The Duran Podcast - Collapsing Ukraine in hopes of removing Putin

Episode Date: August 20, 2024

Collapsing Ukraine in hopes of removing Putin The Duran: Episode 1991

All right, Alexander, let's talk about the situation in Ukraine. And I guess we have to do kind of two videos in one, it seems, because we have the one situation in Kursk, which we have to discuss. And then we have everything that's unfolding in Dombas. I know there's important news about the fall of New York, Torezsk, Pachrovsk. A lot of important areas are now falling to the Russian military or are about to fall to the Russian military. But you have this Kursk situation, which is taking all of the media attention away from the important part of the conflict, which is in the Dombasa. I don't know,

which one do you want to start off with first? I'm going to suggest that we actually do look at the general military situation first, and maybe we can cover touch Kuski into it and then home in a little bit more precisely. Because what Ukraine did is that even though they are massively over-extended and short of men and machines to fight across what is a very extended front line, and even though the Russians have been building up their forces steadily over the course of the year, they did something that is militarily completely illogical, which is that they extended their front line further. They stretched themselves out even more.

And they did that as it was through this course incursion. And they sent, they sent 10,000 troops apparently into Cusk region. There's reports that there's another 10,000 troops somewhere, you know, in reserve, that they're apparently being heavily bombed and attacked by, the Russians at this particular time. So that's 20,000 men. It's a significant proportion of the Ukrainian army. And it's not just in terms of numbers. I mean, the Ukrainian army is believed to number, his frontline, is believed to be around between 250 and 300,000. So you get a sense of, you know, it's a significant block of troops. But it's also some of their very best troops,

some of their most elite units have been sent to Korsk. And not just that, but a very large proportion of their armour has been sent to Korsk as well. And their artillery is there. Their best, their Hymars missiles

were in the area, the Hymars launchers. A lot of their best equipment, all concentrated in this one place. and apparently this front, this rather small front in Kuzk is now getting all the best

supplies. So we're getting reports from all sorts of places, Ukrainian soldiers in places like Pakrovsk, Torez, they're all complaining that they're not getting reinforcements, they're not getting supplies, they're being heavily outnumbered by the Russians

and the result is that all across the contact line now, the Russians are breaking through. And in fact, the advance is accelerating. Now, this brings us back to this big question of why have the Ukrainians done this thing to themselves? Because if you look at the Kusk situation at the present time, despite, you know, concentrating this large force in Kusk and crossing the border, So far, all that they've actually managed to achieve in Kusk region is occupy a number of villages. And, you know, people talk about 80 villages.

But some of these are tiny places. I mean, we're talking about places that you won't find on any map. They are very, very small, you know, a couple of dozen people. So they've occupied about 80 villages, some of them tiny, large stretches of forest, which have no economic use. And one small town, Sousja, of which perhaps they control all of it. The Russians say that they still control some of the eastern bits of Sousia. The Ukrainians are trying to persuade us that they control all of it, and they're sending Western journalists to Sousia to try to confirm that story.

But they don't seem to be able, or at least they haven't managed for the moment, to expand beyond this belt of very uninteresting territory that they control inside Russia. And they're giving contradictory or rather different explanations all the time about what they're doing. So when it first began, Zelensky's advisor at Mikhailo Podoliyak said that this was all done in order to improve Ukraine's position in forthcoming negotiations. That was what he said. Then a couple of, you know, day or so afterwards, the narrative shifted. It was to try to get the Russians to divert their forces from the rest of the front line in Dombas. And then we've had another explanation now from Zelensky himself.

It's all about creating a buffer zone on Russian territory. So he's a different explanation. which lead me to think that, again, the Ukrainians are not being honest about what they were really trying to do. But let's go through those explanations one by one. The first explanation, it was supposed to put Ukraine in a better position in negotiations, as could have been predicted. And as we said on the Duran, what this operation has actually done is that it's made the Russians decide that no negotiations with Ukraine are possible at all.

