The Duran Podcast - Attrition war depletes Ukraine. Russia sends powerful SMO message

Episode Date: January 2, 2024

Attrition war depletes Ukraine. Russia sends powerful SMO message

All right, Alexander, let's do an update as to what is happening in the conflict in Ukraine. And let's start off with what is happening on the front lines. And I guess since we're going to talk about kind of a military update, we absolutely should talk about what happened in Belgorod, Dönetsk City, as well as the Russian strikes, which were really throughout Ukraine. And we also had Russian strikes, which I believe sent an interesting message that actually targeted the university where Bandera attended. And I think that that sends a very strong message to Ukraine and to the collective West. But let's just do a general update on the front lines. Then we can talk about the escalation in Belgorod, the city, and elsewhere.

Interesting situation on the front lines, because, of course, the Russians are on the offensive, pretty much everywhere now. They're advancing, they continue to advance enough to Africa. This is the most difficult battle. The Ukrainians are throwing every conceivable reserve that they have to try to. to hold the line in Avdavka. They've decided that this is the linchpin of their entire defence system. We see again quarrels between the Ukrainian leaders about what to do with Avdewka. We see Zoluzni saying that, you know, the Russians are going to capture it in two or three months, which may be true. It may be an optimistic. It may fall sooner. It may fall later. But the point is, if you tell soldiers

who are fighting to defend Abderafka, that this town is going to be captured eventually, then they're going to start wondering inevitably what it is that they're doing there. But anyway, that was Zalusely. That was the general. Zelensky, however, he actually traveled to Avdavka, or so we are told. I've now read inevitably some people who are wondering whether that video was really fixed. But, you know, I'm not going to get into this discussion. But anyway, Zelensky, by either going or pretending that he has gone to Avdhaevka, is on the contrary, signaling that of Derfka must be defended at all costs.

So we have, again, the conflict between Zalusini and Zelensky, very visible, once more. But anyway, they're trying to defend of D'EFka. And in spite of that, reports say that they're losing ground, but there it's slow. Everywhere else now, it's fast. It's fast in Bahmut, in the Bahmut area, where the Russians are now within two kilometres of Chassev Yard and have just apparently stormed and are in the process of capturing another village, Bogdanovka. It is fast in the Marinka area where they're advancing in all kinds of directions, all simultaneously, and they're in the process of capturing another important village, which is not on Mikhailovka. it is extremely fast in Zaporosia region, which is the place where the Ukrainians tried to launch their big offensive. All the indications are that the Ukrainians are gradually retreating there. And yet, in spite of the fact that the Russians are advancing everywhere, the Russian Ministry of Defense,

Gerasimov, Shoygu, Konoshenkov, the man who's the overall spokesman, still talk as if the Russians, are on the defensive. They're saying that we are defending, we're conducting an active defense. All that we're doing is expanding our areas of control. So my conclusion from this is that what we're seeing is not a true general Russian offensive. It is the Russians continuing to engage in attrition. I think they do intend to capture Chasafyar and Avdewka eventually. But I think their primary purpose at the moment is to prevent the Ukrainians getting any rest after their offensive. They're still hitting the Ukrainians continuously all the time and they're still conducting attrition. And the objective, I think, is to continue to weaken the Ukrainian army every day

day after day, they're hammering away, Americans who are familiar with their history will know that this was the strategy pursued by the Union armies during the American Civil War after General Ulysses Grant took command. In other words, a constant, relentless, daily war of attrition. And you can see the problems that this is causing for Ukraine. They're short of ammunition. They admit that. There's no sign that the West can do anything to replace that.

The Ukrainians are short of men. There's lots of arguments, quarrels, squawbles about calling up people. That hasn't been resolved either. Nobody really believes that this is going to make a big difference in the end because whatever men they call up, they don't have time to train them, and most of those men are not going to be particularly keen to fight. So it's a trition warfare, which the Russians are continuing. They're not giving the Ukrainians rest.

They kept advancing and attacking during the period of the Rasputitsa, the autumn, and they're doing the same during the winter. Okay, before we get to Belgorod, Donetsk City, the Russian missile and drone strikes throughout all of Ukraine, I just want to ask you a quick question. Since you're in the UK and you mentioned the fact that Ukraine and the collective West are not able to produce the ammunition and the weapons, is it true what the Times reported the other day, which is that the UK is essentially out of weapons? And now their main task is to go around Europe, actually to go around the world and to try and find either ammunition. or countries that can produce ammunition for Ukraine?

