The Duran Podcast - Russia Rearms, West Disarms. Zelensky Wants US to Strike Russian Missile Launchers

Episode Date: August 6, 2026

Russia Rearms, West Disarms. Zelensky Wants US to Strike Russian Missile Launchers

All right, Alexander, let's do an update on Project Ukraine. And actually, let's start with the reshuffle in the military and in the defense ministry. The Kremlin will be unifying logistics under one command. And they will also be creating a drone command or a drone department within the military. What do you make of these moves? I think very interesting. And I think what they show again is that the Russians are placing their military more and more under a kind of semi-permanent war footing. Obviously, this has very great relevance to what's going on in the conflict in Ukraine at the moment.

but it also has longer-term relevance as well in terms of the future development and evolution of the wall. Now, I read all of these changes and the fact that there's been a reshuffle of command and that the Russians have created a unified logistic system in the rear and that the Russians have also set up this independent drone command. Now, my understanding is that, in fact, during the period of the Soviet Union, during the time of the Warsaw Pact, during the Cold War, the Soviets did operate a centralized, unified logistics command in the rear. In fact, they had a name for it. They called it the till that, you know, it brought together all of these elements in one place. Then the Soviet Union collapsed.

There was a reorganization of the militaries. There was the military. There was an attempt to move, you know, during the 90s and early 2000s to restructure the military more on what you might call Western lines. This is, you know, the period when Western influence in Russia was very strong. There was a period when the Russians had a defense. Defense Minister, the man called Serdyukov, who was very keen on sort of westernizing the Russian military. And these logistical and, you know, systems were fragmented. Now, the till, if I can call it that, is now being re-established. And the point here is not just that this provides

unified logistics, but that it integrates the Russian military more closely into the military production system, as used to be in the case of the Soviet Union, so that you start getting an even smoother interconnect between the military, the general staff system, the military industrial commission, which is headed by Medvedev, by the way, and the various component parts. of the military system, of the industrial and technological system that makes weapons. Now, it does also, however, have immediate relevance for the progress of the war, because unifying logistics, creating a centralized command system, and Putin, when he made these appointments, was very careful to say that the

sorting out the rear areas was a combat task that the people who run the rear areas are going to be running a system that is geared towards combat. It's not just a management, civilian, procurement and distribution organization. And he's put a top field commander, one of Russia's most successful field commanders, in charge of all of this. To me, and I have to say this, this also looks like gearing up the logistics

and military industrial system in Russia, in the short term, to support what could be a much more racket, and sustained offensive in Ukraine over the next few months. You put somebody who's been there on the front lines, who's very familiar with the situation on the front lines, who knows all the other combat commanders, you put him in charge of the rear, you involve him in the procurement and logistics process. And it seems to me that this is intended to remove bottlenecks ahead of what I suspect is going to be a much more rapid Russian offensive once Don Bass falls. So that is my

assessment of this. And the other side of this, and it fits exactly into this picture, is that they've now created this unified drone command. I understand that it's not going to be directly involved in some of the FPV drone operations. So you will still have military units on the front lines, which have their own integrated FPV operators. You know, brigade will have some people who run FPV drones. But you're going to have a unified command. So you're going to have groups like the Rubicon group,

who run FPV drones and medium-range drones, and they're also going to be operated centrally. And then, of course, you're also going to have people who will be operating the long-range drones, and this is going to be a service independently, of the Russian aerospace forces. So you're going to use things like the Geran drone, as a kind of long-range artillery.

And again, I have to say, this in the short term, looks to me like it's geared to support an offensive by the Russian military, to give ground support from the air for the Russian military as it advances more faster on the Ukrainian battlefields,

after Donbass falls. So that's the way it all looks to me. How is this different than the shake-up? How is the reshuffle in Russia different than the shake-up in Ukraine? It's completely different. The shake-up in Ukraine was about the defense minister, the chief of the defense minister. The reshuffle in Russia is about refining tactics

and developing... systems to facilitate ongoing military operations and to assist in an accelerated offensive and possibly to prepare for a future war with the West. The crisis, the politics, the crisis in the commands in Ukraine was as a result of a massive quarrel between the uniformed military led by Sirsky and the drone people and Fyodorov, the defense minister, the civilian defense minister about the entire direction of the war, the whole strategy with which the war is being fought. The Russians are giving themselves the tools through this reshuffle to accelerate, to accelerate, to develop the already agreed existing strategy, the Ukrainian reshuffle,

it arises from the fact that there is no agreement about strategy in Ukraine at all. And you can see this, by the way, because after the Ukrainian reshuffle, nothing has really changed. Ukraine continues its drone offensive as before. There are attempts at the same time simultaneously to tighten up mobilization. And for the moment, the new military chief, Drapati, who is in command of the Ukrainian armed forces, is mostly invisible. I mean, you barely see him. The Ukrainian reshuffle was bitter and contentious and evolved.

a massive public row. The Russian reshuffle was smooth. Nobody was sacked. I mean, that's an important point to understand. People were promoted and new organisations were arranged and it was smooth and it was done in order to execute more efficiently on what is clearly an already pre-arranged plan. Zelensky is upset with the West. He's upset about the whole Patriot missiles situation. He is saying that from 2025, the Patriot missiles and interceptors have decreased by, I believe he said, more than a third.

