The Duran Podcast - EU, NATO angry as Orban visits Moscow to talk peace

Episode Date: July 6, 2024

EU, NATO angry as Orban visits Moscow to talk peace The Duran: Episode 1950

All right, Alexander, let's talk about what is going on in the conflict in Ukraine. And also, let's talk about Orban, the Prime Minister of Hungary's surprise trip to Moscow. This started off as a rumor, but Orban is going to Moscow. That's how it looks. He was in Kiev about a week ago, maybe even less. Yes. He went there to talk ceasefire with Zelensky. And now he's going to Moscow.

Everyone is very upset, by the way, Alexander. Charles Michelle is upset. Donald Tusk is upset. They're all coming out with statements saying that Arban does not speak on behalf of the European Union. But he is the president of the EU Council. Hungary has the rotating presidency. And it looks like Urban is trying to get a ceasefire, trying to get some peace. But the globalists, they don't want any peace.

So maybe we start off with Arban. and then we talk about what is actually happening in the conflict of Ukraine. Yes, I mean, what Orban is doing and being criticized for is what everybody now agrees. I say everybody, because even some of these people that we've just been mentioning agrees, needs to happen. We had a so-called peace summit in Switzerland about three weeks ago. Russia, as we know, was not invited and did not participate in that peace summit. The peace summit was an absolute debacle, as we discussed, in our various programmes. Most countries around the world stayed away.

They had to engage in all kinds of manipulations to bump up the number of signatures on the final communicate. They included the patriarch of Constantinople, which I found astonished. in the communique until Erdogan found out about it and complained and they had to remove his signature. So, I mean, and everybody was saying, everybody was telling them, Brazilians, the Indians, the Chinese, the Saudis, the Turks, everybody was saying, you have got to speak to the Russians. You're going to have to have negotiations with the Russians discussions with the Russians in order to settle this conflict in Ukraine. And even Zelensky is now coming along and saying at the next peace conference, we're going to have to have the Russians there.

So what does Orban do? He speaks to the Russians, what everybody says you need to do in order to solve this conflict. And how do they react? They are furious. They're furious because, of course, the last person they want to see solving the conflict in Ukraine is all ban. who they loathe for all sorts of reasons because he's a sovereignist, because he protects, he defends Hungarian national interests. So they're furious about that.

But also because viscerally and fundamentally, most of these people may pretend that they want to see a settlement of the war in Ukraine. But in reality, as their comments show, in truth, they don't. So, you know, they're angry. They're angry because it's Orban. And they're angry because, well, he's actually making serious moves to try to achieve peace. I think this is a game changer when it comes to the conflict in Ukraine, to Project Ukraine. Because like you said, for the first time, I can't remember when we had someone, a world leader or leader of the collective West actually speaking to all sides.

making trips to meet with with everybody on all the sides of the conflict to try and resolve it. I mean, has anyone done this in the last, in the two plus years of this conflict? I don't think so. No, no one has. Erdogan, Erdogan kind of, I mean, kind of Erdogan, maybe you could say. Well, yeah, in the very first, in the very first weeks of the conflict, there was this attempt to try and set up a negotiation. and Lukashenko in Belarus and Erdogan in Turkey acted as mediators as did Neftali Bennett, the Israeli prime minister.

But of course all that then failed, as we all remember. And Zelensky said from that moment on that he was not prepared to negotiate with the Russians anymore. And then I seem to remember that some about a year or so ago, the Austrian Chancellor, briefly visited Moscow, a very mysterious visit, but it didn't lead to anything, suffice to say. And certainly he wasn't brokering talks or engaging in any kind of mediation at all. So, and of course, Xi Jinping has appointed a Chinese official, Li Hui, who has been trying to go to Kiev and to Moscow, and he's been listened to very politely in Moscow. and he's gone to Kiev and the Ukrainians have been frankly rude about him.

