The Duran Podcast - Merz ACHES for conflict with Russia. US refuses boots on the ground BACKSTOP

Episode Date: January 8, 2026

Merz ACHES for conflict with Russia. US refuses boots on the ground BACKSTOP

All right, Alexander, let's talk about the E3 meeting in Paris, Mertz, Macaron, and Stammer, along with Whitkoff and Kushner, and Zelensky, also there, so they can sign a letter of intent, which basically commits the Europeans to provide some sort of a security guarantee to Ukraine if there is a ceasefire. That's the plan. If there is a ceasefire, then the UK and France, they claim they will definitely put boots on the ground. Germany might jump in, but it'll create a presence on the borders of Ukraine, and it also might send in troops and whatever other countries in Europe want to pitch in to these coalition

of the willing forces, entering Ukraine, building a military hub, manufacturing weapons, if there is a ceasefire. The United States did not sign up to this. Your thoughts? Yes, I think let's just talk about Germany. Can I just say straightforwardly, Friedrich Maths is aching to join this coalition of the willing and to send German troops to Ukraine and if possible to tangle with the Russians. I mean, if you listen to his rhetoric, if you listen to what he's saying, I mean, it is absolutely clear to me that this is absolutely what he wants to do. He has a massive problem in the German society is solidly opposed to it. Young Germans are becoming increasingly radicalized because of their opposition to it. And there's now conflict with sections of the SPD, his coalition

partner, which understand that this is going to be deeply unpopular. And Some people in the CDU, increasing numbers of people in the CDU, are hostile to this as well. So he's coming up with these formulas. He says that he wants to keep the Germans out, Germans on the border, but not inside Ukraine itself and all of that. But there is no doubt at all that if he were able to get his way, which by the way he probably won't, he would get those troops across the border into Ukraine as soon as he could. That, to me, is clear. But all of this, all of this is in the abstract.

Because what happened in Paris is that the Europeans came to Paris, Macron, storm, melts, expecting, assuming that it was all in the bag, that the Americans would come along, that they would say, by all means, put your troops into Ukraine, and we will give you that backstop for those troops that Stama and Macron were talking about, have been talking about throughout 2025. You remember how Stama and Macron came to Washington back in February 2025 at the same time that Zelensky was there and had the bust up with Trump, in the Oval Office, how they were meeting with Trump. They were trying to get Trump to give them their backstop, their security guarantee.

They were expecting to get the American backstop. They were expecting that the Americans would commit to Article 5 security guarantees for Ukraine itself. They were expecting to come away with a document, an actual signed document from the Americans saying that. and to their dismay it didn't happen Rubio, who was supposed to go didn't come Witkoff and Kushner

came I was I'm Whitkoff and Zelensky clearly don't get on and you could see that all of the Europeans were there again

effusive embracing Zelensky he was the hero of the hour the actual film footage if you've seen it Whitkoff with Zelensky Whitkoff is very And the Americans came up with vague words. They talked about security protocols.

They gave every appearance of encouragement and of telling the Europeans what the Europeans wanted to hear, that they stopped, fell well short of making any actual commitments at all. And they weren't prepared to sign anything. And there has been absolute dismay about this in London. I've been tracking the media and the various statements that officials have been making here. And you can sense the enormous disappointment that they were expecting that the Americans would come, go much further, commit to far more give absolute signed commitments. And now the worry is that not only did they not do so in Paris, but that the reality is that they never will. Isn't it bad that from the Russian side of things that Whitkoff and Kushner were at this meeting?

And they were talking about how, I believe Kushner actually put out the statement that they pretty much wrapped up the negotiations with security guarantees for some sort of a peace plan or a piece. a peace negotiation with Ukraine. The Russians were nowhere present, obviously, that we're not invited to these talks. Once again, you have the United States negotiating with the Europeans and with Ukraine. And you have American officials saying, yeah, we've wrapped up the security parts component of our peace plan or our solution for winding down the conflict in Ukraine. a solution which the Russians are going to reject and everyone knows. The Russians are going to rejects everybody knows.

The Russians are going to reject collective West, NATO, European troops in Ukraine, anywhere in Ukraine. Macron's talking about being far away from the front line, being in the west part of Ukraine, whatever. The Russians have said it a thousand freaking times. There will be no Western troops in Ukraine. We don't care if they're a part of NATO. We don't care if they're a part of the EU.

