The Duran Podcast - Rabotino media narrative. Ukraine mobilization

Episode Date: September 2, 2023

Rabotino media narrative. Ukraine mobilization

All right, Alexander, let's do an update as to what is going on in Ukraine. And, you know, if you read the Collective West Mainstream Media, if you listen to Olensky-Pedoliak, all of these guys, NATO generals, you get the impression that Ukraine is miles away from Militopol. about to enter Mariupo. Now, I'm not exaggerating either. They're very clever with their titles, you know. Ukraine breaks first line of defense is closer now to Mariupo. I mean, these are the titles that, you know, media outlets like Forbes or, or Business Insider, the Telegraph, the Telegraph. The Wall Street, the Wall Street Journal as well, of course.

You know, okay, so you did a video on your channel yesterday, and you talked about, you talked about, about the fighting that is taking place, specifically in one area. Byr-A-Batina and this area around Ranapitina. I saw Brian Berlertic's video on The New Atlas. I saw your video. And both of you are pretty much coming to the same conclusions. And you say something very different than what Zelensky is saying, that what Danilov is saying, NATO command, Forbes, Telegraph, Wall Street Journal.

What's the truth? Yeah, well, this is, this is it, because it is, becoming increasingly surreal and we're getting absolutely diametrically opposite accounts now from you know different sources so on the one hand we get this these stories which are coming from ukrainian authorities the ukrainian authorities what they say is automatically reproduced by the western media and by western commentators and then we get the other sources which are you People on the Russian side, I mean, I want to stress, they are on the Russian side. We have to say that straight away.

But they are very much in contact with Russian soldiers on the ground. And this is the key thing to understand about them. They have been consistently reliable and well informed about the fighting right from the start of the war. They are often savagely critical of the Russian government. I've never known them at any point to start saying things, you know, sugar-coating things. On the contrary, when things start to go wrong for the Russian side, they become very angry and they talk about it and they make criticisms. So, a reliable information from, you know, a sources which have proved reliable against others that are not.

And let's begin with the way it started at the start of this week. I mean, first of all, there's this village of Rabortino, which we've been hearing so much of. about for so many months. Last week, Ukrainians said that they were on the brink of capturing Rabatino and that the Russians had been pushed back to some

buildings in the south. Now that was true. Everybody at that time, the Russians, Ukrainians, they were saying the same thing. And then out of nowhere, on Monday, Hannah Maliar, who is the deputy defense minister of UK, said that Raboltino has been completely captured by Ukraine.

And the media, especially in Britain, but to some extent in the United States, started to repeat that, repeated that claim as true. This is despite the fact that Hannah Malia has a record of telling us things in the past, which have turned out to be not true. I mean, she claimed, for example, after Bachman fell, for some weeks, She was saying that the Ukrainians still had positions in Bahmah, that they were still holding onto, and that turned out to be wrong.

So nonetheless, people assumed that what Hannah Malia was saying is true. And then a few days later, we got reports about Ukraine having pierced the Sulavikin line. And this appeared all over the place. It started with a reported Bill Zaytun. It then started to sort of spread. There was a piece yesterday in the Wall Street Journal, which claimed to be an exclusive, even that when you actually read it, it's not exclusive at all. It's simply what they're all saying.

And it's clear again that we're talking about information obtained from Ukrainian sources. Now, the Russians are telling us Rabatino has not been captured by the Ukrainians. The Russians still control the southern part of Rabotino. they, by the way, said that there was another battle for Rabatino only this morning, that the Ukrainians again are tried to capture the village, and they were again thrown back and that they suffered losses. And they've also said the Suravikin line has not been reached, let alone penetrated. And when you actually read the Wall Street Journal piece,

it's quite clear that what's really been talked about is that the Ukrainians have to some extent downscaled their attacks on Rabatino they're no longer really focusing on trying to capture that village it's proved to be too difficult for them so they've now tried to transfer the focus to other places and they're trying to capture in particular another village called Verbovet which is well to the east

