The Duran Podcast - Putin's vision for post war Ukraine

Episode Date: June 24, 2025

Putin's vision for post war Ukraine

All right, Alexander, let's talk about Putin's statements at the St. Petersburg International Economic Forum. We're a few days removed now from those statements that he made during his speech, as well as a panel that he was taking part in. And we can now start to analyze what the Russian president said. And he did say some pretty amazing things. So, on Ukraine, on what he said about Ukraine, one people with the Russians, Ukraine as being part of Russia. There was a lot more context to it, but, you know, he was saying these things. What are your thoughts on the statements that Putin made during the St. Petersburg-Berg International Economic Forum?

In my opinion, there are significant departure from the Russian position up to now. Now, you're absolutely correct in saying that if you read the totality of his comments, they are a lot more moderate than some of the headlines might imply. I mean, he said that Russia had never disputed Ukraine's right to independence, that the Russians had worked incredibly hard to find peaceful solution. that peaceful solutions through diplomacy are still available. But when he was talking about Ukrainian independence and Russia's recognizing of Ukrainian independence, I noticed that he was using the past tense.

So it's starting to look as if Putin is gradually coming around to the view that there There is not going to be a negotiated outcome of this conflict with Ukraine, that Zelensky will never come to terms, that the Europeans will never agree to Ukraine coming to terms, and that the United States will never bring the kind of pressure on Ukraine that would cause Zelensky to come to terms. So that the war is going to continue. Putin is starting to think beyond the war, and he's starting to think, what will the outcome of that be? First of all, he says, if we're talking about the four regions, these are clearly Russian, there is nothing to discuss here.

But he also said, if we move beyond the four regions, which we are doing, we're now advancing in Neapro-Betrovs region, we're also advancing, of course, in Khadrath region as well. if these territories are occupied by us, then every place where a Russian soldier puts down his foot becomes Russian. And these territories are historic Russian land anyway. And he's clearly preparing the situation for, in a future negotiation, the Russians telling the Ukrainians, look, you didn't agree to the four regions being Russian. We've now moved beyond the full regions, where we've occupied large areas of Nehpro-Petrovsk region, Harkov region, and Tsumi region as well. Sumi also very Russian.

He also, interestingly, refused to rule out the possibility that the city of Sumi might be occupied by Russia as well. So you could lose these three regions too. So the four regions become seven. So, I mean, he's basically signaling that. But he's going further than that, and he's saying that since all of Ukraine is ours, because Russians and Ukrainians are the same people, if the Russian army is obliged to go on advancing further westwards, if he crosses the river, the NEPA, if it captures not just Odessa and Nikolayev, but other places too, Krivoj, Nicopol, Kremlinchuk, Kiev itself, if it goes further west still,

Jitomir, Vinica, then these places too are Russian and following logically from the position that Putin is saying. In that case, there is nothing to prevent Russia holding referendums in these places as well. If the people choose to join Russia, that's their right, and that's the end of the matter. How does everything that's happening in the Middle East between Iran and Israel affect what's going on in Ukraine? It affects it a lot for two reasons. Firstly, the Russians obviously are seeing that the United States is now immersed in the situation in the Middle East. It's having to transfer weapons supplies and air defense into Saudi. from Ukraine to the Middle East, the Russians are going to take advantage of that.

Of course they are. I mean, there would be fools if they didn't, and they're not fools. So that it assists them from a military point of view. But it also has, I'm afraid, another consequence, which is that the Russians will say to themselves, the Americans attacked Iran, even whilst they were negotiating. with Iran. They've acted with extraordinary duplicity. We've already seen many times how it's difficult, impossible it is to negotiate with the Western powers. Putin, again, in the same comments in Spief, went over the whole story of Minsk and the way in which the Russians were

tricked over Minsk, the way he personally was tricked over Minsk. All of that, he would, he went through the period of saying, well, it looks as if Donald Trump is different. Now he's going to say, well, it looks like Donald Trump actually isn't any different. He too cannot be trusted any more than previous American leaders could be trusted. The Americans canceled at the last moment another meeting, which we were supposed to hold with them, seeking normalization of relations with them. So in light of all of this, we shouldn't worry too much about what the Americans are saying about Ukraine, because they may be talking about negotiations, they may be talking about peace agreements, but we can't place any reliance

