The Duran Podcast - DIRECT negotiations US-Russia, ONLY way forward

Episode Date: May 9, 2025

DIRECT negotiations US-Russia, ONLY way forward

All right, Alexander, let's talk about what is going on in Ukraine. And let's talk about the diplomacy that is not really taking place, to be quite honest. I have to say that. It's not really taking place. It looks like the Trump administration is still trying to figure things out. Trump is not able to make a decision. He says he's going to make a decision very soon, but he's still unable to make. to make a decision, walk away, continue to escalate like Biden or do something in the middle.

Vance was speaking at a Munich, a type of Munich Security Conference event, but in the United States, part of the Munich Conference organization. And he said that what Russia was asking for was just too much. So he did say that. It was too much of an ask. But he is hinting at some sort of moving away from the ceasefire, the Kellogg's ceasefire plan. So an interesting statement from Vance. An acknowledgment, actually. The way I read it, it was an acknowledgement that there are U.S. officials that have recognized and read Putin's statement from June 2024. And they do understand what root cause Istanbul Plus means. So at least we know that there are people in the Trump administration

who do have an understanding as for what Russia is looking for in some sort of a deal. But on the flip side, Alexander, we have Kellogg. He is making the rounds on all of the media. He is talking about his freeze plan. He says a ceasefire in place. We're going to freeze everything along the, current front lines in place. We're going to create a DMZ, 15 miles for Ukraine to step back, 15 miles for Russia to step back. And he told Fox News that he was speaking with the Zelensky

regime and he told them, don't worry about de facto recognition or de jura recognition. Don't worry about any of the recognition of the territory that Russia holds. Because as we did in Soviet times with the Baltics, as we did in Soviet times with Germany, we're just going to wait the Russians out. He actually said this. So he's actually going around saying this stuff. And of course, the Russians are probably listening to all of this, I guess, in horror, but also kind of laughing at the ridiculousness of this all. What are your thoughts? And he's also said, just a fairly, follow up with catalog. He's also still talking about European peacekeepers. He's very proud of his plan. He's Very proud of it.

He's been very proud of his plan. And apparently during that disastrous episode in Paris and London, when his plan was first presented, well, the adaptation of his plan was presented. The Ukrainians, you know, Zelensky threw a fit about it. Apparently he told the Ukrainians, well, don't worry about NATO membership because though Trump is opposed to it, you never know. The next administration might not be. So he's...

Wait out. He wants to wait out. He works up. Exactly. Which, of course, as you absolutely rightly say, the Russians are listening to all of this. They're reading all of this. They know perfectly well what Kellogg is saying. I don't know whether he understands this exactly.

I suspect he doesn't, in fact. But he is in effect destroying his own peace initiative. because I don't think it was ever acceptable to the Russians in any form anyway, but anybody from the US who comes to meet them now, Wicke, Rubeo, whoever, they will just be able to dust out all the things that Kellogg has been saying and say, look, look, he's not interested in a final settlement of the conflict. He's not interested in a long-term resolution that addresses the root causes, or that he was is a freeze.

He's talking about, you know, be militarized zones, which we know nothing about, by the way. Nobody's talked to us about this. The Ukrainians haven't said anything about this either. He's still talking about European peacekeepers. He's holding up the possibility that one day, Ukraine might join NATO after all. And he's even saying that the regions might eventually be returned to Ukraine. So, I mean, this is obviously a non-starter as far as we are concerned, and we are just astonished that you still come up and presented to us. I think that at some point, if there is going to be any movement here, somebody has to take Donald Trump aside and tell him, you cannot go on keeping Kellogg as your peace envoy.

because Kellogg, whether inadvertently or not, is undermining all your peace efforts with the Russians. I wonder if that's the goal. Well, it might even be the goal. I mean, it might be the goal. It might be that Kellogg really does want that to happen, that he knows that the Russians will never agree to any of this, that his objective is to try to get the Russians eventually to walk out at this process so that we get the

Lindsay Graham sanctions, bone crushing sanctions imposed and all of that. It could be. I mean, I really don't. I mean, I think that probably Kellogg himself doesn't quite know. I mean, he sometimes gives the impression

of being quite proud of his plan, if I could put it like that, generally believes that it might work, which of course it won't work. But ultimately, really doesn't matter. The point is that this isn't taking the thing forward at all. I get the impression that Trump doesn't, as a matter of France, want to impose massive further sanctions on the Russians.

