The Duran Podcast - Russia Frontline Advance. Putin's Messaging Woes as Lavrov's WW3 Warning Ignored

Episode Date: June 28, 2026

Russia Frontline Advance. Putin's Messaging Woes as Lavrov's WW3 Warning Ignored

All right, Alexander, let's do an update on Project Ukraine. On the front lines, the situation is looking very, very bad for the Ukraine military. My understanding of things is that the Russians are clearing out Konstantinovka. I don't believe they fully captured Konstantinovka. There are pockets of Ukrainian military in the city that still remain in the city. but the Russians are clearing all of that out. That'll probably take a couple of weeks, maybe, tops. I don't know if I'm reading the situation correctly.

In Leman, you have a very similar situation. The Russians are moving fairly quickly to capture Leman. I didn't expect them to be capturing Leman at the same time. No. That they're winning and capturing Konstantinovka. But you could have two very big cities, which will be captured by Russia. They're 15 kilometers outside of Sumi and 15 kilometers outside of Kramatorsk.

So Kramatorsk is now becoming a frontline city. And just a reminder to everyone that's watching, those are the two last big settlements, Kramatorsk and Slaviansk. Once those are wrapped up, Dombas is wrapped up. You had Putin speaking to the military cadets. You had Lavrov. I'm not sure what the event was where Lavrov was speaking, but he said some interesting things. And you have the narrative, which is that Ukraine is from the collective West media,

because they don't want to talk about anything that's happening on the front line. They don't mention anything that's going out on the front line. One article from the BBC, one article from the New York ties, that's about it. But their narrative is that Ukraine is winning because the collective West is able to send drones into Russia, so that equates to a win. Yeah. Okay. And the Financial Times, once again,

is talking about the Russian economy in near collapse. They're saying it's a slow, it's a slow collapse, but it is collapsing. So anyway, I think I've given a roundup of everything that is happening around Project Ukraine. I think you've provided a masterly summary of everything that's happening over Project Ukraine. I'm going to explain, I'm going to set out what my own view about Konstantinifka and Lehman. I think the fighting in these two cities is essentially over. I think that in Lehman, certainly, the Ukrainians are retreating from Lehman. There's been actually a fairly detailed description of the fighting in the Russian media

in Lehman, more detail than we usually get, but that the Ukrainian garrison is trying to withdraw from Lehman. In Konstantinovka, there is still a presence, an organized presence of some Ukrainian troops in one small area of Konstantinovka, in the very northeast end of it. But what you basically read that the Russian Defense Ministry says, you know, they've cleared 150 buildings in one place, 150 buildings and another, what people need to understand If you haven't been to Russia or to the former Soviet Union, when they talk about buildings, they mean apartment buildings.

And apartment buildings in Russia and in Ukraine, in the Soviet Union, can be very big places indeed. So, mostly, I think that there is no actual fighting going on. But if you're talking about Konstantinovka, you're talking about a town, which before the had a population of around 80,000 people. These places are very, very big. Russian troops enter them. They have to search through them to find if there are any Ukrainian soldiers hiding in them. They have to clear booby traps because the Ukrainians, like all armies, by the way, good armies,

lead behind booby traps. So they have to clear out the booby traps. and this takes time. And probably it will take a couple of days, weeks. Who knows how long? But eventually we will be there. So both of these two cities are about to fall, as you rightly say, or have realistically already fallen.

And everywhere else on the front line, the situation is very bad, as you absolutely rightly say. The Russians are literally a few. kilometers now from Kramatosk. I think they're closer to Kramatos than 15 kilometers. I mean, and they occupy the high ground so that they can look down on Kramatosk too. And Kramatosk has been battling bombed and the Ukrainians have evacuated the civilian administration and the military command, the military headquarters of the Ukrainian army, in Donbass was located in Kranatos. And apparently it's also been withdrawn.

