Show notes
Welcome to Breaking Battlegrounds Radio! In this week's episode, we dive deep into a range of thought-provoking topics with our fantastic lineup of guests. First up, we have Thomas Grove, a renowned WSJ reporter, who provides valuable insights into the latest developments in Russia and Ukraine. Then, our friend of the show, Dan McLaughlin, also known as the 'Baseball Crank' on Twitter, joins us for an engaging conversation. Dan shares his thoughts on how to refocus the media's attention on critical issues beyond Trump, including discussions on polling trends for both Trump and Biden, the upcoming presidential election next year, and his insights into the Speaker's race. And, of course, we can't forget Kiley Kipper in Kiley's Corner! Tune in to hear Kiley's unique take on various subjects this week, including the mysterious world of Tupac, the Citizen app, and the enchanting puffin season in Iceland. Join Kiley as she unravels the story and discusses its implications, all from her corner of the studio. - Connect with us: www.breakingbattlegrounds.vote Twitter: www.twitter.com/Breaking_Battle Facebook: www.facebook.com/breakingbattlegrounds Instagram: www.instagram.com/breakingbattlegrounds LinkedIn: www.linkedin.com/company/breakingbattlegrounds - ABOUT OUR GUESTS Thomas Grove covers the confrontation between Russia and the West for The Wall Street Journal. He is based in Warsaw. Before that Thomas covered Russia for more than a decade and he has traveled to Ukraine regularly since Russia's invasion. He writes on Russia's military, the arms trade and the Russian defense sector as well as great power competition.He started his career in Istanbul with Reuters writing about the economy and the rise of Recep Tayyip Erdogan's AKP. Thomas has since reported from across Central Asia, the Caucasus region and the Middle East. - Dan McLaughlin is a senior writer at National Review Online and a fellow at National Review Institute. He was formerly an attorney practicing securities and commercial litigation in New York City, a contributing editor of RedState, columnist at the Federalist and the New Ledger, a baseball blogger at BaseballCrank.com, BostonSportsGuy.com, the Providence Journal Online, and a contributor to the Command Post. His writings on politics, baseball, and law have appeared in numerous other newspapers, magazines, websites, and legal journals. - Transcription Sam Stone: Welcome to another episode of Breaking Battlegrounds with your host, Chuck Warren. I'm Sam Stone. As always, fantastic guests up for you today, folks. We're going to lead things off with Thomas Grove of The Wall Street Journal. He's been covering in depth the confrontation between Russia and the West. And obviously he is based in Warsaw, previously covered Russia for more than a decade. He's traveled to Ukraine regularly since Russia's invasion, writes on Russia's military, the arms trade and Russian defense sector, as well as great power competition. Thomas, thank you for joining us. Welcome to the program. Thomas Grove: Great. Thank you so much for having me. Chuck Warren: Thomas How did you get started in this business? It seems like you've done great reporting, starting with Reuters and now you've just planted your flag out there in Eastern Europe. Was this a career path you wanted or you just sort of fell into it by doing various stories? Thomas Grove: That's a really good question. I studied Russian in college, and I was just fascinated by kind of what was the kind of referred to more frequently at the time as the kind of the post-Soviet space. So all of Central Asia, the caucuses, Russia itself, you know, it was all just wild and fascinating. And I couldn't get enough of it coming out of college. So I basically after that just basically washed up, started with Reuters, and things just kind of took on a life of their own, really. So spent spending ten years in Russia, you know, we left just right before the war, just a few months before, luckily. And I went to I was going to Israel just to kind of start something completely new, turn a new page. And that lasted about 4 or 5 months. And before I knew it, I was back in Ukraine again. I'd covered the 2014 war and and now it was kind of I really didn't expect. However, when I went back in 2022 that I'd be seeing the biggest land invasion in Europe since the Second World War. It was obviously a surprise. At least it was for me. You've been so much for others. Chuck Warren: You've been to Ukraine a lot in person. Do you feel sort of like you're reliving a World War One video from junior high? I mean, is it you know, here's one thing you see on our side. You see these you don't get to see many photos, but you see some about the trenches and the the bloodshed. And then you see Ukraine where it doesn't look like anything's going on. And there are some on the conservative side who say, see, this isn't a big deal. Tell us a little about what you see on the ground when you go. Thomas Grove: Well, I mean, that's a really that's a great question. I think probably the best way of explaining it is is explaining the journey. You know, you have to take to get there. You