The Duran Podcast - Battle for Donbass coming to an end

Episode Date: July 24, 2024

Battle for Donbass coming to an end

All right, Alexander, let's do an update on the military situation in Ukraine. What is going on on the front lines? It definitely looks like the Ukraine military is collapsing. Now, what does this mean? What's the timeline for this collapse of the Ukraine military on the front lines? It's hard to predict. But all the indications are that things are going very badly for Ukraine across the entire front. and we are seeing some sort of a collapse or retreat from the Ukraine military in this conflict.

What is going on? I think that's exactly right. And I'm going to say something else. I think that there is still a huge amount of denial about this in the amongst the commentariat in the West, the ones who continue to support the continuation of the war. Some of the more sane amongst them, or at least realistic amongst them, like Julian Rehn. who writes for Bill Zayton are coming to exactly the same conclusion as the one that you've just given. He actually has posted a message in which he's actually said that the Ukrainian defences in Dombas are collapsing.

And that is exactly what is happening. We're seeing this happen right across the line of contact. The Russians are now taking positions and we're talking about heavily fortified positions. in place after place, location after location. And the Ukrainians are simply not resisting in the way that they once were. And what is happening is that the Russian advances are now isolating the three major towns, which are basically all that is left of Ukrainian-controlled Dombas, Two of them, of course, are Slaviansk Kramatosk, which is in the northern part of Dombas.

That was where, by the way, the uprising against the Mindana movement began in 2014. The Russians are now taking all of the places around or coming very close to doing so. Leman, Sivask, Chassev-Hir, we're getting reports every day now of Russian advances in all of those places. And, you know, once all of these places are taken, Kupyensk as well, Slaviansk Kramatosk look undefendable. There is no real hinterland behind them that the Ukrainians can use in order to establish an effective defense of these places, at least none that I can see. And the other third place is another town further west called Pakarovsk, which is the major supply base apparently that the Ukrainians develop in order to get their frontline troops in Dombas supplied.

And the Russians are now within about 20 kilometres of Bakrowski. Again, all of the fortified positions around Bakrowski are falling. You know, every day you hear another place, fortified line falling, a village, fortified village, falling and one gets to the sense that Ukrainian resistance where once it had been fierce is becoming token so we are I think now within sight of the battle for domb of the end of the battle for dombas dombas this major coal mining iron and steel heavy industry region in east Eastern Ukraine, which rebelled against the Ukrainian government after the Maidan coup in 2014, where the Donetsk and Lugans People's Republics were set up in 2014, which the Russians went

in to Ukraine in February 22 to protect. Anyway, this long, difficult battle for Donbass, very difficult place to capture. It's densely populated. The geography is bad. There's lots of rivers and canals and streams. The ground is apparently very soft. All of that kind of thing. Anyway, this place, this difficult, important battle looks like it's about to end. When the battle of Dombas ends, Ukrainian positions east of the Nipa River, including in places like Kharkov, become, undefendable and we will probably see a collapse in Dombas. My guess is by late summer, early autumn, and perhaps just possibly a overall collapse of the entire Ukrainian defence positions in eastern Ukraine, east of the Dnieper before the end of the year. That looks to me a potential, a possible

trajectory of events. I might be. be overstating things a little, but I don't think by very much. Okay, so CNN, they ran an article a couple of days ago, and they talked about how the Zelensky government faces a double whammy in terms of their difficulties with this conflict. The first one is the situation on the front lines, which you just outlined, CNN admitting that Russia is winning. That's basically what they admitted. Russia is winning. Russia is is advancing, taking village after village, and the Ukraine military is collapsing on the front lines. And they mentioned the second problem that the Zelensky regime faces, and that is a possible Trump presidency.

CNN claims that this is why Zelensky has started to talk about negotiations. What do you think the Zelensky administration has to do now, given that things are looking very bad on the front lines, very bad. Everyone is now admitting to it. Even though there are, I agree, there are certain analysts and publications that are trying to cope, but reality is reality. And in November, there is the very, very real possibility, probability that Trump will become president. And just one final thought, Alexander, Trump and J.D. Vance, they have not tapered down there. Their talk about getting peace in Ukraine, in Ukraine, solving the situation. As a matter of fact, Vance has gotten even more aggressive with

