The Duran Podcast - Out of Money, Out of Missiles: Zelensky Exit Plan as Trump Faces Ukraine Defeat

Episode Date: September 5, 2026

Out of Money, Out of Missiles: Zelensky Exit Plan as Trump Faces Ukraine Defeat

All right, Alexander, let's talk about what is happening with Project Ukraine, and things are getting absolutely crazy when it comes to Project Ukraine. We have the Europeans continuing to push for for more extreme measures against Russia. We have Zelensky continuing to push to close the airspace over Russia, to completely close it off for civilian airliners, to the airliners, to the point where he actually contacted the United Nations to try and get the UN to intervene and close Russian airspace. And you have the Russian forces continuing to advance across the entire front line. Problems in Kharkov for the Ukraine military. Problems in Odejo for the Ukraine military. Problems in Dobrylia for the Ukraine military. Problems everywhere for Ukraine on

the front lines. What are your thoughts on everything that is happening? Or where should we begin with all of the madness and the panic that is gripping the collective West as Ukraine crumbles? Well, I think you've actually answered the most important point already because the key point is the one that you made in your very last sentence. The madness is a product of the gathering slow motion collapse that we are now seeing on the front lines in the war in the sky, in the economy, in all kinds of other things. It's gradually starting to be understood in Kiev, in Western capitals, in the United States, that this war is being lost. they've been telling themselves at various different times, well, you know, maybe we can pull it through. Maybe we can scare the Russians.

Maybe we can drive the Russians. Maybe we can come up with some new miracle weapon that's going to turn everything. Maybe the drone offensive is going to achieve some dramatic and wonderful result. Some new sanctions. Something is going to work. Something is going to give. There's going to be a crisis in Russia. Putin will fall, something will happen. And now I think they're beginning to sense that this moment,

which will translate into some kind of victory for them, this miracle is not coming. And they can see the Russians closing in from the sky and on the land and on the sea. And that is what is ultimately causing the madness. we have to unpack it and we have to go through it, I think, step by step. Firstly, we've had this extraordinary drone incident in Leipzig. We discussed it in a previous program. It's perhaps important to reiterate quite how strange and weird and if at the non-as, that whole story is. And Antonov-124 parked on a runway in Leipzig, some people come walking along they see a drone there, they look it over, it's taken away a certain amount of time passes,

and we're told that it is a drone probably connected to Russia in some way. And on the strength of that, we now have a whole narrative about Russia waging hybrid war against Europe, claims that the Russians are becoming so desperate that they're about to launch some kind of major attack on Europe, even as the narrative that Russia is losing in Ukraine is still being plugged by some people. There are some explanations out there that it is because the Russians are supposedly losing in Ukraine, that a desperate Putin is going to somehow, immediately attack the whole of Europe, which is, I mean, at a logical level, that makes no sense. But at every other level, it doesn't make any sense either. And besides, it isn't true.

So as we discussed in our previous programme, you get all sorts of people in Europe talking about escalations of various kinds, harassment of Russian ships, seizures of Russian ships. The Russia House in Berlin closed. More talk about the need for escalation generally. More talk about suppression of internal dissent within the EU also. Then we have the demands from the United States that the Europeans do more and that they buy more American weapons for cash. And of course, we get really extraordinary things now coming out of Kiev, the threat to attack the Russian airports.

Or maybe they're trying to pretend that this isn't really a threat at all. It's just advice being given to airlines and insurers to close Russian airspace. or rather not to fly their aircraft to Russia because the sky over Russia supposedly is full of drones. But then of course, airlines mostly ignore these warnings. The only airlines that showed any real interest in complying with that were certain smaller airlines in Turkey, not apparently Turkish, the state airline,

Turkish Airlines itself. So a follow-up, we go to the United Nations. We told the United Nations, the skies over Russia are becoming incredibly dangerous. Please shut down all the skies over Russia. We have further complaints to other international agencies from Ukraine. Rasvet, the Russian satellite array, is some kind of massive threat to the world. So close. it down too, close it down if you can't close it down over the whole world, then at least close it down over Ukraine. How does anybody do that? How can a agency shut down Rasvet, which is a Russian proprietary system?

