The Duran Podcast - Last chance ultimatum. Europe prepares to blame Trump

Episode Date: May 22, 2025

Last chance ultimatum. Europe prepares to blame Trump

All right, Alexander, let's talk about what is going on with Project Ukraine, with the diplomacy between the United States and Russia and your insights being in St. Petersburg, talking to various people about a diplomacy that has taken place between Russia and the United States, Trump, and Putin. Well, my overwhelming sense, when I was in Russia, and I should say I went there to attend a legal forum in St. Petersburg. So there was many lawyers and people of that kind that I was in contact with. I did to have some opportunity to move around St. Petersburg itself, but it was limited. And my overwhelming sense overall was that there's been a general stiffening and a determination to see this thing through and that there is no sense at all in Russia that these negotiations are going to be what ends the conflict in the end. Now, at this legal forum, Dimitri Medvedev, who is the former president of Russia and the vice chairman of the Security Council and the man who is an overall charge of

Russia's military industries. He's the chairman of the military industrial commission. Anyway, he gave a speech, as a long speech, talked about many topics, but on the issue of the conflict, he said simply, look, these negotiations between Russia and Ukraine are Ukraine's last chance. If Ukraine doesn't come to a deal with us basically on our terms, then there is a real possibility that at the end of this, we're not going to merely have an unconditional surrender. on the part of Ukraine to Russia, but that Ukraine itself as an independent entity might cease to to exist. And he then went on to say, and this is a little very interesting, he then went on to say,

of course, there are some amongst us who actually want that to happen. In other words, that there's an actual desire on the part of some people in Russia to proceed to that end and to put aside any idea of negotiations and things of that sort. So I didn't get the sense that the Russians are in any kind of very great compromising mood. And I think that overall, the Russians increasingly feel that Trump himself is starting to understand the strength of their resolve about this and the fact that events are starting to move in their direction and that he's starting to modify his understanding of the conflict based on all of that. that he no longer believes anymore in the unconditional ceasefire idea. He wants negotiations and he understands that the conflict needs to be ended on something close to Russian terms. Now, if you listen to what Rubio has been saying, you get some, I do these are Rubio's own

feelings, but I got the sense that he's, to the extent that he was conveying Trump's thinking, You can see some reflections of that when he spoke to Congress. And Bloomberg says, and we only have it from Bloomberg, that Trump basically told the European leaders after he spoke to Putin, that the United States is not going to be so heavily involved in mediating the conflict from this point on. There's a limited amount that he can realistically do, and that in his assessment, Russia is going to win the war. Now, that's Bloomberg. We need to be very careful. And Bloomberg is probably being told this by some of the European leaders who are clearly very angry with that call.

And if you follow the media here in London and across Europe, you can see that they are altogether very angry with the call indeed. But they're not sure at the moment exactly what to do. So that's my own sense. So very strong determination on the Russian side. Some people in the United States, perhaps Trump himself, starting to understand that this is how the war is going to end and that the United States needs actually generally distance itself, not just from the war, but from negotiating efforts. But of course, a parallel rage about this within Europe, and I suspect within some people in the United States also. So the conflict now diplomatically is not between America and Russia exactly. It is between the West within the West itself.

Yeah, the question is whether the United States could get Zelensky to agree to Russia's terms, because that's where we're heading. I mean, when you listen to Medvedev, when you listen to Lavrov, what he said over the past couple of days, this memorandum is going to be the capitulation papers. I understand that Ukraine's going to have input as well and both sides are going to have input. But my sense of things is that Russia is going to basically put June 2024 into a memorandum. Istanbul Plus is going to be put into a memorandum format. And then these papers are going to be presented to the United States.

