The Duran Podcast - REPORT finds Russia, Ukraine wanted peace. US, UK, Germany pushed war

Episode Date: November 15, 2023

REPORT finds Russia, Ukraine wanted peace. US, UK, Germany pushed war

All right, Alexander, let's talk about what is happening in Ukraine. We have the row between Zolluzini and Zelenskyy, and we have the situation on the front lines, but we also have the EU pledging more money, more ammunition, and the United States divided about Project Ukraine with some Republican lawmakers. insisting that not another dime goes to Project Ukraine until there is some transparency and some accountability. And of course, the priority right now with many lawmakers in the United States is the war in Israel. So let's start, I guess, with Zalusini and Zelensky maybe. Yeah, absolutely. Let's talk about this because, of course, yesterday was a day of swirling

reports and rumors about power struggles and generals being sacked and other generals being under investigation. So, you know, there were reports and they were reports from pretty, you know, authoritative figures, you know, members of the Ukrainian parliament were coming forward and saying that three generals, including General Tarnaski, who is the overall commander of Ukrainian forces in southern Ukraine, the general, in other words, who has been conducting the main part of the offensive. You remember the summer offensive? He was the general conducting the summer offensive

against the Russians in Zaporozia region, whose armies were supposed to break through to the Sea of Azov and to the Black Sea. So General Tarnavsky was supposedly was going to be sacked. Another general was going to be sacked who was in charge of watching, monitoring the border between Ukraine

and Russia in the north, very sensitive political role. And there were other reports also that General Zaluzni was under investigation, that the chief medical officer of the Ukrainian military, who's a woman, by the way, and also has general rank, that she was going to be sacked as well. Stranagh, which is one of the most reliable Ukrainian military, well, political military publications reported this. And as I said, so did several parliamentarians.

Then we got reports from the Ukrainian Defence Ministry saying this was not true, but they only said that after several hours had passed. And what gets the sort of sense overall that there is a mounting political crisis in Kiev? I'm guessing, this is a guess now, but the most plausible guess is that there was a plan to sack generals, presumably in order to weaken and isolate Zillusioning. It seems to me that his relationship with Zelensky has completely broken down, but that perhaps Zeluzni or someone else in the military pushed back and said that they weren't going to accept these resignations,

and Zelensky, perhaps in a weakened position, had to pull back and at least delay announcing them. And all of this is happening with the Russians stirring the pot, Nikolai Petrushev, Putin's national security advisor, the Secretary of the Russian Security Council. He said that there are people in the wings in Kiev who are preparing, waiting to take over. And, well, as I said, some people think that the Russians might be playing a role in all of this. I don't myself. I think this is just Petrushev. as I said stirring the pot and being mischievous.

And at the same time, we're also getting reports that William Burns, the CIA director, is flying to Kiev tomorrow. And of course there's, again, huge amounts of speculate. We don't know for a fact that he's going, by the way, but there's huge amounts of speculation that if he does indeed go, what is his role in all of this?

One view is that he's going to play an active part in these intrigues, whose ultimate end point is Zelensky's own resignation. The idea being, you know, you leverage Zelensky out, you put Zeluzni in and making president, and Zaluzni then starts negotiations of some kind with the Russians. That's one view. The other view, which I more favor, actually,

is that Burns is going to Kiev to try to calm the situation, to try to stabilize it, because we have a gathering catastrophe on the front lines. I mean, reports are now pouring in of Ukrainian troops in really severe difficulty. The Ukrainian Air Force has been, as far as I can tell, largely blown out of the skies. and I would have thought that any sensible, rational government in Washington would say to itself, this is not the moment to carry out those kind of events, those kind of coups or uprisings in Kiev. You want stability there because there's a real risk that instability in Kiev will further result in more instability in demoralization and potentially even collapse on the front lines.

So I think that is where what the purpose of sending burns there is, in order to put plaster on what I suspect is a festering soren. So what is the situation on the front lines? Well, it's getting worse every day. And I have to say things are moving in some ways, in Avdavka, at least, actually faster than I'd expected. I mean, you know, of Devga is a city of a town of about 30,000 people before the war. So it's not a small place.