I think that was the number that he put out there. But he is also claiming that the Europeans do have Patriot missiles. If the U.S. is saying they need the Patriot missiles for the war in the Middle East, he's angry with the Europeans because they will not give up their Patriot systems. Of course, the Europeans have given up all of their spare Patriot systems and then some. But he's asking basically the Europeans to give up all of their air defense, including the air defense that protects European countries, European capitals. He wants it all. But there are no Patriot systems. to get to Zelensky. He's very upset. So the new plan going forward is to, at least from the Zelensky administration, is to hit the Russian missile launchers to go after Russian launchers. And for that, he's going to need access to Starlink over Russia. Elon Musk refuses to meet with Zelensky, but who knows, maybe Musk does give access, I doubt it, but that's his plan. Starlink, then to go after Russian launchers deep inside of Russia, which he claims he knows where

they're located. They've got the targeting ready. They just need Starlink to finish off the job. Of course, the United States sent something like 13,000 missiles into Tehran to go after the launchers, and we know how that turned out. So if the United States cannot do it in Iran, then what makes the delusional comedian in Kiev believe that he's going to be able to go after Russian. launchers inside of Russia, deep inside of Russia. That's the new grift. That's the new plan from

Zelensky. The situation in Ukraine is catastrophic. Even the spectator, Alexander, is writing that the tide has not turned and that Ukraine intercepted zero missiles from the Russian strike into Kiev the other day. Well, let's talk about Zelensky, because everything that you said is actually very important and we do need to see this because it tells us again in a sense how dangerous Zelensky has become because what he's asking what he's telling the United States, what he's telling the Europeans is that I and Ukraine are the single overriding priority. nothing else, your own security, the conflict in Taiwan, the state of your military, the situation in the Persian Gulf, none of that is at all important. You must give me everything you've got.

You must give me all your air defence systems, even though that is only going to last me for a few weeks because it will. I mean, there are desperately few air defence systems left. And if you won't do that, that's not because you can't. It's because you won't. So you are betraying Ukraine and that you are somehow responsible for the fact that we are losing the war and that people are dying. And at the same time, if you won't do that, then help me escalate even more. give me the means so that I can take the war even further and deeper into Russia. So what he's now demanding, and it's actually a significant further escalation,

and you can understand why people in the US, mask and the Pentagon and even Trump are having cold feet about this, what he's basically saying is, participate in direct attacks with me against the Russian army. You've already been helping me to some extent with drones, but use your most advanced communications technology. Act, in other words, as if I was a full-spectrum ally like Britain or Germany or some place, country like that, a full spectrum ally,

join me, join me in a war against Russia. Because what is demanding essentially amounts to that. It is asking the United States to take a direct and open role in attacking the Russian military inside Russia itself. Now, I think there's a strong chance that sooner or later he's going to get it because you're going to get all of the usual people in Washington and in Europe saying that, of course, Ukraine must be given this. It needs every single tool that it needs in order to defeat this aggression.

But this is another massive escalation. the Americans have already breached the Russian red line in terms of Russian missile strikes in, sorry, missile strikes against Russia with the attackams and the storm shadows. This takes breaching that red line a massive step further. Now, it's also going to fail. I mean, the missile launches are mobile. They can be shuffled around. Russia is, of course, a heavily forested country. The Russians know where to hide and are very adept at hiding their missile launches. And of course, Russia also has an air defense system. And the most heavily defended

targets in Russia are inevitably going to be the missile launches. So it is going to fail operationally. But of course, what Zelensky is really trying to do and has been trying to do since the start of the war is to get the United States into a direct conflict with Russia. And what he is now proposing is a massive further step in that direction. The US might agree to this, and Musk might agree to this as well. Well, eventually, once Russia continues to push forward and they do capture Slavians and Kramadorsk, as we said in the previous video, you're going to see a lot of panic from the collective

West, a lot of panic from the United States. And they might do some very stupid things, and this may be one of them. How would they hit these launchers with what? With drones, that doesn't seem possible to hit the missile launchers with drones. So Flamingos are nonsense. Nonsense. Everyone understands this. I think Ukraine launched 30 flamingos or something, 15 or 30 flamingos.

