The Duran Podcast - Dangerous risks for U.S. as Ukraine crumbles w/ Peter Erickson from Conversations Among The Ruins

Episode Date: June 28, 2025

Dangerous risks for U.S. as Ukraine crumbles w/ Peter Erickson from Conversations Among The Ruins

I am here with Alexander Mercuris in London, and we are very happy to have with us on the Duran. Mr. Peter Erickson from the very popular YouTube channel conversations among the ruins. Peter, it is great to have you with us on the Duran. Would you like to promote the channel? Any other links, X substack? We'll put everything in the description box down below. But Peter, thank you for joining us. I'm very happy to be here.

Yeah, the YouTube channel is, as you just mentioned, Conversations Among the Ruins, and the co-host with my son, the two of us have conversations. It started with his initiative, his encouragement. He persuaded me to do it. Now I'm very happy that we're doing it. I have virtually no other online presence, so I don't have any other links to recommend.

Great, great. We will have those links once again, as a pinned comment and the description box down below. We're going to talk about Project Ukraine, right, Alexander? Absolutely, of course, a topic which has fallen out of the news recently because obviously we've had the dramatic events in Iran and with a conflict between Israel and Iran and the United States and Iran. But there is this other war going on,

which is the war that has dominated much of the news over the last three years, three and a half years. and which continues. And we've had intense activity on the diplomatic front for the last few months, ever since Donald Trump became president of the United States, as re-inoruated president of the United States. But we just had a NATO summit meeting. And I almost got the sense that, you know, the sort of energy had gone out of the affair. Trump turns up at this meeting, he doesn't really seem very, very much. interested in talking about Ukraine. The European leaders before the meeting were saying that they were going to try to use the NATO meeting to try to refocus Trump's attention on Ukraine.

You had a few statements to that effect from people like Mark Lutha, the NATO Secretary General and the French president, Emmanuel Macron, but nothing like that actually seems to have happened. There was a desultory meeting between Trump and Zelensky, which doesn't that appeared to have come up with any great outcome. Zelensky was seen and heard and sent on his way. There were no great commitments of more money or more weapons or any of that sort of thing. And we got a rather limp declaration at the end of the meeting, apparently very watered down because Trump wouldn't accept anything less.

So is this the end of the affair? What do you think, Peter? I mean, are we still going to see this thing continue? or is it the case that not just the United States, but the West in general is finally tiring of it? Well, I'm afraid it's not the end of the affair. I think it will continue. There's no question in my mind that Trump would just as soon walk away from this,

wash his hands with the whole affair. And yeah, clearly he has no interest. He barely mentions it anymore. It wasn't a problem he could solve in 24 hours. and now he's admitting that he just can't solve it. And so he'd rather turn his attention to other matters. I think there's no question about it. But can he?

That's a big question. You know, can he actually walk away from it? And, you know, when I play out different scenarios in my mind, I don't see him succeeding in doing that. He may actually try. You know, they may cut off, for example, the flow of weapons. to Ukraine. But if that, you know, is quickly followed by a true collapse on the, on the battlefronts, and the Russians start marching, you know, quite rapidly, let's say, towards the Deneper,

or even if they cross a Deneper, you can imagine the hysteria that's going to break out and the pressures that are going to be put on Trump and the blame that will be attached to him. I don't think he can escape that. And, you know, And I don't know that he can actually withstand those pressures. You know, we've seen something about track. He's not a strategic thinker. He's a very impulsive man. He's a very, let's say, short-term thinker.

He doesn't really think many moves in advance. You know, rather than being a 5D chess player, he's really not even much of a checkers player, I would say. So when it comes to that, when there's that hysteria, that president, that president, pressure, that blame, I think that he'll be forced to cave in because he'll have people coming, you know, to him and saying, look, you're going to have an Afghanistan on your hand. Remember what that did to Biden? Remember how you, you know, you mercilessly criticized him for that. And now you're going to have one of your own. You know, you have to show strengths.

So I'm afraid that he won't be able to. You know, we've seen, I think, Trump often has good intentions. I mean, very healthy instincts, but he doesn't, again, he's not a strategic thinker and he surrounds himself with people that are actually opposed to as good instincts. And I think we'll see, you know, a similar failure to achieve his goals in this case. For the record, I actually agree. I think Trump might want to have nothing more to do with the crisis in Ukraine, but the crisis in Ukraine, unfortunately, is not going to go away. And unfortunately, also for him, it's going to want him involved. And just to go to the point of what you said, that Trump is not a great strategist.

