CIA is Ready to Do For Ukraine what NATO Has Feared for Years

Putin is now considering a major escalation because his three-day special military operation is failing horribly. According to US intelligence, that escalation could come in the form of an attack against a NATO country. But if you ask a Kremlin official, he'll tell you that Putin may even be considering a tactical nuclear weapon to save his losing war. So this might be the real reason the CIA director secretly flew to Moscow to warn the Kremlin that don't even think about it. So, let's get into all of this. We have so much more information now about that meeting that we had just two days ago. In case you missed it, on Tuesday, CIA director John Ratcliffe made a secret trip straight to Moscow, spent around eight and a half hours on the ground, then got back on his plane and left. The reason this secret visit rang so many alarm bells was because the last time a CIA director went to Moscow was November 2021. That time, he was trying to convince Putin not to invade Ukraine. He told him that, hey, this would be a horrible, horrible idea for the Russian economy, for the Russian military, and of course, for the Kremlin itself. But I think we all know what happened next. Nonetheless, though, that visit was very, very important. So, when another CIA director goes straight to Putin's doorstep, everyone starts paying attention. Now, the most common speculation was that Putin is planning an attack against NATO. And we'll get to that speculation because the American side has kinda confirmed a lot more information than you would expect. But first, let's look at what the Kremlin officials are saying themselves. We actually have a rare interview where people close to the Kremlin talk to Bloomberg, an American news outlet, explaining exactly what Putin is thinking. So, I really want to show you guys what they talk about. According to this report, Russia is preparing to escalate attacks on Ukraine after concluding that negotiations for a peace deal have reached a dead end. That's according to three people who are close to the Kremlin and they, for some reason, spoke anonymously to Bloomberg. Now, keep that last detail in mind because that's important, based on what they're about to say. Anyways, according to them, Russia is weighing intensification of powerful conventional ballistic missile strikes on Kyiv, including the center of the capital plus infrastructure targets in other Ukrainian city. Now, this is something Putin himself actually confirmed on Russian national television just past weekend. So take a listen to what he said, especially when he's talking about Ukrainian strikes on Russia's Amazon, aka Wildberries and Ozone. Take a listen. The Kyiv regime has set itself the goal of damaging our economy. What has it done? It has opened this Pandora's box all by itself. Well, then you'll get a response targeting your most vulnerable economic sectors, which, to be honest, are already on their last legs. This, incidentally, also applies to agricultural production from the export of which the Kyiv regime receives its main income. The proposals being conveyed to us are sometimes, to put it mildly, strange and unacceptable. We are always ready for dialogue on peace, but only on the basis of the realities on the ground. On top of that, these Moscow officials also told Bloomberg something else. They said Moscow increasingly views the Ukrainian strikes, meaning the strikes on Russian infrastructure and refineries, as attacks by NATO states. And why is that? Well, that's because, according to Russia, NATO members are supplying Kyiv with weapons, and they're also supplying Kyiv with weapons, and they're also supplying Kyiv with intelligence. Now, this is where I do want to stop and explain something. Of course, no one's denying that NATO is helping Ukraine. But keep in mind, the exact same thing is happening on the other side too. Iran is supplying Russia with drone components. Iran actually helped Russia build drone factories inside of its own territory so Russia can keep producing more and more Sahel drones. On top of that, Iran is also supplying them with missiles. North Korea is supplying Russia with missiles. North Korea is also sending millions and millions of artillery to Ukraine. And now we have North Korean soldiers on Russian soil looking to enter this war. And North Korean soldiers are also the ones firing North Korean missiles into Ukraine. That means North Korean soldiers are targeting Ukrainian cities because Putin invited them into a European war. And of course, let's not forget China. China has been helping Russia circumvent all these sanctions. China has been helping Russia with satellite imagery. If it wasn't for Chinese satellites, Ukraine would have such a massive advantage compared to Russia. And of course, Russia's satellite imagery is not as detailed as you would like. This is something I just learned a few days ago, which is shocking. But let me really show you what I mean. Because it's crazy that we're not paying attention to this. So this is an example of a satellite imagery that a Russian satellite, the best Russian satellite can take. It operates at a 1.5 meter pixel. So each pixel in this image is around 1.5 meter of territory. So it's not bad, but you can clearly tell that this is not as detailed as you would like. Now, take a look at satellite imagery. This is a satellite that Ukraine has access to because they have access to American satellites, American government satellite, private company satellites. And of course, they can also access all the European satellites, whether it be private companies or official government satellites. That means Ukraine has a huge advantage. So Ukrainians can see this image. This is the exact same place just shot through in a resolution that an American satellite can see. An American satellite, the best one can go down to 30 centimeters per pixel. You can very clearly see how much more detailed this is. You can literally count them. You can even see how much more detailed this image is, and you can see how much more detailed it is. So you can see how much more detailed this image is. You can see how much more detailed it is. You can see how much more detailed this image is, and you can see how much more detailed this image is. So if you look at this image, you can see how much more detailed this image is, and you can see how much more detailed this image is, and you can see how much more detailed this image is. 