The Duran Podcast - EU's Russia Obsession: Nukes, Military Drills, and a Loan No One Can Explain

Episode Date: April 24, 2026

EU's Russia Obsession: Nukes, Military Drills, and a Loan No One Can Explain

All right, Alexander, the 90 billion loan to Ukraine. It's a great loan. It's a great loan, Alexander. You don't have to pay it back and there's no interest for Ukraine. Anyway, that's been approved. Europe celebrated, the Europeans celebrated along with the special guest of honor, Zelensky, here in Cyprus in Yianapa, Alexander. And my sources tell me that they really did celebrate.

They really did celebrate the 90 billion gift to, to Zelensky, the 20th sanctions package has also been passed. Kaya Kalas is already talking about a 21 sanctions package. And today, they are going to be discussing getting Ukraine into the European Union. And they're also talking about the militarization of Europe so that they can go into a war with Russia, at least that's the obvious purpose of militarizing Europe. By the way, Alexander Finland has. removed or has the Finnish government has submitted a proposal to the parliament in order to remove legal barriers for hosting nuclear weapons.

Yeah. That also happened. And we also have Poland and France. They are engaging in military exercises preparing to or game planning the nuclear bombing of Russia, of St. Petersburg. So they're having all these military exercises about flying over Russia and bombing St. Petersburg. And we have the UK, which is also game planning some sort of an attack or invasion of Kaliningrad. All of this is going to happen over the next couple of weeks, all of these military

exercises and operations. Lots going on with regards to Russia, a Europe that is absolutely obsessed and focused on. on going to war with Russia, on escalating with Russia. And now we have the 90 billion to Ukraine. Let's start with the 90 billion. Money handed over to Zelenskyy. Lots of unanswered questions about the 90 billion euro loan, by the way, because the original plan, as I very, very well remember from December, was that the European Commission would place

bonds in the international financial markets and that the loan and that the loans would the loan, the money for the loan, would be raised via those bonds. And, well, we always said there's a big question mark over this because it's completely unclear when the bonds are going to be redeemed. Supposedly it's going to be, would the Russians pay reparations? But when's that going to happen? Ukraine is never going to bathe the bonds. And that did beg the question of whether in a situation like the one that existed in December,

people in the financial markets would buy the bonds. Now, we are now in a completely different situation again. We're in April. We have a massive economic crisis starting, staring. at us over the horizon. Budget and financial problems appear to be growing. I would have thought that the eagerness in the markets to buy bonds, these bonds, is going to be significantly less than it was in December.

In fact, I'd be very surprised that anybody would buy these bonds, which begs the question of whether we are in fact looking at the same. loan today as the one that was being discussed in December because they're now talking about distributing the money to Zelenskyy very fast. So what I think we're actually going to see is that they're going to take the money straight out of the European budget and that governments are going to increase their contributions to the European budget over the next few months. that in theory should be authorized by European national parliaments

because it's a transfer to Brussels. I think in Germany they would be able to do that. In some other countries, it would be very, very controversial. So I think one of two things is going to happen. either the Germans will transfer most of the money, or it will be sent to the European Commission through various backdoor mechanisms, which are probably technically illegal, just saying. There is another factor at play here as well on the 90 billion euro loan, which absolutely no one is talking about. But in February, the Russian Central Bank started a case in the European Court of Justice, saying that the decision that was also made in the autumn of last year to change the terms on which the central bank reserves were being frozen, to change them from a

a situation where the freeze had to be rolled over every six months. There had to be a decision every six months to roll it over, to one where it was indefinite, that that was illegal. And again, I remember at the time that there was a lot of discussion in the media at the time, in Britain and elsewhere, that what the European Union was doing actually was illegal. So on the face of it, the Russians have a very good case, because it's all over the media, in which case, again, the prospects for any repayment of this loan out of the Russian

central bank reserves evaporates if the case is one. So all sorts of questions about this loan. I've no doubt the Ukrainians will be paid over this money soon. But I suspect that when you look at all of the legal issues that are staffinging up, the doubts of the financial markets, the question mark over this case in the European Court of Justice, all of these things, I suspect that what we're going to see is a direct transfer to Zelensky, not of 90 billion euros, but of 30 billion euros, and it's going to come straight out of national budgets, first and foremost Germany's budget.