I think that isn't the course that he ultimately wants to take. And the important thing is that Vance is now coming out. He's not the only person, but it clearly is Vance. And he is actually going directly against Kellogg. He says, what needs to happen? No, we need to forget about ceasefires. The Russians won't have ceasefires. That already destroys Kellogg.

I mean, what Vance is saying is that Callag won't work. The United States now has to instead look to trying to get the underlying issues addressed. and that has to be done through direct negotiations between the Russians and the Ukrainians. Now, obviously, he also says the Russians are asking for too much, but then the whole point of negotiations is that you get together and you discuss what can be agreed between the parties. You don't have to agree to what the Russians are demanding if the objective is to get negotiations started. It's at the negotiation table that you finally decide, you hammer out what each party is prepared to agree to and to concede. That is a completely different position

from Kellogg's. It is much closer to the existing Russian position. And the key thing to say is that the person who is absolutely rejecting negotiations won't countenance them, won't rescind his decree that prohibits for negotiations, who's insisting that there must be an indefinite ceasefire first, and we've seen the terms that he attaches to that ceasefire in the European proposal, which we've discussed in previous programs, which clearly is intended to lead Sir Rosh's capitulation. The person who rejects negotiations, unconditional negotiations, totally is Zelensky. And one can clearly see that it is Zelensky, who someone like Vance probably ultimately now

is coming to see is the problem. Or that's how it looks to me. Well, you know, Trump is expressing frustration and anger. He says, I'm not happy. And my sense of it is that Trump is talking about Russia. He's not happy with Russia or Putin. I mean, my sense, maybe you agree or you disagree. But I'm starting to, I think it's clear.

It's clear that Trump is leaning more towards Kellogg, the ceasefire. And it seems that he's frustrated with the fact that Putin won't accept a ceasefire. He's upset that Russia won't capitulate, I guess, is what he's trying to say. He seems to be drifting away from Whitkoff and he's gone with the Kellogg's ceasefire plan. Well, we know that they've gone with the Kellogg's ceasefire plan because that's what they've presented as their deal. So we already know that. Vance is correct in that you have to get negotiations. You have to move away from talking about a ceasefire and you have to get negotiations. But bilateral negotiations, not between the Ukrainians and Russians. It has to be between the United States and Russia. That's how we started this. It really was negotiations. When Trump first got into office, he decided. decided not to walk away, huge mistake, but at least it seemed that he recognized that it's the United States and Russia that have to be at the table. And then everything started to break

down and move adrift. And that's when the neocons and Kellogg really started to assert themselves. Yes. What do you think of that? Ultimately, you're absolutely right. I mean, there is no possibility that Zelensky or anybody who replaces Zelensky from the Kiev side would ever agree to in agreement with the Russians. I mean, negotiations ultimately are also a route to nowhere. Seasfires are a route to nowhere as well. If you really want to achieve a peace settlement in Ukraine, the only way to do it is to direct negotiations between Russia and the United States. We've said this all along. I've talked many times, just talk about it. again, negotiations like the ones that took place between North Vietnam and the United States

in the late 1960s and early 1970s, whose ultimate objective was to extricate the United States from the war in Vietnam. It wasn't even in the end about achieving a peace in Vietnam. It was more about extricating the United States from Vietnam. And that's really the only way forward. And there's perfectly good grounds to do that because, as the New York Times has told us, the United States was itself a party to the war in Ukraine. It was commanding the Ukrainian army. It was drawing up plans for it. It was providing the intelligence. It was to some extent even picking the generals, a point which many people have overlooked.

It was providing the military equipment. It was massively, it wasn't just involved in the war. It was a party to the war. So given that it was a party to the war, there's every justification for direct negotiations with the Russians. And if you want to achieve peace, and I'm absolutely of the view that it was a huge mistake to go down this road of negotiations either because negotiations, a peace treaty or at least some kind of settlement of the conflict with the Ukraine between

the United States and Russia is a project that will take, well, probably well over a year to agree to, probably much more than that, which will invite massive criticism in Europe, which will invite massive criticism from the neocons and their allies in the United States. It is a recipe for nothing else but trouble. But if yes, what you want to do, that's ultimately the only way that you're going to end this. I suspect that perhaps some of the people, like the Russians who are advocating direct talks between Russia and Ukraine, but importantly, the Russians are saying that the United States can also be involved. what the Russians are basically doing is that they're using it as a lure to try to get a dialogue and a negotiation with the United States itself underway. And maybe there are people in the US who want to do that also.

