The Duran Podcast - Bilateral summit, US coalition war and Russia

Episode Date: August 11, 2025

Bilateral summit, US coalition war and Russia

All right, Alexander, let's do an update on the summit that is going to be taking place in Alaska between U.S. President Trump and Russian President Vladimir Putin. What are your thoughts on the summit that is going to be taking place this Friday? A lot of anger and panic and pushback from the European Union, from the UK, from Ukraine, and also from the Collective West mainstream media. And I would say a lot of mixed messages coming out of the Trump White House as well. A lot of talk on territory. Actually, the entire focus is on territory.

And I think that's a mistake, actually, because there's a lot of issues that need to be discussed. But anyway, what are your thoughts as we head into the week of the beginning? meeting. It is a, just to come back to what you said, I mean, just limiting it to territory is a massive mistake. It completely misjudges the origins of the wall, which of course, it's taboo to talk about in the West, and they probably don't even talk about it very much with each other. But the reason for the war was NATO expansion. And the fact that Ukraine was drifting into a, it wasn't drifting. It had become heavily involved in a military alliance with the war. and that is what caused the war. That was what caused the original Maidan revolution of 2013-2014,

which to be clear was an extremely violent colour revolution, packed by the United States. It was what provoked the uprisings in Crimea and then in Dombas. It was what led to the war. It was what caused the Russian intervention. And if you follow closely the diplomacy in the weeks leading up to the start of the conflict itself between, well, April 2021 and February 2022, you could see again, NATO expansion was absolutely the center stage of the whole thing. And the fact that in the West there's been this constant continuous denial of this truth doesn't promise very well, I have to say, for the summit meeting on Friday. I mean, I think if Donald Trump thinks that he's simply going to come along and tell the Russians,

look, I don't want, I don't want Ukraine to join NATO, and, you know, that's not what's going to happen when I'm president. I think what he's going to discover is that that's not anywhere near enough of the Russians. I just want to say that because I think that's an important point that you've just made. And it's one that in all of the talk about territory, about territorial swaps, about all of that, this is getting massively overlooked. Now, in all other respects, everything that you said is absolutely true. There is panic, there is anger. I think there's bewilderment as well, because remember Zelensky, the Europeans, they were all looking forward to the announcement on the 8th of August. massive sanctions and tariffs against Russia. They were looking forward to attacks on Russia's

shadow fleet and all of that. And again, Trump takes us almost to that point. And then he retreats. He does really knows, I think, the implications of what it is that the Europeans and the neocons and people like that in the United States want him to do. He understands perhaps better than they do, what the effect of this is going to be on the U.S. and on the Western economies, and of course on his own political position. And he doesn't want to go there. But we had all that messaging from Trump, from the White House, from all of those people telling us that definitely tariffs were coming, sanctions were coming. We were seeing the United States sort of reverse its position on military supplies to Ukraine. They'd stop supplying them. And then they'd resupplying them. And then

they resumed supplying them and that there was this arrangement that the Europeans would buy them and all of that. So the Europeans, the Ukrainians, a week ago, were very confident about their position. And then suddenly they learned that Witgolf has gone to Moscow and the summit meeting with Putin is coming. The deadline on the 8th of August comes and goes. The sanctions aren't there. the tariffs aren't there. The United States is talking to Moscow again. And horror upon horror, Putin is, Trump is meeting Putin.

He's meeting Putin at the United States, in Alaska, and the Americans and the Russians are in direct negotiations. So you could see the panic. You could see the anger. It's not difficult to understand the reasons for it. But what then, of course, happens, and it is completely predictable, is there is this enormous reaction.

And the whole weekend is a repeat of this tiresome and ultimately totally destructive process whereby before any negotiation with the other side, the other side in this case be the Russians, but it might be the Iranians or it might be the Chinese or it might be someone else. the West starts to negotiate with itself. And we've seen a massive negotiation between the West,

the various parts of the West take place in advance of the summit. And it's explained that the West needs to come to a common position. Nobody really ever explains why the West needs to come to a common position. But it's taken as red that that's what they need to do. And of course, what also then inevitably happens is that common position ultimately reverts to being the previous established consensus position because agreeing to it is, you know, the easiest thing to do. We revert, if you like, to the common denominator. So we have a statement from the Europeans, no territory swaps, no surrenders of territory, a freeze of the conflict, an unconditional ceasefire along the existing front lines. The negotiations can then begin, but they can go on indefinitely. Security guarantees for Ukraine, which could include NATO membership. And that is, of course, the European position all along. It's the neocom position at the United States. And it's the proposal the Russians have already rejected. And of course, the administration itself,

which is far from united about this, there's the president himself who sort of seems to have some understanding that he's been manoeuvred into a very dangerous position for himself and for the West, somehow has, sometimes has these impulses to try to move outside this common denominated position. There are others, like his vice president, who clearly have a better understanding of this altogether, and he made some very interesting comments yesterday, which need to be decided and unpacked very, very carefully. You have Lindsay Graham, who also gave a very interesting interview yesterday, in which he swore his absolute loyalty and support to the president, and basically undermined the whole process, as we can also discuss.

