The Duran Podcast - Biden White House wants armistice in Ukraine

Episode Date: August 23, 2023

Biden White House wants armistice in Ukraine

All right, Alexander, let's do an update on the situation in Ukraine. We can talk about what is happening in Kupiansk, in the town of Sinkovka. We can talk about what is happening in the southern direction. Perhaps you may want to talk about Rabatino and what's going on there. And we have Zelensky traveling around various European countries trying to acquire Grypins, F-16s, S-400s, because he's got a new grain corridor where he says he can get grain to the countries that need it the most, which means the European Union. And then do we have, what else do we have? And do we have the collective West media?

They're putting out a lot of articles about how the situation on the front with the big counter-offensive look. very grim, even though they continue to tell us that it's a stalemate. It's grim, but it's a stalemate. What are your thoughts? Where should we begin? Well, let's talk about the situation on the battlefronts. And there's two basic places where things are going on. The first one, and I think the big one, is in the north, around Kupiansk. This is a town of about 25,000 people, at least before the war. It was the capital of the Russian-controlled territory in Harcath region, which the Russians occupied, captured in February 2022. They held Kupiansk and neighboring towns like Isium and Balaklea until September last year. And then last year, Ukraine launched a counter-offensive in this area, which we both very well

remember, in which Ukraine was able to capture these places very quickly over the space of about two weeks, though it must be said at the cost of heavy losses and against, nonetheless, relatively light Russian resistance. Well, the Russians are coming back and they are now apparently, I mean, there's been reports this morning from actual Russian officials that a village called Viksykofka has now been cleared of Ukrainian troops. They seem to be advancing on another place called Petro Pavlovka. Both of these, properly speaking,

looked like being sort of villages connected to Kupyansk itself. You might call them suburbs of Kupyansk. Ukrainians are trying to rush reinforcements to the area. However,

it seems the bridges. Kupiansk is on two sides of a small river, which is the Osgo River. The Ukrainian seem to be destroying the bridges that link the eastern part of Kupiansk on the east bank of the Osgole River from the West Bank. That suggests to me that they are considering now surrendering the eastern part of Kupiansk. And of course if they do surrender the eastern part of Kupiansk, then they have lost part of their gains from the autumn offensive of last year,

which is their one big victory, if you like, in this war up to now. And, of course, we don't know how far the Russians intend to push, how important this offensive is for them, what the Russians ultimately intend to do. But this is an important battle, and Ukraine seems to be losing it. So that's what's going on in the north. Now, in the south, Ukraine is basically at stalemate everywhere. except that they had been making a relentless attempt over the last couple of 24, 36 hours,

to capture this one village, Rabatino, which, to get an understanding of where it is, it is six kilometers away from Oreckhoff. O'Rejov is a town in this area, always been under Ukrainian control. It is the major gathering point of the Ukrainian forces. So in order to advance south, they've needed to capture Rabotino. They've been trying to capture Rabatino for two and a half months. Up to now, they failed to do so. They're basically throwing everything they got left to try to capture Rabotino.

The latest report suggests that they control around half the village, and it looks like at some point they will finally, have captured all of the village. The cost of doing so for Ukraine has been enormous. This is where most of those leopard two tanks, Bradley infantry fighting vehicles,

striker vehicles have been destroyed where thousands of Ukrainian soldiers have been killed. Just to capture this one small village and if they do capture the village, the big Russian fortified lines lie further ahead. But nonetheless, they will talk it up. 24th of August is Ukraine's Independence Day.

It looks as if they need a victory, so capturing Rabatino is the one. And the British media are heavily covering the story, and Ukraine's Defence Ministry is trying to do so as well. As I said, I don't think it is of any significance. It's a place which I think Ukraine expect, it to capture. In the first week of its counter-offensive, they've been trying to capture it for two and a half months. It looks like they're finally on the brink of doing it. But anyway, that's where we are. So that's where we are. A major Russian offensive in the north. If Kupiansk

falls, a very big blow for Ukraine. If Rabatino falls, well, it'll no doubt cause morale to flutter up a little, but I don't think it's of any great significance in the long term. Yeah, morale to go up so that they can continue to fight this conflict, even though all signs point to the fact that this is getting worse and worse for the Olensky regime and then for Ukraine as a whole. You mentioned to the 24th as a day where the U.S. Ukraine government and the collective West, they want to show some gains. Yes.

