The Duran Podcast - PUTIN hardline position, UK has been warned

Episode Date: June 6, 2025

PUTIN hardline position, UK has been warned

All right, Alexander, let's do an update on what is happening in Ukraine. Let's talk about the military situation because there's a lot going on, especially in Sumi, where it does look like the Ukraine military is absolutely collapsing in the Sumi direction. But before we get to a military update, let's talk about what has been happening with the Trump. Putin phone call with Russia, I believe the Russian ambassador to the UK giving an interview. I want to say to Sky News, but I'm not I don't, I'm not 100% sure on that. But it does look like Russia is really blaming a lot of the strikes on the airfields and the terrorist attacks on the trains on the collective West, specifically on the UK.

They're saying the U.S. was involved in the airfields strike. They must have had some satellite. They must have provided some satellite information. But it does seem that they're looking at the direction of the, they're looking in the direction of the UK. And I think this is significant. You had Putin's statements as well to government officials. Let's focus on that. And then we'll shift to what's happening on the front lines because that's important to what

is happening on the front lines. And I think that's driving a lot of the panic from the collective West and from the Olensky regime. So where do you want to begin? I'm going to begin with Putin's statements, actually, to the government officials, because I think that they're being understated. And I think people are not perhaps recognizing that they actually do mark a significant ramp up in escalation. And they touch on the point that you made that the Russians are now also starting to make very pointed criticisms. of some of the Western powers and in particular Britain. So let's start with those because my impression,

I think people sometimes, you know, miss Putin, they don't quite see him for what he is. I mean, he's got the reputation of this very cold, very calculating, man, very restrained and all of that. My impression, both reading the statements and seeing the film of him making those statements, is that he was absolutely furious. It was very, very angry. So this is a meeting in which Lavrov and Medinsky, the Russian official who is leading the negotiations in Istanbul, come to report to Putin about the progress of the negotiations in Istanbul. And let's be quite clear, there was no progress

because there were no negotiations in Istanbul. There was a question of an exchange of prisoners. there was a question of, you know, exchanging memoranda. There was the interesting question of the return of the dead bodies, the 6,000 dead bodies that we talked about in a previous program. But on the substance, there was no movement at all. But anyway, they came along and they brief Putin. And both Medinsky and Lavrov said, you know, let's stick with this process. it's actually been quite useful to us.

We have a contact with the Ukrainians now, and that might actually turn out well in future. And Putin is listening to this, and you could go at the sense that he was getting angry and angry all the time. And then he burst out, he said, look, we've had all of these attacks on our railway system. Clearly, it's been carried out at the point.

They were carried out of the political level by people in Kiev. They were ordered by people in Kiev. Clearly they were targeting civilians. These are terrorist acts. The UKIA regime is degenerating into a terrorist organization. And it has Western accomplices who are assisting it in doing so. Now, some people are saying that this is actually Putin being moderate and that he's saying, this in order to draw retention away from the drone strikes on the airfields and not treating

those as acts of war or anything like that so that he doesn't have to use the Oreschnix in retaliation. I don't see that at all. I think that in Putin's vocabulary, there is absolutely no worse word than terrorists to describe Europe Permanent. And he's basically, he was saying, he didn't basically say, he actually said, what is the point of sitting down with these people? Why are we wasting our time having negotiations with them? This is after Medinsky and Lavrov told him, you know, this is all very useful. We're making progress. These attacks were intended to provoke us into calling the meeting off. Well, Putin was saying, you know, well, what's the point of these meetings? We're dealing

with terrorists. We should treat them as terrorists. We shouldn't have any more, you know, time for these people. And, you know, it's the moment, really, to warn them, not just to warn them, but to start acting against them and treating them as what they are, which is really terrorists, and warn their accomplices in the West. So I thought that was a very, very strong language. And it suggests to me that people are somewhat misjudging the internal dynamics inside Moscow. They assume that Putin is this moderate figure and that he's up against the hardliners who want him to take further action, people like Medvedev and maybe the military. I think what came out of this meeting, actually, is that the dynamics are somewhat different. There's Putin in the middle. He's listening to people like Medvedev and the military people.

