CIA spy analyzes Vladimir Putin and the War in Ukraine | Andrew Bustamante and Lex Fridman 

At 9:48 you used the term "the whole world". Keep one thing in mind. "The whole World" is not NATO

Would love to see this guy come back on and reassess the situation

I'd love to hear how this guy feels about his predictions now.

It’s funny reading the comments after 1 year

It makes me so much more hopeful knowing now (3 months later) that the analysis was wrong in a lot of aspects.

The constant struggle between feelings and logic inside Lex's brain is fascinating.

"Ukraine is a pawn on the table" ... 100%

We have to bring this guy back, grab popcorn, and watch his "assessment" with him.

Lex: hearts and minds matter Spy: money and energy matter ✅

Can we bring this guy back and ask exactly the same questions now?

When are you going to interview Col Douglas McGregor or Scott Ritter?

Lex living in MSM, Putin living in Reality

Joe rogan: talks about DMT all day. Lex: Talks about Putin and Hitler every episode

“Hearts and minds are a luxury”…One of the realest things I’ve heard in a very long time!

It's so funny to read comments of people who heard this man talk about military strategy, then waited for like 3-6 months, didn't see the results and went ape shit , without realising that they mostly just have proven his point about not needing hearts and minds

THANK YOU for explaining about lend-lease used in wartime. Virtually no average person in the US is even aware of this!

It would be really interesting to see this conversation being had again 6months into the war and reflecting on how the ground has shifted.

Bro The entire WEST is giving Ukraine tons and tons and tons of weapons, also training and giving them intel 24/7

CIA spy would never say he's a CIA spy >.>

well this aged well

I like how he analyzes things and yet all his “assessments” and predictions are wrong….. I don’t know what to say 😂

Lex: so intelligent yet so naive…

The Russian invasion was a miscalculation in that Putin expected Ukraine to come to the negotiation table and give up the pursuit of NATO membership. However, Ukraine reacted irresponsibly and refused to sign a peace agreement with Russia in April 2022. To be fair, Boris Johnson convinced Zelensky not to sign the agreement and keep fighting.

Putin didn't miscalculate anything, you guys wrong 15 days calculation wrong from day one. Russia Putin never discuss 15 days with the west so the matter of 15 days is west program.

Odessa by fall is a very bold prediction which is nearly impossible

Anybody can win a war when you keep redefining what winning a war means.

Lex keep up the good work on the channel, you're my go to for so much information about things seldom discussed intelligently elsewhere.

Clear to see Lexi’s bias in regards to Ukraine’s dire situation. Emotion over logic. Sad situation.

People worldwide lost their "hearts and minds" the moment they ran out of toilet paper. God knows what those same people would do if it was food/gas/power at stake. It's most definitely a luxury for those who are at no risk themselves.

