The Duran Podcast - Kursk Debacle Part 2. Zelensky Minsk deception

Episode Date: January 7, 2025

Kursk Debacle Part 2. Zelensky Minsk deception

All right, Alexander, let's talk about what is going on in Kursk. We have another offensive, a counter, a counter to the counter to the counter offensive in Kursk. What is this, Kersk part two? Why? That's the million dollar question. Why are they launching an offensive in Kirst, which from what I understand has already crumbled? I don't even know if you can call it an offensive. At least these are the reports. that we're getting from the Russian Ministry of Defense. And I believe these reports, Alexander, because I read an article in the New York Times,

they were talking about the Kursk Offensive, this new Kersk Offensive. And in the New York Times article, they said that, according to the Russian Ministry of Defense, the offensive, at least this offensive, has already been pushed back, has already been defeated. And the New York Times has reached out

to the Ukraine Ministry of Defense and the Ukraine Ministry of Defense has no comment. When the Ukraine Ministry of Defense has no comment, that usually means that this did not work out well. Anyway, why? Why are they doing this in Kursk? There is one overwhelming and very simple and obvious reason why, which is that, of course, in a few weeks time Donald Trump becomes president of the United States. The Biden administration, which pulls all the strings, is trying to keep the war going in every conceivable way that it can. It's sending more and more weapons, more and more money, or at least it is saying that it's sending more weapons. Probably is sending more weapons

to Ukraine. It's putting enormous pressure on Zelensky to lower the mobilization age, which he looks likely that he's now going to do. It's putting him under an enormous amount of pressure. It wants to keep the war going, as we've discussed in many programs. And it wants, in order to keep the war going beyond its own natural life. It needs to show that Ukraine is still fighting, is still able to push back, is able to conduct attacks here, there and somewhere. So we have a number of local counterattacks, specifically one very local counterattack around a village in Kusk called Bolshaya, Soldatskaya. A relatively small number of troops involved, from what I can tell.

It hasn't been at all successful as at the time of this program, that the Ukrainians are likely to try again over the course of today. Counter-attacks on this scale in this war take place every day. But talk it up, call it a great offensive. Call it because two, or is it three or four? I don't know. I've lost count now. call it something big, make out that it's something big and serious and important, spin it in that way,

which is what the Ukrainians are also doing, pretend that something big and momentous and extraordinary is happening, have all the media in Britain and some of the media in the US talking about this also, and that gives the impression that the Ukrainians who were on the back foot are on the front foot again. That's my initial assessment of all of this. Now, it may be that something bigger is going to be prepared over the next couple of days, quite likely. But whatever it is, it's a huge mistake. If it's a small counterattack, which they do for a couple of days and then they call it off, well, it can only do so much harm.

But if they commit more forces to it, if they start investing, in this operation, basically to fulfill Jake Sullivan's agenda in Washington. And to be clear, I think he is the big policy decision maker here. If they do this, then on the day that the Russian Defence Ministry has said that the far more important fortified town of Kourajovu has fallen in southwestern Dombas, on the day when we hear more reports of more Russian advances on the front lines where it really matters towards the Dnieper River and in other places like Toretsk and along the Osgo Riverlands and all of those places. Well, if they do that, then it is compounding folly upon folly because it's offensive.

Cannot succeed. It would be another pointless waste of resources throwing more machines and more men into the slaughter, but, well, that's been the pattern now for a very, very long time. And I have to say, it's entirely consistent with everything else that the administration currently is doing. Marianna, Mariana, actually said the same thing. She really blasted Zelensky for this latest Kersk offensive. Yeah.