Yes, 60 billion is going to go to weapons contracts. Exactly. So this is going to just be another part of Mautz's realignment drive, a subsidy to his favorite companies in Germany to Volkswagen, Dame LeBenz, companies of that kind. Zelensky will actually get $30 billion. 30 billion. And as I said, I suspect it's just going to come out of Germany's budgets. That's the only way this thing is.

Germany will have the maturity, but the other EU member states are going to have to, they're going to have to figure out where to get this money and then transfer it to Brussels, where Brussels will then just hand it over to Ukraine. I mean, this is the way I've understood it. So, I mean, the EU member states are on the hook. Like Greece, even though the contribution is small, say the contribution from Greece is, I don't know, let's say $2 billion. I'm just throwing a number out there. They're going to have to find that $2 billion, and they're going to have to hand it over to Ursula.

Well, that's the theory. Except, of course, there's a to repeat again. getting a $2 billion euro contribution has to pass the Greek parliament. But it won't. Now, Mitsotakis will get it through. Greece is one of the less problematic countries, but other countries might not be quite so straightforward. Belgium, for example, or Spain might not be so easy now. What if they just don't tell the people or the parliament or the governments?

I mean, that's exactly what I think. That's exactly what I think. Because at the end of the day, what's the purpose of this money? The purpose of this money is to move it. To move it from the people's pockets. Into Brussels, then into the MIC, then into Ukraine, then back into Europe. Exactly. That's the purpose of all of this.

That's exactly the point I'm making. What we're going to see is a direct transfer and off the books transfer because it has to be done off the books in some way by governments directly to Ursula. bypassing parliaments, which technically, I suspect in many cases, is going to be illegal. But I can't see how it can be done in any other way. They can't go to the markets. I mean, who's going to buy? No.

No one's going to buy. It's ridiculous. Especially with this court case now underway. Yeah, it's ridiculous. Okay. I mean, nobody's talking. Notice, though, that nobody. Well, exactly.

But, I mean, the media is not talking about it. Exactly. In social media, they're not talking about it. Nobody talks about this. And, you know, this is not a purely technical point because if the European Union is now raising money, without reference to national governments through member states, in other words, member states are collecting money for the European Union to fund a war in Ukraine. then we are a huge step closer to the EU setting up its own tax systems.

Exactly. That's another benefit to all of this, isn't it? Well, of course it is. Of course it is. But notice again the incredibly stealthy way in which it was done. And no wonder they're all parting. That's why they're all celebrating. Exactly.

Exactly. I mean, that's the real reason. Has anyone ever given you a loan, Alexander? And they've given you a loan with no interest, no need to pay it back. And they decide to fly you to a Yanapa and to celebrate with you. I mean, of course they're happy. Exactly. Because as I said, I think everyone's money. Yeah, I think people need to take a step back and think this through.

Nobody, nobody's doing it. Nobody's saying it. Nobody's explaining how it's going to work. But it cannot work. in the way that was discussed in December. This is a completely different loan. And to me, it looks like a straight transfer from European governments, bypassing parliaments to Brussels. So what if that's not the case? What if they figured out, I don't even know, what if they figured out a Black Rock or someone to come in and buy up this bond? Well, it comes to the same thing.

It comes to the same thing then, because whoever that is, if it's Black Rock, or somebody in the financial world. I'm throwing on a name, J.P. Morgan, Black, whatever. Whatever. Whatever. I mean, they're only going to do that if there's some kind of security in the background. And that security has to be provided by member states ultimately, which is another still a big towards taxation.

Just like, doesn't Brussels have to publish this stuff? Don't they have to disclose these things? Don't countries, individual member states as they move forward in handing this money over to Ukraine? Don't they have to publish all of this? Germany, the German government, don't they have to disclose how all of this is going to work? I mean, I know the 300 billion or 400 billion.

No one even knows the amount, has already been lost in Ukraine and much of it is unaudited and unaccounted war. But here we are with another 90 billion. Yeah. Should the people of Europe understand exactly how this money is making it to Zelensky's coffers? Well, of course they should. And of course, yeah, I mean, the whole point of legally, legally, don't they have to? I mean, the essence of democracy is accountability.