It's got big industrial facilities. It's been very, very heavily fortified. The Ukrainians have made it one of their major defense positions in their defense system. And it was also supposed to be the position from which, in the event that there had been a Ukrainian offensive to recapture Donetsk, city, the offensive would have been launched from Avdavka. So it's a key place. And I expected, personally, that this would take a very long time to play out. The battle of Davka would take a very long time to play out. What I get the impression is, is that on the contrary, the Russians are

making faster progress closing the ring around Avdavka than I had expected. This is, this is despite all the minefields, all the fortifications, all the brigades that Ukraine is pulling from every conceivable point in the front lines and rushing to Advert Abderhka to hold the positions there. The Ukrainians have been mounting counter-attacks, they've been pulling every stop to try to slow or stop the Russian offensive around Abderfka.

And I get the sense that it's not working and that the Russians are moving faster, perhaps even than they expected, that they're now busy capturing this village to the west of Avdeka, the northwest of Adewka, they've, you know, gradually tightening their pincers around Vdewka. They've advanced into an industrial zone to the south of Avdewka. I'm not going to give a time estimate for how quickly that battle will end, but it's progressing, I think, surprisingly fast. And the news everywhere else is equally bad.

So in Bachman, Ukraine is also on the back foot. Now the Russians are pushing hard around Bachmut. Overnight there was reports of more advances by the Russians or the territory the Ukraine regained over the course of the summer is apparently being steadily lost. there is apparently another big crisis for the Ukrainian troops further north in the Kupiansk area where the Russians have played a long game

they've let again the Ukrainian sent reinforcements there which it seems is increasing the rates of attrition even in Herson region where the Ukrainians were apparently making or you know they'd at least establish that bridgehead in Krenki on the deeper river. It seems they're now suffering increasingly heavy losses. Things are not going well for them there.

They're not able to break through. There are reports that Ukrainian soldiers are now refusing to fight. There's been two videos, one by a military unit in Avdavka, one by a military unit in Kupiansk, saying that they are exhausted, that they are demoralized,

that they're starting to question their orders, These are actual soldiers that are starting to do this. And on top of everything else, there's been this systematic demolition of Ukraine's Air Force. Something happened over the course of October and early November. There was a sudden change in the technological balance. And dozens of Ukrainian fighter jets were shot out of the skies for no Russian losses at all. So the Russians are establishing aerial dominance. So one gets the situation, there's the impression of the front lines crumbling,

coming under enormous pressure, and with a developing crisis in Avdavka, which the Ukrainians can't reverse. And the Ukrainians, by their own admission, are now short of men, they're short of machines, they're short of tanks and guns, the EU's promises of supplying ammunition have not been fulfilled, which is unsurprising. There is, as you correctly said at the start of the programme, a political battle underway in the United States about whether to go on funding this bottomless pit, which is the war in Ukraine, and that might be coming to an end also.

I get the sense that Republican opposition is actually growing. to the idea of further funding for Ukraine. And Zelensky's making, apparently trying to make desperate calls to Donald Trump, of all people, to try to get him to persuade the Republicans to shift their ground on this. Apparently he's not responding. And, you know, one gets to sense overall, a military situation, which it's not yet, we're not yet talking about a breakdown, and it's not, you know, there,

It's not happened yet, but it's becoming more fragile. And that is what is feeding into this crisis in Kiev, because with the military situation starting to break down, there's clearly a game of recriminations going on between the Ukrainian military and the Ukrainian political leadership between Zelensky and Zaluzni as to who's to blame for this whole mess. And at the same time, there's clearly no agreement to talk. all about how to go forward.

Yeah, but the European Union, they're saying that they're going to give more money to Ukraine. Germany actually said they're going to double the amount of military aid to Ukraine from $4 billion to $8 billion. Burrell said yesterday that, yes, they haven't been able to meet the ammunition needs of Ukraine, but he's confident that they'll be able to ramp up production and get the ammunition to Ukraine that it needs. Where's the disconnect? Because the European Union is, is the European Union is making it seem like they're,

they're in it for the long haul. I mean, even Schultz gave an interview the other day and he said that we're behind Ukraine 100% and we're going to expand our support to Ukraine. I mean, Germany is taking a position where, where they're going all in for, for this conflict, instead of perhaps scaling it back, it may be opening up negotiations with Russia. Germany is really going in hard. Indeed. So it is.

