The Duran Podcast - ATACMS, F16s, boots on the ground; Russian warnings ignored

Episode Date: May 31, 2024

ATACMS, F16s, boots on the ground; Russian warnings ignored

All right, Alexander, let's talk about the escalation in Ukraine. Let's talk about Putin's warning when he was in Uzbekistan for a two-day visit. And we have to talk about the New York Times article, which is basically signaling that Biden will give his okay for the use of American weapons to hit Russian territory, his permission for Ukraine. Ukraine to his Russia territory, as Putin said in this statement, in Uzbekistan, everyone knows that the U.S. is going to be providing the surveillance, targeting, maybe even the personnel to operate these weapons. So it's very much a U.S. attack on Russian territory. And I think that's the big story here.

Anyway, what are your thoughts on Putin's message and on the news that Biden is going to, it looks like Biden's going to move forward with. This has been the strongest message that Putin has ever given, and it is very, very clear, but I think it is important to understand, again, what the Russian red line is, because if you read what Putin said, and the Kremlin has provided a complete transcript, the weapons that he is concerned about, and the weapons that the Russians are concerned about, and what I have been saying, by the way, for the better part of a week now, is cruise missiles. There's the issue of border clashes of Ukraine using artillery and things like that along the border.

They've been doing that for well over a year, and that has not been a Russian red line. Missile strikes deep inside Russia using attack him's missiles or. storm shadows or tourist missiles, if they ever come, those are absolutely for the Russians. That is clearly a red line. And there's two reasons for this. Firstly, the missiles themselves, if they hit a target inside Russia, will do damage. I mean, they will do very significantly damage. And the kind of targets which Ukraine would be looking to strike with these missiles would presumably be power stations, energy facilities, you know, refineries, that kind of thing. In other words, kind of things which if you strike them with cruise missiles, there would be

very significant damage indeed. And if you're talking about a nuclear power plant, extremely significant damage. But the other point about cruise missiles is that they can only be operated, and this is what Putin went to great lengths to explain, they can only be operated through direct inputs by Western militaries. In other words, the Western militaries must provide the targeting data. They must equip the missiles to be used in a certain kind of way. They would be openly involved in launching strikes against Russia. And that Putin has said is absolutely unacceptable. The Russians would react, and he made it very clear how they would react. He talked about potential Russian counterstrikes

with missiles against targets in Europe. He again mentioned the possibility of the conflict going global with Russian attacks or potential attacks, presumably through. proxies against American bases right around the world. And he also said, you know, unending escalation. How would the United States respond if we counted against Western missile strikes on us, with Russian missile strikes on targets in Europe? How will the United States respond then, given that there is strategic nuclear parity between our countries, between Russia and the United States. So you said if you start going down this route of engaging us directly

by assisting the Ukraine to conduct missile strikes on our territory, then we are heading towards nuclear war. Now, what I take this New York Times article to say is something, slightly different, which is that I think the Americans are backing off from that idea of long-range missile strikes on Russia. I think it's more like the kind of thing that Macron was talking about in his press conference with Schultz, which is that you basically engage Russian units across the border. So if you're talking about military units that are stationed in Belgarod, Russian military units and those sort of things along the Russian border, then you allow the Ukrainians

to launch artillery strikes and rocket strikes against those forces. Now, that has already been going on for well over a year now. The Russians do not consider that a red line. And I've never said that it is one, by the way. They say that because, obviously, the United States and the Europeans are not in the same way directly involved. It is a very fine line, and it is still a very dangerous thing to do. But I suspect that is what NATO is going to decide at the next NATO meeting.