So that's the situation on the front lines in Dombas. And then there's the other two big towns that the Russians are edging towards. One is O'Echo from the south. And it's a very complicated battle there. The Russians are advancing towards O'Echo from the east and the west. There's a kind of pincer's movement. Sometimes the Ukrainians trying to counterattack in one direction, which opens the way for the Russians.

to attack faster from the other direction. It's a complicated battle, but steadily gradually, the princes, Honorécho, are closing. And even more important is what you said about Sunni in northeastern Ukraine. A big place, 250,000 people, I mean, a regional capital. The Russians are now very close to it. And the fortified lines to the north of it have fallen. So an absolutely critical situation on the front lines. And as you absolutely correctly say, the Western media is telling us absolutely nothing about it. An article in the BBC, which hardly anybody reads, an article in the New York Times, which is very ambivalent and really doesn't tell you very much, a major effort to deny the military realities. and a concerted effort by the West, in the Western media, to focus instead on the drone attacks.

The drone attacks on Russia and the drone attacks on Crimea. Now, the drone attacks on Russia, we've discussed in many places, hundreds of drones involved, they have to travel enormous distances, they're relatively small, light constructions, the explosives that they carry very light, The damage they do, very limited. Most of the drones, the vast majority of them, get shot down. They don't, in the end, do very much damage. There was this big attack on Moscow that took place a week ago.

There was a lot of smoke. It looks like this was mostly done on purpose. Some of the drones, maybe not all of them were carrying kerosene sacks to create an appearance of smoke, an attack on a refinery outside Moscow, lots of talk about the enormous damage that was done to this refinery, six months out of action, according to Reuters, based on the usual anonymous sources. I've been told by somebody who's in the oil industry on the ground in Moscow,

more likely it will be back in service in a week. The drone offensive against Russia, in other words, does not have the military, industrial, economic effects that people say. So what you have seen in order to create an appearance of a genuine crisis with electricity cutoffs, gasoline shortages, a renewed focus on attacking Crimea, the distance the drones have to travel to reach Crimea is much shorter. They can carry a much bigger explosive charge. The warning times for the drones,

before the drones reach their targets is less. And you can see that Crimea this summer is getting the bulk, the worst part of the attacks. And that's, by the way, a recurring thing. It happens regularly. each summer, but it's happening on a particularly big scale at the moment. So you focus on that, you talk about the crisis that the Russians are facing, you talk about the Ukrainian drone wars, you talk about gasoline shortages, which are, you know, an inflated

story always in Russia. You talk about those things, but you don't talk about the situation on the front lines. And at the same time, the Russians themselves, we can talk about this in a moment, but the Russians themselves are having their very interesting internal discussions. Yeah. The focus is now back on Crimea and the economy. Yes. This is a pattern, and we've seen this before, which is actually a bad reflection of Putin and the Kremlin in a way. I mean, you know, this happens not every summer, almost every summer, but definitely at the start of the SMO and also the 2003 counteroffensive and all of that.

It was Crimea. That's how you defeat Russia. We're going to focus on Crimea, the Kerch Bridge. We take out Crimea, we capture Crimea, what did Budanov say? We're going to be swimming in Crimea, all of that stuff, all of that nonsense. And that's how they win this way. That was the shortcut, the cheat sheet to defeating Russia. was to go after Crimea.

And then in parallel, you have all the stories about the Russian economy. Well, we're back to that again. Yeah. Right? Maybe we had about a year's break. I don't think last year there was so much focus on the Crimea. There was some. There was some, but not like-

Energy shortages, but not to the intensity. Not like this or in 20203 with the counter-offensive and all of that stuff, right? Which was directed at cutting off the land bridge to Crimea. Yeah. So now we have the drones and Crimea and- and we have the Financial Times, the UK media, put it pumping out the stories about Russia's slow economic collapse. I mean, the Kremlin should have gotten on top of this,

and they should get on top of this. You know, when going to Putin speaking to the cadets, when he was asked about the drones, my sense of it, listening to Putin, was that he showed a level of ambivalence, maybe just not concerned. I mean, his answer to the question for drones was a bit odd in that he said, you know, I've given a directive to the military, to the Ministry of Defense to deal with it.

