Transcription
All right, let's go live, everybody. How's it going? Chuck Holton, uh, coming to you live from Odessa, Ukraine, a southern coastal city along the Black Sea. We just got here about a few hours ago. And as soon as it got dark, uh, we started seeing this from the balcony of our hotel room.
[Music]
So, if you don't know what that is, that's air defense, uh, that is trying to take down maybe a drone attack.
>> Incoming drone.
Russia has been sending hundreds of drones and missiles, up to five, six, seven, 800 a night into Ukraine. Uh, about every fourth night, they, they send that. And by and large, they're all targeting civilian areas. They, they just randomly target, uh, buildings. And it's easy to say that because if you look at the buildings that got hit, you're like, "That's obviously an apartment building. That's not a military site at all." Uh, and so they're just trying to terrorize the Ukrainian people into submission. Well, it's not working very well. We're going to talk a little bit about what Ukraine is doing to fight back. Uh, before we do that, folks, do me a favor and post in the chat where you're watching from. I'd love to see all the, the, all the different places.
Jake is saying, "Is Chuck in Ukraine?" Yes, I just got to Ukraine. It was a long journey, and I'll tell you more about it on the other side of the sponsor break.
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All right. Well, so thank you to Brightcore for sponsoring today's podcast. Uh, as I said, folks, I just arrived in Ukraine. Uh, I actually, it was the fastest trip to Ukraine I've ever had in my life. Uh, we woke up this morning early in Yerevan, Armenia. Uh, my son and I drove to the airport. About what time did we go? Nathan's over here, uh, nodding for us. Uh, what was it? Like 4 o'clock in the morning? No, about 5 o'clock in the morning, something like that. Got to the airport about 5:00 a.m. So that means I got up about 3:30. Uh, and then got on the plane. It was a 2 and a half hour flight, easy peasy, direct to, uh, Chisinau, which is the capital of Moldova. And I've been there before, but I've never flown into it. And, uh, so I was kind of wondering what it would be like getting off the plane. Uh, sometimes the, let's just say the bureaucracy of former Soviet states can leave you wanting, uh, wanting to drive your car off a bridge. So, I, I, it actually surprised me that it went pretty quickly. We got our bags. We walked out through customs, and there was a guy standing there with a sign. He didn't have my name on the sign. He had someone else's name on the sign, but we took him anyway. And I don't, I, I won't stop for somebody that's got my name on a sign because I'm superstitious about that. Uh, he put us in his taxi and drove us about three, three and a half hours from Chisinau to Odessa. We had to cross the land border into Ukraine. Right now, that's the only way you can get into Ukraine because there are no airports that are functioning in Ukraine for commercial flights. So, he dropped us off at our hotel. We went and got some lunch. We walked around down, uh, you know, on the waterfront and some parks and stuff down there. As a matter of fact, uh, I will show you what we found because it's interesting in that it's something that I, that this is the first time I've seen this in Ukraine. I, uh, take, take a look at what we ran into.
>> This bomb shelter behind me is something that you're starting to see here in Ukraine that really wasn't a thing before. Obviously very common in Israel where they've been dealing with incoming missiles for many, many years. But after four years of war and the Russians continuing to ramp up their attacks on civilian areas like this one, there's a playground just right over here in this park. Ukraine has started to put up these bomb shelters to give people a place to run to if a missile starts coming in. So, uh, interesting to see those starting to go up around Ukraine.
And I, I mean, Odessa is pretty close to the western border of Ukraine. So it's, uh, about as far as you can get, uh, from the fighting in the south. So I thought, yeah, it's probably going to be kind of quiet, people just going about their business. And that's, that was true. We saw women out pushing their babies in baby strollers. We saw people going for runs, people taking their dogs for a walk, uh, sitting around at cafes and having coffee. So, it looked like just sort of normal life, but as I showed you at the beginning, as soon as it got dark, uh, we started hearing gunfire and explosions. We did hear a few explosions throughout the day. I don't know if that was controlled detonations or training or something. It's hard to say, but I don't think it was like active combat or anything, but this was not training, for sure. That, that is not training. They are shooting at a threat that they perceive to be coming in. And this is taken from the balcony of my hotel. So, uh, right here where I'm, where I'm sitting, the balcony's right here. And just looking that direction is where we saw those, uh, that the machine guns firing and that sort of thing.
Uh, now Ukraine is struggling greatly, uh, on the battlefield here in Ukraine, and I'm going to talk more about that toward the end. But what I want to talk about because we're here on the Black Sea is something else. The Ukrainians are actually turning the tide of this war, I believe. And here's why. They've been focusing their efforts, rather than terrorizing civilians. Uh, they've been firing missiles and drones into Russia every night and targeting their oil infrastructure. You've heard me talk quite a bit about that if you've heard any other lives that I've done on Ukraine. And the, let's see if this is it. I think this is, yeah, this is, uh, them firing similar missiles. Sorry, that was really loud. Uh, so, this is what they're doing every night. They're firing missiles and drones, uh, out in the, you know, toward the front lines. Ukraine has been working very hard to start developing their own missiles and drones and not having to buy them from somebody else or get them donated from another country. They have this new Flamingo missile, which they've used sort of sparingly so far. I think they're saving up a bunch of those missiles for a very large attack at some point. But, uh, they also have a missile called the Neptune, which used to be an anti-ship missile that Ukraine sort of reconfigured and turned into a land-based attack missile. On that, the, the long version of the Neptune has a thousand-kilometer range. So what they have done over the weekend, just in the last couple of days, is strike at several very important oil, uh, depots where ships come in in the Black Sea and dock and get filled up with Russian crude and then they go and take that to China, maybe India, whatever. Uh, as I'm going to show you on a map here where they've been striking these things. This is, uh, this is amazing. You, uh, if we go over to the map, let's see here. Where's my map? Where's my map? There it is.
