The Duran Podcast - Legal experts green light Russian asset seizure. Medvedev, F16 warning

Episode Date: February 23, 2024

Legal experts green light Russian asset seizure. Medvedev, F16 warning

All right, Alexander, let's do an update as to what is going on in Ukraine and in Russia and with the Russian frozen assets. But let's start things off with how about a quick update on what's going on in the front lines? Absolutely. Well, the Russians continue on the move. That's the information we're getting. They are in the process of capturing another village close to Avdavka. They seem to be attacking two directions from Avdewka. This bitter article in the Daily Telegraph today,

Ukrainian soldiers speaking to the Daily Telegraph, complaining about the impossible situation that they're in, on the front lines in the Avdavka area. And one of them, interestingly, blurted out again, that he wants peace with Russia. So you see, a collapse of morale, very great deal of disorganisation and the Russians on the move in the Avdavka area and they're on the move in many other places as well they are gradually working towards

the encirclement in the south of a place called Wugladeau which is a sort of important fortress sitown that the Ukrainians have heavily fortified a bit like Avdavka itself in the south, controlled southern Donbass, and the Russians seem to be, I mean, they're gradually working towards capturing all the villages that connect, the communications to Vuglodar connect together. And yesterday, a very panicky email, a message from a Ukrainian journalist in the area saying that Vuglodar is now at serious risk of encirclement. And also, they're attacking. in other places as well. In the Bahmwood area, they're in the process

of storming a village called Krasnoye, or at least the Russians call it that, the Ukrainians call it Ivanovska. They seem to be moving towards capturing another town near to Bahmud called Chasovya

after they've captured those places, other possibilities start to open up for further advances in that area too. and then there is a huge uncertainty about what they're doing in two other places. In Zaporosia, in the south, where they're also on the attack, and in the Kupiansk-Liemann area where they seem to be concentrating huge numbers of troops

and people are wondering whether a big offensive in that part of the conflict area is coming. And last but not least, I think we mentioned it the other day, But the Kinky Bridgehead that Ukraine established east of the Dnieper appears to have now fully collapsed. The Russians seem to be in full control of that village. So the Russians on the move everywhere across the front lines. And I'm going to add something else, which is that over the last few weeks, months, as we've discussed in various programs we've done, on the Duran, there's been this narrative that has been circulating. in the West that the war is in stalemate. Now, what has happened with the fall of Avdeiakka is that it's shattered that narrative.

The most heavily fortified town along the front lines has been captured by the Russians. And you can see the admissions now starting to creep through that the war is not really in stalemate at all, that the Russians in fact are winning. So the fact that this is starting to be accepted that the Russians are winning, as you said, it's starting to creep in that Russia has won this. We are seeing sanctions hysteria. More talk about the seizing or the stealing, depending on how you want to look at it. Of the 300 billion in Russian assets, 10 legal experts have now said,

Yeah, this is absolutely legal and lawful to steal Russian assets. Handpicked legal experts is how it looks, but Bloomberg reported on this. And we've gotten the announcement today, both from the EU and from the U.S., a lot of sanctions against entities, institutions, individuals, as well as companies located outside of Russia. and this has to do not only with the two-year anniversary of the conflict in Ukraine, but Biden specifically is saying this is also a punishment for Navalny. It's up like 500 individuals and entities have been sanctioned by the U.S.

and the EU has started to sanction secondary sanctions on companies in China and Turkey and India and all kinds of things like this. What's going on here? This is not going to end well. No, it is not going to end well. No, it is not going to end well at all. Let's start with the seizure of the assets. Now, I should say first of all, that if you have enough money to pay fees and things like that,

if you search long enough to find a lawyer who will give you an advice that whatever it is that you want to do, however wrong or illegal or inappropriate it is, that it's actually perfectly legal, if you're prepared to search hard enough, you will always find such a person. And that's what's happened. I mean, we're talking about the G7. They put together, obviously, a team to hunt down the lawyers who will come up with the advice that tells you, it tells them, you know, seizing these Russian assets is fine. It's not a problem. We actually look at the advice that's been given. It's not actually. actually legal advice. It's a declaratory statement saying, you know, the Russians have violated

international law, so it's perfectly fine to seize their assets, which is, of course, completely wrong in legal terms. I mean, even if you've committed a crime, it doesn't mean that your property can simply be seized. I mean, the argumentation is obviously flawed to the point of absurdity. But they've got the legal advice. The problem they have, doing all of that, is that the person who knows about this best, and not just him, her, but lots of other people, but the president of, the chief executive, sorry, of Euroclear, where the bulk of these assets is, she's now gone public and she's clearly doing so with the backing of the ECB, the European Central Bank.