And of course, the EU Commission is now, as we know, preparing accession talks in order to bring Ukraine into the European Union. I mean, at the moment, I have to say. And more talks about, and we're going to cut you off real quick, because Edmore talks about Ukraine joining NATO. NATO. All that, all that, you know, from Rasmussen as well. I mean, it all looks increasingly delusional and increasingly surreal. But it's not surprising.

It's the kind of thing that tends to happen when a crisis starts to come together like this. And people who are already politically, deeply inadequate, and who've committed their entire political futures and their entire political careers and who have done enormous, probably irreparable damage to their own countries, starts to see that the whole situation is falling apart around them. Their instinct in that kind of crisis is not to rethink what they've done, because if they start doing that, then they open themselves up to criticism. It is to double down, and that's exactly what they're doing.

they're saying, you know, all is well in Ukraine. Situation is proceeding from strength to strength. Well, you know, maybe this offensive that we got the Ukrainians to launch in the summer, maybe it didn't turn out quite as well as we hoped. But, you know, we remain confident overall that everything eventually will come right. And all we need to do is to give them more money still, more weapons. You know, Ukraine's energy system is in a terrible shape, so we must give more money to.

to sort out the energy system. Nobody explains what happened to all that money Ukraine got last year to sort out the energy system after the winter. I mean, nobody, of course, asks these sort of questions about, you know, maybe it ended up, instead of sorting out the energy system in bank accounts and the Cayman Islands. Those are not questions you get from these people, you know, these people or certainly no answers you're going to get from these people.

So, you know, that is what happens. That is what happens when a project like this starts to fall apart. And again, you see the difference, and I have to say this, in levels of agency between the United States and Europe. In the United States, at all times, there was more skepticism about project Ukraine. There were many more critics. There was more debate about it. There were votes, people were voted against things like this, support for Ukraine, in Congress.

There was much more discussion in the media. And now that it's all falling apart, that means that there is an actual debate, even if it is a very strange debate. But there is an actual debate going on about this in the United States. In Europe, where they no longer have political agency, where, talking about matters of this kind is simply impossible, where everybody rushed enthusiastically to impose sanctions that have been utterly devastating to the European economy. Debate is not allowed,

and therefore, since debate is not allowed, the machine continues as before, he continues to do the same as it has, been doing over the last year. The reality is the West, the EU has had a year and a half to sort out its support for Ukraine. They haven't been able to do it in a year and a half. They're not going to do it now. Okay, so there was a document that that was published the other day, a report by ex-Nado and UN officials. And they talk about the the possibility in the first months of the special military operation to have to have had a ceasefire

and eventually a resolution to the crisis in Ukraine. And that document came to the conclusion that not only did the United States and the UK Boris Johnson's infamous trip now to Kiev, not only were they behind the sabotage of a peace in Ukraine. This is, we're talking about like the first couple of weeks. There could have been a piece. It was it was hammered out. It was it was agreed on. We had the frameworks to open up negotiations.

Not only was the U.S. and the UK behind the sabotaging this effort, but also Germany. and I think I think Germany has gotten off easy up until today with regards to to derailing what could have been an end to this horrible conflict

obviously Boris Johnson has taken the brunt of the blame given that he was the person that traveled to Kiev and delivered the ultimate the terms to Zelensky and, of course, the U.S. Everyone understands that when you're talking about the U.K., you have the U.S. behind Boris Johnson and the U.K. as well.

But Germany, Germany played a very big role in making sure that there was going to be no ceasefire, armistice, or peace agreement in the first couple of weeks of this conflict, which has since led to hundreds of thousands of casualties. And the destruction of Ukraine, we see it playing out. Ukraine is being destroyed. There's a lot of fault that should be directed at Germany as well, Olive Schultz. Absolutely, can I just say something? You're absolutely correct.

This is an incredibly important report. I gather it's received a certain amount of attention in Germany itself. Of course, if you're talking about, about the media here in Britain, they've not even mentioned it, but it is to anybody who wants to understand why we are where we are and what the cause of the war was, and who wanted the war, then in my opinion this report is essential reading. And the people who put it together are very, very serious people indeed. One is Michael Schulenberg, who is a diplomat, very senior German diplomat, former deputy UN secretary general.