Okay. If you go over to the map, uh, you see Feodosia, Feodosia, Novorossiysk, Novorossiysk, and Tuapse. These three places have been struck very hard. Now, uh, Novorossiysk was the main artery for Russian crude in the Black Sea. They used to transit about 2 million barrels a day out of, uh, this port right here. And actually, this is the port over here. So you can see if we zoom in, there are ships docked all along here, and they're all receiving oil. Uh, there's ships docked all around over here. This is from earlier this year. Uh, there is now no ship. There are now no ships in these docks. They're all gone. Uh, one of them was struck, a Russian, uh, I forget what kind of ship it was, but it was a, like a 240-meter ship. So it was a good size ship, uh, was struck by an unmanned surface vehicle from Ukraine that came into the harbor and hit it right amidships. And so there is footage out there of that ship sort of listing off the starboard. Uh, so what the Ukrainians managed to do here in Novorossiysk, Novorossiysk, yeah, that's this place, Novorossiysk, um, is they managed to completely shut the thing down. This is a big development, folks. And I, I think that a lot of people just don't appreciate just how important this strike was for several reasons. Now, as I said, it was Russia's number one, uh, port. They moved about 2.2, 2 million barrels of crude a day through that port, and now they're moving zero. So if you take 2.2 million barrels a day off the market, that represents about 2% of all of the oil that gets produced in a day on planet Earth. That is massive. And it's about 20% of Russia's total energy output. And they just took that out on Friday night, and it's closed. So they got nothing going on over there now. They're probably still trying to put out the fires. The more interesting thing is that Russia called Novorossiysk that "no dad come." Why is it so hard to say that word? Uh, they called that place "Fortress Russia" because they said it was impregnable. They had their most advanced air defense missiles arrayed around, uh, the, the city, around the port. And not only did the Ukrainian drone and missile strike, because it was a multifaceted strike with drones and missiles, uh, not only did it penetrate those air defenses, but it managed to destroy a good bit of those air defenses. Actually, it looks like about 20% of all of Russia's remaining S-400s were destroyed in that strike. That's massive. So that makes the attack on Novorossiysk the right up there with the sinking of the Moskva or the operation Spiderweb that they did where they moved drones into Russia and then launched them and went and blew up a bunch of irreplaceable Soviet-era long-range bombers. And the, I, if, if Ukraine can continue to degrade Russia's ability to sell oil, uh, they're starting to call these attacks "Ukrainian sanctions" because President Trump has been threatening sanctions, uh, for a long time, but just hasn't really got around to making them stick. Uh, and the European Union is the same way. A bunch of weenies over there. Uh, and so, uh, Ukraine said, "Well, we will sanction them our way," and their way is, uh, absolutely demolish their ability to put out oil at all. As we watch this unfold, Russia's ability to prosecute this war continues to go down. They still have plenty of people. They still have plenty of weapons. But they don't have plenty of money, and the money is getting to be the hard issue for them. As I've mentioned before, 40% of the Russian government's revenue comes from oil. And every $1 drop in the price of oil, uh, equates to about a 4% drop in the revenue for the government of Russia because Russia has to sell its oil at about $10 off the going price for a barrel of oil that everybody else pays. Uh, because of the sanctions, there are a lot of countries that just won't buy Russian oil. So they sell it to China for, right now the price of oil is about $65 a share. Uh, Russia sells its oil at $55 a share. If it goes down another $5 a share, Russia is not going to be able to take that oil out of the ground profitably. They'll be losing money hand over fist. However, the strike that the Ukrainians just did on these three, uh, fuel depots actually made the price of oil go up because it reduced the global supply by 2%. And now China and maybe India are going to have to look for oil somewhere else. Uh, at least some of it. They, they probably still are getting oil from Russia, uh, via various methods. Russia is trying to build pipelines as fast as it can across to China, but there, it, it definitely hurt them and it hit them in the pocketbook where it hurts the most.
So, let's look at these two strategies and compare them. Russia is firing 7 to 800 missiles at a time now. Like I said, about every four days. They're hitting almost exclusively civilian targets. I'm gonna show you some of those targets while I'm here in Ukraine. I, I'll take you to some of the places where missiles have hit, and you tell me if that was a military site or not. And so they're terrorizing the people. They're certainly making the people very, very tired of war. Tired of having to sleep in the subway station or in a bunker. Uh, and a lot of people are just sort of resigned to the fact that if it's my day, it's my day. I'm not gonna change my lifestyle. And they don't even go to the bunker anymore. They just, uh, just sleep, you know, wherever. I mean, that's kind of what we're doing here. Uh, as the firing is going on outside, I'm not running to the shelter. I'm going out there to film. And I am so tired after getting up at 3:00 this morning. It's about 9:00 almost right now, that I just want to go to sleep. I, I will sleep like a baby even if there are bombs coming down.
So the amount of money that's being taken out of Russia's pocket. What is this? This is sickening.
>> 100 billion.
>> 100 billion. Ukraine can go to hell. Hockey sticks. Why should we give Ukraine another penny? I just joined. Have you talked about this? Who's auditing the money sent to Ukraine?