And they're going to see if Zelensky is going to agree to that. this, which of course he's not. But can he be pushed into agreeing to this? And listening to Medvedev, the answer to that question is clear. No, he will not agree to this. And Medvedev was he was talking, was even hinting at a change in leadership in order to sign the memorandum papers that are going to take a while to put together. He said this is going to take some time to put together this memorandum, but this seems to be the game plan. You put together the memorandum, Istanbul, plus you present it to Trump. Trump really doesn't have many options as far as whether to accept the memorandum, whether to continue to negotiate. It seems that he doesn't want to continue to drag

this thing on any further. He understands the conflict is lost. The stumbling block is Zelensky. The Russians are basically telegraphing this. If you want these memorandum papers, Istanbul plus agreed on, then you're going to have to figure out a way to change leadership. I agree with every part of that, with one modification. I do think Zelensky is the stumbling block in the sense that obviously Zelensky is going to refuse this completely. We've had a strategically placed article in the New York Times written by a Western journalist telling us that the Ukrainian military would never accept, you know, the terms that the Russians are seeking to impose and that there would be a massive political crisis in Kiev if Zelensky did do that, and quite possibly that is true.

I mean, undoubtedly, the Banda rights will not accept this, as we know. But I do think ultimately, the problem is Zelensky. I think the problem is this coalition that exists between the European leadership and the neocons in the United States. Because when we get to the point when the Russians present, what will in effect be a kind of ultimatum to the Ukrainians? Because what Medvedev is now talking about is a kind of ultimatum to the Ukrainians. And Zelensky rejects it. Zelensky is going to be backed by the Europeans in doing this. If the Europeans change their position, if they told Zelensky, look, the Americans wanted to sign. We are not in a position to push back against

this. You have to sign. If the Europeans told people in Ukraine beyond Zelensky, you have to sign. If they said to people like, say, Timoshenko, for example, that, look, Zelensky is being impossible. He's got to go. We agree with the Americans. about this. Are you ready to take over? If you are, we will back you. And if they started to communicate this to other people in Kiev, well, then we might actually see some movement, but the Europeans aren't saying any of that. They are continuing to say the opposite. They continue to back Zelensky. They continue to pretend that this government in Ukraine is a wonderful government. They shut their eyes when a Ukrainian, a former Ukrainian official who was not part of the

Ukrainian government since 2014, in other words, has played no role in any of this, and who's been living quietly in Spain, is murdered. Bear in mind, you know, we've had whole situations in Britain where people have been murdered here and the British government, as we know, has taken an enormous action against the people it says were responsible. Spain, the Europeans, say nothing about this. They're not bothered in any way about the fact that this man was killed after, you know, taking his children to school. So given that this is the kind of attitude that we see in Europe today, of course Zelensky is going to reject this. And of course, the rest of the Ukrainian elite will support him in rejecting it.

The question then becomes twofold. Firstly, what will happen at that point? Will the Europeans and the neocons, Lindsay Graham and all of those, come together and try and pass a bill through Congress imposing these massive sanctions on Russia and then presented to Donald Trump for signature. Are there the votes for that? Lindsay Graham says that there are the votes in the Senate, but are there the votes for that in the House? I don't know. I'm not sure. Trump clearly doesn't want this bill passed. He actually made a statement say that the only person who decides whether or not they're going to be sanctions, further sanctions, is me and no one else,

which is clearly assigned to Lindsay Graham to back on. But that possibility that they will try to push this, try to push Trump in that way through sanctions, through the threat of this bill exists. And well, so that's one big issue. What does the United States do in that kind of situation where the Europeans are clearly acting defiantly? And secondly, what do the Russians do? Now, the Russians, I don't think it's complicated. The Ukrainians refuse to accept the memorandum, whether or not the United States backs it, they will continue the war.

And Medvedev has made it pretty clear what he expects the outcome of that war to be. At the very least regime change in Kiev, arguably something much more than that. Yeah, well, the Wall Street, is reporting that the next talks are going to take place to Vatican. Interesting choice. And the Europeans, they've decided, in my opinion, that it's better for them to allow Ukraine to collapse than to accept a defeat to Russia. I think this is the general attitude of the Europeans. We've talked about this in videos that we recorded a couple of years ago, actually, that the Europeans and the Ukrainians, the Banderites as well, especially the Banderites. They've decided that it's better to go down in defeat, in an outright defeat, and to have Ukraine completely collapse than to accept some sort of a peace deal.