And of course, we have the hardliners within the administration who are now busy trying to unpack the summit, to unravel it, to get Zelensky there in Alaska, after all, to organize the tripartite meeting to do all of the things that we were told just a few days ago weren't going to happen. So you could see the process play out and how it plays out. And again, until and unless the president puts his foot down and says to all of these people, the Europeans, he's hardliners within his own administration, the people in Congress, look, I am the president of the United States. This is what I judge to be in the national interest of the United States. I am going to make this deal with Russia. If the Ukrainians don't like it, they can lump it. If the Europeans don't like it, they can lump it.

They can go wherever they want. They can carry on the wall by themselves as far as I'm concerned. But until and unless the president does that, we're going to have this situation play out again and again and again. And that's what I think we saw over the weekend. Well, that's what Vance said pretty much. He pretty much said, look, we're done funding. Project Ukraine. If the Europeans want to buy weapons from us and deal with Project Ukraine, that's fine. But we're done funding Project Ukraine. So that's what he told Fox News, Maria

Barteromo. But the issue that the White House has, that Trump has, is that he's not really negotiating with the Europeans at all. He's negotiating with the neocons. The neocons put the Europeans forward and the Europeans, they whine and they cry and they panic. But it's really the neocons that are negotiating with the Trump White House. I probably wouldn't even use the word negotiating. They're dictating to Trump. And it's the neocons that are telling the president of the United States, no. Because the terms, the counterproposal that they presented to Vance when he was at Lammy's house or wherever he was over the weekend. I don't know how he lasted a whole weekend with Lammy, but anyway, that's another video

for another time. But, you know, that counterproposal is not really a counterproposal. It talks about reciprocal land exchanges and stuff. It was just nonsense. It was just basically the Europeans with the neocons in back of them saying, no, the war's going to continue. The war will continue. We don't care what Wickkoff and Putin talked about or what they discussed.

So, I mean, that's the essence of, I believe, the problem that the United States has and that the Trump White House has. That Trump maneuvered himself into is the fact that he cannot stand up to the neocons. Many people will argue he cannot stand up to the neocons because there's a part of him which wants approval. from the neocons. There's a part of him that is a neocon-conish. There's a part of his administration, a very close part, like Rubio and these people who are neocons. So, you know, until he can stand up to the neocons, the Europeans, who cares about the vassals, what the vassals say they're vassals. It doesn't matter what they say. Allensky's a puppet. Doesn't matter what he says. It's the neocons. And I'm not only talking about Congress. I'm not only talking about the Senate

or Lindsey Graham. You're talking about think tanks, you're talking about NGOs, you're talking about donors. They're everywhere in D.C. And they're telling Trump via the Europeans, via Zelensky, no way are you going to stop this war. That's what they're telling Trump. The fact that Vance, when he was speaking to Mario Barteromo, once again, tried to make it as if the United States is a mediator. And they're going to speak with Russia first, and then they're going to try to get a trilateral meeting with Ukraine. That's fiction, but Russia goes along with.

There's so many people upset with the fact that, you know, why is Russia talking to the United States when it's the United States that's at war with Russia via Ukraine? I think that's something that needs to be unpacked. But Russia is going along with the fiction of the U.S. as mediators, even though they are getting a bilateral meeting, which to me, if you cut through all the BS, indicates that this is a meeting between the two countries at war. It's the meeting between Russia and the United States. Those are the countries at war. Everyone else can describe it however they want, peace through strength, and Trump should get a Nobel Peace Prize at the U.S. is mediating. It's all spin. What the Russians

have accomplished is they managed to get a bilateral meeting between the two. two countries that are fighting, which is the United States of America and Russia. Anyway, your thoughts on what I said. And you also talked about unpacking what Vance said. I mentioned a little bit about his interview. You've provided a masterly summary, if I can say, because you've anticipated many of the points I wanted to make. And by the way, I completely agree.