And he's also listening to Lavrov and others people like that who want to take a more, well, I wouldn't say conciliatory line, but a line that maintains a dialogue with the United States. And he's listening sometimes to the ones and sometimes to the others, but that he's now starting to lean more towards the hardliners. That was my own impression. And I don't think Putin is ever going to straightforwardly declare war on Ukraine because I don't think that is within the legal parameters. But if he says that he's dealing with terrorists, then it amounts pretty much to the same

thing. And I certainly don't think that he would be held back from using Orashnik missiles because he's branding them simply as terrorists other than a country with which we're trying. Russia is at war. So I think that was my own take on it. Now, the meeting ended with everybody agreeing that they were going to go off and speak about it further in private. And then there were further contacts between Trump and Putin, which will come to in a moment. And we got a gloss on those contacts from Yuri Ushikov, who was Putin's foreign policy aid. And I get the same. that Lavrov and Medinsky and, I suspect, Uschikov also, have prevailed and that Putin has decided

to carry on for the moment with the Istanbul process. But as I said, I don't think this is quite as, you know, set in the sand that, you know, set in concrete now, as perhaps we thought it was. I mean, there is, as I said, growing anger in Moscow about this, and Putin himself is starting to share it and visibly so. So that's what I wanted to say about that. That's what I would stop. Did Putin label them as terrorists? I mean, when I read the transcript, the readout, he said all the things that you said,

but it seemed to me as if he stopped short of saying that the Kiev regime is. a terrorist organization. He said they're gradually moving towards. He used those words. I mean, you know, you're better at going through these things. It seemed like he left himself a little bit of a way out from going full towards, let's say, an anti-terrorism operation instead of an SMO. He did leave himself a little bit of space to not go all the way to an ATO by not labeling them a terrorist organization. He used those words, but he didn't quite get there. And the other thing I want to ask you, just also on this subject on Lavrov, I thought Lavrov was moving more towards a hard-line stance. Do you think he's shifted now back? Now, I think he probably is

reflecting a lot of what Putin feels. I think Lavrov is pretty hard line, by the way. I mean, he was one of the officials who spoke out in favor of launching the SMO back in February 22. And he's taken a very hard-line stance on many, many occasions, and he's articulating it. But he's also a diplomat, and of course diplomats like to talk with talk and to engage in negotiations. And I think on this specific issue about whether to continue with Istanbul, he seems keen to continue for the moment with Istanbul. As I said, Putin came across to me as not so sure. Now, he did use the word gradually, and you're absolutely right. He absolutely did. And the reason I think he did that is, as I said, he was listening to what Medinsky and Lavrov was saying.

He was also aware that this whole meeting was being filmed and that the Kremlin would be publishing a readout about it. So he didn't want to close the door completely before the discussion with Lavrov happened. But one gets a very strong sense of what Putin actually thinks. by the things that Putin's senior foreign policy aid, Uschukh said after the Trump telephone call, because he then said, Uschukh said, that according to the Kremlin now, the Kiev regime is essentially a terrorist organization, no longer. using you, you know, things that they're gradually becoming a terrorist organization.

But they are already essentially one. So that isn't again quite the same as saying that they are terrorists. I'm sorry if this all sounds a little bit like, you know, we're picking hairs here. But this is Putin. It seems like legal speak. It is legal speak, but this is Putin. I mean, I'm afraid this is what he tends to do. You can see what happened.

There was a, you know, going to and fro between Lavrov and Medinsky, probably, Oshikov, Pugchukh. Putin said, you know, these are terrorists. What are we wasting our time with? The others trying to push back. Who knows who else was involved in that discussion? And then, you know, they come to a compromise and said they're not gradually becoming terrorists. They are essentially terrorists as opposed to being just terrorists.

So it takes us closer. to that point, a step closer still, but of course it reflects probably Putin's feelings. Now, the other thing I wanted to say about that is that, again, a lot of people are talking about the drone attacks on the airfields, and those drone attacks on the airfields have spooked a lot of people in the United States, and one gets the sense that they spooked Donald Trump.

