The Duran Podcast - Putin-Trump Call, US Ceasefire Strategy Fails. Poland Patriot Missile Scandal

Episode Date: July 7, 2026

Putin-Trump Call, US Ceasefire Strategy Fails. Poland Patriot Missile Scandal

All right, Alexander, let's talk about the situation with Project Ukraine. We had a big missile strike from Russia into Kiev and into Ukraine yesterday and today. And we also have drone strikes from Ukraine into Russia as well. It looks like Russia is targeting military facilities, storage facilities, storage facilities of drones, of air defense missiles, maybe even those Patriot missiles that Poland secretly gave to Zelensky without Parliament approval. It looks like those have gone up in smoke. A lot of secondary explosions as well, so you know Russia's hitting something significant.

They're also targeting Poroshenko's chocolate factory, which Poroshenko was boasting about, that factory producing drones. That's where the money is at. If you want to get the big Ursula funds, you produce drones. That's how you get into her safe funds and the peace, the peace fund that she put together. But that's the situation in Ukraine. You got a Putin-Trump phone call as well. is Putin going after decision-making facilities in Kiev, as they talked about a month ago,

is his policy of maximum restraint and appeasement of Trump finally coming to an end? Well, I think these are good questions. For the moment, I do not get the sense that these two, the two big strikes that we've just seen are coming off. the decision-making centers. The Russians have said, and they said this about two months ago now, that they would come after the decision-making centers. And if you remember, they said that Western diplomats should start thinking about packing their bags and leaving Kiev. But they haven't attacked in a serious way the decision-making centers yet. And, well, there could be all kinds debates as to why. Lovrov has said that the Russian warnings to the diplomats to the

Western governments remain in place and that those attacks will come. My own view, and I think this is a, I mean, I've made it previously, I think that that Russian warning and that very big strike that followed, which used the Oreschnik system against a satellite town of Kiev and another Oresnik, as it turned out, on the same day, to attack what was called a fortified centre in Dombas. I think all of those things, all that was part of an organised military campaign, but the timetable for that particular strike and the warning, were brought forward because of what happened in Starrel-Belsk, the Ukrainian attack on the dormitory.

And I think that the Russians in, when they carried down that big attack with the Oresniks and all that back in May, were not yet ready for the major campaign involving the centers, decision-making centers in Kiev because the Oresniks are still not, I think,

fully perfected. Production is only really beginning in a big way. And I don't think the timing on the front lines, everything in Russia in terms of the military campaign seems to be fairly carefully

synchronized. I don't think all of these things yet were brought together to make it happen in that way. I'm fairly sure, if I'm very sure, that we will be seeing attacks on the decision-making centres later this summer. In the meantime, what the Russians are doing is that they're pounding Kiev. I've no doubt, by the way, that these are carefully pre-prepared, pre-planned attacks. There is a meeting between Putin and the top military leaders, Geracimov was there. Gerasimov reported to Putin about the general military situation. But he described the strikes on Kiev itself.

Virtually nobody noticed a particular phrase he used. He said that these strikes are taking place in accordance with a plan of the general staff. So there is a military plan. I think they're pounding away at Kiev. They're softening up Kiev. They're coming after what's left of its air defenses. Eventually the point will come when the strikes on the decision-making centers will happen. Probably, as I said, later this summer.

The Trump-Putin phone call, the Zelensky-Trump phone call. Ushikov, in his readout, said that the phone call lasted 85 minutes. and was initiated by the United States. Yes. We don't know how long there's Zelensky-Trump phone call lasted. I haven't seen any references as to who initiated it as well. We are getting reports that Trump will be meeting with Zelensky on the sidelines of the NATO summit. Ukraine is going to be present at that NATO summit,

getting, asking for weapons and money and getting weapons and money, but significantly less than Zeletsky had wanted. Well, there were reports that he was going to get $150 billion from NATO, and then there were reports that he's getting $70 billion, but he's actually only going to get $10 billion, because part of that $70 billion is coming from the EU gift, the $90 billion EU gift that they're giving to Ukraine. So he's really going to leave with $10 billion in new money.

