Russian invasion of Ukraine – a military perspective

Lisa Raitt: Thank you for tuning in to The Raitt Stuff. I’m your host Lisa Raitt, former cabinet minister in Stephen Harper’s government from 2008 to 2015. I’m here now at CIBC Capital Markets and in this podcast, I’m going to share insights on current hot topics in the areas of public policy, politics and business with some guests along the way. Hi, everybody, and welcome back to the Raitt Stuff today’s March 14, two thousand twenty two and we are going to be continuing our discussion about Ukraine. Last week, I had the great pleasure of interviewing the Honourable John Manley on our market perspectives call, which is also found on this platform. And we had a great discussion about Ukraine. We talked about sanctions, we talked about impacts. We talked about Mr Putin. We talked about what the issues are regarding refugees. And today I wanted to go a little bit deeper on the side that we didn’t talk a lot about and that’s what’s happening in the military. It’s important to tell you what the date is today because as you know, it’s something as fluid as this. Things can change. And all I can say is that the conversation we’re having right now is a moment in time, and we don’t quite know what’s happening in the future, but we do know what’s happened up to this moment. And as always, at front and centre is we have to be mindful of the great suffering that’s happening for the Ukraine people right now because it is very much something we’ve never seen before, at least in this part of Europe. And it can be frightening and it can definitely be distressing. So with that, I want to introduce you to my guest today. My guest is the Honourable General Andrew Leslie. I don’t know how the honorifics go if it’s the general honourable or the generally honourable Andrew Leslie. I don’t think we want to say that, do we, Andrew? But I’m delighted to have the general here with us today. Now, general, you have led and you fought in wars, right?

Andrew Leslie: I have and I’ve been in a different kind of battle as a member of Parliament.

Lisa Raitt: Well, that’s true. That’s true. Yeah. Full disclosure. The general and I sat across from one another in parliament. He was in the Trudeau government in 15 and again in nineteen, and I was in opposition between 15 and 19 and we had some sparring. And he, of course, became, I think he became chief whip, which must have been terrifying for those who were in your hands because having a general as the whip trying to whip together any kind of members of parliament must have been extremely, extremely difficult because you can be very stern. And I’m sure that terrified a lot of my former colleagues. But all kidding aside, general, thank you very much for being here, and I wanted to get your impressions on what’s happening in Ukraine. One of the questions that I asked Mr Manley had to do with what keeps him up at night with respect to this war, what really worries him. And he said that it’s the risk of a miscalculation from your perspective in your years of understanding what’s happening, what will you do?

Andrew Leslie: Well, as you’ve mentioned Lisa, thirty five years in the army, in that time I fought in a couple of wars and I’ve led troops in combat and all senior soldiers are trained in risk management to a degree which a lot of other people don’t understand. So John is quite correct. The whole issue gets down to what miscalculations have been made and what could be made. So I’ll just start at the top with Putin, who is the principal villain in this current tragedy that’s unfolding in Ukraine. And Putin, despite his reputation as a great chess player, is not. He’s surrounded himself with acolytes and sycophants, so he’s not getting truth to power. He’s sat atop the Russian pyramid for two decades, and he has long held a series of bitter grudges against the West, against the United States, against whoever is not within his circle, which has caused him to seise an opportunity probably triggered in the short term by the ascension of President Trump to the US presidency and, quite frankly, President Biden’s disastrous withdrawal from Afghanistan, which set the scene. He then took a hard look at NATO, and he correctly made the assumption that NATO’s readiness was far below par that the West had cashed in a series of peace dividends and that the eastern flank of NATO was relatively insecure and that in his mind was no will to fight in Ukraine for the Ukrainian people themselves, where he made some serious miscalculations, which is causing them enormous frustration and anger. Is he underestimated the coagulant effect of his attack on NATO and the EU, who have come together actually far more so in the recent three weeks than in the previous decades? He also dramatically underestimated the remarkable leadership demonstrated by the government of Ukraine, specifically the president and his senior leaders and his generals. He also underestimated the courage, resilience and initiative and bravery of the average Ukrainian citizen men and women, both who are picking up arms and fighting for home and hearth with an intensity and a cunning which is remarkable amongst a large population who don’t have a lot of experience as professional soldiers. He overestimated the effectiveness of the. Russian military machine of which you should know a great deal more than he apparently does because don’t forget, he’s been at the top of it for twenty two years. He has dramatically overestimated the ability of his army to synchronise the various bits and pieces you need to do when you’re setting out to conquer innocent nations, but who have an equivalent level, almost an equivalent level of technology as a Russian army, in many cases, the same equipment. And he essentially completely disregarded the potential impact of sanctions. When you combine this score sheet. You’ve got a ledger which shows one or two successes in terms of his estimates and assumptions. The dangerous thing there’s about 15 or 16 or 17 items, which he’s got badly wrong. And let’s not forget that this is a person arguably a sociopath who sits atop a pyramid, which gives him trigger authority over nuclear and chemical weapons. And that’s the greatest risk right now that he will make another miscalculation. And Naito may miscalculate how they respond to what may be one of the next steps that he has in terms of his eventual plan to achieve his immediate objectives. And that’s the risk of chemical or nuclear. And that is linked in turn to no fly zones and the desire by NATO not to get involved in a war now.