Basically saying exactly what you said, which is that this is a huge mistake and that he's ignoring the entire conflict in Donbass. Yes. Yes. This was her statement. Absolutely. This is exactly what's, it is actually quite extraordinary because men and machines, precious men, precious machines, relatively few in supply, ammunition is being sent to this pointless sideshow in Kursk, even as the really important front lines collapse. And, you know, this is already, the pattern in August, but it's now become even more the pattern still. And given what we've now learned from, you know, the Hill and other places like this, that the discussions about asymmetric warfare, in other words, the Cusk Offensive and other things, was already taking

place in April and that the United States, by which we mean the administration, was fully involved in it. Well, you can see where the ultimate decisions have been made. Yeah. The losses in Kursk, from what I understand, were even bigger than the spring, when was it, spring

2023? Bigger losses in Kursk. Yeah. That's what Putin is saying. Now, nobody's contradicting him. No one that I've seen has actually come forward and said that Putin about this is wrong. Of course,

what Putin is mostly talking about are armored vehicle losses. But here you can see them. You can see evidence of them. I mean, is it the third or the fourth challenger too? Has just been destroyed at Gorsk region achieving nothing there? But anyway, there it is. Yeah. Yeah, that's pretty amazing actually because no one mentions how big of a debacle. No. Kerski is in the collective West media. They don't talk about the debacle. No. That is Kerski. You can see even from the New York Times article. They try their best to avoid it. But I don't think any of this is, is coincidence, the timing of all of this, the Kersk, this Kersk offensive or counteroffensive or whatever. The time period that this is happening, the Christmas Orthodox Christmas time period that this is

happening, two weeks before Trump takes office and the inauguration. The interview, that Zelensky gave with Lex Friedman, which was a very softball, flattering type of interview, which turned into a complete, just jumbled mess. And the reports that Stammer is now pressing the Trump administration, or is planning to press the Trump administration to stay committed to Project Ukraine, I see the entirety of everything that's happening as one big effort to commit. to Project Ukraine. Even the Kersk offensive is about showing Trump that Ukraine can continue to fight. If it just got more weapons, then Ukraine can continue to fight, and that will be

the leverage. The peace through strength that they like to talk about leverage that Trump is going to need to negotiate with Putin. And then you layer on top of that, the Lex Friedman interview, which was pretty much all about trying to con. That's what the interview was about, my opinion, trying to con Trump into committing to Project Ukraine. And then you layer on top of that, the Stommer administration, trying to get to the United States, urgently get to the United States to also get Trump to commit to Project Ukraine. This is exactly true. And it's very interesting how they're going about it, because, of course, before, it was all about giving, you know, weapons and equipment to Ukraine, you know, as long as it takes all of the,

that Ukraine can achieve a victory, backing Zelensky's peace plan. Now you are rationalizing the doing of exactly the same thing, tightening up sanctions, sending more weapons, committing further to project Ukraine. Not because we want to undermine what Donald Trump is trying to do, which is to negotiate an end to the war, we are urging that he goes on doing exactly the same thing us what we've been doing for the last three plus years, in order to put himself Trump and the Ukrainians in a stronger negotiating position. So even though the objective has changed, the means we have been told is exactly the same. And when people talk like that, you can tell immediately what is really going on that this isn't really done in good faith. This is simply a way of keeping project Ukraine ongoing,

on going as long as possible. If it all collapses and collapses on Trump's watch, well, you blame it all on him. Yeah, I found it very, very fascinating that the Lex Friedman interview with Zelensky was so focused on Trump. I mean, it was very much a three-hour, I don't even know how to describe it,

admiration, flattering of Trump, three hours, flattering Trump. I would even say, Alexander, that Zelensky kind of crapped on Biden.

I mean, I mean, he, it seems like he's done with Biden. He said very bad stuff about, about Biden and everything that Biden has given Ukraine. Zelensky was just like, who cares,

he gave us nothing. But Trump is this great figure, this strong man. And, and the, angle, which was revealed during that interview, the angle that they're going for was very much Ukraine, Zelensky, sitting down with Trump, them to agreeing on a negotiating strategy and then taking it to the Russians. I mean, that was made crystal clear. Forget about the three hours and all

the other stuff that they were trying to throw in there. The languages that they're going to speak and the languages that they're going to use and the Budapesth Memorandum and Mink and all of that, Lukashenko, and all of these things that were talked about for three hours. To me, the real, the real interesting part of that interview was the strategy that you could see Zelensky wants to implement with Trump going forward. By the way, throwing also the bad language, which in that part of the world. Cursing in every language. Cursing in Ukrainian English. Yeah, cursing in every language.