So the Russians are rejecting negotiations. So it hasn't put Ukraine in a better position with respect to negotiations. It's meant that Ukraine isn't getting any kind of negotiations. And you could see this from the Chinese. There's been more articles today in global times saying straightforwardly that now negotiations are impossible. The second, that it was intended to get the Russians

to divert forces from Donbass. Well, it's now clear that's not happening. The Russians are continuing to keep all their forces in Donbass, and they remain on the offensive. The third explanation to create a buffer zone is ridiculous. How do you create a buffer zone like this inside Russia? What the Ukrainians are doing is that they're committing more and more men

and more and more of their machines, they're suffering heavier and heavier losses trying to hold useless ground in Russia even as their forces get depleted. If they wanted to create a proper barrier to the Russians who remember outnumber them in northern Ukraine, far more logical thing to have done would have been to set up proper fortified,

lines create something somehow somewhat analogous to the Sula Viken line that the Russians created. A buffer zone of the sort that the Ukrainians are talking about makes absolutely no sense whatsoever. You're talking about preventing Russian artillery strikes on Ukrainian cities like Sumi. The Russians are bombing them. Their air force is completely unaffected by what the Ukrainian. are doing on the ground. So none of that makes any sense. I come back to what I consider to have been

the actual explanation. One that the Russians have been talking about a lot. The Western media touched on it. Now they walked away from it. I am absolutely sure the original plan was to capture

Kurchatov and the nuclear power station. It's the only thing that makes any kind of sense in terms of operation. They'd captured the power station. They would have been able to push, create a crisis in Russia. Perhaps the Russians might have negotiated who's to say what might have happened. It didn't happen. So they're now coming up with explanations to explain what they're doing in Kusk, because for prestige reasons, they can't retreat. And in the meantime, their front lines everywhere else

are collapsing. And that, I think, think is the basic story about what is going on. Now, you know, we can go into more details. We can discuss the situation in Cusk. I don't think we need to, actually, because not very much is really happening in Cusk. They're, you know, they're knocking up the old bridge in various places, and this is getting a lot of news, but it's not improving their overall tactical situation. Looking at what's happening in other places, that is. big news and of course, at the moment the media in the West, is only gently touching it, but I mean, it's clear that a major operational crisis is emerging. Yeah, just real quick to

finish our conversation on, of course, because I agree, I don't think there's really much to discuss it. You know, we've been discussing it a lot. You've been discussing it on your channel a lot. I've been discussing it on my channel a lot, the Duran. We've been discussing it as well. But really what we have, I mean, maybe I'm looking at it from a very simple viewpoint, but they didn't capture the power plant. The collective West cannot come out and say this was all about capturing a nuclear power plant or threatening the destruction of a nuclear power plant in exchange for something from Russia because obviously that would look horrible for the world.

if the collective West came out and said that. So they have to create a ghost of Kiev, Herzon counteroffensive, Harcalfe offensive, Snake Island narrative. Yes. And that's what they're wrestling with to try and create.

It's an information war, but a narrative which is analogous to the Herzson counteroffensive so they can spin this as a victory. I mean, what do you think about that? You're absolutely, you know, that's exactly what it's become. You're provided,

both the reason why they can't to admit to the reality, which is, as you correctly say, admitting that the objective was to seize the nuclear power plant is impossible. I mean, it would create massive alarm bells across the West, amongst Western public as well. So they can't say that. And they can't also admit that the operation has failed. And if they caught, capture the power plant,

it would have been different. You could have created a different narrative. But they could have spun a difference. They could have spun it differently. But given that the power plant wasn't captured and now it's almost certain that it isn't going to be captured, they have to do exactly what you said. They have to come up with various narratives to explain why the Ukrainians are still in Kusk and why they're prepared to stay there and suffer all these enormous losses. Now, of course, it's a narrative game. an information war game, which is killing them because there's suffering terrible losses there.