I mean, is this true that this is what the UK is now doing in order to keep Ukraine afloat? Yes. I mean, everything that I'm reading in the newspapers and everything that I'm hearing from people who perhaps know says the same thing. I mean, I don't want to give away information that I receive privately, but one particular person has told me that recently they had occasion

to visit one of the major arms depots of the British military, and he found it empty. Everything had been shipped off to Ukraine. We are functioning now at an absolute bare minimum. The Air Force is still there. It's still reasonably equipped. The Navy, of course, is not really participated in the war. But if you're talking about the army, the ground forces, We're down to about 40 tanks, and we've apparently given away pretty much all of our artillery,

or our self-propelled artillery, our shells, all of those things. And Germany is almost as much in a bad way as we are. So how do they keep, I mean, without the United States, how does the UK or Europe keep this thing going? They don't. They don't. They don't. I mean, everything that you're hearing about the, you know, Europe keeping going without the United States is moonshine. Everybody knows it. I mean, they pretend otherwise. There's all these talks and consultations and discussions, but the reality is it's moonshine. Without the United States, this whole operation ends. what we've discussed in previous programs is that if Congress doesn't authorise more funding, the administration wants the Europeans to go after Russian assets,

to seize to steal those Russian assets. But again, if they do seize those assets, which looks increasingly likely that they will, the money is going to go to the United States because what will happen is that the Europeans, the British, all of those people will have to place orders with American industry for more weapons because it's now absolutely clear they can't produce them themselves. Incredible. What a mess. Okay, so let's talk about the massive missile strikes and drone strikes by Russia throughout all of Ukraine over multiple days. The Russians actually hit the, as I mentioned in the opening of the video, they hit a university where Stepan Bandera attended. They also hit a museum, actually, of Raman Shukovic. You may want to get into these nasty characters because the collective West media is either washing away their history or it's just not reporting on this because I imagine it's very uncomfortable for them to report on this. And then you had the attacks on Belgorod, and you also had the attacks on New Year's on Donets

City. And Putin has actually come out with statements saying that Russia will indeed retaliate, but it is going to retaliate against military targets and not civilian infrastructure. So some interesting developments may be an escalation, but I imagine it. in the case of Russia, this is not going to be something that knocks them off course. They're going to continue to stay committed to the goals of the SMO. I imagine on Ukraine's side, all of this is connected to, to try to secure whatever money they can get for the United States. I imagine that's the ultimate purpose of everything that they're doing from here on out.

Yeah, let's start with the attacks on the university and all the museum, because of course, Bandera and Sushchukovic are two of the most notorious in Russia, in Poland, in Eastern Europe, plausibly in the world, figures from recent Ukrainian history. And of course, according to the current Ukrainian government, and its supporters principally in Western Ukraine, they're the two great heroic figures of modern Ukrainian nationalism. They were both, as you absolutely rightly say, people with sinister reputation. until very recently in the West as well. They were people who aligned Ukrainian nationalism with Germany during the Second World War,

whose forces carried out, and this is not disputed. I mean, this is not controversial history, carried out appalling war crimes and atrocities during the Second World War on behalf of the Germans with whom they were aligned. and it is deeply troubling, to put it mildly, that people in Ukraine continue to consider these people heroes, and as far as the Russians are concerned, indicative of the nature of the regime in Kiev. Now, the attack on these two buildings, which obviously in and of themselves, have no military significance, I think is intended to send two messages. First is a rather less important message.

The less important message is that Ukraine has been systematically demolishing every conceivable monument and symbol across Ukrainian territory that might in any way be connected with Russia. So they started with Lenin statues, then they moved on to Pushkin statues, then they moved on to every other conceivable statute that you can imagine the figures from Ukraine's previous history of connections to Russia. So the Russians have been obviously upset and annoyed about this and they're saying, look, if you're going to demolish monuments to these sort of people, people of our shared history, we're certainly not going to just sit back and let you put up more monuments,

museums and things like that to people like Shukovych and Bandera. But much more importantly, the thing that really is consequential is that it highlights the Russian objective in this war, which is that at the end of this conflict, the memory, the movements associated with these two people, Bandera and Shukovychevich must be once and forever purged from Ukraine. And Medvedev has just made yet another statement in which he says that, you know, the ending of people in Ukraine associated with this ideology, this neo-fascist ideology, must be once and for all concluded.