Well, you know, that's not an adequate response. And then he made the statement about if the drones were coming from NATO territory, then we would retaliate, but they're not coming from NATO territory. So we're not going to retaliate. The interesting part is when you went to the collective West X accounts that grabbed on to Putin's statements, they ran with the narrative. You see it was Kremlin propaganda that was saying the drones were using the airspace of Europe or using territory of Europe to hit Russia.

They're coming from Ukraine. Putin has just confirmed all of this. So I guess going off of Putin, statements, the drones that go up to St. Petersburg or Moscow, I guess, are traveling through the entirety of Russia. They're not using Baltic airspace or Finley-Finish airspace or anything like that, or Romanian. And you know, the whole news a couple of months ago about the drones falling in Romania, the drones falling in Estonia, all that stuff. I guess they weren't using the airspace and they were using the Russian airspace. And Russia was directing those

drones back into Europe. If you go off of Putin's stuff, statements from the cadet meeting. Putin's messaging is terrible. The Russian government's messaging is absolutely terrible. Let me first of all start with Crimea. You're absolutely correct, that by now, the air defense situation in Crimea really ought to have been organized and reorganized properly. One gets the sense that the Russian focus has been so much. on protecting the heartland that they've never really got on top of providing adequate air protections for Crimea itself. And this is a major problem. The head of the Russian air defenses, Emmankelav Zalov, was sacked about six weeks ago, and there's been actually quite a lot of

criticism about him that he didn't really prepare for this all properly. But anyway, whatever. whether it was a Zala for somebody else, you know, the buck stops with Putin. He ought to make absolutely sure that the Crimea was properly defended. Now, having said that, beyond all of this, Putin never acts in these kind of situations, as he should, as you would expect a war leader to behave. I mean, let's talk about the attack on Moscow, the big attack on Moscow, the fact that there was all these kerosene drugs. Why didn't the Russian government say that immediately? Why didn't they actually have television crews going out there talking to people discussing the fact that it was kerosene, pointing out that the actual physical damage done the slight?

Why wasn't that narrative put out immediately? Why didn't they send journalists and reporters to the refinery that was attacked in Moscow as well, showing that the damage was not as extensive as Ukraine is saying and giving regular updates about the fact that the refinery is going to be repaired in a week or wherever? Why do they never do these things? Obviously, the media in the West will either not report. or misreport these statements, we'll have probably campaigns in the Western media saying that this is false information that the Russians are providing and that the situation is far more critical than the Russians are really saying. But forget about the West. What about Russians? What about the actual people in Russia themselves who deserve to be told what is really

happening to their city and what is actually happening in this refinery that was actually attacked near Moscow. Why not provide them with much more clear-cut information about what is taking place there? And it amazes me that, you know, in the fifth year of the war, the Russians seem to be so complacent about this. So Putin comes along and he tells the military, cadets, he tells them that all of these attacks are intended to distract from the fact that Ukraine is losing on the front lines. And that is true. He tells the military cadets that the war is actually going well for Russia and that the

West isn't talking about the Russian advances on the front lines, which is also true. But it is not enough. It's nowhere near enough. Maybe you don't need Putin himself to be saying these things. Maybe you can have other Russian officials do it. But why not have someone go to the refinery, you know, a minister, an official, have a press conference there, something of that kind. Just as we talked about the attack on Starobiles, the dormit.

in Starrulbelsk, in Lugansk region, where all those children were killed, not a single senior Russian official went there. Now, I do not understand why this is simply not being dealt with properly in the way that it should be. And we're not the only people who say this. I'm going to disclose the fact. I had a email. from a former US official, who himself told me that he's incredulous that the Russians run their media operations so badly. And Putin just doesn't see to get this. He gets all the information.

He has it in the Kremlin. When things happen on the drone war, Peskov says, you know, it's nothing to do with me in the Kremlin. Why did you go and speak to the defense ministry? You could talk to them. And this sort of way of handling a media operation in a war is hopeless and disastrous. And on the question of the drones and whether they are actually using NATO airspace, Putin actually did say that they do use NATO airspace.