Absolutely, absolutely, which I should say in Ukraine and Russia does not go down well at all, especially when it comes from the country's president. I mean, you know, it might be acceptable in some places in the West, but it is certainly not in that part of the world if you know it's at all. But anyway, put all that aside. You're absolutely correct. It's all what it is is an attempt, a very, very straightforward attempt, in which Zelensky is only one party, the people who are really working on this of the British, I think,

but also the European Union and all of the others. It's an attempt to capture Trump, basically to tell Trump, look, we're all behind you, we completely agree with what you want, we're all fully in support of what your plan is. We too want to end the war. The problem is that you've got this man Putin who's been completely unreason, He won't sit down and talk and basically capitulate to everything that we want. So what you've got to do is to push him to the negotiating table by piling on the sanctions, giving us more weapons, and agreeing to a negotiating position with us,

which will be identical to the one in effect that we've always had. So that's what this is all about. It's a fairly transparent, you know, game that's being played here. But of course, the word transparent applies to people like us who've been following the war very, very closely. I'm not sure that Trump has. And of course, there are people around him who probably want to see this. because they two are neocons and hawks, and they don't like Russia, and they don't like Putin. And they probably also want to keep this thing going as long as possible.

And they can't starmic the idea that in a conflict with Russia, the Russians win. So, what can't assume that it, because it is obvious and transparent to us, it's going to be obvious and transparent to Trump. I think in the end it will fail. Trump has been around for a long time, not just in politics, but in business. And I think that he can sniff out to Chancellor. He's met Zelensky several times.

The meetings don't seem to have gone especially well. If you remember back in September, we now know that Zelensky basically threatened Trump by waving the nuclear weapons card at him and then made an open statement about the fact later on a couple of weeks ago about this. So I don't think that Trump has any particular liking of Zelensky, and I think he's probably worked out what Zelensky is and who he is. But if I was to say today that this is going to fail,

I would be saying more than I actually know. Trump is saying that he wants to speak to Putin. He wants a meeting with Putin. Pereskov this morning has said that there's been no contact yet to set up such a meeting. I hope nonetheless that that will be Trump's priority. After he becomes president, he's had several meetings with Zelensky now. He needs to meet with Putin. And hopefully it will be then that he will make whatever decisions he's going to make. Yeah, Zelensky, the European Union, the neocons, they want the meetings to be Zelensky and Trump.

Absolutely. Putin out. Absolutely. The right move for Trump is to meet with Putin first. You don't need the Europeans involved. You don't need Zelensky there. They need to discuss things, those two leaders. Yes.

Yes. We have been in this situation before in other conflicts that the United States has. found itself in. In Vietnam, just to say, eventually the US ended up doing the only thing that it could realistically do, the only way it could extricate itself from the war, which is to negotiate directly with the North Vietnamese over the heads of the Saigon government. And they didn't like it at all. And they complained vigorously and angrily about it. But that was what the United States ended up doing. In Afghanistan, they did exactly the same. They negotiated directly with the Taliban. Again, the government in Kabul didn't like it, but ultimately it was the only way that the United

States could move forward and find a way to get its people out. And it will have to do the same in Ukraine. It will have to negotiate directly with the Russians. Again, Kiev and the Europeans won't like it at all, but it is the only way that this can work. Otherwise, it will just get stuck because the Europeans and the Ukrainians will shift it into directions where the Russians have already made it clear they won't go. Well, it'll get stuck, but it will get stuck. The Trump administration, they'll also get stuck in it. Absolutely. And this will shift from Biden's war to Trump's war. Exactly. And that's when Trump's agenda is in big, big trouble. Absolutely. He will become as tied up with the war as, let us say, Lyndon Johnson was with the war in Vietnam. It will

dominate his presidency. And to be clear, if he owns, if he's maneuvered into taking a ownership of the war, then he's going to face a much bigger debacle than the one that Biden faced when Afghanistan collapsed in 2021. Yeah, Blinken hinted as much. He gave the, he gave a bunch of exit interviews to the Financial Times and the New York Times. And in the New York Times interview, Blinken was asked about, about Trump, about Ukraine and ending the war. And Blinken's response, I'll just summarize it, paraphrase it for everybody, was pretty much, Blinken's response was pretty much, we did everything right in Ukraine, we made all the right decisions, we prevented Russia from erasing Ukraine off the map, we prevented Putin from capturing Kiev in three days.