Okay, that's a common, common, common question that I've answered a million times, and I will, uh, for you, since you're a new listener, answer it again. We, we've given about $120 billion worth of value to Ukraine since the war started. Some of that money, actually a lot of that money, has not been dispersed yet. That doesn't get released until future years. So, you're talking 2032 or 2036, even. So, I mean, a lot of that money is still in the bank in the United States. The money that we are spending to send military hardware to Ukraine is military hardware that's made in the United States. So, it is a job creation scheme. I won't even call it a pro-policy or program. It's a scheme to create jobs by reinvesting US taxpayer money into the US economy by buying weapons. Uh, and the more weapons get that get bought, the more jobs that we create in the United States. They then send the, uh, completed products over to Ukraine to use in their war. Now, we've sent actually precious little actual cash to Ukraine. We have sent some, and President Trump was sending cash to Ukraine before the war even started, back in his first term, and weapons as well. So, President Trump actually started this under his first, uh, his first go-around. He is still giving them money. He's trying to do it on the sly because, like, he knows there are a lot of people that don't like that. But he's, he's still allocating hundreds of millions of dollars a year to Ukraine to help them with this war. So, but let's get to the heart of your question. It's not really about how much the money was or what the money was used for, whatever. Uh, the simple fact is, you just don't care about Ukraine. And you say, "Well, why should I? I'm an American. Why should I care about Ukraine?" Well, other than the fact that there is a grave injustice that's happening here, and if grave injustice does not get your hackles up, uh, I would hesitate to call you a man. Uh, I think I don't think you can be a man unless you have a finely tuned sensor for injustice and you feel driven to do something about that injustice when, when and if possible. Uh, and I, but I won't, uh, I won't, I won't impugn your motives. I'm just saying, uh, that if you don't feel for the Ukrainian people after four years of being brutalized by Russia, they're now recruiting, forcibly drafting Ukrainians that are in the occupied territories of Donetsk and Luhansk and are forcing them to go to the front lines to fight against their brethren, fight against the Ukrainian, the, other Ukrainian forces. Uh, that's pretty cynical. They've stolen a couple hundred thousand Ukrainian children and moved them into Russia and put them in foster homes and told them, "You're Russian now." Because Russia has a huge demographic decline problem. They're in terminal demographic decline. This is the last war Russia will ever fight. I, I really believe that because literally within a hundred years, Russia will essentially cease to exist as a people. Uh, there, there will be somebody living there, but it won't be ethnic Russians. It's going to be people from other, uh, places that are brought in, and they're already starting to do that. Uh, so they, they stole a couple hundred thousand Ukrainian children. If that doesn't bother you, if you don't say, "Man, we should do what we can, uh, to, to put a stop to that," I don't know what to tell you. Uh, you probably don't want to watch this podcast anymore because I'm, uh, the kind of guy that looks at everything from a moral component first and an economic component second. Uh, but you do you, man. Nevertheless, uh, the, the, the final argument I will make is very simple. If we don't engage around the world in some of these conflicts, then who will? Who will take our place? Because the United States has been setting the rules of global order since World War II. We've, we've benefited very greatly for that. Do you think we're just, uh, so pro-prosperous in America because we're all just such hard workers? I think 42 million people, 20% of our population on welfare would dispel you of that notion. And I, listen, go to Haiti if you want to see people who work hard. You've never seen people work hard till you've seen Haitians, and they're some of the poorest people on the planet. So no, it's not, uh, our, our work ethic that makes us prosperous. We're not better than everybody else on the planet. We just do it better. No, it's, it's freedom. It's the, our republican form of government. And it is the fact that we have been righteous as a nation. The Bible says in the book of Proverbs, uh, I think it's 34, wait, Proverbs, no, not 34, Proverbs 14:34. There we go. Uh, says, "Righteousness exalts a nation, but sin is a reproach to any people." So, if America wants to continue to be great, we need to work on being righteous. And I failed to see how abandoning our allies that we have written agreements with. Did you know we have written agreements with Ukraine and with NATO? Abandoning those agreements, not living up to our word as a nation is not being righteous. And if we're not righteous, we cannot expect the prosperity that America enjoys to last. That's all I'll say about that.
Okay. So, >> ask guy, he's talking about or he has a question about you sending or sending money to Ukraine as an American.
>> Uh, I am an American. I'm an American, full-fledged American citizen. I own a home in Panama. I also own a home in West Virginia. I travel about 220 days a year around the globe. If you're trying to insinuate that I'm not a true American because I don't spend all my time in the United States of America, I would take issue with that. I fought and bled for America on foreign soil. It happened to be in Panama. So, I figured I should at least get a parking space or something down there, uh, for my, for my trouble. And, uh, we, we do spend, I, I get to spend maybe almost two months a year at my home in Panama and maybe a month a year at my home in the United States. So there, uh, so I, this, this, uh, insinuation that, well, you're not a patriot because you don't live full-time in the United States. I'd say, well, what I would say, I won't say because I'm not, I'm a classless person, but, uh, there are things that, uh, well, I'm just going to leave, I'm going to leave it at that. You're wrong. Uh, now let's move on with the actual topic here. Uh, these refineries getting hit. Uh, this one in Novorossiysk. Whoops. Hang on. Let's try that again.
>> This is Novorossiysk, and, uh, this is Friday night, and you can see the fires burning. You can, you can see some air defense going up. Uh, this one strike, like I said, costs Russia about a hundred million a year. It's actually, I mean, about $120 million a year. I'm, I'm sorry, a year. A day. Not a year. A day. $120 million a day in petroleum products goes through this port. Uh, not all of that is Russian oil. Some of it belongs to Kazakhstan and other countries, and so Russia doesn't get the full amount when they sell those barrels of oil. They do get some transfer, you know, fees and that sort of thing. Uh, one thing that I'll point out here is that their air defense guys are not very well disciplined, or else they just don't care, because what, uh, when you see this, this right here, when you see these tracers going across, those are like 14.7 millimeter tracer rounds. They're, they're pretty large. They would wreck your car if they hit your car. Bigger than a 50 cal. And they're just shooting it across the bay at, uh, you know, whatever. I mean, there's a drone over there. They're trying to hit, but they're actually, there, there's a bunch of videos out that show them striking apartment buildings and private homes and stuff, uh, inside Novorossiysk. So, uh, bad day for Russia on Friday.
Now, as I said, Russia has been targeting civilians. Ukrainians have been targeting, trying to hit Russia where it hurts, and it's working. Uh, they, they are already seeing, uh, major logistical problems that the Russians are having to get, uh, their troops supplied. There was a video I saw that came out today of one of the Russian troops saying that he, he and his unit in Pokrovsk are eating tree bark because they haven't been resupplied. They don't have any food. They are losing about 700 men a day. Russia is, and that's been corroborated by multiple sources. So, uh, you know, it's there. You'll, you'll hear some things that say, uh, oh, Russia is advancing and they've taken the town of Pokrovsk. Well, it turns out that was a little premature. They haven't taken the town of Pokrovsk, and Ukraine mounted a counterattack and pushed the Russians out of much of Pokrovsk after they had reported to Vladimir Putin that the city was secured. Now you have generals who are afraid to go back to Putin and ask for more air power or ask for more artillery to liberate an area that they told Putin was already liberated, and it's not. So, the, the troops on the ground are struggling without that cover that they need, and they're being hunted down, uh, just mercilessly by Ukrainian drone operators. It's incredible the footage. I can't show it to you because it's pretty graphic, but it's incredible the footage that's coming out of Ukraine that shows them just destroying vehicles and lots and lots of people.
