PDB Situation Report | March 28th, 2026: The Most Dangerous Phase of the Iran War Yet & Ukrainian Forces Gain Ground Against Russia

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Welcome to the PDB situation report.

I'm Mike Baker.

Your eyes and ears on the world stage.

And what a stage it is.

All right, let's get briefed.

First up, the war with Iran hits the one month mark time flies.

As U.S. and Israeli air strikes, continue and attention shifts to the increasingly

volatile straight of Kormuz.

We'll be joined by Steve Yates of the Heritage Foundation for more on that.

And then later in the show, after months of grinding stalemate,

Ukraine pushes back in the South, taking more ground than Russia for the first time in years.

We'll be joined by George Barros of the Institute for the Study of War for those details.

But first in today's situation reports spotlight.

Well, we're now one month into the war between the U.S.

Israel and Iran.

And the air campaign shows no signs of slowing.

U.S. and Israeli strikes continue to target Iran's military infrastructure and the

leadership.

While Tehran continues to respond with missile and drone strike attacks against Israel

and its Gulf namelers.

At the same time, there are mixed signals of a diplomatic track.

Public talk of all framps paired with continued military pressure.

And increasingly the focus has shifted to the straight of Kormuz,

where the risk to global shipping and energy markets is becoming harder to ignore,

as tensions play out along one of the world's most critical choke points.

For more on this, let me bring in Steve Yates.

He's the former Deputy National Security Advisor to the Vice President

and Senior Research Fellow at the Heritage Foundation.

And also, might I add, a great friend of the show.

Be great to see you again, man.

Thank you, Mike.

Thanks for having me back.

Absolutely.

Well, I didn't have any say in the matter.

Why?

That's always great.

Well, thanks for not vetoing.

I don't have that authority.

I can't veto anything.

All right, Iran.

Good God.

Where do we start?

I tell you, where do you want to start?

Well, I mean, we're in the middle at the moment.

So I think we're in one of those situations where things could break

in ways that are very risky.

But in many ways, I don't know how you see it, Mike.

But I mean, I don't think we could have asked more of our military

in terms of the major military operations.

They're doing all the things that should be done.

We don't live in a world of perfection,

but they've had a pretty high success rate

in establishing air dominance,

sea dominance, signals dominance.

The interaction with Israel,

division of labor with Israel, I think is historic.

Again, I don't know how you see it,

but I've never seen the United States

this seamlessly work and joint capacity with an ally.

And if I'm an ally around the world,

there's a lot of chatter about that these days.

We hear it all the time.

But if I'm an ally of the United States,

I'd say I'd like to have a little bit of that Israel situation going on.

If I'm ever facing hardship,

these guys have the technology and the US

is definitely standing with them in this.

So there's some glass half full parts of this.

But as I would acknowledge,

I talked with a friend this morning,

you know, 20 years ago,

we're at the beginning of the Iraq stuff

and after major military operations,

it looked pretty darn good.

And we found a genius way to lose the peace

for a better part of 10 years.

Yeah, that's a great way to put it.

I guess it depends on what your metrics are

when you're talking about defining success,

right? And I agree with you 100 percent

from an operational perspective,

right?

If we're talking about the military's ability

to seriously degrade Iran's military capabilities,

then I don't see how you don't look at this

as an operational success.

If you look at it, as you pointed out,

there are some areas where I see glasses have fallen.

I think we need to address those.

Let's talk about the,

the straight of hormones.

Let's talk about its importance.

And let's start with this.

I'll tell you the truth.

I've been somewhat surprised that it appears.

I'm sure that I'm wrong here,

but it does appear this way.

And perception is important

that the White House has been surprised

that the straight became the leverage point,

that the straight became the focus here.

Am I wrong?

Did they draw up scenarios that said,

okay, as soon as we start doing this,

the only thing the Iranian regime can do

is to create this chaos and blockade the straight

because they can't go toe-to-toe

with the US and Israeli military.

Yeah, I can't say you're wrong,

but I admit, maybe I'm a little too optimistic about this.

I think they did know that this is a point of leverage.

This is going to be a challenge.

That geography, the waterways

in the Gulf of Arabia or Persian Gulf,

whatever your point of view is on that name.

But that geography is confined.

Of course, the straight up hormones is even more confined.

And then the state of Amman is another area.

And Iran has a ton of shoreline along that area

and some offshore islands that are vital

to the processing and flow of oil

and natural gas, theirs and others.

And they've been using some of those islands as choke points

to check off whether people have paid the piper,

whether they're permitted to go or not.

I basically see a layering of this going on.

The Trump administration has been very clear.

They want allies who have skin in the game

to put some things on the table.

That this should not be an America-only kind of thing

for maritime security in that area.

And freedom and navigation on the high seas

is not an America-only kind of objective.

Some of our allies, I think, get that.

I think some of our older allies have some soul-searching

to go through to figure out what they're going to play

by way of a role in the world.

And they might not play much of a role in the world

if they don't figure it out soon.

But if you look at the UAE, Saudi Arabia, Japan,

they see skin in the game

and they're going to step in and play some roles.

