The Duran Podcast - Minerals deal, back to the sunk cost fallacy

Episode Date: May 2, 2025

Minerals deal, back to the sunk cost fallacy

All right, Alexander, let's talk about what is going on with Project Ukraine. Let's focus on the diplomacy and let's focus on the rare earth minerals deal, which has been signed. And it is not much of a rare earth minerals deal. It's more of an oil and gas deal and a weapons deal. At least that's how it looks with the reports that we're getting from Ukrainian officials and from mainstream media outlets like the Financial Times of Politico. So I do want to say that we should wait for the full deal to be published.

And we'll probably do, we'll definitely do a dedicated video once the full deal is published so we can get a better understanding as to what has been agreed on. But the initial reports are that this is a deal that is focused on Ukraine resources with Ukraine in the United States, with many concessions. At least that's how it looks. I want to stress that. That's how it looks if you go off with the Ukraine reports and the mainstream media reports,

many concessions made by Trump White House. That's how it looks. And the reports are that these concessions were made after Trump spoke with Zelensky at the Vatican and pressure was put on Trump from European officials like Macron. on and they made Trump realize that that Putin at the end of the day was the bad guy in all of this. This is the narrative that's being framed.

So I do want to say to everyone that's watching the video, once the document is leaked or release, which I'm sure it will be in a couple of days, maybe even sooner than that, we'll get a much clear understanding as to what's going on here. So anyway, Alexander, with all of that being said, what are your thoughts on the diplomacy that's taking place as well as the signing of the minerals deal. Well, I'm going to actually say a few things quickly about the mineral deal, before I return to it a little bit more detail in a moment. But my own view is that the mineral deal is and always has been something of a red herring

in the sense that it doesn't actually alter or change anything substantive. whatever it is, it can't come into effect until there is peace in Ukraine. And peace in Ukraine is actually receding. And it seems to me that we have to take a step back, think about some of the things we were saying last summer, and look at where we are. Now, back last summer, before the election, we made the point that if Donald Trump got himself involved in negotiations to try to bring peace into Ukraine, he would very quickly find himself lost and he would come under enormous pressure to end up going in the same route that Joe Biden has been going, giving unlimited support to Ukraine, continuing to arm Ukraine and that ultimately that would put into jeopardy his entire presidency.

If you go back to the summer, you will see that that was what we were saying. It was almost a year ago, huh? It's almost a year ago. Now, we are very close. seems to me, defining ourselves in exactly that position. So Donald Trump came into the presidency. He said that he wanted to achieve peace in Ukraine. He didn't walk away from the conflict, which is what we said he should do. And not just us, Steve Bannon was saying it also. He got involved into the details of how to negotiate peace in Ukraine. And he started listening to people like

Kellogg and Waltz and Rubio. And he started listening also to people like, I suspect, Scott Bassett, who was negotiating the minerals deal, or people who basically are very, very much part of the conventional thinking in Washington. And he went forward with a plan, which was the Kellogg plan, which we always, said wouldn't work. And now it is absolutely clear that it won't work. So he presented the Kellogg Plan or a modified version of the Kellogg Plan to the Ukrainians and the Europeans just 10 days ago. It seems incredible to say, but he did. The time spans as so long. The Europeans

and the Ukrainians rejected it outright. But nonetheless, he sent Wick Goff. to Moscow with this plan and he told Witkoff come back with a ceasefire on the present contact line. Now the Russians have repeatedly said that they're not going to agree to a ceasefire, the present contact line, that that freezes the conflict, that Russia is not interested in freezing the conflict. It wants a complete solution to this conflict. That has been the Russian position all along it was restated decisively and clearly by Putin in his speech to the foreign ministry of the 14th of June 24 and Putin explained that many times in the three previous meetings he'd had with Whitkoff. Wittkoff explained this all to Trump, told Trump that Putin is

not going to buy Kellogg, Kellogg Minus or Kellogg Plus, Kellogg in any free. he is looking for a much more substantial settlement that you are prepared apparently to offer. And, well, what then happened was that Witgolf found that he was encountered pushback from Kellogg, Walsh, Bassant, all of the others, and Trump went ahead with Kellogg. So, Wickhoff goes to Moscow, presents Putin with Kellogg. minus, which is essentially a freeze of the conflict, and Putin says no. And that is where we are. Now, what is happening now is that with Putin having said no, with the entire diplomatic strategy, which Trump embraced when he basically went with Kellogg, with that entire diplomatic strategy

