The Duran Podcast - Putin Q & A. Confident with SMO, huge Russian army, Black Sea coast end game

Episode Date: December 15, 2023

Putin Q & A. Confident with SMO, huge Russian army, Black Sea coast end game

All right, Alexander, let's talk about Putin's Q&A. And real quick, this Q&A was for media as well as for citizens. Right? That is what I'm certainly the impression I got. So he was taking... Usually it's split up. Usually it's split up. But this year he did them together.

Okay, okay. I just wanted that clarification. All right. Over four hours. it was typical, I think, classic Putin when he does these long sessions, very well prepared, talks about a lot of different topics. And I guess my first question to you is, what do you think were the important topics that he talked about specific to geopolitics and this channel and the people that view this channel

because he does talk about a lot of domestic issues as well in these Q&As, but I don't think we need to get into too much of those details. The one thing I would say about these domestic issues about, you know, things like the price of eggs and the fact that he eats eggs for breakfast so that he's conscious of the price of eggs and that he knows about, you know, water problems in, you know, a particular region in Russia and all of that is that he does give the impression to the Russians that he is aware of their problems. And that is an important part of Putin's political appeal.

So you must understand that these are not interesting to people like us, but they are interesting to Russians, and they are politically intelligent things for him to do. Now, Western journalists and reporters always talk about this as being a very, you know, paternalistic approach that Putin is taking, you know, that he comes across as the Tsar sorting up people's problems. I think, and this is just my own personal view, and remember I was with my, you know, I have some experience of politics and electoral politics. I think that if Western political leaders showed more knowledge of the day-to-day problems of people, I think it would probably make their governance a lot better and would increase the sense of accountability.

But anyway, that's all I get to say about that. the program was dominated, overwhelmingly dominated, by two subjects. One is the ongoing conflict in Ukraine, and he took lots of calls from soldiers, military journalists. He explained Russia's military strategy. He talked about all of those particular aspects of everything connected to the conflict itself. And the second is about Russia's confrontation. with the West and where Russia is going, where it is heading as a reflection of that conflict. And on both things, he was extremely interesting.

Now, on the war, he was extremely confident. I mean, he clearly feels that things are going very well on the battlefronts. The Ukrainian offensive of the summer was defeated. The Russians are now absolutely on the front foot. He somewhat played down the military operations that are being conducted. He talked at great length about, you know, a particular battle, the one in Krinke. This is unusual because he was actually asked a direct question about, you know, what is going on in Klinki?

Why are these Ukrainian soldiers there on the East Bank of the NEPA? Why haven't we defeated them? Why are we allowing them to stay there? And he explained the whole thinking about that. And by the way, in the process, he provided quite a lot of information about his own personal interactions with the defence minister

and with the chief of general staff, Shogu, and Gerasimov. He was careful not to be. to name them by the way. But the overall message, apart from confidence that things are going his way, Russia's way, on the battlefields, was that the Russian objectives have not changed. They are the same as they always were, that Russia will pursue the four objectives that he set out at the very start of the military operation, that these remain demilitarization, denazification, neutrality for Ukraine, and protection of Russians in Ukraine, and of course, now the recognition

of the fact that the four regions are part of Russia. So he is immovable on this. Now, in all his public comments up to this time, he has been. And I think, you know, we have to take him at his word. He was immovable about these points during, you know, the sort of more difficult times last year. When it was the Ukrainians who were on the offensive, we must assume that he's continuing to be immovable about these things now. And as I discussed in my video yesterday, there's been all of these talks and chatter about, you know, people in the West trying to contact. the Russians talking about a freeze of the conflict in some way working towards some kind of a ceasefire, that kind of thing, but all on the basis of some kind of freeze.

And we've also had that Seymourche article about secret talks between Gerasimov and Zaluzni, which would allow Ukraine to enter NATO. So, well, I think we can put all that to one side now, because it's clear to me that Putin isn't interested in any of that at all. He is going to see the objectives that he set out last February, February last year, he's going to see them fulfilled. And that remains his objective and nothing is going to change it. Yeah, I think one of the most important exchanges that he had actually was

I believe it was the last question when someone asked him if you could tell yourself in the past like today, if you can tell you're a younger Putin give him some advice, what would it be? And Putin said, I would tell the younger Putin not to be so naive when it comes to our Western partners.

