The Duran Podcast - Macron's dangerous escalation with Russia

Episode Date: January 23, 2024

Macron's dangerous escalation with Russia

All right, Alexander, let's talk about this business with French mercenaries that allegedly Russia annihilated 601 or 67 French mercenaries that were staying at a hotel in Kharkov. And the interesting part about this story is that the messaging coming out of Paris is all jumbled and one story. another story. And it looks like the Macron administration hasn't quite been able to figure out how to explain away this Russian strike on this hotel where allegedly these French mercenaries were staying or where much of the command operations were being housed. Just real quick, the foreign ministry came out with a statement and said there are no French mercenaries or French fighters in any country. And then the defense ministry came out with a statement right after the foreign ministry put out their statement and said, well, we do have French citizens fighting

in various parts of the world, but they have no connection to the French military whatsoever. And we're a democracy and we can't stop people from going to fight in other countries. So what's what to make of this news about the French fighters? This is a very interesting story. I mean, it is very interesting because, as you said, there are divergent reports coming out from Paris. I think the first thing to say is that there's no doubt at all that this incident did take place and that dozens of French people were killed in this strike on the hotel in Kharkov. And we're starting to get names of people who were killed.

And they're very interesting. I mean, you know, so there is no real issue about this. Something there were a lot of people from France in that hotel. The Russians appear to have deliberately targeted them, and many of them were killed. So that's the first point to say. Now, the other thing that has happened, and it is actually extraordinary. And I don't think it's getting the attention it deserves. is that the foreign ministry in Moscow, the Russian foreign ministry, called in the French ambassador.

And the French ambassador came to the foreign ministry, and he was there for several hours. And he left, and there were journalists outside, reporters, principally Russian. And they tried to ask him questions, and he just strode past. He wouldn't answer any questions. Now, there have been mercenaries from various countries. or these nationals from various countries fighting in Ukraine now for a long time. Why did the Russians single out France in this particular way to call in the French ambassador? And what was it exactly that they discussed with him?

And then we get this very, very strange series of contradictory statements from the French. we don't have any mercenaries there are no French mercenaries anywhere in the world well that's by the way because French law apparently now forbids mercenary companies so that's the first thing to say so French saying that and then as soon as they say that they then admit that there are actually French nationals fighting in Ukraine so contradictory statements no real explanation of what's happened. No real explanation provided to the French people about what happened.

But then a very, very strange statement from Emmanuel Macron. He says that France and Russia are not at war, but that France and the West can't allow Russia to win in Ukraine. Now, why does he have to point in? out that France and Russia are not at war. I mean, it's unusual. Now, I'm getting lots of reports. There's lots of reports about this, but there is something which I would place it much higher than a room. I think that there is information coming through. And I'm choosing my words very, very carefully, that these people in that hotel were actually principally people drawn from the

French Foreign Legion. There were a number of French intelligence officers there. In other words, they were trained professional French army troops that they had arranged, there'd been an arrangement with the French government whereby they broke their contracts with the French Foreign Legion. and were sent to Ukraine. But in practice, the French government continued to pay them salaries. And that their operations continued to be coordinated by French intelligence. And that they were operating from this hotel in Kharkov. And that some of these people, some of the soldiers apparently,

being from the Foreign Legion are ethnic Ukrainians and Russians and Belarusians, but highly trained in the Foreign Legion, that they were conducting special operations behind the Russian lines and even in Russia itself. And the Russians who got wind of all of this, it wouldn't have been difficult for them to figure it up. They finally had enough and they decided to launch a strike against this hotel. Apparently the decision to launch the strike was taken at the very highest level. And, you know, when I said the very highest level, you know, the very top figures in the Russian government. And then they called in the French ambassador and they told him, look, these people,

whatever you might pretend that they are. They are actually French soldiers. They are participating in the war. And this is an act of war by France against us. And we will not tolerate it. And that perhaps explains the muddled response from Paris and this very strange formulation by Macron but actually France and Russia would not have war.

So that, it seems to me, and I'm getting, I'm getting, you know, obviously information about this from, I should say, several private sources, but it is stacking up and it seems to be both consistent and it looks to be a plausible explanation of what is going on. And I'm going to say, add something. It would be entirely in Macron's nature to conduct an operation like this. He is somebody who, on the one hand, constantly talks about finding ways to negotiate with the Russians. But in practice, and perhaps as he thinks, in order to buy himself some kind of political space with the American. he has been taking on the battlefronts an incredibly aggressive line against the Russians. And it's the kind of supposedly clever sort of thing that one can imagine him and his team coming up with. So it is consistent again with Macron's personality.

