 The big news following the significant Ukrainian victories in Russia, the significant pushback where the Russians basically had to fold and exit the whole province of Kiv, where the Ukrainians in a matter of days reoccupied that territory very quickly and for devastating results for the Russians. I mean, not only were thousands of Russians killed, tens of thousands were captured or thousands were captured and probably tens of thousands basically taken out of the fight, but also hundreds of weapons were captured from tanks to all kinds of, you know, all kinds of mobile transportation vehicles and not to mention weapons and shells and tank shells and just ammunition and everything else, all of that were captured by the Ukrainians set back to Russia significantly and I think it's emboldened the Ukrainians. The Ukrainians are still kind of chipping away very, very slowly at Russian positions in the south. It's not clear when the Ukrainians or if the Ukrainians can launch a significant push in the south. The Ukrainians also trying to push against the Russians in the northeast and around Lehman, I think it's called Lehman, Lehman and trying to basically get away the Russians have held it since 2014 really and they're really well established and they're really well dug in. But other than that, you know, it was a great few weeks for the Ukrainians in terms of just humiliating the mighty Russian army, the mighty Russian army. I mean, if anybody has any delusions about the Russian army, I think they're gone now. Putin's response to this last week was to announce a mobilization of forces, 300,000 reserves that are not being mobilized at them, although I'm reading in some places that the way the Russian authorities have taken Putin's thing, it's not 300,000, they're actually trying to try to enlist somewhere around 1.2 million people. The consequence of this announcement that they were going to enlist a whole bunch of people and call up the reserves has been panic in Russia, a massive attempt at exodus, men just trying to, men who are eligible to be called up through this call up of the reserves, trying to exit the country, whether to places like Finland, every ticket out of Moscow in an airplane was booked up, airplanes full of mails just trying to get out of the city, out of the country. But beyond that, we're just seeing also demonstrations in the streets, demonstrations in Moscow and St. Petersburg and in many other cities around Russia, also in the Caucasus or in some of the independent autonomous regions of Russia, where ethnic minorities control it. And they are there trying to, refusing in a sense to cooperate with the Moscow authorities in terms of enlisting people. They're saying, what is Moscow? What have these Russians done for us lately? As I predicted, there's more and more talk about some of these ethnic groups trying to establish autonomy. The Chechens, for example, Chechens are fought two wars with Russia, lost them, but are fought two bloody wars against Russia to try to establish the independence for which they were lost. The Chechens who are led by a guy who is very, very much an ally of Putin. But this guy basically said, we're not going to pay any attention to this call up. We're not going to enlist people. We're not going to play ball with the people in Moscow. We're holding back for now. We want to see if the Kremlin is serious about this. And again, I think what could happen is you could see an internal breakup of Russia from the inside. You can see the Chechens trying to fight for their independence. You can see some of these other ethnic groups trying to fight for their independence and Russia kind of imploding from the inside. But Putin is obviously in an unbelievably weak position. Everything he has argued, everything he has claimed, everything he has stood for is really, is really collapsed. The regime thought that they could take out the Ukrainians in three days. They thought they would be able to take care of and replace Zelensky with a pro-Russian president to just get on with life. I don't think Russia thought they would have to permanently occupy vast territories in order to, in order for them to succeed in this war. I don't think the Russians expected to lose anywhere between 50,000 to 80,000 soldiers either by through death or through just injury. I don't think the Russians thought they would be humiliated on the battlefield. I don't think they thought they would lose as many tanks and as many armored vehicles as they have in many airplanes. I mean, in every sense, this has been devastating for Russia. But beyond that, I don't think the Russians thought that as a consequence of this war, Finland and Sweden would join NATO, which I think is probably the most devastating of all the consequences for Russia. I mean, the fact is that they went into Ukraine to prevent Ukraine from joining NATO. Well, they got a lot worse than that. They got much more powerful enemies now in Finland and Sweden, now committed to NATO, long, long border with Russia, two countries that have militaries that are far more powerful than the Ukrainian military. So this has been devastating. And of course, the Russian economy has been devastated. They've had a massive brain drain. And now they're losing even more primarily men leaving Russia. So it's an even greater brain drain on the Russian economies to Russia. Russia's struggling. Putin is struggling. All of his actions now are out of desperation. Of course, as part of the mobilization, Putin is threatened to use nuclear weapons. That again is an act of ultimate desperation. I hope, I don't know this for fact, but I certainly hope that the generals within the Russian army and others surrounding Putin will refuse to launch nuclear weapons, even if Putin is crazy and suicidal enough to actually do it. I think there are probably people around him who will stop him, maybe not, which is kind of spooky and scary. But I guess it is possible that we will see the use of a tactical nuclear bomb in Russia. So, you know, all we're seeing is a desperate regime, a regime desperate for attention, a regime desperate for some form of victory, a regime desperate for soldiers, for weapons, for anything. This is a regime, of course, buying weapons from the Iranians and the North Koreans of all people. That's their allies now. That's how isolated Russia has become. The Chinese, while somewhat sympathetic to the Russians, won't give them weapons and are not sharing military technology with