And she's saying, this is completely illegal. She's also pretty much saying that doing it is theft. She's saying that if you do that, you're undermining, you're compromising the position of Euroclear, which is this fund where governments often place money. It's specifically intended for that kind of thing. It also, by the way, handles the money received by governments. from bond payments. So when, let's say, the government of Britain wants to float euro bonds, if they were to decide to do that, the money would usually be parked through Euricle.

I mean, Euraclear is a major institution in the financial world. Anyway, she's saying it's absolutely wrong. She's pretty much said it would be theft if it were done. and she said, I hope that rational decisions are made in this case, which is her way of saying what is proposed, the theft of these assets, the seizure of these assets, the idea of floating loans using these assets as collateral, which is another crazy idea that she shot down. Well, she said, this is irrational.

In other words, it's mad. but they've now got the legal advice. The word is they'll make a decision tomorrow. Time for the second anniversary of the start of the special military operation. That's the 24th of February. We'll see what they do. So, I mean, it's crazy, but that's where they, it could be that that's where they're going. That tells you everything you need to know the fact that they're timing this on the 24th or possibly timing this on the 24th.

Absolutely. And I mean, we got the, we got, that's why we got this, this, as I said, this phony legal advice for these people. As I said, you will always find a lawyer who will, you know, if you want to do something that's wrong, you will always eventually, if you look hard enough, find a lawyer who will justify it. That's not how you get, seek legal advice, by the way, but that's how it's done in this case. What about all the other sanctions at their place? Yeah, I mean, people can. to Navalny. The interesting part, I think, is sanctioning Indian companies, China, Turkish companies. I think that's also going a step too far, a step into the abyss for the collective West.

Well, this is absolutely correct. First of all, it's not going to please the governments of these countries. And India in particular, I suspect, is going to be very angry. The Chinese will shrug their shoulders. But it is the ultimate weapon that the West thinks it has, it has, in fact, financial and economic war, which is to sanction companies. It's not going to make any difference. It's not going to change the overall picture. There might briefly be, you know, a sort of rearrangement and an adjustment in trade flows. But ultimately, in order to block out the Russians completely from global trade, you would probably have to sanction everybody. And I mean, there There's no limit to the number of people you would need to sanction.

And, you know, tying it all to Navalny as well. I mean, what do companies in Turkey or India have to do with Navalny? I mean, it already looks grotesquely and ridiculously unfair. Anyway, that's, again, what they do. Complicating world trade, by the way, even further, raising costs, making it very difficult to ship goods around the world because, of course, all kinds of people are going to be worrying about whether they're dealing

with a sanctioned entity or a company that is connected to a sanctioned entity or a businessman who might have some connections to a sanctions entity. There will be even more smuggling, even more corruption, even more middlemen operating. All it does is disrupt world trade. It inflates costs. It loses friends.

and of course it hastens the work towards setting up global trading networks independent of the West. It's incredibly stupid. And if you look at the sanctions, the people it's supposed to target who are the Russians are not going to be affected. Can you explain very quickly the news that Chinese banks, some of the big major Chinese banks are turning away Russian clients? Is that an indication that the, at least would this be an indication for the Biden White House and the EU leaders that their sanctions are working and this maybe motivates them or gives them encouragement to continue down this path of sanctions? You know, we've heard this before.

This very same thing has happened before. I remember it was happening back in March of 2022 stories about Chinese banks pulling back and not giving accounts to major Russian clients. But of course, the government of China is committed to the relationship between Russia and China, and the government of China owns the banks. So they will find banks. There are lots of banks in China and financial institutions that will work to sort this out. The same with Turkey, by the way.

There will be a brief knock. There always is. And then the system adjusts, as it did in my own. March 2020 and as it will do globally. Okay, so they're going to, most likely they're going to steal these assets. How does this hurt the U.S. and how will this hurt the European Union? This is going to hurt the European Union a lot more. I imagine that the flow will be first people will move out of the EU and they'll probably

park whatever money they have, whatever capital they have in the U.S., and eventually they'll want to get out of the U.S. as well. But I imagine something like that is going to be the immediate, the short to medium-term scenario. Well, possibly. But I get to say something. I think that there is a view that it's the Europeans who are going to be affected most because there's money is in the EU and it's held in euros and it's. held in Euroclear and such things.