And that is an objective that Russia aims to achieve. in 2024. So there we go. So that is what this is. And it's a clear signal, both to Ukrainians and to the world in general, and of course, specifically to the collective West, that the Russian objectives set out at the start of the SMO are not only unchanged, but will be implemented in full. So I think that's an important thing to stress. These were not, you know, accidental strikes. They were very carefully calibrated strikes. And they do exactly, as he said, send a very, very powerful message. Now, about the missile and air strikes as themselves and the attack on Belgaron, I think we must make an immediate distinction because, of course,

the Ukrainian attacks on Belgarod are clearly reprisal attacks for the Russian missile offensive. Reprisal attacks in themselves, I've always felt a somewhat dubious things. But what the Ukrainians are doing is that they're attacking a Russian town, Belgarod. They were probably intending to attack Donette City anyway on New Year, which is what they do. These are indiscriminate attacks so far as I can see on civilians. And they reveal, again, to my mind, the weakness of Ukraine because they can't launch missile and drone strikes, remotely comparable to the ones that the Russians are able to launch. So it again shows the enormous discrepancy in military.

power between the two countries. But secondly, what it does is it again highlights the visceral feelings that drive so much of what Ukraine is doing, attacking civilians in Donetsk, attacking civilians in Belgarod, whilst also no doubt trying to make the Ukrainians themselves in some way feel that they're strong by hitting these places, whereas in reality, in reality, as I said, what it does is the opposite. It is a terrible mistake. It again solidifies the already overwhelming view within Russia, that this is a government, that this is a regime that cannot possibly be negotiated with,

that it can't be allowed to continue because it poses a permanent threat to Russians wherever it is. which is what Putin is saying. Yeah, a couple of quick questions. This has sealed the fate for Kharkiv, I imagine. Oh, I think so. Because according to the Russian military, this was operated. Hitting Belgarod was operated out of Harkiv. And then the Russians hit the hotel and with allegedly with mercenaries.

So Harkiv is... Absolutely. Personally, I have no doubt of that at all. I mean, I think that the Russians were already thinking about Kharkov for quite some time. But I think now, if you read commentaries in the Russian media, I mean, it's absolutely clear that Kharkov is now an absolute objective. I mean, the important thing to understand was that until the Soviet Union broke up, Harkov and Belgarot, which are neighboring cities, on either side of what is now the state border. But until the Soviet Union broke up,

They formed a single big, giant, economic, urban industrial conurbation. Now, since the Soviet Union broke up and since Putin came to power, Belgarod has improved economically, very considerably. Harcath has declined, but the two cities are so closely interconnected with each other that the Russians now say Belgarod will never be safe while Kharkov, which they consider to be a Russian city, remains under Russian control. So it makes economic sense for them to recreate this big industrial hub, an urban agglomeration, which is one of the great industrial powerhouses of the former Soviet Union and before that of the Tsarist Empire. So, I mean, it has always made that kind of sense. And the people who live in Kharkov are overwhelmingly Russians or Russian speakers,

and they were overwhelmingly opposed to the Maidan events of 2014. So, I mean, there is those sentiments. But now what Ukraine has done has demonstrated to the Russians that it simply can't remain under Ukraine control because Belgarod will never be safe. And I personally think that all ideas of buffer zones, involving Kharkov and all that. I think that's all gone now. I think that might have been an idea

that some people were floating, say, in the spring. But I think that today, with Ukraine on the ropes, were the Russians advancing everywhere and with Ukraine acting in this kind of way, I think the Russians have said enough enough, Harkov must be returned to Russia in some form. Right. Because the targets of Belgorod and Donets city, they offer no military strategic value, as you pointed out.

That's clear. This wasn't going to help Ukraine. Hitting these cities doesn't help Ukraine towards any type of a path to victory whatsoever. And because Ukraine is so low on weapons, why? Why is the collective West? This is the part that I'm thinking about is you have a U.S. general now in Kiev, who's supposedly running the show. He's managing everything now.