know, there's no airports in Ukraine. So anybody who who makes that trip, they come from most of the time from Poland. You know, we're just based to and you cross the border and you're in western Ukraine and everything feels, you know, you're in Lviv and things are bustling. You know, stores are open. It's a, you know, a beautiful city full of, you know, 17th, 18th, 19th century buildings. You know, it's it's gorgeous. And you think, well, you know, it is hard to reconcile that with what, you know, lays ahead. And obviously, you know, the closer you get east, closer you the further you get south, you know, it becomes that that reality becomes a lot more dramatic and the scenes are a lot more dire as well. And, you know, it doesn't take long, you know, until. You are in Bermuda and you see things that you simply can't imagine happening in the in Europe in the 21 century. Chuck Warren: That would that would seem to me to be a very interesting article for you to work on, because I think there is this this disconnection here with the American public. Sam Stone: There's definitely not much understanding of what the real conditions. Chuck Warren: And so and I think it's part of the problem with the funding, to be honest with you. I think if more Americans knew what was really going on in the Eastern and south and there was more pictures because we live in a very social media picture, visual society, I think there'd be some difference there because what you see, especially on conservative media, because, you know, Sam and I always have this conversation with people, look, both, you know, Korean Ukraine has corruption and Russia is bad. They're not mutually exclusive. You know, you just can't let a country do this to another country. And people say that and they sort of, you know, nod their shoulders and say, yeah, you're right, you know, But I think that type of thing would happen. So let me talk about something's happened this week, which has been quite amazing, actually. And you wrote about it on October 4th. Russia Withdraws Black Sea fleet vessels from Crimea base after Ukrainian attacks. And my understanding is in your articles is because Ukraine can't use the drones or the missiles from France or England or even the United States to attack outside of certain areas, and especially in the sea Black Sea, that the Ukrainians have created their own missiles. And, you know, tell us about that. Thomas Grove: Well, I mean, what we're seeing is kind of the culmination of a few things here. And, you know, on one hand, you know, we have to think about the fact that in the first weeks of the war, much of the Ukrainian navy was was destroyed. And so, you know, it didn't have the kind of it was certainly not on an equal footing with Russia beforehand in the Black Sea. I mean, the Black Sea fleet. If we could just take a moment to talk about what this is. I mean, this is kind of a jewel in the crown of Russian naval power. You know, it's kind of it is what it is. It is the the Russian empire's power projection, the most important power projection it probably had in kind of the latter part of the Russian empire. So it's in the Russian narrative and the Russian myth. It's an incredibly important fleet. Um, you know, started under Catherine the Great, you know, if you can imagine kind of what that means for people. And so it's only been, you know, vessels have only been withdrawn from Sevastopol three times as far as we know, you know, um, since, since they started to base there and twice during the two World wars, one in the First World War, just after the First World War and the other one right in 1942. Thomas Grove: So you have this incredibly important symbolically and just in terms of capabilities as well, naval power that's there in the Black Sea, which Russia's, you know, has been very proud of. And then you have, you know, the Ukrainian navy, which, you know, they mentioned before, was was kind of wiped out. And so what the Ukrainians have done is they've just been improvising, basically, you know, and I think they kind of did this very early on that was kind of, you know, one of their first impetuses was to to really try to to improvise. They didn't have the the defense industry that that Russia had. So they had to basically kind of try to make things that that would work on the fly. Right. And so what we've seen is these Neptune what are anti-ship missiles but have you know and was used effectively against the Moskva you know Russia's flagship last year, we've seen them start launching their own kind of naval drones, these kind of unmanned surface drones. And so, you know, they have some capabilities of their own. But, you know, two of those, you know, they've added what the British and the French have given them. Thomas Grove: You know, the the storm shadow missiles. And so I think it was a very potent kind of mixture that sorry here, the terrain behind me apologize for that. But yeah, so you had a very potent mixture of of of of weapons that Ukraine was using against Russia in the Black Sea. And so, you know, it made the officers on the ground feel unsafe because they flattened and flattened it. But they, you