Without accountability, there is no democracy. For there to be accountability, there needs to be honesty and transparency. And in Europe, transparency and honesty on accounting issues is required by budgetary law. But what we've just been talking about in this program tells us that this isn't going to happen. Okay. I imagine somewhere down the line, something's going to have to get published?

Yeah. Some audit or some. Yes. Or maybe not. I don't know. Yeah. You publish a 50 volume budgetary thing. Each volume is about 2,000 pages long.

Right. And on page 147 of subparagraph 3A, whatever it is, you'll find some little sentence, very unthinkously. And, well, that will. probably provide somebody who can understand the language in which it is written, I mean, the bureaucratic language in which it is written, what it means, but I doubt that many people will look. This is the world that we are now in in Europe. And I think people need to understand that. Some countries are going to go into debt, I imagine, to hand this money over

to Ukraine, right? Some countries are absolutely going to go into debt. And of course, it's as if they aren't in debt already. Right. No. Okay, let's talk about the militarization. What's going on here? Well, again, a flight from reality. Just as the loan is a kind of flight from reality, a flight from reality into direct taxation

by Brussels. So everything else that you were talking about is a flight from reality as well. The British is talking about military operations against Kalinigrad. Britain has no army. It's spending, has collapsed. It was it the HMS dragon, which was sent to the Middle East, broke down and had to be brought back. The aircraft carriers have no fighter jets. Britain and NATO.

That's be a little bit of Britain and NATO. But where in NATO, is it any better? You talked about the Finns lifting restrictions on nuclear weapons. And of course, we know whose nuclear weapons we're talking about. We're talking about Americas ultimately. France, obviously, has some. But, okay, the Finns are going to take that step. The Swedes probably will.

Sweden currently is now looking at fuel ration. You would have thought that this is their priority now. But, of course, it's not. They're going to Cyprus. They're parting there. They're talking about militarization. They're talking about war with Russia. They're talking about hosting American nuclear weapons,

even at a time when relations between the U.S. and the Europeans are coming under stress. It is a complete flight from reality. There's no relevance to the actual real situation as it is playing out on the battlefields in Ukraine. And we talk about Finland hosting. the American bases and American nuclear weapons. But of course, we've just seen in the Middle East that US bases don't actually provide you with a great deal of protection. And American nuclear weapons in Finland, in the case of a war with Russia, remain under

American control, and would the Americans really be willing to use those nuclear weapons, in a conflict with Russia, which would end themselves? So the whole thing, as I said, is unbelievable, extraordinary belligerence and aggressiveness by a continent that is running on empty. What's Russia's reaction to this? I get your point. Let's talk about the nukes in Finland. I understand where you're coming from, and the U.S. would retain control of nuclear weapons.

But what if the United States decided to launch them from Finland? You're talking about maybe a two to three minute travel time before they hit Russia, maybe even less than that. I mean, right next door. I mean, I understand that this is a continent. Europe is a continent that is broken and busted and in a complete mess. Yes. But still, if you're Russia, you have Finland saying we're going to host American or French nukes on our territory. And if you're Russia, you're just going to...

And Norway and Sweden, too. And Norway and Sweden. I mean, they are all heading in that direction. Do you just stand back and say, okay, no problem because you guys are bankrupt or in recession or broke or you're led by a bunch of incompetent people or because the U.S. has the codes. It doesn't really bother us or we're not too worried about it. No, you can't say that if you're Russia. You would have to take action, wouldn't you? Absolutely.

And this comes back to a program, I think we recently did, which is that over the last, well, since Valdai, I think Valde, I think, was a really important event. There was the, you know, the clear attempt to assassinate Putin. Putin himself has largely vanished from the scene. We see much more hardline figures, or rather much more hardline comments being made by other people. And there's clearly been a shift in mood. And the Russians have now passed the law, saying that the Russian army can be deployed to protect Russian speakers wherever they are. And by the way, there are Russian speakers in Finland as well. And the Russian church has a presence in Finland. I visited the cathedral there many times, just to say. So, you know, Finland too, they are making very clear, giving very clear warnings

now to the Baltic states. And I think there is something else, which is that over the last four years, especially over the last year, apparently the, there's a lot of people, there's always the Russian bureaucracy, like every bureaucracy has churned, people retire, new people come in, the people who are coming in. A lot of them are people who played a role in the wall, and apparently they're much more hardline than the people that they're replacing. And this is indeed causing a shift. Just as within Russia, there is now a shift with new industrial groups and new monopolies and people of that kind focused on the Russian domestic economy, no longer thinking quite in global terms or orient, idea economics oriented towards the West. they are coming up through the economic in a world as well.