I mean, again, absurd things and more threats from Zelensky as well. continuing to make various threats of his own. No willingness, however, to contemplate the realities that Ukraine is facing. But all of this, adding to the general sense of panic, anger, despair, hysteria, and we now have this public gun fight, which lasted for two full days between the intelligence and security agencies. We discussed that in that program as well. One of this is changing the underlying situation. The Russian army is advancing on the front lines. We have a major operational crisis in Kharkov region where a Ukrainian force is now trapped.

We have information that the important key strategic city of Oreckhoff in Zaporosia region, that resistance there is close to collapse, the same in Dobropelia, which is, is a key place in the Dombas, and an important city called Sviatogosk has now also been captured by the Russians, and it looks as if a very complicated battle that was being fought in northern Dombas, north of Slaviansk, has ended in a conclusive Russian victory. So everything is going wrong on the front lines, everything is going wrong in the sky, the Russians attack Kiev every day now. Day and night, they attack in the day, as well as during the night. They're exhausting the Ukrainian defenders. Ukraine is out of air defense missiles. Every part of

Ukraine is open to missile and air attack by the Russians. The economy is in deep crisis. there are budgetary and fiscal problems escalating in Ukraine. Zelensky desperately asked the Europeans for more cash. He said, can you advance me more money from my 90 billion euro loan package? Remember that? Because I need that money to buy air defense systems. Of course, there are no air defense systems to buy. So that is a ridiculous reason to ask for that money at all.

But, of course, the fact is he needs money to plug the ever-growing holes in his budget. And we do, I think, have a real risk now of certainly much higher inflation in Ukraine. And the fight that we saw between the security agencies, in my opinion, is partly a product of worries about closing off of money flows. So Zelensky goes to the Europeans, demands money. The Europeans cannot agree to provide the funding because some of the countries, I suspect, are becoming suspicious. The loan itself, the 90 billion euro loan, was never really upfloated in the way that it was supposed to be. And European governments themselves are facing increasing budgetary problems, you get the sense, the overall sense that the wheels are coming off.

Yeah, Europe doesn't have the money to hand to Zelensky. Zolensky's asking for $36 billion just for his administration and another $27 billion for the military. I imagine the Europeans would have no problem with the $27 billion for the military because they would look at that as the money eventually coming back to them. But the $36 billion to his administration, well, that's money. That's just gone. That's just lost to corruption, right? Absolutely.

So he's asking for a lot of money to keep the whole thing afloat. And the Europeans, I remember we covered this in detail. There was no clear understanding or guidance as to where Europe was even going to get the $90 billion. They were going to get loans, bonds and stuff like that in order to get the $90 billion to Zeletsky. They didn't have the money and they don't have the money. I'm reading reports that the UK Defense Ministry is absolutely broke. They're telling the army to cut back on training, on non-essential army training because they have no money. Germany is crumbling. The German economy is crumbling. Volkswagen is in big, freaking trouble. Mertz is making excuses about

how this is China's fault and this is Trump's fault. It's Mertz's fault. It's the globalist elite in Germany's fault because they cut all trade and all cheap energy from Russia. They're the ones to blame. So where are they going to get this money, the Europeans? They don't have it. And even if they got this money to Zelensky, what is he going to buy with it? There are no Interceptors. There are no Patriot missiles. What is he going to buy with this money? You can't use this money to buy what? The U.S. doesn't have anything to sell them. And now you have Trump, Alexed just to wrap it up. Now you have Trump saying, you know what? I want money from the Europeans for all the weapons that Biden gave them for free. Oh, no. So what are the Europeans going to do now?

They're going to send Zelenskyy $36 billion plus $27 billion, which are all the weapons that Biden gave to Ukraine. And Trump wants payment for that? Well, he wants – I am going to make a guess that at some point he's going to put a figure on all of this. And he's already told us what that figure is in the past. He says he's going to want $350 billion. Yeah, I'm not pulling that out of mine.