now falling apart, he is drifting back towards the conventional position. of support for Ukraine. So he's now just agreed a Mineral Rights deal, which is not favorable objectively to Ukraine. It gives Ukraine, it gives the United States 50% profits on extracting various natural resources from Ukraine. It does not give Ukraine a security guarantee, which is what Zelensky had originally asked for. But it is only, limited for 10 years and it could be used as a device to say that the United States should continue to provide arms for Ukraine because Ukraine is now supposedly going to provide the United States with an income stream from its natural resources which will pay the United States back for those

arms which the United States will in future be supplying. So in effect the United States could supply arms on credit against the security of the middle rights extraction deal. That is at least what the Ukrainians are trying to tell us. And it is possible. So he's got a deal, which is very different from the deal that he sought to negotiate with the Ukrainians in the first place, which is about paying back debt that Ukraine had initially. incurred, and which is going to start pushing him ultimately towards more arms deliveries to Ukraine. He's also now talking about further sanctions against Russia, because they're not agreeing to this freeze of the conflict, which he has, through Kellogg, essentially committed

himself too. So he is becoming Joe Biden. He is in effect going back to doing exactly the things that Joe Biden did supplying arms to Ukraine, imposing more sanctions against Russia, except at Ukrainian promises of future funding which will never come. He is being pushed back, pulled back in effect towards the mainstream. And of course, I know some people will say that this is what he always intended. I don't believe that to be true at all, by the way. I think that makes no sense relative to what he was himself saying. But it is where he has gone.

He always does this. He listens to the people who tell him, you mustn't make concessions. because if you make concessions, you are acting from weakness. And in fact, as a result, instead of forgetting about concessions, forgetting about the old idea of whether or not his concessions, instead of getting the United States out of the war, which he is still promising to do,

he is being dragged back into that war, Because, as I said, he's afraid of appearing weak to the Russians and of losing face with the security people in Washington. So it's not in one of the concessions, at least from your reading of it, is that it's not going to be a deal that's going to last in perpetuity. Exactly. It's going to be tap of ten years. Apparently, it's only ten-year deal. Okay, okay. That's another.

That's a big concession. That's a big concession. I mean, it's a big concession. I mean, it's still, to be very clear, a very lopsided agreement in favor of the United States. And Zelensky didn't get the most important thing he wanted, which was a security guarantee. It doesn't apparently include any security guarantees, just saying. But nonetheless, it is a deal which is much more favorable to Zelensky than the deal that, Trump was proposing just a few weeks ago.

I mean, my own personal view, by the way, I mean, I don't think he should have wasted time with mineral rights extraction deals. I don't think he shouldn't have wasted time with Kellogg. I don't think he should have done any of those things. He should have moved forward, established diplomatic relations with Russia, started maybe to relax sanctions, get the United States out of Ukraine. What he's doing instead is he's committed himself to Kellogg, which has got him bogged down in negotiations and making ceasefire.

proposals, which the Russians were inevitably going to refuse, and which is going to open him up to pressure to start re-arming Ukraine again. And instead of getting out of Ukraine, he signed a mineral rights extraction deal, which is dragging him back into Ukraine. So it's mistaken at every conceivable level. And again, as I said, it's because. Trump continues to have this habit of listening to the wrong people. Yeah, we're getting reports that that Trump is going to actually send 50 million in weapons to Ukraine. It's not, I mean, 50 million. It's a small number compared to everything that Biden sent.

But it's the start. It's the start. Exactly. So he's going to go to Congress and he's going to get an approval, which will be granted to him, to send 50 million to sell. Because they're packaging it is selling. So he'll sell 50 million to Ukraine. and it's going to be purchased by either these schemes, these mineral oil gas schemes. Which will produce no money.

I mean, that's what's absurd about this. Money in the future. In the future. But, you know, if it's a 10-year, the reason I asked you if it's a 10-year cap is because, from my understanding of rare earths, not oil and gas, rare earths, is that it's going to need, at a minimum, 15 to 20 years to do this. Yes. if Ukraine even has any rare earth?