We don't care if they're the US or Canada or anywhere. We don't care. We're not going to have them in Ukraine. And so that's the plan that they came up with. And it has to be said that Kushner and Witkoff, at least their public statements, were to the effect that they've signed off on this. As being part of the security guarantees agreement. I know.

I know. I know. Without, of course, spelling out any detail, without signing anything or spelling out any the details. And this is where we come to it, because of course, unless the Russians agree, none of this can happen because the United States is absolutely clear now, is not going to fight to defend Ukraine. I mean, it's not going to happen. So in order to give Ukraine Article 5 security guarantees, the United States must be confident that those security guarantees will never have to be honored, which means getting the Russians to agree to them.

And the Russians are not going to agree to them. Now, this is where the whole thing becomes, frankly, an exercise of the absurd, because the Americans are not negotiating with the Russians. They have spent far more time. Ever since Trump became president, talking with the Ukrainians and talking with the Europeans, and negotiating with them about all of these things, without negotiating with the actual other side, who are, of course, the Russians. And this means that these negotiations really go nowhere at all,

because Kushner and Witkoff say that it's 95% agreed. But, of course, it's 95% agreed between the Americans, the Ukrainians, and the Europeans. It's the 5%, which is the Russians that matter. and the Russians are going to say no. It was very much like what happened in the early part of last year. When Trump came in, adopted the Kellogg Plan, the freeze of the conflict, if you remember. And there was lots of words, lots of comments from Trump himself, from Weikov, by the way, from Kellogg to that it was all but done.

There was even a moment when Trump gave the impression that a ceasefire, was only a week away. And of course, nobody had spoken to the Russians about this. Nobody had consulted them. Nobody had discussed any of this with them. And when the Russians said no, the whole thing quickly and immediately fell apart. Now, the Russians cannot be happy about this. And this is a point that I think you've made many times. And you're absolutely right to. And from a Russian point interview, they had this meeting with Trump in Alaska in Anchorage. And the more we know about the more we've learned about the meeting, that meeting in Anchorage, it's become quite clear that what happened was that Whit Goff when he met with Putin a week earlier and Trump, when he met

Putin in Alaska, basically said to the Russians, we agree. with Istanbul Plus. We basically accept your demands, the demands that you set out in your speech to the foreign ministry on the 14th of June, 2024. There are some nuances. We might want some changes to the sequencing, all sorts of things of that kind. But the Russians came away from Anchorage, believing that Trump was committed to Istanbul Plus. And ever since then, things have gone sideways. Firstly, Trump speaks to the Europeans,

talks to the Ukrainians, tells them that, yes, Ukraine can have security guarantees, and yes, there can be European peacekeeping forces in Ukraine. He says this in August, you know, meetings that take place in the Oval Office. He says incredibly that Putin has agreed to all of this, which of course Putin never did. We had a massive breakdown in relations between the Americans and the Russians as a result over the course of the autumn. We had the talk about delivering Tomahawks to Ukraine. We had the threats of massive terrorists against Russia and against India and China. Then it all swung back again. We got the 28 points, which were not a exactly the same as Istanbul, well, as Anchorage.

But the Russians said, look, this is making some kind of progress. Yes, we can talk about this. But Witkoff and Kushner come along. They meet Putin at the beginning of December. We're now a month and a half away from that meeting. We've had 20-point plans. We've had other plans. Everything has swung back to talk of security.

guarantees and European peacekeeping forces. And of course, this is completely different from what the Russians believed they had agreed with the Americans in Anchorage. So we're just going through this dance. And a source that I am in contact with who has information from the Duma says that more and more people in Russia are saying that this is all a charade and that there's no real point in this whole affair because it will never crystallize. in the end into anything. And let's focus instead on the war. Now, where the big question is, is why did the Russians continue with a charade?

And will they, in fact, continue with a charade? Because also back in December, we had the attack on Novgorod, the drone attack. The Americans have been pretending that this was an attack on some undecutive. disclosed, unidentified military installation. The Russians undoubtedly know or believe that it was an attack on Valdai on Putin's residence. So the Russians, even as they conduct this negotiation, which isn't a negotiation, because, as I said, the Americans barely speak to them. I mean, there have been many conversations, but there's been no substantive negotiation since Anchorage, no agreements. No movement forward between the Americans and the Russians since then.

