The Duran Podcast - Russian military LAVA flow, collective west panic

Episode Date: April 9, 2025

Russian military LAVA flow, collective west panic

All right, Alexander, let's talk about the military situation in Ukraine. You believe that the Russian offensive, the big Russian offensive, has probably started. Why do you believe this? What are you seeing that many analysts so far are not talking about? Well, what I'm seeing is that over the last week, perhaps the last couple of days more precisely, we're starting to see a quickening of the temper. in terms of Russian advances all across the front lines. Now, we've had in March, early March, the Russians finalising the battle for Kusk. There's one village, apparently, maybe two villages in course, that the Russians still haven't captured.

But having got that aside, having sorted out that problem, we then had that comment from Putin. the time had come for the Russian military, which had gained the initiative right across the front lines, to actually start, you know, to finish the job, basically. And it looks as if the period of the spring thaw, the mud period, has basically now passed. The ground has got a lot harder. And if you are looking at what's been happening on the front lines, you're now starting to see quite a lot of movement. much more movement than was the case, say, two weeks ago. And it looks purposeful.

It looks to me as if the Russians are intentionally now putting pressure on the Ukrainians along multiple positions along the front lines. So I could take you through, you know, where the Russians are pushing. But can I perhaps give a comparison? which is with the Ukrainian offensive, the famous Ukrainian offensive of the summer of 2023, which had been talked about for weeks and months, everybody was expecting it. And then suddenly in June, 2023, it began. And we saw a lot of movement on the front lines.

but actually the Ukrainians almost immediately stopped gaining territory. They found that they were hitting obstacles that they weren't able to capture the key village of Rabatino, that they took an enormously long time to make any inroads in other places along the front lines. What is happening this time is not only are the Russians moving, and they're moving in significant numbers, but they are capturing territory much faster, and much more successfully than the Ukrainians were able to do in 2023. They're able to capture villages right across the conflict line. Now, every day, multiple villages. And it does look to me like a concerted

forward movement. The point is, the Russians don't talk about their offensives in advance. They don't tell us what their plans are. We don't have weeks of speculation that they're preparing an attack in this direction or that direction like we had with the Ukrainians and the West in 2003. And nor do they try big spectacular gimmicks like the Kuzka offensive that the Ukrainians launched last year. So this is a broad offensive right across the front lines. And all of the facts that I can see point to it having actually started. And you can already see that it's having an effect. In lots of places the Ukrainians are coming under intense pressure. And that pressure, if previous history of what happened in the war, is followed with Russian

offensives, that pressure is likely to grow. Just to make one last point, it exactly follows the same pattern that we saw last year. Last year, the Russians captured the fortress town of Avdavka. In February, then there was the saw period and the reorganized. organization. Movement seemed to slow in late February, early March, and then from March, and then going into April, you saw the offensive gradually begin and gradually gain momentum. And then there was the big breakthrough moment, which came in July. Then there was rapid advances in August, September, October, continuously increasing the pace.

a very, very big increase in the offensive in November. And then the Russians basically wrap things up in December, January. So I think this is the pattern that we're seeing again. What is the military goal? If you had to take a guess, I mean, it's a huge front line. It's a huge front line. It's a massive front line. But where do you think the Russians are going to concentrate most of the offensive?

Is this about getting to the Deneb? Is this about capturing a certain region or a certain town or city? And what do you think are the political goals? Because this offensive coincides, exactly coincides with the negotiations that are currently taking place with the United States. So is this also Russia's way of putting pressure not only on Ukraine but on the United States as well? Or is this separated from the negotiations?

I don't see how you can separate this because the United States is going to be looking at this offensive and they're going to consider what's going on on the front lines as they're negotiating with Russia. What are your thoughts there? Well, the Americans, Marco Rubio, to be precise, has already complained that, you know, the Russians launched an offensive. That means that, you know, they're not really interested in peace. and, you know, all of that.

He did a bit more than complaining. A bit more complaining. He's warning, threatening. He's warning, threatening. Now, that is an absurd for opposition because we don't have a ceasefire. But what Rubio is saying is that even though there is no ceasefire, the Russians need to stop all military operations or all offensive military operations. Notwithstanding that there is no agreed ceasefire, in other words, they must suppose. supposedly put all their military plans on hold until there's some outcome to the negotiations,

which could be in three months, six months, one year, ten years, never. I mean, that is an absurd thing, if I can say. Now, my own guess about this offensive is that it has been prepared by the Russians for a very long time. I think the Russians have had a long scale operational plan about how they're going to win the war in Ukraine. I remember back in, I think it was 2023, Shoyugu, the defense minister at that time, actually said that the plan was to end the war in 26. So, you know, they clearly have a big framework plan for the war. And an offensive, like the one that we are seeing now, you know, with apparently new divisions created assembly of troops, large amounts of ammunition and equipment.