himself. But again, I don't think it's chance, and I don't think it was arranged this way, that what Putin was talking about was the attacks on the railway bridges and the attacks on Russian civilians. And I think that, you know, at some level, I mean, strategic bombers are military targets, but civilian trains with children inside them are clear civilian targets. And that is what I think made Putin's anger boil over. Now, on the subject of the drone attacks on the airfields, some people have been looking at the photographs of satellite pictures. I'm not a person to understand satellite pictures. I can barely see them, by the way. But the view that he's apparently not taking hold, even within the US government, is that the Ukrainians who greatly

overstated the effect of those drone attacks, that some of the photographs that we have seen have been manipulated using AI technology. I'm not going to try and guess whether that is true. I'm not able to say. And Riyarbkov, Sergei Ryabkov, who is, of course, a foreign ministry official. He's a diplomat. He's one of Lavrov's people. And remember, Lavrov is the one who wants to keep the process of talking going. Anyway, Ryabka has come up out and made comments, which suggests that no bombers were actually destroyed at all. A significant amount of damage was done to a few,

but actually these are the sort of planes that can be repaired quite quickly or can be repaired and that all of them will be repaired. So it may be that that's what Putin is also being told. Quite plausibly it is true. I'm not going to try and second-guess this. But the fact is, I think that Putin was more angry by the attack on the trains. Remember, one of the reasons he became president in the first place back in 1991 was because of terrorist attacks by jihadi terrorists in Russia itself.

He was furious about it then. He made some famously strong comments about it at the time. It is something that he is absolutely cares about. A very, very great deal. For him, calling someone a terrorist, it's just about the worst word he could use to describe an adversary. Yeah. Maybe going to the airfields, maybe the Trump White House also wants to downplay the damage. from the airfield attacks.

I mean, obviously Trump knew something. And this is my opinion. And I think most people agree with this light of thought. I don't know how much Trump knew. I don't know if he knew the entire details of the plan. I don't know if he was just told that something big's going to happen that's going to give you leverage. But obviously, he knew something.

Now, if he didn't know anything that, looks bad for the Trump White House. You know, who's running stuff in the White House if you didn't know about a plan to hit Russia that was being cooked up for 18 months. If he knew something, that looks bad as well. That looks even worse. If he knew, especially all the details of what was going on. Obviously, he knew that something was being cooked up. They told him something. My guess is that following Trump, he's not someone who likes to get into the details of things. He's not someone that takes a particular interest in in details and going over stuff in in a very meticulous manner. So I would not be surprised if someone told him, Mr. President, we got something planned that's

going to give you leverage. That's going to help you to put pressure on Russia. It's going to be a bit a bit risky. Maybe they told him, but, you know, it'll it'll deliver results for you as you negotiate. That's, that's my take on probably what they told them. but who knows? I'm just guessing here. Now that the Trump White House and some officials in the collective West, some officials in Europe, though not all, are a bit freaked out by what happened,

and they're very freaked out about the Russian retaliation, what it could mean. Perhaps they're also trying to downplay the effects of the strikes on the Russian airfield. So I'm not saying that it was 40 planes. It wasn't 40 planes. Everyone knows. Everyone's come to accept that it was not as catastrophic as Ukraine was making it out to be. But it did cause damage. And perhaps even the Trump White House now is trying to downplay things a bit because they're in a very difficult position here.

And I think you saw that reflected in the phone call between Trump and Putin. And I think you saw it reflected in Trump's message. message on true social, where it did seem to me as if Trump had accepted that things went too far, that the collective West and his administration effed up on this. Something went very wrong and you're going to retaliate Russia. I'm hoping that it won't be a big strike, but I understand that you're going to have to retaliate. I accept it. I mean, I think that's kind of what's happening here.

What are your thoughts? Well, I'm going to tell you what I think happened. I think the Trump absolutely was briefed about this. I don't think he wasn't briefed about this. There is a British expression. I did it whether it's Houston amongst Americans, protesting too much. And I think this is what the Americans are doing at the moment. Oh, no, no, we didn't know.

There's nothing to do with us. We weren't involved. The British are saying the same. The Europeans are all saying the same. Everybody is saying that they weren't involved. And of course, Donald Trump is telephoning Putin. and the purpose of his call is to tell Putin, I mean, this is the real reason why he called, it was to tell Putin, no, no, I didn't know, it was nothing to do with me.

