The Duran Podcast - Collective West support for Ukraine melts away

Episode Date: June 18, 2025

Collective West support for Ukraine melts away

All right, Alexander, let's talk about the situation with Project Ukraine. And with each passing day, you see more panic coming out of the Zelensky regime. We are seeing weapons being diverted from Ukraine to the Middle East. And an interest in Project Ukraine from the West is falling away. And this is getting to Zelensky. the Russian missile strikes, the drone attacks, the advances on the front line continue and actually appear to be accelerating. Yeah.

Russia actually hit Kremlinchuk, which is a city right on the Dnieper. And from what I understand, they did a lot of damage to military facilities and I believe in oil depot. But is this the first time that Russia has hit Kremichuk the way they did? Yes, I believe it is. I think they struck at Kremlin Chug in the first weeks of the special military operation, but on a relatively small scale. Now, of course, they're very, very much closer to Kremlinchuk and to the entire area around the Dnieper.

And the fact that they're attacking cities like Kremlinchuk. Kremlinch is a big industrial centre, I should say. Right on the Denepe. Right on the Dnieper. And in Soviet times, it was a centre of heavy engineering and machine building and all. also of the Soviet truck industry. I mean, you know, people from that time remember Krasz trucks. They were actually made in Kremlinchuk, apparently.

So this is a major industrial node of Ukraine. And the Russians are pushing are now starting to move steadily towards it. And across the front lines, Ukraine crumbles. And there's just been a meeting. in the Senate. There was just a meeting with Pete Hegson to the Senate and he basically confirmed that military aid for Ukraine from the United States funding for Ukraine is coming to an end. And there is no substitute for this from the European Union, as we have discussed in program after program. They cannot replace the United States as a fascinating article

by a journalist called Owen Matthews in the Daily Telegraph who finally made the point that we have been making that all of these sums that the European Union has been talking about, they're not actually real money, they are attempts to create, by Ursula, to create funds, which might one day be set up, but are not going to be set up to help Ukraine. And if they are ever set up, they're more about centralising and pressing forward with the EU project.

It's a very interesting article. It bears reading, actually. Is he watching us? It probably is, just to say, I'm sure he is, actually. But anyway, I mean, I'm not going to get into all of that. So, we have had the most panicky set of comments from Zelensky we've seen up to now. He's published a whole string of comments on X. They come across as more coherent than I believe they really are.

Gwen Zelensky says them in Ukrainian. He says that the relations between the Americans and the Russians are far too warm. He's extremely worried that he's not going to get his massive sanctions. Lindsay Graham's sanctions bill appears for the moment, at least, to be dead in the water. He's clearly, clearly, deeply alarmed by the situation. reading his comments and listening to the things he's saying, I think that for the first time, Zelensky is facing the possibility that he's going to lose.

That was my impression. Talk about the price cap. The all price surge. All is going to, all is surging. It's going to continue to surge. to surge. Yes. The EU is talking about a $45 price cap.

Lindsay Graham is talking about 500% bone crushing sanctions on anyone that, secondary sanctions on anyone that sells Russian oil. All of this is just crumbling. All of these fantastical ideas that the EU and Graham and Zelensky have about Russia and Russian energy is just absolutely melting away. I mean, you're absolutely correct. We were talking about an oil price cap to stop, you know, to somehow put more financial pressure on the Russians.

Have it an oil price gap, which the market, the oil market, is ignoring anyway. I mean, there was a $60 price gap when oil was above $60. Russian oil traded for a bowl more than $60. The idea that, you know, you can push the cap down at a time when oil prices are rising is stupid. And this is anyway, a whole false narrative. I mean, I've been talking about this for years now. They consistently overstate the importance of the Russian oil and gas industry

to the Russian budget and to the overall Russian economy. Dimitri F, who is the head of Russia's Direct Investment Fund, said that if you're talking about the the federal budget, I believe he was talking about the federal budget. Oil and gas revenue accounts for about a fifth of it, not a half, as some people say. And Russia's been conducting anyway a significant tax reform. And there is no shortage of funds and capital in Russia to continue to move forward with the country's development and to fund the war. I think this whole idea is absurd.

Going back to that Owen Matthews article, he by the way also acknowledges it that Russia's not going to collapse economically. It's not going to run out of money tomorrow. That whole thing is absurd. And as for Lindsay Graham's bone crushing sanctions, the 500% tariffs on China and all of that, because it is China and India and Turkey that he's targeting. All that's going to do is deepen the, already existing stresses, perhaps leading to a full-blown crisis in the world economy, including the US economy. And it's still not going to stop the Russians. And it's also going to make the Chinese even more determined to align with the Russians. So, I mean, these are, as you absolutely rightly say, fantasy plans. I mean, the kind of things that adolescents come up with. They have no connection to the realities of the real world. Now, what Ursula was coming up with all these funds was a grift. It was a grift. It always is. Planet Cyprus. That's all it is. That's it all it ever is.