So, we're starting to hear the rhetoric inside Russia kind of ramp up to the point where Russian, a very popular Russian talk show with, uh, some commentators that would be like "The View" or something like that in, uh, in the United States, only not with a bunch of angry women. Uh, this is just a bunch of angry men because it is Russia, after all. But, uh, now I didn't get a chance to translate this into English, uh, or dub it into English so you can listen to it in English. But I, it is subtitled here. So I want you to listen to this conversation. So these guys are talking about, "We just need to completely wipe out Kyiv." And, uh, they went on to list all the major cities in, uh, Ukraine. The problem is, they can't even wipe out Pokrovsk, which is a town that, you know, is a tiny little town like 20,000 people. Uh, it's completely destroyed at this point. There's really not much but rubble left in Pokrovsk. And they've been fighting almost all year to take Pokrovsk. They've lost maybe a hundred thousand casualties trying to take that small city that you've never heard of until I, you know, we started hearing it in this war. I've been to Pokrovsk actually when Nathan and I were here in Ukraine a year ago. We drove right through that area. So, it, the Russians have moved up. They have taken some more land. But if you average out the number of casualties that they take per kilometer that they're taking over, uh, they are going to lose pretty much the entire population of Russia before they take over Ukraine. Now they're saying that they're going to mass their forces and move on Zaporizhzhia. Nathan and I will be in Zaporizhzhia in a couple days, and so we'll bring you a report on that. Uh, and Zaporizhzhia is still a good 14 miles from the front lines. Uh, it's a town. It's a large town, like 300,000 people or more. I mean, it's big, big city. At the rate that they are taking ground in that region towards, uh, Zaporizhzhia, it would take them six months at their current rate to take over or just to get to the outskirts of Zap, and they would lose tens, if not hundreds of thousands of troops doing it. So they just can't. This is why they're recruiting Ukrainians in occupied areas to send them into fight. This is why they're buying North Korean soldiers as fast as they can and sending them into fight. They're tricking people from India and the Philippines and stuff to come into Russia on a work visa and then putting a gun in their hand and sending them out to the front lines. So things are not going well for Russia, and, uh, they're hard for Ukraine as well. Ukraine is struggling to keep the lights on all the time. There's a lot of rolling blackouts and things like that. We've been here, uh, since about noon today, and the power has not gone out once. It hasn't even flickered. So, here in Odessa, they're doing pretty well with, with electricity, but other places across Ukraine are struggling quite a bit more. But that's been a constant issue since the beginning of the war. And so people have pretty much adapted to it by purchasing generators or solar panels or what have you. Uh, everywhere you go around here, you see generators, uh, out in front of shops and stores, and if the power goes out, they just start up the generator and keep on serving coffee or whatever they do. It's not as bad as it sounds. There are people, uh, doing their thing here, going to work. We went to a restaurant. We had a nice lunch overlooking the Black Sea, and there were people in there that were enjoying the day. There were people swimming in the Black Sea. It's like 54 degrees outside, and there were crazy guys out there swimming in it. But, hey, you know, uh, it, I, I want to bring you the reality of what's happening on the ground. Uh, so that's why I came here. I know a lot of people don't care a whole lot about Ukraine. I know that a lot of people are very exhausted with the continuous needs that Ukraine has for assistance from the United States and elsewhere. But these people are fighting for their very survival. And they will beg who they have to beg. They will fight if they have to fight. And they, they're working very hard to become more and more independent so they can make their own weapons here, uh, and drones and things like that, and get them out to the front lines as fast as possible. And if they do that, then they don't have to ask President Trump for permission to strike beyond 600 kilometers or something like that. If they want to hit the, the Kremlin, they can go right ahead and do it.
Now, it's likely that the next thing that they're going to start targeting is on the map here. We'll go up to, uh, okay, let's go up to zoom out. So, here we have Crimea. Here's Odessa. The blue dot is me. Uh, if we go up here to the Baltic Sea, you see Russia has a border along the Baltic right here. They have this little area right here is the only area they have on the Baltic Sea other than the exclave that they have down here called Kaliningrad. So, and Kaliningrad is no help to them in terms of getting oil out, but they do have two oil facilities here. One at Ust-Luga and one at Primorsk. These two facilities have not been struck yet. And if they manage to strike those two, Ukraine will pretty much destroy Russia's ability to fund the war completely. Uh, this is where the majority of Russia's money comes from. These two places right here. So now you, I, if you think about it, you go, "Well, if Ukraine wanted to shoot at them, they'd have to shoot missiles over Belarus, over Latvia, over Estonia, or something like that." But no, they could fire missiles into Russia and come around this way and strike them from the landside. So we'll just have to see, uh, if that actually happens. And, uh, that, if those Ukrainian sanctions are levied on the, uh, uh, the Russian oil machine.
Okay. So now I want to share this tab. This is Deep State Map. Then here's Zaporizhzhia that I was talking about. So from Zaporizhzhia to this salient right here is about 14 miles. And again, it'd take them, at the rate they're going, it would take them six months to do this. The, the gains that they're making over time, uh, are actually very, very small units, maybe 15 guys that get, you know, they, they point a gun at them and they say, "You're going to infiltrate into enemy lines, in behind enemy lines, and plant a flag somewhere so we can say we took over more ground." That's a death sentence. So they have a lot of Russian soldiers who are reportedly refusing to do these missions. They're saying, "Put me in prison. I don't care, because I, it's better to be in prison than to be dead. And this is a certain death if I have to go in there." So this town of Avdiivka, I spent the night in Avdiivka back in November of 2022, and at that time it was only two miles from the front lines. Now it's about 5 miles from the front lines. So there's been virtually no progress in that salient. So again, it's going to take them a long, long, long time to take over Ukraine at the rate they're going.
All right, let's get rid of the map. Okay, so let's get to our questions. Uh, we got 26 questions over here. We got a whole bunch of them. Sue Allen says, "How safe are these bomb shelters? What are they made of?" They're made of concrete, and they are not really designed to take a direct hit from a missile, but they're there. If you, if a missile strikes nearby, it will protect you from the shrapnel. A drone probably wouldn't. I don't know if a drone would penetrate it or not. Uh, those are much smaller warheads. So, they're just like the ones you see in Israel. Uh, they have a steel door on them and a little S-curve when you go in, and then benches around there. You can put maybe 15 or 20 people in each one of those. Also, in most of the apartment buildings and houses and everything around here, they're starting to have, uh, those kind of bomb shelters. They've had them in the older buildings for a long time. They were, ironically enough, built because of the Cold War to protect people from America bombing them, which never happened. So, uh, Katya says, "Is there snow on the ground?" No, it's, uh, 54 degrees. It rained a little bit today, but it's not snowy.
