Ukraine Blamed for The Diesel Crisis #shorts

Drone adaptation and U.S.–Ukraine relations

Peter Zeihan (Speaker 1): 00:00.240 This is not the first time that the Ukrainians have found themselves on the wrong side of the Trump administration in general and Elon Musk and Donald Trump in person. And they find ways around. What they will be, I don't know. Maybe we'll just get some much longer fiber optics. We're going to have some that are 50 kilometers long, which is nuts.

They'll probably have to fly further and around more electronic warfare, which will probably restrict their overall range. But keep in mind that month by month by month, the Ukrainians are extending the envelope of what they can hit, and we now have some of their rocket drones basically striking over a thousand miles from the front.

So this is a problem. This is a complication. But this is not like the Biden administration, where the White House had a veto over what the Ukrainians could target. Back then, the United States provided nearly as much military aid as the Europeans, and so when the Biden administration said, “Hey, we don't want you to strike refineries,” the Ukrainians had to take that very seriously.

Under Trump, aid has gone to zero. And so now that we basically have the Americans not even warning the Ukrainians about incoming missile volleys, they don't see a reason to listen because they don't see anything else that they can lose.

Their biggest problem is going to be they're not going to see the missiles coming in that are targeting population centers. But since they've run out of interceptors, there's not a lot they could have done anyway. This will absolutely generate more civilian casualties, and we do look to be seeing a general breach between the Trump administration and Ukraine. But it's all based on the mood of one man who draws his conclusions based on information that sometimes he makes up in his head.

Prospects for a policy shift and the front

Peter Zeihan (Speaker 1): 01:50.460 That could change in a heartbeat. And the moment Trump realizes that Putin is not his friend and has really just been playing him for two years, things could change dramatically. But it's been two years and refuse to believe that so far, so I don't think that's going to happen anytime soon.

Anyway, a lot of pieces in motion. Bottom line is the front, which was starting to move again because the Ukrainians had not just achieved the initiative, but they'd have achieved technological superiority over the Russians—it's probably going to stall until the Ukrainians can figure out a way to provide guidance to those mid-range drones again.

That could take a week. That could take six months. That could take a year. Who knows? This war changes—what this war is changes—about every 60 days.