what it's going to be. And in terms of what they need is commitment from NATO members who aren't on the eastern front, who can supply and support that. So right now, I think for Canada, we need to have a big rethink about making sure that these political commitments don't get lost in the architecture of bureaucracy. They translate into armored personnel carriers, weapons, medical supplies, uniforms, anything that can help Ukraine get Russia out of its territory. And then after that, prepare for the next commitment, which could be to Poland. And that could be broader stuff. That could be Poland's biggest vulnerability is energy. There's only a few key spots in the country where energy is produced. They're going to need backup grids and technical assistance to overcome that, because sure enough, if Russia ever decides to go at it, it'll be missile attacks from Kaliningrad or from mainland Russia that'll come in at their power centers. You know, back in the 1940s during World War II, it's easy to be dismissive. I think we're wrong-headed. But for some people to simply say, oh, that's way over there. It's the other side of the world. Oh, yeah. What kind of an impact is it going to have? It's a different world in 2024. And for people like Polyev, who says it's just some tiny little country over there, why should we throw billions of dollars at it? I would suggest, Mr. Polyev, look to the north, because Russia's on our doorstep up there. And every incursion, every victory in Ukraine, in Crimea, wherever it's going to be, is emboldening Putin to start looking at the Arctic. And he's already started there. And that's something I think we need to be cognizant of. The world's a much smaller place right now and a more dangerous place right now. And it's going to take courage, I guess, for our elected officials to understand and to realize that and to do something about it. And I'm not sure we're there yet. No. And that's the message it needs to really reverberate with our political leaders, the liberals, the conservatives, whoever it is, is that for Putin, this is a total war. It's a total commitment. It is not going to stop. We do share a proximity in the Arctic with them. It might not stop there. So if you know that something isn't going to stop, that this is how this government structure in Russia operates, then where do you draw the line? When is it going to be too late? Right? That was the same thing that was put to the question of many back at the beginning of World War II. They knew that that wasn't going to stop then. That aggression was going to continue. So at what point do you find the courage? Do you find the motivation? To put the machinery in place and put a stop to it in its tracks. Very pivotal time. And we'll see what happens in the days and weeks ahead with the circumstances as they are right now. Robert, always a pleasure. Thank you so much for spending some time with us. Stay well. And we'll talk again soon, I hope. Thanks, Bill. Appreciate it. Take care. Dr. Robert Hewish from Dalhousie University. And that's it for this edition of the Bill Kelly podcast. Spread the word. You can find us wherever you get your favorite podcasts. And until next time, take care. Talk soon. Bill Kelly podcast brought to you by Wisens Law personal injury lawyers. Listen, you didn't choose to get injured, but you can choose the right lawyer. Wisens Law, 905-522-1102 or wisenslaw.com.