Being Ukraine independence celebrations. So, Rabatino is one of those, let's say, media PR victories that they're looking to relay back to the people of Ukraine and the collective West, because the collective West needs to show gains as well. And then you have the attempted acquisition of fighter jets. I think a lot of this is also just for Zelensky to go back to Ukraine and say that we've got fighter jets because I don't really see the F-16s getting to Ukraine any time soon. But Zelensky is going around to different countries and he's making it seem like he's getting contractual deliveries. for these fighter jets. And when he leaves the country, you know, like take, for example, Sweden, he leaves Sweden and then the Swedish government a day or two later says, yeah, we're not going to

provide Gripins to Ukraine. So, I mean, it seems like there's a lot of, it seems like the Zelensky regime is doing the best it can for the 24th so that it can, it can show a whole lot of progress to the people of Ukraine, so that they can continue to be invested in this conflict. And also, to try and show progress to the collective West as well, who they seem to be detaching from Project Ukraine, slowly, but they do seem to be detaching. You're completely correct. That's exactly what it is. He's also, by the way, as far as Zelensky's concerned, this tour of Europe, Sweden, Netherlands, who knows where else he's going to go.

It's also another opportunity, of course, for him to get out of Kiev. We've discussed before. He doesn't really like to be in Kiev very much nowadays. So he turns up in Sweden, as you correctly said, he talks about Gripen fighters. He says that negotiations are underway with the Swedes for Sweden to supply Gripen fighters. Now, the Gripen, as I understand it, is a good aircraft, a rather advanced aircraft. They're not that many of them. I mean, Sweden is not, you know, a huge military-industrial complex, like, say, the United States is.

but you know Sweden has sold some of these but you know this is a sophisticated aircraft there's no conceivable way that Sweden is going to be able to supply grip and fighter jets to Ukraine anytime quickly I mean we're talking if there was an agreement

tomorrow for Sweden to supply grip and fighter jets it would take years for them to be to arrive they need to be manufactured first because as the Swedish government has pointed out all the Gripins that Sweden has are serving in the Swedish Air Force.

They can't just hand over their entire Air Force to Ukraine and of course Ukraine would need years. Its pilots would need years to train to operate these aircraft. So, you know, he comes along, he makes these statements.

He must know that, you know, he's just plucking something out of the air. The Swedes wait until he's gone. And then, of course, they flasked. contradict him. And the same thing, by the way, happened in the Netherlands. He went to the Netherlands.

He announced grandly that the Netherlands is going to supply Ukraine with 42 fighter jets. And then, of course, the moment he's back is turned, the moment he's out of the picture, no lesser person than Mark Huta comes along and says, well, actually, we haven't yet decided how many F-16s we're really going to provide, because 42 is the sum total of what we've got, 24 in service and there's some others in store. These are, by the way, old F-16s. They need to be extensively refurbished, apparently, before they're sent to the front lines.

Not all of them are fully in operational condition. Training on the F-16s, Ukrainian pilots have only begun training, and they're not actually training in terms of flying these aircraft. They're still learning English, apparently, to get them to the level of being able to learn. how, you know, learn how to speak well enough to be able to undertake the actual training. And none of the infrastructure to operate these aircraft from Ukraine has been sorted out. Airstrips haven't yet been built. Infrastructure hasn't been built.