He's held all kinds of positions. He's a person with an extraordinary record behind him. And from a family, by the way, a very famous diplomatic family. And the other was another one was Harald Kuoyat, who was a German general. And he was, of course, Germany's senior general. And he was for a time, I believe, the senior general. general within NATO itself. So we're talking about, you know, very experienced people. And they've looked at all of this. And what they've come up, what they've produced, what they've

provided us with is some absolutely fascinating and really extremely disturbing information. So you're absolutely right. There were negotiations going on in February and March. We covered them at the time. And those negotiations somewhat to our surprise at the time and later. actually were very successful. The Ukrainians and the Russians found a lot of common ground. Basically, they both agreed that NATO membership for Ukraine was impossible. And all the other pieces, once that point had been reached, all the other pieces fell into place. And it turns out that there were lots of people mediating and helping along with the process. There was the Prime Minister of Israel at that time.

Naftali Bennett. There was President Lukashenko Belarus. There was President Erdogan of Turkey. There was Roman Abramovich, the businessman. And there was also the former German Chancellor, Gahar Schroeder. They were all involved. And they all came very close to an agreement. And the heads of agreement were initialed in Istanbul between the delegations on the 29th of March.

Now, what happened was that in the very first weeks, of the war. Right after the war began, the Germans, the French, the Americans and the British appeared to support negotiations between Ukraine and Russia. And then to their horror, they realized that those negotiations were going to result in an end to the war and a peaceful outcome to the crisis. So what then happened was that they brought together, they hurried, they rushed together, they called together a meeting of a NATO summit meeting on the 24th of March. This is five days before the heads of agreement were initialed. Biden, who doesn't travel very much, flew in all the way from the United States. He met with all of these people with Schultz, Macron, Johnson, Draghi.

and they all then said this is unacceptable we don't like this at all they started to impose unacceptable conditions for Ukraine to move forward with the peace and then of course

as we know Johnson who clearly was appointed the person to convey the bad news first he telephanzalinski and then he travelled to Kiev and he made sure that the entire peace agreement was demolished and this

timeline that we've now been provided also by the way confirms something else which of course we've always known but those events those alleged atrocities in that northern suburb of Kiev

had nothing to do with the collapse of the negotiations the decision to sabotage the negotiations was made before that happened now that opens the question of why did all of these countries, the United States, Britain, Germany, as you rightly say as well, the Germans were also horrified that the negotiations were about to succeed.

Macron and Draghi going along with the crowd, why did they all decide at that last moment, that they would sabotage talks, that they would prevent peace being agreed? Well, I think the straightforward answer, the answer is very simple, and it's actually there in some of the things that people were saying at the time. Biden said in a speech in Warsaw. Johnson said when he visited Kiev, which is that they wanted regime change. They wanted to use the war to engineer regime change in Moscow. That was why the war happened in the first place. That is why they were. wanted the war prolonged. They still thought at this time, but they were sure at this time. We're talking about March 22, that the sanctions would have their effect, the military pressure on the Russians would also have its effect. They all believed that all they needed to do was to keep the pressure on the Russians a little longer, and they were going to get their regime change. So they did not want a peace that would deprive them of that war and of their regime change operation in Moscow.

This document makes it absolutely clear to my mind. Who wanted peace and who wanted war? The West wanted the war at that time. Certainly the Russians and the Ukrainians also wanted peace. It was the West that was driving this crisis all along, and which has brought us to the situation in which we're in today. The document also blows apart the stupidity of that narrative of the siege of Kiev as well, which Millie and Kirby and all of these guys pushed out that Ukraine fought bravely in the opening days of Russia's invasion to drive the Russians out of Kiev. And the document clearly states that Putin removed his forces from Kiev in the surrounding areas as a goodwill gesture in order to get closer to initiating these documents and getting to a piece within the first three to four weeks of the special military operation. The document also makes it clear that even Zelensky preferred a piece.