of Rabotino. And this claim to have pierced the defences that the Surovic in line is really about trying to break through and capture Verbova, except, again, Russian reports say that the attempts by the Ukrainians to capture Verbova have been unsuccessful. Now, who do you believe? Well, I have no doubt at all that the Russians are telling the truth. The reason I say that is because the people that I am talking about, not the Russian defense ministry, not Russian officials, but the sort of war

corresponders, the journalists, the reporters from the ground, as I said, they have a record of telling the truth. And I cannot believe that they would simply invent whole battles like the one in Rabatino this morning out of the broadcloth. And moreover, what they're saying is consistent with what we

about the course of the offensive overall. So this is what I think has happened. I think that some people in Kiev, in Washington, have been increasingly worried that the offensive has not been going well. They're getting concerned that there's been all this bleak reporting about the progress of the offensive in the media. There have been all these articles that we've talked about in the Wall Street Journal itself, the New York Times,

the Washington Post. Washington Post, by the way, has been one of the newspapers that's been covering this less. So that's an interesting fact in itself, by the way. And note that the Washington Post is one of the places, you know, the recent reporting about the supposed Ukrainian successes. I note that the Washington Post is said to be particularly close to the intelligence community in the United States. So anyway, I think there's been concerns about these articles. I think there's been concerns about the fact that in Ukraine itself, Zelensky's poll ratings are apparently collapsing.

I think there's also worries that there's now more and more demand starting to build up throughout the system for some kind of negotiation process to be launched. and there are people both in Washington and Kiev who don't welcome that at all. So the result is that we've now moved from reporting about the actual war where Ukraine is still stuck. It's not been able to capture Rabatino.

It's not been able to capture Velbo there. It's not reached yet, the Suravikid line itself. So what we're getting instead are new stories which say, that Rabortino has been captured. Well, of course, it hasn't been. But then Ukraine took a decision

a short time ago prohibiting journalists from the West and indeed even from Ukraine from actually going to the front lines. So there's no direct way to contradict what they're saying, at least on the Ukrainian side.

So they're saying that they've captured Robotino, they haven't captured Robotino. They're saying they've penetrated the Surovicin line when in fact they've been trying to capture a variable there and we're getting these attempts in effect to create a narrative construct for the events of the last week or so which is not consistent with reality that's how

it looks to me yeah fake it too you make it as as we say in the united states right you know you exactly you have to you have you have to say that you've captured a potenao you have to fake everybody into believing that you've captured but I bought you know and hopefully hopefully you capture it that's I guess the strategy of the Zelensky regime that's the strategy of the collective

West mainstream media I mean I've read that the narrative is kind of like you know we're going to we're going to move now to the flanks and we're going to surround what I bought in there we're not going to go straight on through Rabatina and now we're going to just kind of go around it yeah that's kind of that's what I've been reading is the new

the new brilliant strategy which is very odd me because you change your strategy just right in the middle of an offensive and you decide to go around something. That means you can't go directly towards it. So something is wrong. Something's not going, right? What happens if, when and if, the Ukraine military doesn't capture Rappotene. What then? I mean, the counteroffensive is already a failure. Even if they capture Abottina. We're talking about a massive failure. A massive failure. When you look at a map, forget about, you know, Forbes saying that Ukraine is getting closer to Militap. When you look at a map, you understand that even if Ukraine were to capture Abotene, we're heading into three months of fighting

now. No. This is a failure. But what happens, Alexander, to the narrative, to the funding, to the mobilization that Ukraine wants to undertake, to the domestic, to the, to the domestic, to the, domestic sentiment in Ukraine about the conflict, to the EU funding, to the Biden White House, the Biden campaign, there's so much of play here. What happens if it comes to light that, you know, three months into this, we're now heading into winter, and we didn't even capture Rapportena. What then? Well, the short answer is they're not going to say that Rabotino hasn't been captured. It's a small village, 480 people before the wall.