Anyway, the phone call between the... the U.S. President and both sides, Ukraine and Russia, is Trump, once again, the neutral mediator in all of this. Financial Times ran an article saying that it is the United States that is helping Ukraine attack Russia. I believe they went a step further, even further than the United States is helping Ukraine attack Russia. The United States is effectively running these attacks against Russia, at least American Intel. I mean, the Financial Times really implicates the United States and the attacks against Russia. I have absolutely no doubt whatsoever that that is the case. And I'm going to say something

else. The telephone call from Trump to Putin, and you're absolutely correct, it was Trump who initiated the call, is absolutely a part of all of this. And it explains what's going on. And it also explains to some extent this big narrative construction that we've been hearing over the last few months about how the situation on the front lines in Ukraine in general has turned against the Russians that the Ukrainians now have the initiative in the war. In some ways, it reminds me of some aspects of the U.S. war with Iran that took place in March and early April. Anyway, let me unpack that. Clearly, what happened after Anchorage, and we go back to Anchorage, I'm increasingly coming around to the view that Anchorage was an attempt by Trump, Witkoff, Kellogg, all of them, to try to get the Russians to agree to a ceasefire.

Not an immediate ceasefire on the existing front lines, dangling to them some prospect eventually of a Ukrainian withdrawal from Dombas. This is what Lavrov is hinting at. I think that was what it was all about. It didn't work out that way. Putin came along. He said, look, I'm very happy with the proposal that you're coming up with. that the Ukrainians withdraw from Dombas and we do all of this sequencing.

But Putin again said no ceasefire. There's not going to be a ceasefire until the Ukrainians start to withdraw. And that left the American strategy, you know, up in the air because they hadn't got the ceasefire that they were looking for. So in the autumn of 2025, the decision. decision is made, start the drone offensive, get attacks going against Russia itself, try to escalate the pressure on the Russians, impose sanctions on the Rosneft and Luke oil, put pressure on India to stop buying Russian oil. And so that was the big switch in policy.

also try to scare the Russians with talk about Tomahawk missile deployments. Again, try to get the Russians to agree to a ceasefire on the existing conflict lines. And this continued right out through the autumn. And then eventually we got to the situation in December when there's discussions in Washington, there's discussions in Europe, there's discussions in Ukraine, who, why aren't the Russians doing what we want? Why aren't they, why aren't they buckling under all this pressure? And the idea is, well, maybe it's Putin.

Putin is the problem. So we have the attack on Valdai, the attempt to basically remove Putin from the scene. That doesn't work. So then we have the escalation of the drone war, the harassment of the tankers, the Russian tankers, the Shadow Fleet tankers, that follows. There's the narrative about the situation being in stalemate on the front lines. And there's all the excitement and euphoria

across the West, including in the United States, that the drone war is starting to have an effect on the Russians. So things now are starting to look. Like, it's not quite like that. So there's the announcement last week from the Russians that they've captured Konstantinovka. There's Putin's message to Trump, which is an absolutely standard message. Putin always sends messages to leaders of states congratulating them on their national holiday. So there's the message from Putin to Trump congratulating the U.S. on the 4th of July. So Trump then goes off the bat on that.

He calls Putin and they talk for 85 minutes. And if you pass Ushakov's summary of the conversation closely, which I've done, you see all sorts of words like, business-like, candid appear in that conversation. There's nothing about warmth, there's nothing about sincerity. Ushikov says that it was a constructive discussion. But what contradicts that is that there's no sign of agreement about everything, anything. What you come away with is Trump again putting enormous pressure on Putin, not just to agree with ceasefire, but also to accept Wittgolf and.

Kushner in Moscow. And Putin's saying no. There's even a section where Trump says to Putin, you can have Wickoff and Kushner coming to Moscow whenever you choose, it's up to you. And there's no sign that Putin for the moment is agreeing with all of this. So I think this is what happened. I think that was how the meeting went. For the moment, Putin, Putin is still talking to Trump. I mean, he probably will continue to do this all the time. But that last telephone call, it looked to me, was as Trump trying to put verbal pressure on Putin to agree some kind of ceasefire.