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If he gets more of a support from the Russian people up for this war, then he can dedicate more resources to the war to hopefully turn the tide. That's his hope, at least. That's the plan. Now, Putin also believes that this might be an opportune time to try something like this because there's a shortfall in critical Western munitions caused by the Iran war. So he wants to take advantage of this opportunity that has been presented. Now, definitely something that a lot of people thought was the answer, was the reason behind the visit. But it's important to remember that this is just one explanation. Now, of course, this is just one explanation, and this is an explanation that everyone kind of expected. Even though no one knew what the meeting was about, everyone was saying this is the most likely one. Now, Russia was actually asked about this after this Wall Street Journal report came out. And take a look at what the Kremlin spokesperson says. This is Dmitry Peskov. Dmitry Peskov: Dmitry Peskov has said, citing US intelligence, that Russia could allegedly launch a limited assault on a NATO member state in the coming years. Today, the publication claims that the CIA director may have traveled to Moscow specifically to caution Russian authorities against such actions. Does Moscow view these publications as an attempt by the US administration to artificially hype up the Russian threat to justify expanding NATO defense budgets? And amid accusations of plotting an attack on NATO, does Russia believe the West has entirely failed to objectively perceive the updated Russian nuclear doctrine and its strategic deterrent value? Well, you've lumped everything into one basket here. Many such scare stories are currently being published. Of course, this has absolutely nothing to do with reality, nor does it reflect the intentions of the Russian Federation. The Russian Federation continues the special military operation. While it would prefer to attain its objectives through peaceful means, but lacking the opportunity to do so, it continues the special military operation to guarantee its security and interests amid the conflict surrounding Ukraine. Concurrently, the Russian Federation faces deeply aggressive policies directed against it by European states. And this aggression is originating precisely from European countries. Any assertions to the contrary are a distortion of reality and mere media hoaxes, nothing more. Now, of course, duh, he's going to deny it. Even if Russia wanted to do this, which, again, maybe there's a chance they don't want to do this, but even if they wanted to do it, it's not like Kremlin itself is going to come out and admit to it or give away their plans. And this is an important point because this is exactly what Russia did before they launched the 2022 invasion. Take a look at this example. This was Russian ambassador's message just two or four days before Putin's invasion. Putin launched his invasion and Russia was publicly saying that Russia has no plans to invade Ukraine and it's never going to do it. So even if they're going to do something like this right now, of course, we cannot expect the Russian spokesperson to just come out and admit it. But remember, that was just one explanation. There's another explanation that has come out from the New York Times. And that's also an interesting one. So let's take a look at that one. According to this report, the CIA director went to Moscow to share his bleak assessment of the state of Russia's war against Ukraine and to urge the Russian government to do something about it. He also urged Russia to urge Putin to cut a deal, basically saying, hey, negotiate before your military and economic situation gets even worse. Now, this is possible, but it does seem unlikely. That's because this is the kind of message the United States could have just emailed. You know how sometimes you hear that joke, hey, this meeting could have been an email. I feel like this meeting could have been an email. And this is where I want to go back to what happened in 2021 when we had then CIA director William Burns go to Moscow. And when he came back, we have so much time now, right? It's been like four years since it has passed. He has talked a lot about that meeting. And one of the goals of that meeting was to tell Russian officials and tell Putin that, hey, we know you have this plan. We know you're, you know, like, what is it? Concentrating troops on the border to invade Ukraine. And the goal was to let them know that, hey, we know all these plans and see how they react. He wanted to see how Russian officials react, how Putin reacts. Now, unfortunately, he never actually got the meeting with Putin and same with Radcliffe right now. He never got to meet Putin. He just met with Putin. He met with spy chiefs in Russia. So he met with, I think, the FSB chief and he met with SVR chief. SVR is like Russia's version of CIA. They just operate overseas. And FSB is like Russia's version of FBI. But not exactly because FSB also operates overseas. This is how, like, Putin keeps everyone in check where they have overlapping responsibilities. So no one has, like, complete control and can operate secretly. But nonetheless, that's a topic for a different video, how Putin stays in power. But nonetheless, the goal of the meeting is to tell Russia. Something that they're planning in secret and then to judge the reaction. Like, oh, how are they reacting, right? That's what they did in 2021. And I'm guessing that was the goal right now. So even though this is something they probably talked about, it's unlikely that just talking about Russia's bleak assessment is the only reason the CIA director went to the Kremlin because it was quite a major trip. First time since this war