Can I just steer with your point about the Russians and the Americans? The reason the Russians are talking to the Americans is because this is a war between American Russia. It's a proxy war. So it's described. I don't really think that is an adequate or proper term because- I think in the past you said it's more than a proxy war and you explained why it is a coalition war. It is a coalition war by the collective West, led by the United States against Russia. But you're absolutely right. It is the Americans who have been organizing, orchestrating this war. They've done it all along. We know they were even commanding the Ukrainian an army and drawing up its plans and that the real operational headquarters, which by the way,

I suspect is still the case, the real operational headquarters is not in Kiev. It's in Vizbaden and it's headed by American generals. So, I mean, of course, this is a war between Russia and the United States. And it's precisely because the United States is now losing that war that the Americans have finally come round to the need to talk to the Russians. And this is true not just now, but it's been true ever since Trump became president. He's at least recognized that. And it is because the Russians are in a war with the United States that they need to talk with the Americans.

The Russians have, if nothing else happens, if Putin comes, meets Trump in Alaska, They talk about all of these various plans and schemes and ideas, and they don't agree about anything, but they just meet and talk about those things. From a Russian point of view, that is already a big step forward, because it is the United States finally talking to Russia directly about this war, which the United States has been engaged in against Russia and which Russia is winning. From a Russian point of view, this summit in Alaska makes total sense if it is understood in that way, because if it is going to be ended through a negotiation, it has to be a negotiation between the principal parties who are not Russia and Ukraine, they are Russia and the United States. So that's the first thing to say. Now, about the neocons and the Europeans, to confirm what you said about the Europeans, simply doing what the neocons want them to do.

Well, you mentioned Lindsay Graham, and I watched this interview that he gave yesterday. I was fascinating because he admitted that he was talking to the Europeans all the time. He'd been talking to the Ukrainians. He'd been talking to all of the European leaders. He spoke about how he was on the phone to them. upon what basis does a US senator talk to the leaders and officials of all of these countries? I mean, he's a senator. He's encroaching on the president's prerogatives. Now, you know, there was a time when I used to listen to Lindsay Graham talking in this way

about all of these conversations he had and about how pleased they all were, you know, with J.D. Vance and, you know, Cheney Vance got the stamp of approval and how, you know, well, Trump is conducting this. It sounded like the schoolmaster giving out scorecards to Vance and Trump and to the Europeans. There was obvious who was really in control. It was Lindsay Graham talking to the Europeans and telling the Europeans and the Ukrainians what kind of position they should follow. And yes, he did float the possibility of territorial swaps, but of course, nobody takes that seriously. The whole idea is ridiculous, and we can forget it. So it was fascinating to see it in action.

He does it in a kind of clever way because he pretends that he is supportive of Trump and of this process. but in reality he's dictating the outcome. I mean, that was clearly what he was doing. And that's in a, I mean, go to the interview. You can easily find it. It's on YouTube as well, I believe. And you can watch it and it's all there. So no doubt about it.

None, none at all. Now, let's go now to Vance, who's the most interesting person because he, of course, has to maneuver very carefully. He's the vice president of the United States. States, he needs to be loyal to the President of the United States. He was Donald Trump. And I think that is absolutely the correct thing for him to be. I think people, again, misunderstand what a vice president's job is. If the vice president undermines the president, well, I mean, he can't, it is a crisis within the U.S. government, and that's not what Vance is trying to do. But you could see

that Vance is, at least or so it seemed to me, trying to steer this whole discussion back towards more rational ends. So he said, look, we are sick and tired of this war in the United States. We're not going to provide any more money to this war. If the Europeans want to buy weapons from us, they're free to do so. We've never said no. And that, by the way, it's an important point. People tend to overlook. The Europeans have always had the option of buying weapons. from the United States. In fact, the United States always sells them most of the weapons. They use about supplying weapons to Ukraine.

Well, the United States would have to agree to that because they are American weapons. But there's never been any real doubt that the United States would agree. So that's not really a concession from the American side. So Vance says this. He says the president is not guaranteeing the success of this process, but he thinks he has to make an effort and he has to go along and he has to meet with Putin,

but ultimately if it doesn't succeed, well, there we are. And I noticed that Vance also said he was asked, he's a very clever man. He was asked about sanctions, tariffs and all of the rest. He said, I'm not excluding it, not at all. We may very well do that, but there are a lot of other things in play in our dealings with these various countries, which we need to look into as well, and we can't just go straightforwardly and do it. So again, a very carefully modulated response from Vance, but you can see, I mean, it was clear