upon it at all. There's focused instead on winning the war, because that is the only certainty we have here. The NATO meeting that is going to take place in the Netherlands in now, actually, Now that has taken place in the Netherlands is going to be a reduced meeting, right? It's not going to focus so much on Ukraine. A few statements are going to be made on the conflict in Ukraine. And obviously, the United States' participation at this event is going to be diminished, given what is going on between Iran, Israel and the United States, this conflict that is

that is taking shape. So how is NATO looking at all of this? How are the Europeans looking at all of this? Well, from NATO's point of view, long-term point of view, this is a complete disaster. By the way, I should quickly add, the Prime Minister of Japan and the President of South Korea are staying away as well. They're not going, right? Absolutely, they're not going.

I mean, they'd previously attended earlier NATO meetings, but they decided to say. stay away from this one. There's going to be no important decisions at this NATO meeting. It looks as if even the commitment that the Americans are trying to get the Europeans to make to increase defense spending to 5% of GDP, the Europeans are now kicking that into the long grass because they know they can't achieve it. I mean, it's unachievable. So it looks like even more of a meeting of ghosts than other NATO meetings that have taken. place recently are starting to look. Now, if the United States gets tied down in the Middle East, if the United States starts to get tied down in the Indo-Pacific region, then of course the United

States cannot give more attention to Europe. It can't go on supporting Ukraine. It's going to become a less visible partner and less important force in Europe, in which case, given how important the United States is to NATO, there is no point in NATO anymore, at least as a military alliance. It will no doubt continue, but it will become a shadow. And I think that's something that the Europeans have been worried about ever since Donald Trump became president, that he's not really focused on Europe. He's focused on Israel, Iran, the Middle East, Asia, China, those sort of things. He's not really very interested in Europe at all. And the Europeans have got themselves into this state of believing that the Russians are coming for them. The Russians are

winning the war in Ukraine. Putin is now talking openly about a situation where Ukraine gets reabsorbed into Russia because ultimately it's difficult to read these comments that he's made in any other way. Russia, in other words, will once again become the biggest by far of all of the European powers and NATO will be weakened and become a shadow and the United States might start to detach itself. So this is going to be a major crisis with the Europeans. And they don't really, it seems to me, have a strategy for it. And to be frank, I do you think they are able to put together a strategy. The best that they can do is to have Ursula come up with more funds, because that's what

their response to every problem is now. Yeah, that's what Lindsay Graham is also talking about, more sanctions. Ursula would do her funds. The money will be lost. They're already scheming ways. That's what Politico, the words that Politico used, scheme. That's their words, not mine. They're already scheming ways to shift around, to move around the Russian-frozen assets,

so we know what they're trying to do there. And Lindsey Graham is going on about the 500% Russian secondary sanctions. He says the Senate is ready to vote on this. He says it's going to be a bunker buster for Putin. They have no answers to counter Russia, at least not. on the battlefield, not diplomacy-wise either. We're looking at a money grab now. We're looking at more useless sanctions.

Developed more to hurt and anger Russia and India, than to hurt Russia, at least that's what Lindsey Graham is doing. So it does seem that the US is the Trump administration and the neocons are moving on to the next war, which is Iran. And this time, they really sense that they can get this war. Then they can be a part of this war where with Russia, that door was shut closed and there was no chance of the US getting into a hot war with Russia. And if they did, they would get defeated going into Ukraine.

So this time, I think they can taste an actual war going down. And so that's where their attention is at. This is exactly, in effect, and I think this is something that perhaps we ought to be, We ought to make clear. You actually said it briefly in one of our recent programs or live streams. What's basically happened. No story with this Iran crisis is that the United States having lost one war, the neocons having lost one war, which is Ukraine.

What do they do is they start another, that they've just gone from the war they've lost to the war that they now hope they're going to win. They have no more clear strategies about how they're going to win that war again. Iran than they did about in connection with the war against Russia. But they do see that Iran is clearly weaker than Russia is, a lot weaker. So they're coming after Iran now. And that's probably what is going to absorb the United States for the next couple of months, at least.

Perhaps much long. Perhaps much longer. Yeah. Okay. We will end the video there. The durand. That looks.com. We are on Rumbleauditsub, but shoot, telegram, and Rakfin, and

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