This isn't like, I mean, it's like the Husson and Kharkov country offensives all over again. But at least in those offensives, there were military objectives, which were to a certain extent achieved. There is nothing being achieved here. All that is being achieved is that Ukraine's last best reserves are being delivered. destroyed, they are being sacrificed to achieve an information purpose, even as the front lines everywhere else collapse. Yeah, agreed.

And you know it's going bad for them when the Guardian, the New York Times, the economist, NBC News, they're all running with a title which says something along the lines of the Kersk operation, was a gamble or was a high-risk gamble. they're all saying that, which points to this thing turning out very bad for Ukraine. They just can't say it. So they're using words like this is very risky or high risk or a gamble. They're basically saying this is going to be a disaster. When they say this is going to be, this is a gamble, they mean this is going to turn out to be a disaster.

Correct. So that brings us to why this is going to be a disaster. And the reason this is going to be a disaster is because, as you said, they've diversed. I've reverted so much to Kursk, and it's accelerated the collapse of New York. I think New York now is fully in control of the Russian military. I think we haven't gotten an official confirmation from the Ministry of Defense, but Ukrainian channels are saying that New York is gone. Russia has captured it. Bakrowski, Doretsk, we're talking about very fortified areas.

And even Kupians, even the Kupians direction, it looks like the Russians are advancing. So this is a catastrophe. not because of Kursk, the catastrophe that Ukraine is suffering in Korsk, yes, is a catastrophe for the Ukraine military, but it's a double catastrophe because they're now suffering in the Dombas. Absolutely. Now, to say this very clearly, the Russians would have got to all of these places eventually anyway. I mean, what Kusk has done is that it has greatly accelerated this process, probably by one or two months, I'm guessing. I don't think that's an understatement. If all those forces that had been sent to Kuzk had been sent to defend Toresk, for example,

or perhaps even more importantly, Pakrovsk and the area around Pakrovsk, then, of course, the situation would have been very, very markedly slowed down, and the Ukrainians would have achieved something. But they didn't do that, and the result is that all of these key places are now in danger of collapse. Now, we're talking about substantial places. Pachrovsk and the area around it. Pachrovsk itself is a population of around 60,000. If you're looking at the larger Pachrovsk renovation,

you're talking about 100,000 people thereabouts. Apparently, defences are very disorganized around Pachrosk. The Russians have made enormous progress. They're now literally, you know, two or three kilometers in places from Mernograd, some say about five kilometers. from Pakrovsk itself. Pachrovsk is the major, the biggest single, most important supply and logistical hub

of the Ukrainian army in the whole of Dombas, and it's now at risk and quite possibly and plausibly will fall. And, you know, there are also smaller logistical hubs nearby. Salidovo being one. The Russians are apparently two kilometers also from Salidovo. There are some positions around Salidovo. There's some coal mines, apparently,

which some people rather optimistically think the Ukrainians might be able to organise defences around. It's probably very late in the day, because Pachrosk was well to the rear. It was not apparently, especially well fortified. There's no sign, for example, that there's dense minefields being created around it or anything like that.

But if Pakrovsk falls, the entire supply situation for Ukraine begins to collapse across the entire Dombas. The main supply road from NEPRO, which is, you know, the big city, the big industrial city on the Nipa River is cut. And Ukrainian forces start to face a massive operational crisis. Now bear in mind, the Russians can cut the roads east of Pachrovsk as well. They don't need to take Pachrowski to cut the highway. They're very, very close to the highway in all sorts of places. But if they take Pachrovsk, then they won't just cut the highway, but they could potentially continue advancing westwards all the way,

first to another city called Pavlograd, which is absolutely not defended. And then beyond that to the Nipa river itself. And then, well, we've discussed in many programs, how if the Russians reach the NEPA, in central Ukraine, close to NEPRO and Zaporosia, and if they reach, move along this road, they will be literally opposite NEPRO. Well, then it's essentially game over.

I mean, the entire supply situation will collapse. That's that's Bakrowski. And as I said, they're literally almost there. They were, you know, about 20 kilometers from Bakrowski when the Kuzk operation started. Now they're almost, you know, outside it. I mean, you know, all sorts of important villages and fortified positions which Ukraine was trying to defend have collapsed because the men there aren't getting reinforcements. And elsewhere, there is this other big fortified town called Toretsk. Now, Torezsk is very like Avdavka.