started, someone this high level went to Moscow directly. So definitely a big deal. And it just seems like this. This is too small of a news to share it face to face. There had to be more. And another part of this story that kind of doesn't make sense is that from Putin's point of view, he doesn't care about the military cost. He doesn't care about the economic cost. Only thing that he cares about is that his grip and power is still strong. And I'm guessing after the election that's about to take place in September, he's probably going to have more confidence that he has a good grip on the country and he's probably going to escalate, not because the Russian people actually support him strongly. But he's just going to have to deal with it. And he's going to have to deal with it. year and who knows where it goes from now. But anyways, let's get back to Trump. Trump was asked about this meeting and take a listen to his answer Now let's come back to that nuclear warning that Kremlin officials gave to Bloomberg at the start of this video because I promised you there Is a hole in the story and that hole is a big one It's China take a look at what China said just a month ago relating to this whole thing China again warns Russia not to use nuclear arms in Ukraine This came after Russia increased its nuclear saber rattling because of everything that was going wrong for Putin in 2026 and notice this is something that came out a month ago. This is something China has been telling Putin since like 2022 There's speculation that Xi Jinping when he learned about this invasion. He was very clear that hey China cannot support Russia if Russia resorts to nuclear weapon China just does not want to see that and Putin just does not have the ability to continue this war without China a nuclear weapon is not gonna change What's happening on the front lines? And again, that's not something that's coming from me We have talked to military officials former veterans on this channel and they say this I don't have any military experience, you know I'm not the right person to judge this but a tactical nuclear weapon is gonna be more of a message It's gonna deal a lot of damage, but it's not anything close to what we have seen in the past It's gonna be more of a message that Putin is not afraid to escalate But if Putin sends that kind of message, he's not gonna have the Chinese support to continue this war He's not gonna have the Chinese way of circumventing sanctions and that means he would have to stop this war and that's something he does Not want that's why he would use a nuclear weapon But if he does use it then he's gonna lose the one country that's been keeping him afloat all this time In fact, the Chinese pressure is so strong that now every time Putin brings up nuclear weapons Zelensky just makes a public video telling China to hey get your boy in order. Just get your boy under control That's what he basically says take a listen to what he just said on August 24th I think that was the Ukrainian Independence Day. So take a look when someone puts on a sailor's uniform and cap and Badly pronouncing some words talks about a nuclear strike China must respond must cool their ardor China must prove its ambition to be one of the world's leaders Not only economically and technologically But also as a civilization Making it clear that no dictators have the right to threaten the planet with their old warheads You know, the most shocking part of this story is that Ukraine just carried out its biggest counter-offensive Since 2023 it wiped out basically all the gains that Russia has made this year while losing hundreds of thousands of soldiers But no mainstream media outlet is actually reporting On this it doesn't matter which side you look at the New York Times is not reporting on this news at least not yet The Wall Street Journal is not reporting on it either. And then of course we have the other side We have Russian propaganda machine that's spending billions of dollars every single year to spread the lies that Putin wants everyone to believe This is exactly why we do what we do to cover the truth about Ukrainian bravery and fight back against Russian propaganda Now I will admit we don't have billions of dollars like Vladimir Putin, but we do have you guys Recently we launched basics insider. It's a way for you to support us and get bonus coverage in return You can become a member right now by clicking the join button down below or by going to basics insider calm now Let me tell you what you get for becoming a member because this is not just some kind of charity If you do become a member you're getting exclusive videos that we are uploading every single day that don't appear here on YouTube We go much deeper into the stories We cover spend more time on details that don't fit into those videos and of course best of all bring in Experienced military veterans like Chuck Favre to break down the frontline footage explain what's really happening and separate facts from propaganda It's really our uncensored extended coverage for people who want to understand these conflicts beyond the headlines And of course, I'll be honest your membership also helps us tremendously So if you like more in-depth analysis while helping us continue this work You can become a member by clicking the join button down below or by going to basics insider We would love to have you and best of all here's a segment from our exclusive video Where Chuck Favre is doing his regular breakdowns take a listen, but that's some good shooting man one shot You got that thing. These are what type of drones are these these are? Shahed knockoffs the Russians call them Garan's. Yeah, that's definitely Odessa right there So these are heavy bombers. Yeah, these these are these are carrying 500 pounds of c4. I mean that'll mess up a five-story building. Yeah, that's some good shooting I hadn't seen that. Yeah, there we go. Yak-52 absolutely Shooting out of that play. How fast is that plane going? It's probably going 90 miles an hour Maybe maybe a hundred, you know, you can lean into it. It's you know, I if I was a pilot I'd slow down I just want to close your rate on the