Despite his frequent use of the word "empirically,", Mr Bustamante's opinions might be more compelling if he actually understood the scale of the aid that the US has approved for Ukraine -- or if he understood how the "Lend Lease" program actually worked for the UK (and other countries such as Russia) during the Second World War. He claims broadly that the US is not committing much in terms of its wealth to Ukraine when that simply is not true - if you count all aid, humanitarian, administrative and military, just this year (according to Congressional Budget Office, et al.) it nearly amounts to a staggering .3% of the United States' GDP. In absolute dollars, the US has contributed more than double all of the aid provided by the rest of the world to Ukraine, combined. By domestic comparison, it has contributed in six months pretty close to what it spends on all public housing in the US for the entirety of 2022. And most of this is not part of a lend-lease program - most of it is just pure foreign grants-in-aid. One other way of putting the amount of aid that the US has so far allocated to Ukraine into perspective is to simply compare it to the size of Russia's total annual military spend. It is generally accepted that Russia has the fourth largest budget allocated to defense of any nation in the world (after the US, China and India); estimates for this year range from US$61 billion to US$65 billion. Through May of this year, the US had approved more than US$54 billion to Ukraine, and if you count all forms of aid expected to be allocated to Ukraine by year's end, that number is conservatively expected to be closer to US$60 billion by the end of 2022. So the US, alone, is providing aid to Ukraine that rivals that of Russia's full defense spending for the same year. Want a little more perspective on the United States' commitment to Ukraine? The US has committed to provide aid to Ukraine that will likely be in the same rough range as the 2022 military defense budgets of Israel, Turkey and Iran -- combined(!). Also, Mr Bustamante either doesn't know how lend-lease worked during WW II -- or he is being intentionally disingenuous. The US provided the UK via lend-lease over $30 billion in goods and services; however, it ultimately accepted repayment of only a bit more than $1 billion from the UK for these items, and that was paid back over time. So that means that the US discounted and made a complete gift of 95-97% of the lend-lease aid it provided to the UK. The US hardly 'drowned' the UK in debt. We stepped in and gave them (and other allies) what they needed during one of their darkest hours. Lend-lease was just Roosevelt's way of getting items to Churchill (and other leaders) quickly while skirting around budgetary objections in Congress via the fig leaf that the US would be paid back later. I honor Mr Bustamante's previous military and CIA service, but perhaps he should review the hard facts again on several of the opinions he offered. But if his other opinions on "Russia winning" are like his opinions about the nature and scale of US aid to Ukraine now, or to the UK during WWII, it is hard not to think that his opinions are based more on conjecture and personal opinion than anything "empirical."

Thanks for sharing 🤙

Do a follow up interview now

You can tell this guy is a former intelligence officer, his analysis has been proved to be completely wrong, with UKAF counter offensive. He says taking Odeca will be no destruction and street to street fighting, like Mari-U-pol, does he even realise what happened there, it was largely destroyed?

I love the contrast between Andrews perspective and the perspective of Lex. 30:17.

Very interesting and very informative conversation 👍 👏 👌

Come back and do another analysis at this time I think the situation now is totally f***** up in Ukraine but I would love to see this gentleman's analysis on the present situation

This didn't age well...

This is a dumb take. Lex is a saint for sitting through it so calmly.

Excellent analysis

Excellent interview, especially in light of the Tucker Putin interview. Can you schedule another interview to update your audience relative to the Putin interview in contrast to this interview and to assess where things may be headed. I wish I would’ve seen this before the Tucker, Putin interview. Thanks again. Keep up the good work and the dialogues open and going.

"There's no support from the West to Ukraine" How in the hell can someone say those words with a straight face? Whether you think the support is good or bad, denying it is simply an act of ignorance or dishonesty.

It's early October 2022. Just wanted to hear this guy comments on his prediction back in August that "by this fall Russia will take Odesa". Not exactly what is happening, is not it?

He is absolutely right!!!!! He has the absolutely right assessment!!!

Thank you , great interview. Everything he say makes sense , even after 1 year

This guys went from talking about things that he’s very well qualified about like spycraft and such, to saying Russia will take Odessa by November… I think he’s stepping outside of what he’s actually qualified to speculate on. I just don’t see that happening. Anyway, I’ll revisit in 3 months and hope I’m right.

This was such a good episode. Not unworthy for this “clip” to be 40 minutes long. Listening to Bustamante talk about the Mossad and even DGSE was a thrilling experience.

I would like to see revisit to this video from this span of time and developments.

" Peacefully left alone..." Andryusha, you're so adorable.

The CIA guy kept saying he had all these data points, seemed kind of vague about them to me though. Also I think pessimism may seem like critical thinking but I think it's a trap a lot of intellectuals fall into because it often seems like a negative outcome is a safer thing to bet on, whenever something good happens it's usually a surprise and no one saw it coming. I think many people have a tendency to magnify on the worst elements of our nature and overemphasis those traits, when in reality people are much more complicated and dynamic then that, and things can change very quickly and without warning.

This is a man from the same agency that lost to the Taliban

An excellent presentation

It's so interesting to watch 1 year after.

