The Duran Podcast - Burevestnik negates US geography advantage

Episode Date: October 29, 2025

Burevestnik negates US geography advantage

All right, Alexander, let's talk about the Budavestnik, the new missile from Russia, from the Russian military, which was announced by Putin and Yerazimov. This is a weapon that Putin actually talked about. He touched on it back in 2017, I want to say, 2018. 2018, yeah. Yeah, where he talked about many weapons, so that the Poseidon, the avant-garde, he mentioned. about five or six different weapons systems that Russia was in the process of developing. Now we have the announcement that the Budavestnik is a reality, which is interesting and should be terrifying to the collective West, especially the United States, given the range of this weapon

and the flight time of this weapon, which is in the multiple hours to even days, according to Putin and Yerazimov. So let's talk about the Budapestnik. This is an extraordinary weapon system. And for many, many years, after Putin first announced its potential existence in that speech he gave in 2018, there were many serious doubts that it would ever actually appear. I know that there were several people who thought that technologically it was impossible. Well, like a lot of things that people say technologically impossible, apparently, it has now been brought to the point where its development process is completed and it is now entering serial production and it is going to enter service with the Russian military fairly soon.

So this is a cruise missile. It's bigger than the cruise missiles that we know, the Tom Hawking, the KH 101 and all of those, but not massively big. It's about twice as big. And it's very, it's similar. It's subsonic, it's stealthy, it gets its power from a miniature nuclear reactor.

And that, by the way in itself, is a massive technological breakthrough, miniaturizing a nuclear reactor so that you can insert it into a cruise missile. It means that the Russians now have miniature nuclear reactors that have developed the technology to produce miniature nuclear reactors, and they can presumably use them for all sorts of other purposes, small submarines. in all kinds of other weapons. Let's not get into that as well. I mean, this could potentially have important civilian applications as well.

But the point is, this particular cruise missile can be launched. It's launched from the ground, apparently. It can take incredibly long, complex journeys. So it's impossible to develop air defenses. are pointing in every conceivable direction all the time, even if you can have the missiles, the radars, it becomes very difficult. It can conduct apparently complex, evasive maneuvers whilst in flight, which strongly suggests to me that it has an AI component.

And there are aspects of it that people don't understand. They don't understand yet how it does its targeting. I'm not going to get into all of that. But the most worrying, the most frightening thing about it, the things that ought to make people particularly nervous is that it can loiter. So what that means is that in a time of international tension, the Russians can launch these things. We don't know how many of them they're going to build,

but let's say they build 30. They can launch them. These things can then fly around over the Atlantic, the Pacific, the Arctic, ocean, wherever. The Americans, because these will be stealthy missiles, will not be clear where they are. They can receive the activation code from Moscow, presumably, at any particular point in time. They can conduct a strike in that case against the United States. Imagine what would happen if we were in a position of intense tension between Russia and the United States. And the United States discovered that these missiles were in the air loitering the way that we've just discussed.

The pressure on the United States at that point would be absolutely enormous. And bear in mind also that if the... United States were trying to try to preempt an attack by these missiles by launching a nuclear attack of its own, then presumably there's some kind of fail-safe whereby these missiles could conduct an attack on the United States, even after that American attack had already happened. So this is an inherently, extremely destabilizing, very dangerous weapon. And I know that noticed that one Russian former official, but somebody who is nonetheless politically very senior in Russia, Sergei Staparshin, who was briefly Prime Minister of Russia, before Putin

became Prime Minister himself, before he was appointed Prime Minister by Putin in 1999, and who is still known to be very close to the Kremlin. Staparshan has said that this missile, counters Tomahawk missiles. If the United States starts deploying Tomahawk missiles in Eastern Europe or starts deploying them in the United States, then the Russians will activate these missiles. And of course, they, like the Tomahawk, presumably can use both conventional and nuclear warheads. They can operate these missiles. They can loiter them around. the United States in the way that I've just discussed. I mean, it is so concerning that it doesn't bear thinking about. But we will have to think about it. Yeah. The US has to think about it because

