The Duran Podcast - Europe's Drone Escalation Gamble Is Spinning Out of Control

Episode Date: May 19, 2026

Europe's Drone Escalation Gamble Is Spinning Out of Control

All right, Alexander, let's talk about what is happening in Ukraine and with the war between Russia and Ukraine and the collective West because things are escalating, at least with regards to the drone strikes. So we had big drone strikes into Moscow the other day. This is in retaliation to the Russian big strikes into Ukraine and specifically into Kiev. Some reports put those Russian strikes at those drones into Ukraine at 800. Other reports at 1,500. The strikes into Moscow the other day were over 500, 560. Some reports claim drones into the Moscow region. What are your thoughts on what is happening with the drone escalation? And we have all kinds of fighter jets scrambling in Latvia with. the way all over the place once again, which hints it's something more than just drones from Zeletsky. Right. Well, the first thing to say is that you've actually identified the right word. It is escalation. It is of a major escalation in the whole mood around this conflict with signs that we are now starting to see a situation where it could all be spot. spiraling out of control, when it's spiraling out of control, that it might start to expand beyond Ukraine. And when the Europeans are, despite, you know, this narrative about Ukraine winning, that they're beginning to become not simultaneously very panicky and very aggressive.

Now, this is a huge drone attack about Ukraine on Moscow, far in away the biggest. And I think there's a number of explanations for this. Firstly, I think it was an attack that was planned for the 9th of May. I think what we have seen with this drone attack was the drone attack that Ukraine intended to launch on the 9th of May on Moscow, which the Russians warned about. Trump basically blocked by declaring a ceasefire. a week has passed, the Ukrainians have added and the Europeans and the Ukrainians and the Europeans have manufactured more drones and they launched an even bigger attack than the one they would have launched on the 9th of May. But this is what they, this is what they did. And I think it's here

important to say that the Russian attack, the big Russian attack, which preceded it clearly also was bigger than usual, in part because the Russians manufactured more GERAN drones during the ceasefire, and that meant that they could launch them all together. And there are some reports that over a period of about 48 hours, around 1,000 Geraon drones in total were launched against Ukraine. Now, unusually, TAS has provided information about the targets that these Ukrainian drones actually hit in Moscow. And I have to say that if you accept Tass's account, which is backed by the mayor of Moscow, a man called Subjani, it doesn't seem as if a huge amount of damage was done. I mean, we've not had big industrial facilities damaged.

I think four people have been killed, and that has attracted obviously a lot of attention. But there was an attack on a refinery plant. And again, you see lots of smoke and fires. But as I said many times, that doesn't mean that the industrial facility itself has suffered a huge damage. And apparently it didn't. And it's continuing to function. And it also has not. led to disruptions in electricity or things like that in Moscow.

The airports had to be closed whilst this attack was underway. But in a sense, I don't think this attack was even intended to do damage exactly. I mean, it's very different from the Russian attacks on Ukraine, which are not just drone attacks, but missile attacks. What this was, and it came with a very, very provocative, defiant comment on X from Zelensky himself. What this was, was an attempt to attack Moscow itself, to attack the heart of Russian power, to tell the Russians, we are still in the fight, and we are prepared to attack you wherever we can, anywhere in Russia, including in your own capital, potentially in the Kremlin if they could reach it,

though in fact they didn't reach the Kremlin. Now, the point is it's not just Zelensky who's doing this, it's the Europeans behind him. And the Europeans clearly are pushing this drone offensive. If you're reading the media here in Britain, they are, I mean, they are, you know, advocating it and cheering it on as strongly as they can. And that points again to a major escalation of the crisis between Russia and Europe generally. And the question is why, and I'm going to suggest that there's a number of reasons.

Firstly, the Europeans again are coming out. You can see this clearly. You see this with the Estonian foreign minister. They don't want to negotiate with the Russians. They've made that absolutely clear that negotiations with the Russians are impossible. There is some momentum amongst some people on the margins in Europe to begin negotiating. with the Russians that has to be stopped. You have to pursue escalation to prevent it. That's one reason. The second reason is that there is a further deterioration on the front lines.