Why does he allow Ukraine to use up weapons and missiles that it doesn't have in order to hit targets that offer zero military value? Absolutely. Can I just make a point which needs to be made and always should be made with these kind of attacks, which is that, of course, if they have no military value, if you're attacking civilians for no definable military purpose, then you are committing war crimes. I mean, you know, it's a point which people tend to overlook. And of course, if we're talking about the attack on Belgarod, it apparently involved use of Czech supplied multiple launch rocket systems, which of course the collective West says that it provides

to Ukraine for its own defence and for use within the territory of 1991 Ukraine not to attack Russia. And yet nobody in the West seems to be bothered with these things. Now, I have found this whole behavior, first of the Ukrainians and then of the West, going along with these attacks, utterly baffling. I mean, I could use a much stronger word, but it makes no conceivable military sense. It makes no conceivable political sense either. And you would have thought that long ago the US and the West would have told Ukraine stop doing this, but they're not. And of course, as you rightly say, Ukraine is short of weapons, no, it's sort of shells, it's sort of missiles and rockets. And it's still preferring to expend these missiles and rockets

in what it looked like, essentially terror attacks on two cities, Belgarod and Donetsk. Donets, Ukraine claims, of course, is Ukrainians. So the people that is launching attacks on supposedly are Ukrainians. Belgarod is a civilian city. Again, no object of military significance appears to have been struck. Valuable equipment and ammunition is being expended to do that. The Russians say that two Haimars launchers were destroyed on the eve of the attack on Dornet city because they were deployed into the area. You would have thought that the Americans and the Western powers would be putting their foot down and would be saying, stop, don't do this. But it's the same story as we've seen with Ukraine all along. The Ukrainians do these things. They carry out

assassinations on Russian territory and nobody any longer denies this or questions that this is the case. The Ukrainians straightforwardly boast about it now. They plant bombs on. the Kirch Bridge. They do all of these things. And you get mumbled articles appearing every so often in the New York Times telling us about how the US disapproves. And then, of course, the US just goes on and allows Ukraine to do this. I don't understand why it happens. I don't understand what the thinking behind it is. And if it was intended to intimidate and frighten people in Russia. clearly isn't. If it's intending to divert Russian forces to defend these places, it's not doing that either, not in any way that changes the balance on the battlefields. All I can say is

that on Ukraine's side, it's clearly visceral, driven by anger and hatred and fear. What the calculus is in the West? I simply don't know. You said on the West side, the same. same driven by by fear and hate i mean is that i i i just can't make logic of it no you know there the west keeps on saying we're out of weapons or you know we need the husband our resources and you know this happens and just to add some more context um zolenski gave an interview to the economist and he's back at it again we're going to take out the kirch bridge that's our main objective our main objective is to isolate cremea so we need tourist missiles and we need uh longer range Chattakums and Storm Shadow.

I mean, it seems like nothing's, their strategy, nothing is changing in their mindset. No. And I'm not only talking about Ukraine. I'm talking the collective West as well. I mean, they seem like they're so stuck. Well, one gets the sense of a huge anger towards Russia and towards his president, President Putin, that seems to distort every decision that has been made. because, as you correctly said, these decisions make absolutely no sense.

They never have done. I mean, bear in mind, Donetsk has been shelled continuously since 2014. I can remember watching Ukrainian airstrikes on Lugansk City back in 2014, which, again, were clearly targeting what looked to me like civilian locations. We've had appalling speeches, first by President Poroshenko. And you can find those on YouTube, if you look hard enough. Appalling speeches by President Zelensky. And the West is just unconcerned.

I mean, they clearly want this to happen at some level. I mean, it's the only explanation I can come up with. And as I said, it's clearly driven by hatred and anger and fear because those are the only factors that explain why these things are done. You would think that with a U.S. general on the ground, you would imagine someone with experience, a rational person, I mean, a U.S. general in Kiev running the show, that this would have stopped. Well, indeed. And a general who, one would assume, understands war, but also who is somewhat less emotionally engaged than some of the Ukrainian commanders are. But no, apparently not. My own view about this.

My own view, can I just quickly say? I mean, my own view, I mean, the West has certainly known about these at shelling, these artillery strikes on Donnet City since 2014. And they've never objected to them. I think at some level they've approved of them. I mean, I can't explain the reasonable thinking about them. But I think that they've always had this deep anger against these people. I think it's a deep anger now that's starting.

to extend to Russians in general. And I think at some level that they, you know, they actually want these attacks to have. All right. We will leave it there. The durand.com. We are on Rumble, Odyssey, Bichshut, Telegram, Rock Finn, and Twitter X and go to the Duran shop.

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