You see all the commentaries appearing all over the media. There's a fork in the road. Putin has to make a decision. Does he want peace? Does he want further war? all of this kind of thing. And the Americans piling on the pressure with a drone offensive and all of these things and very, very baffled that at one and the same time, Vladimir Putin is talking to them,

but is not giving them what they want. And I think that this is actually where we are at this point in the conflict at the moment. And I think on top of that, we now have news from Donbass of places like CONCHA's, instantine of being captured and whether the Americans are able to absorb this, whether they're able to assimilate this information, I'm not absolutely sure. But I do get the sense that it's making both them and the Europeans increasingly uneasy. So that's, that's, I think, where we are. It's, you know, the pieces are starting to come together. But this has been, in my opinion, the strategy, the Trump administration has been following all of the,

long. In other words, they've been trying to freeze the conflict from the moment Trump was elected. The tactics change. Sometimes we have persuasion like they did in Anchorage. Other times it's pressure, like with the drone offensive. But one way or the other, they're getting very frustrated that Putin isn't doing what they want. The Europeans and the Trump administration, they're going to head into the NATO summit, and they're just not going to accept that Constantinovka has been captured. I've been reading article after article from the Collective West, and they are running with the stalemate narrative. They continue to say, a U.S. official, actually, just the other day said that Russia has made

no gains on the front line. Yes. As Konstantinovka has been captured, Zelenskyy refuses the fallen soldiers. For two reasons, he refuses to receive. the fallen soldiers, which is what the Russian Ministry of Defense has offered to Zeletsky, about 13. They claim 13,500 casualties Ukraine suffered trying to hold on to Constantino. This is coming from the Russian Ministry of Defense. They offered Zelensky and Ukraine to create a few hours window where they will return the fallen soldiers. Zelensky refuses because,

one, he doesn't want to pay the money. That's reason number one. And reason number two, it would destroy his narrative about Konstantinovka not being captured. That is a... I mean, he could disprove what the Russians are saying by accepting the fallen soldiers and no fallen soldiers or a few fallen soldiers are returned to Ukraine. And Solanski could say, you see, they haven't captured Constantinofka, but he knows it's going to be the reverse. So he doesn't accept it.

So in NATO, they're going to just ignore everything. And Trump is going to be mesmerized and dazzled by Macron and Mertz and Maloney. And he's going to continue to push Ukraine to escalate with Russia. The interesting part to what you said is not the U.S. policy of trying to get Russia to agree to ceasefire. The interesting part, the weird part, is Russia, Putin's policy of maximum restraint and appeasement. Has there ever been a case in the history of war where one side throws everything it has at its opponent, which is the collective West, all the money, all the weapons, everything they have. They've thrown at Russia.

And the other side holds back as much as they can in order to please the, the leader of the opponents? Has there ever been such a situation in history before? Strangely enough, many times. It's far from you. You could argue that something rather like that happened during the American Civil War when Lincoln was constantly saying, appearing to take a much more moderate position than ultimately he did. You could argue something similar happened during the Vietnam War. That is not unusual in itself. Where I think the problem comes, and this is where Putin, I think, is, you know, completely wrong, is that he seems to think that him coming along and telling Trump, look, these people are lying

to you. My army is actually winning. We are advancing this narrative that you're being sold about things being in stalemate. is wrong, which is something that happens now in meeting after meeting, telephone conversation, after telephone conversation, Putin going to extraordinary length, one census, to go through what's happening in every part of the front line and thinking that Trump is actually listening. There I think that that is where I think Putin is completely wrong. It is very, very like Vladimir Putin. As I said many times, in some respects, he's a very rational man, and his own

rationality sometimes leads him into forced places, because he assumes that the other side is as rational and as fact-based as he imagines himself to be. So he did this with the Europeans over the Minsk process, and he's doing the same with the Americans over the situation. in Ukraine. And now I come back to my point that in some ways it reminds me a great deal of the U.S. Iran war in the sense that throughout that war, we were hearing about how Trump was, you know, watching videos, two or three minute videos he was being provided in which he saw lots of bangs, and he came away from them, convinced that the United States was winning. And he was making one statement after another about how the US was doing well and how Iran was in crisis and all

of that kind of thing. And it seems to me that what we're looking at is something very similar. So Radcliffe, Hankseth, all of these people, the Ukrainians, the Europeans, they're presenting him with these images of, you know, drones hitting refineries. smoke rising in Moscow, all of that. And they're telling him, look, this is, you know, the Russians are taking real damage. This is the evidence. There's all these lines of people at gas stations.