You remember Avdegovka was this big fortified, this fortress close to Donetsk. Taretsk was a fortress that Ukraine created close to another Russian-controlled town in Dombas, which is Gordlofka, which is another place which rebels. and broke away from the Ukrainians in 2014. So the Ukrainians created this massive fortified position near Gordlovka. So Toretsk itself, very heavily fortified. New York, it's more than just a village, it's a sort of suburb of Torek, one of the most heavily fortified positions that Ukraine created anywhere in Dombas.

And the whole thing's collapsing. As you rightly said, New York almost certainly has now been captured. We've not yet had official confirmation of this, but the Ukrainians are admitting to the fact that New York has collapsed. All the other places around Torex collapsed as well, the other sort of fortified villages, which are, you know, the first sort of wall around Torek. They've all collapsed.

Reports that the Russians are now well inside Torezk itself. It looks as if within a few days, weeks, I'm not going to try and guess how long, the Russians will capture Torez, one of the most heavily fortified positions, and just as happened when Avdyevka fell, there are no fortified positions that the Ukrainians have beyond Torez. The Russians can go driving all the way up first to an important town called Konstantinovka, which is another significant supply hub, not as important as Bakrowski. What happens is the supplies go through Pakrovsk

up the main road to Konstantinovka. The Ukrainians lose both Bakrowski and Konstantinovka. Their whole supply situation essentially collapses across Domba. So Russians can move all the way up to Konstantinovka, beyond Konstantzlovka are Slaviansk and Kramatosk, If Konstantinovka is lost, Ukrainians won't be able to hold onto those two remaining towns and the Battle of Dombas and of eastern Ukraine, by the way,

will be over. And we're getting all kinds of other news. That's not quite as important as what's going on in Toretsk as well, but there's a small river to the west of Slaviansk called the Jerebetts River. It's now confirmed that the Russians have crossed it. The Ukrainians have provided film showing Russian troops operating east of the Jerebetz River.

Kupians, as he was said correctly, the situation there is turning out very, very badly for Ukraine. And it's the same story everywhere. This is happening because Ukraine has no reserves. Aggressive attrition. You remember we were talking about that a few weeks, months, weeks ago, aggressive attrition has whittled the Ukrainian army down. Reserves are exhausted. And instead of husbanding reserves and trying to hold on to the important positions and buying

themselves more time and coming up with some kind of maybe a diplomatic strategy about what to do, Zelensky and Siersky and Badanov and all of the others, they sent what reserves they had on this absolutely crazy venture into Cusk and Ukrainian soldiers and ultimately Ukraine are paying the price. This is existential. I mean, if events continue along the road that we are looking at in Donvass, we could see a military collapse very soon before the election in the United States in November. Yeah, so didn't the United States know this? I mean, you know, we are getting reports now that the CIA knew about this plan. This is coming from the New York Times, that the CIA

knew of this plan to go into Kursk almost a year in advance, though they claimed they didn't know the exact timing of it and the details. NBC News said the same. The United States knew about this well in advance. Once again, they weren't exact on the details. They were kept in the dark as far as how this is all going to play out to Kursk. But we are starting to get some trickle truth from the collective West media admitting that the U.S. knew about this. So didn't the United States know that Ukraine, if they were to go into Kursk and go through with this operation, of which the United States would have to provide some sort of surveillance and information and strategy in this operation? I mean, it's naive to believe that the, that the, that the

United States, the collective Western NATO, didn't provide any help to Ukraine. Actually, we know that the UK provided the Challenger two tanks. We know this is confirmed as well. So my point in all of this is the West must have known that, okay, we're going to do this Kersk thing. But if we do this Kersk thing, we're going to accelerate the collapse of Dombasa. Is this just basically the West actually admitting this is our only chance left to get at the nuclear power plant. So if we accelerate the collapse by a month or two,