know, sent, I think, two rockets right through it, the Black Sea fleet headquarters. And then you saw an attack on a submarine and a landing vessel not too long ago as well. And so I think it was it was really a calculation made by the Russians that this is just it's not worth it right now. They weren't really the Russian ships weren't able to affect the grain corridors along the sea as much as they hoped they would. Be able to. And apart from that, I think they realized that if they were to just withdraw a little bit further east, it really wouldn't hurt their capabilities in terms of doing what they were doing before in terms of sending missiles into Ukrainian cities. It doesn't really make a lot of difference. Sam Stone: Their weapons have the range from those ships, regardless of if you move them a little bit. Chuck Warren: With Thomas Grove. Exactly. Thomas Grove, Wall Street Journal reporter. He's based out of Warsaw, Poland. We're going to call him the Indiana Jones of The Wall Street Journal because he seems to be going all the hot zones here in Eastern Europe. Let me ask you a question. In your article that we talked about, about Russia withdrawing from the Black Sea. They moved their ships to, you know, a new port in the Black Sea. And you made a comment that I thought was really interesting. You wrote, While the move may represent only a temporary measure to safeguard against further Ukrainian strikes, the logistical headache of relocating some of Russia's heaviest ships underscores the threat of Ukraine's strike capabilities. Why is that such a logistical headache? And I ask this because I think most people are like, I get on a boat, I turn the key, I leave the dock. Why? Why is this why is this such a logistical headache? Sam Stone: People do not realize. Chuck Warren: Oh, no. So, you know, it's like you always hear the old saying. It's like turning the Titanic. Why is it so hard? Why is it such a logistical headache to move them, though? Thomas Grove: Because I think basically you're talking about several kind of docking issues and you're talking kind of diverting the fuel and the supplies that you would need for for these crews to stay on ship or stay stay on board and maintain the ships. You know, we're talking you know, you're rerouting trains, you know, and you're trying to figure out exactly when that happens, where they come from, where those supplies come from. And, you know, this this is all and as we've seen, logistics has been has been a sore spot for the Russians. Sam Stone: Yeah, there's a there's the very famous military quote, and I don't know who came up with it but but said that bad generals talk tactics, good generals talk strategy and great generals talk logistics. As we're we're coming to the end, We have about a minute and a half left in this segment. We're going to be coming back with more from Thomas Grove, The Wall Street Journal, covering this. One thing I want to get into. Thomas When we come back, is, is there or do you see a solution to this that isn't a negotiated solution that costs Ukraine some territory they had before this invasion? And the reason I ask that and I apologize for kind of springing a lengthy question on you as we come to the end of this segment. But the reason I ask that is, is you just look at the demographics and, you know, there are as many military age males in Russia as there is, you know, total population in Ukraine. That's a really big mismatch long term in a war of attrition. How does Ukraine account for that? Thomas Grove: Well, I mean, I think if you were to talk to the Ukrainians, I mean, they would say that it's about defending your homeland and, you know, basically trying to fight off somebody who is trying to take your, you know, your very house from you, so to speak. So, I mean, I think there's no shortage of guts, as we've seen on the Ukrainian side. But I mean, I think, you know, we do have to acknowledge and I think I think the Ukrainians have acknowledged in conversations with Western officials that it is absolutely necessary to kind of maintain the flow of weapons if they're going to continue fighting. Otherwise, it really does become just just very difficult for the Ukrainians. Sam Stone: There's there's no way for Ukraine to supply its own armament needs in this war. We're going to be coming back with more in just a moment. Breaking battlegrounds. Back in just a second. Advertisement: At Overstock. We know home is a pretty important place and that's why we believe everyone deserves a home that makes them happy. Whether you're furnishing a new house or apartment or simply looking to update and refresh a few rooms. Overstock has every day free shipping and amazing deals on the beautiful high quality furniture and decor. You need to transform any home into the home of your dreams. Overstock Making Dream homes Come True. Sam Stone: All right. Welcome back to Breaking Battlegrounds with your host, Chuck Warren. I'm Sam Stone continuing on the line with us in just a minute, Thomas Grove of The Wall Street Journal. But folks, you've been hearing…
Full show notes at the publisher 
Our TOPPODCAST Picks 
Stay Connected