to me that he was the big, he is the big skeptic. I mean, this is my own view, that he is the big skeptic in this administration about whole process. He made that fairly clear when he was still a United States Senator, and nothing that he said yesterday made me think that his views of in any way it changed. No, I think it's clear that you have the Vance Whitkoff wing of things, and then you have the Kellogg, Lindsay Graham, Neocon side of things. And there's no doubt that the Neocon side is much bigger, much more entrenched, much more powerful, has much more influence than than Vance, Whitkoff, and whatever other people are in the Trump administration that do want

to see some sort of end to the conflict or at least want to see the United States out of the Ukraine game, right? I think that's a small group of people, while the neocons side is massive. It's just a massive group of people with a tremendous amount of money and influence. I quickly say one thing about that. You're absolutely right. the American political establishment. The people who want to end the war are a very, very small group of people.

I mean, the American establishment overall is, I mean, they are completely hostile to what Trump, what the administration, what these people are trying to do. They want the war to continue. They still have, they still harbor plans to defeat Russia. No question about this. Within American society overall, the balance changes. And here, by the way, I just want to make one important point. I think one of the great problems is that the president, Donald Trump, has underestimated

the strength of his original political position. If he'd come in January and February, March and April and said, look, this has gone far too far. This doesn't make any kind of sense. I am going to end U.S. involvement in this war now. That was what I'm elected to do. The majority of the American people support me in this. I think he could have done it. I think perhaps he still can do it.

But he doesn't believe that himself. He's very awed and intimidated by all of these people, the American establishment altogether. and what he is doing by being frightened of them and going along with them is that, of course, he's undermining the strength of his own position. He's actually weakening it over time, because the more concessions you make to this group, the stronger they become, the weaker you are. And just to go back to Trump, and we don't really need to discuss this in detail, does he have a neocon side? absolutely. Does he share many of their preconceptions? Of course he does. No question about this too.

He himself at some level is conflicted. But I do believe that he also has another side which draws him more towards the Vance Wickoff view of things. Because as a businessman, he could see that this is a losing proposition. It doesn't. make sense. It's the sunk costs fallacy taken to its ultimate point. And that's, I think, where the divisions within Trump are. There's a real politics side to Trump. I absolutely agree with you on that. The problem is that he always sides with the neocod part of things. At least that's what we've seen over the past six months. And look at where it's brought him. It's gotten him nothing. And here he is with one more chance to take Putin's June 2024 off ramp.

Yes. But what he needs to do is, I agree with you, he needs to take it. He needs to take this off ramp, forget about the Europeans, forget about Zelensky, finally stand up to the neocons and get support from the American people. You know, he posts all kinds of dumb, ridiculous nonsense. on truth social all the time. Maybe he should post something on truth where he tells the American people exactly what you said. I'm out of the Ukraine war. I'm out of the Ukraine business. It was a bad idea. We should have never started. And he needs to say that. We as the United States should

have never started it. We should have never provoked it. And we need to get out of this. Yes. And that's what I'm doing. And I need your support. And he should say it, I need your support. That's what he should say. Anyway, the issue of territory, so we can begin to wrap up this video, everyone is talking about territory, the Wall Street Journal, Bloomberg, CNN, they're writing all kinds of articles, citing anonymous officials familiar with the details. Anyway, about the plans to swap territory, the plans to freeze the conflict in place, Putin's plans to capture all the oblasts and more. Everyone has their ideas and their thoughts

about what's going to be the agreement on territory. I personally believe that it's going to be Istanbul Plus. I don't think Putin is going to be able to retreat from that position. Even if he may want to make a deal with the United States, it's in the Russian Constitution. I think Putin's presidency would be in serious jeopardy if he agreed to some sort of a freeze on the current contact line or some sort of a swap with Donetsky and Lugansk and swap Zaparosia. I mean, there's all kinds of ideas and speculation going around. I can't see anything else but Istanbul plus June 2024. But there's a lot more on the table that needs to be discussed.