Absolutely. You know, if Putin's plan was to shock, let's say, shock Ukraine into agreeing to drop their whole NATO play getting into NATO, it worked because Zelensky dropped the idea of getting into NATO. Absolutely. He came around to seeing things the way Putin wanted Zelensky to see things, which is no NATO. no military. There would be countries that would guarantee Ukraine security, including Russia. And they wouldn't even be allowed to have militaries training or having exercised in Ukraine unless they got the permission of the countries that were guaranteeing the security of Ukraine. So, I mean, you know, Putin's gamble actually worked.

Yes. if not for Germany, the United States, UK. And as you said, France and Macron and Draghi, just going along, as they always do. They go any in which way the wind blows. But the real, you know, the real warmongers in all of this, the United States, the UK and Germany. I wonder, I want your comments on what I just said. And I want you to also answer, also answer one more question, which is legal. Does this document have any legal weight for Russia or for the UN Security Council or anything like that?

Yes. Well, let's discuss those because you made some very important points. Can I just add to that list of warmongers that you're talking about, Jens Stoltenberg and the NATO bureaucracy, who were clearly playing an important role as well? And you can see that also in this particular document. You're absolutely right. Now, what happened was let's deal firstly with the siege of Kiev and all. all that and the great Ukrainian military victory in Kiev. You're absolutely correct. We can

reconstruct this a little. Now, I'm going a little beyond what this document itself says, but I understand that over the course of the negotiations, the Ukrainians asked the Russians to pull their troops back from Kiev. Then what happened was that Zelenskyy started to come under severe pressure from the Western powers, well, from the Americans, the British and the Germans, and of course NATO, to drop this peace process. He initially resisted, and he gave a press conference an interview to Russian journalists on the 27th of March, in which he again confirmed that Ukraine would not be joining NATO and that the peace was going to, you know, you know, proceed. This is despite the fact that at this point the Western powers had already made it clear

that they were opposed to these priest discussions. So on the following day, 28th of March, after Zelensky gave this press conference, Putin took the decision to pull the troops back from Kiev as a goodwill gesture. And on the 29th of March, the document was signed. The draft agreement was signed. So you are absolutely correct. This explodes the myths of the great Ukrainian military victory around Kiev. It was a goodwill gesture by the Russians, requested by the Ukrainians,

agreed to by Putin when it looked for a time as if Zelenskyy was going to resist the pressure, the Western powers put him under to pull out of this of this deal that was by this point emerging. What then happened is of course Boris Johnson who acted as the enforcer

came to, well phone Zelensky and then came to Kiev and said that the war must go on and this peace agreement mustn't proceed and basically made sure that peace didn't happen. And of course, we also had the big media campaign around the events in that northern suburb, which, by the way, as I'm sure you've noticed, no one ever talks about anymore. So

all of that happened, basically in order to sabotage peace. And you're absolutely correct. The whole myth of the Ukrainian victory around Kiev, which has been such a foundational story story in perpetuating the war ever since then. It's just that. It's been exposed now as a complete and total myth right from the first moment. Now, you know, this is a terrible document. It shows, to my mind, it confirms that an agreement had been reached before the war began, well before the war began, by the Western powers. They wanted their war. They were created. They were creating the crisis. They manufactured the crisis that would lead to the war. They wanted a war so that they could impose their massive sanctions against the Russians. It's clear that Schultz and the German governments, the Habek and Berbock, were fully into the game.

If you remember, Schultz and Berbock, and by the way, Macron visited Moscow in the days leading up to the war. It's now absolutely clear to me that they were trying to pull the wall over the Russians' eyes about what was going to happen. And they were saying things that they didn't believe. And they engineered their war in order to get regime change in Moscow. That was the neocon project. long and they were not going to be deprived of it. And an essential part of that neocon project was Ukrainian entry into NATO. Because bear in mind what this also demonstrates is, as you absolutely rightly say, the Russians and the Ukrainians were able to come to agreements.

Zeletsky was prepared to come to agreement. He was prepared to drop the idea of NATO membership for Ukraine. And clearly That was unacceptable to the Western powers. So, which clearly means that at that time, they emphatically did intend, eventually, to bring Ukraine into NATO. So when Macron and especially Schultz were going to Moscow and said that Ukraine's entry into NATO is not on the agenda, they were lying.