I mean, he actually said that. But then, of course, he fluffed his own message, which opened the way for the media in the West to misinterpret what he was saying. How did he fluff? I miss that. Well, he fluffed it. What he basically said was that, you know, they're so frightened of launching drones from their own territory that they're now admitting that these Ukrainian drones that are passing through

their own airspace are Ukrainian drones. And when that happens, instead of blaming Ukraine, however, they blame us. So they say we've diverted the drones onto Ukrainian territory or there's been a glitch or something of that guy. So he's making in effect the case for them. Instead of saying, you know, the West is admitting that the Ukrainian drones are passing through NATO airspace.

He says it's a glitch. He goes and talks about other things, which he just doesn't, as I said, understand the importance of this. So, of course, you get all of those comments on X, which take his words, twist them a little, and convey a message, which is completely different from the one that he wanted to convert.

I mean, there's no excuse for the way there, the terrible way they're handling the information war. I mean, look, with the drones, they have to get on top of it in a way of showing that the collective West simply cannot direct drones into Russia. This is reestablishing deterrence. Call it whatever you want. It doesn't mean that they have to strike at the collective West. That's not what I'm saying. but they have to start saying or doing something in an asymmetrical way.

It doesn't have to be symmetrical. You know, where are the drones, you know, the weapons that are coming in through the West? Why do you continue to allow the weapons to move in to Ukraine? How come you're not knocking that out? You still have all the Western media access in Russia while, you know, your media has been banned throughout. Yeah. The collective West, you still have, you still allow the Western media inside of Russia to operate, including the BBC.

You know, we've said this over and over again, the oil, the gas. I mean, it doesn't have to be a direct symmetrical response, but you have to start showing some movement. You can use the information space to send a message to the collective West and say, we know what you're up to, we know what you're doing, you better cut it out. Iran's handling of the information war is at a completely different level to the Russian. I mean, where the Russians have been abysmal, the Iranians have been superb. And if the Russians want to see how it can be done, they should just go and ask the Iranians.

On a shoestring budget. Without having any of the resources. The BBC, of the U.R.T. having any of the resources that the Russians, by the way, also have, just a second. You see, what makes this all incredibly frustrating is that I think the Russians have taken asymmetrical steps. I have absolutely no doubt. In fact, I mean, we've had information. We've had people tell us that the Russians have indeed provided, for example, significant technical assistance to be wrong with drones, with guidance systems for missiles, satellite data,

all of those sort of things. Why not publicize that fact? Why constantly pretend that you haven't done it? Why not say straightforwardly, look, you help Ukraine in this way, you help Ukraine conduct attacks on our country? We help Iran to conduct strikes against American bases. Why not just... He doesn't want to anger Trump. He doesn't want to anger Trump. Even when there are attacks on British bases in Iraqi Kurdistan, which were carried out with drones,

and the British said that the Russians were involved, and everybody could see that at some level, there was some exchange of expertise at the very least. What does the Russians say? They say, no, we weren't involved. And again, I mean, everybody knows that this assistance is being provided by the Russians to the Iranians. But it loses its deterrence effect because, of course, it's not publicized. He wants to please Trump. I mean, you know it.

You're the first one that knows it that there is the guidance that has been given. Absolutely. To please, to not go hard against Trump. It's not not the Europeans, fair game, but don't upset Trump. It is not not going hard on Trump. It's worse than that. It is don't criticize Trump. Don't criticize Trump.

Don't criticize the United States. That is the message that the Kremlin has given to the media in Russia. And this, even as the Russians themselves, Lavrov, other officials, even Putin, are admitting that all negotiations to end the conflict in Ukraine involving the Americans have stopped. So yes, no doubt there is a longer game maintaining dialogue with the Americans. I've discussed this in previous programs. And I think this is what this is really all about. I think it's about negotiations to end the war in Ukraine.

