The Duran Podcast - Military crisis in Ukraine drives negotiations w/ Stanislav Krapivnik

Episode Date: August 14, 2025

Military crisis in Ukraine drives negotiations w/ Stanislav Krapivnik

All right, Alexander, we are here with Stanislav. Stanislav, how are you doing? And where can people follow your work? Good. A little worried about the upcoming meeting, but good. You can find me on X under Stasker Pimnik. You can find me on the Telegram, the Russian channel, Stavdhdaia Abratna, in English letters, or Latin letters.

The English channel Stas was there. And you can also find me on YouTube at Nogratna. Mr. Slavic, man, Slavic with a K, not a C. All those links will be in the description box down below. Alexander Stanislav, let's talk about the military situation. Let's talk about the diplomacy that is going to be taking place on Friday in Alaska. And maybe we can also talk about some of the history of the United States and Russia engaging in diplomacy. Maybe address the Minsk three elephants.

in the room that everyone is about. So, Alexander, Stadislav. Indeed, indeed, let's do that. Because what we're going to focus on, I think what's going to take up most of our focus today is actually going to be the military situation because we have this summit coming up in Alaska on Friday, but the reason there is a summit going to happen in Alaska,

in my opinion, in the opinion of us on the jurisdiction, Alex and I have spoken about this is because there is a military crisis faced by Ukraine and its collective West backers on the Ukrainian battlefronts. There's been attempts by some people in the West to deny that truth. I read an extraordinary article in the British media, which said that the Russians have only advanced three kilometers in the last two years near Bachmut. You might want to say something about that Stanislav.

I actually read that. That was just a few days ago. But despite all these denials, despite all this pretense, if you drill a little below the surface, you can see the doubts, the worries starting to build. And I think that, in fact, if they knew the real situation, it wouldn't just be doubts and worries, it would be absolute blind panic, because my own sense is that the military situation is even worse than the best informed

people in the West understand. So, Stanislat, that's an introduction. Now, let's go straight to the military situation. Can you tell us what is happening? Maybe we can start with what I think you've discussed as the key battlefronts, which is the Papakrovsk, Donetsk, the whole Donets region. You've explained why it's a difficult region to conquer, the urban sprawl, the fortified lines. I noticed, by the way, even the Institute for the Study of War is now saying those things, which you've been saying for years, I think, suddenly they've discovered that Donbass is a difficult face to conquer and losing it would be a disaster for Ukraine. But tell us a little bit about the military situation as it's playing out at the moment.

Yes, of course. Well, you know, the British press may be correct if they're looking at the direction for Zaporosia because there wasn't a lot of movement. It's now starting to move the front toward the city of Zaporosia itself. So, yeah, they've moved about three kilometers in that direction. But that's a very small angle or a corner of a much larger front. I mean, the front line is about 1,500 kilometers from end to end. That's about the distance from Moscow to, I think, Paris, if you compare it, maybe a little longer.

So it's a huge front line, and Ukraine is just simply running out of men. As we know, last week, Zelensky signed the 60-plus club, which I guess they decided to save on pensions by just getting rid of pensioners. which means they can now invite to serve 60-plus-year-olds. And then you've got a mute off the Minister of Defense in one year is able to steal a gigantic amount of money that is also undercutting defense, which, you know, thank you corruption in Ukraine. It's speeding up this war effort. So, you know, it's a control shot in the head,

and I'm glad they're doing it. But the front itself, the front, again, it's not just Pokrovsk is the big battlefield now. It is Pakrovsk. The two key cities right now under threat for Ukraine is Pakrovsk and Konstantinovka. Now, Konstantinovka is part of a triangle of cities. Konstantinovka, Kramatorsk, and Slavins. Slavins, for the viewers, have been paying attention. since 2014 was where everything started. Slavis was where Stolikov and his band took their stake