Jake says, "What is Ukraine's long-range and ballistic missile capability?" They have two of their own. I mean, they, they have a whole bunch of missiles from Europe and the United States. They have HIMARS missiles. They have Javelins, which are much smaller. They have, uh, oh gosh, the Storm Shadow missiles from the UK. They've got a whole bunch of stuff that's kind of a mishmash that's been given to them throughout the war. But they've started to create their own missiles, and their two main focuses are on the Neptune and the Flamingo. Both of those are medium-range ballistic missiles. They're not hypersonic, uh, and but they do carry a very large warhead, more than a thousand-pound warhead on the, on, on those missiles. And so they will take out a lot, uh, if they strike it. Ukraine has gotten pretty good at evading a lot of Russian air defenses and striking at places that they do that by just overwhelming them by sending a whole bunch, just like Russia does when Russia attacks here. So, I've got, I've gotten a lot deeper into that in the past, but I'm not going to do that.
Whose feet are those? That's my son, Nathan. He's over there. Uh, he's my cameraman/bodyguard. While we're over here, uh, Grace Jones says, "A group prayer at the end, please." I'm all about that. Uh, what is Russian oil quality compared to WTI? Uh, I don't know what WTI is. Uh, I know that Russia has fairly good quality oil. It's, it's light, sweet, more or less, uh, crude, and, uh, it's normally would be highly sought after.
Lord Peanut says, "When will this end? Do you think Russia will just keep on going until Ukraine is exhausted? And why don't they have anything better to do?" They certainly do have better things to do, but Vladimir Putin won't let them. I think that this is going to continue until one of, one side cannot go anymore. And I put my money on the Ukrainians simply because they're the only ones that are fighting for their very survival. That they know if they lose, that many of them will be lined up against the wall and shot. Like the people that lived in Mariupol, people that lived in Lyman, the people that lived in, uh, you know, Bakhmut, a lot of places up, uh, Bucha, all those places that Russia took over, they absolutely brutalized the people and threw their bodies in mass graves. I've visited those mass graves. So, it's, they're real. That actually happened.
Any news on the Kerch Bridge being taken out? Uh, they have tried a couple times, three, four times. So far, it is not completely taken out, but it's also not at full capacity either. It is damaged.
Are the EU weenies not financing Ukraine's war? Yes, they are. Uh, as a matter of fact, they're giving more money than we are at this point. Norway just, uh, decided they were going to give like $2 billion dollars out of their sovereign wealth fund to Ukraine. And they're also working on confiscating Russian assets that were being held in Europe. It's about $300 billion. And taking at the very least the interest on that money and giving it to Ukraine, if not the money itself. And they haven't decided to do that. There, that could be fraught with risk because there are some assets that belong to Europe that Russia holds. So they could do the same thing if, uh, if that happens.
Maricopa Joe says, "Thoughts on your on yuan-backed Russian bonds?" Uh, if, if they're backing Russian bonds with yuan, first of all, that says that Russia is divesting itself from the US dollar as a petrodollar, and they are trying to trade oil in other currencies now, a basket of currencies, and, you know, things like that. Problem is, none of their currencies are strong enough to be able to support something like that, and they would be, they would be losing money hand over fist.
So, did Chuck and Co require a special visa for entry, such as journalism, or is Ukraine's border open for regular entry for foreigners, tourism, during the war? Uh, the border is open. You can come. We did tell them that we were journalists, and I have a press pass that they issued me, but there were people that were just coming to visit family, uh, and different things like that who were at the border as well. So, I would say that anybody could pretty much come in if you're from the United States. If you're not from the United States, you might actually need a visa. We'll see.
Sorry for so many questions, but how does Russia treat Muslims? And they, well, they treat them very, very badly. Um, and they do have some immigration issues, uh, in terms of terror that's fermented by Muslims, like from Chechnya and Dagestan and places like that. They've had some pretty horrific terror attacks in Russia in the last five years that were committed by, uh, immigrants. So it is a problem for them.
Okay. So, are the Russian people still supporting Putin in this war? Are their opinions starting to turn? Some of them are starting to turn. The people who are outside Russia that get access to news that's not Russian state media and see the real reality of what's going on, a lot of them are against the war. People that live inside Russia don't have an easy way to get news that doesn't come straight from the Kremlin. And for that reason, they think they're winning this war. And even though there, they've lost a million men, killed, wounded, captured, and missing, over a million men, it's still not registering with them that maybe there was something better that those million men could have been doing to help the state of Russia.
Was the 2014 Clinton coup in Ukraine not an injustice that precipitated this? Uh, Minnesotan, there is very little, and I mean very little, actual evidence that the Clintons or the CIA, uh, fostered that coup in, uh, in, in 2014. I was here when that happened. I came over for that, the Maidan Square revolution, and let me tell you something, the people of Ukraine overwhelmingly wanted that president gone. Yanukovych, they, they wanted him gone. He was, they knew he was a Russian puppet. Look, they live right next to Russia, and they, before 2014, were able to travel back and forth to Russia and go there for vacations and stuff, and they saw what life was like in Russia, but they could also go to the West and go to Europe, and they saw what Europe was like, and they said, "That's what we want. We don't want to live like Russians." Uh, the inordinate number of Russians that don't even have toilets. Uh, and that was one of the reasons why they were stealing so many of them when the war started over here. They were, they were like, "Wow, modern technology." Uh, so I, no, I would not say it was an injustice that Ukraine kicked out its president and duly elected, uh, another president before Zelensky. It was not Zelensky. They, they had two before Zelensky. Uh, and I've interviewed Poroshenko. Uh, he had some corruption issues, and Zelensky was voted in as a Trump-like figure for Ukraine to deal with the corruption in the system. So, Minnesotan, the things that you are saying in this live are almost word for word straight-up Russian propaganda. And you may not know that because you've been influenced by Russian propaganda, but I wish you could come here, and I wish you could talk to the people yourself. I wish you could see it for yourself, because I think it would change your mind.
Uh, >> one of the reasons why they came >> and, and that, that's why I came here was so that you can see what it's like on the ground through my lens. Uh, Cal Fortune says, "How dumb do we have to be to fall for the old 'fight them over there' lie again? Afghanistan 20 years told us that, then they walked away. We did all that for nothing." Uh, well, yeah. I, I don't think that that's a one-to-one comparison with what's going on in Ukraine. So far, we've had exactly zero US troops that were lost in Ukraine. We have gained a tremendous amount of intelligence from the war, and we've been able to much more focus our spending militarily because we can see what is working in this new way of war and what's not. So, it's not like Ukraine. I'm, I'm sorry. It's not like Afghanistan and Iraq. It's, it's just, it's a different thing. Uh, and I'm not saying that we should be sending troops over here. Ukraine is not asking for us to send troops over here. Ukraine says, "We're willing to fight and bleed and die for our country. We just need help with the weapons."