And the administration in going through

this more protracted period of risk

is ensuring some of that.

Does that make it genius or by accident?

We don't really get to know

and historians will write it after the fact.

And of course, they'll be right and will all be wrong.

But for now, I do see some of those shifting tectonic plates

that help shape what post-major military operations

would look like.

And America's still going to have to play a role.

But it's not going to be the only role

and definitely not the only financier of this.

And so I'd say in another two to four weeks,

we should see a different reality

in the movement of vessels and the Straits of Hormuz.

How we get there, we have fog right now.

I think we just have to acknowledge that we don't have perfect visibility.

And for all we know, the administration

doesn't have perfect visibility.

But it's better than going in a rock style

and saying, we're going to do it all ourselves

and we're going to run this show.

Yeah, no, but we get back that up and say

then perhaps we should have set the table a little better

with our key partners, our key allies.

Because there's a sense of, hang on a second.

Nobody talked to us about this, right?

And that straight is incredibly important.

You know, you look at Europe in terms of LNG, right?

And what that straight means to them in terms of

free passage, you look at Asia, our partners there.

And so the other, the flip side of that is

perhaps you're setting the table with better coordination

right up front.

Knowing, again, you would think, you would think,

knowing that the Straits of Hormuz

it's going to be the issue

and it's going to cause these sea changes

in the global energy markets.

I filled up my truck yesterday, Steve, 102 bucks, right?

Tesla's looking better every day, isn't it?

Yeah, yeah, exactly, exactly.

Well, look, politically,

the White House has to solve this, right?

I would argue that they're going to have to figure out a way

to declare victory in some fashion.

And I think if they had stated up front

that the objective here is to

massively degrade the military capabilities

of the Iranian regime, right?

But I think it, to use your word, it was foggy, right?

What are the objectives?

So look, if they're talking about naval escorts,

for ships, getting an international naval force in there

as the president's talked about, that's well and good.

But you've still got the same regime,

and they've shown amazing resiliency, unfortunately,

for the people of Iran.

But that only lasts as long as it lasts, right?

So what are you talking about?

In definite period of time,

where you've got an international naval force

escorting tankers through in sort of this clumsy effort,

which is still going to slow things down.

Because as soon as you stop,

you've got the same Iranian regime,

and they can continue to harass,

and as soon as they fire off one shot,

the insurance and shipping industries do the same thing,

which is say, nope.

And then you've got this same problem.

So I guess that was a very long-winded way on my part,

and I apologize for asking you,

what happens?

How do you resolve this from your perspective?

Well, I don't have great answers to how you resolve it,

frankly, just because this is a hard and complicated

to link global energy markets.

Global energy markets are a big, important factor.

People don't want to admit it.

It's not only about the flow of energy

and the flow of money,

but whether you like it or not,

that's the oxygen that allows the world to live.

And so it does matter.

We have, in the past, gone through periods

of big uncertainty, high prices.

During the Biden administration,

we did that by policy choice.

It wasn't by taking on a major challenge

that was going to get resolved.

In previous administration,

we've also had shocks that have come about for various reasons.

It's not sustainable for it to go long-term.

And so the administration is going to have to do some things.

I think they have policies and strategies in mind

that they think will begin to move things.

Secretary Besent has hinted at those.

The Trump administration has a perfect record

of keeping their cards close to the vest.

And then after things start moving,

they begin to disclose and articulate.

That's very frustrating for those

who might be friendly on the outside

that would like to understand and explain

and maybe help calm some jitters that are out there.

So we're dealing with a very different

in information environment.

When what I lived in the Bush administration 20 years ago,

there was a lot of information that went out.

The problem was that the actions on the ground

didn't endure to a point of holding up

that rhetoric and that vision.

We have the opposite challenge now,

where we have less going out by way of explanation.

But some facts on the ground are building somewhat

of a foundation, but we're going to live

with this uncertainty politically,

what emerges in Iran, what kind of coalition

of forces kind of mold the grass in this region

so that we're not the daily maintenance manager

of what's happening in the broader Middle East.

We're going to have to have Saudi Arabia,

UAE, Israel, others that are trusted allies

step in in some pretty important ways.

And Japan, I think, is emerging in a very different

new global role.

And they're good with what has happened so far.

Of course, they'd like to be informed

and in on the earlier conversations,

but they're good for now.

Prime Minister Taka H had a good summit with the president.

And as long as they see some kind of de-escalation

coming in the say two to four week period

with some defined landing place,

maybe a maintenance plan going forward,

they want to see resources back in the Indo-Pacific too

to make clear that there is an adventurism there

that where we pay a price for what we've tried to handle,

whether it's in Europe and Ukraine

or this broader Middle East challenge,

the Venezuela and Western hemisphere stuff,

we've got a lot of cans open at the moment.

Yeah, we absolutely do.

Steven, it's a very interesting,

and there's a lot of layers to this, right?

It's how does this impact the Ukraine conflict,

our ability to provide support there

and our allies' ability to provide support there?

Yeah, and so there's so much here to continue talking about.

But first, Steve, you know what I'm about to do, right?

You got to stay right where you are.