And actually, this deterioration over the last couple of days has been significant. The Russians have taken some important places. They took a place at a town called Barovaya. We don't need to go. to the details of this, but it looks like they're about to finish the battle. For Lehman, we've had over the last 12 hours information that the situation in Konstantinovka is not just in crisis, but what I have been saying for some time, that there is a large group of Ukrainian soldiers trapped there. Now that apparently is being visually confirmed. So there is that. But I think that what is driving this sense of crisis even more and this desire to escalate is that over the last week or so, the understanding has dawned in Europe that the Americans are not going to provide more weapons for the European.

Europeans or for the Ukrainians. The US has cancelled a agreement to supply Tomahawk missiles to Germany. And I understand that in Germany, this has come as an enormous shock. The reason the Germans are not providing these missiles, the Americas are providing these missiles, by the way, is because they're running short of Tomahawk missiles. You know, we've discussed this in many places. but also a realization that the armaments drive, the rearmament drive in Europe is failing. We've had what looks like an emergency summit meeting of industrial leaders being called together by Mark Ruta, the NATO Secretary General, saying, look, you're getting all of this money. why aren't you producing more weapons? We've had comments to this effect from Kayakales,

who says, you know, we've been giving money to the military industrial people, but why isn't production rising? And there's now starting to appear articles in the media in London, and one of them looked at the situation with missile production. And the fact that the Europeans, the most advanced missile they have is the Taurus missile, which is not remotely equivalent, even to the Tomahawk in terms of range, apparently, and overall capabilities. And they say, look, we are struggling to build even Taurus missiles. The Germans are struggling to build Taurus missiles in Germany in quantity.

and the Russians by contrast have just launched their Sarmat, massive, incredibly modern intercontinental ballistic missile. How are we going to catch up with that? How long would it take us if we were to go ahead as on our own without the Americans before we could compete with something like that? So there is this sudden understanding, I think, that all the talk over the last year, the great rearmament that's taking place in Europe, people are beginning to sense that it just isn't working. They don't want to talk to the Russians. They can't agree on a chief negotiator. Kaya Kallas, incredibly, is still insisting that if there is going to be a chief negotiator,

with the Russians. She must be that person. The Russians have ridiculed that idea. But basically, they don't want to talk. They may have some knowledge that the situation in the front lines isn't going well. But above all, they understand that the clock is ticking in terms of European rearmament. So the thing to do is to escalate as much as possible. as quickly as possible, create a crisis with the Russians and hope that that's going to bring the Americans back in. I don't understand the whole bringing Americans back in. I understand the theater of it that the U.S. is separate from Europe, but it's not.

I mean, May 9th pointed that out, didn't it? Putin wanted to get the message out, do not touch Moscow. He didn't call the Europeans. He didn't call Ukrainians. He went straight to Trump. Right? Or Trump came straight to him, whatever. But that's how you put the message out to the U.S.'s puppets and their vassals. You're not going to touch Moscow on this day. And it worked. Trump got his victory lap. I got a three-day ceasefire because I'm President Trump. But whatever. We know. know what really happened, right? So how come he doesn't do the same now with the instance of the drones? It's not a European thing. It's not a Ukrainian thing. At the end of the day, you have to go

to the United States and you have to tell the United States, look, you have to stop. Period. Well, we're not going to stop. Okay, if you don't stop, then X, Y, and Z. Otherwise, the drones are going to keep on coming in. They're going to keep on flying into Moscow or towards Moscow and the Europeans. are going to continue to do what they do. They're going to play their clever game of airspace over Ukraine drones over our airspace. And we didn't see anything. And we're going to scramble fighter jets and the Russians are to blame for the Ukrainian drones. They're going to continue to play all these games.

Yeah, the Latvian government collapsed. Yes, Finland and Stubb. They look very stupid. But, you know, they're going to continue with this theater. At the end of the day, it all goes back to the U.S. proxy war. That's why it's a U.S. proxy war. And if Russia's going to stop the drones, at least if they're going to get to that point where the drone stop, they have to establish a deterrent against the United States.

That is what it is. Reestablish a deterrent, which was trashed. Trashed by Biden and the attack omns and Trump's lies where he told Putin when I'm president, Don't worry, I'm not going to allow any missile strikes or any long-range strikes into Russia. And Putin believed that. You've got to reestablish this deterrent. I don't know how it's done. But it has to be reestablished with the United States.