I think that reveals a lot. Well, of course it does. It demonstrates the enormous process of disillusion that he has gone through, that he came when he became president, he really seriously, generally, honestly believed that he could work with the Americans, with the Europeans, that he could build long-term relations with them, that they would treat Russia as an equal partner, that Russia would indeed be a partner,

and that the Western powers would be partners. And he now realizes that's not happening. It won't happen. And in fact, he spoke a lot about the West, actually. He spoke about, I mean, he was asked, you know, do you expect things ever to, improve and well he said well yes maybe some point in the near future or in the rather in the future not the near future but i mean you could see that he doesn't believe in that anymore he's come to a clear straightforward decision that he's going to work with the Asian countries with other countries

and that he's given up on the west and it was very interesting when they was when the moment came to ask questions from journalists from abroad. The people who were managing the press conference first suggested that he take a question from an American journalist and he said, no, no, let's talk first to the Chinese. And a Chinese journalist was given the opportunity to ask the question in front of the American. And I thought that was actually a very very important.

very telling sign. And of course, it's one that people across Russia will have seen. Yeah, the New York Times journalist. Yeah, he also didn't call on the BBC journalist. What's Steve Rosenberg, I believe, is. Yeah. Yeah, exactly. And he was upset about it. He actually wrote a pretty, pretty upset article. He was very upset on the BBC. He's like, well, as the Russians are pointed out. The whole thing's, yeah, he was, you could tell he was very, he was furious. But I mean, you know, as the Russians are pointing out, you know, when Rushi Sunak takes questions for Russian journalists in press conferences, then perhaps Rosenberg can expect these questions to be, you know, taken by Putin. I mean, you know, this is something that Westerners never seem to understand, you know,

that if you're going to treat the Russians one way, then, you know, they're going to treat you the same way. I mean, why they expect to be privileged and treated differently. never ceases to astonish me. We saw that with Schultz a few days ago when he was talking about how the Russians are cut off the energy and the gas and they haven't cut off the energy and the gas not in the way that he was saying.

But let's assume they had done. I mean, you know, Germany wages economic war against Russia and Russia is supposed to just go on supplying gas. I mean, you know, it's this astonishing sense of entitlement. And you saw that in with Rosenberg's reaction to the fact that he didn't get oppressed an opportunity to pose a question. But there it is. There it is.

Okay, so let's talk about two points that Putin made connected to the SMO, the special military operation, which I thought are very revealing. One is the amount of troops in the combat area, I believe the number was 600 and 70. And he talked, he revealed a bit of the split how how it works not into too much detail, but he did reveal the breakdown of troops in active combat and the troops in in the back, in other roles and other positions. So I don't know if you, it would be good if you talked about that. And, and then Odessa talked about Odessa and the Russian, the Russian lands. historical lands in the south and along the black sea. He was very clear about that. Along the

Black Sea, these are historical Russian lands. And after Lenin, Russia, and after the Soviet Union, Russia learned to live in this paradigm, he said, but that, that, that. So, you know, I don't know if it's good to address that as well. I think these were important. They were very important. Let's talk political parts. Let's talk about the military side of it because this is actually extremely interesting because, of course, he did provide not a complete breakdown,

but, you know, pretty good idea of how many Russian troops there are now in the combat zone. And the overall conclusion you can draw from it is that the Russians now outnumber the Ukrainians. That is the first thing. That's the straightforward thing to say. Now, up to this time,

until say the summer and the autumn, you could probably say that at any one particular point in the war there were more Ukrainian troops fighting the Russians than there were Russian troops fighting Ukrainians. The Russians had far more weapons, they had the air force, they had the artillery, they had the drones, they had all of those things. But in terms of actual physical numbers,

you know on the battlefields the Ukrainians outnumbered the Russians now that has changed and Putin made a number of other points very clear he said you know that we have this force which is huge by any objective standard but it is growing bigger and he also revealed the number of men who have signed up to join the Russian army this year. the original Russian target was to enlist 420,000 men by the end of this year. They have substantially exceeded it according to Putin. They have already received 485,000. So you can get a sense of the scale of the Russian military buildup which is underway. There is a huge Russian army now operating in Ukraine. Many of these men are still

training. There's hundreds of thousands of more troops available, if called on, to join them. The Ukrainian army is getting weaker. It is probably outnumbered. And as you constantly remind people on your videos, we haven't really seen up to this time any sign of this huge Russian buildup expressing itself on the battlefield. The forces that are, you know, are fighting in Avdaika, for example, remain the same forces that were called up at the very start of the war. They are mainly drawn from the former Donbass militia,

and this is true right across the battle lines. We haven't yet seen this huge force that has now been assembled, being committed to the battle. Right, and Odessa, Catherine, the Great, the history, the culture, everything that he talked about there. How does that play a role? Well, right.