So the only actual world leader, the only person who's a big name on the international stage, Orban is, by the way, is Victor Orban. And he's finally done what ought to have been done years ago, which is that he's going from one capital to the other, trying to engage in shuttle diplomacy, trying to see. if there's common ground between these two countries and trying to see whether or not there's any mechanism to get a negotiation

and a peace settlement going. I don't expect that he's going to have any success because his own side and remember he's a member of NATO, Hungary is a member of NATO and it's a member of the EU. He's own side. In other words, NATO and the EU, instead of supporting him in what he's,

is doing are repudiating him and how can any mediator succeed in conditions like that but it's a huge bug but if in November there is an election in the United States resulting in a new administration then at that point, what Orban is doing now might become extremely consequential. Yeah, I agree with you 100%. Orban seems to be looking at this from from six months out. Yes. And that wouldn't be surprised if he's had communication with the Trump campaign. I'm not saying he has.

I'm not saying this is coordinated. But it wouldn't surprise me if something like that has taken place. I mean, he's traveling with Peter Siosto, the foreign minister. So, I mean, this is a serious delegation that is going to Moscow. You're 100% correct. The EU, not only do they not support him, they're lashing out against him. NATO obviously is not happy. Zelensky regime, the minutes, Orban-Li.

left Kiev, they said they don't agree with a ceasefire. They didn't even wait for a bond to get on the plane before saying that they don't agree to anything. So I mean, yeah, the entirety of the collective West doesn't want to end this conflict. But Putin has repeatedly said that he's open to negotiations. He even said it in Astana. We'll do a separate video on Kazakhstan and the SCO. But Putin did say once again, he said that Russia is. is ready for peace and negotiations, and it could even be based on the Istanbul agreement. You had Nigel Farage coming out and saying this conflict was provoked. You had Trump coming out and saying absolutely this conflict was provoked on the All-In podcast,

getting a question from David Sachs. And now you have Orban doing this shuttle diplomacy. Something is changing. I'm not saying it's going to change overnight. But, you know, Orban is the type of politician who does look into the future. And he understands trends. If there's one thing that I remember from my trip to Budapest that really stood out from talking to the people in Budapest, was that Orban is a politician who's everyone told me who sees five years into the future.

That is a secret to success. He understands where things are shifting towards them. the momentum of, of sentiment, a public sentiment and what's happening in politics and geopolitics. And he rides that wave. He follows that shift. Always looking after the best interest of Hungary. Anyway, what are your thoughts? I completely agree with all of that. And I think that is exactly right. And I think that one of the things about Orban in this situation is that he's not only, you know, riding, you know, surfing, the tide or to change the metaphor.

He's not only adjusting to the change in the weather, he's also making the weather. The very fact that he's, you know, which is what, by the way, strong and effective politicians do, the very fact that he's now talking to both sides, even though the Ukrainians treated him in the usual bullish way that they treat anybody.

who suggests negotiations. The very fact that he's talking to both sides is going to facilitate a process of future negotiations. There is a global consensus now starting to congeal which says the war was provoked. The Russians have a point.

The West did push much too far in driving. NATO eastwards. It's been picked up, as you rightly said, by Farage in Britain, by Le Pen in France, by all sorts of people in all sorts of places, but outside of the collective West. It's, in fact, it's a truism. It's not even disputed there. It's accepted increasingly by, well, it is accepted by Donald Trump himself. Ukraine, its very survival is now at risk. The Russians are being reasonable.

They want to protect their security. There is therefore a basis for negotiations. And if negotiations are rejected, it is the West that is preventing those negotiations taking place. So I think this international conservative, is starting to form. And it will have an effect. We've seen how it has an effect in the Middle East. You remember we said right at the beginning when there was all that crisis after the Hamas attack on Israel that we'd start to get resolutions from the Security Council calling for ceasefires

and people said it wouldn't happen. And in the event the diplomacy worked pretty much as we expected it would. And the Israelis eventually had to come, pull back. And the U.S. had to change its position. We're in the same process now with Ukraine. It's going to take a long time to play out. It will probably take many months to play out. But the world community does not support further escalation. They want to see this war end. They are blaming the West for the fact that it has been prolonged. They are absolutely sick and tired of Zelensky and he's, you know, act, this performance that he puts on, they're completely unimpressed by it. And they support negotiations and most of the world agrees with what Orban is doing.