There's problems in Crimea. There's all of these things. The pressure on Putin is unbelievable. And he's buying it. And here, and Putin comes along and he lectures Trump. Putin has a tendency to lecture. Lectures Trump for, you know, 30 minutes or whatever it is, going through everything. And of course, what Putin doesn't realize is that this goes completely over Trump's head.

Trump isn't listening to any of this and never will. It will take a much more dramatic situation than the fall of a place like Konstantinivka to shake Trump out of the narrative. Of course, they will. deny that Konstantinifka has fallen, just as they will deny that Slaviansk and Kramatoska fallen when they eventually do. It needs something much bigger like the Russian army to arrive at the gates of Kiev to make Trump realize that the narrative he is being told is a false one. And I don't think Putin gets this. And I think that this is the gap, if you like,

in Putin's understanding of Trump and indeed of understanding of the West and of information war that Zelensky, the Europeans, the deep state in the United States, the CIA, all of these people are taking advantage of. It doesn't make any sense because Putin once upon a time said that it doesn't matter who the president of the United States is. It's the same people in the black suits that come along and they make the decisions. I mean, he knows how things are done in the United States. He knows that ultimately Trump is not the final decision maker.

Yes. I mean, he must know that Trump is not interested in what's happening and is not able to absorb Putin's lectures or Putin's history. lessons. He must also know that. Whitkoff and Kushner are not able to absorb his lectures and his history lessons whenever they fly to Moscow. I doubt that Whitkoff and Kushner can even name the four regents before Newell Blas. I doubt it. We said, yeah. Trump definitely has no idea. So, I mean, Putin knows how things work in the United States. He's been president for 20 years. He knows how things work. So why does he can do.

continue with this policy. And it's a failed policy. There's no doubt about it. It's a failed policy. Well, well, I mean, are people telling him that it's a failed policy? First of all, is it even actually a policy? Exactly. Well, it's because it's a policy. Maybe it's not a written policy, but I mean, I'm not sure that it even is in the end. Because if Putin changed the way in which the military are conducting the war in Ukraine. If he started to make concessions to the Americans, if he started to make concessions to the Europeans, then it would indeed be extremely dangerous.

But of course, he doesn't. He didn't do that when Trump straightforwardly asked for an unconditional ceasefire. at the start of last year. He made no concessions of any substance in Anchorage. I think that is becoming increasingly. He did make, I mean, he said he made. Well, he made some concessions, but the bigger concessions were made by the Americans, and the Americans, of course, never acted on them. So Anchorage never went anywhere. Putin never conceded in Anchorage anything that changed the entire direction of the war, and he's never made any concessions of any substance since. And he made that clear in the call, yes, in the call that took place, that again, he's made no concessions.

There's even again a passage in Ushikov's read, where he says, you know, they were talking about negotiations and Putin said that Russia's absolutely up for negotiations, provided they are on the basis of Russia's principles. It's well-known, well-established terms and principles, which is of course exactly what the Americans, the Europeans, the Ukrainians are trying to get him to move from, what they call his maximalist demands. They're not maximalist, but Putin is sticking with them. So if Putin were making concessions, substantive concessions, which changed the course of the war, and affected the direction of events, then I agree it would be, it would not just be a policy,

it would be a disaster. But that is something which he absolutely refuses to do. So he has a policy of engaging with the Americans, of talking to Trump. But that's all it is at the moment. Well, inaction is also a type of action. I mean, by allowing your ships to be seized. And I know these are not Russian flags. I know the arguments.

They're not Russian flagged and all of these things. But still, you're allowing Shadowfleet, as they call them. We all know what that means. We've talked about it many times. But still, you're allowing ships that are considered to or perceived to be Russian aligned or carrying Russian oil or Russian energy. Those get seized. It's not a lot. It's a small amount. And I also understand it doesn't make a big, a big dead in the overall transport of energy. But still, you're allowing Macron and Stommer and all these guys to get away with it. By showing inaction over the many, many months of the drone strikes. And there was a type of inaction. I mean, Putin disappeared for a good period of time, especially after Valdae. I mean, He disappeared.