I had no idea that the Ukrainians were going to do this thing. Here is what I think happened. I think that what happened was that this idea was, this plan was developed under the Biden administration. I think as it progressed, information about it continue to go up the hierarchical chain. I suspect it was in Trump's daily brief. I suspect that he was informed about it at least at some level by people in the intelligence world. I don't think he understood some of the implications. And then what then happened?

was that his very first national security advisor, Michael Flynn, the man whose career was destroyed during Trump's first term. The man who, in my opinion, Trump would be very well advised to be taking more advice from anyway, because of course he was a serving general and the US military and himself an intelligence officer and understands these things better. He then publishes an absolutely excoriating statement about this. He says, what on earth are you doing? Yes, these aircraft were parked publicly on the airfields because we have an understanding with the Russians that strategic bombers should be made visible. So they make their strategic bombers visible to us and we make our strategic bombers visible to them. That is a Cold War.

understanding that we have always have. And now we've undermined it. We've attacked their strategic bomber forces. We're being led into World War III. This is an extraordinarily reckless and dangerous thing to do. And I think Trump and the people in the immediate Trump team, who had not understood any of this before. If Flynn had been there in this national security advisor, he would have advised and warned Trump about this. The trouble is, Rubio, who is playing the role of national security advisor and doubling that with Secretary of State clearly didn't, either didn't explain it to Trump or quite plausibly, didn't understand it himself. So I think at that moment, the Americans said Trump and the people around his said, oh my God,

what have we done? This is incredibly dangerous. Put aside however many bombers were destroyed, forget about how much damage was done. What is Putin going to do? How is he going to react to this? So then Trump gets on the phone, talks to Putin, he wants to know what Putin is going to do, he wants to know whether Putin is angry with him, whether the Russians are going to take this much further than perhaps they were in ever that they were intending to. Notice that this was a good call, according to Trump, all that nonsense about Putin going crazy. You remember that?

That was just a week ago. But that's all now gone out of the window. We're no longer talking about that, exactly. And of course, you know, we had a really good conversation and of course we weren't able to talk Putin out of not retaliating. And the war clearly isn't going to end any time. soon, but Putin is becoming incredibly helpful to us on Iran and a long discussion about that, which is, frankly, I mean, it looked out of place in this particular true social post.

I mean, it's interesting, by the way, that, you know, they are talking about Iran very much in the way that we said that they, but the whole call came across as Trump, nervous and apologetic and trying to reassure Putin that this is all the awful mistake and that the Ukrainians were acting on their own and their rogue state and all of that and that the United States and he personally were not involved. And again, one gets the sense both from Trump's true social post and from Ushikov's account of the call. Notice that the Russians have not provided a a read out, that Putin basically heard all this in icy silence. I don't think he was very impressed by this part of the conversation at all. Instead, what he appears to have done is he

used the call to take Trump through the whole position in Istanbul, pointing out how utterly intransigent the Ukrainians are. And apparently, according to Uschikov, told Trump that the Ukrainians are essentially terrorists. They're carrying out attacks on trains and they're killing civilians. And why aren't you condemning it? Yeah. The Trump White House is really screwing everything up. The more this goes along, the worst it's getting for the Trump White House. The worst is getting for Trump. The worst it's getting for the Trump White House. He's surrounded by people who want to escalate. And for some reason, he refuses to take action against these people. Lindsay Graham has been running around

for the past three weeks playing president of the United States. And Trump has said nothing. The sequence of events leading us up to the airfield strike is very troubling. Yes. You have Graham in Kiev. You have Mike Pompeo in Odessa. What in God's name are all these people doing in Ukraine? And they're saying very strange things.

They're putting out very strange messages talking about what a beautiful theater. things are going to go off soon. I mean, these are the messages that they're putting out there. These are spies. These are spooks that are putting out these messages that to me makes it seem as if there's this shadow government that is doing stuff that Trump is either too uninformed to deal with or too uninterested or just not capable of dealing with it. I mean, or he's complicit.

That's the other, yeah, that's the other. possibility. I mean, he needs to end this very, very quickly. The U.S.'s involvement in Ukraine because his administration is going down very fast, the longer they stay bad down in Ukraine. And Putin's going to retaliate. He did not retaliate yesterday. That was not a retaliation strike all the missiles. That's obvious. But Russia's going to retaliate. They're putting a lot of blame on the UK and finally, Alexander, on the front lines, Ukraine is getting hammered.

They are getting absolutely hammered. Sumi seems like it's just collapsing like a house of cards. Yes. Your thoughts. Right. I'm going to start with the Trump people because I completely agree. What Trump needs to do is to call in Lindsay Graham and tell him what the F are you doing?