Uh, Benjamin Nam says, "What's the latest from Zaporizhzhia nuclear power plant? Has Russia connected to their grid?" I, I don't believe they have. They said they were very close to doing so, but Russia and technology don't get along very well. So, I don't think they have connected the Zap plant yet. They desperately need to though, because Ukraine is also striking their power infrastructure as well. Thank you, Angie. Very kind of you. If we run into somebody in need over here, we'll, we'll definitely help them out with that. Uh, how about Vietnam? We could have, could have, should have won, but we threw it all away, and we're still paying the price tag. Okay. So there's a good argument, Cal Fortune, for continuing the fight, to continuing to help Ukraine win the war, because if we've invested $120 billion, and again, the, it's more complicated than that, but if we've invested $120 billion and we quit now, then all of that sunk cost goes down the tube, and a grave injustice will be done. Uh, Ukrainians will lose their lives in the tens, if not hundreds of thousands. They will create a massive refugee crisis in Europe. Uh, and again, we have agreements with NATO and with Ukraine that were signed way back when during the Clinton era. And those security guarantees, look, if we don't live up to those, what we're broadcasting to the world is, "You cannot trust the United States of America." Is that what you want? I mean, is that, would that be better for, for everyone around the world to laugh if America says, "We want to help you with something"? We can't trust you. No, we should live up to our, uh, our, our promises. And in regarding Vietnam, as you said, we definitely could have won that war. It was not lost on the battlefield. It was lost in the halls of power. It's the same thing with Iraq and Afghanistan. If you're advocating that we pull out of Ukraine, you're advocating for the same thing. You're, you're advocating that we lose another war because we just don't have the gumption to spend less than 5% of our military budget in any given year to defeat one of our most powerful adversaries without firing a shot or losing a single soldier. To me, that sounds like a pretty good deal. Now, I, I'm with you. We don't have a ton of money. We're putting a lot of stuff on credit cards that, you know, go to China or something. Uh, and so that's its own problem. But in a vacuum, this is worth doing because we've already given our word that we would do it to multiple countries. Not doing so would harm us gravely. Number two, we're getting a lot out of this war, believe it or not. And number three, we will never have to go to war with Russia because Russia is not going to.
Have enough men left to go to war with anybody when this is over? Are they being fired from a ship? Uh, no. Those are being fired from the land. I believe there are there we saw some ships floating around out there today. But, uh, how long can China let this go on? Don't they need a strong Russian ally to achieve their goals? Not really. I think China would like it if Russia collapsed because it would give China the ability to take back. Did you know that there's a a plot of land that's part of eastern Russia that belonged to China until 1939 and then Russia took it from them? That plot of land is larger than the state of Ukraine and China would like to have it back. So there you go.
You just said 42 million in America are on welfare, but we should keep giving money and weapons to Ukraine. I think that from a geopolitical standpoint, it is better to give money to make the world a safer place and make America a safer from our adversaries uh than it is to hand out $4,000 a month to 400 pound women with nine kids who don't work. Uh if if that's what you're asking, absolutely. Let's give it to Ukraine and not give it to those those angry, ungrateful welfare queens.
Uh, what's going on in Harrison? I will tell you soon because I'll be going in there very soon. Uh, I I haven't been there yet. I just got to Ukraine today. What does it matter to anyone here if Russia owns Ukraine? It doesn't matter at all. Uh, okay. So again, guns up. If you can't see the moral problem with that, then I don't know what to tell you. If what you're saying when you say America first is what I'm hearing is Americans are better than anybody else. And if you're not saying that and you're just saying we should not spend money on anything that doesn't benefit Americans, well then I just made a case for how helping Ukraine does benefit Americans globally. So, which is it? Do you just not care about people that are being victimized? If so, I I don't know what to tell you, man. I I wouldn't be able to look in the mirror. I wouldn't be a man if I was cold-hearted like that. But if you're like, "No, I I just mean America first means we should only spend money in the United States and never spend money anywhere else outside the United States." That's a short-sighted polyianic view that will actually make America under much more threat. Much much more threat. And there may come a day where we do have to fight them over here.
Question. If Europe, Australia, UK, and all stop their relationship with Israel, how would that impact Europe's ability to fight Russia if it comes to comes to it? Uh, not much. Uh, Israel does provide technology and intelligence to Western allies, uh, but not so much about Russia. It's more about what's going on in the Middle East.
I think Dr. Daniel Reynolds, PhD, he says, "What if they go ahead and hit the Kremlin?" I think that'd be a really bad idea because Russia would pull out all the stops to destroy the government buildings in downtown Kev, which they try to destroy all the time, but they have a lot of air defenses around those. And they've so far managed to keep them safe. But Russia would not sleep and if if they destroy the Kremlin, and I honestly I don't think they should just because I hate to see icons like that get wrecked. A lot of people put a lot of sweat and, you know, a lot of work into building that magnificent structure. I've been there. I've seen it. And I would hate to see it get destroyed. Uh, I don't think it's necessary to destroy it in order to win the war. Okay.
Why aren't we talking about Tibet? If you're worried about oppressed people invaded by evil people, well, there are people in 120 countries around the globe who are being oppressed, who definitely need a voice. I just came from one of them, Armenia. I can only be in one place at a time. And I I can't get into Tibet. I don't know if you knew that, but uh Americans don't get to go to Tibet. That's that's not a thing because China controls Tibet. And they're definitely not going to let a journalist in there to report on that. Uh, now I've reported from the borders around it uh by going to the that part of the world and even sneaking illegally into some of those countries that that are in that area uh in order to report on that. So if you haven't seen me reporting on other things besides uh Ukraine and I mean I don't understand what you're getting at there. Are are you saying, "Well, because there are other people in the world who need help, we shouldn't help anybody." I that doesn't follow that that's not logical to me.