It's just a grift. They cobbled together a billion euros, I think, to send, which is also stolen from the Russian assets, by the way. Yeah. Every month they're stealing a billion euros. A billion. A billion. And they're saying it's interest from the Russian. How much interest are the Russian assets? generally. Exactly. I thought it was one and a half billion a year, but they're taking a billion every single month, which leads me to believe that they're tapping into the actual amount of money. Yeah, you made that point about a year ago. And you are right. You were right then and you are right now. There is not, there is insufficient interest being generated by these assets to make it possible for these funds to be released. They're using other people's

money to continue to throw at Ukraine so that you can all end up in accounts in the Cayman Islands and Panama and, well, I'm not going to start throwing around the names of countries. But anyway, to do all of that so that people like Zelensky and Koch can sort their retirement savings away. Yeah. Oh, and big grift. And it does look like when you look at the missiles that are being moved and and the military hardware that's being moved from Ukraine to the Middle East,

it looks like the United States has been demilitarized to a certain extent. I mean, they don't have the resources to take on both of these wars. So they're choosing, and of course, they're going to choose Israel and they're going to choose the Middle East. Obviously, everyone knows this. Everybody knows this. But they're having to actually go into the missile interceptors and the air defense systems in Ukraine. and take those and move them to the Middle East. They don't have in their stockpiles that they can just easily give to Israel.

They have to dip into Ukraine. Just as Ukraine is shuffling soldiers around from one part of the front to another because it's short of soldiers. So the United States is shuffling around missile interceptors and such things from one place to another because it's short of missile interceptors. Now, again, we have been talking about this on our programs many, many times. Ryan Bellettick has been talking about it. Others have been doing so as well. The point is that the United States cannot sustain a long-term industrial war.

We have been saying this for a very long time, going all the way back to 2022, the U.S. military industrial complex doesn't work that way. Once upon a time, in the 40s and 50s it did, it doesn't do so anymore. Has the EU and NATO realized that they're losing this conflict really bad? I mean, you're saying Zelensky is finally starting to realize that he's not going to come out of this in a good way. Has the EU and NATO realize this, or do they still believe that they can crush Russia somehow? They can pull out a victory from all of this. I don't think that... Or is the plan just to allow Ukraine to go bust?

I'm increasingly starting to wonder whether there's any kind of plan at all. To answer your question, I think when they meet and talk with each other, they don't admit to this. They don't admit to the fact that Ukraine is losing. They can't bring themselves to admit it to each other. It would require a big breakthrough by the Russians, say the capture by the capture, the Russians of Kharkov or maybe Sumi or something like that, for it finally to dawn on them, that Ukraine is going down. But at the moment, they're all pretending to each other that all is well and that the war is being successfully fought and that Ukraine is holding its positions

and that the heroic Ukrainian army is resisting the Russian advance and that all we need to do is continued to supply weapons and things against Ukraine and to increase the pressure on the Russians to supposedly bring the Russians to the negotiating table. In other words, to force them to capitulate. I think that is the narrative they still talk to each other about a few people, I think are beginning to get a sense of how bad the situation is. One of them, I think, is the German defense minister, Boris Bistorius. He is an extreme hardliner.

He's very, very anti-Russian. He has, in the past, supported supplying tourist missiles to Ukraine. We know this, because when the Russians leaked the conversations by the German generals, they said as much. They said that Boris Bistorius was in support of providing tourist missiles to Ukraine, and that he was very frustrated with Olaf Schultz, because Olaf Schultz was blocking. the supply of tourist missiles to Ukraine.

So this is no, in no sense, someone who is anything other than a fully paid up supporter of, you know, the Ukraine enterprise. But he recently made a trip to Kiev. Apparently, it was to tell the Ukrainians, well, look, we're not going to give you the tourist missiles after all. But there were also reports that he was going there because he was worried about the situation on the front lines. And he wanted to discuss that situation with the Ukrainians, with presumably people like Sirski, who presumably know what the real situation on the front lines is. So I get the sense that Pistorius probably does understand some of what is going on. But if you're talking about someone like Stama, for example, I don't think he has the slightest idea.

Is there any possibility, a final question, for the Trump administration and for Europe to align and to recommit to Ukraine? I can't see how. With what? I mean, this is, I mean, you know, let's assume that the war against Iran is a huge success, that this is a huge success. there's regime change and a collapse of the regime in Iran, it's still going to absorb, achieving that is still going to absorb a large proportion of US resources over the next couple of days or weeks that will still create the problem that there's insufficient resources to reallocate to Ukraine. And I don't think that the Russians are going to be set back by what happens in

Iran, they're going to continue the special military operation. They'd be completely consistent about this. So I don't really see how this can end in any positive way. If Iran collapses, there is a higher possibility that the United States might move forward with Lindsay Graham's disastrous sanctions, just saying. But I mean, that That's possible. But I don't think that's going to change the dynamics on the battlefields or going to alter the fact that Ukraine is still going to lose. What about the reverse?

The way it's looking right now is it turns out very badly for the United States when it comes to Iran. And Russia continues to do what it does. What does that mean for the Trump administration, for the EU, for NATO? I mean, we're talking about huge defeats. on multiple fronts. We are talking about not just a geopolitical crisis, but the final and visible collapse of the hegemony of the West.

If they lose the conflict with Iran, by which I mean if Iran survives, keeps its nuclear you know, facilities intact and the government in Iran remains in position. and makes no substantive concessions. And Israel is badly battered as a result of this. And, of course, if the Russians move on and advance and achieve their objectives in Ukraine, then, as I said, I mean, that is the end. It is the moment when it will no longer be possible to deny that the sun has set on Western hegemony and all of that. We are no longer talking then about the end of the unipolar moment.

We are talking about the fall of the West as a geopolitical entity. All right. We will end the video there at the durand.locals.com. We are on Rumble Odyssey, Bitschute, Telegram, and Rock Finn. Go to the Duran shop. Pick up some merch like what we are wearing in this video update. The link is in the description box down below. Take care.