No. By the way, here I'm going to make my own observation. I know everybody says these numbers that he's making about the funding and the weapons supplies, the cost of the weapons supplies, that the United States gave to Ukraine, that Trump is multiplying them. I don't think he is. I think that during the period of the Biden administration, that's about roughly the amount that the,

the United States. He's low-balling it. He's low-balling it. Low-balling it, not increasing it. And as for the loan, I mean, I remember this all very well. I went through all of this in detail at the time. The original plan, which we took apart, by the way, was that they would float bonds on the financial markets.

They would be guaranteed by the European Commission and by European governments. And we made the point then that, the problem, the obvious problem with that plan was that the bonds had no repayment date. You were asking international investors to buy bonds without telling them when they were going to get the capital that they were going to spend on their bonds, on those bonds back. And that is frankly something I've never heard all. Well, I mean, I've heard some things like that being done.

But not quite in this way. The bonds were supposed to be repaid when the Russians were defeated and failed Ukraine reparations, which is to say never. No investor was ever going to buy bonds on that kind of basis. So as far as I'm aware, the bonds have never been placed and have never floated. And the 90 billion euro loan, properly speaking, does not exist because the money to pay it has never been raised. What has happened is that some European governments, by which we mean Germany,

have been advancing money to Ukraine and setting that money off against the 90 billion euro loan. But already it's nowhere near enough, as we also said, to cover Ukraine's costs, even before the events that we have seen play out over the last couple of months, the drone wars, the blockade of the Black Sea, the ongoing collapse of the economy, which means that the Ukrainian government is unable to raise taxes. There are no domestic sources of funding for the government anymore. Even before that, even on the basis that things were going on, keeping going in Ukraine in the same way that they were going at the end of last year, the 90 billion euros,

even if it had all been paid to Ukraine, would not have been enough to get Ukraine through one year, let alone the two years that the Ukrainians were saying. So this whole number, these figures, this money that they're throwing about is just more money being thrown down the drain. And they're being asked to throw even more money down the drain, literally down the drain, the drain which has the golden toilets at its start. Because that's what this is all ultimately, truly and really all about now. But joking apart, this is a very dangerous situation. Something has also been happening, which is not getting the attention, that it merits.

The Russians are now starting to attack targets with Gerand drones in western central Ukraine in the areas immediately to the west of Kiev. They've also launched what looked to me like a warning strike on some kind of facility in central Kiev, not far from the railway station. This is the very same railway station, which the Europeans use to go to Kiev and which Zelensky uses to exit Kiev. And remember, just a few months ago, back in May, the Russians were telling the Europeans and the Americans, get your people out of Kiev. Of course, they paid no attention. Their people are still in Kiev. It seems to me that we're getting step by step by step closer to the moment when Kiev itself is going to be cut off.

500 locomotives of the Ukrainian railway system have apparently already been destroyed. That's Russian figures, but I suspect they are probably true. There are still enough locomotives to keep trains moving in Ukraine, but trains are being attacked now regularly. air links, as we know, have long been closed. Ukraine mostly depends on its railway system. The roads are becoming increasingly dangerous. I can absolutely foresee a situation where the Russians do finally attack the railway station.

Medvedev has threatened it, in which case, everybody who is in Kiev is trapped there. And I don't want to sound alarmist. Probably the Russians are up for discussion about this. If we have a situation where the railways are closed, and people do need to be evacuated from Kiev, then I think the Russians will help. They will open road links for people to pass through, probably to Belarus and all of that.