Lisa Raitt: Yeah, I’m going to I’m going to go to one topic before we get to the bigger topic of no fly zones and China, because I want to talk about the impact of China and all this. You mentioned at the beginning the disastrous leaving of Afghanistan. One of the things that I noted in Afghanistan was although we had trained people and we sent many of our people over to train their defences that were left for them collapse pretty quickly under the Taliban. In the case of Ukraine, did we have soldiers as well training Ukrainian soldiers? And what do you think is the difference between their ability to withstand Russia?

Andrew Leslie: I had the privilege of leading troops in combat in Afghanistan as the deputy commander of the NATO mission. What happened was soldiers need a reason to fight and they need to have a certain reinforcement of morale and spirit. In the case of the Afghans, we had taught them for about 15 years how to fight using advanced technology such as aircraft, long range precision strike missiles and the list goes on and helicopters available to take them away to hospitals when they got wounded. With the announcement and the abrupt termination at the end of August of last year, all that fire support the coordination that communications the helicopters to take them to where they could be treated if they were badly hurt disappeared. At the same time, they knew that all the allies are going to pull out. The average Afghan soldier lost hope and as Napoleon said, morale is to victory as three as to one, and once an army loses hope, they scatter and run. And that’s sort of what happened in Afghanistan. In the Ukraine, it’s different. Ukraine people are still buoyed by an energy and enthusiasm, a passion for their land. They have lots of hope, though that’s perhaps starting to fade as we get into the third week. But I’m confident that it’s two very different entities in terms of their approach.

Lisa Raitt: President Zelensky, by reports from media, has withstood. Many, many multiples of assassination attempts. Is that just press or do you think that’s actually a plan of the Russians to try to take out the president himself?

Andrew Leslie: I think it’s probably a bit of both. First of all, the Ukraine government led by their president has truly won the information war. Yeah. When you look at the global response, but of course, the Russian side of the information where Putin really doesn’t care what everyone else in the world thinks, you just cares what his key decision makers and leaders within the armed forces and the police think. I think the number of assassination attempts is reflective of the value that the Russians put on the president of Ukraine as a target. He is just one person, but he’s doing a magnificent job, and his death would have a negative impact on civilian and military morale. There’s no doubt about it. But he’s been surrounded by very loyal troops and supporters who are literally fighting the death to keep them alive.

Lisa Raitt: On sanctions you mentioned that Putin didn’t actually think about the impact that sanctions would have. One of the more curious ones is the fact that the oligarchs, the very, very, very rich Russians who were able to benefit from the fall of the Soviet Union, our friends of his. And they are now feeling sanctions themselves. Of course, Roman Abramovich is one of the big ones. Does it matter that his friends are being heavily penalised, do they have sway on him? Is that an effective tool?