Now, this might actually play out in the SMO. This is the trend of comments that we have been seeing coming from Putin now for several weeks. He referred to Adessa as straightforwardly as a Russian city. He's done so in previous comments. Of course, he went further. He went, rather he was in, he went into more detail this time. but I have always said ever since the start of this conflict began that I could not see myself how this conflict could end

without the Russians gaining some kind of presence in Odessa that Adessa was just too important symbolically, economically, culturally for the Russians, for the Russians to start a conflict like this and simply not press on in some form, to Odessa. And I think Putin has now made this absolutely clear. The Russians want the Black Sea Coast.

They see this as Russian. They feel that it should never have been given to Ukraine in the first place. They think that Lenin and the Communist Party were doing things within the structure of the Soviet Union, which of course doesn't exist anymore, that when Ukraine became independent, it took all of these, all this property, which, properly speaking, didn't belong to it with it, that the people who have been living there have been discriminated against by Ukraine. They've never been treated as equal citizens. Their culture and language and historical links with Russia have never been respected. And to be frank, reading and listening

to Putin's comments, I think that he's objective now is not some kind of autonomy for these regions or something of that. I think now he's thinking about right annexation and that when the Ukrainian government capitulates, which I'm pretty confident he expects it to do, he will demand that all of these territories be returned to Russia. Yeah. It feels like it's, it, this has changed considerably than the first goals of the, of the, of the SMO, things have changed considerably. And a lot of it is the fault of the collective West.

Yeah. The sanctions have liberated Russia. It doesn't have to think about, you know, if it does annex any more territory, it doesn't have to think about, you know, what are going to be the effects on us with regards to sanctions or anything like that. I mean, this is a huge departure. from the first months of the SMO. Oh, he's an enormous departure. This is a trajectory of thing. I mean, when the SMO started, you know, a couple of days after it began, there were negotiations. And they were very complex negotiations. There's a very, very curious article about these negotiations in national interest, which I think is a sign of nervousness, by the way, within the US,

and by the way, in London as well, about what happened over the course of those negotiations. But anyway, there was negotiations. And at that point, Russian objectives was still very limited. Let me just clarify for the upteenth time what the eventual deal that was agreed in Istanbul was. It was not the finalised treaty. It was heads of agreement. But those heads of agreement required, only required, Ukraine to agree, that when it got security guarantees from Russia and from the West,

in return, for giving up its plan to join NATO, that those security guarantees would not extend to Crimea. And on base, the status of which would eventually be decided in subsequent negotiations. There were other things that were also to be decided in subsequent negotiations leading up to the treaty.

But those things were to include rights of Russian speakers, Russian people in Ukraine. They were to include other things about the political setup in Ukraine. But they certainly did not extend to annexation or unification, if you prefer, of the entire black coast of Ukraine with Russia.

I mean, there was no thought of anything like this. And the Ukrainians had a potentially very good deal indeed, and they walked away from it. They were told to by the West, and that is what they did. And the best that they can hope for now, when the war ends, and, you know, in their interests, it's better that it ends. soon rather than later. The best that they can hope for is a massively diminished and truncated Ukraine,

cut off from the Black Sea, and therefore dependent on the Russians, on agreement from the Russians to maintain their transport links. Remember, Ukraine depends, I mean, its major exports are agricultural products. they historically have been shipped through Odessa. If Odessa is under Russian control, the Russians have a stranglehold over Ukraine's major exports. A final question.

You mentioned a lot about Russia reaching the Tenebred and how this will be a chokehold on Ukraine. What happens if the Russians do indeed, if the end game is as Putin, hints at the Black Sea coast Odessa as well as getting to the De Nibir. Right.