out in Slavins. The Ukrainians responded as stupidly as possible by just bombing everybody and everything, and then they extended the bombing of everybody and everything into Danyetsk and Lugansk cities, at which point they actually, they could have quelled everything if they just and bombed civilians because the vast majority of local population, they wanted federalization so they could elect their governor or such, but they didn't want to fight. There were bans volunteers from Russia. There were bans from their population, volunteers, but the majority population didn't want to fight. So Slavinsky is a symbol because Slavinsk was the first city they took, but they couldn't take Denezkan. They couldn't take Lugansk. So when Slavinsk falls, that's a major

moral blow. Slomis is also, by the way, where there's a lot of oil, there's a lot of oil or gas drilling, and it's shale gas. And the population of Slimus was against that until the fighting started, and the Ukrainians removed the population. No population, no problems. So they started shale drilling in that area. And of course, we know who was linked to that, that was Hunter Biden and a few other sons of prominent families. So those are morally key areas. Now, what's happening right now is Pachros, we'll start with Pekrovsk. Pachrovskis is tactically surrounded.

So from the south, it's been cut off for quite a while now. In the north, it's being cut off, and the Russian army is advancing up to 1 to 2 kilometers a day, expanding its northern wing, which is also focusing toward Konstantinovka to the north, so it's expanding out. And just yesterday, Russian

diversionary groups were able to bring under fire, so effectively cut off the last major route toward Konstantinovka from Bakrovsk. If they can hold it, they'll effectively cut that communication line. The next communication line is quite a

further west, northwest to get around. So that makes it a much, much bigger problem. Additionally, Russian, you know, we're audacious. We don't know these rules of war that we're supposed to follow, so we just do whatever it takes. And Russian diversionary groups charged into the middle of Pekrovsk about a week ago and just took the middle section of it where the railroad line is. Effectively basically cut my city in half. And since then, additional troops have come in, and the city, the southern half of the city is basically cut into three sections already, plus the northern half, that's, I'm not counting. And that's creating a huge problem. Now, the main road, while Pakrovsk isn't fully encircled,

the main road is under fire. It's under artillery fire, and it's under drone control. And there's a reason you don't cut a city off totally. There was a great English strategy book called strategy that came out right before World War II started. I don't remember the author's name, but that's on one of my bookshelves. And he pointed out a very good fact, which anybody that really understands strategy already knows, you always leave a route of retreat for your enemy who's in a built-up or a heavily defendable position. And you do that for a psychological reason. If you cut them off fully surround him. You're going to have one of two, choices. You either starve him out or you have to take him by storm, one way or the other.

So hand-to-hand combat, street-to-street combat, and so on. Ukrainians are Russians, whether they want to admit it or not. They are historically. And though they've, a lot of cultures over a years from Russian culture, they did have Russian stubbornness that stuck around. So they don't want to surrender. The actual POW count isn't that high, as you think, at this point, but there's a lot of people retreating. So if you cut them all the way off, a lot of them are going to fight to the end just out of stubbornness. And that costs you time, that cost you men, that cost you material. And the desires to avoid that. I mean, if we were fighting, no offense to the Italians or Romanians, but considering their military history over the years,

if we were fighting them, they're probably surrendered, and that would be fine. You could surround it. But you're fighting basically other Russians, and that becomes a big difference. problem. So what you do is you leave them a route of escape. You control that route so they can't get supplies in. You destroy whatever's coming in. But you keep that route open. So morally, open, but under threat of closure. So morally, they always know there's a route. I can still get out, but I don't know for how long. And that builds up psychologically in your opponent. And sooner or later, people start running. And fear is a contagion. It is very contagious. It is very contagious. You know, in the old armies, when they came in ranks, the officer up front with a saber,

and there was a guy with a spear behind or a pike behind, and that was a sergeant to make sure nobody ran. It's stick the guy, the first guy that ran in the gut. It's sick the next guy ran, make sure everybody's moving forward because fear is contagious. And it's just as contagious now as it was 200 years ago or 500 years ago or 1,000 years ago. So when part of the units start running, the front starts collapsing, everybody eventually starts running. And that's by the way when they take the most casualties. Because they're running across open areas. They're running as fast as they can.