I would add, by the way, that one of the other things the French did directly after this event is that they announced an enormous arms package for Ukraine. Macron said that France would provide 50 precision guided bombs to Ukraine a month that they'd build for Ukraine. Seventy-five Caesar howitzers. All of this looks very much, again, like Macron striking a tone of defiance against the Russians after he was both found out and had his people killed. Yeah, well, you know, I think that Russia is going to, I don't know when or how, but Russia is going to pay this back. That's my sense of things because, you know, Macron has been playing a double game,

I guess you could say it. On the one hand, he's talking about how Europe has to find a solution with Russia and they have to live with with Russia and the realities of Russia while on on the other hand, he's he's been pushing very, very hard. Next to next to the UK, I would think France is France and Germany. Those are the three countries that have really been pushing this, this conflict very, very hard with Russia against Russia. And he was found out.

He was found out. And 60 something mercenaries, we'll call them mercenaries, were wiped out. And you know, yeah? Just to say about that, bear in mind, bear in mind, I mean, this is a euphemism. The Russians don't want to say too much because they don't want to simply say these are professional French soldiers who are who they killed. But the use of the word mercenary to describe these soldiers, if most of them were members of the French Foreign Legion, might not be wholly inaccurate. because, of course, you could argue at a stretch that foreign nationals who sign up for the French Foreign Legion are a sort of mercenary. So just bear that in mind.

Yeah. I mean, my question to you is there must have been, and I actually talked about this in a video I made on locals actually, where there must have been some sort of an agreement in place between Russia and NATO, where they agree. read, you know, NATO, don't do, don't, don't step over these red lines. I don't know, maybe attacking Russian infrastructure, like Russian proper infrastructure or something like that. Don't step over these red lines. And we won't go after your mercenaries. We know they're there. We know they're operating in Ukraine. We know that there's a presence of these mercenaries, we'll call them mercenaries. There must have been some sort of an agreement. I don't know.

That's my sense of it. And knowing Putin and knowing Russia, I imagine they warned the collective West over and over again. Stop sending drones to Moscow. Stop sending drones to St. Petersburg. Stop providing surveillance and radar assistance to Ukraine so they can target Russia proper. And they probably warned and warned. And now it seems like Russia is now actively going after foreign fighters. Like they are actively targeting and hunting down foreign fighters,

wherever they are in Ukraine and they're annihilating them. Absolutely. Well, I think you're completely right. I think there have been these unwritten rules. By the way, I think they've existed for a very long time, long before this particular conflict. But it's clear that the West increasingly has been ignoring these unwritten rules. And I'm sure you're right. I'm sure the Russians have been giving one warning after another.

And the West has been paying no attention. and the Russians have said enough enough. And they've done it with this missile strike on these French soldiers in this hotel. And they also made it clear what their views were when they called this French ambassador into the Russian foreign ministry. So, you know, I think this is a top message. And by the way, it's a message which isn't just been relayed to France because, you know, we know that there are American people in Ukraine. that there's British. So if this can be done to the French, it can be done to the others too. And there might be an element of warning there as well. Now, as to Macron, bear in mind something,

which is that relations between France and Russia have had another major source of friction over the last couple of months, because we've seen this progressive collapse of the French presence in North Africa. There was the coup in Niger. And the coup has been successful. The Niger government has survived, and it is becoming stronger. And it's now creating an alliance with Mali,

which is now very much working with the Russians and with Burkina Faso. And there's been a big Russian military delegation has been to Niger. and they're now discussing military cooperation. So Macron, who cares about the French presence in Africa, one can very uneasily understand why he, you know, would be particularly incensed by this.

He'd want to strike back at the Russians in some way, might be prepared to even be going beyond his other reasons for supporting all these hard line moves against the Russians. why he might be prepared to go even further and authorise French soldiers to strike at the Russians in all kinds of ways. And there's an awful lot going on between France and Russia at the moment, or at least between the Russians and Macron. We don't have the whole story. But this latest event, this attack on the hotel, the calling in of the French ambassador, these mother. messages, chaotic messages from Paris do suggest that the French are seriously embarrassed

and have at the same time taken a bloody note. Yeah, one final question. You know, the UK, Germany, France, they're going hard against Russia. I mean, they're essentially at some sort of war with Russia. other proxy war by Ukraine, or maybe something even more, something deeper, a deeper hate or a deeper desire to destroy Russia. And we're always talking about what they're doing to Russia, but what are the asymmetric ways that Russia can respond, specifically to France, Germany, and the UK? I'm not talking military action, war, acts of war, anything like that. And I say this to you

because there was an interesting statement from the French foreign minister, the new foreign minister, saying that he's very worried about the fact that if Russia were to win in Ukraine, it would control a large percentage of food supplies and of wheat. And that could be a pressure point, a point of a lot of pain for Europe and for France if Russia controls a significant amount of wheat exports, which it inevitably will. So, so, I don't know. What are some of the ways that you can envision Russia in the medium to long term? Yeah.