Haha, armchair military analyst gets it badly wrong! How unexpected 🤣🤣🤣

"War is a terrible thing. That is a quote..." - Andrew Bustamante 🤣

Very little if any of his predictions have come true. I'm not calling him dumb, i'm merely stating that there are more variables than any one human can compute. At the end of the day, the war of attrition stands as just that.

Thanks 🙏

The first question that I would like to ask is, what is the accuracy rate of the guest's data analysis of past conflicts? How many times has his analysis been correct?

The America on which we Americans, born before 1980, base our National pride on is so far past we cannot even see it in the rear-view mirror anymore.

Keep in mind, that this was his professional assessment, not random thoughts. Btw I think the decimation of the Black Sea Fleet probably played a role in the grain-deal, but Im not a CIA spy.

Lex.... you might want to search what's the Azov battalion, who's Bandera and check the comments Ukranian hosts were making in live national TV saying the people in Donbass should leave and that they were not Ukranian back before the Maidan, this is not new, if you check all that saying it's Na-zi it's not that far fetched.

This is a really great discussion!

With geniuses like this in our intelligence services what could go wrong?

❤ this interview

"I don't know how such deep corruption can yield such good results" Dude forgot what his high school teacher said: You got the right answer using the wrong premises

The certainty with which this man passes his opinions as fact is obnoxious

I’m 10 minutes into the clip and I feel like it’s already enough for me. 1) It’s funny how this dude is certain, that russians will take Odessa even though another large city divided by a big river(!) is on the way to Odessa. Furthermore, even after rapid advance through Kherson during the first days of invasion, when the roads towards Mykolaiv were free and the city was not fortified at all, the russians were not able to encircle it. And even after taking or encircling Mykolaiv russians would have faced a plenty obstacles on the way to Odessa (Southern Bug river crossing, for example) 2) Airborne/Amphibious assault on Odessa became impossible after the Moskva flagship sunk and russians being forced out of the Snake Island. Also, the Black Sea fleet became a lot more cautious with their maneuvers due to Ukraine getting armed with Harpoon missiles, etc. 3) Odessa had been bombed with cruise missiles (including residential areas and the port area recently), so they are clearly not interested in preserving the infrastructure and architecture there.

You are totally right 👍 answering and telling them the truth 🙏👍

I don't know a single German worried about the Russian gas issue...

Interview guy is like: "No way Putin can take control of the south, he would need to butcher countess civilians who will fight to the death. There would be a bajillion war crimes!" CIA guy is like: "Yes. And?"

Haven't watched the entire video, but the lend lease act doesn't put Ukraine into debt - If something is destroyed, it's automatically written off, after the war Ukraine can return all the equipment that is not destroyed OR they can buy it from USA, which is a lot different than putting a country into debt.

Watching this on 7/27/2023. Would Andrew call what he said a “slight miscalculation”?

Well this has aged like milk. Nice “assessment”.

I don't agree with most of what he says , hindsight is great as this was over a month ago but his assessment is way off the current reality

Great interview Lex. Pls consider inviting Col. Douglas McGregor for a more accurate perspective of how/when this war started.

Everything this guy said, in an incredibly self-assured way, didn't happen. Actually the exact opposite happened. Maybe he was simply kicked out from the CIA...

Well, this aged like milk

Odessa before the fall of this year? Lol

This aged well.

This didn't age well... Odessa is still free.