They're dropping every equipment that they can't take out with them. They're dropping vehicles because a lot of those vehicles, you know, getting a vehicle, your chance of survival is zero. Being on foot and spread out in groups running in every direction, you've got a much better chance to survival. But they tend to lose a hell of a lot of men in those areas. I mean, there's always going to be some holdouts, but the majority will make a run for it. And it's easier to fight them later on than the next village, that isn't as built up as the area you're in right now.

So that's why you don't cut off the, until the very, very end, until, okay, the guys that are left, they're not going to run, they're going to stick it out, might as well cut them off at that point. So the majority of time, you still have a way out for them, psychologically, because that will work, that always works.

It's human nature. And there's nothing worse than fighting humans. I mean, there's nothing nature can put up as a barrier that can compare to a human being. So you always want them to leave whenever possible. So for that reason, Fakrovsky is tactically surrounded. So tactically surrounded means its entry points are under fire control, but it's not a full circle. So there's always the option for them to run.

Now, Konstantinov Kato North is also now seeing fighting right around the edges. So the Russian units, especially diversionary units. So there's what's called, and the Ukrainians have them too. It's what's called recon, diversion, and sabotage units. They go out, they go out in the deep, they ambush, they bring back recon, they ambush, they blow up objects or objects like bridges, tunnels, cut off roads, things of that. Basically cause chaos in the enemy rear. And these units, they're usually a squad of between four to seven men, very highly trained. These are special forces, very, very highly trained, very adaptable, very high morale,

because they're out on their own for quite a while. And if they get caught in an ambush, if they get caught in a heavy firefight, there's nobody coming to save them. I've known quite a few guys like this. So it's a very, very high level of qualification. in this case. So they're doing quite a bit of a job. And the Ukrainians simply put, are, A, they're running out of men. The deaths, the losses are anywhere, and I've heard various estimates, and I've heard estimates that come out of the U.S. have leaked out here and

there estimates from certain American experts. And the extreme estimate was from actually from an Orthodox Ukrainian priest of the Moscow Patriarchist. He was making a speech and he got information from Americans. So the estimates are anywhere from 1.6 to 2.5 million dead. That's dead, KIA. And you've got to figure just as many invalids that aren't coming back. Or if they're coming back, they're coming back with prosthetic limbs because, you know, heavy, heavy injuries. So you're looking at anywhere from 2 to 2.5 to 5 million people that are out of combat, either dead or too heavily injured to return. And don't think there are quite a few Europeans among those. Quite a few Americans too.

So when the bobbing head over there, the yapping dog in the corner, and wanted terrorists in Russia, Lindsay Graham, starts talking about this is a great investment and no Americans are dying. No, there's been quite a few Americans dying, including the crews of the Haimars, including the crews of the Patriots. So this is a situation,

and it's intensifying because it's not just there. The Russian army is closing in. The Russian army is closing in on Krasnilimón, which is to the north of Slavinsk. on the high ground, and this is historically how the Red Army took those territories back from the Nazis. Because the Nazis were also dug in. They didn't dig in for eight years.

They only dug in for half a year. And it took about half a year to get them out. Well, I guess more a year. But it took about half a year to get them out. But these guys are much more dug in. And the difference is also, unlike the Red Army, the Russian Army is much more averse to take in heavy casualties. So they'll take their time and just flattened everything with fun.

arms, artillery, drones, and everything else. So they'll advance until they hit some kind of resistance, level at all, and then advance again. And the Ukrainians aren't putting up nearly the fight that they used to put up because the quality of soldiers is just collapsing. The elite units are down to 30, 40 percent, some are lower than that, veterans. The veterans have been in the fight for three years, well, a lot of them for three years or two years. Actually, a lot of the three-year guys don't exist anymore or are on prosthetics or ran away. There's quite a few of those these days.

Desertion rates are skyrocketing. And what's been noticed is they'll hold the defensive line because all these guys are fresh off the street. And just to understand how fresh off the street, I mean, this was a year ago, but the video they came out south of the Russian line of Khadikov from the Ukrainians. This one guy is showing training in a wood line, and they're disassembling, assembling assault rifles. Kalashnikov, AK-47, whatever they were given. And the guy goes, you know, this is their first time holding a rifle in their hands. In two days, they go into an assault. They're all dead.

