The Duran Podcast - Russia's aggressive attrition strategy in Ukraine

Episode Date: February 3, 2024

Russia's aggressive attrition strategy in Ukraine

All right, Alexander, let's do an update as to what is going on in Ukraine. Let's start perhaps with the situation on the front lines, more Russian advances going on throughout the front lines. We could talk about, maybe you want to talk about that Dvka, Kupyansk. There seems to be more activity in these areas, or at least more news coming out from these areas. And then we can talk about Putin, I guess. guess his speech, his appearance in St. Petersburg and some very interesting statements and speeches that he gave. So let's start with the situation on the front. Well, indeed. I mean, let's start because it is we're seeing more of the same, only a lot more of the same in the sense that the

Russians are intensifying their pressure. And it's fascinating to see if you keep track of what's going on in the war. The Russians advance in one place. The Ukrainians pulled together reinforcements and try to stop that Russian advance. They take very, very heavy losses, and Ukrainian losses apparently are spiking. There was one Ukrainian source that said that they're losing men now at the rate of 1,200 a day. Now, these are not dead. These are dead and heavily wounded. But that's what, you know, is coming out of Ukraine at the moment. So the Russians attack in one place. The Ukrainians, as I said, try and reinforce there.

They pull troops from various other parts of the front line. And then the Russians increase the pressure elsewhere. And they're doing this everywhere. They're doing this all the time. So they're now pushing very hard in Kuipians. The Ukrainians stopped the Russian advances near Kupiansk city. They blocked the Russians for several weeks at a place called Sinkhvka. There was a lot of heavy fighting there.

The Ukrainians apparently took a big hammering in Sinkovka. The Russians have their losses also, but they can absorb losses. Anyway, the Ukrainians then started to sort of breathe, And then, of course, the Russians attacked in other places close to Kuopians on the various. Oh, string of villages is now apparently falling under Russian control. And they're pushing hard towards the Osco River. And it looks like they're working towards bypassing Sinkovka from the south, even as they're apparently renewing their attack on Sinkovka.

And again, when he has reports that the Ukrainians are getting very desperate, that they're now starting to create defenses within Kupiansk itself, that they're evacuated people from nearby areas. And it looks like some kind of a crisis is developing there. And this is happening. This is, remember Kupyansk is in Kharkov region. More and more reports now that the Russians are putting pressure on various parts, places in Harcalf region, there are reports which are impossible to verify and which may not be true,

but which do points to increase Russian activity. The reports which we can't verify is that the Russians have actually crossed the border into Harcalf region from the north and have captured a village and have now moved on and have captured a town called Volchansk. I mean, I'm not sure this is correct. But the fact that these rumors are circulating at all tells us that the Russians are very active on the border now. They're sending apparently reconnaissance teams across the border all the time. They're forcing the Ukrainians to say to themselves, are the Russians intending to a launch of an offensive here? Are they, can we afford to divert troops

to hold the positions in Kupians? What do we do? And again, a sense of gathering crisis. They must be very uncertain about what's going on. The Russians keeping them guessing. And then the Russians attacking in other places also. So they're attacking very hard in Backwood. Again, it's important to stress, it's a point we've made many times, only a fraction of the Russian army is involved in these attacks up to now.

But again, the Russians pushing hard in Bachman, moving steadily closer towards Chassevjad. They're in the process now, apparently, of storming two villages, Bogdanovka and Ivanovka. to the west of Bahmert, which the Wagner organisation never captured. And that's one area of crisis, and then a little further to the south of that, we come to Vdyevka. And the situation in Avdegovka, very, very critical. The Russians were able to capture various fortified positions that the Ukrainians had created in the south of Abdefka.

They're apparently fighting going on within Abdefka. itself in this area, the Ukrainians trying to counterattack suffering enormously heavy losses in doing so. They're trying to move troops into Abdefka to push the Russians back. That means that the Russians can bomb them, which is exactly what they're doing with their air force. That means the Ukrainian suffering very heavy losses there. And the Russians at the same time, and one's senses that because the Ukrainians are having to worry about the situation in Udddhafka itself, they're pulling troops from other places on the Udddairka front lines, and the result is that the Russians are making further advances in other places.