I mean, this is something the advanced planning for which must have begun. I am guessing around the autumn of last year, 2024, you know, the latest, I mean, you know, this is These offensives, they don't just happen. I mean, they need to be prepared for and sort through, and the plans need to be worked out. And everything points that to me. But of course, when you do undertake an offensive in the middle of negotiations, or at least whilst there's talk about negotiations,

then that does have a political effect. In Russia, as we have discussed many, many times, going all the way back to the first beginning of the special military operation. The political and military decision making is integrated to an extent that simply doesn't exist in the West. And clearly the plan was there, but the decision to go ahead with the plan, to move forward, must be to some extent affected by the political and diplomatic calculus. And the Americans have been talking about putting pressure on the Russians, about ultimatums against the Russians,

about further sanctions against the Russians. The Russians will be saying to themselves, the Americans want to put pressure on us, then this is the right moment for us to be put pressure on them. And how can we do this better than by making, further advances on the battle lines, in other words, by conducting our offensive. So I think that, you know, there's clearly been a political decision. Putin signaled it to move forward despite the fact that these negotiations or these discussions, they're not

even really negotiations so far. There's been no proper negotiating format created. Anyway, despite the fact that there's been discussions, there's been contacts, the Russians are saying to themselves, this isn't enough. We have really seen fundamental progress. So far, none of the key issues that we have been raising have been addressed by the Americans. A Russian foreign ministry official, Sergeiqyad Yavkov, said that last week. The Ukrainians are not honoring their part of the energy truce. we didn't expect that they would, but the fact is that they haven't. The Americans aren't doing anything about it. So we're not going to hold back from our offensive. We're going to conduct our

offensive. And hopefully, maybe, possibly, that will put more pressure on the Americans. And that might instead of causing them to try and impose further sanctions on us, which we will just brush off, that will make the Americans perhaps come round and start to negotiate with us in earnest, which they haven't been doing up to now. Now, as to Russian plans and what they are specifically planning to do, it's always very difficult because to say, the point I've made many times. One, I have no background in military planning or military history or anything of that kind. So that's the first thing to say. The second is, obviously, the Russians don't share their military plans with me or anyone else. So, you know, we're all reduced to guessing.

Two things can be said about this. Firstly, this is an offensive that is being launched right across the front lines. In every part of the front lines, going from the north, from Sumi region, which adjoins Kursk region, Sumi region, is in Ukraine,

obviously. The city of Sumi, around 280,000 people, right on the close to the border with Russia. The Russians are probably already within long-range artillery range, of Sumi, just saying.

So, Sumi, possible target. The Russians are moving quite quickly there. The Russians have achieved a very significant breakthrough in the last few weeks in southern Kharkov region. They've crossed the Osco River in multiple places. This is near the town of Kupiansk, which you've been hearing so much about. They've apparently united their various bridgeheads. The Ukrainian forces in this area seem to be weak and unable to put up a huge amount of resistance.

Further north, the Russians appeared to have largely captured the bitterly fought over town of Volchansk, which leads to Kharkov, the second biggest city in Ukraine. So there could be a lot going on in the north. Suu, Kharkov, they could all be coming together. That brings the Russians very close to Kiev again. It would be a major crisis for the Ukrainians if that were to happen. Then there's the central area, which is the area where the Ukrainians appear to be. Most concerned reports are that they're trying to concentrate what troops they have in reserve

in this area, the area of Toretsk, China. the town of Konstantinovka, which is still under Ukrainian control, the cities, the towns of Slaviansk and Kramatosk, the major conurbation in Donbass, the only major conurbation in Donbass, which is still under Ukrainian control. The Ukrainians appear to be determined to resist the Russians there as far as possible. But over the last couple of, last week or so, It looks as if Russian pressure in this area is increasing markedly. The Ukrainians launched a misguided country attack, I think, in Toretsk, which appears to have failed very badly. There's reports that nearly all of Chasofyar is now under Russian control, that the Ukrainian troops there are essentially encircled.