And they are all dead. They have up to zero training. These are guys who never held their assault rifle. They're given an assault rifle on a spot showing how to assemble, disassemble it. And good luck. See you later. See you on the other side. And that's a situation. So when the Russian, they'll hold off at a distance.

But once the Russian troops get closer and the Russian troops are now moving in two to five-man teams. And they're using, they've actually had cases using horses. But for most part, they're using buggies and they're using motorcycles because they can move faster than the drone operation. You can get the drones up or the artillery can focus in on them. to get up and storm into the Ukrainian positions. And once they're in, they establish themselves into an edge position, hold it and wait for the next following groups to come up. And the Ukrainians are running away.

Once it gets that close, even though they'll outnumber the Russian fighters, they're running away because these are extremely low quality, low morale troops. They don't want to be there. They never want to be there. And they definitely don't want to die for Zelensky. And while they may not surrender, and a lot of them do, but while many do not surrender, they'll choose to run. And some of them just keep on run. Desertion rates are extremely high.

They're losing something between 300 or 500 deserters every single day. And it's gone to such a point that family, close relatives will have all their money confiscated in their bank accounts if somebody deserts. So they're trying to do collective punishment. on the families out of some kind of desperate way. They haven't come to taking families hostage yet, but that's probably next step down the line. Yeah. Yeah.

Stanley stuff, because obviously we don't have unlimited time. Can I just focus on a number of specific questions? Firstly, if Pachrosk falls, and I've heard reports that the Russians are now leafleting the Ukrainians to tell them to surrender, which is consistent with what you've been saying, maybe less to make them surrender, more to make them think that this is coming to the end and this is the time for them to go.

If Bakrosk falls, what effect does that have on the battle in Konstantinovka? And you mentioned that Konstantinovka, Slaviansk and Kramatowski make up a triangle as somebody who dabbled in mathematics in the puzzle very successfully. If you take away a triangle, or if it's a stool, a stool with two legs can't stand, will that lead to a faster collapse in Slaviansk and Kramatosk? So this is what I'm saying. If Pagrosk falls, does that affect the situation, Konstantinovka? If Konstantinivka falls, are Slaviansk Kramatros defended?

Absolutely, you're right. What happens? When Pachrovs falls? This isn't a question of if, when. We're looking maybe, it's always hard to foretell any kind of combat how long it's going to take. Because human nature is human nature. Just like economics, the great science. Sometimes people will buy, some people will sell, sometimes they'll run out of the market.

Same here. Sometimes they'll stand. Sometimes they'll run. I would guess somewhere around one and a half, two weeks at the rate things are going. Pekrovsk is either going to be fully done or mopping up operations. When Pekrofts falls, behind Pekrovsk is very little cover. Now, the Ukrainians are trying to do a Seraviken line. Of course, thanks to corruption, ineptitude, lack of equipment, lack of men, which, by the way,

they mobilized their engineers when they were fighting in Artjomov, Bachmoud. They had 3,000 engineers to build new fortifications. They wound up mobilizing them and throw them in the front. Most of them never made it out alive. So they basically, for a very short gain of a few days, they sacrificed a key, key asset. So now those people are missing and they're feeling it. Additionally, in some of those areas, you know, you can have all the obstacles in the world, minefields, dragon teeth, wire, everything.

Unless you have units overwatching those obstacles with fire, not just looking at them going, oh, look, pretty tanks coming out. Unless you have units with capable equipment and capable armaments overwatching that point, it's all worthless. Mines can be cleared with a Micklick, for example. It just shoots a rocket out, the rocket trails, dead cord. Dead cord's full of explosives attached to it. They fall, they explode.

any mines that don't explode, they just the shockwave tosses them out. You get a path right up to the wet. Dragon's teeth are great until a tank drops a chain around it and just pulls them out of the way, or a tractor comes up and pulls them out of the way. So again, this is an obstacle for a couple hours, maybe.

