WPTF Afternoon News
Michael Breziki on Ukraine’s Independence Day and the War’s Latest Developments
- With us today, a friend of mine, and a commentator, Michael Broziski, who is actually very expert in Ukraine, and we're gonna ship the focus now on Ukraine. We're in the middle of this war, horrific war. Ukraine Independence Day was this past Saturday, August 24th, so Michael, welcome to the show. - Hi, thanks for having me back on. - Well, Michael, we've been focusing so much on the presidential race and U.S. politics, but for our listeners, just in general, what's the current status of the conference Ukraine? Because every day we're getting updates about just two days ago, there was a Russian invasion of Ukraine and drone strikes, and then Ukraine's making semi-roads into Russia, and I'm kind of losing count here, so can you just talk about developments on the ground, what's going on between this war, and why is it so important to continue to support Ukraine with aid and money? - Absolutely, so right now, lately we've had some very good news for Ukraine come out. Obviously, as many of us have been seeing in the news, Ukraine's been doing this large push into the Kursk obelisk, which is a border region of Russia. The reason why this is important isn't just that Ukraine is taking rain and Russian land, but on the battlefield, this is having a tremendous impact on Russia's ability to supply and move its troops along the whole northern front of the country. What this essentially means is that Ukraine has kind of denied an area of access to Russian forces from about half of the front, which again, for a country that's been under so much pressure, that had so many losses, so many step back against the larger and in theory more powerful adversary, this is very good news. Other new developments that have occurred on the front in the south have been major attacks done on Russian infrastructure, as well as one of the most noteworthy things going forward and even after this conflict, the Ukrainians have been doing a really good job of attacking critical Russian oil infrastructure. As many of us and the listeners will know, Russia is a very large energy exporter, particularly when it comes to oil and natural gas, so Ukraine being able to hit some of these largest oil refineries and processing centers even to the heart of Russia, primarily through drones, but sometimes with some Western supplied equipment, really puts the pain on Russia financially and will continue to put the pain on Russia financially going forward in the future. I mean, some of these facilities take decades. - And I'm gonna ask a first question and then I'm gonna have Jeff Hamlin and we're gonna go back and forth here. But one question I often get asked out is, and I've heard different theories of this, is why is Putin doing this? Why did he invade Ukraine in the first place? I mean, that's a really basic question, but what is your theory behind that? Or what is your opinion? - It's a basic question. Yeah, thanks, it's a basic question, but it deserves answering. Putin's been very clear about his ambitions for the Russian Federation from day one since he first took office in the year 2000 and then got re-elected in 2001. What that is, is that the re-creation of the old Soviet Empire, Putin himself has said that the greatest geopolitical tragedy in his mind was the collapse of the Soviet Union. Ukraine has always been a core fundamental part of any Russian imperial ambition, especially when it comes to reclaiming Russian greatness. I think the easiest way to put an analogy, imagine if Mexico were to try and reclaim its territorial ambitions by taking back the American West from the United States. In a sense, this isn't a great analogy, it's not a one to one, the history isn't exactly perfectly lined up, but if it makes sense to look at it from this, it's a core facet of what it means for a strong Russian empire. That means controlling, dominating, or at least having a puppet state in Ukraine. This also leads a springboard, geopolitically to his other ambitions, which is securing what he sees as the geopolitical kind of weak points of the Russian empire, particularly when it comes to pushing the borders out west, much in the same way that NATO looks to secure. It's Eastern flank against Russian aggression, Russia wants to be able to dominate more of the European plain, particularly the territories that it used to control under the Warsaw Pact. This is kind of a necessary for us when we're looking at this, like why would Russia need to do this? But yes, I understand that Putin comes from an old KGB stock. He's an old Soviet imperialist. For him, this is like a fundamental necessity, which is why it's so important for us now to prevent Ukraine from falling to secure an independent, strong, and democratic Ukraine, because it forestalls all of the other plans and ambitions that a man like Putin might have, which would not be to stop at Ukraine, it would be to push further into Romania, Poland, the Baltic states. - Yeah, and so it's very important that they win, otherwise other countries can be invaded. Jeff Hamlin. - Well, I was wondering if time is on Vladimir Putin's side here, and if this, the longer the war goes on, it's been several years now. Does it benefit him? - I mean, I wouldn't say that it necessarily benefits him because wars complicate domestic politics to a unpredictable degree. However, it certainly doesn't benefit the Ukrainians either. I mean, that kind of goes without saying the Ukrainians get more and more attacks. They only have so many resources. That being said, the longer that Putin continues a unsuccessful war, that's the key here, time being on his side, barring any sort of success, the more and more unstable his domestic political situation gets. The more unpopular the war becomes, the harder it becomes for him and his government to hide the impacts of this war from the Moscow elites, from the people who would have the voice to stop it. Obviously, they're aware that a war is going on, but the consequences, the casualties, economic difficulties that the Russian government is facing now. I wouldn't say that it's on its side, but it is kind of like two people punching each other down into the dirt. It doesn't help anybody at all for the fight to get dragged out longer. - Last question, we have one minute, one question. I'm going to try to combine them with different ones. What is it going to take to win now? I mean, obviously, the presidential race is important, whether it's vice president Harris or Trump. Is it going to be aid, bipartisan support? What does the message have to be to get this international community to support, including United States of America? - You know, it's a thing that I know that a lot of Americans are tired of hearing, but it is aid and for two very important reasons. One, supplying the kind of advanced military equipment that we have in the West, the Ukrainians will allow them to change the war from kind of this trans-dragging, long-spanning war into the award movement, which the Ukrainians have demonstrated, they are very good at, better than the Russians, pushing into Kurds, you know, recapturing lots of territory when they have the tools to do so. And two, the other big reason is that if we're able to get an administration in office that's ready to spend even more aid than we've already said, then that's the sign that the administrations in Russia would need to back down. Right now, they see this as something where the Iranians are definitely getting American and Western aid, but not enough to outright beat them. But if they see that the West is ready to fly truly the amount of aid necessary to actually beat the Russians on the battlefield, then the Russians will, will undoubtedly be prepared to back down. But we want to thank you. Slava Ukraine to you in the Ukrainian community. We're going to bring you back in a week or talk about the Ukrainian community with Kalana, but we wish all of you a happy, belated independence day and slava Ukraine. Thank you so much.