If they even have any, most of them is, most of everything is in the, in the east anyway. But whatever they do have, in order to actually build out the infrastructure for all of this, if that's the plan, if that's the plan, is to build the facilities for these rare earths. Because the rare earths, you can find, I mean, the U.S. has a Canada has, they're plentiful in North America. But the trick is the, is the, facilities, the processing the facilities. That's the tricked infrastructure. That's what that's what China has. That's what China has built out. If the plan is to build these facilities in Ukraine, which sounds kind of ridiculous, given that the country's at Warren, there's no stability in

Ukraine. There probably will not be any stability for a while now. A 10 year cap makes no sense. So the only thing that I can think of is that this deal is about sending weapons to Ukraine, selling the weapons to Ukraine. Of course, money in the future, but still. Yeah, that's exactly what it looks like. I mean, it looks like a device to pretend, or at least, I mean, maybe Trump believes this at some level that, you know, giving weapons to Ukraine on credit rather than, you know, because I mean, this is, you know, it's about an income stream that doesn't actually exist.

And, of course, the other thing is he's talking about sanctions now again. I mean, he's doing exactly what Biden did. He's talking about further sanctions, banking sanctions. I don't understand the concept of banking sanctions on Russia, given that the entire financial system there is already under sanctions. Oh, it sounds good. It sounds good, exactly. I mean, I've heard suggestions that he might sanction the Russian central bank,

I'm not sure what difference that makes, actually. But anyway, I mean, given that the Russian central bank now operates inside Russia, of course, it does have, it does work through the bricks. But then any attempt to try and pull brick states away from cooperation with Russia has been undermined by his tariff policy. So, I mean, none of this adds up. But the key thing to say is one way or another, he has been pulled back into the policy of supporting Ukraine. As I said, he still talks otherwise.

I mean, he's still making speeches about the fact that he's looking to extricate the United States from Ukraine. He's still talking about the fact that this was Biden's war, which would never have happened if he had been president. But the reality is that he is being like, you know, like a magnet pulling iron, attracting iron, he's being pulled back into the conflict in Ukraine. Whereas, as I said, he could have made a simple, clean decision back in January, said, you know, this isn't like war, it's got nothing to do with me. This is for the Ukrainians and the Europeans to sort it out. We've got far too other important things to concern ourselves with.

And, you know, they could, but he's not, he didn't do that. We were the first to say that. We were the first channel to say it. Absolutely. A year ago, we said it. Many people have said it afterwards, but I mean, okay. Yeah, exactly. He didn't do it.

He didn't do it. He wanted to believe that he could find some kind of agreement with the Russians. And he was probably, he was persuaded by Kellogg that it would be an easy thing to do. Of course, it wasn't. And perhaps what's really most disappointed. in all of this is that his own envoy, Wickoff, who met with Putin, met four times with Putin now, warned him that it wouldn't work, but he still stuck with it. So it's, it's, you know, you can't help someone who, you know, continues to listen,

to prefer bad advice over good. It reminds me very much, I have to say, about the negotiations that he conducted with Kim with Kim Jong-un during his first term where as I said he made all the big initial steps which were strong and promising and that it all came sputtering out because he couldn't control the people in his administration and didn't really seem to understand the importance of doing so yeah he listened to Bolton we listened to Bolton exactly this case he's listening to kellogg exactly yeah who's who's who's who's a worse version of bolton if you ask me well he could say at least bolton you could say is manipulative and clever in his in in an

evil way in an evil way he's he's he's like that bolton but i mean kellock i mean you you listen to what kellogg says and i mean it's easy to see if this guy knows nothing about anything i mean he was he was he was on fox news the other day alexander and and and he was saying that um that ukraine has agreed to a ceasefire. Now Russia needs to agree to a ceasefire and Ukraine will agree to the four territories, not de jure, de facto, as being controlled by Russia, but, but on the line. He kept on saying on the line, which is basically saying a freeze. He's saying that Ukraine will agree to an unconditional ceasefire freeze. That's what Kellogg was saying. Which the Russians have always rejected. A thousand times. Exactly. I mean, if he seems to, again, Kellogg, like,