He has good instincts sometimes, but he's not a great strategist. If we go back to the Iran situation, we had a whole succession of posts, which followed one after the other in the hours' just before the ceasefire was announced, in which he started by referring to Iran as the enemy and then ended up talking about God save Iran. So, I mean, you know, this incredible change of language over the course of just a few hours about Iran.

So, you know, if he's going to be as, you know, volatile on that topic, One must assume that he's equally likely to be volatile about the situation with Ukraine. But where does that leave us? Because Ukraine is visibly losing the wall. I mean, we had reports a few days ago about counter-offensives in the North, Sumi region. That's spotted down after two days. They're continuing to lose ground in all sorts of places.

their forces are very, very heavily reduced in number. They're running out of shells again and drones again and all of that all over again. The F-16s haven't made a difference. The Mirage 2000s didn't make a difference. So what exactly does the West do, does Trump do, if we do get the kind of crisis that you're talking about? The Russians break through to the NEPA. or they cross the deeper.

The military is collapsing. What exactly is he going to do in that situation? That can satisfy the neocons, the hardliners, the Europeans, who are completely unrecognized to giving up on this project. What can he actually practically do, which would satisfy all of those people? Well, I think there's very little that he can actually do. I think that's going to be a very scary moment in this, because that's when the possibility of direct intervention, I think, will come to the floor.

You know, we've heard talk at various times. Macron seems to have been, you know, his, has, along with Starmer, have shown a real desire for some reason to send their troops there, right? but that's faded. You know, there's just not the popular support for it. It's not doable. You know, they just don't have the forces. That's a big problem. They're asking for an American backstop, right?

But if we reach that crisis that you just described, the pressure to do that, or maybe not so much the pressure, but just in that state of panic, you know, I think anything becomes possible. And we may see some very reckless action. You know, I hope that it won't happen, but there is a real chance that we might see direct intervention at that point. I think the main thing, militating against that possibility is actually the very weakness of the European military. And they just, you know, they just don't have the forces.

You know, some of these political leaders like Macron and Starmor, they talk big, you know. but their own militaries are aware of their limitations. And I think you probably remember after Starrmer made many, many statements and threats, it was some of his own brass leaked some information, essentially, you know, this is all theater. We can't. This is not feasible.

So that's, you know, that's the main break on all of this, I think. It's just the reality, the reality of limited military, capability. But again, and just, you know, when they, when that happens, it's just going to be real panic and anything becomes possible. And, and when we're talking about Trump, you know, he is so mercurial, you know, that it's possible, too, you know, that he could flip-flop and say, you know, we can't stand for this. You know, he may panic, too, thinking that, oh, no, they're going to pin a Biden on me. We've got to do something. We have to act forcefully.

I don't think that'll happen, but it just, but anything becomes possible at that point. That's going to be, you know, a scary moment in this. And I think inevitably we're going to reach that moment. Did you notice that over the course of the NATO meeting, Macron, who has been the strongest advocate up to now, of direct military intervention by the West in Ukraine, he was saying to Trump, look, you acted so decisively against him. run, you must act with the same decisiveness in Ukraine. Now, it's not being reported in that way, but wasn't that in effect Macron telling Trump to be ready to intervene militarily? Because even if that wasn't exactly the words, that was in effect the tone of the rhetoric. And other European leaders, including Maloney, by the way, picked up on that.

Now, Maloney tied to turn it. She said she was, you know, the Trump needed to push for a ceasefire. But the others, when they talk about a strong action against the Russians, they seem to be mirroring some of the sort of more martial tones of Macron's language. And I do know that there is a view. it's not what I personally share at all, but I do know that there is a view in Europe that the United States, even if it isn't going to send, cannot send troops to intervene in Ukraine, can declare some kind of no-fly zone, and perhaps can launch bombing strikes against Russian forces or do something of that kind.

Do you think there's any possibility of that? I'm afraid there is. Yeah, I think that's, it's very important to point out. I think that the treatment that Trump received at the NATO summit, I mean, it was sycophantic in the extreme. And he was, and you contrast that with, you know, the previous statements that were coming out of the, well, not so much NATO, but certainly from the European governments.