I don't understand what Bustamante is basing his assessment on. The Russian advance is pretty much a crawl, and this is without having to siege major cities such as Odessa. I do not see how they could conquer the south all the way up to and including Odessa in basically 2-3 months. Furthermore, Odessa itself is way better fortified than Mariupol. And by the way, the ONLY way Russians were able to take Mariupol was by essentially bombing it to the point where it's a smoldering ruin. If, as Bustamante says, they wouldn't use that strategy in Odessa then I truly don't see how he expects them to conquer the city. I also don't think the support given to Ukraine is NOTHING. I agree that the support could be much better, but it IS making a difference. Even the power to hit Russian bases, supply depots and so on at a distance behind the frontline is an amazing advantage to have. Not to mention whatever that hit in Crimea was, not even sure how Ukrainians accomplished that exactly but it looks like they took out a bunch of Russian airplanes on the ground. When Bustamante says there's no economic benefit to the West to support Ukraine I think he's extremely wrong. I get the argument about the US, a country sitting an ocean away from the conflict. However, if Putin is allowed to win in Ukraine he will not stop and proceed to exert military control over Moldova and, if necessary Belarus thus becoming considerably stronger and more dangerous over time. This would directly imperil EU member countries as they will now share a direct and large frontier with Russia as well as suffer the consequences of waves upon waves of refugees from all those battlefields.

Wow I need to watch the entire conversation now. I give Lex a lot of credit here, he got some very blunt information that is contrary to what he wants to hear and he didn't shut down or go into attack mode, he maintained his typical "probe with questions" approach, while admitting he wants a different outcome. I guess I should have expected this, but it reinforces what a great thinker and interviewer he is. And he lets us see his heart, without letting that get too in charge of his head. Great clip and I am heading to the full conversation now.

This aged like milk

Skepticism is the worst enemy of success.

I'm sorry but this guy present some incoherence between several points (the winning part: all depends on what the initial goals were. If they failed, there's no winning. If we just talk about territorial gains, in that case Russia wins, but does this mean Russia will be able to occuppy such a large portion of Ukraine ? I strongly doubt it if we look at what happened in the Donbass region after 2014. But anyway, this is not the end of story, the war is not over. The lend lease act during WWII was exponential as well, meaning slow at the beggining and fast and decisive at the end) and especially doesn't seem to understand what happened in the European Union since the invasion of Ukraine. The only way for Germany to be again supplied with fossil fuels from Russia is that Putin must win. This doesn't make sense. Although we can surely say that Germany was in the first place reluctant for many explainable reasons to not be able to fully supply Ukraine with military equipment, the only way Putin would be left to win, followed by negociations, would be a regime change in one of the major countries in the EU, in France it would be with the far right or far left taking the power; they are pro Putin. Or in Germany, with a collapse of the coalition. At this moment, after the many massacres in Ukraine, the way things are now it is quasi impossible to go backwards and talk to Putin like nothing happened to make an agreement and let Ukraine loose a large part of the country. And even in this case, except Russia of course, the only country that can really decide whether this war has to stop or not it is the USA. They are the only country to be able to supply Ukrain with such a large amount of military equipment. No other country can do that. This means that Germany will do what the USA tell them to do. And I can add, that still on the political level if one of the major western countries in the EU, had today the idea to make an arrangement with Putin in th back of Zelensky, I can tell you it would be the end of the EU, and therefore the end of german economic power. The east and west europeans within the EU would just break up on that point due to the history towards Russia of their respective countries.

Great historic minds and analysts have no clue how this can shape and don’t dare to through a prediction. Very, very bold statement.

Two years into this and Bustamante is 💯 RIGHT!!

Signing off to go to a channel where I actually respect somebody that I can see is knowledgeable

It appears that Andrew's "assessments and calculus" of the Ukraine invasion comes off too smelling of his personal political beliefs rather than actual empirical data that he keeps trying to claim he is going off of.

thank you for this podcast .. very informative ..

Update please

Look at him, he must be so proud of his assessments. He was a spy in a comedy movie nobody watched

This dude admitted he was wrong in the beginning, and now looking back he was wrong during this interview lol. Some expert.

Wow, turns out CIA guy was really bad about this analysis thing...

Thank you. Excellent interview….very objective.

Ukraine has severely crippled RU.

Watching this guy from the future kills the credibility of his assessment with every minute

6:48 Does he really think if Russia takes Ukraine the sanctions will be lifted? He is just so wrong on so many points it's unbelievable.

Yes

6 months on, we can now say that this spy wasn't a successful one....

Looks like his next assignment from the CIA handlers is to gather intel while working undercover at a surf shop.