It's not going to make any significant difference to the war. And I suspect that the real thing, that the Russians were worried about deep missile strikes on their territory, for the moment has been shelved, but that idea is out there, it's floating around, and as night follows day,

despite this very, very strong warning from Putin, which has come now, I suspect sooner or later it will be revived. Okay, so the paragraph that you're referring to about Biden greenlining attacks into Russian territory, but having those attacks be confined to, to a perimeter, let's say, around the border, is this paragraph in the New York Times. Some of his advisors refusing to speak on the record about a debate inside the White House

say they believe a reversal if his position is inevitable. But if the president does change his view, it will most likely come with severe restrictions on how the Ukrainians could use American provided arms, limiting them to military targets just inside Russia's border that are involved. in attacks on Ukraine. So basically, the New York Times is saying that Biden was saying no attacks in Russian territories for the last two years. We're not a party to this war. You've heard that over and over again. So if Biden does change his position, which I do believe the New York Times is saying he will, he's going to change his position, but he's going to put these restrictions. And it's

only going to be attacks within a certain area around Ukraine, that targets within a certain area around Ukraine. But a lot can go wrong. This is the fear. A lot could go wrong here. And a lot of damage could be done to not only military targets, but civilian targets as well for which Putin is going to have to respond. The Russian government is going to have to respond.

One of the ways I think they will respond to this, and I want your thoughts just to finish off, one of the ways that I think they will respond to this with the Biden restrictions in place is that they can go after bridges or they can go after the electric grid, which is on the verge of collapse. None of this helps Ukraine. None of this helps the collective West. None of this helps Ukraine. None of this helps the collective West. They're doing more of the same because, of course, bear in mind, all of this has already

been happening. And of course, the Ukrainians have been doing this with the support of the United States. As we all know, so these restrictions which have existed have always been there. This in some respects regularizes what has already happened. But it's important to say it not only regularize it, it makes it possible to enlarge and expand it. Because you can now do it. openly in a way that perhaps you couldn't do it before, before you had to pretend that it wasn't Ukrainian troops, it was Russian dissidents and Belarusian dissidents and people like that. Now, you don't have to pretend about that anymore. And you can probably do it on a bigger scale than you have been doing it. You can launch rocket attacks on Pelgarod and you're no longer

embarrassed by saying that, you know, this is, you know, something that isn't really happening, even though, as I said, rocket attacks on Belgarod, attempts to strike at Kusk, all of those things have been in practice taking place for a long time. Now, the thing is, the Russians will react to this, and they already have done. The Harka operation is a reaction to cross-border strikes already by Ukraine. And the important thing to understand about the Khadouf operation is that already it was a disaster for Ukraine. This is a quiet area of the battlefront by Ukraine's own admission. They're short of men and ammunition and equipment. Their interest therefore was, one would assume, to keep a quiet area of the battlefront quiet. In the future, in the war,

Instead, they woke it up, they stirred it up, and we had more Russian troops, therefore, crossing the broader, and the fighting in Haddiv has reactivated, and it's causing a crisis for the Ukrainians right across the entire line of contact. Now, if the West launches shelling attacks or allows Ukraine to launch shelling attacks on Russian communities, and I absolutely agree with you, this is not going to just be limited to military targets. With Ukraine, it never is. It'll be civilian targets as well. Once that happens, then of course the Russians have been given carte launch now, the green light, if you will, to expand their operations further into Kharkov region, to deploy more forces. The Ukrainian Defence Minister says 300,000 men are gathering to do precisely that. That would be an overwhelming force.

I just don't know how Ukraine would respond to it if it were true. And you are absolutely right. The Russians can take further steps against Ukraine that go beyond what we've seen already. they can take out the bridges of the NEPA. They undoubtedly do possess that capability. They can also completely knock out the Ukrainian energy system, and they've now reached that point where they've done sufficient damage to it.

The Ukrainian Energy Authority has admitted that there are no thermal power stations operating any longer in Ukraine. The only electric power being generated in Ukraine comes from the nuclear power stations. All you have to do is for the Russians to knock out the connectors, which allow power from the nuclear power stations to be connected to other parts of the Ukrainian energy grid.

And Ukraine is completely out of power. You can supply some power from the West, but one gets the sense that with energy costs in Europe already spiraling, that would be a very expensive thing to do and a further drain on the European economy. So none of this is going to help Ukraine. It's going to make Ukraine's position worse. But again, remember, the pattern has consistently been throughout this conflict for the West to clamber onto this escalatory escalator.