Just stop. You are undermining my position. I am the president of the United States. I decide the policy. I am not backing this bill. And I want you to tell the people in the Senate that I'm not backing this bill. And if necessary, I will call them in and I will tell them that too. The moment that happens, the bill collapses. There is no way the bill can pass without Trump's at least tacit support. The sanctions bill, the tariff bill. I mean, I mean, the tariff bill. I mean, there are many people who think that this is, you know, all are connected with, you know, these budget appropriations thing, the big, beautiful bill and all of that. But I think that letting people like Graham, you know, maybe whatever, imagine that they have leverage with Trump over something like that. It is completely wrong. I mean, what is Trump, what is Graham going to do?

If Trump says, stop this whole sanctions nonsense, nonsense, stop going to Kiev in the way that you are, stop doing all of these things. Is Graham going to really turn around and block Trump's budget? I mean, it's hardly conceivable. So I think you should call the bluff with these people. And straightforwardly, there is no support as far as, I can tell for this bill within the Republican base, the Speaker of the House of Representative,

Speaker Johnson is not going to put it to the floor of the House if Trump tells him not to do so. So Trump has it absolutely within his powers to kill this thing. And I suspect that a significant number of Republican senators who are now co-sponsoring the bill and who's saying that they support it will melt away if they know that the president is against it. That is what a strong president does. I don't understand why Trump doesn't understand this. I think that he's weakening his own position in Washington and is allowing again all of these people to basically take control by behaving in this kind of way. Now, I understand and I know that there are many people who say that this is all a cunning plot and intricate theatre and that Trump is actually as every bit as much

as the hardliner as Lindsay Graham is. I don't buy that at all. Why would they go through this kind of theatre? If that was really Trump's intention. Why would Trump collude in an operation which ultimately undermines himself and weakens his own position and weakens his entire presidency by engaging in this elaborate ruse. So I don't buy this. I think that Trump needs to tell Lindsay Graham, I am the president of the United States. I am in charge of the foreign policy of the United States. I was elected with a specific mandate to conduct this foreign policy. What you're doing is not helpful. Stop. I think that's what you should do. And I think it would work. Anyway, that's the first thing. That's the first thing to say. Now, I do want to say something, and I'm going to say quickly at this point, firstly, about the role of the British. The idea the British are in this up to their ears. I think the British have a compulsive liking for this sort of thing. The British did a lot of this during the Second World War. Everybody knows the films, which the British continue to churn out about their

cloak and dagger operations of that time, you know, the guns of Navarone, the cockle shell heroes, the damn busters, all of that. The British still believe that all of this was tremendously successful and made a huge difference to the Second World War when we now know that it made no difference whatsoever. The British of very little ability to continue to support Ukraine in military terms. We've just had a strategic defense review in Britain. It confirms that the British armed forces are basically stripped of all of their weapons. They can't provide more weapons to Ukraine. They are trying to retain relevance and trying to continue to poke the Russians and to infuriate

the Russians in a way that will involve the Americans by aiding the Ukrainians in these sort of operations. That is what the Russians think. that is, I'm afraid, what I believe, because, you know, I live in Britain and I know about the British addiction to this sort of thing. What is James Bond ultimately all about, if not that? Now, the point is it's not achieving anything useful for Ukraine in the war. You're starting to see more and more analysts, by the way, saying this. How does this help Ukraine in the war? It does not, but it is turned the Russians very strongly against Britain. They're now straightforwardly saying that the British

are complicit in all of these acts. Remember what we said at the start of the program that Putin is now talking about these as terrorist acts and is talking about Ukraine's accomplices in these acts. So he's basically pointing at the British and saying, You are accomplices. You are involved in all of this. You are accessories in it. And they're now starting to, the Russians are now starting to take further action. They've closed down the British Council in Russia. Well, perhaps that was to be expected. But they are now campaigning to get offices of the British Council closed down in friendly states as well. They've never done that before. They've never gone to other countries and said to them, the British Council is essentially

a shadow intelligence network and all of that. And in your own interests, you need to close it down. Up to this time, the Russians have never taken steps of that kind. Now, whether other countries will heed this advice from Moscow? I don't know. I should say that briefly, I've had encounters with British councils in various places, and I've actually been impressed, favorably impressed, by some of the people that I met there. I'm not talking about the whole organisations

because I don't know what they do. But anyway, the point I am making is that the British may now find that they're up against pressure, not just in Russia, but across much of the world from the Russians, talking to their friends in Beijing,

in Delhi, in relation, Asia, who knows where, close the British Council down, which is a major instrument of British soft power. I think Britain should stop. I think this is likely to get us into deeper and deeper trouble. I think that if we really were involved, we should absolutely tell the Russians and tell the Americans that we're not going to be involved again. Eventually and quite plausibly, the Americans are going to get angry with us and going to tell us to stop also, and it may not be pretty if it happens. And I think we should be contacting the Russians and reassuring them that this is not happening again and that this is the end of this. That's what I think we should do.

