The Duran Podcast - BRICS furious as Zelensky tries to disrupt May 9

Episode Date: May 8, 2025

BRICS furious as Zelensky tries to disrupt May 9

All right, Alexander, let's talk about the military situation in Ukraine. Of course, we have the Victory Day events taking place. We have a three-day ceasefire, which Russia has announced. They called this three-day ceasefire, and they're going to comply with the three-day ceasefire. Of course, Ukraine and Zeletsky there are not going to comply with this three-day ceasefire. Obviously, this is going to take away some of the momentum from the advancements. in the Russian military, from the Russian military side of things. But Ukraine's going to definitely try to capitalize on this three-day ceasefire.

And perhaps after the Victory Day events, perhaps we may be seeing a Russian military making a big advance from the south in Herzogne and even possibly from the north, from Sumi. But in these three days, we're going to see the Zelensky regime and the Ukraine military try to do whatever they can now that the Russians are in a ceasefire. We are seeing the Zelensky regime, the Ukraine military, trying to get some sort of foothold in Kersk at the moment. Of course, a lot of this is connected to May 9th and is trying to say that they've taken a part of Russia while the May 9th celebrations are taking place. Anyway, your thoughts on the situation on the front lines. Well, I think you've summed it up very well.

Now, about this ceasefire, Putin often declares ceasefires. I think there was even more irritation in Russia than usual, amongst the military commentary, which is very extensive in Russia, about this particular ceasefire because it came after basically the Easter ceasefire that Putin also declared, was likely. largely ignored or so it seems by the Ukrainians. But I think the reason he declared it is because he's got the Victory Day celebrations. He's got all of these world leaders coming. He's got Lula and Xi Jinping and the leaders of Azerbaijan, Armenia, all kinds of countries, turning up

in Moscow. I think he felt that it was essential to show to these people to all of these countries, that Russia really is being reasonable. And if they're coming to Moscow and attending a Victory Day celebration in Moscow, Russia doesn't want to be seen to be taking aggressive military steps at that particular time. And, you know, always with Putin, diplomacy is enormously important and keeping good relations with Russia's friends is enormously important. And I think this is why this ceasefire was announced when it was. Zelensky has rejected it outright. I think he's made that absolutely clear.

And I think what's going to happen is that you're not going to see any real decline in the fighting over the next three days. You're going to see lots of attempts by the Ukrainians to try. to take advantage of the fact that the Russians have paused. They will probably regain some ground in a couple of places. But ultimately, it's not going to change the situation overall because three days is not enough to do that. Now, there is something absolutely obsessional

about the way in which the Ukrainians Zelensky is acting at the moment. I mean, they were driven out of Kusk. They suffered an absolute military debacle in Kusk. You would have thought that in light of that, Kusk would be the last place they would want to return to. But of course, that's not Zelensky. He's been trying to capture a village, Totkinno, inside Kusk. He sent waves of troops to try and capture this place. When I say waves, I don't mean, you know, we're not talking about tens of thousands of people,

but we're talking about hundreds. The Ukrainians are suffering terrible losses. And I don't think there's any real doubt about this. There's been film showing, you know, Ukrainian tanks and armored vehicles being destroyed. And there's been reports of large numbers of Ukrainian soldiers being destroyed. All in order to achieve what exactly? To capture this village, there's some talk of the Ukrainian soldiers. and advancing beyond this village

towards other places inside Kusk, maybe approaching the Kusk nuclear power plant all over again from a different direction. I mean, I've actually seen people suggest that very thing. I mean, by this point in the conflict, that is a ridiculous idea. The Russians are fully prepared for any offensive in Kusk. If the previous one didn't succeed,

there is absolutely no chance that this one will. But Zelensky does this and he's doing it quite obviously because he wants to seize Russian territory, what territory that he recognizes is Russian, immediately prior to the May 9th holiday. And the other thing that he is doing is that even as world leaders are gathering in Moscow, even as the Russians have declared this ceasefire, he's saying absolute huge fleets of drones towards Moscow to try to disrupt the Victory Day celebrations. They're not just towards Moscow, but across Russia, but a lot towards Moscow itself, trying to interfere with airports closed, trying to do all these kind of things.

