Zelensky: Putin to Invade Ukraine on Wednesday (or Maybe Not)

CLAY: There is now more concrete data at least — or a concrete report — in terms of an official timeline that Russia might be invading Ukraine on Wednesday. It sounds so crazy to say — and that’s the report, by the way, of CNN — that Ukraine’s president has been told that. This is wild, Buck, because I can’t remember any other invasion of a country that’s been forecast a couple of days out like, “Hey, by the way, we’re gonna invade you in two days.”

BUCK: Also, just so everyone is clear, I read that off the CNN screen, the exact headline.

CLAY: Yeah.

BUCK: You’d think that… Now it’s “flight attendant hit man with coffeepot after he tried to get into…”

CLAY: (laughing)

BUCK: Look, I know the news cycle you change things up a lot. But if they really think they’ve got a clear —

CLAY: European invasion in two days?

BUCK: — European invasion, first of all, I know people and you know people are saying right now, “Yeah, Buck, it’s CNN,” and I know, but on things like this remember, even propaganda outlets… Pravda tried to get the weather right. There are some things you don’t want to get wrong no matter your politics are and something like the schedule of an invasion would be one of them, right? No matter how partisan you are, you have to get certain facts right. But, yeah, Clay, we’re being told it could happen Wednesday, it could happen before then. Obviously, once you announce a timeline —

CLAY: I know we had a different communication universe when the blitzkrieg was happening. But it’s not like in Poland they were like, “Hey, Hitler’s letting you know; two days from now he’s rolling across the border,” right? So I just can’t even hardly think of a precedent for when there has been an acknowledgment and discussion about this. It’s not a family vacation, like, “Hey, in a couple of days we’re taking this flight over.”

BUCK: When you think every overwhelming military and particularly air superiority… That’s when maybe think of Persian Gulf War 2 with George W. Bush where he said, “You have 48 hours, Saddam, to capitulate or else.” That was because wherever they moved their surface-to-air missiles and wherever they moved the Republican Guard, it wasn’t really gonna matter and at some level…Here’s what’ll happen.

The basic military analysis you can do for a Russian invasion of Ukraine is that if you do what they call order of battle — if you lined up tanks versus tanks, planes versus tanks — the Russians are gonna smack Ukraine pretty quickly in terms of seizing… They’ll be able to seize major cities, probably seize the capital, the important areas, sites of strategic importance, power, electricity — things like that — water, airports.

They’ll be able to do that. Then the question turns into, “Well, what do they do once they’ve done that?” Because the hard part is often then in the insurgency phase. If the Ukrainian people… We’ve been told… We had Nolan Peterson on from Ukraine. e may be having him join us later this week if we can get to a place where he can talk to us. Depends on what the security situation is.

Clay, the belief among many is the Ukrainians will fight. If the Russians think they’ll be able to patrol the streets of a restive Kyiv or Kiev and they’re not gonna have big problems on their hands, that’s delusional, no matter how much better their military is pound for pound. You know, insurgency is different from “our planes can shoot your planes out of the sky.”

CLAY: Do the Russians believe that the Ukrainians are not gonna fight —

BUCK: That’s a good question.

CLAY: — and is that why they’re letting it be known, ’cause you know how this stuff happens, Buck. If you’re just like a Ukrainian guy and you’re sitting there near the border and suddenly Russia invades and you don’t expect it, you might fight, right, as opposed to running because you’re in danger. But if the Russians are like, “Hey, we have pretty good intel that many of these Ukrainian forces are not going to actually fight.

“Let’s let them know we’re coming so that they have time to abandon their posts and/or they’re not overwhelmed or surprised suddenly when this occurs.” I’m just trying to think through the Russian plan, if they want it known that they are coming on a specific date, is that because they expect some form of capitulation automatically and not the rabid defense that the Ukrainians are trying to argue they will face?

BUCK: It will rely so much, I think, or turn so much on what the stated aims of any military invasion by the Russians would be. Let’s say the Russians go in and they topple the government. If they make it quick and they make it seem like they’re only going after certain targets, government targets they want, and then they say, “We want a friendly, pro-Russian person that’ll promise not to be in NATO.”

Maybe then there’s a situation where they say, “Look, we’re gonna leave as long as we’ve got a Russian puppet here.” Maybe you don’t have… You know, again it’s so tough to really see how this goes — rather, to guess where this is gonna go — because, one, it may not even happen. Two, what’s the scale of what they go in with’ how successful are they, Clay?

And then, beyond that, what are the Russians trying to accomplish, right? We have multiple steps. If we were doing a decision tree here, it would be kind of a mess. So tough. Tough to say, tough to know. Let’s just hope that cooler heads prevail, and everyone can go back to arguing over other things and not war.

CLAY: Are the Russians gonna cross the border? Are they vaccinated? Do we know?