There's no NATO. There's no EU. I think it would be a big mistake to agree to Ukraine going into the EU because the EU and NATO is pretty much the same thing. There's no more weapons to Ukraine. There's elections. Perhaps Putin and Trump discussed dissolving the SBU and the intel agencies and the CIA presence and the NGOs and all of these things.

in Ukraine, dissolving this Germany headquarters, dissolving the weapons flow from, and the weapons flow from Poland and from Romania and from Greece. All these things need to be discussed. And while the focus is on territory, because that's what they're fighting over right now, I mean, it's a war of attrition, but everyone is always concerned about the territory and who's gaining what. There's another way that you can, that you can win the, the, the conflict and the war, and that's dealing with the diplomacy, with the presence of the Intel agencies and the U.S. intel agencies in Ukraine and the U.S. influence in NGOs and the puppet leadership in Kiev and all of these things can be rooted out of Project Ukraine. And that could take

Russia one step closer, actually very close to accomplishing the SML goals, which were demilitarization and denazification. Indeed. Putin made a very interesting point a couple of days ago at the Valar Monastery where he was and he was asked about this and he said, look, our position is the same. This is last week. Our position is the same as what we set out at the foreign ministry on the foreign ministry on the 14th of June, 2024. We're not retreating from that. But these are not just conditions. They are

gulls. He actually used exactly the word that you have used now. And of course, if you go back to the speech he made to the foreign ministry on the 14th of June 2024, which I did. I was reading it with great interest over the weekend, by the way. You will find every single point that you've just made there. It's all, it's all clearly and fully set out. Some things may be less so, the Vizbard headquarters, for example. I mean, I'm sure the Russians knew about it then, but he talked, he went into enormous detail about the history of the conflict, the role of the United States in it, the role of NATO in it, the part the Europeans are playing, it's scathing things to say about the Europeans, who again, he referred to as very, very, he referred to as very

in exactly the way that you have done. And he set it all out. And he said, these are the objectives that we have and which we must achieve. He said this clearly. So absolutely, when he sits down with Trump, he's going to bring all of this up. And I think that's another reason why he wants to meet with Trump. Because, of course, over the course of telephone calls, it's difficult maybe to convey this. properly to Trump.

Or at least that's what Putin probably thinks. And he's probably anyway also very frustrated that he's talking to Trump through Whitgolf. And Whitgolf has never been, oh, he's an intermediary. I mean, it's not the same as speaking to the person himself about the fact that we spend too much time talking about territory. Though, I mean, territory is important. I mean, Putin is saying the four oblasts are Russian. He's not equivocating about this and never has done.

I mean, you mentioned before, even if Putin wanted to make those concessions, it would be very difficult for him to achieve, to get Russia as a whole to agree to that. You're absolutely right about this. But Putin has never shown the slightest desire to make those kind of concessions anyway. But anyway, put that aside, you're quite right. There are all of these other things, NATO membership, CIA presence in Ukraine, the nationalist forces in Ukraine, the bandar rights and all of those people, demilitarization, denuclearization, elections, NATO obviously, EU, the issue of the EU, also, the Russians have been steadily shifting their position on. EU membership as well, where they supported it in 2022. More and more Russian officials are now speaking out against it, including the Vedif and

Lavrov, just a second. So all of these things Putin will want to discuss. The reason we spend so much time talking about territory is partly because that's what the West wants us to do. They always made this out as a territorial land grab. why Putin would want territory when Russia is the biggest country in the world, I really can't understand. But anyway, they make it out in that way.

But also, of course, inevitably, because we said spend so much time talking about the various details of the war that it's very easy to think that, you know, the war is being fought over Pachrovsk and who controls Pachrovsk, where, of course, Pachovsk is itself only a means to an end, which is the achievement of the objectives, the goals, to use Putin's word, of the SMO. Yeah, it's the goals of the SMO, exactly. Do you think that many things have already been pre-agreed? No. I mean, I don't see how, actually. At what level could they have been pre-agreed? some things might have been, I mean, there has been a lot of talk about... Maybe contours of pre-agreement between Lavrov and Rubio then, maybe?

Well, maybe what the might be is a framework agreement about the sort of topics that need to be addressed and looked at. And that, obviously, I think that probably is happening. But about the details of the settlement, I think we're as far away from that as ever. And the fact that we've had this enormous towing backwards and forwards between the Europeans, the Americans and the Americans and themselves and all of that over the weekend shows that there is actually no real consensus, certainly not between the Americans and the Russians. If you believe the story that was spread last week that Putin said, you know, I will cease fire if the Ukrainians withdraw from Dombas. and now there are reasons to think he might not have said that and that he might have also said if the US-Ecrans also withdraw from Zaporosian-Harsson, let's all get into that. But if you take that view, if you assume that those reports from last week are true,

then already you can see that the Europeans, the Americans and all of the rest are moving rapidly to rejecting that demand which Putin made last week. Yeah, if you believe those reports. If you believe it, exactly. All right, we will end the video there at the durand.locals.com. We are on Rumble and X and Telegram and go to the Durand Shop pickup some merch, like what we are wearing in this video update. There's a link in the description box down below.

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