You know, when he was pushing for negotiation, with Russia for, you know, there were, you know, there were all kinds of expressions of anger. There was much protesting. And now, you know, they all fall in line. And I think we all know the, like, the treatment, for example, that he received from Mark Routi. It, you know, it was just embarrassing. I mean, but it does tell you, right, you know, that, and I'm sure that, you know, Trump, you know, Trump understands it, hey, you know, when I strike, you know, when I act as decisively as

commander-in-chief, you know, they all fall to attention or they, you know, they lick my boots, you know, that's, and he could not have failed to notice that. And I think that was probably, as you say, that that was really the desired effect. And so, yeah, when the time comes, I think you're right, boots on the ground, American boots on the ground, is highly unlikely. But a no-fly zone, you know, that was something that was discussed in the early stages of the war. I'm sure that the Pentagon probably is going to fight that tooth and nail, though. I mean, it's just, I think they understand the capabilities of the Russians. And, but again, you know, when, you know, when you have big egos and big unstable egos like

like Trump's, and you have panic, you know, who knows? You know, he'll find there are sycophants within the Pentagon, I believe, that are going to tell him what he wants to hear when it comes to that. So there is, I don't think that will happen. I think there's just, the reality is that, again, neither the Europeans nor the Americans really can prevent, you know, the eventual total defeat of Ukraine. but there will be tremendous pressure.

There will be that moment of panic in which almost anything could happen. Let's just turn to the Russians now, because the Russians have been conducting the war in a way that many, many people find very exasperating, that they've been slow and incremental, they advance one village at a time. Actually, it's now more than that. It's several villages at a time.

but, you know, they've not aimed for any big breakthroughs. They've been fighting around Kupiansk, there's town of the north for many months now. They've basically surrounded it. You know, they perhaps could have stormed it. Many people ask, why haven't they done that? They've been doing the same thing with Pachros. What do you take with the view?

Is there's two views about this? The view number one is that the Russians taking their time in this way is emboldening the West, is making the West think that the Russians are slow and sluggish and timid and that if we hit them hard, they will basically run away. And then there's the other view, which I do know exists inside Russia, which is that what the Russians are basically doing is that they're boiling the water. slowly, in effect, what they're doing is they're accustomed to the West, the United States, to the reality of Ukraine's defeat, and that they're not rushing to win the war fast, because if they did, that might precipitate precisely the kind of dangerous panic reaction from the West that you were talking about. So you do hear both views, very sharply controlled. trusting ones. Have any thought about that?

Yeah, I guess that I have to admit, sometimes I do, I myself feel exasperated. You know, we know that the Russians have hundreds of thousands of troops, well-armed troops, well-trained, you know, units that are seasoned with combat veterans that are ready to, you know, to enter the fray. And, but yet they're held back there. And I, you know, I, you know, I, you know, guess when it comes to comes to the Russians and their prosecution of the war, I tend to

just give them the benefit of the doubt. They say that they have the intelligence, I don't. There are smart people in charge of this. They know what they're doing. And so, you know, that is my tendency. And I think that it's correct. One thing is you can see that over time,

well, this notion that the the Russians are weak. You know, it's still there, but it is clearly diminishing over time. As, you know, this incremental strategy that they had pursued, you know, maybe initially was perceived as weakness, but it is now looking as, I can't remember who used this phrase exactly, a lava flow, just an irresistible lava flow. And so that, you know, that contempt that was so common,

let's say back in 2022 and even in 2023 is vanishing. And then it was a stalemate. And now we're, you know, we're getting, I think, an increased recognition that the Russians are winning and they're bound to win this war. So, yeah, you know, yeah, then on the question of what, you know, again, Putin and the Kremlin in general just has to look, they have to look at the whole picture.

You know, quite often when we're staring at the map, you know, we're just thinking about the city, this town, and what it looks like to us, you know, what's taking place on the battlefronts. But there's the larger geopolitical picture. And I think, as you have often pointed out, Putin is very, very concerned, places great value on its relationships with the global south, or you could say the global majority, you know, especially with countries like China and India. that relationship is very, very important to Russia, those relationships, I should say. And then also there on the other side, yeah, there is the very unstable and, let's say, frankly, diluted European leaders and American leader. And so all of these things, you know, military victories have political impacts, political consequences. And those are things that he has to take into consideration. as well. So it may, who knows, like, what's going on beyond, behind the scenes.

We were all expecting a major offensive, you know, we were expecting that these, these hundreds of thousands of reserves would be committed to the battle sometime in June. Well, June is almost over, so it looks like that's not going to happen. Then I heard a report it might be in September. It's, they have the capability, you know, and if they're not using them, I think, it may be a consequence of, you know, of Putin or the Kremlin's, you know, understanding of just the overall political situation. It's not the moment.

