George Barros
speaker
576 appearances
5 recordings
1 series
first heard Jan 2025
last heard 6 Jun
George Barros’s voice in public audio — every appearance, attributed to the second.
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recordings per month · last 12 monthsRecordings per month over the last 12 months — 2 in all, peaking in Jun 2026 with 1.
Appearances
800 billion euros to invest in the European defense industrial base. That's excellent. Again, needed to happen 10 years ago, but here we are. Now, that said, Europeans can do a lot. They produce a lot of artillery ammunition. They produce a lot of working good stuff. Rheinmetall can make armored fighting vehicles and tanks. So in principle, that stuff can get to Ukraine.
But there's some niche systems and capabilities that truly only the US has. that the Europeans cannot replicate. Two systems come to mind. The interceptors for the Patriot air defense system. Europeans themselves depend on the Patriots. It's kind of bizarre how the Americans have a monopoly over European air defense. The Ukrainians are running low on those.
The Europeans barely have any spare that they could give the Ukrainians that they haven't already. The American production rate of Patriot Interceptors is actually quite low too. And so, no more American aid, no more Patriot Interceptors, that's going to be a big problem for Ukraine. Number two is the HIMARS for their operational strike capacity. The Ukrainians rely on the HIMARS.
It has become a workhorse capability. It is the only system they have for reliable, effective operational range strikes, those being strikes beyond 30 kilometers, but short of 70, 75 kilometers. The Europeans do not have a commensurate mature system like the HIMARS to be able to fulfill that very important need.
So, even if the Europeans want to throw a lot of money and try to build up, they need that stuff. And the solution might be that the Europeans just go to the Americans and go to Robert Grumman and go to Lockheed and they're like, hey, we'll pay you at General Dynamics. They're like, hey, we'll pay you to give us the interceptors and the HIMARS ammo.
And then they'll give it to the Koreans that way, which in principle could work and would benefit the US industry too.
Right. So it seems like the Russians are in the beginning phases of their spring offensive.
It seems that they are currently trying to take the Russian forces in Northern Ukraine, the ones that were clearing out Kursk, where the Ukrainians were in Kursk and Russia, and they're trying to steamroll it across the international border into Sumy, and possibly into neighboring Northern Kharkiv oblasts in Ukraine. Now, candidly, Mike, I got to tell you, I'm not my...
My forecast is not particularly grim on this operation. The Russian forces that they have up there has not been significantly augmented from what they were operating with in Kursk. It's about ballpark 60 to 70,000 guys, so maybe six, seven divisions or so.
A lot of the same units that have been there for a long time, we've not indicated any redeployments of bringing in fresh troops that those forces that were tired fighting and expelling the Ukrainians from Kursk They're not going to have a lot of gusto and energy to keep going into Sumi.
So it seems like the Russians might try to do some pushes in the north and call that the spring of Benthev, but I don't see it going very far, to be honest, and they're certainly not going to take Sumi city. And that'd be kind of hard for the course. I mean, the Russians, winter of Benthev has concluded.
And the Russians failed with their winter offensive in Donbas to take their objective for the all 2024 offensive, which was taking Pokrovsk. So, I'm sure they're going to make some tactical gains. They're going to make some territorial gains. They'll get some villages and fields.
They might even get a couple of small towns and stuff, but they're not going to be making any operational breakthroughs, that's for sure. Okay.
Yeah. It's not that surprising really. The Russian fourth generation apparatus is very skilled at going to all corners of the Russian Federation and other countries as well and trying to seduce migrant workers, students, foreigners. both in Russia and outside of Russia, to come and volunteer in the Russian military.
Because the Russian military is just trying to suck up as many bodies as they can to meet that replacement quota for those casualties that they're taking. Lots of foreign nationals have made it into the Russian military. Sri Lankans, Indians, Venezuelans, Cubans, Africans.
These two Chinese guys that were captured by the Ukrainians, I reported there being at least a couple hundred in the ranks of the Russian military. That thought's surprising. I don't have any dispositive evidence, but it's my impression that those captured Chinese were not PLA soldiers. I would be astonished if they were deliberately sent by Beijing to go there.
It seems more likely that these were Chinese nationals located in Russia or in a Russian adjacent country who went to an office and voluntarily signed up to go get a paycheck for $40,000 or something. Here they are captured along with many other impoverished foreign nationals who have made the same bad decision.
I buy that there are many more Chinese, but I don't think that they're PLA. I know for you, this is interesting. Your listeners can look into this. Last year in 2023 or 2024, there was a massive scandal with India because there were several hundred, about thousands of Indian nationals that a Russian human trafficking scheme had recruited and into going to serve in the Russian military.
It became a massive international scandal. President Modi actually made a whole stink about it. The Indian foreign ministry formally went to the Russian foreign ministry and said, hey, quit it. Stop trying to recruit Indian nationals to go fight in the military. It was a whole public spat. It doesn't mean that the Indian government was sending Indians to go fight in Russia. Right.
Also, schau, am Sonntag, am 5. Januar, haben die Ukrainer die Offensiv-Operationen in der Kursk-Salient über die internationale Grenze innerhalb Russlands beendet. Das ist die erste Zeit, dass die Ukrainer auf der Offensiv-Operation sind, wirklich seit dem Sommer 2024. Für die letzten mehrere Monate sind die Russen auf der Offensiv-Operation gegangen und langsam die ukrainischen Schmerzen entfernt.
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