It won't stop at this. the whole when it when it clearly and visibly is seen to fail what will happen is that the Ukrainians will come back they will say the reason it isn't working is because they can't attack targets deeper inside Russia they need help from the US and the Western powers to do that they'll start demanding permission to use attackans and Taurus and storm shadow missiles deeper inside Russia. There'll be the same kind of debate that we've seen many times and sooner or later

that permission will come and of course it'll be an enormous escalation. Putin has signalled clearly this is a Russian red line. I mean other Russian red lines, as we've discussed previously, have existed in the Western imagination. I've been saying that this is a red line for some time. Putin has now made that absolutely clear, but of course, even though it is a red line, I fully expect at some point the Western powers to end up doing this very thing. Putin, in his warning, spoke about other unending escalation. And that's what we've seen from them, even though every escalation

takes us up a more dangerous point and ends up making Ukraine's own situation worse. Yeah. No more Kirby telling the media or Blinken telling the media that the United States is not a party to this war, that that's over with. Well, that's right. Okay. So that's obvious. Well, they will go on saying it. Yeah, but they will say that they're giving weapons to Ukraine to defend itself. That they're not actually directly involved. These are not really any more American weapons. They're Ukrainian weapons.

But of course, that lie, because it is a lie, is becoming more threadbare by the day. And again, the Russians are in effect already pointing this out. They're pretending they're only helping Ukraine to defend itself. Everybody can see that this is a proxy war. The United States is now taking another step towards becoming directly involved. You know, not a step. I mean, it already is directly involved, but it's going to be even more openly, directly involved,

than it has been. And given that that is so, when the demand comes for attack him's missiles against nuclear power, in Russia, say the one in Kusk, well, there will be people who will say, well, the United States is already effectively involved. So why not do it as well? Because we're not really changing anything significant or substantial. And, you know, Putin, well, he has his red lines, but we all know he's bluffing. And that's, I predict, as night follows day, where we're going to end up. And the New York Times says as much it has a military analyst, a former military official,

who basically says that, actually, I'll just read it to you. Ukraine has a legitimate military need to weaken Russia's ability to wage war. This military official said striking its oil production facilities and power plants, the United States did the same thing in Germany and Japan during World War II. This analyst Jones, is his name, Mr. Jones, added that fears about Russian escalation, were overblown. There has not been blowback against other NATO countries such as the UK, whose weapons Ukraine is using to strike targets in Russia, he said. And Putin's threats of escalations since the war began happening. This is how they think. We've said this many times. This is how they

think that we've already crossed all of these red lines, imaginary red lines, red lines that they've created, but doesn't matter. They attribute them to Russia. And they now have internalized it that Russia created these lines. They actually believe that these are Russia's red lines now. And they talk themselves into more escalation because they say, well, we've already crossed X, Y, and Z red lines. So Russia doesn't just go and doing it. Let's keep on going.

Yeah, two observations. Go ahead. I mean, I agree with you. I mean, that's exactly what we wrote. Okay. Two observations. I think there's another thing I play here. And I think that that's Germany.

by the Biden White House now openly saying that they're going to give permission to Ukraine to use attack weapons, long-range missiles, to hit Russian territory, long-range missiles, which are going to be operated and have targeting and satellite from the United States. That removes Olaf Schultz's reason for not providing the tourist missiles. So really, Schultz, he has no more excuses as far as providing tourist missiles where his big reason, his big excuse for not providing the tourist missiles were, well, Germany would have to operate those missiles. They would have to provide the satellite, the targeting, the coordinates. We don't want to do that. That excuse is overworth now for all of Schultz.

The United States, France, the UK, they can really pressure Germany now into providing those tourist missiles. So that's the first thought. You want to answer that? I'll tell you my second. Well, go on to your second. Okay, my second observation is simple. If no accident happens and we don't get to the point where Russia, something happens to Russian territory and a power plant gets hit,

a civilian target gets hit, and we're talking about a lot of damage done to the target and a lot of lives lost. If we don't get there and the Russians successfully defend, so they don't have a need to hit, say, a military base in Poland, then I look at this latest escalation as a dangerous escalation, but it's, to me, it's a way to get to the next wonder weapon or the next escalation, which is the F-16s. If something terrible doesn't happen with this latest escalation, which is effectively permission, the escalation is permission.