It seems the idea of operating them from Poland and Romania, at least of the moment, the US has gone cold on that and again it's unlikely that we'll be seeing any F-16s over Ukrainian skies before the summer of 2024 at the very earliest and I've heard that the total number of F-16s that Ukraine might get next year assuming that there's still a Ukraine to receive them

from the summer would be about 12 So, I mean, you know, the whole thing, as you absolutely rightly say, is all about morale, all about PR in Ukraine. It's about keeping morale high in Ukraine itself. We've had articles in the Washington Post about how morale is sagging in Ukraine. So they have to raise morale, and they're doing it with attempts to capture us. single village, Rabotino, and talking it up relentlessly, despite all the loss and all the cast. And we also see this whole whole story of the F-16s and the Gripens. And there's less reality to it than substance. Yeah. What do you think about a more cynical type of analysis with

all of this tour of Europe and this F-16, this Gripon fighter jet? procurement. Is this a military industrial complex play at getting Europe to upgrade to the F-35s? Well, of course it is. That's exactly what it is. I mean, that's partly the agenda. I mean, the Europeans, the Danes and the Swedes and the Dutch, sorry, are going to be getting rid of their F-16s anyway, so they have to get F-35s. So why not palm them off to Ukraine? So, I mean, that's partly, that's absolutely a part of the agenda. I mean, always money, business, commerce, all of that plays a big role. And the military industrial complex, particularly in the United States, is doing very well out of this war.

They're getting lots and lots and lots of contracts. They're absolutely drowning in money at the moment. What they're not producing in any significant quantities is increased arms. I mean, if we're looking at shell production, Shell production, which is perhaps the key thing, was 14,000 rounds of 155mm shells last year. They managed to increase that to 24,000, which given the resources that have been thrown into it, the financial resources, is not a big increase. So you can see that from the point of view of the military-industrial complexes is all working out very well, because what they're doing is they're getting normal. awful lot of money and they're not having to spend very much because they're not producing

weapons in greater quantities. They don't want to, I think, because from their point of view, they don't want to reinvest all of this money in production because if they did, they know the war will at some point end, so they'll be left with overcapacity, which they don't want. So it's a very good deal for them, the wall. Yeah, the manufacturing of the 155 is just not good business for the MIC at all. And I think they understand that this war is not going to turn out well for them. So why should they invest in an additional production for a side of this conflict that's not going to win? It doesn't make business sense for them.

So a better outcome for the military industrial complex is to send Zelensky to tour Europe up and to try and push, to continue to push the Netherlands and Denmark and Greece and other countries to upgrade to the F-35s as quickly as possible. I mean, it makes better sense for the MIC and Zeletsky's like their salesmen. That is kind of what it feels like, doesn't it? Yeah, it is. Exactly. Exactly. is a type of salesman trying to close deals. Yes. You know,

that's kind of the impression that I get. Anyone that's been in sales could see that Seleski is running around, trying to close contracts. And he's saying, we closed 42 planes. And the Netherlands is saying, well, not really. And then he's saying, no, no, no, 42 planes. And the Netherlands is like, well, maybe. And, you know, you can see he's trying to get the deal.

It has that feel to it. But what do you make of all the mainstream media articles, which are talking about the dissatisfaction with Zelensky and Zoluzni as to how they've been going about this big counteroffensive. The Financial Times, the Washington Post, the New York Times, I think they all ran articles talking about how they wargamed the counteroffensive, and they all knew that Ukraine was going to suffer catastrophic losses, but they figured that the Zelensky regime would just cover over those losses and continue to push. forward, they wrote about how there are officials in the Biden White House who are upset that the Zelensky regime dedicated resources to Bahmuth and didn't dedicate all of the resources in one direction, mainly Zaporoja. What do you make of all of these articles that have been appearing across the entire mainstream media over the last week? I would qualify that. They have been appearing across the U.S. mainstream media.

and it's been relentless. There's been one article after another. There's been a steady bombard of these articles, Washington Post, Forbes, the New York Times, all sorts of places. The FT. The FT, right. The FT is a very interesting article.