If Russia can scramble drone GPS and make it go off target, isn't it possible that Ukraine scrambles incoming Russian drones, diverting them away from targets towards civilians? Uh, Ukraine does jam the signals uh as much as possible. Russia has ways of getting around that. It certainly makes it slightly more difficult for Russian uh missiles and drones to hit what they're aiming at. What I'm saying is they they're not doing that in all parts of Ukraine, but in all parts of Ukraine that are being struck by Russian missiles and drones, they're striking civilian infrastructure. So there's no question to me that they're just terrorizing the Ukrainian people and it's not having much of an effect. Is really stealing their resolve to never give up.
Will the Russian people ever come to accept that the special military operation was a disaster for Russia? Yes, I think they will. They'll be forced to at some point. Brody, what's so special about drone netting seen over nuke plants? Well, the drones that they're sending over, the one-way attack drones, the fuse on them is pretty sensitive. And so if they hang up a a fabric net uh over the road and a drone comes down and hits that net, the drone's going to go off and it's not going to do much damage to the vehicles that are underneath. And so I know that for example, all of the roads going into Haron are completely covered with drone nets for that very reason.
Yes, that was a question. Will Chuck be back in Panama for December 20th this year? Uh, no, I will not. I'll be in the States December 20th this year for Christmas. Craig Young Bloodood said, "As God's children, why can't we all just get along?" Well, ask Russia. So, like Israel, they can't stop fighting because they will be ended. Of course, Ukraine will cease to exist as a nation if they stop fighting. If Russia stops fighting, the war just ends. So obviously that tells you a lot about who's in the right and who's in the wrong.
Uh, you visit mass graves in Marupople? No, I've visited mass graves in pin and BHA. Uh, personally those ones I've seen personally. I also went to one in um Leman, but uh I I didn't actually go all the way into it. I just went up kind of to the edge of it and looked at it. There's also one in Biknia, uh, but it's older. It's it's from, you know, other things. But anyway, u I have I was in Marupople days before the war started and of course I have not been back since because I would be in Russian captivity if I did.
Any idea, Chuck, what's going on in Picros? So many conflicting reports. Yeah. Uh, the Russians almost took the city. Ukraine counterattacked and Ukraine has been uh pushing them back out of the city right now and things are looking pretty dire for both sides down there. It's just a drone war par excalance. If Russia wins, wouldn't it be a pirick victory? Yeah, in many ways it would be Cleth Riven Media because Russia has already lost so much in terms of market share and demographics. Uh, they've lost so many men that they and their birth rate is so low they're never coming back from this war. They're never going to to recover. They could not have enough children to repopulate Russia. Uh, it just it it literally it the next generation of Russians is going to be like 50% smaller than the current generation of Russians. And they just killed off a million. Well, not not a million. They they didn't we don't know how many of those are dead. Probably I would say conservatively 600,000 of those are dead. Uh, because there that's the wounded I'm sorry the dead that are known to be deceased. The missing and the captured. Uh, those captured are not dead. Uh, but the missing almost surely are. There's just uh Russia does not work very hard to pick up the bodies of its fallen soldiers.
Is Ukraine under a woke leadership, far-left government? Uh, no, they're not. I've interviewed Vladimir Zalinski. I've met him a couple times. I've gotten to know some of his inner circle. I've sat around naked in a sauna with him from time to time during the many, many months that I've spent in Ukraine covering this war. And I can tell you that these guys are not uh leftists. They're not globalists. Now, as I said, they will beg who they need to beg to get what they need to save their country. And so, Vladimir Zalinsky swallowed his pride and went cowtowing to Joe Biden and everybody else and to Donald Trump. Whenever he sees Donald Trump, he just starts saying, "Thank you, thank you, thank you, thank you, thank you, thank you, thank you," just so that he won't get yelled at for not saying thank you enough again. Um, but listen, they they just had a massive corruption scandal that was uncovered in the nuclear energy company, the state-run nuclear energy company. And so you say, "Aha, I knew Ukraine was corrupt." Well, nobody ever said Ukraine wasn't corrupt. The question is, is the president of Ukraine corrupt? Are the people leading the country corrupt? Well, guess what? The people leading the country are the ones who exposed this hund00 million kickback scheme. Uh, they arrested six of the eight people that they've charged so far. Uh, the other two fled the country. One of the ones who fled the country is a former business associate of Vladimir Zilinski. And so then the question becomes did Zalinsky know about any of this? But and and that may come out at some point. I'm not saying it's outside the realm of possibility, but uh right now what Zilinsky is doing is sanctioning the people who fled, including his former business associate, demanding investigations, and arresting the people that are responsible. So you could say because corruption exists everywhere. I mean, we have plenty of corruption in the United States. The reason we don't think of the United States as a hopelessly corrupt country is because we have systems in place to deal with the corruption. We have a court system. We have a legal system. We have whistleblower laws and things like that. Well, guess what? Ukraine has those same laws and many of them were put into place by Vladimir Zilinsky when he took power because again, he was hired to get rid of the corruption. Now, I can't I don't know the man's heart. I certainly haven't seen his checking account. Uh, but I do know that the ridiculous claims that he has 17 villas all over the globe and things like that that he's buying with American tax dollars is patently false and is has been proven to have originated in Russia. That's Russian propaganda.
Uh, do you believe that Ukraine will join NATO after the war ends? No, I don't. I don't think they will. Is Putin still threatening to use nuclear weapons? Yeah, about every other day, but he's not going to do it.
Ryan G says, "What's the regular solders's load out over there? Do they have M Well, there are some M4s. There are some AK74s uh and a smattering of other weapons. They they have a mixed bag because they've gotten weapons from so many different countries. So, uh, it's there's no like standard load out for these guys that I know of. Some of the troops that are in the field were actually outfitted by wealthy businessmen who wanted to help the cause and so they raised a platoon or a company or a brigade, outfitted them all the way they wanted them outfitted and then sent them off to war. Uh, that's kind of weird, but that's how the territorial defense units work.
Who even knows the former comm nukes even work? That's a good question, Jake. The war in Ukraine. Do you think Russia has been holding back? No. Uh, they have not been holding back. I can promise you that. That would have been if if they were holding back, they are truly the stupidest people on planet Earth. Why would you sacrifice a million of your men if you had the ability to bring more force to bear and and win the war and not bill your men? I I've heard this, you know, Scott Ritters talks like this all the time, like, well, just they're doing it because they're magnanimous out of the goodness of their heart. They're, you know, withdrawing from Picrosoft as a as a goodwill gesture. Yeah. And they're leaving mountains of bodies behind when they do. So, yeah, that's that doesn't pass the smell test at all.