I don't expect it to happen. I don't believe the British can ever kick this addiction. So I wanted to say that because it's my own country. and I'm very concerned about this. Leave James Bond to the movies. He's probably dying there anyway. But leave James Bond to the movies. Stick to the real world.

Understand that the real world isn't like the movies and stop doing this kind of thing. About the military situation, you are absolutely correct. Ukraine is being totally hammered in the north, in Sumi, which is the region where the Russians are operating, which is closest to the capital, to Kiev itself.

Sumi, the city of Sumi is on the main road to Kiev. The entire Ukrainian position is collapsing like a house of cards in exactly the way that you said. There's now increasing talk that Sumi itself might have to be evacuated. officials are talking about the fact that there are no defenses to speak of in Sumi. Bezeglaia, the Ukrainian MP, is talking as if the Sumi region may soon be lost. What happened was that the Ukrainians about two weeks ago were facing a collapse in Konstantinovka and Pakrovsk. They're out of reserves. They transferred whatever they had, basically, to hold their positions in those places. That meant stripping their defenses in Sumi region and where we see the result. They've slowed the Russians a

little in Konstantinovka and Pakrovsk. They haven't been able to stop them there. And in the north, in the meantime, through this redeployment of forces, their positions are collapsing. And if Sumi collapses, then as I said, the Russians quite plausibly soon will be at the gates of Kiev again. Yeah, kick the addiction. I like that. It's true. The UK will never be able to kick the addiction of wanting to destroy Russia. People in the United States are never going to be able to kick the addiction of wanting to destroy Russia. But the problem that I see Putin having is that it's, you know, you say he's angry with the train attacks. I'm sure he's angry about the airfield attacks as well. This is not an isolated incident. No. You know, we've had crocus, we've had generals, we've had bloggers, killed inside of Russia. You know, where does it end?

When does it end? I think this is what a lot of people are asking, and it still seems as if Putin is still not able to, to say, upgrade the SMO. He still can't get there. No. I think there is tension and argument about this in more. Moscow increasingly. And if I can just talk about the British Council, I think that the intelligence agencies and the security agencies in Moscow have probably been lobbying the Kremlin to close the British Council for years. So the fact that we've only got to this point now after this

latest event tells you how careful and slow Putin has been to get to this point. And I think that is true. I think that he has up to now worked overtime to try to keep, you know, doors open, even to the British in some weird ways. I mean, I don't know why, by the way, because I've never got the impression that he liked them very much. But anyway, he's gone out of his way to, I think, avoid an escalation, which he thinks is incredibly dangerous. And as I've discussed in previous programs, he's saying to himself all the time, and he's been told all the time, Don't fall for provocations. These are ultimately all provocations. We are winning the war. We must stick to winning the war. We're getting good results in Sumi region. We're getting good results

in other places. We are gaining, we're on top of the sea, black sea drones that just made another attack on the Crimean Bridge. And it was a failure. Let's not put everything at risk by over by reacting in such a strong way that could catapult us into a bigger, bigger conflict. I think, though, and this is again where I come back to that meeting in Moscow, I've never seen, as I said, Putin's so angry. People don't recognize the signs of Putin's anger, by the way. I've seen him in person twice at plenary meetings at the speech conference. And on both I saw what made him angry and how he responds to anger. He looked very angry to me over the course of this meeting.

I think that the anger levels are rising. And I would just say this. There's this famous comment about the Russians. So Putin is very, very Russian in the way that he responds to this, to these things, which is that the Russians are often very, very slow to get on their horses. But when they do, they ride very fast. And I think that's the thing to understand. The moment it comes, the moment the breaking point is reached, it will be sudden.