the neocons generally, and I think ultimately like Trump, continuing their belief that they can somehow bend Russia to their will. Now, Biden didn't do it in three years. Obama before that didn't do it. Why does Trump continue to think that something which has proved repeatedly impossible can now be done? I mean, I don't know. But anyway, that's where he's as a had been pulled back to. Now, I should say... Just answer that question real quick, Alexander, your thoughts? Maybe because Putin leads him to believe that, or at least because they're, Putin treats him with respect, he treats Putin with respect, maybe Trump believes that he can bend Putin? Well, who knows? Putin does treat him with respect. But as I understand it, in the meetings

with Whit golf, Putin has been absolutely forthright. and clear. And in the two conversations that Trump and Putin have had it with each other, Putin has again also been absolutely clear. So I think the problem is not so much that Putin isn't being clear. It's that the people that Trump always goes back to in the United States. He always has this idea that it's for security people, these sort of people who really, understand these problems in some way. And if you combine that with his own negotiating skills, that will somehow deliver a solution. So the result is, as I said, he's going back exactly where he started, in other words,

to becoming Joe Biden. Now, I ought to say this isn't sustainable and it might not last. I mean, we have a Russian offensive being prepared, not just being prepared, an ongoing Russian offensive. The Russians have made significant advances over the last couple of days. They're about to finish the battle for Chassevier. They're about, they seem close to encircling Pachrosk. They're close to capturing the town of Lehman. It could very well be that we're going to see a breakdown in Ukrainian.

defenses in this part of Dombas that might lead to other things. The campaigning season in Ukraine has not yet properly begun. The Ukrainians themselves are saying that they're very worried about what's going to happen in May. So it could be that over the summer, if there's a major Russian advance, come the autumn, Trump is going to revisit this question and is going to realize that Kellogg actually let him down the wrong path. but the fact is it would have been far, far better, even if that does happen. I mean, the other possibility,

and I have to say this is that on the contrary, Kellogg's and people like that will tell him, no, you can't pull back. You've got to escalate, which would make him even more like Joe Biden. But it may be that at that point with Trump, the penny will finally drop, and he'll understand that, as I said,

Kellogg is taking him in the wrong direction. not the direction he needs to go, and that this is the point where he has to change course and start doing the kind of things he ought to have been doing, which is listen to those people in his administration, who, like Wake Goff, who have been very, very much more critical and skeptical about the whole Kellogg line and where it was going to lead. Yeah, how long was it until Trump got rid of Bolton? I think it took a while.

Oh, yeah. to get rid of Bolton. So, I mean, I don't know. I think, I think Kellogg might be, might be staying for a while. You know, the interesting part about it is that if you were a good manager, you would, you would step back and say, you know, on the one hand, I've got this Kellogg guy who's spoken to nobody. He's spoken to Zelensky and the Europeans, who are a bunch of buffoons. And I've got this Whitkoff guy who I've known for for decades, a close friend of mine who has actually spoken. to the source, to the Russian president four times for multiple hours, four or five hour meetings. Who should I go with? I mean, it's kind of a no-brainer, is it? But he went with Kellogg. At least that's, yeah, go ahead.

He shouldn't have, he shouldn't have looked for advice to some. He shouldn't have gone to someone like Kellogg for advice in the first place. Yeah, but he did. I mean, that, that's my own thing. you know, seeking advice from Kellogg, and given Kellogg's background and history, was obviously a mistake. But there it is.

I mean, you know, Trump has a habit of doing this. He tends to, as this, I think a lot of the problem, the trouble, it goes back to something you've discussed many times, this idea of seeking peace through strength, this idea that if you don't bend Russia to your will, you are not showing strengths, you're showing weakness in some ways. And the idea also that if you show weakness to Russia, that will emboldened China,

all of these complicated and over-complicated, bad ideas that you see circulating memes, points that people make all the time, which really, I mean, a clear-headed, strong-minded president would never, ever fall full. But, you know, that's, I think, the problem. I think Trump really does want to project strength all the time. And in the reality, what he's actually done as we see with this mineral rights extraction deal is he's showed weakness because he's conceded so much to Zelensky, which he said he wouldn't do. Yeah, you can't conduct foreign policy with memes and taglines and stuff like that piece.