The Russians must be thinking to themselves, even whilst the Americans go through this pretense, through this motion, the motions of conducting a negotiation, we see that there is this attack, an attempted assassination, as we see it on our president. When we called up, when our president spoke to Trump, he denied all knowledge, he pretended that he was shocked. And then we got reports afterwards just literally the following day that in fact it is the CIA that he's running the drone war against us all the time. Of course, we knew this, but now it's been publicly said. And Trump himself comes along after saying that he believed the Russian accounts. He no says he doesn't. So I think that the Russians must be

looking at all of this with intense cynicism. And I fully expect that the Russians, This is going to reignite the long debate that's been taking place in Moscow between Putin and the other officials there. And they'll be saying to him, really, what is the point of this exercise any longer? The Americans are not serious about these discussions. This is not leading anywhere, even though the Americans always stop short of making commitments, really dangerous commitments, to the Ukrainians and to the Europeans, in terms of, an actual negotiated solution, we never get any closer. And we might just as well continue with the war, which we are in fact winning. Yeah, if I had to sum it up, I would say that Russia

continues this charade because they believe it buys them time to defeat Ukraine. Yes. They keep dialogue with the United States because they believe that this will keep the collective collective West, a bit fractured, let's say, and will give them the means to more easily defeat Ukraine without having, you know, someone like Biden who was just sending endless amounts of money and weapons and stuff like that, at least with Trump, they feel that they can talk to Trump and at least keep him at bay to a certain extent. While the Trump administration, I get the sense that they want to continue with this charade, so that they can eventually get the regime change in Russia, whether it's takeout Putin,

whether it's get the economy to sink, whether it's both. I mean, I think that's why they want to continue the charade without committing U.S. troops, right? They're just constantly trying to find ways to gain leverage over Putin, to gain leverage over Russia, 500 percent bone-crushing sanctions that Lindsay Graham says now have been greenlit, hitting tankers, seizing tankers, taking Russians as hostage, whatever it is. They're constantly searching for ways to gain leverage over Russia, to try and perhaps sink the economy, to fracture bricks, to take out Putin, to take out the leader.

That's what this seems to be about. I agree, but except that I would add one caveat to this, which is, is that I suspect that the Americans are not fully united behind this. I suspect that there are some people in the US who still consider Ukraine ultimately to be a massive distraction from the real war, which they're aching to fight, which is the one in the Asia-Pacific region. And I think this is the dominant group within the Pentagon, but within the National Security Council and the intelligence community and the CIA and those sort of people, I think they absolutely do have the view that you want.

So the Russians want to keep the Americans distracted with negotiations and keep the charade going because they want to win the war. The Americans want to keep the charade going without making any definite commitments because one group of them wants to use the time to try to crush the Russians, economically, militarily, to remove Putin from the scene himself, to do something of that kind. And the other group see this as keeping Europe at bay, the situation in Europe quiet, while they build up their forces against China and whilst they tighten their grip on the Western Hemisphere and on Greenland.

So even if I think that there are two different factions that play, their approach ultimately, the approach in the end is complementary. they can all agree that what they can all agree about is, you know, let's keep this dialogue with the Russians going. It's never going to go anywhere. It's never going to crystallize into anything. It's never going to produce the coveted Nobel priest prize that Trump is aching for. But it serves everyone's interests and everybody's agendas to go on doing this same thing. So the CIA can take pot shots of Putin. That's what CIA wants to do.

And the Pentagon can engage in this massive naval buildup against China, which is what the Pentagon wants to do. And as for Trump, sometimes he leads to the one side. Sometimes he leads to the other side. He does seem to have an odd relationship with Putin, which is never easy to fully understand. It's a misconception, by the way, that the two men know each other well. They've had just very, very few meetings.

But anyway, Trump, as I said, goes lean sometimes to the one, sometimes to the other. But ultimately, it doesn't matter because whichever side Trump leans on, the direction of travel is the same. Yeah, agreed. All right, we will end the video there at the durian.orgas.com. We are on X and Rumble and Telegram. We are also on Substack. Go to the Duran Shop. Pick up some merch.

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