But anyway, this is all very hypothetical because we're nowhere near close to that position yet. The key thing to say is, yes, I absolutely agree. Trump went with Kellogg. At the moment, he's still going with Kellogg. He's very angry and frustrated with the Russians because they haven't caved and agreed to Kellogg. He doesn't seem to understand that Kellogg not only won't work, but cannot work. And the one positive, and this is the positive I take from what Vance is saying, is that there seem to be people in the administration, important people. in the administration who understand this and who are telling Trump, look, this isn't going to work.

Seas fires aren't going to work. Kellogg isn't going to work. If we're going to get out of this mess, we need to have some kind of negotiations for a final settlement. Let's start with negotiations between the Ukrainians and the Russians. And obviously the Russians at the moment are asking for too much, but maybe over time we can find some way forward. I mean, so there is clearly a group of people within the administration, within the Trump administration who get it. Vance, it seems to me, is one. Whit Gough obviously is another.

Probably there are other people too. Yeah, he's not listening to them, though, at least at the moment. No. And it just seems that Trump is afraid to go with them because for some reason, probably domestic political reasons may be connected to Russiagate. He doesn't want another Russia gate like in his first term. He's afraid to go against the neocons, the Democrats, the think tanks, the deep state establishment that is very anti-Russian, very pro-Ukraine. He doesn't want to go against them. Or he would prefer to find a way to get the U.S. out of Project Ukraine while also making it look like he's not walking away and also making it look like that he's not angering the NATO European partners. He kind of wants the best of all worlds.

Yes. And he's just not going to find that. He's going to have to go against one of these groups, one of these interests. And it looks like he's still very afraid to go up against the neo-Khan neoliberal establishment, which is incredibly invested in many ways. After we talked about the minerals deal, many ways they're invested in Project Ukraine and in regime change in Russia. I completely agree. Now, I'm going to make a guess.

One of the particular fact is that worries Trump a lot and weighs on him. and a person who's probably been talking to him quite a lot and may have a great deal of influence over him is Lindsay Graham. I mean, Lindsay Graham has put forward this sanctions package against Russia, secondary sanctions, 500% tariffs on countries that import Russian oil and uranium and things of that kind. Now, Lindsay Graham is saying that this is intended to support Trump's peace efforts, that it's intended to come into effect if Russia doesn't act, it doesn't obey what Trump is saying. But another way of looking at this, and maybe a more appropriate way of looking at this, is that what Lindsay Graham is saying is, look, I've got 72 senators who want to follow my type of unrelated.

anti-Russian line in the Senate. And don't you dare go against us? Because we are a more than two-thirds majority in the Senate. If you press on and do deals with the Russians, which we don't like, you will split the Republican Party. And we have commonality on these sorts of questions with a Democrat. and it will wreck your entire domestic agenda because you'll have alienated us and we are in a position to do you an enormous amount of trouble in the future. And of course, 72 senators would be enough if there was a renewed impeachment drive to impeach you if it came to that.

So, you know, this Lindsay Graham thing looks to me as much threatening or, you like, a blackmail to against Trump, keeping Trump in line as it is anything else. Nobody talks about it in that way. But, you know, we're talking about Washington and Washington politics and what the near cons are all about. And that's, I have to say, how frankly, it looks to me. and I think Trump is very nervous of this. He's gone out of his way to try and win Lindsay Graham over.

He needs Lindsay Graham's votes to still get his remaining nominees confirmed with coming to the end of that process. But he also leads Lindsay Graham's support to get the rest of his agenda through. The trouble is, of course, appeasing people like Lindsay Graham and the near contendency is, now antagonizing the MAGA people who are ultimately even more important to Trump than, you know, the Lindsay Graham faction is. So we've had Marjorie Taylor Green, who's written a fiery post in which he says, you know, what is this awful minerals deal? Are we committing to Ukraine or not?

Surely the whole point is that we don't press forward with commitments to Ukraine. And Sean Davis, who's the CEO of the Federalist, which is absolutely, you know, the Neocom, the intellectual wing publication of the Neocon movement. He's gone on Fox and he's also said that, you know, mineral steel is fine, provided it is not a pathway towards an indefinite commitment to Ukraine, which, of course, is exactly. what it is. So you can see that by appeasing Lindsay Graham and what he represents, Trump risks angering some of his own core supporters. So he's got to balance this. And I don't know that he really knows how to. So he dithers. He tells people that he's prepared to walk away. He goes with Kellogg.