Russia is going to get these cities anyway, so we might as well go for broke and see if this succeeded. I mean, was that the thinking behind this? Or is this just incompetence? Well, maybe they didn't know that this would accelerate the collapse in Donbass. So I can't believe that. No. I mean, I mean, one must allow for a certain amount of incompetence. I mean, last year, if you remember, they got Ukraine to launch this massive country offensive in Zaporosia. In those days, by the way, a year ago, it was going to be

capturing Crimea. That was going to be the knockout blow. That was going to shock the Russians into negotiations and create a crisis in Moscow and force Putin to step down and all that kind of thing. That didn't work.

So it looks as if starting from some time last year when it became clear that that offensive was going to fail they started coming up with a new plan and the new plan was to seize the power station getting the troops together after all the losses that they've suffered in the summer offensive

training them up to launch this new offensive it's obviously taken a long time and in the meantime as you rightly say everything else is falling apart all around them but they now realise that Crimea is out of reach they cannot possibly take Crimea But the objective remains the same.

Provoke a crisis in Moscow. Bring about the collapse of the Putin government. You can't do it by capturing Crimea. The war everywhere else is being lost. So how are you going to do it? You seize the course nuclear power station and try and blackmail the Russians into some kind of capitulation, create an atmosphere of crisis

that might then play into a, a crisis in Moscow itself. Putin's whole position might at that point start to look shaky, and you might eventually get that regime change that you've been working towards ever since this conflict began. That, I think, was the plan. Now, I don't know to what extent the military in Washington were briefed about this,

because I do get the sense that some people in Washington were taken by surprise. But you can see how, you know, the brain, the geniuses in the White House, Sullivan, Lincoln, all of those people, and the people in the intelligence agencies who are not military people in the same way. You know, they might have cobbled up this plan, come up with it, said to themselves, this is our last throw, we've still got this objective to achieve regime change in Moscow. We might as well throw, you know, throw the dice.

see if it works, if it doesn't work, well, Ukraine's going to lose, but then realistically is going to lose anyway. Ukraine has always been a pawn in this game. So, you know, if you're going to sacrifice the poor, well, so be it. The strategy from NATO, from the United States, the collective voice has always been a knockout blow. It's always about delivering a knockout blow, where the Russian strategy is the exact opposite. Correct. Okay. Let's end it there, I guess.

The duran.com. We are on Rumble, odyssey, bitchute, telegram, and Rock Finn. Go to the Durand shop, pick up some merch, like the t-shirts that we are wearing. Today, I will have a link in the description box down below. Real quick, Alexander, do you remember when Zelensky gave a video statement about a week ago and he said something along the lines of, this really, I really thought about his statement. It remained with me.

He said that the operation in Kursk is going really well, and Russian President Putin is going to end his tenure as president the way he started it with a disaster in Kursk. And he was referencing the Kursk submarine disaster when Putin came into office, and Zelensky was hinting that the Kersk nuclear power plant and all of that was going to be how, how it ends.

And that that was this, this view that Zelensky had of the operation. That, to me, gave it all away. Exactly. Exactly. That tells you what it's all about. Tell you how they think. The entire war has been about this. It's not been about Donvass.

It's not been about Ukraine. It's not been about anything else than who rules in Moscow. This is what this whole thing has been all about. have been about trying to achieve engineer regime change there and with uncertainties about what the new administration in

Washington might do and you know we're now hearing that whichever side wins neither candidate is enthusiastic on pursuing this thing even you know even the Democrat candidate isn't a proud you can see the urgency

try to do it now before it all fails and of course if you failed. Well, as I said, you've sacrificed Ukraine, but as it's just the pawn in the game, ultimately, you don't care about that. If you succeed, however,

and you bring down that terrible man and his horrible government and all that and achieve your bigger, greater geopolitical objectives, what a wonderful coup that would be. And, well, you know, it's worth the risk there for. Just try it and see what

happens. Incredible. All right, we will end it there. Take care.