But that will be for the Europeans, the Americans, the diplomats, all of those people. I very, very much doubt they will provide safe passage, Dissolensky, and people like him. Just so. If they keep on pressing forward with this cutting off of civilian airliners into Russia, then that is exactly what the response is going to be from Russia. And it's going to be a devastating... I would say even a checkmate move if Russia goes after the railway links that bring the Europeans, the Americans, the intel agencies, whatever else they carry with them,

whatever plans they bring with them that are, that they feel is too sensitive to to discuss over other communication channels. They need to discuss these things in person that carry the senators and the lawmakers If they cut off that link, Zelensky is isolated. They're isolated from Zelensky. Zelensky is unable to travel around Europe, which is probably the most important thing for him. Every opportunity that he has to leave Kiev, he takes it. And he usually comes back to Kiev with money, which keeps the opposition forces and the oligarchs and the bander rights

at bay, it would be a devastating move if that rail link to Poland is cut off. An absolutely devastating crushing move. And that's exactly what's going to happen. If they continue down this bonehead, stupid, idiotic idea of trying to close off Russian airspace, this is a very, very dumb, stupid thing. But then again, Alexander, think of everything that they've done has led to catastrophic consequences and outcomes, whether it's hitting the Russian ships in the Sea of Ozoff, whether it's hitting the refineries, going after the wildberries. It's all been one catastrophe after

another, all these plants that they're cooking up or that they have cooked up. Absolutely, because they're all premised on this idea that if you attack wildberries or refineries or something like that, you're going to create an internal crisis in Russia, which is going to bring Putin down. Stoop said as much. Exactly. Stoop says exactly what you. said is exactly what I'm sorry. No, no, you're absolutely right to point it out because Stubb gave away the entire game. And it not only has not turned out that way, not at all turned out that way, but on the contrary, it has accelerated and deepened this crisis in Ukraine to exactly that point where we are now.

Now, I'm going to just say something about the attempts to close Russian airspace. I believe that they are actually ongoing. Ukraine launched another big drone strike towards Moscow, about 500 drones by some claims. And this happened directly after Zelensky made this game. this warily. Let's call it a warning. It was really a threat, but let's call it a warning. And it's been a fact that over the last two weeks or so, Ukrainian drone attacks have reduced significantly in size and quantity, probably because the Russians are destroying the warehouses and the logistic places where the drones were stored. But the Ukrainians will always have some drones.

and I think they brought them all together, and I think they launched this big drone strike on Moscow, precisely in the hope that they would be able to break through and reach the airports and close the airports. Remember, this has happened on occasion. Ukrainian drones have been close to airports, and airports in Moscow and St. Petersburg have been closed for certain periods. So I think this was what this attack was intended to do, not to close the airports permanently, but even a closure for an hour or so, would have been enough to lend weight to Zelensky's story that the airspace over Russia was becoming unsafe. In the event, Russian air defenses are now apparently so well organized around Moscow that it seems. that no drone, none of the drones were able to get through. And hundreds of drones were shot down. And that, of course, costs also a lot of money. These drones cost between $60,000 and $200,000 apiece.

They are massively overpriced, by the way. The actual cost of these drones ought to be a lot less, but they cost an awful lot. And by the way, there was a recent, article that I read, where it turns out that because of the Starling terminals that they have and all that, they also use some rare earth components and magnets, which means that they are also draining our limited stockpile in the west of rare earths too. But anyway, let's dwell on that. A very, very expensive operation attempting to, as I said, disrassive. Disrard. the skies over Moscow. It failed. But coming back to your point, it shows that the Ukrainians are not giving up on this. The Europeans and the Americans who are fully behind this and who

plan this with the Ukrainians are not giving up on this either. They are doing these stupid things, despite the fact that exactly, as you said, all of these stupid actions have ended up creating massive problems for Ukraine, have caused the situation there to deteriorate catastrophically. It seems that they are incapable of learning that lesson. There are still some people in the United States. some people, though they're getting fewer and fewer with each passing week in the Trump administration, that have some sense to them that are pragmatic, rational, that would if they could pull out of this, this debacle that is Project Ukraine. Europe is lost. I'm convinced that Europe is completely lost.

They've got mad. They're obsessed with Russia. They're obsessed with Project Ukraine. They're completely incompetent as well, and they're living in a delusional bubble. But if you look towards the United States, is there anybody that can tell the Trump administration, forget the CIA and Ratcliffe. He's also completely delusional and completely misinformed. The whole Radcliffe story, by the way, on a side. note, just to show how delusional and misinformed he is, when he made that statement saying

that Russian soldiers, they have 35 minutes or something like that when they're sent to the front line to live. He got that information from one, one telegram channel. That's where he pulled that information from the CIA actually pulled that fact from a telegram channel. My understanding of this telegram channel is it's relatively small. and a channel based completely on rumor and hyperbole. And he actually pulled that from that channel.