We got to take a quick break,

and then we'll be back with more from Steve Yates

here on the situation report, so don't go away.

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Welcome back to the PDB situation report.

Steve Yates joins us again,

Senior Research Fellow at the Heritage Institute.

Now almost couldn't pronounce heritage.

Well, Steve, I think we've almost solved

the whole Iran situation on the first segment.

So let's see if we've got anything left on the table.

Here's a concern, I guess.

Because you have to gain these things out, right?

We have to think about this.

And I appreciate what you're talking about

a timeline of two to four weeks.

And we've got more clarity.

Perhaps we've got more involvement from regional partners.

There have been reports that the Saudis,

MBS and particulars have been quietly encouraging

the White House to continue this effort.

I think all those players out there

are concerned that if we, for whatever reason,

possibly political reasons and rising gas prices at the pump,

we decide to declare victory and call it a day.

They're left with a more hard-lined regime in Iran,

which still has capabilities,

and they'll have to deal with it.

And that's the reality.

I think if we're going to be pragmatic about this,

it doesn't appear as if the regime is looking

to make any significant changes.

They're not going to become more moderate, perhaps.

Who knows, maybe we get a miracle here.

But at some point, we'll end up dealing with them again.

And so I guess a success would be

if that time frame has been extended.

Every administration's just kind of put lipstick on this pig

and hope that the next administration

might be able to deal with it.

Maybe what we've got here is a success

because we now push it further down the road

to the point where we have to deal with it again.

Yeah, well, I mean, there's a couple of ways

if you want to put them, paste markers

for optimistic outcomes.

And I'll just, I'm not naturally an optimistic person.

I'm just playing one on your program today.

But if you're going to try to place

some of these markers out there,

you'd say, okay, we were living with a scope of a threat

that really was underappreciated in some ways

minimized by a lot of people.

But the very fact that the remnants of this regime

launched two long-range missiles

out in the direction of Diego Garcia

proved that they had a long-range missile capability

that was better than assessed

by a lot of different services around the world

and could strike targets much farther.

And as you know, you don't have

that kind of long-range missile development capability

unless there's something you want to put on that tip

that is not your average boom, boom device.

And so that, I think, legitimized it away.

A lot of the conversations that I think erroneously,

and I would say slanderously,

was saying that the Prime Minister of Israel

was dragging President Trump by the nose into this effort.

There is a global security problem

that was percolating under the regime in Iran

that was bigger and closer to doing terrible things.

So the authors of October 7th in Israel,

not that long ago, the backers of assassination campaigns

in the United States and that bled out

a lot of our troops in Iraq and other places,

they were closer to disastrous capabilities than we assess.

So at least at that measure,

that has been degraded much more profoundly

than the strikes last summer could have done.

Then generally, yes, there could be remnants of this regime

that are not good, shiny, happy people going forward.

And it might not be a Kumbaya moment

for the people of Iran who are long-suffering

and deserve a better future,

deserve to celebrate a Persian culture,

not an Islamist theocracy.

All those things remain true.

But if we are in that middle ground, Venezuela-like,

where we have remnants of a regime

that is odious to our morality in some ways,

our strategy, but is behaving in ways

that are more contrite in the coming period,

we are not better off than you do cost-benefit analysis

of was that worth it.

And then if it pops back up and we have to do something similar

again, is that better or worse,

more expensive or less expensive than taking the Iraq model

or other things, or the Obama approach

of I'm going to send pallets full of cash

and I'm going to try to buy the threat every so many years.

Those are basically the bad options

that a responsible commander in chief

and global power has to face.

I think what we're muddling through now is better

than what we've gone through in the past so far.

And so I would accept this measure of risk,

don't claim perfection on anybody's part,

but I think that's kind of the muddle that we have.

On balance though, if it tips the scales

and the people of Iran get a better transition,

that's freaking historic.

And we're in a completely different Middle East,

Israel, Saudi, Iraq, the UAE, others,

we're just in a different ballgame.

Yeah, look, I don't think there's any doubt that,

certainly from the Israeli perspective,

they consider a wind to be a change in the regime.

That's what they clearly have in mind.

That's what they look at as a primary objective, right?

I think that was maybe secondary for the US perspective.

And a lot of Iranian Americans agree with that.

Yeah, right.

If it happened, it happened and great.

But you've also got the regional players,

the Saudis and others who I think would love

to see the Iranian regime go on.

But for the past few years,

I think they tried to play nice with them.

They tried to date Todd and now I think they realized

that that doesn't work.

But you still end up with this issue.

We really don't know who's in charge.

It does appear as if the revolutionary guard

or the RGC has cemented their position

at the top of the food chain.

It looks like Mesod Pizzeschi in the president

is marginal at best.

You've got a political group there that probably

is secondary to the RGC.

And I would argue the clerics have probably figured out

they're not running the show, right?

For optics, they're still there.

But it does appear that we end up with a scenario

where the RGC is fully in charge, the security apparatus.

And I don't know that that's a happy result.