So Russia lost, in our opinion, as Blinken, as outgoing Secretary of State, Russia lost, so we made all the right decisions. and now it's up to the new administration. So we're leaving Ukraine in good hands. Ukraine exists, according to Blinken. It exists. It has the possibility of thriving within NATO, within the European Union, whatever.

And now it's up to the incoming administration. So that was Blinken's way of pretty much saying, this is on you now, Trump. If you get bogged down in this and Ukraine collapses, you're going to get all the blame. And we're going to make sure. you're going to get all the blame. And I'm positive the neocons and the NioLibs and the Obamas and the Bidens and the Hillary Clinton's

and the mainstream media is going to make sure that Trump gets all the blame for this. Absolutely. That's exactly. That's the objective and that's what they're going to do. So they're setting a trap. The question is, does Trump understand that? Or is he going to be, again, swept along by all the talk that's, if he showed, shows weakness now, he's betraying the peace through strength agenda that he has.

A strong man, a really strong leader, knows when to say no. He should take a leave from Putin's book, for example. Putin has just pulled out of Syria effectively, and he just accepted it gracefully and walked away. It didn't work out in Syria. Asad fell, so be it. that's a classic example of not falling for the sunken costs fallacy he didn't try and send more troops he didn't try and set up another government in damascus even though he had his people in damascus he didn't try to organize something else which would have dragged russia deeper and deeper in he just walked away and that is what a strong leader does sometimes you have to do that you have to know how to retreat as well as when to advance. And you've got to also be clear about your priorities.

As Machiavelli put it really well, a really good, strong leader, sometimes needs to be a lion and sometimes needs to be a fox. Trump now needs to know how to be a fox. Well said. Just a final question. Let's go back to the Lex Freedom and interview, and I just want your thoughts on it because they spent a lot of time, or Zelensky spent a lot of time talking about Minsk. The Minsk agreements from 2019 is when he picked up the discussion on the Minsk agreements, and he talked a lot about the Budapest Mitzk memorandum. He put all the blame on Putin, squarely on Putin. According to Zelensky, he tried to negotiate with Putin hundreds of times. He tried to negotiate with Putin on Minsk. And according to Zelensky, it was Putin that kept on breaking the Minsk

ceasefire. And he talked about the Budapest Memorandum and how the signatories to the Budapest memorandum, they betrayed Ukraine. Yeah. They betrayed Ukraine and they didn't follow the Budapest Memorandum. And if Ukraine had the nuclear weapons, it would have been in a better position. and therefore Ukraine needs the security guarantees, needs very, very powerful security guarantees, which effectively means the United States inside of Ukraine. That's what Zelensky is talking about. What are your comments on the way he, the revisionist view of Minsk and the Budapest memorandum that Zelensky threw out there, which a lot of people who have not been following this conflict

will just believe it because many people aren't going to going to go into the details of Minsk or they're not going to go into the details of Budapest and they're just going to say, okay, Ukraine got deceived in the Budapest memorandum. And it was Putin that did not agree to the terms of the Minsk agreement and broke the Minsk agreement. So a lot of people, millions of people will actually buy into this viewpoint of Zelensky's when it comes to these two. topics. Yeah, absolutely. I mean, this is one of the fundamental exhausting things is that it's very, very easy to lie about these matters, which is what Zelensky, by the way, is doing.