They know that time is, in essence, is on their side. Now, that, you know, at the beginning of the conflict, I felt that that was the opposite. I was worried that the Russians had made a great mistake. And, you know, I looked at the, you know, the economies of the Europe of the NATO countries. he's just dwarf, you know, certainly measured in just the nominal TDP terms, absolutely dwarf Russian. And you say, well, they're going to gear up their economies. It's just, if the Russians don't act decisively and quickly, it's all over. But of course, we found out that the opposite is true.

You know, much to my amazement, I think the amazement of other people. So this slow process of attrition makes sense from a Russian point of view. When you think about, you know, in these wars of attrition, what really matters is your, your military production, you know, that productive capacity. And that, you know, is certainly in Russia's favor. And, you know, it seems to be increasingly in their favor over time. So, again, they're not in a hurry. I think there will be a moment, you know, when we see those reserves committed to the fray.

But, you know, all of us who are impatient, you know, I think we just have to defer to the Kremlin in these matters. After all, it is their war, not a house. I mean, they're ultimately, they're ultimately the people who run this. Let's talk about the Ukrainians, because as far as I can see, the Ukrainians show no willingness to compromise on any fundamental issue. The only thing that they're talking about at all is a ceasefire. Lavrov taunted them about this just a few days ago.

He said that the Ukrainians for a long, long time, were saying that they didn't want a frozen conflict. Now, in effect, they've enthusiastically embraced the idea of a frozen conflict. Of course, we are not interested in a frozen conflict. We are being maintained consistently what our position is. I think he's absolutely right about that. But the key thing is that on the substantive issues, the Ukrainians are not willing to make any concessions at all.

And Zelensky is saying that he doesn't believe in this negotiation process that's been taking place in Istanbul either. Do the Ukrainians actually have a plan? Because I can't understand what it is. I mean, they're not prepared to negotiate. They're not prepared to reach a deal. They must be able to see that they are losing the wall. They must understand that.

must have some understanding of the military crisis that is gradually engulfing them. And yet they show no ability in any way to negotiate their way out of it. I mean, what is their plan? I think their plan is to keep on fighting and hope for a miracle, which is another way of saying they really don't have a plan. Yeah, no, it's quite extraordinary. Of course, we've seen things like this in the past. I think they're, you know, I guess we can look at this from different perspectives.

One is that even if Zelensky and, you know, his ruling clique did want to negotiate an end to this war, I don't think that they could. You know, the nationalists have grown, the ultra-nationalists, I should say, have grown too powerful. And they have made it clear again and again. You know, ever really since the beginning of the war is no negotiated settlement. they you know there are people and you know a very influential and powerful people in Ukraine

that I think would rather see Ukraine be destroyed than to actually surrender to to Russia I mean that's irrational it's just hard to preach but it seems to be true I mean we get these statements it's kind of a death cult so that's a big part of it

and then then there's Zelensky's own interests You know, is just that, yeah, well, Ukraine, Ukraine may go down, but if, you know, if he goes down with it, or maybe not, you know, if he's able to retreat to leave just as the collapse occurs. And I think you've pointed this out recently. He does fine. I mean, there is a matter of personal interests of the ruling clique, too. Now, you know, what you can hope for is just some kind of upright.

or a coup, we just, unfortunately, we have seen no signs of that. I mean, it's just, I think there's no question that Ukrainian society, the public, are increasingly exasperated. You know, the polls such as they are do show just a very, very low levels of approval for Zelensky, but they don't have any options. You know, of course, they can't exercise their right, you know, as a ballot. And there, you know, except for the occasional, let's say, burning vehicle, or there hasn't been any signs of any sort of insurrectionary activity.

So, you know, for the present, it just seems like that is the course that we're on. I mean, that this ruling clique and, you know, the ultra-nationalists that support them and have penetrated this ruling clique are committed to this course. you know, they will not surrender. For them, that's just sort of like, I think the extinction of their own identities. You know, this is what they define themselves as anti-Russians and people that, you know,

never bow their head to Russia. And, you know, the consequences of this is going to be horrific. Yeah, you know, I wish I could go into a ray of light, but I don't see any ray of light here. I absolutely agree with that. I think they will go on fighting to the very bitter end, and as I don't expect to see a negotiated solution. That then brings us back to the United States, because where we started the program, which was with the question of a debacle coming over the horizon, Trump clearly doesn't want to be bogged down in Ukraine. I think we discussed that at the beginning of the program.