You know, you send a message when you show in action and constantly allowing the red lines to be crossed, or at least allowing the big red line to be crossed. Now, let's not forget how all of this started. Biden launched the tackles into Russia. Putin specifically said, missiles into Russia, long-range missiles into Russia, or missiles into Russia are a red line. He said that pre-2014 Russia. He said that's a red line. Trump, as he was campaigning, he put out a statement saying, there is no way that I'm going to greenlight missile strikes into Russia.

When I become president, that policy is going to be canceled. That was what Trump said on a campaign trail. Putin decided to not act on the missile strikes into Russia. in the hopes that when Trump becomes president, then he can engage with Trump, and Trump is going to reverse the missile policy into Russia. That was how all of this went about. Trump obviously was lying on the campaign trail, obviously. What we got is more, more strikes into Russia. Is Putin finally starting to understand the games that are being played or not?

I mean, it's, it's, every, it's, it's not a policy, the restraint, but it is a direction of, a guide, it's a directive of the Kremlin. I think what, what there is. Maybe it's the correct, maybe it's the correct decision. I'm not saying, maybe it's the correct decision. Maybe it's not. I'm just, I'm just throwing it out there. I think, I think what there is is a policy within the Kremlin or this, on, on purpose. Putin's part, not to engage in counter-escalation that could widen the war and which might

jeopardize, firstly, internal stability within Russia, secondly, the military progress in the war itself, which continues, and thirdly, which might lead us into a situation where we could find ourselves in a direct conflict between Russia and the West. So I think that that is a policy decision. And I think it's a policy decision that Putin looks determined to stick to, even as he continues with the war in Ukraine and has his army continued to make gains there. Now, there are, however, things that I think need to be said also. Firstly, with the shadow fleet tankers, I would actually push back quite strongly on

I mean, we, perhaps, because I live in Britain, we've now had Russian warships very close to Britain. We've had Russian frigates, warning off British warships from approaching Russian tankers. This has caused, or at least shadow fleet tankers. This has caused great dismay and alarm here in Britain. We've also had an incident, which just happened a couple of days ago, in which apparently a Russian warship warned off the Germans, a German coast guard, which also was approaching a shadow fleet tanker. The one thing the Russians have said repeatedly that they are not prepared to do is they're not prepared to protect ships that aren't properly sorted out. legally themselves. At one point I thought that it was only ships which carried the Russian flag

that the Russians were prepared to protect. In fact, they're clearly prepared to protect ships that carry other flags, but ships that have no flags that have not sorted out their legal status. The Russians are not prepared to protect in the same way. We're talking about the odd one or two here, probably owned by very dodgy ship owners. I don't think this makes any difference in the great set of things. The vast majority of tankers get through and they are now being protected by the Russian Navy. About the missile strikes, yes, I do think the Russians were fooled by Donald Trump. He went out of his way to say. He gave a... I remember a very big article in Time, interviewed at Time magazine, after he was elected,

said that he vehemently opposed strikes on Russia. He then, as we see, resumed strikes on Russia. But then again, is it really the case that the Russians have not reacted? I think they have taken reciprocal action. I think they provided assistance and military technology to Iran. and if American bases across the Middle East have been severely damaged, and there's been attacks on British bases, by the way, in Iraqi Kurdistan as well, well, that may be partly because that may partly be blowback from the attacks

that we have seen happen against Russia. So I do think the Russians have been completely passive. I think they have reacted where they continue to fail, is in the information war, which I've discussed so many times, that I don't really think I need to repeat what I've said there. But they may have taken counteraction, but because they don't talk about it, it's as if in the wide discussion of things,

this counteraction hasn't happened. Poland provided air defense missiles, Patriot missiles, to Russia. The reports claim that this, I mean to Ukraine, sorry, the reports claim that this was done on the orders of Pistorius. Pistorius is not in the Polish government. He's the defense minister for Germany. These missiles were not were not missiles in like stockpiled or missiles just hanging around. these were missiles that Poland was going to use as part of their defense network.