I forgot the number into Russia and Russia knocked all those down. That's a ridiculous weapon. Taurus, tourist missiles, tomahawks, the U.S. is low on tomahawks. That would also be crossing a huge red line. Zelensky may be right on one thing, which is that crossing a red line is not going to trigger a retaliation from Putin. He understands this, and the West in the United States understands this. But what is the possibility of actually hitting these launchers?

And with what? As I said, the United States launched 13,000 missiles into Iran, a number, a ridiculous number. It may be off. The number may be off. But I read somewhere it was thousands of thousands of missiles in Iran to go after the launchers. And then we found out over time that 70% of the launchers, that 70% of the launchers were intact. Absolutely.

Well, it's going to be... And that's Iran against the United States. I mean, what is he hoping to accomplish with this? And how can this be accomplished? What he's hoping to accomplish is eventually to draw the Americans into the war. I understand that. That I understand. And the way he's going...

What he's, I think, thinking about is not just attacking the launches. The other thing that's coming now is that there's the Russian satellite. system, the RASVET, which is, we were, by the way, far and away the first people to say this. The RASVET is already at low-level operation. In other words, it is providing coverage over Ukraine. There is, I think, some evidence, and I think it's very strong evidence, that some of the Gerand drones are already being guided through the Rass-Vet system to be. make attacks on targets inside central and maybe even Western Ukraine.

Apparently the coverage, because the satellite array is relatively small at the moment, they can only do that for one or two hours within a 24-hour cycle. But the Razvet array is getting larger every few months. and it's assumed that by early next year, the Russians will have complete coverage over Ukraine. So there is now talk in Ukraine of shooting down the Russian satellites. Now, Ukraine doesn't have that capability. So when they talk about this, who do they actually mean? they mean the Americans. Only the Americans conceivably have that sort of capability.

And as for attacking, the Russian launches inside Russia, well, again, the only way that can be done with any prospect of success is for fighter jets to actually get close to where the launch. and to launch shorter-range missiles, of which the United States still has quite a few. But that means getting F-16s and Mirage 2000s closer to the Russian border and within, in other words, easy targeting range of the Russian Air Force and of the Russian air defense system. And again, that can only really be done with much more coordination provided by the United States. Again, it can only be the United States because no other Western country, not Britain, not France, not Germany, not Sweden, has that kind of capability. So you could see what Zelensky is trying to do.

He knows he's losing the war. He knows that the situation is catastrophic. He knows that his army is now shrinking and is overstretched and exhausted. He knows that his seaports are blockaded. He knows that there is a massive crisis coming within the budget, the Ukrainian budget, just over the horizon. He knows that Ukraine is facing a terrible winter. But obviously he's not prepared to talk.

or to negotiate. After his 40 days, he came back, again demanded unconditional ceasefire, freezing of the conflict on the existing lines. Instead of entering into meaningful negotiations with the Russians, who would, of course, insist in that case on he's quitting the sea. He wants to escalate in all sorts of ways that by definition are going to involve the United States. People in the United States need to understand what Zelensky is trying to do. If they go after Rasmets, wouldn't that lead to the Russians going after Starlink? Wouldn't that lead to a massive drop in SpaceX value? if investors are, if investors wake up to the fact that, you know what, our, our most important

assets or one of our most important assets are definitely our revenue generating model, which is Starlink at the moment, can be destroyed by a country. Well, this is exactly what, why I suspect, Musk didn't want to talk to Zelensky, because he acutely understands the enormous risks for Starlink and for SpaceX and for the entire complex of companies that Elon Musk has put so much hard work building up and floating on the stock markets. He understands the enormous risks involved in this kind of thing. Now, Starlink is in some ways a more robust system because it has far more satellites. I mean, thousands of satellites, not just a few. So knocking them out for the Russians would

presumably be more complicated. But they're in lower, very lower, very lower, orbit, apparently, than the Rassvet satellites are. There are rumors that the Russians have weapons that can reach these satellites. I'm not going to try and speculate as to what those are. I mean, the whole idea is terrifying. And America should absolutely not go down that path. But the key thing to understand about Zelensky is he doesn't care, just as he demands that the West strip itself of all their defenses so as to keep him in his job for a few more months. So he wants the West to become even more deeply committed into the war, to engage in fighting Russia for him. And well, what that leads to the potential effects on the West and on the world

is something he just doesn't care about. His entire position and power is at stake. So yeah, he doesn't care about it. Absolutely. He usually gets what he wants as well. He didn't get the Patriots, but that's because there are no Patriots to give. If there were Patriots, they would be. He would get them, yeah. They would be giving it to you. They would be given. The U.S. just doesn't have any.