BUCK: At least if they’re not vaccinated —

CLAY: My understanding is —

BUCK: — we know the libs will be upset.

CLAY: Yeah. Maybe they won’t be allowed in if they’re not vaccinated.

BREAK TRANSCRIPT

CLAY: As we finished the second hour of the program, news breaking about a potential invasion of Ukraine that could occur on Wednesday. And in fact, President Zelensky says, quote, “‘Ukraine has been informed Wednesday, February, 16 will be the day of the attack,’ according to comments attributed to Zelensky, accompanying a Facebook update to the nation.

“He does not say who or what agency provided that information.” That tweet has since been deleted, Buck, that I am reading from right now. So this whole thing is super weird. Now, CNN reported basically the same thing, and I am reading that from CNN anchor and chief national security correspondent Jim Sciutto.

BUCK: Sciutto! He went my high school as well, him and Fauci. Fauci’s worse than him.

CLAY: Yeah. So he deleted that tweet that I just read you. (laughs) Literally that tweet went up like five minutes ago. He did say this, which is up from 11 minutes ago” “The U.S. is closing its embassy in Kiev and temporarily relocating the small number of remaining diplomatic personnel to a city in the west of the country, quote, ‘due to the dramatic acceleration in the buildup of Russian forces,’ Secretary of State Blinken announced.” I’m hitting refresh on his Twitter feed, and yet he’s pulled that down that I read to you directly off of Facebook. So it was there; it was not. Which I think, Buck, just kind of emphasizes the strangeness of this story in general, right?

BUCK: This is why when I pointed out, they basically have flashing on the screen — and, by the way, on Fox News right now, Fox News alert: “Ukrainian President Informs Russia will Attack Wednesday.” CNN had that up first, and then after a commercial break came back into the angry guy on plane throwing coffeepot or whatever the story was.

CLAY: (laughing)

BUCK: Usually if you had breaking news about an imminent invasion and had a source that you could go to in some credibility and detail, you would explain to the audience what’s going on ’cause this is gonna have so many immplications, even apart from our primary consideration, which is make sure that U.S. forces don’t get embroiled in this; this become a broader conflagration in the region, et cetera. But it’s gonna affect the markets massively.

It’s gonna affect obviously, for anybody who’s got family in Ukraine, affect their safety. There’s a lot of things that all come together here. So when you talk about breaking news, imminent war is about as big a story as you’re gonna get, and for them to switch so quickly was an indicator of something. There’s a lot of noise out there. Can I also just point out that the Russians love to do this kind of thing.

They excel in something called “maskirovka,” which is warfare by deception. This is what they’ve done in dealing with Crimea, in the Donbass region, in Georgia in the past — obviously the country, not the state. So these are some of the things that have gone on, and they may be… Clay, to your point about who announces an invasion? This could be dezinformatsia, remember we talk about Russian disinformation all the time.

This could be actually disinformation put out there to get Zelensky to react in a certain way. We just don’t know, man. We’re looking at… We’re four or five thousand miles away. We’re relying on a reporting cadre that has limitations in their sources. You got Russians putting out lies, nonsense, and garbage on purpose — the Russian state — left and right. But I gotta tell you: From what it’s looking like right now, I would be surprised if we did not have bombs falling this week, based on what we’re seeing.

CLAY: I just can’t get over the modern era, like, the president goes on Facebook and says, “We may get invaded”? I mean, I understand that we live in an era where things are quite a bit different, but the idea that you could be scrolling through Facebook and it’s like, “Oh, look, Simone got a new puppy — and, oh, so-and-so’s mad because their boss made ’em wear a mask.”

And then, like, the president of Ukraine’s like, “Hey, we may get invaded!” You know, it’s so strange that you would go on Facebook and say, “Hey, I’m told that the country may get invaded on Wednesday.” That seems… Again, it seems like maybe that would be a national address moment, the dropping it in a Facebook message.

BUCK: They have been certainly preparing for this for weeks, and just I don’t see… Clay, I’m trying to see this thing through and get a sense of what this looks like if it does happen. I feel like people would have been saying “limited incursion,” meaning what they’ve done in Donbass. Essentially create some noise somewhere inside of Ukraine; say, “Oh, we have Russian interests there.”

You land some paratroopers or whatever. You roll in some tanks. You say, “We’re taking this area and we’re gonna operate this as some kind of a protectorate,” which is similar to what they’ve done in Donbass in the east. They had the referendum in Crimea, which was obviously not a military invasion, but it was essentially coup by vote, ’cause they said it was rigged and it was done so the Russians could get their way.