Yeah, I do feel like, for lack of a better word, taboos, narrative taboos have been broken. Yes. The war was provoked. That was a huge narrative. taboo that that has been broken now. It was an unprovoked war. That was what the Biden White House based their entire script for Ukraine on. And now you have Orban actually engaging in diploma. This is huge.

It's absolutely huge. And it's smart from Orban's position because whatever happens, whatever happens, he will always be the EU leader who can see. say, I tried to find peace and I work the diplomatic angles. And as things get worse and worse for Project Ukraine, Orban can say, I told you so, you're up. I told you so, Zelensky. You didn't listen to me.

I told you so, Ursula and Charles Michel and Gustav was going to replace Michelle and Kaya Khalis is going to replace Borell and everything. I told you so. I was right. You were wrong. and he's going to be able to say that with confidence. And that brings us to Ukraine, which which is collapsing. So any thoughts on what I just said and the situation with Ukraine?

You're absolutely correct. I mean, Orban is one of those extraordinary individuals who is bigger that, you know, makes his country seem big. Hungary is a relatively small place. I mean, it is a small place. I mean, it's not Brazil, it's not China, it's not India, it's not the United States, not even Germany or France. And yet, it plays this outsized role in world affairs because Orban has that personality,

that force of personality and that skill in absolutely, as you said, identifying and navigating the currents, the currents of world affairs. And also, can I just say, acting with sanity and humanity in this affair. I mean, he's always opposed this war. And he was right to. He's always been skeptical about the Western policy. And he's been right to.

And you're absolutely right. He will be in a position when it's all over. The big losers in this are going to be the Europeans because they went all out on this. They went all out with what the US administration was doing. And they're finding themselves in a situation where whatever happens now, they're going to be left hanging out to dry.

Because if either the, if there's a change of administration in the United States, all the indications are that it will get fully behind what Orban is doing. And if the current administration in some form is re-elected, well, it's increasingly looking isolated and probably in its new iteration, even it will probably start looking for a way out. And besides, and this is why we come back to what you've been touching on, The situation on the battlefront is becoming cataclysmic.

Nobody who is following the situation closely on the battlefronts anymore seriously believes that this war can end in any other outcome than a Russian military victory. So they're going to lose. The Europeans are going to lose however it goes. And the person who, as you rightly say, will be in a position to say to them, I told you so. You led Europe into disaster. You've left us cut off from vital Russian energy. We've become uncompetitive. We have a conflict with Russia. We've probably lost Russia as a part of the European system. Well, probably forever. And it's all because you made these disastrous decisions. Again, as most people who follow us know, I recently been. to Germany. And I was there. I've seen now the effect of the cut off in energy supplies.

I've actually seen it close up. I've seen this huge jump in prices, for example, for pretty much everything that you see in Germany and the malaise that's affecting the economy in Germany. And I've seen it in close up, and I've heard what Germans have to say about it. So Orban is going to be able to turn around and say to these people, look, should have listened to me. I was right. You followed your ideological obsessions and look where it's led us. Of course, they will hate him even more for it because the one thing nobody likes is ever to be told by the person who was right that they were wrong. But there it is.

Absolutely. That is someone cut out that snippet from this video and post it all over Twitter. Twitter X. They're going to hate him even more for being correct. Absolutely. What is going on in Ukraine on the ground? Very quickly. Very, very quickly.