The WSJ. The FT, remember, is of all the British media publications, the one that is in some ways most closely linked to the US. And the point of it is, about that article in the EFTU. It's a very interesting article because it wasn't a stand-alone article. It was an article that actually referenced the articles which had appeared in the American media. In Britain, if you look at the Guardian or you look at the Daily Telegraph or you look at the Times, they have tended to try and keep away from this story about American

dissatisfaction with the course of the war. Now, I have to say, I think that partly a lot of is simply scapegoating the Ukrainians, saying, you know, the offensive hasn't turned out. Our wonderful plans haven't worked out. The reason they haven't worked out because the Ukrainians aren't doing what we told them to do. We didn't ask them to do something that was beyond their power. We didn't ask them to do something that was, you know,

made no logical or logical or military sense. It's because they are, frankly, they just didn't listen. They didn't listen to these wonderful, great plans that we've prepared for them. Now, the key thing to understand about the United States is that for the US, there is a particular political calendar at play, which is, of course, they have the election next year. And the Biden White House doesn't want a disaster in Ukraine next year. Now, all of these articles look where they're coming. They're coming in the Washington Post. They're coming in the New York Times.

they're coming in the Wall Street Journal, they're clearly coming from sources within the administration. The administration is softening up parts of the American media in preparation for, I am convinced of it, some kind of diplomatic initiative to try to end the war next year.

Now, what they want to do, and this is what I think, is that they don't want to concede, defeat to the Russians, obviously. They want to freeze the conflict and you know, on Korean or West German lines, we've talked about this many times, but they're talking about territory for peace and they're now threatening the Russians. So we've had people like Edward Lutvac talking about three million man Ukrainian army and we've had other suggestions from people like Senator Malinowski about if the Russians don't agree to what we're proposing

territory for peace, then we will get Ukraine next year to announce a unilateral ceasefire and automatically either bring it into NATO or bring it into some kind of security structure that will mean that the West will undertake to protect it. Now I think the Russians will see that as a bluff, I think, which by the way, is, I think the Russians will not be in the slightest bit impressed with any of that. But I think it's part of a negotiating strategy to try to bring the war to an end. What is the negotiation strategy outside of the freezing? I mean, is there anything else that you can see them working towards?

I mean, we've talked about West Germany. We've talked about the Korean idea, freezing, the conflict along those lines. but obviously that's not going to happen. Is there a plan B or C that they could try to implement in order to get the Russians to go along with some sort of ceasefire? The only thing they can do if this doesn't work, and as I said, this is a bluff that the Russians are certain to call. The only other thing that they can do,

because I think further military escalation by the United States, they're coming around to the view that that would be very dangerous, not just dangerous in terms of military consequences, but politically very dangerous for them in the United States. American opinion, public opinion, is now turning against the war. I mean, we now see significant majorities amongst Americans saying that the US has done enough to help Ukraine. It shouldn't be doing even more than what it is doing.

So I think they understand that they've gone as far as they reasonably can in what they've provided to Ukraine. So the only thing I think that they can realistically do is try to win over more countries around the world to pressure the Russians to try to agree to this ceasefire and to a piece on these terms. So there's going to be a diplomatic initiative, more attempts, you know, like the JEDA conference to get the Indians, Chinese and other people on side. Difficult to see what they can offer to the Indians and the Chinese and all these other people. But anyway, that's most likely what we're going to see. Threats, bluffs, they're not going to work. I think the Russians can see through them.

But the one thing that the administration is absolutely not prepared to do. And I think this is for them a red line. I mean, whatever happens, even at the risk of losing the election, The one thing they're not prepared to do, are not able to do, is to discuss the things that really concern the Russians, which are Russia's core concerns about Ukraine's membership of NATO and about the general security picture in Europe. Some European leaders might be willing to discuss that. The Austrian Chancellor has said that, you know, we do need to think about the security situation in Europe. We have to talk to the Russians about it.