And that perhaps in the very short term is true. But people around the world, governments around the world, financial entities around the world, understand perfectly well that the initiative for this is coming from the United States. And they're going to say to themselves, if the Americans are prepared to press the Europeans to do this, that means that they're prepared to do this themselves. We can't risk in the end. or keeping our money in the United States.

So, if any money does go to the United States as a result of this, it will, I suspect, be only for a very short time. What it is going to do, as I said, is it going to hasten the construction of an alternative financial architecture, which is accelerating. Great advertisement for bricks, courtesy of the United White House. What is the, yeah, say they get the $300 billion, say they steal the $300 billion, they get the $61 billion, and then they have this $50 billion from the EU over four years. Ukraine is also entering into various IMF loans and high IMF agreements.

It's incredible that the IMF is actually also loaning money to Ukraine. That's probably a whole other separate video right there. But say they get all this money in the next couple of. of weeks. They make the announcements. We've got it, 300 billion, 61 billion, then we have the 50 billion. What does that do as far as the conflict in Ukraine is concerned? About the war, very little. The United States is now saying that they will supply attack and missiles to Ukraine. You remember this long story that they wouldn't supply attack them's missiles? They've run out of everything else to send. They haven't got the shelves. They haven't got the tanks. The F-16s are only

being supplied in small numbers because they're not that many of them that they can supply. There aren't that many pilots and the runways get damaged all the time. There was a report, in fact, there wasn't a report, it was a film yesterday which showed the Russians destroying a Patriot missile system in Ukraine, in Herson region. There's reports that five out of seven of the Patriot missile systems that the West delivered to Ukraine have now been destroyed so the Ukrainians are now down to just two. So, I mean, you know, it's not going to make a fundamental difference to the military situation. And, but what it will do is that it will keep the laundry moving.

So you have $500 billion altogether to play with, which will probably. be enough to pay most, to pay everybody off. And that's what it's all about now. I mean, it seems to me. I mean, I'm sorry that sounds desperately cynical, but it's cynical because it is. I mean, that is the situation. I mean, they spent, what, trillion dollars on Iraq?

They spent, I think, more than that, on Afghanistan. And of course, we're heading now into that kind of territory with Ukraine. Of course, if you add the money that they funneled into Ukraine, before the special military operation began, it's more than that. But, you know, the point is that all the people who need to be paid off will have been paid off. And that's probably what this is really focused upon at this time. Is Olensky any closer to admitting that he has to enter into negotiations with Russia?

given the circumstances. I haven't seen any sign of this. I mean, he did make a very bitter speech at the Munich Security Conference, in which he all but said that the West was betraying Ukraine. But my own view about Zelensky is that his own personal interest now is in continuing the war as long as he can. I think that entering into negotiations, all that's going to do is it's going to stop the money flows.

And the most important priority is to keep the money still flowing. So he needs to keep the money moving towards Ukraine. Again, he has to pay all sorts of people in Ukraine off. Perhaps he has to pay himself off, just say. So I mean, you know, why therefore should he end the war? It doesn't really make any sense for him. So on the one hand, because I don't think he's a man wholly without conscience, by the way, despite what people say. I think he's deeply shocked and distressed about the realities of what's going on on the battlefields.

I mean, he was touring the battle lines, as I said, we discussed this in our previous video. He looked in deep distress, even as he was doing so. But at the end of the day, if you're looking at the question in terms of dollars and cents, it's more important for him. to keep things going. And he will do so, he will continue to do so for a few more, for as long as he possibly can. And it's, you know, it's probably going to be, well, he hopes, I think, perhaps another year if he gets all this money. Now, I ought to say, though, that the word that's circulating in the United States is an article today in ABC, which says that Ukraine is due to run out of critical weapons by the end of March, by late March.

In other words, in a month's time, even if Congress were to authorize the $61 billion tomorrow, which they're not because they are on leave until the 28th of March. And you have to get by... February. February, sorry, 28th of February. You're 28th of February. and you have to get by Speaker Johnson and all of that. I mean, even then, you won't be able to get huge numbers of weapons to Ukraine,

even assuming those weapons existed by the end of March. But I suspect, by the way, that that story about Ukraine fully running out of all weapons by the end of March is probably in part intended to put extra pressure on Republicans in Congress. to get them to vote. What I'm hearing, though, I mean, I read, I say hearing. I mean, I read it today in one of the media outlets. I think it was the telegraph, is that apparently representatives, Republican representatives in Congress are now receiving lots and lots of messages

from Republicans across the United States, people who vote for them, saying that we are deeply opposed to funding for Ukraine. And that may be having an effect as well. Yeah. Before I get to, I want to talk a bit about Medvedev and what he said. Your thoughts there. But what about the F-16s? There's reports that the F-16s will arrive by the summer, I believe, the beginning of summer.