Trenches, again, you bring a tractor up, fill it in, and keep on going. If you don't, the key is while somebody's trying to do that, you cover them with fire and you start to destroy them. But if that fire is missing, because you don't have enough troops, you don't have enough heavy equipment, This is just a very small barrier for a very short amount of time.

And more expensiveness is probably worth. And that's what they're finding right now is basically they don't have the troops. They're running out of the heavy equipment and the missiles like the javelins and so on. So holding this front that they're digging 20 kilometers past Pachrosk is an impossibility. They don't have the troops. They don't have the quality of the troops and they don't have the equipment to do this anymore. And they're out in the open. There aren't that many villages that you can barricade your stuff.

in and build up. And where they are, they can just be gone around. So now they have a very, very, very big problem on their hands. You know, what do you do? How do you hold? Once Proffs goes, it's a basically fast move toward eastern NEPA Petrovsk, which is across the NEPA river, the eastern portion of the city. But that makes even a bigger problem because now, instead of even going at Konstantinovka, Russia can do the deep circle, the deep circle toward going around the Constantinovka and going toward cutting off Slaviansk from the south, southwest. Now, meanwhile, the moment the Krasnilmón falls, you're going to have pressure on Slavinsk from the north, going downhill as a matter of fact, all the dry ground. And holding those three cities,

I mean, you can hold them for some amount of time, but it's a suicide mission. It's like Hitler's command stay in place and hold, which cost them division after division. They just got surrounded and got degraded and got wiped out in the end or surrender. It'll be the same thing. And if that falls, you know, all of, never mind all of Yeppertrovs area east of the Neapur Falls, you've got, of course, all of Dianer that gets basically liberated. And now you're going into Paltava Oblis, and Harkaf Oblis is also under threat, or from now from the south, not just from the east and from the north.

So you're looking at a massive collapse of the front. And the problem is, is once a portion of the front falls, any portion of the front that's still holding is now under threat of being surrounded and cut off and being wiped out. So unless everybody starts moving, anybody that's left, it's only a matter of time. Can I just ask you a question, which is one that I've actually come across many times. There is a view, which is I've noticed not held by soldiers, that when you're talking about a front line, you don't, what you need to do is how. have fortified positions, and it's the fortified positions along the front line that matter. Whereas soldiers talk about the need for a continuous front line, that if you don't actually have people holding positions between the fortresses, then the fortresses themselves

become submerged. And apparently this is something that is well understood by soldiers, but not by civilians. So that, you know, if you have a town and you fortify it and it's standing by itself and you concentrate all your people there, but the surrounding country is empty, that is not a good strategy. Can you explain that? Because I've had this, you know, that point. This explained to me, but can you explain it for our viewers, maybe?

Yeah. Well, you don't need to have quite the same. It's not quite the same as World War I. but you just had this continuous trench line up and down for all. Well, on the western front, the eastern front was a lot more mobile and a lot larger of a front line. But on the western front, of course, you had the rows upon rows of trenches. You just had just massive amount of men covering almost every square meter of that trench. You don't have to have that.

I mean, what you need to do is you need to have firing positions or bunkers or at least trench. areas that can cover each other. So if there's space in between, that's fine, as long as the enemy can't pass because he's being hit from two sides. And if one bunkers being attacked, the bunkers beside it are able to cover it with fire and give it assistance of that way, that's fine. Of course, that takes a lot less troops. And considering the weapon systems that we have available today, especially if you have air control and artillery on your side, heavy artillery, you can do that. It's a lot harder, of course, for the Ukrainians, because outside of drones, they don't have air domination.

They're outgunned by long-to-artillery, a good 6 to 7, sometimes 10 to 1, depending on what portion of the battlefield they're out. And Russia has the loitering munitions that they don't have. And in effect, some of those loitering munitions are now get on drones. They've gotten such a degree that they can do such maneuvers. They can fly over as if they're going to a city, turn around, and come back and take out a specific bunker somewhere in the front line. So now they're in for the deep hole and for the front line. And then you get the fobs, of course.