Instead of an attack home's or a leopard tank or an Abrams tank, this latest wonder weapon is permission. That's the wonder weapon. We give you permission to hit Russian territory. If the Russian successfully defend against this wonder weapon, then what this does is it gets the collective west to the next wonder weapon escalation, which is the F-16, which everyone is saying will enter the conflict in September, October. timeframe. So this acts as a bridge in a way. It's an extremely dangerous bridge, but it does act as a bridge to get the collective West and the media to the F-16 narrative. But a number of things. I think if the United States starts permitting Ukraine to launch attack him's missile strikes on Russian positions, even just inside the border, then if I read Putin's words,

they are breaching Russia's red lines. I think, I think, because Putin is specifically talking about cruise missile strikes. Of course, if they do what this American military officer or military person is talking about, clearly he's from the MIC, clearly he's one of the neocon think tanks. And you're absolutely right. They've internalized the story that the United States crosses red lines and the Russians never react. We're in a war. I mean, that's a reaction. But I mean, you know, they don't ever think that. They never consider that possibility that this is indeed, that this has already led us into, this kind of thinking,

has already led us into an actual war in Ukraine. But as he, put that aside, if we get to that point, which, by the way, I believe we will, just to reiterate again, then a Russian red line is, reached, the Russians will react, and then we are in a very dangerous situation indeed, because how does the United States and what do the West do? And Putin is clearly talking about attacks on positions in Europe, and of course, as I've already said, he's hinting at attacks

further afield as well, right across the globe. He actually used the word, do they want a global conflict because that is what this situation threatens. And, you know, this is a very dangerous situation. It's incredible that people don't see to understand quite how dangerous it is. There are some people in Russia now, like Dimitri Suzlov, who is a member of a Russian think tank, who said that the time has come for Russia to actually, you know, even explode a nuclear bomb, just to remind everybody of the potential power that it does have. I don't think that's what the Russians will do, by the way.

But anyway, we are heading towards, we're heading towards that particular point. But as I read what the Americans are going to try and do for the moment, is that they're going to try and confine things to the kind of rocket attacks, artillery strikes, that kind of thing close to the border. and it won't make any difference. It won't work. Now, attacks on oil refiner is completely counterproductive for the United States already

because Russia has a gigantic oil industry. You can't possibly reproduce that across the vast territory of Russia. I doubt that would be a complete waste of valuable missiles to launch those kind of strikes. attacks on nuclear power stations, a completely different thing entirely. And that would be beyond dangerous. It would be incredibly dangerous indeed. And just to finish with Mr. Jones, he talks about launching attacks on energy facilities right across Russia, that kind of bombing and missile campaign, which is essentially what we just saw in that article in foreign affairs by Elliot Cohen and the

former Ukrainian defense minister. Well, for that to happen, Ukraine could only conduct something on that kind of scale with the direct involvement and participation of the United States. And that is what these people are in effect pulling us towards. They want, in effect, they're calling for, in effect, a war with Russia and they're They're saying, no danger. We can just go on doing it. We can attack Russian energy facilities, presumably right across the vast territory of the Russian Federation. And, you know, the Russians won't respond, which is a lunatic idea when you step back and think about what it means.

So, oh, you know, that's the first thing. But absolutely, it is absolutely coming to your. second point, a bridge towards further escalation. The United States and the Western powers, as they stare defeat in the face in Ukraine, have just gone one further step, in fact, not one further step, several further steps up the escalatory escalator. Again, Putin talks about unending escalation, and that was, again, what they've seemed to want to do. So yes, the S-16s are going to appear. The Swedes are now providing the only AWACs aircraft that they have, presumably to support the F-16s. That poses a number of questions in itself, because have the Ukrainians been trained

to use these aircraft? Presumably not. These are complicated aircraft to operate. Presumably they will have to be operated by Western personnel, just saying. They're going to be immediate targets for the Russians, priority targets for the Russians. Almost certainly these aircraft will be shot down. And then what? So you can see that we're moving up this escalatory escalator all the time. it's very extraordinary that nobody seems to be able in the West to grasp this or to understand the danger of the situation, this dangerous game that they're playing. And it's one, where you said previously,

