"A Deep Dive Chat with CannCon’s Brian Lupo and Q"
Larry Johnson
A Son of the New American Revolution (July 28, 2022)
https://sonar21.com/a-deep-dive-chat-with-canncons-brian-lupo-and-q/

. . .

29:08 Larry Johnson: "Ukraine had an army of 600,000 troops that they could call upon. The Russian army is around 940,000. Compare that to present U.S. Army strength 460,000, and the Marine Corps is down to 180,000. So you're looking at Ukraine's army as larger than the United States and Great Britain and Germany combined, number one."

Number two: "... In conventional military strategy, an attacking force calculates that they need a three-to-one advantage because the guys who are defending have an advantage by virtue of crouching in trenches and bunkers and fortifications and they can really chew you up. Russia in this Special Military Operation uses as front-line troops the militia of the Donetsk Republic and the militia of the Lugansk Republics supplemented by Russian forces and some Chechens: these guys are some really bad asses, they are some men's men. They embody the warrior spirit. And they're Muslims of all things. And yet they're loyal to Russia."

"So Russia started this attack where Ukraine had the three and Russia had the one. So the one is doing the attacking against the three, against all conventional military wisdom. The Ukrainians should have kicked Russia's ass. Just the opposite has happened. Russia -- within 24 to 48 hours -- essentially made Ukraine blind. They took out all their ground radars. Prior to taking out those ground radars, if a Ukrainian jet was going to do an intercept, they had to rely upon the ground radar to give them the coordinates so they could attack. Russia took those out, so those Ukrainian pilots were flying blind. They landed and were not flying close air support where you fly out and your air force can drop bombs and missiles on an attacking force. ..."

31:42 Normally when you are under attack and getting beat up pretty bad you would hope that there would be some help dropping bombs on your attacker. If you had an artillery battery back some 20-25 miles away and zeroed in who could throw in artillery and provide a shield, and a way to use the combined air power and land force and air force which is really a Marine specialty, more so than the army."

32:21 "So Russia was at a disadvantage and what Russia did very quickly, was they disarmed, they completely dismantled and confused the Ukrainians. And since that day, Ukraine has not mounted a successful counter-offensive in which they've taken and continue to control territory that the Russians controlled."

"People cite' 'Well, but you had all those Russian tanks that were stalled up north of Kiev. Yeah. That was a feint. When you go back and look at the media reports of that time they cited that it was either a 40-kilometer-long column or a forty-mile-long column. It's still a long-ass column. And if you have a column of vehicles on a road, you talk about a fat target. Man, it doesn't get better than that. So what do you do with that? If you have a functioning airforce, you bring in those fixed-wing aircraft, start launching missiles and bombs and blow the crap out of them. Well, that didn't happen. Or get your helicopters, Apaches, put those in the air. They've got missiles. They can fly in and strafe them from the side. Enfilade them. That didn't happen. OK, we've got our army. They've got artillery. Let's get that artillery out there and they can shell from a distance. They don't have to get in close. That didn't happen. OK. Let's get our tank battalions out there and they're fight those guys from the side and crush them. That didn't happen. And last but not least, Hey, let's get a regiment of guys with the shoulder-fired, with the NLAWS, Javelins, they can be 600-800 yards away. They can fire those babies off and toast those Russian tanks. That didn't happen. That gave you a wealth of knowledge right there about the ability of Ukraine to fight back."

34:31 "Now you get into a bar fight and you punch somebody in the face and they crumple to the ground, you know they're not getting back up. But if you punch them in the face and they come back and punch you, you know you're in a fight. And at this point a lot of propaganda was distributed saying 'Aw, the Ukrainians are killing Russians. Look at all the Russian planes that are getting shot down. Until someone discovered that the Ghost of Kiev, this marvelous Ukrainian pilot, it was a video game footage."

[question: 'I didn't realize how big Ukraine's military really was, especially in comparison to Russia's. I didn't realize that. They've been at war in the East of Ukraine for eight years so they have to have artillery units that are dug-in, whatever long guns they have, but they're already dug in. They've got fire missions established that they can call up. What was the reasoning for them not doing anything? Was it just that their technology was outdated compared to the Russians? Or were they unable to mount an air assault. What was the reasoning for that?"]

35:56 Larry Johnson: The Russian attacks in those first two-to-three weeks completely disrupted their [Kiev regime’s] lines of communications, their ability to resupply, their ability to send reinforcements, their ability to see that you got more arms…. The Russians changed their tactics. They didn’t send waves of troops against hardened targets. They stood back and started using a combination of artillery. They have a very sophisticated drone force with drones overhead locating what they wanted to take out and that was being hit by missiles fired by aircraft. And then Russia had developed these precision hypersonic missiles. Very early, about March 13th the Russians hit a NATO camp, a de-facto NATO base in Yavoriv which was used to assemble a lot of foreign fighters. There were U.S. and UK personnel in leadership positions there helping with the training.