You know, you get a 2,000 kilo or 3,000 kilo fob. You just get a gigantic crater. But it's not just a crater because a shockwave as it goes out through the ground will collapse most of the trenches in and around it. It's just a massive shockwave that goes through. A friend of mine actually got caught in one of those from an American J-dam and got to get dug out, and he was decent distance away from it. And the Russian fobs are much bigger than the American J-dams.

So this is another way to just destroy enemy fortifications unless they're cemented up and with reinforced concrete, rebarred concrete. So just digging in a hole isn't going to work. Plus, even if you make trenches, you know, when the rainy season comes, yes, it's very difficult for vehicles to work. It's also very difficult to be in a trench because that trench will get fully filled up with water. So you may be standing chest deep in water. You're not going to stand there for very long in chest deep water, especially when it's cold water. So a lot of those trenches become absolutely uninhabitable.

On the Russian defensive side, because of equipment, I've been in these trenches. They have pumps. they have reinforced boards. They have a lot of things. And we bring them a lot of things up to the front lines. Insulation for the bunkers and so on. Some of these bunkers are better than some of these people's country houses, if you think about it. They're very well built.

Of course, with the fronts moving forward, you kind of abandon them and go forward, and next session on comes up on those. So that's a big problem. It becomes a big problem for the Ukrainians, is. Yes, they don't need to have a continuous line. They just need to be able to cover each other's positions, but they don't have the men. And that's something that's been noticed. Russian troops on several occasions have taken positions,

bunkers, cemented bunkers, and there's no one there. They're just tempted. They've never been occupied. I'm reading a lot of troops. Yeah, yeah. I'm reading a lot about that. So, Konstantinovka will be lost, Prakovsk will be lost. It doesn't seem as if Slaviansk and Kramators can hold out for much longer.

If that happens and Ukraine loses Dombas, has it lost the war? Well, no, that's the problem. It's, you know, it depends what you consider the war. For Zelensky, the war is the last Ukrainian. Worst case scenario, that back up their bearings, they're right. out of Kiev to evolve, and they continue fighting while there's still human beings left alive on his side. Again, the 70 plus, they're already trying to grab 18, 17-year-olds, which, by the way, they're having a lot of difficulties because unlike the grown men, they just kind of stand around

like sheep and look at, oh, they got him, but they didn't get me today. So I'll live another day. The 18, 17, 19-year-olds, they gather up in bands and beat the living crap out of these, quote, recruitment guys, press gangs. They'll attack them. and they will beat them mercilessly. These guys are not going to the front. But what about eastern Ukraine? I mean, can Ukraine hold eastern Ukraine, east of the NEPA if it loses Donbass? No, no.

This will be a rolling collapse. Up to the NEPA Petrovsk is open country. Poltava is mixed. I mean, I've been to Poltava. I worked in Poltava on projects, on a project. So it's mixed, but it's still not holdable, and it hasn't been fortified. Kharkov, again, if Harkov is barely holding in the north and in the east, because they're just running low on troops, and what reserves they have, they seem to be throwing at the Sumi bulge that Russia has created.

And again, those are what trained reserves they have. If Haikov is also getting hit from the south, there's no way that city's going to hold or that province is going to hold. And the good thing is, too, by a year's worth of bombing the communications, so in this case the utilities, in Kharkov, a very large chunk of the population has left. Cold winners, hard to survive, they left, which is exactly what you want. You want the civilians out of the way. They can't be used as human shields. You don't need to feed them in the middle of a fight. They're not a drag on your own logistics.

They're out of the way somewhere to the west. If they decide to come back, they'll come back after a fight. So that makes fighting in and around the city much easier. And I think, again, there's not going to be a storm of Hadeko. Hidekov is going to get surrounded. There's going to be a pathway out. And I think a lot of the Ukrainian troops are just going to run for it, make a run for it, rather than be fully cut off.