So you just don't talk about it. I mean, that's what's going to happen. It's going to vanish from media commentary. It already has. I mean, this is one of the problems. I mean, you say you've captured Rabatina. So you have to pretend that you're advancing beyond Rabatina, which is why they're attacking in places like Verberver and other places.

and if you'd actually look at the map. I mean, Rabotina, you need to go through a Rabatina to get to Topmac. You need to get to Topmat. To get to Melito, Villotopoli. And they're not getting anywhere close to these places. But you have to, if you tell one thing which isn't true, then that leads you inevitably to say more things that aren't true as well. It's the nature of lying to be straightforward about it.

So that's what they get. But these are small places. So if it doesn't happen, it's very simple. You stop discussing it. We're going to see an end to reporting about reporting. In a few weeks' time, the rains and the mud will start. There'll be the new narrative that the offensive will then resume when the ground hardens. By the time the ground hardens, we move on to something else.

I think that's what they're going to do. I mean, that seems to me the way around. but at the moment it gets you out of this immediate problem. You've had all of these negative stories appearing one after the other in the media. We've had all this big push from people like Samuel Charrup, the Council for Foreign Relations. Some people in the military, Millie apparently has been saying things in the background about the need for negotiations to begin, all kinds of things like that. So you shift the narrative away from things. that you prevent negotiations.

I think in Kiev, there's a lot of people who just do not want to see negotiations, period. And it isn't just because they have an ideological investment in this war, which no doubt they do. It's because they know perfectly well that if there were negotiations, they would not survive in power. So you keep the narrative, you push the narrative back towards. success. You don't talk about your failures. You don't talk about your failure to capture Rabotina at all. And in the meantime, and I think this is the really big thing and the very ominous thing, Ukraine is going to start launching. It's now, I think, become absolutely clear, this massive mobilisation. And the reason they're going to launch this mobilisation is not because

they're winning, because if they were winning, they wouldn't need to launch a massive mobilisation. And mobilisation. It is precisely because they're losing and they're becoming afraid that a Russian offensive is coming. So they need to get more people to make up for their losses and to build up reserves and this talk that they're going to mobilize 200, 300, 500,000, 500,000 men. Nobody seems to be quite sure, but that there is going to be another huge mobilization in the autumn and the winter. Yeah, but, you know, the mobilization does a happen overnight. This takes time. And the collective West leadership, maybe not all the leaders in the collective West, but the top leaders, they must know the truth. I imagine, I hope they know the

truth. Maybe they don't. Maybe guys like Schultz and even Biden, maybe they have no idea what's going on. But I imagine Sullivan knows what's going on. I imagine Blinken knows what's going on. I imagine Blinken knows. knows what's going on. I imagine Macron knows what's going on. You know, Kalube was at a foreign ministers meeting, for example. He was at this foreign minister's meeting for the EU. And you can see that he's panicked. Yes. And, you know, he told the EU foreign ministers because they're talking about the failure of the counteroffensive and then he lost it. He said, you know, if you guys are so upset with the way we handle the counterfeiting what he said, but he's like, if you guys are so upset with the way we handle things, pick up a gun and go to the front line.

I think he basically told the foreign minister. I mean, he panicked. You can see that he's panicking. But it also shows that the EU foreign ministers are at a very minimum aware of the failure of this counteroffensive. And with it, it's tied in. All the money and the weapons. Everything is tied into or was tied into the success of the counteroffensive.

So, I mean, I understand they can hide it, but sooner or later the truth is going to come out. And I imagine it's going to come out sooner rather than later. Yeah, well, absolutely. And that's, of course, the other thing, because you can control the narrative for a little while, but you can't control it forever, especially if we do get a Russian offensive. You're absolutely right.