So these were actually missiles in Poland's inventory that were to be used to provide air defense for Poland. And instead, it looks like, if you go by these reports, without Parliament approval of Poland, that these missiles were handed over to Zelensky. on the orders of Germany. Russia's deputy foreign minister, Mikhail Galuzin, told Ria Novesti, we have verified information that Latvia and other Baltic republics have already provided their air corridors for Ukrainian drones that attacked our country's civilian infrastructure. What does this mean? It definitely sounds like...

NATO and Europe is in conflict with Russia. Well, it doesn't sound like it. It's, I mean, if you go by just these two reports over the past 24 hours, this is just 24 hours of information that we have. I think these are two distinct things. I mean, the air defense missiles are, you know, defense weapons. The drones are weapons that are carrying out strikes against Russia. Let's talk about the Patriot missiles. I think this was an extraordinary decision, a terrible decision.

Poland going behind its own parliamentary bodies, breaking its own laws in order to supply air defense missiles, which are now desperately in short supply, on the instructions of the German defense minister, who is in turn almost certainly getting his instructions from Brussels and by the way, Washington, because the United States must approve all transfers of air defense missiles. Now, that tells me a number of things. Firstly, that the situation in Poland is becoming politically very fragile, and the Polish government was very nervous about taking this to the Polish country. Parliament to get approval there, that there might have been serious pushback in the Polish Parliament

if this decision had been made publicly and legally in the way that it should have been. And we can see that there is at the moment a major conflict, an argument going on between Poland and within Poland and between Poland and Ukraine. So, I mean, this is already a very bad thing. But also, again, stripping Europe even more of what air-deaf. defense assets it has so that Zelensky can throw them away because the big story of the whole Ukraine war is of the West giving weapons to Zelensky, lots and lots of weapons and lots of money to Zelensky. And what invariably happens is that those weapons are used up, burnt up.

The money is wasted. Zelensky comes back for more, and he invariably gets more. He may be only getting 10 billion out of this meeting in Ankara, but he wanted 70 billion. Now they're saying it has to come out of the loan. But remember the loan, the 90 billion euro loan, I mean, there are all kinds of legal problems with it. It looks as if, to me, this 70 billion, I think it's euro payment, is actually going to step outside the loan. I've already, I've said many, many times that I had doubts that if they floated bonds on the international markets, they would get people to pay those, to buy those bonds. It looks to me as if what this is all about now is gradually, changing the original 90 billion euro loan that was agreed in December into direct payments by European governments. In other words, it's changing the entire character of the loan and it's doing so in a way that means that European governments are now going to start paying money again directly

to Zelensky. In other words, he's getting money and he's getting money. It is a sign still of the way in which for Europe, despite everything, despite talk of rearmament, despite economic crisis, keeping Zelensky with the money and the weapons that he wants continues to be the overriding priority that trumps everything. legal procedures, constitutional mechanisms, concepts of accountability, financial stability, it does everything. So, you know, what we see is that this grift, as you've correctly described it, of keeping Zelensky and Project Ukraine funded and running, continues unabated.

Now, the drone attacks through the Baltic states, it's a completely different story because this is an offensive attack. It's well understood. It's been universally acknowledged in international law that sending an armed man across a country's border is an act of war. The drones passing through Baltic airspace, NATO airspace, with the agreement of the government, governments of those countries and attacking targets inside Russia is an act of war. No question about this. The Russians would be entitled to retaliate. This is where we come back to what I said at the start of the program. The Kremlin has a policy of avoiding an expansion of the war and an escalation beyond the conflict in Ukraine itself.

the drone strikes on Russia are not as effective as the West imagines. And I think the cumulative evidence of the last few weeks confirms this. So they're saying to themselves, the Baltics, the NATO powers, are doing all of this. It's an act of war against us. Is it doing us so much damage? Is it hurting us so much that we must respond? No, it isn't. It is in our interests that we maintain this policy of non-escalation for the moment.

So we're not going to react to it in that kind of way. So these are two different things. All right. I'll end the video there. My only comment to that is I don't think the West sees it in the way that the Kremlin sees it. No, I understand that. I think the West sees it as, you know what, we can ramp up even more now into Russia. I think that's the way the Western leaders look at Russia's restraints.