The thing... Drovskind and moving further west, perhaps, to Kiev or close to Kiev. What does that mean? The thing to understand, and the point I'm trying to make is this, that if the Russians reach the Dnieper, in the area

of NEPRO, the city of the Russians call Nepro-Petrovsk, which was of course its name previously, until the Ukrainians change it to NEPRO. If the Russian army reaches the NEPA,

then Ukraine has ceased to be viable as a state any longer. It cannot function further as a state beyond that, unless it comes to some kind of an agreement

with the Russians. It can't maintain the war. I mean, that is the other thing to understand. It's like when, for example, South Vietnam lost the Central Highlands, just explaining this to Americans, when they lost the Central

Highlands to the North Vietnamese army, there was some talk that South Vietnam could continue to fight on, but of course it couldn't, because control of the Central Highlands put the North Vietnamese in a position where they could dominate the rest of Vietnam and the same would be

the case with the Russians. So at that point if the Russians battle through and arrive to the NEPA it really is a choice for Ukraine between total capitulation or complete military collapse I mean the Russians can cross the NEPA as well, by the way. I mean, I think that's another thing to say. I mean, the idea that the deeper is an uncrossable barrier is a myth. They did it in 1943, when their opponent was

the Wehrmacht. It is an enormously long river. It would be impossible for the Ukrainian army to defend every part of it. And in places, it's quite shallow. It's not the case that the banks of the deeper are higher on the West Bank everywhere along the NEPA. This is also, by the way, something of a myth. If the Ukrainian army is forced back and has to cross the entire NEPA and is pushed to the west bank of the NEPA right across the entire front line, then Ukraine will be in a state of collapse, military, political and economic, and the Ukrainian army will no longer be able to defend. And of course, if the Russians cross the NEPA, the NEPA, In that case, it is the end.

We are talking about at that point about the final collapse. It would be like the equivalent of the Allies crossing the Rhine in the Second World War, which again, remember, they did. So it is absolutely crucial. If we get to that point, when the Russians reach the NEPA, we're not just in the end game. We are in the end game of the end game. So that's the first point I want to make here. Now, what makes it the end game? Like what is what is it about reaching the Dnieper?

That makes it the end game. Because all the big cities, all the major industrial centers are located along it. That is how, that is the shape of Ukraine's economic geography. Kiev is there. NEPRO is there. Zaporosia is there. Kremlinchuk, not exactly there, but pretty close. Poltava is there.

They're all strung out along the Dnieper, because the Dnieper obviously is the artery, the key transport, well, it may not be anymore, but it was once clearly the key transport artery of Ukraine. Beyond that, you have much smaller towns and, you know, probably forests and fields, much less densely populated until eventually you reach the western borders and Galicia, which is again a completely different region, and that is in a kind of a way of a standalone region. But, you know, core Ukraine, if I can speak it like this, I mean, every single part of it would,

be within easy reach of the Russian army. And defending all of it, at that point, at that stage, a lot strung out along this river would be all but impossible. And I think the Ukrainians, by the way, understand it. One of the reasons they fought so doggedly to try to hold on in places like Donbass is because they understand how critical it would be if the Russians broke through to the NEPA in that kind of way. I think people don't understand the geography and the economics of this. And to repeat a further point, which I've made many times, if the NEPA becomes the state border

between Russia and Ukraine, then, of course, in the long term, if there's a rough Ukraine left, but its border is the NEPA, then to all practical purposes, that Ukraine, again, is in a situation where the Russians potentially have their hand on Ukraine's throat. They can choke it off pretty much at any point in time whenever they choose.

And if they control the Black Sea, then. Exactly. Yeah. Okay. All right. Anything else that you want to add to the Q&A? He spoke a lot about... He spoke a lot about economics.

He spoke about the fact that the economy is... I mean, they're now going to achieve 3.5% growth. He spoke about the fact that manufacturing is growing at a rate of 7.3%. He was, as always, he had all his fingers on all the statistics. Unemployment has fallen in Russia. There's labor shortage there. I do want to just make one observation about the labor. shortage because a lot of it again you see this a lot in the media in the West people

are saying that one of the reasons that there's the labour shortage is because so many men have joined the army and so many others have left the country which is true I mean people have left the country and we see that a lot of people have joined the military we had 300,000 people joined last year as reservists in the mobilisation that took place then We've had another 485,000 joining the army this year. That's about 700,000 people. And we've probably seen there's arguments about the figures. Some say that it was a million people who left Russia after the mobilisation.

I've heard it's much less than that. Maybe 700,000. Some reports say that about a third or a half of these people have now returned. But let's... Let's still say that 700,000 people left. So let's say there's about one and a half million people who either left Russia or joined the army during the war. That has to be set against the 3 million people from Ukraine

who have gone into Russia since the conflict started, which means that, in fact, the labour pool has probably increased rather than four. just from that and we're probably also getting guest workers and people like that from Central Asia going to Russia now in growing numbers so that there is a labour shortage is not principally because of these other regions because as a set the pool of people who could probably work is probably greater now than it was say on the first of February 2020. It is because the economy is growing so fast. All right. We will leave it to there.

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