They were lying to the Russian. lines, lying to their face. So this is where we are today. Legally. Legally, let's talk about this. Now, if... Go ahead, so Schultz's role? Schultz's role in all of this was absolutely crucial. And I think it does beg a lot of questions about how German politics evolved in the months before the, you know, the start of the war, because clearly, at some point, he participated fully in the Nicon regime change project in Moscow. He became a full accessory to it, a full conspirator, if you like,

behind it, along obviously with Behrbach and Habek. And this must have been a full accessory to it. happened long before the war started so again all of his supposed objections to all of these sanctions that we were hearing about before the war started you know that he was supposedly against you know it's closing down Nord Stream he was supposedly intent resisting Russia's disconnection from Swift all of that clearly well so it seems to me must have been a lie And he was obviously deceiving people in Germany, just as he was trying to deceive the Russians.

So he's played an extraordinary double game. And going back to the point you were making earlier in the program, about why is he doubling down now? Why is he increasing the amount of money that he wants to send to Germany and to Ukraine and ramping up weapons and things of this kind? It's because, of course, he doesn't want his own personal role in this crisis to be properly examined and exposed. And this is where we come to the legal issue. Because, of course, if ever there is a proper investigation, if there's probably a full inquiry in Germany about this,

about the origins of the war, which conceivably there might be. I mean, Germany has suffered massive economic damage. we had a meeting with a member of the, well, an interview with a member of the, the AFD, Glenn Dyson and I, Maximilian Kra on the Duran, which he discusses the economic damage that Germany has suffered as a result of all of this. If there is a proper investigation, there's a proper inquiry, then of course this report immediately becomes both evidence, in itself because the timeline is there.

Schultz's statements are all there. And of course, it also opens up further lines of inquiry as to the precise role he has played. And now, I'm not going to go further. I'm not going to start talking about, you know, potential prosecutions because I'm, you know, not able to discuss that because I don't have all. of the knowledge. Well, it does seem to me that, you know, there is at least some reason

based on this document to think that one might come, you know, prosecutions might come. I mean, you know, he said a lot of things that weren't true. He prolonged a war that was against Germany's interests and Europe's interests and catastrophically against Ukraine's interest. he seems to have been an instigator of that war, at least to a certain degree, perhaps to a great degree. And, you know, I would have thought that at the very least, based on what this report says, he has questions to answer. Now, that, of course, relates to Shultz.

It relates even more to Boris Johnson, to his foreign minister, Liz Truss, to the Defence Secretary, Ben Wallace. potentially to the Americans, to others too. But of course, I don't seriously expect that any investigations like that will ever be launched. The most that might happen in Britain is that you might get a House of Commons inquiry

someday in the far future, which will tell us about the mistakes and errors that were made over the course of this and will gently wrap some people over their, you know, on their wrists and say, you know, we didn't do very right. This is what happened after the Iraq war with Blair. It's what happened after the Libyan war with Cameron. That's all I suspect that we will ever conceivably see

happen to Johnson and Truss and the others. Let's not also forget the EU's role in this. We know as a fact that Ursula was in D.C., a month or two before the SMO started, actually three months before the SMO started around November, 2020, November, December, and she was actually holding meetings with the Biden White House, and they were talking about possible sanctions that they would place on Russia in the event that a conflict were to start in Ukraine. So they were laying out the sanctions roadmap three months before. the SMO even started. So obviously the EU, Ursula, was was in on this as well. And two more

things to wrap up the video. What if, what if Olaf Schultz and the Greens knew that that something was going to happen to the Nord Stream pipeline? What if they were okay with it? you know sometimes you know sometimes in in green ideology the ends justify the means you know so you know what if they were they were aware that something could happen to the north street pipelines because the pressure that they were receiving from the business community must have been uh uncomfortable uncomfortable uncomfortable for them so that's just a just a thought yeah just a thought there and And at the final thought, and we'll wrap up the video for you to comment on, is Ukraine, if it exists as a state in the future. And Zelensky, or maybe people in and around Zelensky who managed to survive this catastrophe, what they should do is they should bring a legal case against Germany, the UK, the United States at a very minimum against Germany and perhaps France.

not just a thought. Well, absolutely. And in mind, I mean, that is not impossible. It might conceivably one day happen. So, I mean, you know, let's not discard that. But let's just deal with Nord Stream because this is an interesting thing. Because you're absolutely right. If Schultz, Habek and the others, and of course,

Haubach is Germany's economics minister. He's particularly close. He's to the business community. He was supposed to be. He's supposed to be listening a lot to what these people are saying. Whether he does, of course, is another matter. But anyway, if these people had some foreknowledge of what happened, which we don't, it must be said now. No, but if they did, if they did, then of course they are potentially accessories and as potential accessories.