Yeah. June is the next. Any difference? Yeah. No. Well, they will make a certain. difference at the beginning. This has been the story with all of these weapons, the attackers. And by the way, on the question of the attackers, Victoria Newland has been out and about.

And she's effectively inciting Western governments that have attack and missiles, I believe some of the Baltic states do, to give them to Ukraine. Just saying, I mean, she's been making statements to that effect. So even if the United States in the end, does, supply attackers missiles. It's quite likely that we're going to see attack and missiles supplied by Ukraine, but anyway, to Ukraine by some of the US's NATO allies. But the point to say is all of these weapons systems, the S-16s, the attackers, what happens is that they appear, there's a couple of weeks, two or three weeks, that they do have some kind of an impact. then the Russians figure them out and then they're neutralised.

And the same will be true of the F-16s. Now, there are problems with the F-16s. They're not that many of them. The number of pilots who have been trained to fly them. Supposedly, we always be careful about these claims, but supposedly it is quite limited. The training, if they are Ukrainian pilots, that these pilots will have received,

cannot remotely be sufficient for them to fly these aircraft in a proficient way to take on the Russian Air Force. And of course, there are major problems as the Ukrainian air defence people are admitting, openly admitting, with basing these aircraft in Ukraine. The runways aren't ready. The Russians are bombing the runways. it might not be an easy thing to operate for Ukraine itself. But the thing to say about the F-16s, the Russians have now perfected the means to shoot down Ukrainian fighters from very, very long ranges, longer ranges than the missiles,

the F-16 itself operates with. So beyond a certain point, the Russians will start shooting them down. It's what always happens. Happened with the storm shadows. The storm shadows made a big impact for about two or three weeks. Now the Russians regularly shoot them down. They shoot down or have countered the Haimars missiles. They've destroyed apparently most of the patriots.

The German tanks were a disaster. So more wonder weapons. They're not going to make any difference. Even Western officials admit this, which begs the question of why they're supplying them at all. Okay, well, why are they supplying them? This leads us into Bedvedev's comments where he has sent a warning to NATO. And he has said that, look, if those F-16s are flying out of airfields in Eastern Europe, in NATO member states, well, then perhaps we have to consider them as a party to this conflict.

I mean, that's what Medvedev said. Yeah, I mean, you did. He's right. I mean, yeah, so what happens there? And going back to the attack homes, okay, so you have F-16s flying out of, what was just saying, Romania, right? Okay, let's say, F-16s are flying out of Romania. Attack-ums have a long distance.

They have a long range. So I would imagine that they're able to hit deep inside Cribaya. And deep inside Russia as well, Russia proper, the attackoms. So what happens if they do score one or two successes in the early part of these weapons deliveries? What happens then? Because we're not just talking about, you know, Haimar systems hitting the Russian military. We're talking about long-range attack-oms and F-16s. right i think what does russia do i think i think with the attackers and you know the tourist missiles

from germany if they're ever supplied and there's chaos in germany about this this matter by the way which we we can discuss it another time but the long-range missiles i think the russians are on top of and i doubt that even these missiles have the range to reach russian territory including Crimea, from the territory of NATO states, F-16s are a completely different matter. If the F-16s are based in Romania and Poland, then in effect, Romania and Poland are directly involved in the war. and the Russians say that in that situation they would have a right to take and this isn't just Medvedev by the way

they would have a right to take action against those bases from which these aircraft are flying and to be honest I think that would be an absolutely reckless thing to do and I get the sense that with the mood in Romania and Poland is turning against this idea as well But, you know, we'll have to wait and see what exactly it is that the administration does in the summer.

It is a very dangerous administration, as we've discussed many times. It does incredibly reckless and dangerous things. And if the Russians do respond by attacking any basis from which the F-16s are flying in Eastern Europe, We'll have to see then what the response is going to be and how it will plan out. Just the final question. Kiev Odessa from Medvedev's comments. Yeah, I think. Yeah, I know, absolutely.

I mean, he spoke very clearly about this. And I think that the thing to understand about Medvedev is what he says today, Putin says tomorrow. So just keep that in mind. I have always said, I cannot imagine the special military operation ending without some arrangement about Odessa. It looks like Kiev as well. All right, we will end the video there.

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