Rico says, "Have we got anything out of the mineral deal yet that Trump has made with He didn't actually make a deal. They talked about a deal, but nothing was signed and and so no, we haven't. We could wh >> Sorry. >> What does Ukraine need right now? Uh, they need air defense. They are they're actually working very hard on some solutions that will allow them to shoot down every single incoming drone. Uh, because they're they're slow and they're easy to track and they came up with a very cheap solution uh to to take out those drones. And so I think over the coming, you know, winter and and next into next year, you're going to see Ukraine the the battlefield is going to shift because at the rate that Ukraine is taking out oil depots across Russia, Russia's not going to be able to survive till next year. But even if they do, the war is going to completely evolve and we're not going to be seeing 800 drones a night coming into Ukraine because they're just all going to get shot down. They're going to put up a drone wall at the border of Ukraine and shoot everything down. So, uh, I hope that comes sooner rather than later.
US EU citizen here living in New Zealand thinking about relocating back to Europe. Is that a bad idea or am I crazy, Andrew? I have no idea. Um, it's not as far away from everything as New Zealand. Uh, New Zealand, I think, has very high taxes. I'd be looking for a place with lower taxes if I were you. Uh, maybe look at Panama.
Larry Spanagal says, "Biden did not have the stomach to stop Putin. Do you think Trump does?" No, I don't. Uh, Trump wants so badly to be friends with Putin. Um, and I'm I'm not sure why. Uh, fund Ukraine. Fund Ukraine makes you safe. Sure, that is smart. Always pushing for a war with a nuclear power makes you safe. Actually, uh, Russia knows that if they use a nuclear weapon that nuclear weapons will be used on them and Russia will cease to exist. It's that mutually assured destruction. That's why nuclear weapons were made and they are so they're not going to use a nuclear weapon. If they do, that's the end of the war. The war is over. Uh, in within days or maybe weeks after that because NATO will get involved. There's no two ways about it. They will have to and the United States will get involved. So, I think that the strategy Ukraine is taking right now of hitting Russia in the pocketbook, not trying to kill all their soldiers, but just hitting him in the wallet over and over and over again is the smartest play because it will hobble Russia's ability to continue fighting. Uh, and and that'll be it. So, let's hope.
There has been some talk inside Russia of getting rid of Putin already. Uh, what do you think about the protests that went on in Mexico City? I don't have time to talk about that today. I'm half dead. I've been up since 3:00 this morning. Do you think Putin could be taken out anytime soon? I'd love to see that. Uh, he has worked very hard to consolidate power to himself and surround himself with people who are beholden to him for their wealth. But I think that it may come down to a Dietrich Bonhoffer moment or something like that where somebody comes in with a briefcase for a meeting and it goes kabooy or something that at least we can hope.
Vicky Hutchkins, do you really think that obese women get food stamps? Every time you mention it's always an obese woman. Show me a skinny woman that's getting food stamps that's posting her videos on uh social media. Obviously, there are people of all sizes and shapes that get food stamps. And so, I'm not beating up on fat people. I'm just saying that I'm just saying that it there's a a definite trend in these incredibly ungrateful videos that we see on social media that these women tend to be definitely not going hungry, but saying that they're starving and that they're going to die if they don't get their $4,000 a month for not working.
Before logging off, can you give us an itinerary of Ukanian travel and expected coverage? No, I'm I'm not going to do that. Uh, it's not safe for me to tell you ahead of time everywhere I'm going to be uh for obvious reasons. So, you're just going to have to find out uh little by little, step at a time.
Was any US funds a part of the 100 mil energy embezzlement scheme? Uh, from what I've been able to find, and I looked into it pretty deeply today on the right in here, uh, I have not been able to find any American money that was directly engaged in this embezzlement scheme. It was it was by and large Ukrainian taxpayer funds that were stolen. Now, there are some contractors that work with Energom that could potentially have American roots or American partners or something like that. Uh, so I I can't say definitively, but for the most part, it was Ukrainian money.
Do you think this Ukraine war with Russia will need to end before the Ezekiel war will start? I don't know. Is India still buying Russian oil? I think they have cut back dramatically. They might be getting some, but I don't think they're getting too much.
Would it make sense to say that Ukraine is much more 5.56 than anything else? No. I think it's probably evenly split from what I've seen. All the border guards I saw today were carrying uh Soviet style AK74s. And it's usually, you know, the the higher up you go in the special forces hierarchy, the more American weapons that you'll find that they have.
Can you shoot drones like clay pigeons? Uh, I've seen videos of people doing it and uh, but it's that's not a great idea. I mean, it's that's not a good solution because if the drone is close enough for you to hit it with a shotgun, then it's probably close enough for the debris that comes from that explosion to harm you. And there there have been some videos out lately that show that Panama, what is their language? Spanish.
Russia won't be able to survive. Have you been to Russia? Yes, I have. I've been to Russia multiple times and let me tell you, even in Moscow, even in uh St. Petersburg, the standard of living there would shock many Americans. But when you get out of the cities, you would It's a third world country. There there are two Russia. There's first Russia and there's third world Russia. Uh, and there are many more people that live in third world Russia than live in uh, Moscow and St. Petersburg. So, uh, I I'm telling you I it's not a matter of opinion. It's just a matter of arithmetic. If you do the numbers, Russia's birth rate dropped below 1.0. It's like 0.9. Now, if it's not above 1.6, they cannot survive. If it's not above 2.1, they can't replace themselves. This is something I've done a lot of study about. There's some very good books on the subject. I highly recommend them if you are interested. Okay, who's next? Is Dine Corps active in Ukraine? Not that I know of. Money well spent. Thank you. In 1917, Romanovs were >> What's that? >> These are just comments. >> Oh, these Oh, I'm in comments section now. Sorry. Did I Did you switch me over or did >> No, it does that when you >> I get to the end. >> Okay. Well, we've gone well over an hour, folks. So, I'm going to end it here and I'm going to walk over there directly and fall on my face in that bed and sleep like a dead person for and I don't even care if the bombs are falling outside because I am beat. I'm very tired. So, please go to chuck holton.com. You can support us over there. Uh, you can find out a lot more of the work that we do. Uh, I have been doing Newsmax live broadcasts today from here. Uh, and did one the other day from Armenia as well. So if you want to keep up with all the reporting I do, go to chuck holton.com and uh we will see you over there. All right, stay tuned folks. See you next time.