I suspect that in that case they would be subject to sanctions under German law, I mean to legal sanctions under German law. I don't want to go into too much of a discussion about this at the moment because we just don't have enough evidence to really speculate further. But if they had foreknowledge of what was going to happen and let it happen and weren't perhaps sorry that it did happen, then as I said, there would certainly be legal consequences, I mean, potentially in Germany itself. This is putting aside wider legal, international legal implications.

which would also exist, by the way. Now, I'm not going to say more about that, apart from one thing, which is that, you know, we see the situation in Ukraine starting to implode. And surprise, surprise, we now have all of these very interesting accounts about how it was all organized by, was it the six guys and the boats, all operated, you know, administered managed by this Ukrainian. Colonel who is now conveniently in prison. I'm not going to say anymore.

I think you did a very good video about this on your channel. So I'm not really going to cover that in more detail. I would just urge people to go to Alex's channel now and look up that video and see how he takes that, the humorous way in which he takes that all apart. But the question is, why is that story? coming up now well it could be because this attempts to implicate Zolluzni in this affair but of course it might also be because some people are beginning to get worried that with project Ukraine falling apart more questions about what happened

with Nord Stream 2 might start to be asked by more and more people so they want to get their alternative version out there first so that's that's all I I'm going to say about this. I mean, legal implications do exist in this. And you're absolutely right. Ukraine might have claims. Ukraine might have claims. Russia potentially might have claims. Though, again, this would be a shocking idea, I suspect, for many people. But perhaps more meaningfully, people in Germany potentially could have claims, business people, those kind of people. And last but not least, what you said about the EU and about the role of Ursula von der Leyen in this affair. He's absolutely right. I mean, you know, she was also fully involved. She's in and up to her ears. Anyway, I mean, I just find it so interesting that you had this huge incident with Nord Stream.

Schultz was standing right next to Biden when Biden said that they'll take care of Nord Stream if they need to. Obviously, there's... obviously there's coordination given this report there there was a lot of coordination in the early days of this conflict and before the conflict between the united states germany uh the european union the uk france obviously they were coordinating a whole bunch of things yeah well coordination is a very very um shall we say mild word to describe what was going on if it was coordination that led to legally actionable acts, then of course that coordination might start to look more like a conspiracy. But let us not go there. Let us not go there yet. Because it's important not to get

ahead of ourselves. The point is, this report in itself is absolutely crucial. It shows how a chance for peace in March last year was thrown away. As you absolutely rightly said into your previous comments, it also showed how Putin's calculations, what Putin's actual calculations at the start were, that he was trying to shock the Ukrainians into agreeing of peace and to demolish their idea that, you know, this is peace for them, led, could be found through Europe. It shows that he did have Ukrainian interlocutors, that the Ukrainians themselves understood that at the time. and we saw that the Western powers, having got their war, having started their sanctions, having decided on regime change in Moscow, were not going to give peace a chance.

They were going to see that war continue, and they were intending to escalate it. And they still had hopes at that time that they would achieve regime change. All of that, I think, is now factually established. he's there in this report. The report also contains statements by Western officials, especially by the way, Boris Johnson, which shows clearly what he was thinking and what the others were thinking.

And it is a critically important document. And one would like to believe, and one hopes that when this crisis in Ukraine is over, and people there start to ask questions about why the lives of their loved ones were sacrificed in the way that they were, that they would go to this report and other reports like it and start asking the right questions of the right people and start to take it further. And I think that if they did, we would probably find some very revealing answers, which we need to know also in the West. All right, we will leave it there. The durand.com.

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