I mean, some Russians are now Medvedev, it's just on a speech in which he's talking about the various different ways in which regime change in Kiev can be managed. Just to say, I mean, he's going into all those details now. And Lavrov has also said, you know, Ankharech, we forget it. And Ushikov has said, Anchorage, let's forget all of that. Let's focus on the war. I don't think it is about negotiating an end of the war.

it is about going long term, trying to find some way in the long term to develop some kind of an understanding with the Americans to end or to reach some kind of detent with the Americans in Europe when the war is over. And in the meantime, to use the Americans to try to keep the Europeans under control. Well, you know, one can say, see that, but frankly, at the same time, this very complicated diplomatic game is being played, which may not succeed. The information wall is being comprehensively lost. Ukraine is far, the one area where Zelensky and the Ukrainians beat the Russians comprehensively, not on the battlefield, not in the sky, not in intelligence gathering, not in all of those technical things, certainly not in technology,

but it is in information. I say even Zelensky, Zelensky and his team in Kiev are far better at this than the Russians are. It's almost as if Putin was doing better with Biden because he understood that the that Biden wanted to destroy Russia and had no interested talking with Putin or any kind of dialogue. When Trump came along, Putin built this architecture

to accommodate Trump, Ushikov, Dimitriev. I mean, he built an entire team of people to do business with Trump and to please Trump and to liaise with Wyckhoff and Kushner. I mean, Putin did that. He put that all together. And it seems like this, this, this pull of perhaps unlocking a business deal with the United States,

unlocking some sort of diplomatic reprosmone with the United States, is creating moments of not clarity. Like with Biden, there was clarity. This guy hates us. He doesn't want to talk to us. He wants to destroy us. There's no use to even call him. There's no use to discuss anything.

Let's just do what we need to do. But with Trump, there's all of this, well, you know, let's not, let's not criticize him because we have to think that maybe in two or three years. You know, we'll bring him, we'll bring him to our side. We'll get him on board with how we see things. Let me call him and tell him not to listen to the G7 leaders, give him a heads up. Well, you gave him a heads up. And what happened?

We saw what happened at the Oval Office. Zelensky's doing great. Great. We directed Ukraine to smash the refineries in Moscow and we're the ones behind Kremlin. I mean, we see what happens. It's good that they're speaking with the United States, but it also seems as if the dialogue with the United States, the constant dangling of reproshmo with the United States, has considerably moved Putin off course. Well, I think this is. I mean, do you understand what I'm trying to say? No, I absolutely do understand.

But Biden, it was crystal clear. Biden, it was, you know, this guy hates us. There's no use in talking to him. He doesn't want to talk to us anyway. So let's just do our business. This is where I think the fundamental problem is. I think that Putin is so uninterested in the information side of the wall. He puts such little weight on it that he thinks that he has the political.

space to try this long-term diplomatic strategy with Trump. I don't know how optimistic he is about what its ultimate prospects for success are, but he says to himself, well, there's a 1% chance maybe that it will succeed, so I might as well try. And as a result, because he doesn't take the information side of war, at all seriously, he loses it comprehensively by default. Because as a result of exactly what you said, of trying to maintain this dialogue with Trump in the way that he does,

the messaging gets totally lost and totally fluffed. I think it is profoundly wrong. In this, and I have to say this, in this, Putin is absolutely a man of his generation. He is taking with him the worst habits of the Brezhnevira Soviet Union, which is the Soviet Union, of course, in which he was brought up. I mean, they didn't take the information war at all seriously, and not just Putin. He, at some fundamental, basic level, he thinks it doesn't matter. And that Russia getting itself involved in it is somehow beneath him as Russia's president and beneath Russia itself.

What really matters is what goes on on on the battlefield, what goes on in the sky, what goes on in the world of diplomacy, what the newspapers write, what the television cameras show, that really doesn't matter in the end. I think he's profoundly wrong about this. I think that obviously you mustn't sacrifice everything to information, which is what Zelensky to a great extent does. But I think to treat this with such extreme disdain as Putin does, opens him and rush her up to all kinds of problems.

You're right. It does matter. I mean, ultimately, yeah, sure. Russia's going to win in Ukraine. They're winning in Ukraine. They're demolishing the Ukraine-NATO military. They are advancing. There is no stalemate. That's fiction. But the fact that he doesn't get his messaging down on specifically the drones and the missile strikes into Russia. He doesn't put out the correct messaging, the correct warning. He kind of hints at red lines, but they're not really red lines. He kind of. of says that we're going to hit decision-making centers, but then they kind of walk it back and we're not going to hit decision-making centers or they kind of confuse things in the messaging. It leaves the collective West, especially the Europeans, just ignoring what Putin says.