But to your point,

if we've degraded their military capabilities significantly

and they're not able to create the same level of instability

in the region for a number of years

because we've also gone after their manufacturing capabilities

from the initials and other things,

you have to look at that and say,

okay, that's as a success

because they've been the primary blocker

to wall-turn peace and stability in the region for decades.

And if we come out of this,

they don't have a monopoly on security

in the Arabian Gulf, as I'll call it.

And then basically the ability to immediately go back

and either by way of terror or coercion,

try to force market to move

or powers that have to back away and make concessions to them.

There's that's a net forward progress.

It's gonna be very, very hard,

I think to get to a place where those

that were sent into exile for 40 plus years

and those who have been waiting out for all this time

a different day, I think that the emotions

but justifiable desires of a lot of those people

are gonna be hard to meet in the immediate term.

Even though I would greatly wish

that we could get to that kind of a place.

But for the Saudis and others,

I think we're in range of what's manageable.

We're all gonna have to invest

and we're all gonna have to be more honest

about what the what the division of labor

and the work is in this region.

Yeah, I think when the regime comes out early on

in this conflict and tells their own people

that if you come out in the streets,

we're going to kill you at some pretty powerful incentive

for them not to come out in the streets

because they've just seen thousands of their own slaughter.

Coming back around to the street

because I think ultimately it all meets there, right?

And by there, I'm meeting essentially

what we pay for fuel at the pump, right?

Because politically, it's just not tenable, right?

And so if the, from the White House perspective,

if they're concerned about how the Republicans do

in the midterm, for example, they've gotta wrap this up.

They've gotta figure out a way to stabilize that.

They've gotta figure out all the insurance

and shipping industries sufficiently.

That means, you know, probably not long-term

seized and occupied operations in the strait,

even though they're putting out

the Marine Expeditionary units in the 82nd Air Horn

and we've got a lot of assets, obviously.

A, an occupation in some fashion, you know,

I'm not saying the right,

I look, the Iranian regime, I'm the first person

to say the Iranian regime should be,

they deserve to get their ass kicked, right?

Yeah, and they should, what I'm talking

from an operational perspective here,

setting all that aside.

You know, an occupation in that area

is not going to call them the markets

and a naval escort operation

is going to have short-term, you know,

abilities to do the same, to call them the markets.

It's not sustainable over a long period of time.

So they've gotta cut a deal here.

And by all accounts, it looks like the Iranian regime

is saying, hey, look at this,

we're gonna come out of this steel

with complete control of the strait.

One of their demands, reportedly,

is that they're gonna expect the international community

to say, yes, you've got a sovereign right

to control the strait of the port moves, yeah.

Maybe set up these tolls, you know, pay for safe passage.

Well, I think we've got some divisions

inside the remnants of the IRGC and the Iranian regime.

We have part of them that either are channeling

their inner North Korean or Baghdad Bob,

and there's other parts that are allegedly talking

with the president of his team.

I can't know who they're really talking to.

The president seems to think he got a down payment

on sort of earnest money that the person he's talking to

or the people he's talking to could do something

by getting safe passage of like 10 vessels

under a Pakistan flag to move.

That seemed to be a demonstration of ability.

Is that enough?

Hard to say.

But I do think you're right in the immediate term.

You've got basically a month and at the longest two months

to have demonstrated that there's some downward pressure

on prices, there's some down deescalation feel

in terms of the flow of goods.

And this is an important case study for people.

America does not rely on that region for our oil,

but that oil and gas affects global markets

and those global markets affect all of us.

It affects China and they're learning that too.

They are not a superpower and they are not independent.

And it affects our allies,

including as I would differentiate good allies.

I don't see all allies as being just like everybody else,

but our good allies, they're affected too.

And so there is a limited period of time.

I think they're looking at those islands

that are around the Hormos and so I would expect maybe

if the first best option is whoever the president is talking to,

there is some kind of a deal that actually proves to work

in coming weeks.

That may be a Hail Mary, it may be reasonable.

I can't tell at this point, but if that isn't delivering fruit,

then they're going to have to do something

that fundamentally shapes the reality around those islands.

And I don't want America to be the only one involved in that.

I do want it to be a shared operation

that least with our Arab allies

and be able to make that a sustainable reality.

But I think that's basically the fork in the road

that hits us in the next two to four weeks at the very least.

Yeah, I think that's a really solid assessment, Simon.

I think what we will see in Europe

from our allies there in Europe,

I think they will get on board.

They're in an interesting situation, right?

From a population perspective, right?

That a lot of the folks there in Europe

are not behind this idea,

but what they are behind is not paying outrageous amounts

of money, maybe $10 a gallon for fuel.

So from a political survival point of view,

at some point those governments are going to have to say

we got to get it on board.

Otherwise, we're just going to get kicked to the curb here

because of the economic realities.

Even if the population isn't crazy

about the idea of supporting the conflict,

they'll be likely supportive of the idea of deescalating,

and creating some stability and certainly lower prices.

So I think that will all come into play.

The regional partners, you could almost argue

are far more important in this whole scenario.

And Steve, I'll tell you what,

it's always a great conversation.

Well, what you say is a great conversation.

I'm just filling in with that.

I appreciate you, Mike.