Yes. And this is when we come back to my point about Putin, because, of course, Putin comes along and explains this all for hours to Donald Trump. And I think, you know, in Putin's mind, this is all about controlling escalation, trying to get Trump to understand that he's not been told the truth. And Putin not understanding, the Russians perhaps, not understanding, that the Europeans, the Americans, all of them, don't see these things in the way that they do.

It's worth pointing out the Americans and the Europeans here are acting irrationally and recklessly. and dangerously for themselves. It doesn't make sense to give what Patriot missiles you still have to Ukraine and to have them all burnt up and do so at a time when there's a massive shortage of air defense assets and these systems can't be replaced. So why do it? It makes no sense to go on giving Zelensky money when all that happens. is that he comes back and demands more. It makes absolutely no sense to conduct drone strikes inside Russia

when the effect of all of that is to have your bases across the Middle East burnt. So the Russians tell themselves these things. And of course, what they don't perhaps ever quite understand is that the other side doesn't work with. within that world of rational thinking and calculation that the Russians do. I think it makes a lot of sense if you're a Western leader. Keep Ukraine fighting Russia. You're not fighting Russia.

Ukraine is fighting Russia. Keep them fighting until the last Ukrainian, which they've said many times, right? Keep it going for however long it can go. And all of these contracts, at the end of the day, It comes back to us anyway. Oh, absolutely. Right. I mean, for them, it makes perfect.

I mean, if you're a European leader, if you're the United States, you're not fighting in this conflict. You know, you're letting the Slavic people fight, right? Ukraine, let them fight. Keep on funding it. And the good portion of those funds are coming to us anyway. I mean, the 90 billion EU loan, which, as we've said in many videos in the past, was always going to come from the EU member states.

There was no chance in hell. No, absolutely. Absolutely. Of course, the EU member states were going to pay for that money directly. But of the 90 billion or the 60 billion, that's actually a weapons program of that 90 billion, that's weapons programs for U.S. And for Western military companies. So at the end of the day, if you're a politician, it works out well for you.

I have not seen a single article. in the Russian media that mentions or discusses the extent to which this is a grift. I don't think that the Russians have any ability at the moment to compute this fact. This is something that is so completely alien to their way of thinking that you're giving money to Zelensky so that the money comes back to you and that he just goes around, sloshing around the system and that you don't actually produce weapons as a result, because that's not even your priority. This isn't something that, as I said, the Russians are able to compute because they work

in a completely different way. So this is, they live on Mars and we live on Venus or whatever it is, you know, people say. I just don't think the Russians get this. I certainly don't think Putin. gets this at all, that there are very, very powerful financial interests in Europe that actually like this, that Mertz's massive debt-fueled weapons program and infrastructure program, that the purpose of it is not to generate weapons, but to generate debt.

Russia, of course, as we know, has an aversion to debt. It's something, as I said, that they just cannot get their minds around. And this, I think, very, very difficult to get them to see it in that way. Because for them, this is a question of war and peace. And they take these things war and peace very, very seriously, and assume that if you fight a war, you fight that war in order to win it. Yes, lots of Slavic people are dying. in this war.

But if you look at this in purely geopolitical terms, the Russian military is getting bigger, Russia's getting technologically more advanced, its economy is growing, and it's deepening its alliance with China. It doesn't make geopolitical sense either. Yeah, I mean, I don't know, it's hard to understand. Trump says it, I'm going to sell weapons to NATO.

I mean, he says it, I'm going to sell. I'm not going to give the weapons. I'm going to sell the weapons. I mean, he says it, you know, right there. So, I mean, it's a pretty, it's pretty much in your face what's happening. Yes, I've never seen a single commentary about this, looking at this in the kind of way that you've discussed, anywhere, as I said, on the Russian side. I mean, maybe there are other places. I mean, I don't read it. I'm not able to read the entire Russian media. But the idea that this is, you know, the, the idea that this. This is all ultimately a grift. As I said, is something which I think they find all, I mean, I don't think it's something they have ever properly understood. All right. We'll end the video there at the durand.com.

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