Because as you explained, Europe is useless. Europe doesn't have the power. Ukraine doesn't have the power. It's the U.S. that has the power. Well, you're absolutely right. And here I think this is where we need a little bit of analysis. And it goes back to Zelensky's state. because he said that this is fully justifiable, these big drone attacks on Moscow, on Russia,

are fully justifiable whilst Russia is attacking us. Now, who is that addressed to? Who is he addressing when he writes a post on X like that? Well, it's obviously not the Russians. It's hardly the Europeans because the Europeans are supporting him. By process of elimination, it is the Americans. And the reason Zelensky is doing this is because he's clearly very angry about the fact that Trump told him to stop in advance of the 9th of May. Zelensky clearly wanted to attack Moscow.

On that day, he wanted to provoke this bigger crisis. You're absolutely correct. Americans, drone attacks of any kind cannot take place. They depend entirely on American satellite data and guidance data. Trump turned the switch and the Ukrainians had to stop. They couldn't proceed. So Zelensky is clearly very angry about this. Now, this is where the issue of deterrence as between America and Russia comes in, because the Russians saw, as a result of that incident over the weekend, over the 9th May weekend,

that the Americans can bend, that you can do things that will scare them into causing. the Ukrainians to stop. You can threaten to attack central Kiev with Orashenik missiles. And you remember we said at the time that the fact that the Russians made these kind of warnings and threats and that they were backed by a call from Putin himself and that the Americans heeded that warning, it represents a shift from what has happened up to now, and the Europeans, the Ukrainians, and by the way the Russians, must be saying to themselves, this might happen again. Next time, the Russians, well, the Russians can come.

back, they can make similar threats in future and that might indeed cause the Americans to stop. So I think that this is adding to that nervousness and edginess in Europe and in Ukraine. And you could see that in Zelensky's statement. The question is not, do the Russians have deterrent capabilities? They've now seen for themselves that they do. The question is, will they use them? Will they actually do what they did, what Putin did on the 29th of April? Telephone Trump, tell Trump this is completely unacceptable if this continues in the way that it has.

then we will take massively strong action against you unless you make sure that your European and Ukrainian proxies stop. So that capability to force deterrence on the Russian side does exist. It's a question, as has now become clear, of political will. Will Putin do it? And if he doesn't, why? You're exactly right. I was going to say the same exact thing. Of course, Russia has deterrence. It has 6,000 nukes or the Sarmat missile, which can hit anywhere in the world.

They have Orezniks. If there's one country that has deterrence, it's Russia, right? But they always give up. It seems like they have this policy. where they sacrifice deterrence for diplomacy when you don't need to. The two can work hand in hand. But they always give up their deterrence in the belief that these leaders, whether it be Merkel or whether it be Trump, whatever, this leader, this person is going to finally give us the cooperation, the partnership, the peace, the stability, the new security architecture that we've been looking for for 20, 30, 50 years.

Finally, we're going to get it with Merkel. Finally, we're going to get it with Trump. And they give up their deterrence. And then they allow the West, specifically the United States, but the Europeans, to chip away at the deterrence, to push the boundaries. They take two steps forward and one step back. So they launch the drones. No reaction. Okay, let's launch some more drones.

No reactions. Let's launch some attack them. No reactions. Let's launch this. Oh, okay, there's a reaction. Now, let's just dial it back a little bit. And then after some time, we'll start up again. And they chip away at it.

They start with Rostov. Then they go to another area, Varoni, then they go to Moscow. Then they go to say, they work deeper and deeper and deeper into Russia. But once again, it's all gradual, step by step. And they test to see if Russia is going to push back. And when they don't push back, they continue a little further. But when Russia does push back, they don't go, the U.S. and the West don't, they don't go back to their initial position.

They just take one or two steps back to where they were. The issue with the manufacturing of weapons is that, yeah, it's not working out, but the strategy is a drone strategy. It's not a missile strategy. And the belief is that the goal is to just get to the point where your manufacturing, manufacturing so many drones that you can just overwhelm Russia, just manufacture drones. Forget about tours, forget about missiles. Drones, drones, and then we're going to get to a point where we can send a thousand or

2,000 or 3,000 drones into Russia. Yeah, the point about this article was they did acknowledge that there is no equivalence between drones and missiles and that drones simply do not have the kind of capabilities that missiles do. Now, I get us here, make a suggestion, which is something. Can I just say one thing? If the goal is not to defeat Russia militarily, though, the goal is always to get regime change. So does it matter if it's a missile or a drone?

