The Ukraine Collapse Reality Check begins with Steve Bannon reading Putin’s warning to Europe, and Tej Gill laying out why the war has turned into a losing meat grinder the media refuses to show.
WATCH THE CLIP BELOW:
This clip aired on WarRoom’s evening show on December 2, 2025. Transcript begins below (lightly edited for clarity; may contain minor errors).
Tej Gill: Ukraine Is Losing a War of Attrition
STEVE BANNON (HOST): So, Tej Gill, I just want to read a couple of quotes here. I just gave you this specific, and he said even for Putin, this is hard.
President Vladimir Putin warned European powers on Tuesday that if they started a war with Russia, then Moscow was ready to fight and that the defeat of European powers would be so absolute that there would be no one left to even negotiate with. Almost four years into the war in Ukraine, the deadliest conflict in Europe since World War II, Russia has failed to conquer the country, a much smaller neighbor, which has been supported by European powers and the United States.
Ukraine and European powers have repeatedly warned that if Putin wins the Ukraine war, then he would attack a NATO member, a claim which Putin has repeatedly dismissed as nonsense. Asked by a reporter about remarks in the Russian media that Hungarian foreign minister Peter Zlerato had cautioned that Europe was preparing a war against Russia, Putin said that Russia did not want a war with Europe.
This is a quote from Putin. If Europe suddenly wants to start a war with us and starts it, Putin said, then it would end so swiftly for Europe that Russia would have no one left to negotiate with.
Putin used media on my GETTR account with Putin that showed the introductory meetings. I just said, hey, finally we are sitting down with the guys who won. They won on the ground without massive United States weapons sales, or actually giving them weapons on many occasions, without huge infusions of cash. The Ukrainian people would not be where they are today on the battlefield. The thing would be long over. But they have almost two million casualties, dead and wounded, and the country looks like Dresden in 1945.
Somebody has to become a realist there. And I am most disturbed by senior personnel. And you should note, Marco Rubio was not in Russia today. Just saying. It was Kushner and Witkoff who were there with Putin across the table.
And any of this loose talk, and it is loose talk, about us giving sovereignty guarantees to countries that have guys like Yermak running it. He is now virtually in hiding, if not under arrest, or heading to the front. Because they now caught him red handed with stealing. They say 100 million dollars, but we know it is billions.
So, Tej, you have dedicated a big part of your life to being a patriot and going to serve your country on foreign battlefields. Your assessment of Ukraine, particularly the situation where we are talking about security guarantees given the sovereignty, and you saw on Saturday the president and Holman and the guys finally decided to go into New York City. I knew they went in first at the very first days of the administration. But to have a show of force with ICE now that Mandami, the Ugandan Marxist, jihadist, is going to take over, they had an ICE.
And it was not one of these ones they plan on. It was just kind of ICE guys going down into New York City on a Saturday during the holiday season, during the Christmas season, the Saturday after Thanksgiving. And man, it was a riot. You had people throwing garbage cans at them. They freaked out. And I have to give a hat tip to the ICE agents for keeping their cool and just getting the job done.
But we do not have, this proves we do not have sovereignty. Nation, and now we do not control it.
Tej Gill, your thoughts and observations.
TEJ GILL (GUEST): All right. Where do I start? I will start with Putin. Putin is, he has basically crushed the Ukrainian military now for the last couple years. No matter how much money, how much technology, how much manpower Ukraine throws at this, Russia just keeps grinding them down. It is a meat grinder. It is a battle of attrition and Ukraine is losing.
Short range ballistic missiles that have conventional warheads on them, and there is no way we can shoot them down. There is no way Ukraine can shoot them down. And Europe just wants to keep this fight going and going and going.
Every time there is about to be a peace deal or peace negotiations, Zelensky does a crazy stunt. They bomb the Russian strategic bomber fleet. They send sea drones into the Russian tankers. They do something to sabotage it. They do not want peace no matter what. Because if there is peace, the spigot, the money spigot, gets turned off.
And you talk about ICE raids. Europe needs ICE raids. Europe needs to close their borders. If Europe wants to fight Russia, maybe they should start recruiting all these Muslim immigrants on the streets.
Europe has lost everything. There is no more Europe anymore. Europe is now an extension of Russia. That is where they live. They live in the meat grinder. They are going to just wear down the European troops.
STEVE BANNON (HOST): This is the tragedy of Ukraine. We said this on the eve of the war three years ago, almost three and a half, almost four years ago, I guess, that it is not about the courage and the valor of the Ukrainian people and their dedication. They know it is a meat grinder. It is one of the reasons the mothers and fathers have worked so hard to keep the young men out of it. It is the reason they now have 300 thousand deserters that they are now searching through the European capitals on. It is a meat grinder.
The Russian way of war when you go to the bloodlands is not fancy. It is not fancy. They have armor, they have artillery, and they have infantry. And they are indifferent to how much the infantry gets chewed up. The Ukrainians have seen that. And that is what is so amazing about them as a people.
But the reality is, you are just not going to beat the Russian army. And what is happening here is that more and more Ukrainians, I think the president said the other day, 25 thousand casualties between both sides a month. One of the bloodiest years of the war has been this year. It is not reported by the mainstream media. You do not see BBC and MSNBC. Remember the first six months of this war, every night they were there, you were seeing all kinds of footage. They do not show it anymore because the Ukrainians are getting pounded.
It is time to bring it to a close. But the Russians are going to dictate some terms here because they won on the battlefield. And if you do not believe it, they will keep going. They will keep pounding.
And like I said, they have not taken Odessa. Their performance has not exactly been, you know, startling. I do not see back when I was in the service and in the Pentagon, we had all the concern about the Red Army coming across the Fulda Gap and, of course, the North German Plain. I do not see that happening now with this army. Hell, they could not even take parts of Ukraine. I do not see them blowing through Poland and into Germany.
But the Europeans have to know they have to defend themselves. The point is, we cannot be giving security guarantees and sovereignty guarantees in a part of the world where you have guys like Yermak in these governments and Zelensky making decisions. That is an obligation of the American people.
That is an obligation of, look at these kids 10 years old today. In 7, 8, 9, 10 years, we could be backing some kind of corrupt Ukrainian government with these guys in Brussels that have basically turned their countries over to the Arabs and to the Muslims. And they are our partners.
Brussels is 30 percent Muslim. The Fifth Republic in France is about to fall because of finances. The UK has got nothing. They are going to have a civil war in the UK. Those are supposed to be our partners. They would be giving guarantees we depend upon. It will all be the United States. It will be our blood, our treasure.
And that is why it is outrageous. General Patton, General MacArthur, General Eisenhower, Field Marshal Montgomery. Everybody said even as crazy as Winston Churchill got about the Balkans, nobody would ever get involved in a war in World War II in the bloodlands. That was for the Russians and the Germans to pound it out. And trust me, it is the bloodiest battles in world history all took place in that general area. And the leaders of the American and allied forces kept us out.
We cannot be giving sovereignty guarantees to a bunch of crooks. That is what they are. Yermak is one of the great crooks out there.
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