And, you know, it might not be very comfortable for those at the receiving end of it. Just the final question. How do you square all of this with? Putin's patience, the Russians now looking at the West for everything that's happened with the airfields, with the attacks on trains. They're openly saying that the West was involved in this. And the fact that Europe, especially the UK and Germany, but especially the UK, do not shed up about how they are preparing to go to war with Russia.

No, I know. They can't shut up about it. No, I know, absolutely. Every announcement is, it's a public announcement of how they are ramping up drone manufacturing. They're ramping up submarines. They're putting money into factories in order to create weapons. Every statement that is now coming out of the Stommer administration is that we are going to war with Russia. Yes.

And how do you? And it's the same in France. and it's the same in Germany. And the Germans are now talking about breaking off diplomatic relations with Russia. At least some people in Germany are. And the Russians for the moment are being very restrained in response to all of this. And they're still trying to conduct their dialogue with the Americans. By the way, it may surprise people to know this, but it was the same historically on previous occasions.

I mean, in the run up to the Second World War, and indeed, after the Second World War, there were criticisms in Moscow that the leadership was much too restrained in its response at that time, just to say. And, you know, we know that who was the leader leading the Soviet Union at that time. It was none other than Joseph Stalin, but there were many, many criticisms, quietly expressed criticisms and worries that, for example, would do a deal with the Western allies, which would allow them to capture Berlin before the Red Army reached it. So, you know, you have these tensions there. They are not completely new in Russia. As I said, I think, as I said, that the pressure is growing in Moscow. I absolutely think that they see that. I think Putin invested a huge amount of trouble. time after he became president in developing close relations with various European states.

He forged friendships with Shiraq, with Schroeder, with Berlusconi. He's continued to have good contacts with people like Salvini. He perhaps is saying to himself or has been saying to himself, let's just keep going. Let's win the war in Ukraine. Let's say, reopen, keep our dialogue with the Americans going in. Let's hope that these people will come to their senses and all of that time and energy effort that we devoted to developing relations with the Europeans is not going to be for waste. It's probably gradually becoming understood by more and more people in Moscow that it is for waste. And I think that they see what mouths especially. I mean, I don't think they take much, take Stama very seriously, but I certainly think

they take Germany very seriously. And I think that Putin is probably, again, because he has connections with Germany, because he worked very hard to build some kind of working relationship with Merkel, which I think was a mistake, by the way. I think he should never have trusted Merkel to the extent that he did. Even he seems to acknowledge that now. But anyway, I think that he's always had this lingering affection for Germany. And I think he finds it very, very difficult to accept that the Germans really are turning against him to the extent that they are. And, you know, like a lot of people, he just doesn't want to give up on something that he devoted 20 years of his time as president to trying to build up. So I think that's probably part of the problem. And of course,

it isn't just Putin, it's other officials within the foreign ministry, it's probably people within some people within the business community as well. But I think with every single day, these people become fewer and fewer. The mood becomes more and more hardline. That's starting to affect Putin himself. When I was in St. Petersburg about two weeks ago, you remember, I went to a meeting with lawyers. And these were civilians. They were not military people. Some of them had had contacts in the West, very, very close contacts in the West with the European Council. They had in law firms or were part of Russian law firms that had established deep and very close relationships with Western law firms. I spoke to people exactly like that. And they are

already now, utterly disillusioned by what is happening. And I suspect that's going to very eventually reach the Kremlin as well. Yeah. Okay. Yeah, you know, Germany definitely worries Russia, but the UK is also pushing Germany in that direction as well. Again, I think this is something that perhaps the Russians don't fully understand, which is that ignoring Britain, I mean, Britain by itself, can't do very much. But unfortunately, Britain does have influence in Europe, especially in Germany. And Britain has been consistently hostile to every step towards German, Russian rapprochement.

They were bitterly opposed to the North Street pipelines, for example, and to economic links between Russia and Germany. The British media has been running with this every single day. They still do. They still talk about the Germans being too soft towards the Russians. And that does unfortunately have traction in Germany itself. And again, it's a mistake for the Russians to ignore this. And they need to, well, they should have done long ago, taken the Germans to one side and said,

why are you listening to the Britons? I mean, these people are obsessed. They're not talking to you in your own interests. The Russians never did that, and we see the results. All right, we will end the video there at the durand.locos.com. We are on Rumble, Odyssey, Bichute, and X. Go to the Durand shop. Pick up some merch.

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