it could very easily get out of control. I suggest it already has. I mean, policy is no longer being made in any strategic sense. I mean, the contrast, for example, with the way the superpowers, the Soviet Union and the United States acted during the Korean of Vietnam wars,

could not be starker. Yeah. Okay. Perhaps the only way that this ends is, you know, a lot of people make the argument that Putin has gone too slow. And perhaps the only way this ends is if this is if this finishes quickly, of course,

That's a huge risk for Russia, for the Russian military. But, you know, outside of finishing this conflict quickly, I don't see the escalation ending. I believe we're going to get to a point where the final decision is going to have to be made by the collective West, which is whether to introduce troops into Ukraine. And that's, and you know, I want to say that if we're lucky that an act, accident doesn't happen, a nuclear accident or a military base being hit either in Russia or in Eastern Europe. We're going to get to that point where they're going to have to decide if troops get sent to Ukraine. Something still tells me that Putin and his team will find a way

to keep this confined within Ukraine. So that's what my gut is telling me. No matter how much, Yeah, no matter how much they're provoked, they'll find a way to keep this confined to Ukraine. But it's going to be Ukraine that suffers a lot. None of this is going to help Ukraine, as he correctly said. I think that's exactly what they're going to do, because of course, from their point of view, they have no incentive to incentive to widen the war. And as we have seen, the Russians have absorbed every blow that's been thrown out them, and they've come back and they've grown stronger.

and I think that they won't do anything that is extreme and unprovoked, well, not extreme, anything that is disproportionate. I think they will always maintain a steady proportionate reaction. But you're talking about accelerating the war. I think the war is accelerating. And I think this is what is now driving this crisis. I mean, all of these actions, all of these decisions, are symptoms of the West knowing that the war is lost, sensing that the war is lost,

and looking desperately for some way to turn the situation round. These are not plans that a victorious strategy, you know, lead to a victory. They're desperate attempts to prevent a defeat that is now clearly looming over the the horizon and if you follow the as i say you follow the situation in the war as closely as i do because as we do you could see this you can see this every day that the ukrainians are suffering terrible losses and there's forces are being ground down and the russians are getting stronger and moving i mean it still appears incremental on the map but the reality is compared to the static front lines we had for about a year and a half, two years, they're moving faster now.

And they will move faster still. And they move faster. So just to end the video, the West is going to have to decide troops, boots on the ground or not? Well, I remain of the view that the ultimate thing that's going to affect Western policy making is political reactions. within the West itself. And this is where I think the boots are, this is, I mean, this is clearly where we're heading towards.

I mean, if you're involved in a conflict directly, which you would be, I mean, you know, the F-16s is one thing, missiles as something else. The attackers, by the way, it's worth pointing out, have not been a success. I mean, they've carried out,

they've done some damage, but nowhere near the amount of damage that I think that they were expected to. And the Russians have had no difficulty up to now. I say no difficulty. I'm sure it's been very difficult. But the Russians have been successfully shooting them down in large numbers. There was a missile strike just the night before we were doing this video. When the Ukrainians launched multiple, the Americans of the Ukrainians launched multiple attack

missiles against Crimea. And all of them were shot down. So, I mean, it's not proving a success. The Storm Shadow didn't turn out to be much of a success either in the end. So the F-16, even with these eight-wax aircraft, I'm sure it's not going to be much of a success either. So it will come to boots on the ground. And then the question is, how will European publics? It'll be many European troops who will go. How will European publics respond to that when they start to see their soldiers coming back in large numbers, in body bags?

I suspect that the political reaction will be very strong. Germany has already ditched, by the way, the idea of going for conscription. And I suspect that nervousness is already there. Yeah, the foreign minister of Hungary, Peter Sierto, he basically said the other day, no, you know, no, uh, Hungarians will be in Ukraine. Oh, I can fight this war. This is not our war, he said. This is not our war.