Everyone that watches us and watches your videos knows that things are going terrible for the Ukraine military. Just very quickly, Zelensky in an interview with Bloomberg says that he has 14 brigades ready to go, but it's just that he's not getting weapons from

from Washington. That's what's holding back a huge offensive. Anyway, your thoughts. I mean, this endless mantra from Zelensky, he's never got enough weapons. I mean, he wants presumably the United, even if the United States military gives him all of its weapons, he can still come around and say it's not enough. But let's not spend too much time on what Zelensky says. There may be 14 brigades in reserve. If you're talking, about 2,000 men per brigade. That's about 30,000 men in reserve. Nowhere near enough, by the way. Certainly not enough to conduct an offensive, even if they were all fully trained and equipped, which of course they won't be. The reality is on the battlefronts. It goes from disaster to

catastrophe and is doing so every day now. Now, you know, a quick rundown. The Russians dominate the situation on the skies. They've been blasting away at Ukrainian airfields. What's left of the Ukrainian Air Force has been systematically dismantled. They lost seven Suhoi 27 fighter jets, their best fighter jet, by the way, in one air strike on one airfield. There have been several other similarly disastrous air strikes on other airfields. And on the front lines, they're losing men at rates that are unimaginably horrible between 1,500 and 2,000 men a day, and they're losing ground now. I mean, you know, we've discussed many times on these programs

that the West is fixated on territory rather than actually looking at the effect of attrition on the Ukrainian army. Well, the attrition is continuing and it is getting worse. Remember, if we're talking about 2,000 men being lost a day, then that's double the size of the force that Ukraine, that Zelensky says they have in reserve in a month. Ukraine will lose in a month, twice as many, as the force that Zelensky says they have in reserve.

Anyway, let's not push that too far. But everywhere on the front lines, they're in retreat. They failed to launch their great counter-offensive in Kharkov region. It's looking increasingly likely that they're going to lose Volchansk. Battle is still going on there. Ukrainians still experiencing terrible losses, but all the fortified positions in Volchansk are being lost. In Chasif Yard, the other major strategic place where the battle has been raging.

This is this town east. of, sorry, west of Bachmert, it opens the way to basically the NEPA and to the capture of these two remaining big towns, Slaviansk and Kramatosk. The Ukrainians have just lost their most heavily fortified positions in Chasafyar. This is the micro-district that was located there, area of high-rise buildings. They've just been driven out of it. It looks. like the rest of Chassefia will follow at some point over the next couple of weeks. Further south still, an area called Tore, a town called Torez, supposedly after Avdekar, the most heavily fortified position that the Ukrainians had along the front lines.

The Russians have broken through all of the defenses. They're now deep inside Torezsk. There's a major operational crisis. we're getting reports that Ukrainian troops there, instead of fighting back, are actually surrendering. In the Avdyevka area, you remember Avdewka, which they captured in February, Russians continuing to advance, they look like they're about to cut off one of the major supply roads. They're closing in on this other important town of Pakrovsk, which is the major Ukrainian logistical center. and further south still the Russians mopping up in another town called Krasnogorvka

about to cut further communication lines and looking like before long they're going to bring the whole of southern Donbass under their control as well wherever you look it is a crisis for Ukraine and this weeks after months after the The US Congress authorized a further appropriation for Ukraine. The weapons have been supplied, and they are making no difference. The Russian offensive is gaining momentum. The Ukrainian army, Zelensky himself, says, doesn't have enough weapons to hold it back. And in spite of all his boasts about the 14 brigades that he's got in reserve, the result, the reality is he doesn't have enough men either.

Yeah, nothing's going to make a difference. The attack homes, none of these new wonder weapons, F-16s, attackums, permission to strike pre-2014 Russian territory. None of it is going to make a difference. No. And Orban knows that, just to close up the video. He understands this. Exactly. Exactly.

Exactly. Okay, let's end the video there. The durand.com. We are on Rumble Odyssey, bitchy, telegram, rockfin, and Twitter X. and go to the Duran shop, pick up some limited edition merch. The link is in the description box down below. Take care.