the foreign policy in relation to Ukraine and to Europe. Vance has basically said, I don't care about Europe. It's their problem. Ukraine is their problem. We need to deal with America. So the Zelensky government has not been able, even though he spoke with Donald Trump, Zelensky, they have not been able to get Donald Trump or J.D. Vance to tone down the rhetoric about solving the conflict in Ukraine, about finding a peaceful solution, about pulling out of Ukraine. It's actually had the opposite effect, I think. So what happens now? I agree with all of that. Can I just also add that Rick Ronell, who is some people think the likely pick for Secretary of State in a Trump administration. He has also made exactly the same points

as J.D. Vance has done. He had a meeting with various European officials. And he said, look, Ukraine is not a core interest of the United States. It's your problem. It's not ours. We've got other things to think about. You sort it out. And we've had other comments by people like Eldridge Colby, who also looks like he's a rising figure in the Trump team. Incidentally, interestingly enough, this time around, Donald Trump seems to be working to get an effective foreign policy team together, foreign policy and national security team together, before he becomes president. So we're not going to look towards improvising and coming up with all kinds of people that, you know, Rex Tillerson, who, you know, he didn't know before or anything of that kind, has happened the first time around.

Now, let's talk about Zelensky. The important thing to understand is that the military situation, the deterioration of the military situation, is irreversible. This Russian advance is going to continue, regardless of what the United States does. if we have a situation where in November Kamala Harris is elected president of the United States and announces her undying fealty in support for Zelensky, that's still not going to change the situation. The Russians are now definitely going to win this war. I think every objective analyst can see this. It's clear. The events that are evolving are not. of a sort that you can simply turn round. And in fact, we've had a flurry of articles, which are clearly planted articles, appearing across the Western media, the really interesting articles,

the important articles, which are telling us that the West cannot change the situation. We've had an article in Radio Liberty saying that the Europeans are nowhere close to achieving their artillery shell production targets. They're only producing a third of the shells that they said they would by the end of this year. We've had an article in Reuters that says the same about the United States that shell production in the United States

is in chaos, that again, it's probably reached a plateau at 36,000 rounds a month, which is nowhere near enough. and again, this isn't going to change any time soon. And we've had another article from Reuters, which I discussed yesterday in my program on my own channel, which is about Patriot missile production,

which is stuck at 500 missiles a year, which is again nowhere near enough. So this cannot change. Now, that means that for Zelensky, the worst outcome, if he's being honest with himself, being objective about things, he's the worst outcome for him and for Ukraine, or at least let's put aside Zelensky, for Ukraine, the worst outcome would be the election in November of a president, Kamala Harris, who says that she's going to provide unsteading.

stinting support to Ukraine, support that she cannot deliver on. The best outcome for Ukraine is the election of a Trump vans team, which is much more realistic and which might, if approached properly and intelligently, help the Ukrainians out of the mess that they're in, out of the hole that they've dug themselves in. to and find some mechanism or means for them to agree a peace with Russia which preserves Ukraine. So if Zelensky or the team around him were thinking about this rationally, that's what they would be thinking, except I don't think that is what they're thinking, unfortunately.

I think on the contrary. They're thrashing around. They are pretending to the Trump team that they want peace. I do think they really do. I think that they are talking about peace initiatives that they are completely insincere about. Because when you drill down and look at the actual statements that they are making, there is still no real glimmer of realism

there in any part of them. I think they still believe, they still imagine that there is some kind of magic formula that the United States can come up with, which will deliver them victory. They can't bring themselves to believe that the United States cannot prevail over Russia in what is after all the proxy war. And if Trump and Vance do win and end American, can aid, then I think that the Zelensky team and the people around Zelensky are probably already preparing the narrative of betrayal, which is that they, what they're going to fall back on and rely on when they set up their government in exile in London or wherever it is. So I think that's what they're going to do. But it is worth saying, again, that if,

you had a government in Kiev that really cared about the future of Ukraine, quietly, they would welcome the election of a Trump-Vance administration, which was realistic about what America can actually do and might work with the Russians and Ukraine to try to find a solution to this conflict, which, as I said, at least preserved some kind of Ukrainian state, probably west of the deeper. If you had a government that really cared about Ukraine, they would have enforced Minsk I, Minsk two. They would have not torn up the March 22 ceasefire agreement, and they would not have listened to Boris Johnson, and they definitely would not have listened to Biden and a Biden White House, but we don't have that. Elensky, his team, their very lives are tied into the war.