Yeah, listen, Steve Yeats,

Senior Research Fellow at the Heritage Institute,

it's always a pleasure.

I'll look forward to the next conversation.

Take care, take care, man.

All right, great guy.

Now, coming up next, there are new signs

that Ukraine may be regaining momentum.

That's right, for the first time in quite a while.

With recent gains in the South,

raising questions about Russia's position.

We'll be joined by George Barros,

a great friend of the show.

He's with the Institute for the Study of War.

They'll have his insight and assessment,

which is always excellent.

So stay with us.

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Welcome back to the PDB situation report.

With the war in Iran dominating the headlines,

it's easy to forget that the most devastating conflict

in Europe since World War II

is still grinding on in Ukraine, thanks to Putin's invasion.

And there have been some notable developments.

Over the past two months,

you create a forces how launched counter attacks

in the South, reclaiming more territory

than Russian troops have captured.

For the first time since 2023,

now that's a meaningful shift obviously.

And while there's been some focus on disruptions

to Russian access to systems like Starlink,

the bigger story may be Ukraine's improving operational

planning and execution on the battlefield.

For more on this, let me bring in George Boros.

He's a good friend of the show

and the director of innovation

and open source trade craft at the Institute

for the Study of War.

George, thanks very much for coming back

on the situation report.

Hey Mike, thanks for having me once again.

It's always a pleasure to see you.

I appreciate that man like wise.

Listen George, I was talking the other day

with Constantine and Francis,

who run the trigonometry podcast.

It's a great show.

And the last question for me was,

what do I think should be on people's radar screen?

What is something happening in the world

that we're not paying enough attention to?

And my response was the Ukraine conflict

because we've all shifted focus.

Last month it's been all Iran 24-7.

If you could walk us through

the most recent important developments in the conflict.

Yeah, absolutely.

So February 26 was a very interesting month for Ukraine.

And there were some major inflections

and some of the battlefield trends

that we've seen there as we study that war.

In February of 2026, the Ukrainians

actually managed to liberate more territory

of occupied Ukraine than what Russian forces

managed to seize across the theater.

And this is the first time that there's been a net

positive territorial gain in favor of Ukraine

since Ukraine's counteroffensive in 2023.

So it's been over two years since we've seen this pattern.

And that's a really big deal.

And I think we could have a wonderful discussion

on some of the underlying causes behind that.

But the bottom line up front is that the war is maturing.

I think we're on the precipice of a new phase of this war.

And a lot of the fundamentals are actually working

in favor of Ukraine.

As Ukraine has mature operational concepts,

matured some capabilities,

figured out how the Russians are fighting this war

and finding vulnerabilities that they're exploiting.

So we'd sort of talk about that.

But spices to say the war is not dynamic

or the war is dynamic.

It's not a stalemate.

OK, so two parts of my question.

The first part is, from your perspective,

what's the most critical element that's contributed

to this success recently by the Ukrainian military?

And the other part is when you say it's entering a new phase,

what do you mean by that?

Sure, let me start with the second question first.

What I mean is that it seems that we're

starting to leave the last days of the war

that was dominated by positional warfare.

And after the counteroffensive of 2023,

when the Ukrainians attempted to vary

sort of by the book's NATO style, well,

minus the air component, but basically,

crudely speaking, by the books,

breaching of a prepared enemy defense

in death with mechanized equipment.

And that failed.

We've basically been in a positional warfare

where the lines change very little.

It's difficult for forces to achieve mass.

There's no operational breakthroughs.

And basically, the lines are more or less static

crudely speaking.

The Ukrainians are now experimenting

and achieving ways to actually get armor to the front

at the small tactical level.

And they're now actually being able to achieve elements

of surprise despite persistent drone overwash at all times.

So that's really interesting.

And I think we're going to see more dynamic moves

on the battlefield in 2026 and 2027.

So that's the answer to the second question.

For the first question, underlying causes.

Biggest reason is maturation

in Ukrainian operational planning.

I will say that the Ukrainian military

has grown tremendously over the past four years

of full-scale war.

And up until about year three, maybe three and a half,

the Ukrainian forces were, for the most part,

primarily focused on tactical level problems.

How do I kill the Russians that are in my burguades

immediately have a responsibility

when they come within 1520 clicks of our front lines, right?

But one of the things that has happened

is that the Ukrainians through maturation of command

concepts by the development of this new core echelon

that's set on top of burguades with command staff there,

they're now thinking about critical vulnerabilities

of the Russian operational machinery.

They actually now are doing what we call

the US military center of gravity analysis

and seeking to find sort of the systems

that the Russians rely on to sustain

their concepts of operations, to sustain their campaigns.

And the Ukrainians are beginning to systematically study

and attack those centers of gravity.

And we can talk about the tactics of that

of what that I actually looked like

and how manifested with the successful counterattacks

in February, but that's really what's happening right now.

Okay, and so let's kind of expand on that

if we could, and what, you know,

from, again, from your perspective

and what you're seeing, what are they going after primarily?

Are we talking about, you know, command and control,

which are in my communications facilities?

What are we talking about when you discuss this

advanced in their making and their ability

to be more strategic if you want to put it that way?

