The Duran Podcast - Russian drones dominate skies. Zelensky Kiev exit

Episode Date: July 14, 2025

Russian drones dominate skies. Zelensky Kiev exit

All right, Alexander, let's talk about the military situation in Ukraine. And let's talk about the Russian drone strikes into Ukraine. A huge amount of drones are smashing Ukraine on a daily basis. How are you seeing things? Well, I mean, this is a critical situation for Ukraine because the Russians are now able to launch strikes against Ukraine every single night. And they're doing so, basically. And those are getting more and more powerful as more and more of these drones are appearing.

And it's not just drones because the Russians have been also ramping up missile production. And with every drone strike, there are missiles launched as well. And I'm going to make a guess, I think it's the missiles that are doing the big damage. So what is happening is the drones are flying, they're operating, they're attacking, all sorts of places. They're probably attacking the air defense systems as well. As the drones distract the air defense systems, which are unable to keep up with what's happening, they're getting submerged under this pressure. The missiles are just getting through.

And the Ukrainians are now admitting that their patriot interceptors cannot shoot down the Iskanda M's, the landlord's ones, and they're gradually now abandoning the fantasy that they could shoot down the Kinshals either. And just to make it clear, the Patriot missiles that Ukraine has are apparently entirely Pact-3 missiles. So they are the ones that are designed to shoot down hypersonic missiles. The Ukrainians at various times pretended that they were successful in shooting down hypersonic missiles, it's becoming increasingly clear that they were not.

What's the situation on the front line? I'm reading about continued Russian advancements, cauldrons forming in Kupianz, the Russian military operating in Teno-Petros, the region, the oblast of Tlipro-Petrovsk, advancing in Pakrovs on the flanks of Pakrovsk. What's the situation? on the front line. It's Sumi. There seems to be battles taking place between the Russian military and the Ukraine military. Siersky is talking about reentering Kursk and Belgorod. A lot of stuff is going on on the front. What's the situation?

What Sierski is saying about re-entering Kusk and Belgarod is basically he's just repeating what Zelensky said. Zelensky wants that to happen because Zelensky continues and persists in running a media war. Given what a community complete debacle, the Kusk operation was, you would have thought that the last thing that the Ukrainians would want to do is repeat it. But Zelensky wants to repeat it, and he wants Siskki to do it for him, because that gives him, as he believes, good publicity, both in Ukraine and in the West. So the result is that we have a whole series of pointless countertacks being conducted by

the Ukrainians in Sumi region. The Russians do what they invariably do. They go into the defense where the counterattacks are happening. They bomb and shell the Ukrainian soldiers that are conducting these counterattacks. And the result is that the Ukrainian military, which is desperately short of men, loses more men, and the Ukrainian military, which is desperately short of machines, tanks, armored vehicles, and those sorts of things, loses more of those as well. Even at a time when the United States, as we've discussed in many programs now, is no longer capable of replacing the weapons that Ukraine is burning through. So it's, again, Zelensky and Siersky, not fighting the real war

that needs to be fought on the battlefronts, but fighting a virtual war, which plays out in the end badly against Ukraine. The real battle continues to take place in Dombas. The Russians are now really at the edge of what you might call the last big line of defense that the Ukrainians have in Dombas. This is this cluster of four cities going from north to south or east to west, Slaviansk, Kramatoos, Konstantinovka, Pakrovsk. They've largely encircled Pakrovsk. They are battling through a place called Novoeconomics, which is a village immediately to the east of Pachrosk, which is very close and is basically a suburb. They're cutting the supply lines. They've encircled troops around Ukrainian troops south of Konstantinovka. And they have basically

Konstantinivka itself mostly encircled. They are also clearing areas close to Slaviansk itself. This is what those battles in Kupyansk and Lehman and Siversk are all about. It's about putting the Russians closer to the position where they can launch an attack on Slaviansk. So you could see how it's working out. When this final barrier breaks, not only will the whole of the Dombas be under Russian control, but it'll be an open road to the NEPA in central Ukraine, as I've discussed many times, because it's very, very difficult to create a stable front defense line to the west of these cities. There isn't the operational space to do it anyway. And of course, the Russians are already advancing towards the NEPA further south.

They've broken through south of Prakosk. They're pushing westwards. And they're also pushing northwards because they're advancing towards. at the city of Zaporosia, and some reports are putting them about 40 kilometers south of Zaporosia and still advancing. So you could see, the lava flow, if you like, has reached the last barrier. When it breaks through the barrier, then as I said, there's really nothing to stop it anymore. There's no further barriers that would line its way until the NEPA itself is really.

There are rumors, and these are just rumors, that Zelensky is preparing some sort of exit from Kiev. Can you expand on that? Yeah, these are not, I think they're more than rumors, actually. This was a Ukrainian commentator who published apparently a plan, details of a plan, which he says he was given by Ukrainian officials, in which there is now apparently serious preparations planning for a relocation of the Ukrainian government to the West, in other words, away from Kiev. Now, the Ukrainians immediately said this is fake. This is not an original document. But the Ukrainian commentator, who is apparently a well-regarded one, stood his ground.

And he said that simply isn't true. It is an absolutely real document. And he has absolute confidence in its authenticity. especially given the people who gave it to him. I think this is entirely likely. If we go back to the earlier programs that we made a little while back, I think we could just, we've just explained what Zelensky's strategy really is. It is to keep control of Ukraine, to remain the government of Ukraine, to keep the government of Ukraine, to keep the money flows from the West still coming in. And then when the moment finally comes to make a quick exit,

and that is completely consistent with the plan that we've just heard. So he would leave Kiev with the government. They would relocate presumably to evolve or someplace like that. maybe they would stop first for a time in a place called Vienitza or someplace like that, but then they would presumably move on to Lvov. And if the Russians, of course, advanced towards Lvov, I'm not saying they would. We don't know what the Russians would do. But if we got into a situation where the Russians do start moving further west still,

that government, which would continue to have the support of Ukraine security agencies, and of the various nationalist battalions would then relocated the West, set itself up as a government in exile, and continue to do all of the various things that we've discussed in our previous programs. So this document is consistent with what we've worked out Zelensky's policy to be, and even allowing for, you know, confirmation bias, given that this Ukrainian commentator, tells us that he's absolutely confident of the authenticity of this plan. I inclined to believe it's true. Final question.