I mean, the media definitely ignores it. And the leaders just kind of, they brush it off, whatever he says. They don't really take what he says seriously anymore. And it does emboldened them, where with Iran, they had their message. down, very clear. Their messaging was crystal clear. And I believe that that actually deterred much of the collective West, especially the Europeans from fully joining with Trump in the war. The Europeans were saying, yeah, we support you. Absolutely, President Trump. We're not going to go against you in this war, whatever you think you have to do. Iran's in

the wrong, you're in the right. But do we really, we don't really want to get too involved in this conflict because, you know, Iran's kind of, they kind of mean business, right? I mean, well, indeed. That was the message. This is the difference. And it does make it, and it does, and it does lead to real life consequences. Absolutely does. Of course it does. Can I just say something? We've talked about Iran, but after I came back from Russia, right, just re-informed. myself about how the Soviet Union handled the information war during the Second World War. And they had a specific spokesman who was there every day to give information to the media about what the latest military developments were. They had an whole information bureau set up

to do that. They had regular updates, which were broadcast from Soviet radio, including to the Germans, And of course, they also had a specific spokesman who went, there were particular baffles, which went a particular way and went out on the radio and informed the Soviet people about this. In the Second World War, that remember was Stalin's Soviet Union. They ran a far more professional media operation than Putin does today. And, you know, this isn't the kind of lockdown authoritarian state that the Soviet Union was at that time. But they understood the importance of information then, and Putin just doesn't see to understand that today. I will never forget, as I said, that exchange with Tucker Carlson, in which Putin said, well, you know, we're not going to waste time with the information war because America is always going to win it.

I mean, surrendering the battle before it's even for, which the Iranians, as you rightly say, have shown that that is completely wrong. Yeah. Okay, let's wrap up the video with Lavrov during his speech. He hinted at Alaska being a way to buy time in Trump administration. What did you make of that statement? Well, absolutely. Well, I mean, I think Lavrov, who's never, I think, been very enthusiastic about this whole diplomatic process.

I mean, that was as much a message to Putin as it was to other people. He said, look, you know, you talk about Minsk all the time. How was Anchorage ultimately different? You went to Anchorage. You came away thinking that you got an agreement with Trump. And where did that go? I mean, it achieved nothing in the end. So I think this is, I think this is, again, Lavrov, who I think he has, I mean,

Lavrov has had many more interactions, bear in mind, with the Americans and over a much longer period than Putin has. I mean, he was, you know, he's been in New York. He's worked at the UN. He's met many American officials over a very, very extended period. I don't think he's any illusions about the Americans at all. And I don't think he shares whatever illusions he has about Trump. But there's been another thing which is not getting the attention that perhaps it should do,

which is that a couple of days ago, they all met, all the top people in Russia met at a Security Council meeting. And Lavrov gave a report, and it was all very, very secret. And we won't tell what it was all about, but I think we can now see

because Lavrov said, and he said in these public comments he made, and I should say he's made them in two places. One was to the Diplomatic Academy in Moscow, where they trained diplomats for the Russian foreign ministry. And he then said very similar things to the Primakov Institute, which is Russia's premier foreign policy think tank. Basically, what he's saying is that the Europeans are preparing for war and that the mood, not just amongst the Europeans, but across the collective West, is starting to resemble what was the case in Europe before the Second World War and specifically before the attack on the Soviet Union on the 22nd of June, 1941. And as I said, Lavrov made that report to the Security Council.

It's clearly had an effect. Even Putin repeated some of that, some of those warnings, when he spoke to the military cadets. I mean, he came very close to saying to them, look, we are now in a potential warcoming situation. The Europeans are clearly, not just the Europeans, the collective West is clearly preparing for war. against us. And we have to be ready for that. So you could see that even has Putin, I ultimately

is Putin, completely fluffs the information war. The Russians, the Russian government as a whole, Russian officials as a whole are hardening their views. They think that the situation with the West is in fact deteriorating. Putin may think that he might eventually achieve something with Trump, but I don't think anybody else in the Kremlin does. Do you think that Putin is listening to Lavrov, do you think that Putin, by creating this type of government or maybe non-government group, I'm not sure how to categorize them.