Sure, so the Ukrainians conducted a series of counterattacks

in February that liberated, you know,

somewhere in the bulk part of 330 to 400 square kilometers

of terrain.

And the, what I'll tell you,

let me tell you the sort of like the common story,

the narrative that currently surrounds that,

then I'll go ahead and maybe issue my little corrective.

So the story of this is largely that, you know,

as you know, Elon Musk, the CEO of SpaceX,

shut off the Russian access to Starlink on February 1st.

And the common telling of this story

is that the Ukrainians that exploited that cut off,

they went and attacked into this Russian forces

that were in disarray with all of their comms

booger it up because of that rung pole

and the Ukrainians there for manolous gains.

And that's not quite exactly right.

Well, what actually happened is that the Ukrainians began,

what we call shaping the battlefield in late 2025.

They began conducting, as you exactly as you said,

strikes against logistics, strikes against command posts,

targeting and getting the Russians to basically,

you know, make some silly mistakes.

I made them vulnerable,

potentially allowed the Russians to advance too far,

with the intent of cutting them off at a later date.

So creating kind of like a Salt Lake

and shaping the battlefield for a protracted period

before actually committing to the ground phase

of the operation.

So the ground phase began in late January and early February,

which then coincided in space and time

with the SpaceX Starlink rung pole.

And simultaneously, the Russians also,

I've been throttling the messenger app telegram,

which the Russian military used

for command and control purposes,

but that's for political reasons.

And so we had sort of these degradation

of command and control at the top of what was a planned

Ukrainian undertaking,

which served as a sort of happy unexpected catalyst

but nonetheless helped it be successful.

And also the Ukrainians discovered a tactic

to achieve drone dominance in a very narrow sector

of the front line.

So within a tactical sector where they were doing these attacks,

they managed to be able to have just

tactical drone dominance with little strike activities.

Yes, there were Russian drone crews there as well,

but the Ukrainian space and time massed effects

and were able to have drone dominance

with a depth of 20, 30 kilometers

and made it very hard for the Russians

to be able to stick their necks out.

And because of that, we actually had Ukrainians

using armored personnel carriers

and infantry fighting vehicles up to 20 kilometers behind

where the Russian lines were assessed to be,

which was quite astonishing.

And so it's sort of thinking about how to mass

these effects in space and time after shaping

the battle for a protracted period.

The Starlink cut was a great catalyst for that as well

and it resulted with these successes that we've seen here.

With that loss of connectivity with communications

from the removal of Starlink,

and they were essentially, correct me if I'm wrong,

they were essentially piggybacking off of this, right?

They had a system and they'd figured out how to

get their hands on some terminals.

And so they were essentially

riding off of the Starlink capabilities

that had been provided to Ukraine.

But what are they doing to try to fill that gap now?

Yeah.

So the Russians are now trying to establish

their own Russian controlled sovereign Starlink alternative.

So there's a Russian company,

private space company that's now actually just last week

did a launch that put into low-earth orbit,

I think 16 satellites that are supposed to become

the basis for a sort of sovereign Russian equivalent

of Starlink for space-based communications.

Now, what I'll say is that this system,

its efficacy is to be determined,

they're not going to have global coverage for a long time.

It's unclear whether they put these particular spacecraft

into geosynchronous orbit to study Ukraine

or if they're trying to, like,

piecemeal and put together a global constellation

the way Starlink has.

But it's not going to, you know,

this is going to be a strategic long-term undershaking

and it's probably not going to be as good as Starlink.

If I had to wait, you're just knowing that

the limitations on the Russian space industry

and it pales in comparison to that level excellence

of the American companies have achieved in this domain.

Right.

Well, and the resources that they're able to throw

at something like that have to be relatively limited,

given their four years of their invasion into Ukraine

and Starlink's operating thousands of these low-earth satellites.

So if the Russians have put up, what, 16?

Yeah, they've got a ways to go, I would argue.

George, if you would stay right where you are

being mindful of your time,

we have to take a quick break

and then we'll be back with more from George Barros,

the Institute for the Study of War right here

on the situation report.

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Welcome back to the PDB Situation Report.

Joining us once again is George Barros,

Director of Innovation and Open Source Trade Graph

at the Institute for the Study of War.

And that is a new, if I've not mistaken,

and impressively lengthy title.

As Director of Innovation, if I wanna take just a little

a moment to ask you, what does that mean?

What are you looking at right now?

So in my new role, and don't worry,

I'm gonna still be studying Russian Ukraine.

I've been doing that for 12 years professionally

and I'll continue doing that.

But in my new role, what I'm looking to do

is to improve our workflows and our processes.

So as you know, Mike, you know,

when you have an intelligence workflow

and your persistent collection analysis,

synthesis, exploitation, dissemination, right,

there's a whole data pipeline and infrastructure

that actually supports those workflows.

And so we can work with technologies like knowledge graphs,

we can work with, you know,

large language models to be able to import the data.

And what I'm looking to do here

is work with private technology companies

for knowledge management and solutions.

Make our workflows more robust.