Doesn't it have the same societal, societal effect? Right. Right. Well, this is where I think it becomes extremely interesting. Because as I said, TAS provided details about the actual damage that was done by this drone strike on Moscow. Now, I mean, it wasn't confined to Moscow. There were drone strikes in all sorts of other places and TAS has not provided indications of those. But I think this is fairly consistent with the overall picture. We have lots of drone strikes. We have lots of drone attacks. Most of the

drones, the great majority of them get shot down or brought down by an air defense system that is becoming increasingly proficient at defeating drones. So if you went through the damage that was done during this drone strike on Moscow, it is peripheral. I mean, it's ephemeral. Drones or debris from drones crash into some big apartment buildings. People die? Some people die.

Two or three or four people die. But it's not going to change the overall economic picture in Russia. And here I can speak with confidence because, as you know, I followed the economic picture very, very closely. In fact, there is an economic upswing again. The economy is now rebounding, even as this drone offensive is taking place. So the drones are not affecting the economic situation, economic and deal. in Russia. And I doubt over this enormous country that they're having much impact on everyday life. There are some people, there's some worry, obviously, when drones fly overhead,

but it's not an enormous pressing proximate threat for people. It's enough to keep them angry and enough to keep them focused on wanting to win the war, but it is never enough to intimidate them or to make them turn against Putin and the government, or to demand that the war end. Now, what the Kremlin has been doing over the last couple of days, even as these drone attacks had been intensified, is they've been taking what you might describe as escalatory steps of their own. So there was that press conference that Putin gave. He was asked about the drone attacks. He said that we obviously mistake steps to make sure that we can't be attacked in future. But what he seemed to be suggesting is that the Russian

expand what he calls their buffer zone in Kharkov. In other words, the drone attacks of the user's justification for expanding the area of the special military operation in Ukraine itself, for perhaps ultimately annexing Kharkov, just as that. And they've now taken the further step of messaging that they're going to do things in Transnistria. They've decided to grant citizenship to people in Transnistria. And by the way, I didn't think it's just Transnistria. I believe it's all of Moldova, which again looks to me like an aggressive step.

Now, I remember how back in 2024, I had a lot of people, I had one particular person right to me saying that the Russians had laid this trap for the Ukrainians in Korsk, region and that it was the Russians basically opened up Kusk region for a Ukrainian attack into Kusk region. And I said, this didn't see to make any kind of sense to me. I understand that there are more people who say this today and there is a certain amount of evidence for this. So the Russians have shown, if that is true, a willingness to tolerate Ukrainian attacks in order to pursue bigger objectives. And I wonder with this drone offensive, they are doing the same.

The point about the episode on the 29th of April, the call between Putin and Trump, is that it showed that Putin knows he can get the Americans to stop the Ukrainians. if he wants to. He did it then. So if he doesn't do it further, the question is one. And maybe, maybe it's because it works to his wider objectives, given, as I said, that these drone attacks are not going to change the dynamic and the course of the war.

I agree. Yeah, they're not. Definitely. They're not. And everyone knows it. But just a final point on all of this. The goals of the Europeans of the United States is to keep the war going and to get to a point in 2029 or 2030. Whether this can happen or not, probably can't happen.

But look, they're saying it. We're going to get into a smash with Russia by 2029 and 2030. So their goal is to just manufacture enough drones, enough weapons. So that they can get into this conflict to build up an army. They're trying to build up an army. They're not successful at it. But they're trying. They're trying to build missiles.

They're not successful at it. But they say they're trying to do it. The drones seems more realistic. If you give Germany three years, it seems realistic that Germany can start cranking out a good number of drones in three years. Are they going to be the best drones? Are they going to be the most technologically? advanced drones, probably not. But if you give Germany and other countries three years runway, they are eventually going to get their act together and start manufacturing lots of drones.

And so this is the stated goal that they have, which is to get to a point in two, three years where they can get into some sort of a conflict with Russia. So I mean, if you're Russia, what do you do? How do you address this? I mean, you have the war, which is now, but you have in three years, years, something that the Europeans and the United States putting the Europeans up to it, are going to do to you. Yeah. Yeah. Well, again, the key thing here is this.