they always benefited from their geography, right? Exactly. So they were, they're putting all of these missiles in Poland and Romania and they want to put missiles in Ukraine. And that's why we have this, this conflict. One of the main reasons we have this conflict is because the United States was eventually going to try and put long-range missiles into Ukraine, right? That's the whole reason to move Ukraine into NATO, is to put long-range missiles in Ukraine. That's why we are where we are. And this missile takes that geography advantage away from the United States. So now they have the Odashnik, which basically covers Europe.

Also can destroy aircraft carriers, right? It can completely demolish aircraft carriers. and now you have the Buddha Vesnik, which, as you said, can just loiter around over North America, right? Absolutely, North America, the Arctic, the Atlantic Ocean, the Pacific, the Indian Ocean. I mean, given that it's a weapon with an effectively unlimited range, I mean, not absolutely unlimited. I mean, there would be a point where presumably the nuclear reactor would run down. I've heard it said that it could be weeks or even months in the sky. Did Asimov said 15 hours?

15 hours was the test. Yeah, that's what he said. But he said that this is far from the limit. Right. Right. So we don't know what the limit is. But this missile, as I said, could be there in the sky. As I said, it would be, it absolutely, as you rightly say, negates the U.S.

geographical advantage. I mean, Russia doesn't have to base nuclear weapons in Cuba anymore. It can have these things operating over the Atlantic. And of course, with no arms control limits, because we are closely approaching in February the moment when the New START treaty expired. And there's no sign that the United States is showing any interest in negotiations about this. Well, this reality of having these missiles operating it this way suddenly becomes real. Well, you know, the neocons, they were working within the framework that it would be another conflict in Europe, right? That was how the neocons were always looking at, at Russia, Ukraine, and NATO. For them, it was always a war.

And Trump has said this many time. It was a war far away from us. So for them, what did it matter if there was some sort of a smash in Russia, Ukraine, Russia, Europe? I mean, the U.S. is far away. Not anymore. Well, no, not anymore. This is the other thing to say. Obviously, each superpower has since the 1960s had the capability to strike the other with

intercontinental ballistic missiles and ballistic missiles launched from submarines. These are nuclear weapons. The Russians now have a capability to conduct strikes with cruise missiles against the United States, which they have not had before. They don't need to send bombers close to the American border, for example, which again has been a difficult technology for the Russians to get on top of. They can send these missiles instead. And as I said, it's open for the Russians. If they choose to operate these missiles without nuclear warheads or conventional warheads, they put these.

Americans in the same dilemma that the Americans have had, the Russians themselves have had, about Tomahawk missiles. Are Tomahawk missiles? Nuclear armed or are they not? Now, obviously, a weapon system that uses this very advanced technology and that depends on a miniaturized nuclear reactor cannot be built in enormous quantities. I mean, this is an expensive system. But again, I think it would be very unwise to assume that the Russians would only be able

to build a few dribbles of them. I mean, I can imagine that the Russians could build 50, 100 of these things, and that's probably all you need. Yeah, and the whole talk about a golden dome for the United States or the Iron Dome. All of this talk about these domes that are protecting the collective west or that are going to be built to protect the collective west is now over. Absolutely. That's what I think. Yeah.

Yeah. So I mean... The United States needs to hurry up and starts strategic arms negotiations. They're not interested. Well, no, they're not. No, that's the trouble. And this is one system. We've discussed it in previous programs.

There's also the Poseidon submarine drone. That is apparently fully operational. There is already a submarine, which apparently, they're called the Belgarok, by the way, which is able to launch them. There are other submarines that are being built, which will be their main launch carriers. But that also is on the horizon. In fact, may not be on the horizon. It might actually be in service. But this thing, the Burabesnik, is in some respects more destabilizing still.