Now what does this really look like? To take over… To punch the Ukrainian armed forces badly is something the Russians could clearly do. To hit them hard, they could clearly do that and to overrun them pretty quickly. But to control Ukraine afterwards, especially with NATO right next door? There’s a part of me that feels like maybe this still doesn’t actually…

This is all just the biggest move of brinksmanship we’ve ever seen from the Russians in the modern era, the post-Soviet era. ‘Cause Clay, think about what this looks like. You look at the challenges that a coalition, U.S. coalition in Iraq and Afghanistan — particularly in the context of Afghanistan, that was a NATO mission. People forget that. I was there. I remember it was all these NATO countries.

You’ve got Polish guys, British guys, Italian guys walking around. That was a NATO mission and against a smaller population, and a much less technologically and militarily sophisticated population than what you’re dealing with in Ukraine. However, a portion of them wanted to fight in Afghanistan, obviously. They had Pakistani sanctuary where they can operate, retrain, equip, all the rest of it in essential safety.

But the Ukrainians will be getting arms and munitions and assistance, I’m sure, from NATO if this thing turns into a hot war. Clay, it’s kind of hard to fathom that Vladimir Putin thinks that if he full-scale invades Ukraine, this doesn’t turn into a nightmare and a bloodbath. That’s why something smaller and more targeted feels like it has to be possible or just the whole walk-back.

“You guys promise me I get assurances you’re not gonna join NATO ever, ever, ever, Ukraine — and if you do, I’m coming in with everything I’ve got.” That’s what it feels like has to be possible. I haven’t heard anyone make a compelling case for how Putin with can take Ukraine and just subsume it into Russia without massive challenges, casualties, and becoming a pariah state. I just haven’t seen it.

CLAY: And to contextualize, we’re talking about a country of 40 million people. So this is California. This is Canada, right?

BUCK: A big landmass, too, a big country.

CLAY: In terms of the number of people that we’re talking about, it’s not an insubstantial number. And again, in the context of America, it’s the size of California in terms of population. It’s Canada’s population.

BUCK: Just so everyone understands, I just did a quick search on this one. Germany is 137,000 square miles. Ukraine is 233,000 square miles. This country is substantially larger than Germany in landmass, 40 million people. And because, Clay, what happened in the past where Crimea got taken and Donbass and Ukrainians just didn’t have anything really to throw at it, they really didn’t have a military that was organized, their military now is actually much better than it was.

CLAY: Yeah, and that’s why to me it just seems so weird. Again, if you’re just now getting in your car, you’re just now having time going out for lunch, wherever you may be, the idea that you would announce when you’re going to invade, the idea that Ukraine’s president would just Facebook message about a potential invasion that’s going on, none of it really seems to add up.

Again, unless Russia is thinking, “There’s a massive number of Ukrainian soldiers that are just gonna put down their weapons the minute that we invade. We know that they’re going to allow us to come right in and there’s not gonna be any actual resistance.” It’s the exact opposite of a blitzkrieg.

And to your point, they know that they can be successful. But I can’t think of a time where one country has invaded another and let them know they were coming. Now, to your point on Iraq, if they were making a demand and they were saying publicly, “Hey, Ukraine, unless you do X or Y…”

BUCK: Have Zelensky resign and someone else step in, something like that.

CLAY: Yes. Then you would at least say okay, they’re letting it know what their plan is as the United States did with Iraq during the Second Gulf War. But this just all feels really messy to me, that we’re basically on a countdown clock. You know, they could put it in the corner of the screen and they’re like, “Hey, the invasion is gonna start in 36 hours.” It’s weird.

BUCK: Just remember also that the Russian — and in this case the Soviets, but same basic idea — the Soviet casualties in Afghanistan were substantial. I mean, they had 15,000 killed in the Soviet-Afghan war, 35,000 or so wounded. That was trying to take Afghanistan, right? Well, there’s easier and harder ways to look at these situations. But you think the Russian state really wants to tackle that right now?

They’re saying right now on Fox, Clay, 100,000-plus Russian troops — about 130,000 is the number that you see — and then they’ve got 35,000-plus rebel troops also. This is on Fox News streaming right now as we’re talking to you. The Ukrainian military, if you’re up at six-figure strength, which I believe they are, all you need are rifles, RPGs, anti-tank missiles.

And you can make an occupying military absolutely miserable and cause serious casualties on a regular basis. So I don’t know, man. I hope this turns into a thing that we’re all feeling silly that we ever had to talk about, Clay. But I think if you were placing odds right now, you’d have to say the odds are on some kind of Russian action during this week.

CLAY: The other thing, by the way, during the Olympics, which we can talk about when we come back, which some of you may be saying, “Well, that’s crazy.” But there has typically been, “Hey, don’t invade another country while the Olympics is going on” presumption, right? Especially because we’ve been talking about the relationship between China and Russia.

So is China just saying, “Hey, Russia, go ahead, ’cause we want to see what the United States’ response is going to be here, given we’ve always claimed that Taiwan is a part of our country too?” That’s a larger conversation we should probably have as well.