We know from the Washington Post that Hegseth, that Trump was upset with Hegseth because allegedly Hegseth did not tell him about the weapon shortages. But it's pretty much confirmed now that the U.S. is running very low on these types of weapons. Well, you know, this is the extraordinary thing. I remember roughly this time last year, the Pentagon was trying to slow Patriot missile deliveries to Ukraine. This is before the conflict with Iran started. It was before the June 2025 war. They were already flagging, people in the Fed again were already flagging warnings about the fact that Patriot supplies were dwindling because so many missiles,

so many patriots had already been given to Zelensky. And Zelensky complained, the Europeans complained. Zelensky's friends in Washington complained. Zelensky had a telephone call with Trump. Trump went away and said, of course, Ukraine can get patriots, and Ukraine got patriots. So, of course, if there were patriots to give, if there were naysams and other types of air defense weapons, the West would be giving them because this spoiled child, which is what he is, all he has to do is throw a tantrum. And he always up to now has been given what he wants. And he doesn't see why that should change. And the West also banks on the fact that Russia is not going to do anything.

At least to the West, they're not going to retaliate. They understand that. They'll retaliate against Ukraine. And we have seen a symmetric retaliation against Ukraine when it comes to the wildberries. The Russians have now hit Ukraine e-commerce logistics. So there is a retaliation in Ukraine, but the West understands that if they hit Russia, well, then the Russians will not hit back at them. I mean, we do have reports which came out yesterday, which says that the United States has restored their intelligence sharing with Ukraine.

It was paused for a brief amount of time in 2025, but now it's been fully restored. Oh, well, I mean, we know about that. This has been a well-known thing. The point is that the United States is not disengaging like Trump would like people to believe. No, it is not. They're actually getting further and further deeper into the conflict of Ukraine. But this has proved a disaster for the West. Yeah, Trump's going to lose two wars.

Trump is at risk of losing two wars. It's not been good for Russia because obviously they had drone attacks, attacks, attacking wild berries, warehouses, and all that. But Russia is not disarmed. Russia, as we discussed in this program, is re-arming. It is the West that is becoming disarmed. The West's military position in Europe, relative to Russia's, is weakening because we constantly, persistently give Zelensky what he wants.

Now, the West used up 500 attackers missiles attacking Russia. 500 attack and missiles were what Biden gave Ukraine, a massive depletion of the stockpile. Now they've had to use more of the attackings missiles and the successor missile attacking Iran. And the stoppile is completely exhausted. the United States is apparently out of tactical missiles. It's Tom Oaks systems are also well down. But more important, these air defenses are massively down. Giving Zelensky always what he demands, what he wants.

I believe the situation is not good with armored vehicles either, because again, the Biden administration gave so many back, so many of the actually working Bradley's to Ukraine. And artillery across Europe is in terrible straits. The British gave most of their self-propelled, I believe almost all of their self-propelled how is this to Ukraine. And now we've learned that the Germans have given even more. So in the end, this policy of giving Zelensky what he wants,

It's not stop the Russians. It's disarmed us. So the CIA and the collective West through Ukraine, it appears that they are escalating the dirty war. We have a lot of assassination attempts now taking place inside of Russia. And they're even going after drone CEOs. Yeah. Drone CEOs. Yeah.

In Nicarenburg, they tried to assassinate. fascinate the man who runs the African-Iritch drone company. Yeah, we have. Like on the tip of my... Anyway, one of the big drone manufacturers and they tried to kill him. Yes. Isn't this running the risk of Russia retaliating against Collective West weapons CEOs, known CEOs?

Absolutely it is. I think we discussed this when we were in Chattanooga in the United States. The Russians, again, are usually very, very slow to respond to these things. But similar things were happening during the Caucasus Wars, the wars in the Caucasus in the 1990s and 2000s. Again, there was lots of assassinations, lots of murders and things of that kind. And the Russians spent years just absorbing it. And then finally they responded. And large numbers of people who were involved in this in Europe and in the Middle East were killed.

So yes, absolutely. This is the way the Russia's work. Where in the West we do salami tactics. we slice one piece at a time and get ourselves deeper and deeper in. With this kind of thing, the Russians wait and then they wait, and then they wait still further, and then they come big. And I'm afraid this is exactly what we're likely to see. The problem with the dirty wall is that it has every potential to continue long after the actual convention.

conventional fighting ends. Let's speculate, let's assume that the Russians win the war, capture Kiev itself, establish a pro-Russian government in Kiev, do all of the things that many people are speculating about. Zelensky, or whoever replaces him, forms an alternative government in exile in London or Paris or Nice or Beirits or wherever. They continue to prosecute, the dirty war and they continue to get funding and help in order to do that. This could go on for years

exactly as it did in the Caucasus, with the war in the Caucasus. And the Russians will respond. All right. We'll end the video there, the durand.com. We're next run, we're on Rumble, we're on telegram. We are also on substack. Go to the Duran shop, pick up some

merch. Links are in description box down below. Take care.