Explaining how it is all wrong is something that takes up a huge amount of time. And unless you are really going to be very interested in these things, most people just don't have that time. But briefly, and we've discussed Budapest, 1001 times, many, many times. Ukraine never had had any nuclear weapons. It never gave up nuclear weapons in return to the Budapest memorandum, which is not even a treaty, by the way. The nuclear weapons belonged to the Soviet Union. After the Soviet Union broke up by a universal agreement insisted on by the United States, amongst others, they passed directly to Russia. And in fact, the military force that was in control of the nuclear weapons in Ukraine, Russia's strategic rocket forces, they continued to serve loyally Moscow.

So there was never any situation, any point in time when Ukraine had nuclear weapons. This is a straightforward and complete lie. Now, the Budapest memorandum, as I have discussed many times, was part of a whole series of agreements that was made at the time of the end of the Cold War. And one of the key points about those agreements, and there were many of them, was that there would be no eastward expansion of NATO, that Ukraine would remain a neutral state. Its constitution said as much. It's actually there. It's provided for in its constitution. And there was also an agreement, which is also, by the way, the Budapest memorandum, that there would be no interference in the internal affairs of any of the other. the country is involved. Now, every single other part of the Budapest memorandum, the whole Budapest memorandum, the whole structure that it created by the time of the Maidan coup had

completely fallen apart because in 2008, the NATO effectively invited Ukraine to apply to join. NATO changed its constitution, Ukraine changed its constitution so that it ceased to be a neutral state and committed itself in its constitution to join NATO. And the Western powers massively interfered in Ukraine's internal affairs and helped to engineer the 2014 coup. By the way, when they also tried to do the same thing in Belarus in 2020, and various people pointed out at the time that interfering in Belarus's internal affairs violated the Budapest memorandum. The U.S. Embassy passed, published a statement saying that this was completely irrelevant because the Budapest memorandum had no legal back, no legal sanction. So, you know, when it's gone over this many, many times, the whole structure, the whole legal foundation upon which the Budapest Memorandum was constructed by 2014 when the Ukrainian crisis in its most serious current form began. By then, it had completely collapsed.

So that's the first thing to say. And the story about the nuclear weapons is a really. head herring because Ukraine never had them by universal agreement. And that was why they were all ultimately returned to Russia. Now on Minsk, here actually there is, it's again profoundly misleading, but there is some element of, I won't say truth, but let's say that he, when Zelensky says that he tried to negotiate with Putin. It's true. But the key thing to understand is that the Minsk Agreement did not actually provide for negotiations between Ukraine and Russia.

The Minsk Agreement was supposed to be a document to settle an internal dispute between the Ukrainian government in Kiev. You are so right. This is such an important point that you just spotted. I didn't think of. Sorry, it just came to me. You're right. Yeah. I remember that time. We were covering it. Yeah, absolutely. Whereas Zelensky was trying to get Putin and him to negotiate when it wasn't about Russia and Ukraine. It's about Ukraine. And then don't. I interrupt. Everyone's going to get upset with me because you interrupted Alexandria, but I'm sorry, just came to me right now. You're right. And again, what's lived inside this for ages. But the point was that it was supposed to be, in fact, Ukraine, committed itself as part of the Minsk Agreement to negotiate with the people they call the Dombard separatists.

They categorically and absolutely refused to do so, or to implement any of the other steps set out in the Minsk Agreement, which laid out a whole series of steps that needed to be made. They were to negotiate, they were to pull back their forces, they were to agree terms for a new constitution, there were to be new elections by the end of 2015, all of these things were supposed to happen and they're set out in Minsk. And of course there was also supposed to be an agreement about autonomy, or at least some level of autonomy for the Donbass regions and protections for the Russian language, those kind of things and arrangements for setting up and control of local police forces.