But that's what we're looking at. Attrition warfare, just to understand, the West has, is continuously fed on maneuver warfare. Maneuver warfare works great when the enemy can't hold you. Attrition warfare is a different thing. Now, the U.S. and the British and the French fought attrition warfare in Normandy, where it was hedge growth,

hedge growth of headgrove, where you could have one panther tank standing there, Calf wagon, um, standing there taking down an entire American battalion that couldn't move forward because they had a key location and so on. And that was really attrition warfare until they broke out of the hedgerows and broke out of Normandy and then they went to maneuver.

But by that point, the Germans were very weakened. Attrition warfare tends to go slow until it no longer goes slow. And when it goes fast, it goes really fast because most of the enemy are dead, destroyed, or running. At this point when they've been so attritted, they can't hold back your side. And then you just go grab whatever you can as you move forward with extreme speed. And we see that it's picking up. It's like a bankruptcy.

Bankruptcy builds up slowly until it's no longer going slowly. This is the same thing. It's a bankruptcy of the Ukrainian army. And we're getting to that point where morale's breaking. It's ripping at the seams up and down the front. And it's just a matter of pressure. And let's not forget, there's 350,000 Russian troops and reserve. Russia is rotating battalions.

So battalions stay up there for half a year, maybe less, depending on the front area. And it gets rotated to the rear to relax, refit and retrain. And another battalion moves up and so on and so on. On the other side, the Ukrainian side, there are guys there have been, if they're still alive from the beginning, they've been there from the beginning. If not, they've been there for a year, for a year and a half, two years. they're done. They're morally psychologically and physically done. Okay. I just want to wrap up on the military thing. Just said very quickly, just two little points that you said. I saw some videos recently of Ukrainian troops escaping the Kliban Beek Reservoir in exactly the same way that you were saying. They were running and you can see that they were being hunted down. It was actually, I found it a very distressing thing to watch, but it was exactly the way that you described it. The British journalist, who was talking about the Russians advancing three miles and two years, was talking about

Bachman. That was the part of the front line that he was talking about. Now, let's focus now just quickly, it's swerve quickly to the diplomacy. So is this why we're having a summit meeting now? That the United States, it may not have a complete picture of the state of the war, but they do know that there's something. going wrong in Bakrowski. They do know that there's something going wrong in Konstantinovka. The Institute with the Study of War has finally told us what you've been saying for months that Donbass is actually important and very, Ukraine can't afford to lose it. So the Americans, some Americans at least do know this. Is this why the Americans are suddenly reaching out to the Russians, sending Witt off to Moscow, trying to get a summit meeting organized because

they know that if they don't end this Russian offensive through diplomacy, the front is going to collapse. Yeah. And you know, when the front collapses, even though the Ukrainians will just go to the other side at Niebuhr, there is a possibility that government collapsing and the army collapsing further with rebellions. There's always that before they can reorganize defense. But Russia on the Niepper, anywhere on the Nepper, let alone the enemy.

entire NEPA from the northern border to the southern border means Ukraine as an economic entity is dead in the water. Because the NEPA is like the Mississippi for America. You take over to Mississippi from one side. You've condemned the other half of the U.S. to a very fast decline because that's just how important that river system is for transport, for industry, and so on. Or the Danube. It's the same thing as the Danube.

take any of these major river systems. So there is a big question. It's a big question. How hard they will be able to hold. Now, Russian reconnaissance and sabotage units are across the Nyepper in the south, and they've been operating in the south for quite a while. The Ukrainians are very, very thin line. They've had to pull a lot of the troops. So sooner or later, it's going to be an offensive to take back Kurson and those areas. And it has to be taken, and Nikolai has to be taken for a death to be taken. It's just, you can't bypass Nikolai. because Nikolaev becomes your flank threat. So you have to neutralize that flank threat before you can go on down

the threat to the supply lines. So there's that. Yeah, it's, you know, yes, the Americans are in a panic. All of the West is in a panic. They're approaching is slightly different depending on which country is doing what. But they're in a panic because unless they can reinstate some kind of discipline and control over the Ukrainian army, refurbish it, get it arrested, replenished. There's a good chance that they're not going to be able to hold the other side of Danyeper either.