Andrew Leslie: Depends who you talk to. In my opinion, I believe that most say ninety five percent of the oligarchs are not actual influencers or decision makers in the Putin regime. They are vassals, if you would, with their lord having allocated them certain responsibilities to carve riches out of the hides of the average Russians. But most of that money flows through the hands of Putin and his immediate cronies, most of whom are located in Moscow. And they’re all now essentially in bunkers, making sure that irritated citizens don’t take them out. So I’m not sure about the influence of the oligarchs, and I’m not sure that Putin actually cares, because when you’re offering billions, it’s probably pretty easy to find someone to replace an oligarch.

Lisa Raitt: That’s pretty true. So it’s reported as well on the weekend that Russia has asked China for help, both in terms of money and in terms of military. I don’t know if China has responded, I haven’t seen this morning what their response is. If you were sitting in in NATO, if your commanding NATO’s, you had done before. What response would be more concerning to you that China says yes or China says no?

Andrew Leslie: China is at a pivotal point. Initially, as we’re well aware, the whole world is Putin was given the guest of honour status at the Olympics. And of course, he didn’t actually launch his attack until after the Olympics was over two days after the end of the closing ceremonies. Now let’s get something out in the table. Putin is not a great general. He’s a lousy general. No general in their right mind who studied any amount of history would attack in Russia in the spring. Why? Because the very rich soil turns to mud under the very heavy rains. And that’s why most of his forces, even though they’re tracked, are stuck to the road. So he’s lost an enormous amount of potential for momentum there. Let’s get back to China. I believe that the president of China and the president of Russia had an entente cordiale. But I also believe that if nothing else, the Chinese are extraordinarily pragmatic and tend to take the long view. And now that it turns out that Putin is not doing well at all and that a significant portion of the world’s economies are united against him, and that the shock and horror of the visuals being taken by the Ukrainian defenders of spread around the world. China can either go all in with Russia, in which case we probably are on a past World War Three faster than we hoped for now. Or they could act as the the wise sage dragon, if you would, who’s there to sort of mediate between the two opposing forces of note this morning? Very. Senior officials in the U.S. government have come out and said, Look, China, if you back stop the trade routes and the cash loss that Russia is currently suffering, we are prepared to take action against you. I would say, yes, you don’t necessarily I mean, you should never try and get in a two front war and once again, another nuclear power, we want to avoid the United States getting drawn into a direct shooting conflict with Russia for as long as possible, and we certainly want to mitigate against anything in that realm with China.

Lisa Raitt: Now, which brings us to our last discussion, which is the no fly zone. And it’s a good segue way in because if we are trying to keep the United States from entering into direct conflict, it is said out there that a no fly zone puts you in direct conflict with Russia. However, I mean general, every night we look at the television and we’re seeing thousands of Ukrainians bombed out of their homes and towns like, it’s like having Mississauga devastated by shelling and by by fire. And how much longer do we do we actually watch this happen before somebody says that’s enough? They’ve they’ve taken enough punishment or enough brunt of this, and we’re going to go in and we’re going to help them because this loss of life is just ridiculous.