He repeated it over and over and over again. This is the CIA, just to give people an ideas as to how misinformed the director of the CIA is. Absolutely. Is there any way that the U.S. can pull back from this? Because Trump is going to take a massive, gigantic, huge L in this war. He's going to get it. This is Biden's war. This is Trump's war now.

If he doesn't figure out a way to really distance himself, ASAP tomorrow, to distance himself from Project Ukraine and from the European. Because he listened to people like Radcliffe. And that's why he is in the mess that he's in. And Radcliffe, as you rightly say, is getting his information from dodgy telegram channels. I mean, there are good ones. I mean, the good ones you can count on your fingers, by the way, just to say, but there are some very, very good ones out there.

We follow the good ones. Including some good Ukrainian ones, just to make that also clear. Yeah, very good ones. This one was a dodgy channel. And by the way, that story, that telegram channel claimed that they sourced it from an article for which they provided no reference and which no one could find. So, I mean, the whole thing was just, I mean, nonsense. I mean, basic checks that ought to have been done to very. that that was true.

I mean, the whole business, I mean, it's unbelievable to think that the world's most powerful intelligence agency gets its information in this kind of way.

Well, the problem is, I mean, other rational people in the US government who are pointing this out and trying to point this out to the president. Well, yes, there are.

When we went to chatter, Tanuga, we met people who are not part of the administration, but who have connections and who are part of the world, if you like, that exists around the administration. Some of them are very well informed. Some of them understand the situation extremely well. They're trying to get through and to provide this advice to Trump himself and to the administration altogether. But within the administration itself, you said that the number of people who are rational and understand these things is getting smaller by the day.

They are. We've lost another one, Dan Driscoll, the Secretary of War. I mean, he was, it seemed to be one of the best people around. The Speaker, the Speaker of the Pentagon, not the Secretary. Yes, that's right, exactly. He was, he was one of the best people around, and well, he's gone. So, I mean, all of the people who are able to, I mean, there are people still, one gets the sense that Scott Besson isn't particularly keen on Ukraine and on Zelensky. As you discussed in that last program we did, he said that these attacks on the refineries was a,

absurd idea, a crazy idea, which has contributed to the overall energy crisis. I mean, he's obviously saying things, overstating things. But, you know, he clearly doesn't like Ukraine. He doesn't like Zelensky. Again, when I was, when we were in Chattanooga, I heard one person who said that he was with Bessent, when Besson had a meeting with Zelensky. And I mean, this is somebody who I'm sure is absolutely say it as it was. And he described Zelensky's behavior during that meeting with the U.S. Treasury Secretary and how Zelensky was screaming that the U.S. Treasury Secretary. So there are people who have that sense, but unfortunately up to now, they have not been able to break through and to shape policy.

Unfortunately, and this has to be faced, the dominant people in the administration have been people like Radcliffe and Kellogg and all of those others. And of course, there's been the hardline as in Congress. Lindsay Graham was now gone, but Richard Blumenthal was a Democrat, and others like Tom Cotton, all of those. they have won the internal baffles up to now within the administration, which is why Donald Trump is in exactly the position that you said. What happens to Zelensky?

There was a foreign, an FP foreign policy article, which even is hinting at the fact that Zelensky is disintegrating. And that's neocan, like neocan central publication that is saying Zelensky. is absolutely crumbling. Well, it's a good question. I still don't think that he's going to be ousted from power. I don't think there's anything short of a goo that will do that. For the moment, the Europeans continue to back him when Fyodorov came forward,

you know, the former Ukrainian defense minister who was sacked a short while ago and who was talked up as this great heroic figure by the Europeans, especially in the West. When Fyodorov suggested, it's time to have new presidential elections, the Europeans were horrified. And they backed Zelensky and they told Fyodorov to back off. And then they bought him off by giving him a cushy job in Italy. So, you know, they still want to keep Zolensky in place.