And they're much more antagonistic to the West and much more hardline. So they're looking at all of this. The military is building up in power. And they're saying to themselves, this is unacceptable. This is intolerable. America is getting weaker. It's bogged down in the Middle East. The point has come.

Well, we must settle with the Europeans too. and show them who is really strong. There was an extraordinary statement by a Russian deputy foreign minister called Mikhail Uliannev, who warned the Baltic states, stop thinking that Russia is afraid to take action against you.

Now, no Russian official has spoken like that. In the past, the Russians on the contrary, have always gone out of their way to say up to know that they have no plans for military operations against the Baltic states. Suddenly, the rhetoric is shifting. That's been a Pescott's statement actually the other day was we have no plans to take any action against Europe. This is just ridiculous talk that we're going to do anything militarily against Europe. I mean, that was pretty much what Peskov said yesterday. But we see, and that was, and Ulyan have made that statement, just after, you could see that the foreign ministry, people in the foreign ministry, the

defense ministry, the Security Council, they're starting to talk differently. So again, you could start to see the tension between Putin, whose background is in the 80s and 90s, and the newer people who are coming to the floor now. Well, you're basically describing a shift from moderates, extremely moderates under Putin, to hardliners. Yes. Yes. And of course, what the Europeans are doing is accelerating it. For the Europeans to talk in this way, for the Europeans to come up with these plans, at a time when their own economies are buckling, when the industrialization processes are intensifying,

and when the relations with the U.S. are deteriorating, is, I mean, it is so, it is so irrational that it goes beyond irrationality. I think it makes sense. Obviously, obviously, there is obsessiveness here. I mean, I mean, but it truly is Captain Ahab level, obsessiveness. I think it makes sense. Well, it makes sense. This obsessiveness and it's so irrational and Europe is in such a mess that this is the only

thing they can do. Well, yeah. I mean, right? I mean, what else can they do? Well, they can do many things. I mean, they can change me. They don't want to do it. My point is, is, you might as, I'm not thinking that Brussels is saying, you know what?

Push for war. That's the way, that's the way out of this, out of this. Well, except it's not. I mean, if we go back to that famous book about obsession, which is Moby Dick. Captain Aham died and his ship was wrecked, but the whales survived. Yeah, I understand. And if you're exactly right. That's the trouble with this.

I mean, yeah. If you put your, if you look at it from the Brussels globalist perspective, the way they're looking at it is, sure, they could do many things. They can start to govern. They can start to look after their people's interests. They can start to run proper economies. They could do all these things, which they don't want to do, nor they, I don't even think they're capable of doing these things. I think they have the intellectual bandwidth to do these things. I think you're making a very good point.

I mean, in the sense that this is all they've got. It's not that it makes sense. It's that it's all they've got. They don't have anything else. It's all they've got. And so they're sticking to it. And they're not just sticking to it.

They're taking it further and further and further, even as everything else around them collapses. Now, you know, it is incredibly dangerous. I mean, that's the first thing to say, and that goes back to your point. And when you're talking about nuclear, rehearsing nuclear strikes on St. Petersburg, that is incredibly dangerous. I mean, that is mind-blowing, fantastically, ludicrously dangerous.

We may in Britain find that we can't even stop Russian merchant ships because a single Russian frigate can humiliate, you know, humiliate the entire Royal Navy. But the point is that if you are talking and talking to yourself and everyone else around you in this way, then that in itself creates a kind of incredibly dangerous forward momentum. And when it's the only thing you've got, you've got no restraints either, no restraints on yourself. But it is dangerous. It doesn't make it any the less irrational. It makes it more irrational. All right.

We'll end the video there. The durand.com. We're on X.ron rumble. We're on Telegram. We are also on Substack. So check us out there and go to the Durant shop, pick up some merch. All those links are in the description box down below. Take care.