But I think the current administration with its flock of neocons will never agree to that. Then it means we're heading towards a strategy, which is to just try and get this war extended to the elections. Exactly, exactly. Because they're not willing to concede any of the points that Russia really wants to discuss. It's, you know, let's just get this to November 2024, I guess, the default strategy. What they want is not a substantive negotiation with the Russians. What they want is a kind of armistice,

like the one that was negotiated in Korea, which is then perpetuated forever, allowing the remainder of Ukraine eventually to join NATO, like Germany did, but still claiming control of the west, the east rather of Germany. So they want to do that and wait for the day, when, as I said, Russia collapses, and in the meantime, they can build up Ukraine and continue

with their policies. Now, the Russians have already made it clear that is completely unacceptable. So, given that that is so, given that they're not prepared to engage the Russians in real negotiations, substantive negotiations, the only real alternative option they have is exactly what you said, to try somehow or other to keep the war going. until November 2024. And keep their fingers crossed, that, you know, if there is a big Russian offensive, it won't work and scrabble around,

go to places like Pakistan and Turkey and Egypt, try to find 155mm shells there, try to crank up reduction a little, try to perhaps do what some are suggesting, get Ukraine to move over to the defensive, something of that kind. All right. Any final thoughts to wrap up the video? I imagine that what's going to be very important, a quick thought for the Biden White House going forward is going to be managing the information flow, managing the media, so that they can keep the collective West public in the dark about what's happening in Ukraine and try to keep them as much as possible invested in Project Ukraine, even though, as you pointed out, the populations of the United States and much of the collective West there. they're losing their appetite for this conflict.

So I imagine media management is going to be very important. It is going to be enormously important. And as I said, all these articles that have been appearing in the Washington Post and the New York Times and all of these other places are examples of media management, which is what they're best at. And the other place that they need to worry now a lot about is Germany, where opinion is also now increasingly shifting against the wall. and where people like Schultz are getting heckled

when they start appearing in public and calling for more support for Ukraine. So this is going to be very, very difficult. But, you know, it's what they're best at. It's what they've always shown the greatest skill in. So, you know, the work on this, probably they'll find a way. You blame the Ukrainians to some extent. You blame the...

Some of the Allies. maybe, talk about the British having gone too far. I mean, you know, the British, remember Biden doesn't even like Britain very much, as I've discussed many times, but the British, it seems to me, have set themselves up as obvious scapegoats if anything really goes wrong. Yeah, I mean, you know, the elections are not that far away either. No. If you put yourself in their mindset, in their shoes, look, we're three months from November,

pretty much, we're three months from November. And then from there, it's one year until the election. So the way they're probably seeing it is, you know, we can, they're probably saying to themselves, we can do this. We can manage the conflict. We can manage the ammunition. We can manage the media. We can manage Zelensky and then figure out a way for him to stay in power. And we can manage the band of rights in the West.

And we can manage Poland and Duda. We can manage all of these things. And we'll get over the November 2024. finish line. The only thing they can't manage are the Russians and Putin. That's the one wild card that they can't manage. Exactly. That's the trouble. And, you know, they're trying this,

I think it's now increasingly clear that this diplomatic outreach, these so-called Tier 1.5 talks that we've been hearing so much about, I mean, the Russians are utterly dismissive about these, but it's increasingly looking as if these are now backed at some level by some elements within the administration. I mean, you've discussed it before.

There's the fanatical hardliners, Newland and Blinken, people like that. Apparently, according to Seymour Hirsch, Blinken is now also starting to have doubts. But there's those people who want to continue the war who still want to, you know, go on, escalating. They can't bring themselves to get off the escalation escalator. But then there's the others like Sullivan,

who are more concerned about the election. They have the election to win. The election is becoming increasingly problematic and difficult. We did a very powerful live stream with Robert Barnes, in which he outlined many of the economic problems, the way that the opinion is shifting against the administration in Washington. So they have to try and find some way through all of that, and they don't want the debacle in Ukraine,

and they're going to try whatever they can do to try to get these negotiations underway. And if not, they'll charity keep them war going. Because what else can they do? All right. We will leave it there. At the durand.orgas.com. We are on Rumble odyssey.

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