So, you know, for the moment, it seems to me that in terms of his political position, he is relatively secure. He also now has a whole group of people in Kiev who are in effect his accomplices, people within the SBAU, for example. I mean, this gunfight that took place between the SBAU and Gour, which is Budanov's former outfit, but I suspect. Budana still has a lot of influence there. The thing to understand is that the SBU has become deeply connected to Zelensky and his operation. And it's led by a man called Poclad, who has a very dark reputation within Ukraine, but who does seem to be intensely loyal to Zelensky and who has done lots of, well, shall we say dirty work for Zelensky.

and he's not going to, he, he, it seems, is, is, is worried about, you know, what happens to him if Zelensky goes. So there are men with guns in Kiev who are there basically to protect Zelensky too. Now, there are potential internal threats for Zelensky if the situation in Dombat becomes, well, it will become catastrophic. But if the Azov brigades that are now trying to defend Donbass, if they all become trapped, there's going to be enough Azov people still outside. And they are very ruthless and angry people. And I can easily imagine they're mounting a coup.

And I can also imagine the leader of Azov, a man called Bieletsky, I don't believe if there is an encirclement of the Ukrainian forces of the Azar forces in Donbass. I don't believe Beletsky is going to be amongst the people who's going to let himself be surrounded. He's going to go back to Keough. And I can imagine Belensky launching a coup against Zelensky

and he doesn't care what the Europeans say. I mean, he's a very, very hard man indeed. So there are those threats. But my own guess, I still believe that Zelensky's overall plan and those around him, is to try to hold on for as long as possible and keep the money flowing for as long as possible, pay off enough people. And then as things begin to break down, get on that last train with the suitcases, bulging with cash, and escape to the West.

He's got apparently French bodyguards. there's reports that he's taken further steps to shore up his security. So I think that is his plan. And I think that before the railways get completely closed down, I personally would not be surprised if he does that. And that we have a sudden exodus from Kiev, not just Zelensky, but all the people around him. And I still believe they're going to try to set up a government in

exile somewhere probably in France, you know, all sorts of nice places in the south of France where people like Zelensky can hide. They will never be safe. There'll be all sorts of angry people who are coming after them. But I think that is his plan and I think it's becoming perhaps a little less likely that the plan can be executed, especially if the Russians do start knocking out the railway station. But I think that's still his plan, and I think he's going to cling to it, at least for the present time. And the Europeans will support the government in exile because it may not be the money that they're sending to Ukraine at the moment, but it still will be a good income, a good

revenue stream for them? I think this is an essential point to understand. I think they will support that government in exile. And to repeat, the conflict in Ukraine is not going to end, simply because the Russians break through and let's assume they capture Kiev. Let's assume the Russians go further west and capture Wolf. It's still not going to be the end of the conflict. You're going to have lots of men with weapons all over the world, especially in Europe.

The CIA already, even before the war started in January 2022, were threatening the Russians with an insurgency in Ukraine. That's what they're going to try and work up now.

I don't myself believe there is going to be an insurgency in Ukraine. I've written a piece on substack. on our substact sides about this, I think that the days when it would have been possible to organize such a thing are gone. I think with a population made up mostly of pensioners, you're not really, that isn't the type of demographic that's going to conduct successful insurgences against the Russians. But that doesn't mean that we aren't going to have a dirty ball, that we won't continue to

have assassinations. the assassinations are going to continue to happen inside Russia itself. In Moscow and in other places, they apparently killed another Russian military officer in the town of Saratov, where the giant Engels airbase is located. So that is going to continue. And of course, as night follows day, the Russians will take countermeasures. just as every single attack that's been made on them has been mirrored eventually by a much bigger attack that they make. When the Russians really get going in the dirty war, which I think they will, then it is going to be very ugly.

But I think that is something we must prepare for and be aware of. I'm afraid it's coming. All right. We will end the video there. we are on X and Substack We are also on locals And go to the Draft Shop pickup Some merch those links in the description box down below

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