Absolutely. He also said something else, by the way, which is very interesting, which is that one of the latest foreign ministry, the foreign ministers, EU foreign ministers meeting, it ended in a complete shouting match. Apparently everybody was yelling at everybody else. A lot of the yelling was directed at him, obviously. But it seems there was an awful lot of yelling altogether. And I get the sense that behind the scenes, there's an awful lot of recrimination and anger. And I've been saying in several of my programs

that there is now strong undercurrent of panic growing. Across the West, especially in Europe, but amongst the neocons in the United States as well, as Project Ukraine is not only turning into a, disaster, but a massive geopolitical defeat, which they never expected. And panicky people, especially when they are these sorts of people, become increasingly desperate, and they do incredibly desperate and reckless things. And they're gambling. And they're gambling with the peace of Europe and with risks of nuclear war, which are just unthinkable. You know,

going back to Mr. Jones, he said, most unlikely that Putin will respond, you know, we can go ahead and do these things and the Russians will simply take it and accept it. When I did a program recently on his channel with Daniel Davis, who we are doing a program with as well, by the way. And the point which we both agreed about, remember, he's a military officer,

is that if there is a 1% chance, a 1% chance that the Russians are, are not bluffing, then that is too high a risk given the stakes. That was well understood during the Cold War. But with these people, the people we're talking about, it was a 100% chance. And Putin is now could not be more clear. I'm afraid they're so angry.

They're so full of panic. They're so full of frustration. that I think they would still say it was a bluff. They're so full of stupidity and misinformation. That's what they've been fed over the past, not two years, over the past, 10 years about Ukraine and Russia. Misinformation and stupidity to buy into that misinformation. The stupid belief that you could use Ukraine to get regime change in Russia.

stupid, completely stupid from the leaders of the collective West, completely dumb and stupid. Under normal circumstances, Alexander, in the real world, they would have been fired. All of them would have been fired if they had taken these types of decisions in a business scenario, all of them. And hold strong Hungary and Peter Ciarto because it's really the only country. that is trying to prevent the destruction of Europe. I mean, you know, can we use the word heroic for Hungary and for Peter Searto? I think in this case we can't because I imagine it's under a lot of pressure. Absolutely.

No question. Absolutely. There we are stupid. And obviously in a business setting, none of these people would survive. But look at them. None of them have been in a business setting. Which one of them had been? Jake Sullivan?

Jake Sullivan. Was he in a business? Was Tony Blinken in businesses? In anything? Was Biden in someone? Of course, he did have a business, but we know the kind of business that was. And you can apply the same to all of the others.

He would make 10%. He would make 10%. He would actually. He was in that kind of business. He must be said he was a very successful businessman. But it was a no risk business. That kind of business. All of the others, have any of them,

has Bearbock, has Harbeck, who apparently wrote children's stories, has any of them run a business, had any idea of that kind of thing, understood how you calculate risks and assess risks and make decisions around them? Has any of them had any idea of production and industry and factories and employing workers and employing employees and working with engineers and scientists and technicians? None of them has had anything, anything.

like that kind of background of experience at all. So that's why we are where we are. And of course, it's a political class, a caste, if you wish, which exists in the United States and in Europe self-perituating and self-generating. And what is terrifying is it's closed off all options and debates so that everything happens confined to itself. Well, to be fair, to close out the video, two points. We'll talk about Pavel and his artillery shells scheme in another video, because that shows that he has no understanding of business or the market. We'll talk about that fiasco in a separate video.

But just to close out this video, to be fair, Trudeau was a drama school teacher. And what else? He was a ski. I believe a ski instructor. I don't know. People in the comments will correct me down below. So he has been in the real world, right? Trudeau. Of course he has, yeah. Of course he has. Absolutely. I forgot all about that, actually. I mean, he's the example. I mean, he's the person that should all turn to for business advice. All right. We'll end the video there. The durand.orgas.orgas.com. We are in Rumble. Odyssey, bitch you, telegram, rock fin, and Twitter X, and go to the Duran shop. Use the code. Get Ready 15. and get 15% of merch. Take care.