He doesn't make a final decision. This thing dragged. And in the meantime, we get reports about Patriot missile systems being dusted off in Israel and Germany. This is a Biden-era project, by the way, but apparently it's going forward. We have deliveries of equipment for the F-16 fighters that have been sent to Ukraine, and which are achieving nothing, by the way. We've had this license for the $50 million of weapons that Ukraine is supposed to buy. We don't even know what kind of weapons those are or whether there's even a contract for them. But these are all signals that look like, to me, the bureaucracy in this vacuum of decision-making is taking control. And it was the bureaucracy that basically drafted the middle rights deal and made it into the vehicle that we discussed in that other program.

you know, the laundry mechanism, which is what basically it is, because that's what they've done in Afghanistan. That's what they were doing in Ukraine. So they've reproduced all of that in this latest. It's just the latest iteration of all of this. And I think that for the moment, this will just go on and on and on until eventually, probably, events on the battlefronts make the decision for Trump, which is what at some point in the summer they're going to do. And in the meantime, of course, Putin is gathering all his friends.

Xi Jinping is now in Moscow. China is starting to take a harder line on Ukraine that it has been doing up to this point because they're very angry with the Americans over the economic And they feel the need the Russians more, probably. So there's apparently a raft of agreements being prepared between China and Russia. It's important to say, again, if China were to commit to start providing, you know, weapons and technology to Russia, well, that will have an immediate effect on the course of the war. We would see the effect very, very quickly. And of course, it isn't just China.

There are all kinds of other countries are gathering in Moscow as well. And we can see that even as all of this power vacuum, hesitation and dithering in Washington continues, the other side is coming together. And at the same time as the Russians are coming together, and they clearly have a plan. Szilisky is also busy. I mean, he's sending drones, fleets of drones to Moscow to disrupt the Victory Day parade. If there's been anybody warning him to stop doing that from the West, he's obviously paying no attention to any of these warnings.

When has Zelensky ever heeded warnings? I mean, you know, the Biden administration supposedly told him, don't attack Russian energy installations. So he went on attacking Russian energy installations. The Trump administration got Zelensky to agree to an energy truce, a truce, a 30-day truce not to attack energy installations in Russia. So he went on attacking energy installations in Russia. Zelensky is uncontrollable. And there is every reason to think that as this vacuum of decision-making in Washington continues, he will become more hardline and more radical and more reckless and more desperate as the military situation on the battlefronts turns against him. So drift is not a

policy and it does come with risks. Trump can go on putting this off as long as he wants, but, you know, sooner or later, as you absolutely rightly say, he has to decide. And either he goes with people like Lindsay Graham and Kellogg, or he goes with people like Vance Wickoff and perhaps Marjorie Taylor Green, but he's got to make a decision. He can't just keep this going in the way that he is indefinitely, telling people that he's about to walk out tomorrow or the following day or next week or has already walked out and that it becomes clear that he hasn't actually done anything like that. He's got to make a decision because I'll Ultimately, if he doesn't, the decision will be made for him and made for him in a way that might not be to his advantage.

Yeah. The weapons are going to run out from the Biden era in about a month from all of Biden's packages, his drawdown package. So, you know, Trump has maybe a month, maybe two at most. And that he's going to have to either go back to Congress and ask for a huge weapons package. or he's going to he's going to have to figure out other ways to to get weapons to Ukraine and and I think that's where the the minerals deal comes in I think that Trump is trying to thread the needle he's trying to please the neocons he's trying to please the Lindsay Graham's and and the organizations and think tanks behind them

and he's trying to to also please maga yes maga americans America first. And he's going to try to thread that needle. So he's saying, okay, we'll keep the grift going in Ukraine. So they're happy. The interests about the money and the washing machine, they're happy about the minerals deal because that means that they can keep that grip going. In the minerals deal, you could say that weapons are going to be sold to Ukraine and not given. So the MIC is happy. The neocons can kind of be happy. there as well, understanding that weapons will somehow make their way to Ukraine. He can package it to America first in a way where he says, you know, I'm not giving weapons to Ukraine like Biden,

but I'm selling weapons to Ukraine and we're making our money back from the $350 billion that we lost in Ukraine that we gave to Ukraine. So he can kind of package it in that way. And I think his instincts are also taking over with the framing of some sort of, of a narrative where America is a war winner. Because you see a lot of statements, you know, we got Yemen to capitulate the United States won World War II. No one else won it. We wanted, yeah, the Russians helped a little bit.