airplane on the target But one thing I'll notice the guy in the the pilot stayed off a couple hundred yards, right? So that tells me he understands what the blast radius is and he knows the guy in the back can make the shot Two cool things right there. So these guys obviously work together. This was last week Russia pushed a bunch of armor in Yeah, I can set this up for a second Adam We got so one of the things that happens here is you constantly hear about Russian infiltration and they normally send two three four guys together and Every now and then about every four weeks they put together a larger Section and this was nine tanks a couple of APC's and about a company-sized element of infantry What happens now is the larger the element? Russia puts together the quicker Ukraine finds it and smothers it with drones and that's what happened here This is drove of Piliya, which is Which is north and east of Pokrovsk. Yeah, how's that? How's that porcupine armor working? So look at this tank look the vert They didn't even bother to put up any nets, right? Okay, we've got a fire in the vehicle Well, let's fire on the outside of the vehicle So so the Russian tanks they made a decision about 50 years ago to reduce the tank crew from four to three so driver gunner and Vehicle commander that allowed them to make smaller tanks that were lower to the ground that was there, you know, that was their idea But in order to do that, they have an automatic loader But it means the tank crew without blast walls and here's a guy rode a motor so he's gonna turn into an astronaut right now the tank crew is sitting on the Ammunition and not just the ammunition there are projectiles and then there are propellant bags So they're literally sitting on bags of gunpowder, which is why those tanks blow up So if you go back a little bit and you see that that that very unique Intersection they were at you always want to avoid those because they're very easy to find on a map So that wasn't just four streets coming together. It was like six there was a curve. It's easy to describe that on a map Communicate that location and send drones to do this so I think in every case where you see the vehicles are stopped they have probably abandoned them and 38% yeah, so that hatch is open there. That guy's already flown the coop you drive a hundred Russian vehicles into contact with the Ukrainians 38% of them get abandoned by the Russian crews and that number hasn't changed in the last three or four years So there we go again. You see this tank. It's sitting there, you know, it's not this guy is obviously still Manned, but they're gonna get promoted to astronaut right here, too So we've got a complete there's a grad missile rocket multiple launch rocket system We're seeing the reason why the Russians can't put large ground maneuver Warfare elements and deploy them forward this happens every time, you know Another one of the reasons why these vehicles aren't doing so well fuel is hard to get the system is so corrupt that if somebody gets 500 gallons of diesel they turn it into 600 gallons of diesel by pouring windex into it, right? So the fuel is adulterated. So when they send this this column of armor forward, how are they being resupplied? Are they even giving them more fuel? No, these guys are on kind of a one-way trip you know and the thing is these these Russian soldiers show up and with the exception of the guys driving the tank because they have To learn that these guys aren't soldiers. They're they're like total civilians and they don't realize they're they're being given absolutely suicidal orders they can't grasp that that entire Assault element is going to get wiped out in the course of 90 minutes two hours. So the other thing is yes So there's that there's that very conspicuous intersection. We were talking about you described that to me big old right road coming in from the Northeast it's got a big triangle line, but there it is eight-digit grid cordon and we're gonna see there's close-ups but most of the Russian vehicles are Getting engaged right there in that Intersection so important safety tip avoid anything conspicuous on the battlefield don't have 900 antennas Don't fly a flag. Don't put a feather in your hat Okay, here's some guys. Yeah, so that was mama's station wagon for some Person living in Donbass. They just stop you at a roadblock. They take your stuff You know, they'll take the groceries that are in your car and you walk tough tough luck So what do you think? probability is that this tank just ran out of gas and that's why they abandoned it I think it was it absolutely could be you know or the fuel was adulterated or just like i said they these guys you know got on the radio and said hey the tank has stopped or they didn't say anything and they just got out of the tank and if i was them i'd be under that tree right there i'd be curled up in fetal position holding on to the you know the root ball but like i said 38 so motivation is in the you know motivation is zero combat effectiveness is zero and you know this is simply the latest there was an event about a year ago in south of kupiansk according to russia's own parliament the kremlin's propaganda budget is set to jump by 54 next year they call it the ministry of truth and in 2026 it will spend 146 billion rubles or nearly two billion dollars the goal is to flood the internet with kremlin's narratives and you darey anything that dares to criticize vladimir putin including podcasts like this one we are already seeing this happen over the past month we have gotten dozens of one-star reviews all coming in the middle of the night minutes apart from each other almost like someone on the other side of the world is working on the clock but here's the truth we don't have billions like putin but we have you guys if you can just take five seconds to follow this show and leave a five star review it helps us fight back against russian bots and keep spreading what they are trying to hide every follow helps us reach more people who care about real stories so tap that follow button and join us thank you so much for your support and now let's get back to the show