Nolan Peterson Brings Us an Update on Ukraine

CLAY: You may remember this guest that we are about to talk to right now, Nolan Peterson, because he came to us live from Ukraine right before the Russian army invaded Ukraine. He’s a former Air Force special ops pilot, correspondent for Coffee or Die magazine, back now in the United States for the first time in 18 months. Nolan, we appreciate you spending the time with us here. What can you tell us about the situation on the ground in Ukraine? Where we are headed and what the experience has been like for you over the last almost a year since this invasion started.

PETERSON: Yeah. Well, thank you for having me on again. It’s been a hell of a year. You know, there are many people like me who anticipated the full scale invasion was going to happen. But, you know, still being a resident of a European capital in Kiev and to have been there, witnessed, you know, cruise missile strikes on the city and to quite literally have the walls of my apartment shaking from, you know, mortars and artillery just a couple of kilometers away from where I live was really shocking. But it’s been absolutely remarkable to see how this country has united around their common defense. And I know for me as an American, it’s so inspiring to see so many of my friends who, you know, had no affiliation to the military before the war but volunteered to take up arms and defend their country.

You know, the Russian defeat in the battle of Kiev was a major turning point in the war. And over the summer into the fall. Now we’ve seen Ukrainians on the offensive, both in the eastern Kharkiv region and just recently over the weekend, I’m sure everybody’s aware of the news that Ukrainians took back to the Kherson, which was the only regional capital that Russia had seized at the beginning of the war, a city in southern Ukraine, sort of near the the exit of the Dnieper River into the Black Sea. So Ukraine is on the march. I think morale is relatively high among the troops.

And I have to say, you know, as Russia continues these long range cruise missile and kamikaze drone attacks against Ukraine’s power grid, which has made life pretty miserable in cities across Ukraine, including Kiev, where my wife and I live, and we’re losing electricity and heating going through the cold winter months, not to mention just the terror of hearing cruise missiles and, you know, Iranian Shahed drones impacting us quite often. Living under that constant fear and that strain. I think that this latest victory in Kherson is a real morale boost for Ukraine’s troops, but also to the civilians as they look forward to what’s probably going to be a very, very tough winter.

On the flip side of that, you know, for Russia’s military, which is largely been filled up with reservists who’ve been basically press ganged into service and are short of supplies and training, you know, the constant advance of the Ukrainians is very detrimental to the morale, you know, especially since they’re going to be sitting out there in trenches, in foxholes, you know, below zero, very cold and miserable weather coming up. I think one more thing to mention to you, you hear a lot of talk about the possibility of a winter lull in fighting. And from my perspective, my, you know, my communication with Ukrainian troops, I anticipate that Ukraine is going to push its advantage this winter and to keep up its momentum and to keep hammering both to, you know, destroy Russian morale and get back as much territory as they can while they have that battlefield advantage.

BUCK: Well, Nolan, we appreciate you being with us and thanks for coming back. We talked to you at the very beginning of this conflict, and now we’re glad you’re safe on U.S. soil for the meantime. But, obviously, it has been a very difficult, to put it mildly, year for the Ukrainian people. What do we know about the scale of Russian losses and do you think the Russian endgame is here? I mean, given that it doesn’t seem anyone thinks they’re going to be able to take the whole of the country of Ukraine over there. They’re on the defense right now and losing ground, as you say. So where is this? I mean, first off, how has this affected the Russian military in terms of scale and where do you think this is going?

PETERSON: Yeah. Well, I think, you know, the Russian military, you know, at least their invasion force in Ukraine has been, for all intents and purposes, decimated. And I think that, you know, from just a logistical standpoint, Russia’s ability to conduct any offensive operations, you know, in the next 6 to 9 months or years, probably almost nothing. They’re going to be on the defensive. And, you know, not just when it comes to their ability to muster troops and military hardware, but also the morale of those troops, like I just mentioned, you know, many of the ranks of the Russian units are being filled by these reservists who don’t want to be out there. They have little to no training. They’re not getting enough equipment. So I think that, you know, for the Ukrainians right now, it’s in their interest to keep going to push as far as they can. And for Russia, I think it’s going to boil down to a political decision in Moscow about how they can, you know, to sort of tap dance their way out of this. I think in my perspective.

BUCK: But can I can I ask you now, I know we’ve obviously given a lot of material weapons, finances, financing to Ukraine in this conflict, the American people have. Do you get a lot of, I mean, are Ukrainians like just very thankful to America? I mean, do you get people kind of come up to you and like, thank you so much for what your people have done here or does it not really come up?