Andrew Leslie: It is. Does that ever happen? Look, the tragedy of all. There’s many levels of tragedy. I’ll just start at the beginning very quickly. Putin took about four and a half months to build up the two hundred thousand troops and roughly thirty thousand armoured vehicles that he needed to surge across the border into the Ukraine. During that entire time, though, there were a variety of folk who raised the alarm. Nothing happened. So if you look at it from that point of view, Putin saw no obstacle to doing what he intended to do. He’s now in trouble. He’s in trouble on a variety of fronts. He’s got nothing to lose because if he tries to dismount from the tiger, there’s a good chance that Tiger will have him for lunch. So when you’re talking about a sociopath who has access to nuclear weapons and chemical weapons and who may try and make an example to justify that to his own people, he would need some sort of trigger. And the danger is that by establishing a no fly zone, you would have NATO pilots and aircraft over the Ukraine engaged in Russian equivalents, but also down on the ground around the swarms of tanks and armoured vehicles that are lumbering around. A lot of them are getting destroyed by the Ukrainian defenders using handheld weapons on foot, firing from ditches at ranges of 50 metres. Extraordinary bravery legendary. But those ground based air defence systems that are surrounding these swarms of vehicles would be shooting at the aircraft in the air. So the casualties would be thick and fast and furious on both sides to defeat that and continue with the suppression of the Russian ability to use the air. That means we’d have to bomb and attack multiple hundreds of targets on the ground. We’re now at war. Nato is not ready to fight a war. We cashed a peace dividend, as mentioned in my introductory remarks. There should be hundreds of thousands of troops now deployed along NATO’s eastern border. They’re not. And so without the ability to fight a conventional battle, you’re then forced to resort to either surrender, which is not an option or nuclear or chemical. And therein lies the current conundrum. What will a guy who’s made several actually many grievous miscalculations do next? And we don’t want to create a scenario where he can actually use NATO’s presence bombing and attacking Russian troops on the ground to unify his people behind making that fateful decision. And there’s only a couple he has to convince.

Lisa Raitt: I know I said last question, but I’m going to do one more. I’m breaking all protocols here. I’m sorry your press secretary would kill me right now in the United States, the polling indicates that forty four percent of Americans would vote for Donald Trump and Donald Trump on the weekend expressed empathy for Putin’s march into Ukraine. I can’t get my head around this. I don’t understand what’s happening politically and indeed, here in Canada, there are some voices out there saying that this is all fake. Any commentary on that and does that impact the forces? Does that impact people who are standing up for Canada?

Andrew Leslie: I don’t think it will impact on the troops themselves because they’re professionals, but they are also can recognise that there is. I mean, the principal villain in all of this is Putin. Yes, a variety of mistakes were made by NATO, who disarmed too quickly or didn’t see the the various cues and indicators about the force build-up or and the list goes on. But having said the list goes on, I don’t want to brush it aside after this is all over. If we survive, you know, we should have a reckoning with those politicians and leaders who failed to see the warning signs and, by the way, did not invest in their armed forces. But that’s for a later date. Right now, the fact that a huge number of Americans in gross numbers support the idea of Trump support the idea of support implicit or direct for Putin is extraordinarily disappointing, and it’s extraordinarily dangerous because it reinforces in the perception of the Chinese and the Russians and those who wish our Western system wrong. Rightly or wrongly, I may not be right whether or not the Chinese do, but they see that as a weakness, a legitimate weakness. And in that sort of turmoil of tensions within theoretically small democratic parties, they see uncertainty. They see chaos. And unfortunately, they also see opportunity. Never, ever give your potential opponents the impression that you’re confused, your chaotic or you present to them an opportunity, be it in war or business.

Lisa Raitt: And with that, I can’t think of a better way to leave our clients here at CIBC with your thoughts. I want to thank you so much for being with me here today. Normally, I’m a 12 minute podcast, but I couldn’t stop. Thank you. I wanted to get more information out and thank you. I know we say this all the time, but in a meaningful way. I hope you know it’s meaningful, but thank you for your service, not only to our nation in terms of of donning the uniform, but as well going into the battle of Parliament, which is not as clear or as structured as one would want to have. I have to say, but thank you very much and it’s great to talk to you again, and I hope we can continue the conversation.

Andrew Leslie: I would be honoured and delighted and thank you for what you do, by the way.

Lisa Raitt: Well, appreciate it. Great. Thanks for everyone for joining us today.

Lisa Raitt: Lisa Raitt: Thanks so much for tuning in. Now, if you have any questions or comments or even requests on topics to discuss, drop me a line at [email protected]. Your interactions actually will make this better. I’m your host, Lisa Raitt, and this has been The Raitt Stuff. I’ll talk to you next week.

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