There's like direct strength and stuff like that. But I mean, okay, so let's go to the minerals deal again. It's a 10-year cap. That's a big concession. It was from in February. In definitely. Once again, this is what the mainstream media and Ukraine are reporting. So we always have to say that.

Yeah. Maybe when we get the deal published, it could be different. I always, I just want to make sure I say that as I go through some of the concessions, the apparent concessions. Okay, so it's not in perpetuity. It's in 10 years. Another big concession that Trump made is that it will be jointly managed. In other words, it is going to be a clear 50-50 split where I believe the previous deal,

which was published in February, set up a fund. which the managers of the fund were three U.S. and two Ukrainians, which meant that the U.S. would have the voting advantage and the final say as to where the money and the fund would go or how it would be utilized. Now it looks like it's going to be 50-50, so three and three, I guess you could say, on the board of this investment fund or two and two, whatever it's going to be. So that's another big concession. The other big concession was no back pay. We started at $350 billion or $300 billion, and then went to $100 billion.

That's been reduced to zero. So Zelensky's off the hook with any kind of back pay money. And the other big concession is that in the 10 years, if you go by what Politico is reporting and what the Financial Times is saying is that the U.S. is going to actually put money into this. fund in in the form of direct payments or military assistance so we could be looking at weapons but we could also be looking at the u.s putting cash into into this fund so so bear in mind that we don't know that this this is going to make any profits at all so it could actually become a vehicle for transfers of funds further transfers of funds directly into ukraine except you don't call them

grants anymore or even loans you call it investment instead then. Right. Investment, yeah, that we're going to get back later. Yeah, on credit. Yeah, later. Through business that we're going to do in 10 years. 10 years time, exactly 10 years or 50 years because I go. I mean, so in every respect, this is a very bad deal. And again, when you look at the people that Trump appointed to negotiate this,

Scott Besson, to be precise, Scott Besson is exactly the kind of person who you would expect to come up with a deal of this guy. Because Scott Besson is deeply anti-Russianist, apparently, and very anti-Chinese too, apparently also. And he's going to be sympathetic to Ukraine and willing to listen to what the Europeans want. Yeah, well, Scott Besson did his message. He said that this deal, what it does is that it shows

that the Trump administration is committed to Ukraine's sovereignty. And that kind of gives you a hint as to how he was looking at this. Exactly, exactly. So, you know, again, I don't think he should have gone with this mineral rights extraction deal. The point about it is, as I said, it's pulling him back and the United States back into Ukraine, where he himself says, Trump himself repeatedly says, that he wants to get the United States out. He was talking about this just, I think, yesterday. So what happens when Russia says no, again?

for the thousandth time to the ceasefire, to the Kellogg ceasefire. Now that Trump has this minerals deal and he can market it and package it to the American people as a win, even though it's clearly not a win, if this is indeed the deal. What happens next? Because Russia is going to say no to the ceasefire. At least that's how it looks. They're going to say no, right? We're not no unconditional ceasefire.

That's the other thing that frustrates me, Alexander, is, the media, they make it out as if Russia's terms, the four territories in their entirety and all of these things are brand new. Putin just came up with this. When they've been around for, these terms have been around in the public domain for almost a year. Yeah. For almost a year they've been around. Yes. But no one wanted to talk about him in the media.

Now all of a sudden they're saying, well, Putin all of a sudden woke up and he said that he wants all of their son. No. He said that back in June, 2024. So what happens when Russia says? politely, diplomatically to Trump. No, no unconditional ceasefire. What happens? Well, the first thing is sanctions. I mean, I think that is probably now where we're heading. I mean, Trump is increasingly talking about sanctions. Zelensky says that Ukraine and the United States are working together on deciding what further points of pressure to put on.

Even with terror war with China, even? Well, I know. I mean, it sounds absurd. But anyway, that will be the first step. Then when that doesn't work, that's when the pressure for the arms supplies will really begin. I mean, this is as a, if you don't go to, if you don't get out of this, you will always slide back. That's, I think, something that Trump never, never understood. It's what we said when we first talked about this last summer, he should have. He should have simply walked away, but of course he didn't.