Are the Russians afraid of increased drone production in Europe? Perhaps they are not. Perhaps they feel that what is happening and what has happened over the last year shows that drone offensives against them by the Ukrainians are not that effective. And longer term, and when I say longer term, I don't mean very long term, perhaps even this year, the capabilities of drones to hit Russia itself are going to fall, are going to reduce. There is a lot of commentary about this, by the way, on the Russian side, that the Russian

are becoming more effective at dealing with drones. So it may be that the Russians looking at the overall situation in Europe are saying to themselves, the Europeans can't sort themselves out with weapons production. They can't produce more tanks. They can't produce more aircraft. They can't produce more ships. We are producing all of these things. And this is the other interesting thing that has come out over the last few weeks,

which is that the Russians are producing lots and lots of weapons, but most of them are not going into the area of the special military operation. They're being used to build up these reserve armies, which, again, what are they intended for? Are they intended, as I still believe, by the way, to be used once Donbass resistance in Donbass is broken to launch a deep attack into Ukraine, that would be consistent with Russian operational military philosophies. That's still my own personal view. Or is it that they're building up these armies

in order to take on the Europeans in the future? Of course, the one does not exclude the other. But the Russians look at the fact that even as Russia continues to rearm and enlarge its armed forces, and build up its industries, by the way, and imports workers from North Korea to help them do that. The Europeans can't get themselves organized, don't seem to know how to get themselves organized. The Americans are bogged down in the Middle East. Their weapons capabilities are declining also. The balance, in other words, in Europe, continues to shift in their favor. And the Europeans are now investing heavily in drones.

But this is today's technology, which the Russians understand far better than the Europeans do, because they operate these drones daily in actual combat situations. And it won't be in the same way, the technology of tomorrow. just to say. Now, can I just say, it's the kind of thing that the Russians do think of if you go to Dan Glancy's books on the Red Army, the development of the Red Army, before the Second World War, and during the Second World War, you see that the Russians do actually plan and think things through in that sort of way. Remember the program we did with Stanislav Karpivnik in which he spoke about how this is for the Russians, the science, and that they tend to approach military planning and military thinking in ways that are very different from the ones that the West and the Europeans follow. Yeah. Okay.

Well, we'll see how all of this develops. What can we say? We will. Well, we don't know. But I mean, the key thing to say is that the Russians do have deterrence and they know they do. Because before Victory Day, they played that card. They showed that they can enforce deterrence on the United States and force a change in American behavior. and by extension, European behavior as well.

So it's not as if the Russians don't have that knowledge. The question is, as I said, if they don't use it, why? Yeah, what good is it if you don't use it? Sorry? What good is it if you don't use it? Well, well, exactly, exactly. But why are they not using it? Yeah, that's true.

Is it because of what you said, because of diplomacy, or because they have some, deeper ideas, which we can't see. Eventually, Alexander, just to wrap up the video, eventually you have to start using it and forcing it. I'm not saying you launch a tax. You have to start establishing that deterrence because you can't have your neighbors,

and I'm not talking Ukraine. Ukraine is a war. I understand that. It's a war, fine. But you can't have your other neighbors to the west of you continuing to provoke you. I mean, indefinitely. Right? That's not a way to live. That's not a way to coexist. You can't, you know, have that go. You can't have Latvia, Lithuania, Finland, Poland, continue this drone over our airspace charade indefinitely. Right? You just can't move forward like that. So eventually, it has to get resolved. I would say it has to get resolved quickly, actually, because I think it's bad for Europe. But that's that, that, that, that, that, that, that, that, that, it is very bad for Europe. I mean, it is very bad for Europe. I mean, it is. It is very bad for Europe. I mean,

It is deepening our overall crisis about which, by the way, the Russians are very well aware, again, if you follow their commentaries. And, of course, from a Russian point of view, I mean, they're continuing to win the war. I know that there is this narrative that they're not, but as I said, the events tell a completely different story. And what I was saying about establishing deterrents, Maybe the Russians are working towards, not just establishing deterrence, but towards towards changing the security system in Europe altogether. And this was the objective.

Remember that they set themselves in 2021 with those treaties and with the various discussions that took place in that year, that it's not just Ukraine, it's about the entire security system in Europe. And they feel that they need to create conditions for that to happen, not just with a victory in Ukraine itself, but with a situation of Russia, achieving overwhelming military strategic preponderance. And this is how they're going about it. It's not inconsistent with the Russian style of doing things. There was also a period in the 1950s,

which is, by the way, what Sergei Karaghanov is always talking about, when the Russians approached things with nuclear weapons technology. in exactly the same way. Yeah. All right. We will end the video there. The durand.orgals.com. We are on XRumble and Telegram.

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