Mobilizing two, three, 500,000 men isn't going to solve your problems. It's going to make your problems worse, because you can throw lots of untrained men into the battle lines. And that does make a difference. but ultimately all you're doing if these men are not trained, if they're elderly or very young, if they're unfit to fight, if they're not properly equipped with modern weapons,

all you're doing is you're creating more soldiers for the Russians to kill. I mean, that's what you do. I mean, it's a terrible, cynical thing, but that's what it looks like. You can perhaps buy yourself a few more weeks, but it's not going to solve your problems. It's going to make your problems worse. it's going to be a catastrophe.

And I think this is the thing to always remember, a human catastrophe for Ukraine as well. So you can buy yourself time. But unless you use that time, and we do now have a space of time because the autumn period is coming that I support, sir, that's talk about a Russian offensive.

There will, I think, be some kind of a Russian offensive. There's been too much talk about one for it not to happen. But I don't think this is the big knockout blow. that the Russians are going to launch. I think that's more likely going to happen in the spring rather than now, because the Russians are building up their forces as well.

I don't think they're ready for that yet. But, you know, you have a time period when you could sit down and talk, but the problem is, and we've discussed this in previous programs, it seems as if the Western leaders still have, haven't yet accepted that the Russians are in no mood to talk and compromise on the basis of what the Russians will insist upon. I mean, there was another article by Anatole Levin and the

Guardian, which for me highlighted the problem. Now, Anato Levin has times been one of the best and most realistic commentators about the diplomatic struggle, and he did some very good article before the start of the fighting and he also did a good piece about Sarkas's attempts to talk about home truths and things but he's still talking about

freezing the war on the existing front lines and that's what people are thinking it's not going to fly the Russians won't agree he says that if Putin decides this the Russians will go along with it but Putin is not

going to decide this And I think that on this issue, Anatoleven is out of touch with wider Russian opinion. Yeah, well, okay, let's stay with the Russians a bit. And I want to ask you about the drone strikes. Every day there are drones heading towards Russia, every day. And I think we would be, I think it's clear that these drones, are disrupting everyday life in Russia. Yes, yes.

Right? I mean, how can they not? For example, airports are constantly having to shut down, and flights are being delayed. So every day you're getting drone strikes. Obviously, NATO is providing surveillance and intelligence. You had a couple of months ago, the Ministry of Defense said if NATO strikes, Russian territory, we're going to take out decision-making centers. Well, we're now a month, two months into the drone strikes, which are hitting or

trying to hit Russia infrastructure. They did hit the air base in Skolf, which is 30 kilometers away from Estonia. Yeah. Zelensky said that he hinted at the fact that Ukraine did it. He hinted at. He didn't say it, but he said we created a UAV that could travel 700 kilometers and it hit its target. Estonia has come out with denials. They say that they didn't do it. But look, there's no doubt that all of these drones are being coordinated to some extent, to some level by NATO and the Pentagon. You know, the Ministry of Defense, they seem to have, they seem to have drawn a red line a couple of months ago. It doesn't look like they're enforcing that red line. And so every day you're getting these drone strikes.

With every hundred drones, no matter how good a job Russian air defense is doing, they're going to hit something. And, you know, they're going to hit infrastructure. They may hit a civilian target. I don't know. I hope not. But, you know, it's just logic. If they keep on launching, something's going to get hit, and at a minimum, it's going to disrupt Russian society.

What do you think is happening here? The New York Times says that Ukraine is launching these drones so that they can keep the Ukraine population believing that they can strike at Russia and they can keep the population invested in the conflict. There's obviously a part of motivation by the collective West and by the, so let's a lot of the the Zelensky regime to launch these drone strikes into Russia in order to panic the Russian population. But for the Russians, for the Russian side, for Putin, Putin's government, I imagine they're going to have to handle this sooner rather than later because, you know, you can go a month

with this, you can go two months with this, but after a while, I'm getting messages from, like, I'm listening to hardliners on social media, and I'm getting the message from them. they're starting to say, look, what's going on here? You know, this can't go on forever. And so I think there's pressure there as well. Anyway, I want your thoughts on it. Yeah. I want to just said, and the strike on the air base and everything connected to the drone strikes.