Absolutely. To talk to the Russians, to exist with the Russians for them is unacceptable. I think the Europeans, the current European leadership is also of this mind as well. They don't want to coexist with Russia. They don't want to talk to the Russians. So I think whatever Trump decides if he believes that he can get Zelensky or the Europeans to his side, it's not going to work. The question is, can the Europeans and Zelensky get Trump to their side? Exactly.

Well, or if not Trump, if they can create enough critical man. massive pressure in Washington to force Trump to go to their side. I think that over the last 10 days, we have just, we have started to see Trump starting to make clearer what his own particular feelings are. He doesn't want to impose sanctions on Russia. I think he understands that Lindsey Graham's sanctions would be an absolute disaster. I don't know that he's worked this out, but I think deep down he feels that. I think he also understands, and I suspect he's been briefed by some people, maybe in the

Pentagon, that the war he's lost. And I think he understands that too. But there are many, many people who deny what the Europeans want to do is that they're prepared to sacrifice Ukraine so that they can maintain the specter of the Russian ogre, the Russian aggressor, that is there on their doorstep. There's been an extraordinary article in the New York Times, which says that the future US government is going to be hostile to Russia. So I think that reflects sentiment in Europe as well. They believe that if they can maintain this crisis with Russia,

once Trump is off the scene, the US will revert back to supporting Europe. and the whole grift, which you've talked about many times, of NATO and all of that, will resume again. But they need to have Russia there now in order to do it. And I think also at a fundamental level, it's very difficult now for them to reverse course about Ukraine, because if they do a deal with Putin, then of course, inevitably the question, becomes, well, why have you waited so long? Why didn't you do the deal before? Why didn't you conduct diplomacy? And they don't want to have to answer that question either. And last and not least,

and this should not be underestimated, they want to use a military defeat in Ukraine as a mechanism to blame Donald Trump, to say that he is the person who has engineered that defeat. So you started to see articles appear in all kinds of places. There was one in foreign policy. There's others in other places saying that, you know, Ukraine isn't doing so badly at the war. On the contrary, if anything, the balance of advantage is tilting in its favor. The Russian economy is under enormous stress. It's a house of cards.

Victory, in other words, was at hand. And then that imbecile, that idiot Donald Trump came along. He loves Putin too much. He's a weak negotiator. He's been seduced and fooled by Putin. And as a result, the whole victory that could have been achieved was lost. And I think they intend to use that against Trump, not just to, not just to discredit Trump himself, but to discredit the entire political movement in the United States, which he has, Maga, and all that.

We've been saying this for a while now that the Europeans are going to turn on Trump. There's no doubt about it. And they're already starting to. And it's the Europeans. It's the neoliberals in the U.S. It's the neocons. They're all working together on this. And they are going to turn on Trump. Trump, if he does. And that's the question, if he does decide to walk away from Ukraine. Yes. That's still not a done deal. It's still not a done deal by enemies. But in terms of the conflict itself, let me go back to what I said at the start of my program. I mean, obviously, Putin wasn't there at the legal forum.

So, you know, we didn't hear directly from him. He's been making some very interesting points recently. But certainly I got the overwhelming sense that these people, not all of them, I would guess we're very political people. We are talking about lawyers. They are pretty much united now, that this thing must be brought to a successful conclusion. They will accept nothing less. And they are, as I said, a particular very civilian class of people. The New York Times also had another article.

in which he said that the soldiers in the Russian army expect now nothing less than victory and will be very, very embittered and feel deeply betrayed if they get anything less. So that is the mood in Russia. The Russians are not afraid of sanctions anymore. They are convinced that they're winning the war and they will continue the war. And as Medvedev said, if this peace deal isn't worked out the way the Russians won, Well, whatever issues there are for Trump, whatever quarrels there are between the Europeans and Trump, it's not after ultimately a Russian concern, they will go on and win in Ukraine.

And that's now the direction. Yeah, last chance. This is their last chance. All right. The durand. Dot local. We are on Romba Loddisi, Bitcher, Telegra, Finnat. Go to the Duran shop. Pick up some merch like what we are wearing in this video update.

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