I mean, Peskov government, Ushikov, his presidential aide, Dimitri, do you think by creating these envoys or this group that is liaising with the United States, he's confused things with regards to Lavrov and the foreign ministry? That maybe it was a mistake to create this group. Well, I think. It confuses what Lavrov and the foreign ministry should ultimately be doing, doesn't it? I think that the sense within the foreign ministry is that all of this private diplomacy that has been conducted violates every diplomatic rule and it is leading nowhere.

And it is, again, modeling the message about Russia being in confrontation with the West and a very serious and dangerous confrontation with the West. which message should be made much more clear. So I think that's absolutely Lov's view. I suspect it's also the view of the military as well. And I suspect it's also the view of most of the people and the Security Council. What I'm going to say is this. I think Putin himself does listen to Lov, does take Lov seriously.

But he says to himself, well, given how dangerous the situation has become, as Russia's president, it falls upon me to do whatever is in my power to try to keep diplomatic doors with Washington open, to maintain the dialogue with the Americans, to talk to them as far as I can, to explain to the realities so that the risk that we do end up in a war, which would be a catastrophe for everyone, is avoided. So you can see this, but to repeat again, he's going about it in a way which fluffs the wider message, the bigger message, which is the message that Lavrov, Medvedev, the military, all want to convey to the Russian people that, you know, this is a dangerous situation.

and we must treat it as such. Well, I mean, we, you know, we always criticize, many people criticize Trump's creation of these envoys to handle diplomacy, right? You know, Rubio is just kind of doing his thing. And really Trump's diplomatic team is Wickoff and Kushner. And everyone always asks the question, you know, who are these guys? Yes. You know, what's their role within the White House? What are they up to?

You know, why are they handling all of these very complicated negotiations? whether it's Gaza, Iran, Russia. I mean, Putin mirrored. He accommodated Trump, and he mirrored Trump's actions in a way by creating his own team of on-voice, where he, I would have thought that the best route for Putin to have gone down. And this is what they were doing about a year ago was to say, look, there's a proper way to do diplomacy.

There's a proper way to do negotiations, and it's handled by the Ministry of Foreign Affairs. So if you want to speak to us, well, then you tell Marco Rube, who is a secretary of state to speak to Lavrov, and that's how we do. I think Putin is very typical about these things. Yes. Why did he do such an atypical unorthodox maneuver? I mean, that's the part that I think is very confusing in all of this, which points

to the fact that he really wanted to accommodate Trump. He did, absolutely. And I think, perhaps possibly he thought last year that it would result. in a diplomatic resolution. I'm not sure how far he really believed it. But anyway, he thought that he would go the extra mile with Trump to see whether it would come to anything. And I think he still says to himself, well, Trump's pulling troops out of Europe. He's reducing the American military footprint in Europe, which I think will continue, by the way. He's downscaled U.S. help to Ukraine anyway.

And ultimately we're going to need to develop a long-term dialogue with the Americans. So if Trump wants to do it this way, we'll do it this way. I think that was a serious mistake, by the way. I think, and again, maybe one shouldn't be too hard on Demetriev. Maybe Dimitriev should not have been chosen by Putin for the role that he did. But if he was going to have meetings with With Goff and Kushner, he didn't need to put Demetriyev as the role. person to talk to. He should have had proper people from the foreign minister. Ryabkuf and people like that, Galuzin and people like that. Real diplomats. The Iranians

notice didn't make that mistake. In all interactions with Witkoff and Koshner, they were represented by the foreign minister who was a Raghachee. And Ghalibha, the Speaker of the problem. Yeah. All right. All right, well end the video there, the durand.local.com. We are on X rumble and telegram. go to DuranShot, pick up some merch, also check us out on Substack. Take care.