This isn't a particularly sensitive area for the Ukrainians. But my own sense is that ultimately the main focus of the Russian attack is going to be in the South. They are pressing in multiple places towards the Dnieper. Instead of capturing Pachrovsk or getting bogged down in a big battle for Pachrovsk, which many people had expected, they've outflanked Pachrovsk to the south. they managed to push forward significantly west of Bakrowski and to the south of Bakrowski, moving steadily towards the Dnieper.

The Russian forces in the south, the same forces that defeated the Ukrainian offensive in 2023 and which have been resting, you know, remaining still throughout 2024, have now been activated and they are pushing northward and they're starting to edge closer to the great city of Zaporozsche on the Deeper River. So my guess is that that is where the big blow will fall, that they will push towards Zaporozia towards the NEPA, towards the two cities of the deeper, on the Dupas, Zaporosia and NEPRO. This is Ukraine's industrial heartland. We've discussed many times in many programs,

how Ukraine ceases to be functional as a country if it loses control of the territory east of the Dnieper. And if the Russians reach the Dnieper in this central industrial area, of Ukraine, then this is a crisis for Ukraine, which I think would be an existential one. I mean, we would be looking at a possible situation where Ukraine as a state would be unable to continue to function any longer. So my sense is that this is where the Russians are probably going to strike, that this is their main area of attack. But the Russians, and this is again, I think, something that, you know, you can find out all about it from Jacques Ball's books and from other

books of military history of talking about the Russians. The Russians tend when they conduct offensives to conduct them along a very broad front, to stretch the defenders as far as possible, to cause cracks and to cause cascades. And they always show great flexibility. So, If the collapse comes somewhere, which might even be unexpected to them, then they will adapt their plans to that and they will adjust them and they will strike in that particular place where their collapse has happened. So I don't think that the Russians are rigidly committed to one particular plan. But my guess is that their major objective is the NEPA. I wonder how the collective West, Europe, the EU, and or the U.S., the UK, how they can counter this. I mean, they must know what's going on.

Obviously, they must know if Russia is about. out to do something. You would imagine that they would have the intel to understand that things are progressing for some sort of a Russian offensive. I wonder how they counter this, or if they can counter this. And maybe Trump his angle to trying to get some sort of a ceasefire very quickly. Zelensky as well, he's saying, I want an unconditional ceasefire. He says it every day now. So it seems like they're very panicky, they're very pressed to get some sort of a deal negotiated, whether it's an unconditional ceasefire, whether it's something else. They want to get some sort of a pause, something in place to slow down the Russian tempo or the Russian Momento, the Russian plans.

You have this offensive that could be taking shape. you have the fact that the United States is going to run out of weapons from the Biden drawdown package in the summertime. A lot of people, they say, oh, Trump is still giving weapons. Trump is still giving, you know, all of these missiles and artillery shells to get up. That's the drawdown. That's the Biden 60, whatever billion drawdown that continues. I mean, Biden made sure that there was a lot of money and a lot of weapons as he exited that Ukraine would be able to use. it during the first six months of Trump's administration. So Trump hasn't touched that. He's letting

the drawdown run its course. But that's going to run out. So I wonder if the U.S. is looking at all of this, the Trump administration, as well as the Europeans, as well as Zeletsky, and they're saying, we got to come to some sort of a pause, a stop, a freeze. Yulia Timoshenko is talking about some sort of May deal. The month of May, there's going to be some sort of a Korea-style freeze and then a DMZ. It seems like the entire West, the entirety of the West, Selensky, Europe, Stommer, Trump, in their own different ways, they want to get to some sort of a freeze, a pause, a stop, something. Because maybe they see the Russian force is gaining momentum.

They see the drawdown package coming to its end. All of these things are happening and they realize the game could be lost come summertime, completely lost in the summertime. Absolutely. Can I just also add to all of that? We have opinion polls now coming out of the United States. And what they show quite clearly is that Republican voters, and especially those Republican voters,

who are most core Trump supporters, are strongly opposed now to further military assistance to Ukraine. So the politics, after, as the drawdowns run out, the politics of going back to Congress and asking for further assistance for Ukraine are impossibly difficult. Given that we are already seeing all of the turmoil over the tariffs, I mean, for the Trump administration to antagonize its base at a time when it needs support more than ever, I would have thought would be incredibly reckless. And I cannot believe, ultimately, that they will do that. Now, the West, the way it approaches Ukraine, we discussed it in our