37:04 The Russians took that out with a hyper-sonic missile. Now I know for a fact from a buddy still on the inside who had access to the intel that the Joint Chiefs and the UCOM commanders had to go for a change of underwear after that. Because they had no warning of that missile. They recognized that their air defense couldn’t stop it. And it took them completely by surprise. And at that point they realized, Oops, we’re in trouble.

37:35 And yet, throughout this operation, the Russians were very careful. They didn’t turn the lights out. In Ukraine. They could have. They didn’t. They left most of the power stations up and running. They could have taken out the Internet. They didn't. They left social media because they were getting more intel from it than by taking it down. Interestingly enough, when Russian soldiers deployed to the front they confiscated all their cell phones They weren't going to have them doing any happy-snaps, selfies to post on Tic-Toc. 'Here I am in the latrine taking a shit.' None of that. They kept that away. Whereas the Ukrainians, they kept their phones. 'Hey, babushka, I love you so much.' That's on your cell phone's electronic signal.

38:26 Well, guess what? The Russians have some of the most sophisticated electronic warfare in the world intercepting those signals, triangulating, and 'BOOM!. And on top of that, the Russians were very specific about targeting command centers. So they weren't initially going after the troops. They were hitting command centers. Why? Because, if you take out the commanders, and all of that command structure breaks down, those troops on the front line. They're like a chicken with its head cut off."

[Q asks why, with such a large army, does Ukraine need us, the United States, to supply them with weaponry?]

40:10 Larry Johnson: To start with, the Russians took out many of the ammunition and fuel depots. That was one of the major targets of these precision missiles, missiles that were ground launched, air launched, and launched from the black sea. And so a lot of this weaponry was getting blown up.

I had a conversation with this military buddy of mine, and this was in early April. Honest to God. The people at the Defense Intelligence Agency and the J2 for UCOM, this is what their message was. 'We hope the Russians are going to run out of those missiles and rockets soon. We hope. We don't see how they can continue.' Good God. From an intelligence point of view, that's shocking, but it's true. What the West did not understand, we always treated Russia as if it were the red-headed step child. Stupid, retarded, couldn't do anything. They were a third-rate economic power. And I had this retired army liutenant colonel try to make this argument with me last night. And he said 'Russia's just a third-rate military power.' And I said, 'Excuse me. For the last eight years the United States has been relying upon that third-rate military capability to ferry our asses to the space station because we don't make rocket engines anymore. So, if they're third rate, what does that make us?' That shut him up.

...

43:59 [corruption in system buying luxury weapons instead of less expensive but more reliable weaponry ...]

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46:00 talk of Missile defense systems ...

...

49:55 This is what Western military analysts have failed to appreciate. Russia is only using about 20% of its actual army in this conflict. And there is this other myth that they're just taking conscripts off the street giving them a little training and then throwing them forward as canon fodder. No. It's Ukraine that is doing that to its people. Russia is only putting experienced combat veterans or people who have had a chance to experience combat. These conscripts are being used in the rea -- the REMF -- they're doing the support work in the rear. Washing the dishes, cleaning the clothes. Resupplying, making sure the supplies move forward.

And Russia is not keeping their units out there to get burned up. They put them out for three or four weeks, then they bring them back for a week or two of R and R then they put them back in. This has really been one of the most remarkable military operations by Russia in history. And it's going to be studied in war colleges -- if our war colleges still exist -- when this is done.

[50:56]

...

52:40 "What has made Russia so slow in this, and I didn't appreciate this at the outset, in the intervening eight years since this war started, the Ukrainian army created massive trench systems, multiple lines of trenches in the eastern Ukraine, in the Donbas. And so, these are fixed positions. And there are a lot of videos out there so you can see what's happening. And the Russians, instead of running up against these where they run the risk of getting killed, they follow a recipe. The recipe is: first you locate the command center for those units and take them out. Once you take them out, you locate the artillery support units for those and you take them out. Once you take them out, you start shelling with thermobaric munitions where these things are like napalm on crack. It's a fire that doesn't go out. You start hitting those trenches with that. And the Ukrainians have been suffering enormous casualties with that. So the Russians are just slowly pushing them back and at the same time they're trying to minimize the risk of civilian casualties."

53:59 "One of the pieces I just posted tonight and I thought I was glad I was sitting down when I saw this video. It is a PBS reporter for the PBS Newshour. It used to be known as the Jim Lehrer Newshour and before that the McNeil/Lehrer Newshour. Hey, it's public television in the United States, bought and paid for by the deep state, Uncle Joe and Aunt Nancy Pelosi and Cousin Charlie Schumer they pump the money into this thing. It's a Deep State whore, to be candid about it. [reporter details of dead Ukrainian military pulled out of civilian buildings] ... and when the PBS Deep State worm starts to turn, that tells me that we're having second thoughts about what's happening in Ukraine."

55:23