I just want to say that we both have said, and we both understand that on a military level, as far as the conflict is concerned, it doesn't change the dynamics of the conflict. But it is having an effect on all sides. Absolutely. So the first thing to say is that increasingly one gets the impression that Russian military facilities are being steadily hardened and that it's becoming very difficult increasingly for Ukraine to send drone strikes that are able to get through and do significant damage on the Russian military. So I mean this is not having an effect on the war. The reason the drones got through to Pskof is twofold. Firstly, this is an air base which is focused. on air transport, you know, Elyushin 76 aircraft and that kind of thing, which are transport planes. It's not an air base that is directly involved in this conflict. I mean, they're not participating. Those aircraft are not participating in the conflict because they're transport aircraft. They're not bombers. They're not fighters. They're not anything like that. So one gets the sense. It was some distance away from Ukraine, a high 800 kilometers, its transport aircraft, it probably has been

given lower priority in terms of hardening, so, you know, protecting, getting protection. So it was a softer target. Ukraine is finding it more difficult to strike harder targets. So it went for this particular air base. So, you know, I think we need to. understand that in military terms this isn't working. Now political pressure on the Kremlin to change course to intensify the war.

Will this have an effect? There's a number of things to say about this. Firstly, we've had articles starting to appear in the Western media about this, and this is from Western journalists. There was an article some weeks ago. The Guardian, there was a follow-up article

in the Daily Telegraph. They've been asking people in Moscow. and the reporting which is coming back is that within Russia itself, this is becoming normalized. In other words, Russian society is adjusting to the fact that there are these drone attacks. They're absorbing the fact. They're getting on with their lives. It causes a certain amount of disruption. But it's not so bad and so critical that it's,

It's changing the public mood and is changing the mood about the wall. In fact, if anything, it might be hardening things a little. And I think the Kremlin doesn't want to escalate things. I think it probably calculates that part of the purpose of these drone attacks, certainly they are intended to improve morale in Ukraine, whether they really are is another matter, but anyway, to improve morale in Ukraine to create good headlines in the West,

to lower, reduce morale in Russia. But as it's not reducing morale in Russia, as the military conflict, as the military side of the war, is unaffected from the Russian side. I think the Kremlin has decided that they're going to absorb this. They can absorb it.

They can cope with these problems. It's not causing excessive amount of political pressure on them. It's on the contrary, solidifying Russian society further behind the wall. Now, the big change is going to happen if one of these drones, or some of these drones get through, and large numbers of Russian civilians are killed.

Then the pressure on the Kremlin to respond and to respond in a big way is going to grow. That hasn't happened yet, and the Kremlin, must be hoping that it won't happen. But if it does, well, the Kremlin has launched missile strikes on what they call

decision-making centres. They apparently launched another one a few, about a week ago, on some place in Kiev. They might start doing that to a greater extent. They don't want to go there. They don't want to escalate the wall because, from their point of view,

the war is going, well, they're winning. They don't want to, create a pattern of escalation which might spiral out of control, conceivably affect diplomatic support for Russia in the outside world, and enable the West to mobilize more resources and more backing for the war and for Ukraine. So this is what the Kremlin is trying to do. They're trying to absorb these attacks. They're probably relieved that Russian... Society has been so stoical in response to them. But of course, if something big gets through, if, as I said, you know,

I don't want to discuss potential targets, but if, say, an apartment building is destroyed and Russian civilians get killed, well, then, of course, the pressure will then be really on, and we'll see what the Kremlin does. Yeah, I agree with your assessment. I think they're, in general, Russia is playing defense and they're absorbing whatever

the collective west is throwing at them, whether it's on the front lines or whether it's with these drones. My thinking is when the offensive comes to a conclusive end that's counteroffensive

that's when Russia is going to start thinking about their response not only to what's happening on the front line, but I think that's where they're going to start thinking about their response to the drones as well. Yes, I mean, do bear in mind, the West is becoming increasingly frustrated with the Russians. I mean, we've had, you know, we discussed this recently about how Schultz and Macron are trying to call Putin and they're finding that he's not speaking to them.