What happens with the Zelensky government, with Ukraine, if you have the administration of the country shift from Kiev to Levov, the Russians continuing to advance? Does the collective west, does NATO, do they provide some sort of protective umbrella to the west of Ukraine? I mean, I'm just assuming that this report from this commentator is accurate and that the Russians continue to advance and eventually they do end up on the De Nipar. Perhaps the Zelensky administration does relocate to the west. It would definitely be Lavalph, which is where they would set up there. government. What kind of protection, given that you're so close to Poland, could the West provide?

But would they be able to provide any type of protection? They have no more patriots. The U.S. is low on patriots. The United States has been demilitarized to a certain extent. Europe has been demilitarized to a very large extent. Would they be able to do anything to safeguard? this type of government in the West or even to safeguard some sort of Ukraine administration of the West? Well, it's possible that those plans exist and I would not be surprised if Zelensky himself hopes that they do and is going to urgently lobby for them. He's going to want French and British troops to go in to Western Ukraine and German troops, presumably Romanian troops and all of those to protect his government. But the reality is that

none of these countries can take on Russia and they know it. And we've seen in the past that they said they wouldn't do it without an American backstop. So it ultimately comes back to Donald Trump and what he intends to do in that situation. My own guess is that if we're starting to see a Ukrainian collapse start to take hold, far from the United States rushing to Zelensky's rescue in that case. I think the consensus in the United States will be to bail out, and I don't just mean, you know, the Maga people, I think it will start to expand well beyond the Maga people as well. That's consistent with the way the United States has responded to previous collapses of this kind. There will be no appetite in the United States to go and fight the Russians, involve or any of those

places. And I think the American people in general, will be obviously very strongly opposed to that, but I think large sections of the elite, even those parts of the elite that go along with the neocons most of the time would probably bulk at doing something like this. I would add also something else that, of course, if Western troops were to enter Western Ukraine, far from deterring the Russians, it's almost certainly the one thing that would be guaranteed to persuade the Russians to keep advancing westwards because the Russians have made, and they've said this very, very clearly, that as far as they're concerned, the entry of Western troops to any part of the Ukraine

is for them a red line. It is as bad as having Ukraine itself in NATO. So I think we are not at that point of crisis yet. We're probably some time. Far off. We're far off. Far off from it. But, I mean, it's quite likely that we will have some very nerve-wracking moments when we get close. But my own sense is at this time that the Americans and ultimately the Europeans will

back off. And then Zelensky will relocate to Cannes or Nice, someplace like that. And he'll continue to have his government and he'll continue to have his embassies, by the way, and his diplomats answering to him, certainly in most Western countries. And he'll probably continue, at least for a while, to hold on to Ukraine's seat in the General Assembly at the UN. Guterres, the UN Secretary-General, is unspokenly supportive of Ukraine. And he's made statements to that effect, which have annoyed the Russians over the U.N. missile and drone attacks, by the way. And so he will, for a while at least, for some years at least,

he will continue to have the trappings of a government and the money will continue to flow. And you'll have the television channels and the radio channels and you'll have the funding to mountain insurgency and all of those things and I'm afraid the conflict will just continue even if the battles on Ukrainian territory themselves

have ended. It will take a while a long long time, could take years, decades even, before the situation is finally resolved. Yeah, interesting report on the Zelensky government in Kiev. We're still a long ways off from those

I mean, but I mean, can I just quickly point out, you know, the best, perhaps, the most obvious historical analogy is with the nationalist government that was defeated by the communists in China, which relocated in Taiwan. Right. It was not until the 1970s, late 1970s, that the United States finally stopped recognizing that nationalist government in Taiwan as the government of China. I mean, when Nixon went to China officially, as far as the United States was concerned, it was still the nationalist government in Taiwan that was the government of China.

And it continued to be so for several more years. And many, many European and other Western states went along with that fiction. So that lasted for 30 years. And I don't really think it's going to be any different with Ukraine. I think that if we do get a government in exile of the kind that I've described, the United States and European governments will go on supporting it for decades. I think the one big difference in the China scenario that you mentioned is that back then the United States and the West was on the ascendance. Absolutely. Where now it will be the bricks in the east, which will be on the ascendance.

And they just might say, who cares what the Europe is. Well, the United States say anymore. Well, exactly. Well, it'll make a huge difference. I mean, that makes all the difference. But all I'm saying is, I mean, you know, don't expect that simply because the Russians say take law, if they do take the volve, if they take the valve, that that is the end of this. It won't be.

It will just be, there will just be another chapter in this saga that will continue. And we will have the same, we'll have attempts to destabilize the city in Belarus, we will continue to have bought the sanctions in place. We'll have all kinds of things going on for years and years and years. But for the moment, on the battlefronts, the Russians have continued to advance. The Ukrainians are getting weaker. The missile and drone strikes on Ukraine are now becoming a nightly affair. And the Ukrainian economy is apparently in deep crisis.

So we can see with the trends. I mean, they're very clean. All right, we'll end the video there, the durand.locals.com. We are on X and Telegram and Rumble and go to the Duran Shop, pick up some merch, like what we are wearing in this video update. A link is in the description box down below. Take care.