them. The Indians are not giving them weapons or military technology. Both countries are buying oil and gas primarily oil from Russia, but they're not militarily supporting them. So what you're seeing is Russia further isolated, further desperate. Putin, not knowing where to turn to, not willing to give up, cannot, he can't admit defeat. So just becoming more and more desperate. Of course, the fear is, and the real risk is that as he becomes more and more and more desperate, that he becomes, that he becomes more and more of a risk of actually launching, you know, actually launching a nuclear attack. Jeff asks, and again, I'm jumping to Jeff just because he's asking a question about the topic we're talking about right now. So Jeff asks, says, Putin and everyone is evil for initiating conscription. Zelensky did the same thing. It was terrible watching Ukrainian men fighting age, having to leave their families at the border and go back to defend their country. It was, although those pictures, many of them were doing it voluntarily. Some of them, obviously, were not. But yes, conscription is awful. It's horrific. It's anti-individual rights. It's evil. But again, I wouldn't compare a country doing it out of a sense of desperation and self-defense and a country doing it in order to invade another country. So conscription is evil and bad. It's evil and bad in Ukraine. It's evil and bad in Israel. I served three years under conscription. So I know personally the evil of it and the damage it does to and the wasted time and life. The only good thing to come out of my army service is that I met my wife there. But it's evil in Israel. It's horrible in Israel. And one of the things we do in Israel is Boaz Arad, who runs the Iron Man Center Israel and who has been a friend of mine since the early 80s. One of his programs as part of the Iron Man Center is a program about privatization of the Israeli military and ending the draft and embracing a private professional army for Israel. He's got some former generals on his side. He is testified in the Knesset and everywhere else. So I do not think Israel is an exception. Absolutely. I think Israel should eliminate the draft. I've said this many, many, many, many times. So this is not something new. If you know anything about me, you know I'm against a draft everywhere. So it's just another knock against some people on the chat who are trying to attribute to me ideas that I don't have. I've always said that a country that cannot raise a voluntary army to defend itself is a country that does not deserve to exist. I think that is true of Ukraine. I think that is true of Israel. I think that is true of every country. So it is evil of all these countries, but it is if you were more evil when you're raising that army in order to invade another country, in order to initiate force, the initiation of force is just horrific because then you're not only doing damage to your own people by initiating force against them and conscripting them, then you're putting them in real harm's way and you're initiating that and you're putting everybody else in harm's way. You're putting everybody you're attacking in harm's way as well. So the real evil here is in the Russian side, although, yes, conscription is evil, no question about it. All right, let's keep going. Yes, so I'm encouraged to see and I keep getting more encouraged to see more and more the resistance in Russia to the mobilization, to the conscription, to you know, forcing people to join the military. I don't know if you know this, but some of the anti-war protesters, you know, it's like in England in I think the 18th century, you know, sometimes the sailors would kidnap people and enlist them in the army and they would be part of the navy. If you were drunk or something like this, they would enlist you. What's happening right now in Russia is some of these anti-war demonstrations, they're literally taking people off the streets and forcing them into military uniforms, they're forcing them into the into the military as punishment for being anti-war. Of course, these are not going to be motivated soldiers. These are not going to be successful soldiers. These are going to be just cannon fodder. So it's horrible and tragic, but it's not going to solve Putin's problem. Putin's problem is far deeper than having more bodies. He doesn't have enough trained soldiers. He doesn't have enough motivated soldiers. He doesn't have enough people who actually motivate to win. He has lousy strategy. He has lousy generals. He has lousy weapon systems. I mean, the Russian military is incompetent and having another 300,000 troops is not going to change the fact that they're incompetent. Russian soldiers are unmotivated to fight. Having 300,000 additional unmotivated soldiers is not going to change the outcome. Russia is in trouble through and through. In every aspect of this, Russia is in a disaster zone for itself. Troy, thank you. Troy waiting in to get us over the 650 target. Really appreciate it. Troy with 500 Australian dollars. That's great. Thank you. And you can ask a question sometime, but it's great to have your support. So, you know, just disaster for Russia. What can we say? Disaster for Putin, but Putin's in a corner. He's becoming more and more desperate, which is not both well for anybody, particularly for the Russians. The Russians are going to be the biggest victims of all of this, and the Russians are really suffering. I wish, I wish countries like America opened doors to anybody fleeing Russia right now. Imagine the brain drain out. I was just talking to somebody here in Brazil who was living in Tbilisi for a few months, and he said he had to leave Tbilisi because so many Russians had moved to Tbilisi to get away from Russia and away from Putin the devastating economic consequence of what Putin's doing. They moved to Tbilisi and they're doing rents so high that nobody else can afford rents in Tbilisi. So, Russians are going to places like Tbilisi, Georgia, they're going to places like Turkey, but what would be great is if Western Europe and the United States opened its doors to fleeing Russians and brought that talent to where it can best manifest itself. But, you know, immigration policy is so pathetic and ridiculous. That's not going to happen. Thank you for listening or watching The Iran Book Show. If you'd like to support the show, we make it as easy as possible for you to trade with me. 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