And I think that's a big problem. I mean, their own self-preservation is tied to the continuation of this war. The Europeans, the EU, their reputation and their power is tied into the war and tied into America's commitment to the war. Not only their power, but a lot of their money is tied into the United States' commitment to this war. And of course, you have NATO. NATO needs this war to continue. NATO needs to claim that they achieve some sort of victory in this war, because if they cannot

say this, well, NATO is useless. I believe Lavrov, he really said it best a couple of days ago, a week ago. when he said that what's really going on with NATO is that NATO has to achieve a victory in Ukraine, or at least say that they achieved the victory in Ukraine, because if they do not do this, well, then NATO member states are going to ask questions about how good of an investment NATO business, this business of NATO really is. Should I really allocate 3% of my budget to this alliance, which, when all this said and done, did not defeat the Russians in Ukraine.

So what do you think of what I've just said to close out the video? You're absolutely correct. And your point that you're making, actually, is that NATO, the Zelensky government, the other supporters of the war, are ultimately more concerned about imagery and narrative construction than they are about reality. So from their point of view,

if they can't achieve a victory in Ukraine, And I suspect that there are still some people who are deluded enough to think that they can, but that the majority no longer do. It's important to them not to negotiate because that would be an admission of defeat, which they can never accept, and an admission that this defeat was probably unavoidable, and was a defeat inflicted upon them by the Russians. What they need to do, or what they think they need to do instead, is to create a narrative of betrayal.

That is all the fault of J.D. Vance and Donald Trump, and Rick Grinnell and Eldridge Colby, they've come along, they've stolen victory from Ukraine. And in fact, if it had been otherwise, if there'd been all that support for Ukraine, that people had talked about if Ukraine had been given the F-16s and the attack and missiles back in 2022, then it would have won. So this, this is going to be the narrative that they're going to construct. And their priority now is to, is to create it. They're more concerned about that

than about anything else. Well, just to close out the video, the Trump White House, the Trump Whitehouse. The Trump campaign, I'm getting ahead of myself, the Trump campaign should not let them do this. Of course not. Of course not. Now, Trump is a good communicator with the American people, but the person who is particularly skilled at, you know, exploding all the myths here, is J.D. Vance. Just to say, though Colby and Grinnell have been pretty straightforward about it as well. The thing that supporters of the war in the West never address, they've never addressed it at any point during the war, is the fact that resources are finite. There isn't an indefinite number of Patriot missile interceptors or Abrams tanks or Bradley infantry fighting vehicles or artillery shells or any of the things that Ukraine would need in order to win. in the war. Ukraine does not have an infinite reserve of manpower that he can use to find. So this is,

this is what this is all about ultimately. It's about resources. There aren't the resources to beat the Russians. It is as simple as this. And well, obviously you have to address the lessons of that. You've got to work to try to get your defense plants and industrial base sorted. And perhaps a Trump vans administration might get round to doing that. But it won't be easy either because, of course, there are lots and lots of people in NATO, in the United States who are very happy with the way things are. Because as you've often said, this is a grift. The grift can only work if it continues in the way that it has been doing for so many years.

which is lots and lots of money for very little and sometimes for nothing at all. Yeah, absolutely. But the Trump team, they have to start now to get the message out that you don't try to pin this. This is the message that they have to get out. Don't try to pin the Ukraine collapse on us. This is all your fault. NATO, Biden, White House, Sullivan, Blinken, Ursula, you guys got in this. mess. You guys got us into this mess. They have to get that message out there because they're

definitely, I think you're right. Actually, we've said it in many videos over the past year. They're definitely going to try and pin the collapse on Ukraine on Trump. If we get to this point, and we've come to this point, we said in many videos, if we get to this point where things are looking favorable for a Trump election win and things are looking very bad for Ukraine, they're going to try and pin all of it on Trump. So he's got to get on top of this with the messaging. The truth. Absolutely.

He has to say the truth. The truth. One of the interesting things, by the way, about that Reuters article about artillery shell production in the United States is that he admitted that the problems that Ukraine is facing with shells are nothing to do with the delays by the Republicans in voting through that $61 billion. appropriation, that in fact, there just aren't enough shells. That is the problem. Now, that is the point that J.D. Vance was making right the way through. So he's got the facts on his side. And that always helps you in any argument. I mean, I should say that. I mean, I've seen this play out in many places in law, in academic work, and, of course, in politics. If the facts, are on your side, then however hard the other side tries to spend them, if you do your job

properly, you should always win. Yeah, well said, all right, we will end the video there. The durand.com. We are on Rumble, Odyssey, bitchie, telegram, rockfin, and Twitter X. And go to the Duran shop, pick up a limited edition t-shirt. You will find a link in the description box down below. Take care.