Yeah, the British helped a little bit. But at the end of the day, it was the United States that won World War II. So I think he's somewhere deep inside, he probably understands that he's heading for a big loss when it comes to Ukraine. But he's going to try to thread the needle. He's going to try to keep the America first. supporters believing that

whatever happens in these wars, including Ukraine, the U.S. is winning. I think that's the type of marketing mind tricks that he's trying to play with all this World War II stuff and this Yemen capitulate stuff.

He is trying to frame things as America is winning, even though we're having a rough time of it in all of these areas. Well, I agree. I think that's probably he's thinking at the moment. I should also say that it's probably his own visceral instincts. I mean, he doesn't like to admit that America has lost. And I think that one of the reasons, one of the things that attracted him to Kellogg in the first place is that it appeared to offer a deal which did not look like America had lost. It actually, froze the conflict in a way that it could be Pakistan as saying that actually America won, that it won in Ukraine, which of course is exactly one reason why the Russians, who are in fact winning, are never going to accept it. I mean, obviously so. But I mean, I think there is that

sort of visceral sense that Trump doesn't like ever to appear a loser. He doesn't like the United States ever to appear a loser. Now, I think you're probably. probably summarizing what he's probably thinking at some level. But of course, he is underestimating here. His own people. The point is Marjorie Taylor Green and Sean Davis have already seen through all of this. They've seen through the middle deal. They don't like the middle deal.

The fact that it's going to be shown to the as, you know, this is what we're getting in return, we're going to get all our money back, they've already said that if it's a pathway to a deeper commitment in Ukraine, they don't like it, they oppose it, they don't want it. And of course, what he's ultimately coming and saying to them is that, yes, we're not giving weapons to Ukraine anymore. We're giving Ukraine weapons on credit. Now, that amounts to the same thing, because the fact is, you're never going to get your money back.

And it's always a huge mistake in politics to underestimate the ability of your own people to see through these sort of games. And I think that people like Marjorie Taylor Green, who is, I mean, she's fiery and, you know, whatever. but she comes across to me actually as a very intelligent person. And the other people in Maga will see through this. And they will say, what earth are you doing? You're giving more money. You're giving more aid. You're piling in more money to Ukraine, all on the strength of a mineral deal,

which is never going to produce anything. So I think that this approach might not work for Trump as he thinks it does. And we can already see that people within his own administration, like J.D. Vance, are already signaling that they don't agree. Meanwhile, Russia is continuing to make advances on the battlefield. And China and Russia continue to get closer. Exactly. Closer aligned on Ukraine, which is big trouble for the collective West, for the U.S. and for Zelensky. Well, especially given that the whole point about project Ukraine,

going backwards, was to use Ukraine to actually pull Russia away from China. What it is doing? To regime change Russia. To regime change Russia. And then go after China. Yeah. And then instead what's happening absolutely is exactly the opposite. They're coming ever closer together, as we're going to see over the next couple of days

in Moscow. So I mean, it's wrong at every conceivable. level. I have to say this. I said this on a program that I did recently on my channel, which is that my own sense is that the Trump administration is losing momentum on absolutely every front. Their economic policy is fracturing. The tariffs are being quietly dismantled. We now have talks with China, the start of talks with China, which the United States sought. that, you know, the narrative in the U.S. is the other way around, that it was the Chinese who backed down. But it doesn't look like that at all to me. The Chinese who clearly said it was the U.S.

that approached them for these talks. So we're going to start to see the tariffs against China. They're going to be brought down and dismantled. We've seen the whole negotiations in the Middle East. They're going nowhere at all. The Iran negotiations, it seems to me, are stuck. We have no real project on re-industrialization in the United States. Apple is talking about making its iPhones in India instead of China. Well, how does that help re-industrialization in the United States? It doesn't bring jobs back to the United States if they're simply relocating their production from one Asian country to another Asian country.

And, well, Ukraine, as we see, it's turning out exactly as if you're, was before, we're just drifting back to the old failed policies, which everybody could see has failed. Apparently, there's even an intelligence assessment, which was prepared before the new team took over, which basically said that there is no weapons or number of weapons that the United States can supply, which can change the military equations in Ukraine any longer. So I get the sense that this is an administration that is losing the momentum and is running out of steam on every front. And it started very strongly, but at some point it began to lose focus.

All right. We will end the video there. The durand.com. We are on Rumble, Odyssey, Pitchie, Telegram, Rockfinite. And next 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. Low, take care.