And they introduce more regular,

and go work with some of the biggest private space

companies that are collecting phenomenal types of data.

Applier, it's looking to use how it

into our underclassified intelligence work,

that sort of thing.

And excellent.

Well, congratulations on the new gig over there.

But you can count on us continuing to call you

for insight into the Ukraine conflict

because we always, always appreciate it.

And speaking of the Ukraine conflict,

let's turn our focus back to that.

A lot has been made of the manpower discrepancy

between Russia and Ukraine.

And if you could talk about that just a bit

in context of the successes that Ukraine's been experiencing

over the recent past.

Yeah.

So the manpower shortages that the Ukrainians face

are not yet solved.

And so far as, look, there are so front-line units

that don't have enough people.

There are still companies and battalions

that are a fraction of what their doctrinal end strength

are supposed to be.

There are still holes in the line, so to speak.

I mean, actually, when I talk about the theater in Ukraine,

I don't like to use the word lines

because the front is actually not a continuous series of lines.

It's a pointless front line

where you have sort of the strong points

that are occupied by a small number of Ukrainian soldiers

who will then be responsible for hundreds of meters of frontage.

But then they're constantly being surrounded,

not surrounded, bypassed, bypassed by Russian infiltrators

who will then establish these non-continuous,

continuous strong points in front of them,

behind them to the left and right of them.

And so it's sort of us, it's a pointless front line

where these strong points are interest-bursts.

And they make up for that with the use of drones.

So it's been very interesting,

and it's really not like what we think about

when we think of the lines from World War I or World War II,

because it's just very likely man on both sides.

And that's an interesting characteristic of this war.

Now, the persistent ISR and the use of drones and unmanned systems,

not just in the air, but also for UGVs, for logistics,

UGVs with guns on them to shoot people.

I mean, in Ukraine last fall,

they did their first ever combined arms of assault

that actually contained a UGV assault elements

that went in clear terrains.

The infantry could take a very interesting innovation there.

It's actually helping offset the manpower shortage,

but I don't want to say that the manpower shortage is solved.

But I'll also say that the Russians

are really fighting this war quite stupidly,

because they continue to believe in the cult of the offensive,

and they continue to marshal between 30 to 50,000

ships per month into this massive complex roboticized kill zone.

And the casualties that they rack up are astounding.

And the gains that they make are very small,

and I would argue not worth the strategic cost.

The numbers, in fact, I'm sorry for interrupting,

because the numbers sometimes seem a little bit

all over the map, right, in terms of casualties on both sides.

What, from what you've seen,

what are the most credible numbers?

Yeah, it adds in flows depending on a couple of different factors.

So whether is a big part of it,

because actually when it's cloudy or rainy or foggy,

the drones don't work.

And so you'll actually have decreased casualty

than some of those conditions.

And that's also when Russians will try

to do their offensive pushes,

because they know the drones aren't up.

So sort of it adds in flows.

But ballpark, Russian casualties are in the neighborhood

of 30,000 per month give or take.

I know in late 2025, the Russians are trying to make all

of their end of your goals before the new years.

And the casualties were closer to 40,000 or 50,000 in that month.

But the average is basically about 1,000 casualties per day.

That's killed and wounded.

So it's about 30, but at this a little bit higher recently.

How long could they sustain it?

They can sustain it.

They can sustain it for a long time.

The current mode of generating these forces

is doing very bad things to the Russian economy,

but thanks to the war in Iran and the boom on oil

and the US decision to grant Russia some exceptions

for oil export.

The Russian economy is now making a lot of extra money.

So that's given them some breathing room here.

But even if the money were not a living factor,

which it is, but not decisive,

the Russians maintained the option

to globalize our population.

And we've been collecting indicators that show

that the Russians have been slowly changing

their strategy from force generation.

The previous mode used to be attracting guys

with this massive payouts.

Now they're starting to do a ruling mobilization

of reservists who signed up to be a reservist

under a social contract.

That was I only get mobilized if there's

an official declaration of war or the Russian homeland

that's attacked in some apocalyptic way.

And the Russians actually modified the laws quite sneak

to NOS.

Actually now we can mobilize reservists

under the threshold of us officially being at war.

And some of those mobilized personnel

have begun deploying the training centers

and that sort of thing.

So that's a different way to go about these pools.

But it's going to cause political problems for the Russians.

And Putin makes bad decisions when

he's faced with political dilemmas.

He constantly throughout the course

of the last four years of war makes

militarily strategically questionable decisions

for politically expedient answers.

Because that's just dictator's psychology.

So it is a fascinating example of how the world is so small

and so connected.

When you talk about oil prices, for example,

and we have the Iran conflict not to get off on a tangent,

but I think I'm about to.

But you have the Iran conflict, which as you pointed out,

has created these rising prices on the global energy

markets, which basically pours more dollars

into the Russian war machine.

So you've got that as a consequence.

And then you've got the easing of sanctions.

So that you can deal with a problem of supply

within the global energy markets, which benefits Russia.

And now you've got the easing of sanctions

on Iran, of all things, in order to try to keep prices

down for political reasons.

It is fascinating.

You've got these layers.

