Live from Music Row Friday morning on The Tennessee Star Report with Michael Patrick Leahy – broadcast on Nashville’s Talk Radio 98.3 and 1510 WLAC weekdays from 5:00 a.m. to 8:00 a.m. – host Leahy welcomed international relations expert and contributor for The Epoch Times, Dominick Sansone, in-studio to explain how Russia is winning the war with Ukraine by attrition and what this means for the United States of America after providing $40 billion dollars in aid.
Leahy: We are delighted to welcome back into our studios our very good friend, the columnist on Eastern Europe and Ukraine and Russia for The Epoch Times, Mr. Dominic Sensor. Good morning, Dominick.
Sansone: Good morning, Michael. Thanks for having me on.
Leahy: Well, everything you told us, and you’ve been here several times, and you’re actually on before the invasion and then subsequently of Ukraine by Russia, that happened when was it, May?
Sansone: February 24, I believe.
Leahy: Is that when it happened?
Sansone: The initial special operation was announced by Putin.
Leahy: That long ago?
Sansone: Yes, it’s been going for a while.
Leahy: That’s a long time. It’s March, April, May, June. It’s four and a half months.
Sansone: Yeah. It’s become a war of attrition, which I had predicted would happen.
Leahy: You totally predicted that. And catch us up on the status of the Russian invasion of Ukraine. My impression is that Russia is slowly winning a war of attrition, but I’m not the expert, and frankly, unless something terribly significant happens, I find it just dreadful to read the daily news on Ukraine.
Sansone: Well, where we’re at right now, we had talked about those two autonomous republics in the southeast, which were the primary focus of Russia’s special military operations.
Leahy: Now, what are those?
Sansone: The People’s Republican and the Donquitch in the east.
Leahy: Two autonomous republics, part of Ukraine. Right. But border on Russia. That’s right.
Sansone: Mostly ethnically Russian, but there’s a split there as well.
Leahy: Okay, so give us an update on the status of the Russian invasion.
Sansone: So that one republic, the Luhansk People’s Republic, has been totally taken over by Russia. Liberated they would use the word.
Leahy: This is new. When did that take over?
Sansone: Within the last week or so. Russian totally took control of that.
Leahy: I didn’t know that.
Sansone: Donetsk, the other adjoining republic, is about half under Russian control, a little bit more still half under control of the Ukrainian armed forces.
Leahy: Is it inevitable that the Russians will take over? That?
Sansone: I think it is, unfortunately. But it’s really a war of attrition. They’re doing their best to destroy Ukrainian military forces, which I think was part of the original plan.
If you remember, when that special military operation was initially announced, that was one of Putin’s main points, was the demilitarization of Ukraine.
So clearly they weren’t going to do that of their own volition. The west wasn’t going to push them to do that. So I think that this is kind of his own way of doing that, his strategy to methodically destroy Ukraine’s armed forces.
So I think even a lot of those failed military operations in the beginning, the drive for Kyiv, even originally for Karkov, which, again, they’re kind of attacking again.
I think those are kind of distractions so that they could concentrate forces in the southeast. They were operationally sloppy in those two initiatives.
A lot of Russian troops, poorly trained Russian troops. And so I think that. Now, what you’re seeing is this concentrated push in the southeast, which was really always the original plan, while methodically destroying Ukraine’s armed forces.
Leahy: What strength level are the Ukrainian armed forces now?
Sansone: Dwindling significantly. Dwindling. There’s a difference in reporting between Russia and Western media. Of course, russia says that they’re fastly being decimated. We say that they are losing.
And I think that for the most part, you kind of see a lot of major publications preparing Western audiences for Ukraine’s eventual defeat
Leahy: And what Ukraine’s eventual defeat will look like after we’ve given them $40 billion plus.
Sansone: Much more than that.
Leahy: Much more than that. We want to talk about that, and then let’s Project Own, when that eventual defeat will happen, what will it look like and what will it mean for the United States of America?
Listen to the interview:
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Tune in weekdays from 5:00 – 8:00 a.m. to The Tennessee Star Report with Michael Patrick Leahy on Talk Radio 98.3 FM WLAC 1510. Listen online at iHeart Radio.