Denepper is wide enough of a river, but it's not an impassable barrier by and fault. The Germans found that out real quick. Russian offenses across Dnieper happened very fast, and once those beachheads are established, they get reinforced and reinforced. And that's when the Germans still had air paris. on their side. So, yeah, you're not going to be able to hold a Niepper unless you have a refurbished fighting force.

And that becomes a big problem. Now, you know, the biggest fear in the Russian military and probably most of civilians is a deal. It's flat out. The Russian mentality is, yes, we want the war to end. We're going to end this war. We've found this long enough, we've spilt enough blood to the end and finished the job. No shortcuts, no premature endings. And everybody's afraid of a Minsk 3.

It's whether or not they mention it, whether or not they want to mention it on any of talk shows, the fear is a mince 3. The Russian mentality is, you know, okay, fine, we're in a fight. Most people have accepted this is existential, where they didn't really accept it at first. It was only a minority that understood it at first, but now it's widely understood concept. And I'll say another thing, from a military standpoint, military political. One of the reasons why this attrition warfare is going so slowly is to destroy the Ukrainian ability to wage partisan warfare. because the original American concept was if the Russian army goes in fast and hard, we've got plenty of trained people that are now going to bleed the Russia endlessly dry

until it collapses internally. We'll create an Afghanistan forum and so on. Well, most of the men that could have fought or wanted to fight a partisan war, they're now dead or they're getting killed on a daily basis. The ones that are hiding, they don't want a partisan war. They don't want any kind of war or the ones that left, they're not coming back. They may be heroes and super patriots on the other side of the borders far away from any of the press gangs as possible. That's safe.

But they're definitely like coming back where they're going to get their heads taken off as that is a possibility. So the people that could have been doing the big fights, the partisan war, and so on, most of them are gone. And they're not coming back. We're in such a physical condition that they're incapable of doing this. So there is also a logic of that behind it. So there's that. You know, honestly, with Alaska, I'm paranoid. You know, I understand the American mentality and the Western mentality.

They have this idiotic idea that they like to personalize all their problems. Every problem has a name, an Orchistua and a last name or family name. And in this case, all their problems with Russia are Vladimir of Legerimur. If we could only get rid of Legimer of the Imrich, all of our problems will be solved, and everybody will be happy. Russia will be a dismembered vassal, and we'll do whatever we want. They don't understand that it's the entire Russian people here. And Legion and Legamirich is the projection of the Russian people and the will of the Russian people.

And who may follow behind him may make him look very tame. They don't think that far ahead. That's the problem. They think in the immediate. So we've seen Donald Trump, a third. attempted decapitation attack on Iran. I mean, it was three months ago. And they murdered a lot of those senior officers and scientists with their families

in their apartments. They and their Israeli partners, vassals, masters, you know, depends what you ask. What's what that relationship is. Do I put it past the U.S. to do something like that? No, I don't. I'm praying hard that nothing like this. will happen or this will get called off. And there's a lot of people that have that,

and there's a lot of people that have that paranoia right now. So, yeah, it would be interesting. So that's the mood in Moscow. Stonyislav Krapivnik, we've been extremely useful, very, very use, wonderful program, if I may say. I think we will have to wait and see what happens on Friday. I'm going to make a prediction. I think Putin is going to return to Moscow safe and

sound. I don't think we need to be afraid of any of those things. And secondly, there is not going to be a mince three. That is my other prediction. I think that Putin understands very well the advantages that he has at this time. And I also think he understands very well the mood in Russia. And I don't think he has any intention of agreeing any sort of mince three. This is my own Stanislav once again, working people follow York. That remains to be seen. But we've understood an awful lot about the war. It's enormously useful what you've been telling us and very helpful.

And coming, as I said, from a source in Russia connected to the events there, like none of the other commentators that I know who discuss the military situation. All right. I'll have those links in the description box down below. Take care, everybody.