PETERSON: Oh, it has. I feel like a rock star walking around, especially as an American veteran who served in Iraq and Afghanistan. I wish every American had the opportunity to go to Ukraine and speak to people in the streets. My father-in-law was a veteran of the Soviet military, and he has tears in his eyes every time he talks to me cause he’s so thankful that we saved their country. You know, this post-Soviet society, you know, with a generation of young people who braved snipers’ bullets in the Maidan to overturn a corrupt pro-Russian regime, they want to live in a democracy. They look to America as their ideal for what they want to achieve in life. And we’re enabling that to happen. And we’re going to have an incredible ally for the rest of our lives in Ukraine because of what we’ve done there. And I think that’s something that we should all be proud about.

Moreover, when you look at Kherson from more military standpoint, the troops who fought to liberate Kherson are extremely grateful for that. Because those HIMARS allowed the Ukrainians to pummel the Russian supply depots and logistics hubs, you know, the bridges across the Dnieper River, and it allowed the Ukrainians to take back Kherson without laying siege to the city. You know, the way the Russians have advanced is they just, you know, blast everything ahead of them and they, you know, just basically level cities to to occupy them. But the Ukrainians are able to fight smart and save civilian casualties, to save their infrastructure, because they’re able to use these precision weapons very well, to advance and, ultimately, the war is going to be a lot shorter and it’s going to create a lot less civilian deaths because Ukraine has the ability to support smartly, to fight smartly and precisely. And so I think that, you know, the influx of U.S. weapons, some have argued that that is prolonging the war. But I would argue the exact opposite. I mean, Ukraine has advanced weaponry and they’re using that to great effect to bring the war to a victorious end from their perspective and at a much lower cost and sufficient civilian casualties.

CLAY: Nolan, quickly here to close, what is the time frame of a resolution of some sort here? You can correct me if I’m wrong, but we’re sitting probably as we move into fall and winter there, it’s less likely there’s going to be advanced military operations because of snow and the difficulty of moving troops and material and everything else. Where are we going as we come closer to another spring? When does this end?

PETERSON: Well, I actually think that Ukrainians are probably not going to have a lull in fighting this winter. There might be some slight lull if they’re trying to reconstitute their logistics and now they face a pretty formidible Russian defensive line along the eastern bank of the Dnieper River. But I think, you know, it’s definitely Ukraine’s interest to keep going right now to get as much land as they want. You know, at some point, I think, you know, every almost every war ends. And, you know, the two sides deciding, you know, sitting down on the table and deciding the end of the conflict.

But, you know, I think an important, you know, idea for Americans to remember is that when it comes to Ukraine’s thinking about an end to this war, it’s not about lines on the map. Most Ukrainians really don’t care about the territory that they want to get back. You know, after hearing all these stories and I personally saw, you know, the mass graves and the civilian dead in Bucha and Izyum, you know, these outlying parts of Kiev or Russians massacred many civilians. You know, for Ukrainians, when they see those lines on the map is sort of the leading edge of Russia’s invasion.

And they know that behind that, for millions of Ukrainians who are living under oppression, they’re being raped and tortured and murdered and they don’t want to consign millions of their fellow citizens for that sort of barbaric occupation. And so it’s going to be really, really difficult for President Zelensky of Ukraine, as well as for many Ukrainian citizens to come to terms with Russia occupying any of their land. And you see recent polling puts Ukrainians national among civilians, their support for, you know, continuing the war until they get all their territory back, like well over 80%.

So, you know, it’s you know, the future of any war is really hard to predict because it’s contingent on so many things. But I would say, at least for the near term, we can expect to see Ukraine continuing to get back as much territory and liberate as many of its citizens as possible, while they enjoy the continued support of the West, because they probably understand that, you know, maybe that support won’t last forever and they need to try and win this war as quickly as they can.

BUCK: Nolan, where can people go to read your dispatches and your pieces from Ukraine, where you’ve been covering this war from the very beginning?

PETERSON: CoffeeOrDie.com. So, it’s the military news magazine run by Black Rifle Coffee and a lot of great, great reporters, a lot of them are veterans. So, yeah, it’s been a great privilege of mine to be there these past nine months and for the last eight years to report on this war. And yeah, as for some, as an American who lives in Ukraine. I’m so grateful because, you know, the American tax dollars saved my life giving the Ukrainians the ability to defend themselves in their capital city.

CLAY: Thanks, Nolan. We appreciate you and we’ll hopefully talk to you when you go back to Ukraine again. And again, that’s CoffeeOrDie.com, if you want to read his excerpts.