previous video when we talked about the military situation, is that when things quiet and down, they seem to persuade themselves and talk about a stalemate in the war. They revert to that narrative of stalemate. And then when things start to move again, when the Russians start advancing, when what apparently US military officials are calling the lava flow, which is the Russian advance, which is a tremendously evocative metaphor, by the way, I mean, a lava flow is, as anybody who's familiar with, they're pretty much irresistible. When the lava flow starts moving again,

then, of course, you start getting panic sets in, and you get hysteria, you get talking about deploying troops to Ukraine. Remember all of that with Macron that happened? You get decisions to launch missiles into Russia, you get all of that going on. So it swings between the one and the other. Either, you know, we fought the Russians to stand still. They suffered these tremendous losses. We're now into a stalemate. So for that reason, we can either weight out the Russians or coerce them into agreeing

to a ceasefire on our terms rather than on Russian terms. And when people like Timoshenko talk about Korean-style armistices and things of kind. That is a deal on American Western terms now. It's not a deal at all on Russian terms. The Russians have repeatedly said they do not want a frozen conflict on their doorstep. They want a disarmed Ukraine. They want the four regions inside Russia. They want this resolved once and for all. So anyway, we have that sort of story spreading. We're going to get the ceasefire. The Russians are tired. the Russians are exhausted, all of those things. Then, as I said, when the lava flow resumes,

well, maybe we will get panic. But I suspect you're right. I suspect they are getting intelligence now, that the Russians are going to start moving very soon and may, as I believe, have already done so. And then all the doubts and fears and worries that are always there, rise to the surface, and in order to prevent that disaster happening, you do everything you possibly can.

You pull out every stop to try to get the Russians to stop of themselves to have a ceasefire. And so you have the orchestrated demands from right across Europe that the Russians accept an unconditional ceasefire. You get the cause of Ukraine that the Russians accept an unconditional ceasefire. Something, by the way, which the Europeans and the Ukrainians were refusing. They were rejecting all of that just a few weeks ago. But now they're all demanding it in unison. And you get people like Rubio and the neocons in the administration, and they're demanding the same thing. They suddenly have become great converts to a ceasefire.

I cannot see why the Russians would agree to a ceasefire ahead of their offensive. From a Russian point of view, the problem is that the Americans, and it can only be the Americans, have shown no tendency up to now to move towards them on the substantive issues, which were the ones that the Russians. brought up back in June 2024 when Putin had addressed the foreign ministry. In other words, Istanbul plus, if the Americans

started to talk about these things seriously, then we would undoubtedly have a more serious negotiation underway. But at the moment, we aren't having any kind of real negotiation at all. So there's

no reason for the Russians to stop. And I'm going to say something else, even if we had a substantive negotiation, I'm not sure that that would in itself persuade the Russians to stop, because they're probably saying to themselves, given the history, given the unwillingness in Europe, in Ukraine, and in parts of the administration itself to address these serious issues. if we do stop, we'll simply go back to where we were. They'll stop talking about these things again. So it is entirely in our interests to keep moving

and to keep moving steadily and remorselessly westwards. And if we don't get the agreement that we want to get and we have to battle our way all the way to the NEPA, So be it. I suspect that is probably the thinking in Moscow. Now, if there is a big Russian offensive, what can the West do? Militarily, they can do nothing. Nobody's going to send from Europe troops to fight the Russians. I think that is out of the question. There's no way they're going to send troops to fight the Russians, whilst the war is ongoing. The only discussion is about sending troops to Ukraine if the Russians agree a ceasefire. And we haven't even got that position of the Russians

agreeing to a ceasefire. And we can already see many European countries are doubtful and are distanced themselves, even from that. So there is no way the Europeans are going to get directly involved in the war. There was talk about doing it last year. I don't think anybody's thinking about doing it seriously this year. The Americans absolutely are not going to get involved. I mean, this is one thing that Trump and Heges and all of the others have completely ruled out, and I think they know perfectly well that quite apart from the colossal risks, of going head to head with the Russians in a battle in Ukraine, which are, you know, terrifying risks. The American public, especially Trump's base, would not support it. They've already given

piles of weapons to Ukraine, tens of billions of dollars of weapons to Ukraine. They've run the war. They've run the war themselves. I mean, we've discussed that with, in our articles, in our videos about the New York Times article. They've run the war, they've commanded, they've told the Ukrainians what to do, they've sorted out their plans, they've launched the missiles, they've done all of these things. None of that has worked. So militarily, there isn't anything in practical terms that they can do to stop the Russians. I think the only plan that the would be would be to do some kind of massive sanctions or, you know, tariff, secondary tariffs blow that Trump and some people in the administration have been