And you can imagine the effect that this is all having on people like Xi Jinping and Lula and all of the others. must be absolutely furious about this. They must see what Zeletsky is doing as, well, not just disrespectful, but aggressive and extremely dangerous. And frankly, that is going to harden their attitudes against Ukraine, which in China's case, in particular, could turn out to be disastrous for Ukraine. So anyway, that is one thing that Zelensky is trying to do. Now, the other in all other respects in the weeks between the Easter ceasefire and this current Russian ceasefire, what we have seen is that Russians make major advances right across the entire contact line.

They're advancing in every single place. They're looking to make increasingly threatening moves. There are rumors. Maybe they're more rumors than reports, but there are rumors that they have already established some kind of presence on the Ukrainian side of the Dnieper in Herson region. There are rumors of the Russians preparing some kind of big move in Harsong region, maybe to retake the city of Horson. The Ukrainians are very overstretched. They don't seem to have many troops in Herson region at the moment to resist the Russians. The Russians have made significant advances around Pakrovsk.

They've pushed back all the Ukrainian counter-attacks that were taking place around Bakrowski. They all failed. They have advanced around the town of Konstantinovka in the south. They've established this big bridgehead on the Oswald rivers, which they have expanded. They're closing in on Lehman. They're closing in on Siversk. All looks like operations carried out by the existing Russian forces in the conflict zone to prepare for an offensive that everybody expects is going to come. And we get reports about two big reserve armies, about 120,000 men, that the Russians are preparing to commit to the battle at some point in the summer, which if they,

they are unleashed if these forces are unleashed, given that the Ukrainians are already overextended and overstretched. One wonders what the effect that will be. Probably we're going to see the Ukrainian lines buckle in much the same way that we saw last year when the Ukrainians also became overextended as they tried to hold back the Russians in Kharkov and launch their own offensive in Kursk, allowing the Russians to make. big advances in Donetsk. Only this time, this year, I suspect, it will be on a significantly bigger scale than what we saw last year.

Yeah, I wonder if the Russians are going to pick up the pace after the victory day. Well, I think they are. Barring something completely unexpected, like peace talks, which I don't for a moment believe are going to happen, I think that we're going to see as the summer wears on, a major Russian advance, just as we saw last year, though probably on a significantly bigger scale. And come the autumn, come November, when the sort of campaigning season ends, we will be looking at a completely different map from the one we're looking at today, with Ukraine in a much, much weaker position than the one it is now.

That's how it looks to me. based already on the preliminary moves that the Russians have been taking since they resume their offensive, their preparatory offensive in March. Yeah. I wonder if they're going to change the status of the SMO. Well, that's not impossible, especially if there is some big incident in Moscow. Now Putin gave a very interesting interview to his favorite journalist, Bavl Zarabin, in which he said that the Ukrainians have been repeatedly trying to provoke Russia into some massive overreaction. They've been trying to provoke the Russians to use nuclear weapons, which he was determined never to do,

that the Russians, he himself, have resisted all of these attempts at provocations. But of course, in a few weeks' time, maybe sometime around all. August, we will probably have a critical mass of Orrashnik missiles ready for use. They could be used to attack targets in Ukraine on a very, very large basis. It's not impossible. And if the Ukrainians continue along the path that they've been following recently, we could indeed see an upgrade of the SMO. There's already been much talk in Russia, going all the way back to 2022, by the way, of upgrades. it from a special military operation into some kind of anti-terrorist operation to say even that would be a step below outright war, but it would be an upscale from what we've seen up to now. And if it were classified, reclassified in that kind of way, well, things that the Russians are not doing at the moment, they might start to do, like start, start, start, hunting down Ukrainian political leaders, for example.

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