Because a drone, a submarine drone can only hit the coastal areas of the United States. A cruise missile of this kind with unlimited range can hit any part of the United States. Yeah, I think that's the main point of the weapons systems that Russia has developed, is that they negate all of the U.S.'s advantages, all of NATO's advantages, right? All the different systems, besides Erznik, Budavestnik. When you combine them all together, it pretty much negates any advantage that the U.S. might have had over Russia. Trump was asked about this about the Budavestnik, and he brushed it off.

Yeah. He brushed it off and he started to go into this this rhetoric, this narrative about how the U.S. has subs right off the coast of Russia, which he talked about three months ago or six months ago when he got into the fight with Medvedev on X. And he said, well, we have the subs right off the coast of Russia. And we don't need to send a missile 8,000 miles to Russia because we have the subs anyway. We're not playing with them. They're not playing. in games with us. But he pretty much brushed it off. And then he started to mock Putin again. He said, you know, Putin is, Putin, Russia, you know, they should stop developing missiles and end a war that another military would have won in a week's time, right? Yeah. So he went on that tangent.

Yeah. Once again, you know, you got to wonder, does Trump understand this stuff? Is he being briefed on this stuff? No, I don't think he does understand this. I don't think he understands this at all. And I think one of the other problems of Trump is that he has this unshakable belief in the technological supremacy of the United States, which makes him discount the capabilities at the other side.

I mean, he goes on, as he rightly say, about the Russians not winning in Ukraine within three days or three weeks or whatever it was. He forgets that he had to negotiate a war in Afghanistan, for which the United States wasn't able to win in 20 years. But that is Trump. I don't think he understands these things. I don't think he understands what this weapon actually signifies because he's got people like General Kellogg who tell him that the Russians are useless, that we could Well, you remember the expression that Kellogg gave about the Russian military. And I think they told Trump this all the time, morning, noon and night.

He's ready to listen to this. He's very willing to listen to this sort of thing because it feeds his own beliefs, which are, you know, it's always patriotic beliefs, can I say, but they're very misguided. And I don't think he understands the importance of this. And I don't think he understands the importance of strategic arms limitation or anything of that kind. Yeah, well, just to wrap up the video, I think the whole strategic arms limitation, all of that is just... Yeah, I think the neocons, the deep state doesn't want to do it because they want to go to war. Or in their minds, in their minds, they believe that they can win some sort of a war, some sort of a nuclear or tactical nuclear.

We were a war against Russia. This is what some of the deep state crazies actually believe. I mean, they talk about this stuff, right? All the time. Absolutely. Every single day, if you read their pieces, they're always coming up with complicated strategies and ideas, all of which are premised on the assumption of overwhelming U.S. superiority. They are unable to imagine a world in which that is no longer the case.

And of course, the arms industry, Raytheon and all of this, that eventually, when the penny drops of these weapons are real, well, they'll be saying to themselves, this is another wonderful opportunity for us to get Congress to authorize another gigantic program. First, to build the equivalent to this system and then to build some kind of complex defense system that's going to cost hundreds of billions to repel it and all of that kind of thing. So there is never going to be, and this is, I think, a major difference between the situation today and the situation when arms control got going in the 1960s, there is never going to be a strong enough constituency in the United States that supports arms limitation with the Russians in the way that they used to be supporting arms limitation with the Soviets. The people who advocated that kind of thing People like, well, what's his name? Nunn, Paul Nunn, I think his name was.

Paul Nitz, all of those, Sam Nunn, Paul Nitz, all of those people from the past. I mean, they've all passed away. One or two of them are still there, but they're very old now. Nobody listens to them anymore. Yeah, I agree. Anyway, they're still trying to figure out hypersonic. Yeah. Yeah.

That's just a fact. All right. We'll end the video there. The durand.locals.com. We are on X and Telegram and Rumble and we are also on substacks. So check us out there as well. And like this video and subscribe to this channel. Take care.