And now it looks like we're getting into the sunk cost fallacy all over again. It looks like he was getting out of it. Now it looks like he's being dragged. Okay. Is there something that Trump is doing? Is there some sort of angle that he has in order to avoid all of this? Is there some sort of deal that he's working with Putin in the background? I mean, is all of this a distraction?

I don't know. I mean, is there anything like that going on? Or is this really what we're getting? No, I don't think there is, actually. I think there's been lots of hints and suggestions and rumors, that there's been all kinds of agreements between the Russians and the Americans and that there's some kind of deals on the table. That's why I'm asking you that. I've seen many rumors and reports saying that there's some.

Yes. Originating from Czech officials, from Czech Republic officials as well, yeah. All kinds of officials like that. But, you know, I do think there's any truth of them. I mean, just a, was it two weeks ago? There was, or 10 days ago, there was, if you remember, that article in the Financial Times saying that Putin had agreed to freeze the conflict on the existing contact line,

and it was all based on five people informed about the matter. It turned out it wasn't true. So, you know, I don't see anything like this. judging by what the Russians are saying, their position remains what it always was, as it was entirely predictable that it would. So, I mean, there's lots of talk and chatter, you know, behind the scenes that something is in the works.

But I don't see any real sign that anything is in the works. I get the sense that Trump at the moment is out of ideas, if I have to be honest. I think he thought that Kellogg would be straightforward, that the plan would be straightforward, that Putin would immediately accept it, that Putin was desperate to get into America's good graces, to escape the shadow of China,

and that his economy was really indeed on the ropes, just as Trump thought, you know, Trump has written in many places and that they're suffering these catastrophic losses, and all of those things. I don't think it's ever really occurred to him that none of that is true. And I think he's now baffled and frustrated and perhaps even a bit angry that it's not turned out that way. And the result is, as I said, that he's now thinks that by backing Zelensky and putting the squeeze,

he's going to finally force the Russians to the table. as I said, I think that we have to get through this and wait until the autumn when it's clear that isn't going to happen. And that's perhaps, perhaps when negotiations will resume. I should say, we have been here before. I bring this up all the time and I know this can perhaps sound like, you know, going over the same thing again and again. But it's exactly what happened with Nixon and Kissinger and the Vietnam negotiations. I mean, they were constantly trying to put pressure points, as they thought, on North Vietnam and to try to get North Vietnam to make concessions.

And gradually, ever so slowly, but it took them years to get there, they finally realized that that wasn't going to work. And then when they finally did the, made the agreement with North Vietnam, It was basically on North Vietnamese terms. So it took them a long time to get there. There was increasing arms supplies to South Vietnam. They were increasing financial pressure on financial support for South Vietnam. They were going to China.

You know, there's just Nixon going to China. Kissinger going to Moscow, trying to get the Russians and the Chinese to put pressure on North Vietnam. And then eventually, finally, they understood that the only way they could get the United States out was, in fact, doing the deal, which had been on the table with North Vietnam all along. Proposals that the North Vietnamese had actually made as far back as 1968, but which the United States didn't agree to until 1972. for wasted years, for disastrous wasted years, disastrous for the U.S. military, disastrous for the U.S. economy. Let's hope that with Ukraine, it won't take as long as that. Disasters for U.S. presidents. Yeah.

Is Trump's presidency coming to an end because he's been bogged down in Ukraine now? Well, quite possibly. I mean, wasn't it Steve Bannon who said to him that, you know, who warned him that if he didn't get out of Ukraine fast, it would become his war just as Vietnam became Nixon's war. But, you know, he didn't listen to that advice. He thought it would be straightforward and easy. He assumed that he'd get a deal within the first hundred days. The first hundred days have gone. He hasn't got the deal. and he's frustrated and angry and he's been pulled back in. You know the interesting part to all of this, just to finish off the video,

is that come midterms. If things don't go well for the Republicans, all the neocons are going to turn on him as well. Of course. All the people that gave him this advice and that bogged him down and he agreed to it because he does take responsibility for all of it, you're all going to turn on him.

Of course. He's going to wonder, how did I get here? Yeah, that's what he's going to wonder. Why is this happening to me? Well, of course, exactly. I mean, you're absolutely correct. I mean, he's, I mean, they're going to fix the blame on him. Inevitably so.

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