There are many people in the United States who will not be happy, however, if Ukraine is defeated. There will be perhaps demands for some kind of intervention to prevent it happening. But we've also discussed the enormous difficulties that that involves and why that might not work and might not even happen at the end of the day. So, no negotiation, no peaceful settlement of the conflict. a defeat of Ukraine, isn't that also going to be a huge defeat of the United States, given the commitment that the United States has made to Ukraine? And how will the United States respond to a defeat of that kind? Let's put aside the question of what happens to Donald Trump.

Let's talk about the United States in its long-term position and what it does. Yeah, no, I think there's no question, and it's going to be. it's going to be a very consequential defeat for the United States. I know that John Mearsheimer has said, there's no question that Russia will win this war, but it will be an ugly victory. I think there's no question that Ukraine, of course, will be defeated, but it will be an ugly defeat,

an ugly defeat not just for Ukraine, but for NATO, because the involvement of NATO has been so extensive from the very beginning. and the, you know, the constant, you know, the insistence on part of all the European leaders and of American leaders, at least, you know, Biden, that we cannot lose, you know, as long as it takes. You know, remember, we don't hear that so much now, but we heard it again and again. And I think the Europeans still utter that. This will be a difficult one to walk away from. You know, when you're talking about Iraq or, you know, a small country on, or Afghanistan even, you know, that was an embarrassing debacle, but now people don't think about it.

It's a small country on the far, on the other side of the world, you know, with really very little connection to the Western world. But this is different. You know, this Ukraine is part of the Western world. This is not something that you can simply walk away from, that you can memory whole, which often our media is very, very good at doing. This is right on the borders of Europe. So this is something that will have consequences. Consequences for the reputation of NATO, of the collective West.

There's no escaping of it. It's going to be a serious blow. When this started, there was a great deal of confidence, of course, that we would prove victorious, that our weapons were far superior. And we have seen these weapons introduce one after another, you know, with great fanfare. You know, each and every one of them was going to be a game changer. You know, everything from the high Mars to the F-16 and several weapons systems in between. And every single one of them has had virtually no impact. Or if there was an impact, it was temporary.

and the Russians then figure it out a way to neutralize that weapon. And anybody who's paying attention, you know, sees this. I say, well, wait a second. You know, this is not the, you know, the invincible military power that I thought it was. And then on top of that is, of course, the weakness of the U.S. or in general, the Western military industrial complex has been laid bare. I think that's actually maybe the even bigger story. It's not just that their weapons weren't what they were made up to be,

but they just don't have the productive capacity. You know, you find out that, well, they had a stockpile of a thousand of these, a thousand of those, and, oops, well, we used it all up, but we can produce 100 every year. It's going to, we're going to wait for 10 years. You know, I am exaggerating a bit, but not by a whole lot. all of these have been exposed to people who are paying attention. Now, and that is going to just have a long-term impact on the way.

We're already seeing this. This is not some sort of distant possibility and eventuality, but this is taking place right now. But it's going to reach its culmination when the defeat finally occurs. And when this is all over, and the dust settles and the smoke clears, the rest of the world is going to look at, have a completely different understanding, a completely different picture in their minds of what the collective West is. And it's going to be greatly reduced. They entered this conflict as giants and they're going to be walking out of it as midgets. And that's going to affect everything.

It's not just going to be military contracts, but it's going to be. going to affect diplomatic relations and, you know, economic treaties and so on and so forth. It's just, it's going to be, I think, inevitably just a huge boost for the emergence of a multipolar world. Peter Erickson, they walked into it as giants and they walked out of it as midgets. I might steal that one from you. You're welcome to. Peter Erickson.

Thank you very, very much for sitting and talking to me and going through this so carefully and thoroughly and so analytically. Thank you. You're welcome. Thank you, Peter. Once again, the channel is Conversation Among the Ruins. Peter, you want to give a plug one more time to the channel? I will have the links in the description box down. Okay, yeah, it's just a YouTube channel.

I don't think we're on any other platform right now. Conversations among the ruins. and we record generally three times a week, Monday, Wednesday, and Friday. And if there is some sort of crisis, which often occurs, you know, we may have an extra. But, yeah, that's generally the pattern.

Fantastic. Thank you, Peter, for joining us. Take care of. Very honored to be here. Thank you, Peter. Take care.