forces and all of that kind of thing. What Zelensky, and in this as we now know, he was strongly backed and perhaps instigated to do it by none other than Macron, what Zelensky tried to do was he wanted to scrap the Minsk agreement and substitute direct negotiations between himself and Putin, which would have meant that the Russians would have acknowledged that the conflict was not an internal one, but was it interstate one between Russia and Ukraine? And the Russians were absolutely furious about this, and they said that they would not under any circumstances do this. And there was a huge row between Lavrov and Macron, and between Putin and Macron,

in 2021 for this precise issue. And the Russian Foreign Ministry published a very, very strong demarch addressed to the French and Germans on this precise topic. And of course, what eventually happened was that everything eventually fell apart. Ukraine made it absolutely clear in February 2022 that it would never implement the Minsk agreement. It would never negotiate directly with the Donbat, the people they called the Donbass separatists, and the result was that the war in February 2022 began. They did get into a situation where they had direct dealings with the Russians, but they were, of course, on the battlefield. Yeah, that's an excellent point. That is an excellent point. Yeah, and then you also have, just to wrap up the video, you also have Merkel in many

interviews. I've counted three interviews where she admitted, recent interviews, where she admitted that The Minsk agreement was just a way to buy time to build up the Ukraine army to eventually get into a conflict with Russia. And Poroshenko has admitted the same. And Poroshenko was at the time he was the president that negotiated the first Minsk agreements. It was Portochenko. And then Zelensky took over after Poroshenko, right? Exactly. Yeah, Poroshenko was the first.

Yeah, then Zelensky came in after. Poroshenko has openly admitted that he never intended to implement the Minskko. agreement. He's never made, since he ceased to be president, especially since the special military operation began, he's never made any attempt to conceal this. And of course, all sorts of people, you know, the Azol people and all of the others, they've always made it clear that they've never recognized the Minsk Agreement. The United States didn't like it. The British were straightforwardly against it. So nobody in the West took the Minsk Agreement series. As the Russians complained, the only people who took the Minsk agreement seriously were the Russians themselves and the leaders of Donbass, who had not been happy about the Minsk Agreement for entirely separate reasons, either. They always believed that Ukraine would never implement them, and they were right. Yeah, just a final question, a final point and a clarification from you. Yeah, the Minsk agreement was about Ukraine and Donbass. Yes.

Those were the two parties involved in the Mids Agreement. So my question is, France, Germany, and Russia, they were all, were they signatories or observers? I mean, what, but they were, they were, it wasn't Russia and Ukraine, guarantors. It wasn't Russia and Ukraine. No. I just want to clarify this. It was Ukraine and Dombas with France, Germany, and Russia as guarantors. Is that correct?

Correct. Absolutely correct. The Russians entered into no commitments in terms of the Minsk agreement at all, save that it was agreed that once the entire process set out in the Minsk agreement, the setting up of the government, the new government, the rewriting of the constitution, the new elections. When all of that process had been worked through, when the military forces had been fully stood down and demobilized, when there was another peace in Ukraine,

then at the end of that process, the Russians would work to make sure that Ukraine once again had control of the Donbass Russian border. But that was supposed to come at the very end of the process. And even though at various times, the Ukrainians tried to reverse it. They insisted that that needed to be done first, even though the sequencing, in fact, in the Minsk Agreement is quite clear. So anyway, I mean, again, what doesn't want to get into the,

I don't want to get too much of the detail. But fundamentally, the Russians made no commitments themselves in the Minsk agreement. They were not a party to it. Their role in it was identical to that of the French and the Germans, which was as guarantors. That's the main point. Yeah, exactly. Okay, yeah.

Okay, the video is over. Zelensky's very manipulative. Oh, yeah. Absolutely. Very much. And Lex Friedman did not do his homework. Because the point that you're bringing up is central. Absolutely. And Zelensky could have been challenged on this if Lex Friedman had done correct research. Well, I doubt that he's read the Menzky Agreement.

I mean, to be straightforward with all the Budapest memorandum, all familiarized himself with any of the treaties. If anybody, if somebody really wanted to interview Zelensky properly about this, Zelensky would, I can tell it what would happen. You get a stream of the discernities and he'd storm out of the room. Agreed. All right, we will end the video there. The durand.orgas.com. We are on Rumble Odyssey, bitchy, telegram, rockfin, and X, and go to Duran Shop.

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