Striking back at these countries. Well, I mean, bear in mind. Not military. I want to stress it. I'm not talking about war or anything like that. I'm talking about economic stuff and different mechanisms like that. Well, bear in mind. And I think going back to your original point, the rhetoric among some political leaders and an awful lot of the media.

in the West, in Western Europe, much more so even than in the United States, by the way, would lead you to think that we are actually at war with Russia. I mean, the way they talk about Putin specifically and about the Russian government and the kind of language that's used about Russia, if you just read it, you would conclude that things have got so bad that to all intents and purposes, we are fighting a war with. them. Now, what the French minister was talking about, about Russia controlling the wheat exports, I think points to the underlying truth, which has been at the heart of the deterioration in relations

between Russia and the European Union ever since President Putin came to power. way back in, you know, 2000, which is that the Europeans, or some people in Europe, you know, the dominant group in Europe, and certainly in the European Commission, had come to the belief that Russia's role was to act as a supplier of cheap raw materials to Europe, but not just cheap raw materials, but also raw materials where the extraction, would be controlled by the Europeans and Western interests themselves. I mean, they were constantly talking, for example, about diversifying the Russian energy industry. I can remember lots of talk about this.

They strongly opposed the setting up of Gazprom. They strongly, but they wanted to break up Gasneft. They opposed the setting up of Rosneft. They did all of that. kind of thing. And the third energy package was clearly intended to sort of drive all of that. So this has been a longstanding thing. And of course, the problem they face is that the Russians are the world's biggest commodity producer in oil, in gas, in diamonds, in all kinds of strategic minerals, probably in lithium before very long. Apparently there's big lithium deposits

in Donbass, just saying, and of course, in food. And one senses that one of the things that is causing all this anxiety and worry is that instead of the Europeans being able to gain control of Russia in that way, you know, making Russia, you know, the new Africa, if you like, just as Africa used to be the place where they used to extract raw materials, and base their prosperity upon it. Russia would become that in its place. Instead of that happening, what is now happening is the precise opposite.

The Russians are actually tightening their control of all of this big trade in commodities. And I think the Europeans are getting more and more nervous about this. And so far, the Russians have never announced. any open retaliatory steps. The closest they came was in 2014, where they, when they banned food imports into Russia from the European Union. That's the only big sanction that they've imposed so far, at least publicly. But privately, all kinds of things are now happening. And they're talking already now about if the West moves forward and confiscates Russia's frozen assets, the Russians will confiscate Western assets in Russia. Apparently, the value is about the same,

just saying. They're mainly German, but there's a lot of French assets as well, tied up in Russia. Things are that kind. But ultimately, it's this control of commodity markets, the ability to prevent the Europeans accessing commodities cheaply in the way that the Europeans need in order to keep their economies moving and at least achieving some degree of growth. And I think this is going to happen, by the way, I think that regardless of how this political situation turns out now, I don't see the Russians re-embracing the Europeans directly in that kind of way, in the way that the trade relationship between Russia and Europe being restored to the European. the level that it would.

So I guess the biggest, the biggest thing that the Russians can do. But, you know, if you're talking about France, you're talking about Britain, the Russians can also work to erode the influence of these countries in all sorts of places around the world. And they can do so in Africa. They can do so in Latin America, in the Far East. that of course is already happening but remember tightening control of commodities tightening control of special minerals and metals and all of that is starting to have a serious effect on the western economy

i've seen that the german chemical industry for example the mainstay of german industry now appears to be in a sense of accelerating decline and we're going to start seeing that expand all the time. So yes, there's going to be economic conflict, economic war, probably all kinds of diplomatic struggles going on. The Russians will be exerting control of that. And of course, the whole world of covert operations, which also goes on, which I really don't know very much about and don't want to speculate too much on. Yeah. And then you can say that Russia not only controls a lot of commodities, but through bricks.

Controls more. Then you start to see a much, yeah, a much bigger picture. Absolutely. And, of course, currency systems and all that kind of thing. But of course, that isn't just, that isn't just Russia. I mean, that's other countries also now coming together and saying, you know, this is gone far enough. We can't allow this to continue like this anymore. All right.

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