We sometimes, I think, get lost in the conversation

about the battlefield because it is so important.

But then all these other things happen.

It's a reason why I point out when some folks,

I've got a lot of friends to a libertarians.

And I get it or isolationists.

And I get it.

I understand it.

That would be a lovely world of living.

But I'm always fascinated by how they imagine

that you can draw the curtains around your country.

And you won't be impacted by things

that happen outside of those curtains.

So anyway, I'm back off the soapbox, George.

What's something coming up related to this conflict

that you think could, in the short term,

have a major impact?

I'm very concerned about the Ukraine energy grid.

The Ukrainians survived the winter.

They survived the Russian campaign that

sought to destroy the Ukrainian energy grid

and break the back of it.

And basically, we morselized it into a western Ukrainian

energy grid in eastern Ukraine and in the end of the grid.

But this survived the winter, but the fight's not over.

The Ukrainian energy grid is in a very bad place.

I'm not going to sugarcoat it.

And exactly connected to your previous statement, Mike,

now that every single spare Patriot interceptor

that didn't exist, and there was a shortage

of rightfully going to protect Americans

in the sent-com area responsibility.

Ukraine's no longer receiving Patriot interceptors.

And that's a big deal for Ukraine

because it is the only system in the country

that is effective at intercepting Russian ballistic missiles.

And actually now what we've been seeing

is ever since the operations in the Middle East

kicked off, we started firing off tons of Patriots

and Ukraine's receiving them.

The Russians actually modified their daily strike packages

against Ukraine.

They now contain a larger proportion

of ballistic missiles than before.

And more of them are getting through.

And we think the Russians are trying to exploit

that vulnerability that gap to try to get in free hits

while I can.

So it is not impossible that they collapse

the Ukrainian energy grid in the coming months.

Some of them are looking out very closely.

Now what I'll know for you is that collapse

in the Ukrainian energy grid will not have an immediate

effect on the front lines.

It makes life terrible for those civilians,

but I'm concerned what it does for defense industry.

Because Ukraine now manufactures more than 50%

of its defense articles in country.

Yeah, that's not something that gets out there

in the public, I think very often,

but that's a fascinating statistic.

Yeah.

And as you know, to have a factory,

that's a very energy intensive undertaking.

I visited a factory in Ukraine earlier this year actually.

And they had a whole bunch of silent diesel generators

to power when the power goes off

because it happens regularly.

But if they collapse the energy grid in this entirety,

I mean, this generation will get you so far

and that would be a big deal.

So here.

So all right, last question, George.

All right, so we have the successes

that you've highlighted here for the Ukrainian military.

You've got the potential for this energy crisis.

And you've got what appears to be a building spreading

or early summer offensive by the Russian military.

This is a very soft science question.

Are you optimistic or pessimistic

in the short term for the Ukrainian military?

This is the most optimistic that I've been in a year and a half.

The lines are solid.

The data is pretty clear.

The operational concepts are coming clear.

Last year, there was a whole bunch of uncertainty

about what will happen if the Western or American aid

to Ukraine is cut off with the Russians

being able to have a breakthrough.

But I'm telling you now, we looked at the data,

spoken with soldiers and commanders in Ukraine,

including guys that I talked to on a regular basis

over the years who are usually give me a pessimistic forecast

but as of February, the mood is like, yeah, it's hard.

The situation is bad because it's a very great way.

It's never rosy when you're in wartime,

but they're like, we got this.

We're not going to fold.

The fortress belt is going to hold the Ukrainian

heavily fortified cities that are the front line now.

The Russians, their level of innovation is quite low.

They really have not been doing a whole lot much differently

to try to make their gains other than brute forcing them.

The Russian gains in 2025, which was a difficult year

on average, was only about 15 square kilometers per day

for at the cost of about 1,000 people killed wounded.

That's a very bad trade off.

And now we have this trend where,

because of superior Ukrainian operational thinking,

going after the intermediate rear

in a much more intelligent way,

thinking about the Russian center of the gravity,

we actually now started to see the Ukrainians

making gains for the first time in over two years.

So, again, this I think I want to be cautiously optimistic

but this is the best, the troops on the ground

have felt in two and a half years

and it's the best that, you know,

as a person who's looking at the data very close, I felt.

So, we'll see how this continues to mature.

Great assessment.

George Barros, Institute for the Study of War,

listened to men, always a great conversation

and I look forward to the next one.

But thank you very much for being here

on the Situation Report, George.

Oh, thank you so much for having me, really appreciate it

and I hope you have a wonderful rest of your spring.

Well, that is all the time we have

for the PDB Situation Report.

If you have any questions or comments,

maybe you've got a joke or a humor or a sanic

don't you want to pass along, just reach out to me.

PDB at thefirsttv.com and as always,

you know what we do, right?

We take the best comments and questions.

We mash them all together once a month into an episode

that we call asking me anything.

We've got another one on the launch pad coming out here.

So, let's stay tuned that as they say,

I don't know who they is, but they sometimes say stay tuned.

But anyway, keep your postcards and letters coming

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I'm Mike Baker.

And until next time, you know the drill and stay informed.

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