It turns out that the White House has also tried to call the Kremlin and the Kremlin has refused to take the calls. there was this group of ex-diplomats from the Council of Foreign Relations who were trying to conduct Tier 1.5 talks in Moscow and they find that the Russians are not responding and in fact the Russians officially are denying that there's been any kind of talks at all they say that there's just been informal contacts with people that they call scholars so in a sense you can almost see these drone attacks

because you're absolutely right by the way they are they are being promoted. They could not be conducted without help from the West. I mean, you need to be able to send drones in ways that avoid Russian radars and things of that kind so that they can get through. Ukraine doesn't have that kind of capability. It has to have come from the West. The West is telling the Ukraine where the radars are, the Russian radars are, so that the drones can slip round them. what the West is trying to do is trying to get the Russians attention, trying to sort of push the Russians into actually picking up the telephones.

And in a way, a way of understanding this drone offensive and all of these other little things that are happening, you know, the attempts to send speedboats to Crimea and to plant the flag there on a deserted beach. I mean, things are, I mean, very weird things like that, is they're trying, their expressions, if you like, of frustration more than anything else. I think the Russians understand that,

and that's why they're playing it very cool. But of course, to repeat again, if something really tragic happens, which it may, then of course the political pressure in Moscow will be on all right anything else that you want to add

before we wrap up this video I've never I said this is the most this is the weirdest period of the war for me up to this point I mean it is very difficult to find a situation where as I said

what I suspect are the actual realities of the fighting on the front lines diverges so completely from, you know, the way it's been, you know, the stories that are appearing in the West. The Wall Street Journal article, the exclusive in the Wall Street Journal, is in some ways the one that, for me, gave it away because it talks about Ukraine piercing the front lines. And actually, when you read it, they're talking about an attack on this village of Vervebova,

which is not quite the same thing. if you really track it carefully. But this is something that has clearly been coordinated for some time. Because remember, the first person to actually make the claim that the front lines had been pierced was not a Ukrainian. It was actually an American. It was none other than Mark Millie. He actually said that Ukraine has pierced the front lines

in the fighting in Rabatina. And this is even before the Ukrainians themselves were admitting or claiming that they'd captured the village. So, you know, this concept of front lines, where the Russian front lines, the great fortified barriers are located, is being shifted all the time. And it's happening, as I said, increasingly,

to reflect political needs. Yeah, even using the word piercing, doesn't really tell you much. you know, they're very clever that the headlines that they put out there. They're very clever with their choice of words. I mean, if you just read the headlines, like if you're just scrolling through

through your news feed and just read the headlines, you would come to the conclusion that Russia is about to collapse, the Russian military front lines have completely collapsed. That's the conclusion that you would come out with. And you would think that Ukraine is pretty much on the borders with Crimea at this point in time. I mean, they're very clear.

clever with their choice of piercing the front lines, making progress towards Melito Paul. It's pure deception. Yes. It's not, yeah, exactly. I mean, if something really big had happened, you know, they would not be using words like Pierce. They would talk about, you know, a major breakthrough. Something of that guy. And, of course, it's not.

And, you know, when you go to the body of these articles, I'm talking about the big newspaper. So I'm not talking about, you know, tabloids like Bill Cytum. or the British tabloids. You go to the big ones, as you correctly say, the actual content of the articles always turns out to be a lot more conditional than the headlines suggest. But the most weird thing of all is about Rabatino at the end of the day. Because this is several times that the Ukrainians say they've captured.

captured Rabatina. And, you know, by the way, you know, Russian sources have made similar claims. I mean, you know, back in October, they were claiming that they'd captured Marinka, for example, which they hadn't done. And they still haven't. But at least with the Russians, we do eventually get a retraction. With the Ukrainians, we never do. They still haven't admitted that they've lost to Bahmuta. No. No. Or solid. Or solidarity. Or solidarity. zone. So that tells you everything.

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