talking about. And that may come. But the risk of doing that is that it will destroy any prospect of a Russian-American rapprochement. And one gets the sense that Trump himself is very, very, recommitted to achieving that. And secondly, for the many reasons we discussed in our various programs, doing that is not going to work. China now, after the tariffs that had been imposed on it, is going to be most unwilling to apply these sanctions on Russia. I mean, it's just not going to happen. No one is going to do it. Exactly. So, I mean, no one is going to do it. And even if most unlikely that were to happen, as we've also discussed in previous programs, Russia is self-sufficient in every form of natural resources.

It is oil and gas and energy and food and everything it needs to keep going. And it will. So, I mean, this is an unstoppable thing. There is no leverage. If you really want to stop this and preserve Ukraine, what you have to do is finally accept reality. Tell the Russians, look, we understand that your terms are Istanbul plus and we agree to them. Then the only question is getting Zelensky and the people around him to agree or other people in Kiev. is the only way that this can be prevented. This has been obvious to us, I think we've discussed as many times in our programs, for a long time, at least since last year. But it's unfortunate to say this, there is still a lot of resistance to accepting this in Washington. And of course in Europe, there's no acceptance of it at all.

Yeah. The Kellogg-Waltz-Rubio resistance. to this. Whitkoff would accept it right away. Whitkoff would accept it the other three guys. No chance. I was going to say the same thing. What if the only thing the West can do, the United States can do, is to accept Istanbul plus June 24 terms. I mean, that's the only way you stop this lava flow, right, as they call it. That's it. So would Russia say now if the United States said tomorrow, okay? I mean, It's not going to happen tomorrow, obviously. But if they said, okay, we'll agree to the terms Istanbul Plus and we'll get Zelensky to exit the scene.

Whatever, I don't know how they'll do it, but if they really wanted to do it, they could find a way. Would Russia then say, okay, we're ready to talk? Yes, I think they would. Putin said back in June 24, 2024, that if there was a commitment to accept, an acceptance of Istanbul plus, then there might be a ceasefire on the basis that it would be a ceasefire to enable the Ukrainians to withdraw their forces from what area of the four regions they still control. They would have to leave.

They would have to see them leaving. They would have to see them leave. And then there might be a ceasefire on that basis. The trouble is that the longer you leave this, the less, the less. likely that is to happen. Let's say that we are talking about this. We're still where we are now in August and this lava flow continues to move westwards and the Russians have reached the NEPA and some of the cities in Donbass, Konstantinovka for example, Kramatosk, are either captured or under heavy, heavy siege.

At that point, and it's not impossible, the Russians may say, well, look, Istanbul plus was what we proposed last year. Now we've moved beyond that point. We now control large areas of Kharkov. We control large areas of Nehpro. These also used to be historic Russian regions. The people there also speak Russian. Many of them want to join Russia.

Perhaps we will conduct referendums there and find out whether perhaps they do prefer to join Russia. In which case, of course, the Russians could quite easily say, look, Istanbul Plus is a train that has left the station. We are now further along and we need to talk about more. We need to talk about these additional regions. and we need to talk about Odessa and Nikolayev as well. Bear in mind, Putin is supposed to have told the industrialists in, at this meeting of industrialists that took place in Moscow, just about three weeks ago, if we don't get Istanbul class,

if there isn't an agreement about this, then we will actually go on until we get Adessa, Nikolaiath, and all of these other places. So to repeat again a point, we have made several times, there isn't an indefinite amount of time here. It's not like, you know, the Vietnam War where North Vietnam was a far less powerful country. It could be contained in northern regions of South Vietnam until some kind of. of peace agreement could be finalized. It's not like that. The people who hold the military initiative are the Russians, and it is going to remain so. Now, so there isn't a huge amount

of time. And I think what Trump needs to do is to understand that, formally appoint Whitgolf, because it has to be Whitkoff. I can't see who else there is. senior negotiator, cut out Wolves and Rubio, and allow Witkoff to form his own negotiating team, to meet with the Russians in presumably Riyadh, and to hammer this out now. Yeah, not much time left. All right, we will end the video there. At the durand.locos.com. We are on Rumble Odyssey, pitch, Telegram, Rockfinite, X.

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