There's a village called Pervomyski that they're in the process of capturing. They're advancing in the north towards a place called Kermik, which is also in the Udorfka area. there, gradually threatening to close the bag. It's a very complex battle. But again, one sense is Ukraine's suffering heavy losses there as well. And you go further south still. Same stories. Now a return to fighting near Rabatino.

Remember that place? Ukrainian spent enormous efforts, resources, trying to capture it in the summer. Fighting has returned to Rabatino. Russians are threatening to capture Rabotino. Ukrainians need to make a decision that they hold on to Rabotino. Do they defend themselves there? They're sending troops to try to hold on.

Because, of course, if Russians fully recapture Rabotino, it will be a major blow to Zelensky's prestige, to Ukraine's prestige, reverse everything that was achieved during the summer offensive, not that anything of substance was achieved during the summer offensive. that, you know, the prestige effect will be bad. So, again, reinforcing failure by defending ground that was of no use to them,

but lending themselves by doing that to the strategy of attrition, that the Russians are imposing upon them. And the same again in Hirston region, They're clinging on, apparently they're now on the shoreline in Kinki, but they're not actually pulling people back from Krenki. And they're trying to support the people who are in Kinki by keeping more troops on the west bank of the river, where again the Russians can bomb them, which is precisely what the Russians are doing. So expending reserves, expending ammunition stocks, burning up their drones, and the Russians are becoming. apparently getting closer all the time to a situation. When they can start to jam Ukrainian drones,

we're starting to hear the first hints that this is happening on an ever bigger scale. And we'll probably see that also happen before long. And reports now in the British media that the Ukrainians have only one months of ammunition stocks left by the end of February, even if they can serve ammunition, and they're only using ammunition at very limited levels at the moment. But unless they get major infusions of more ammunition supplies to them,

their ammunition supply situations by the end of February will become critical, which is, again, exactly what the Russians are working to achieve. So you can see what I've called aggressive attrition, how it works. You don't aim for major breakthroughs. You press the Ukrainians all the time. You make them lose men. You make them expend machines and ammunition. And at some point, when the Ukrainians are sufficiently weakened,

I myself believe that the big blow will come. Apparently, in Ukraine, they're already worrying that it will come this summer. And there's a lot of talk about this in Ukraine. and effectively admissions that when it does come, Ukraine won't have the force or the strengths who was sternly. Yeah. What do you make of, before we get to Putin and St. Petersburg, what do you make of the reports from the, I believe it was the New York Times or the Washington Post,

maybe both, where they claim that the Biden White House is now pressing, Ukraine to change their strategy, to rebuild in 2024, to build defensive lines, to build their own pseudo-vican line, and for Ukraine to go into active defense operations, to husband their resources, build defenses, not go on any offensives, not go on the offense, and to build their resources and husband their resources for a big push in 2025. Yeah, exactly. Basically, the White House strategy is everything that Russia did in 2003 for Ukraine to do in 2024.

But what do you make of those reports? I mean, the first thing to say is that this is not a clever plan. It is an admission of the reality. I mean, the fact is, Ukraine is not in a position to launch offensives now. So why even talk about them? I mean, you know, talking about a cunning plan to go on the defensive rather than launch an offensive, another renewed Ukrainian offensive, is to imply that Ukraine has a choice that it can either choose to remain on the defensive or choose to go on the offensive. It doesn't have that choice. Its forces have lost the initiative right across the front line and the Russians are advancing.

and it's taking everything the Ukrainians have got to hold the Russians back. You can't seriously think about an offensive in this kind of situation. So what we're seeing is all of the other various cunning plans that we've heard, the great Herson offensive that was going to happen across the NEPA, but that's failed. So we're now abandoning that. We're reverting to the earlier plan, build a Suravikin line, Sura-Vekin type line.

No sign, by the way, of that being done in any serious way by Ukraine. And it just doesn't have the resources to create something analogous to the Sura-Viken line. But try and build something like the Sura-Viken line and go on the defensive because they have no choice but to stay on the defensive because we can't provide them with many more shells because we haven't got any shells to provide. the S-16 deliveries are being postponed continuously because Ukraine isn't ready to operate them. We're becoming increasingly short of air defence missiles. We're coming up with fantasies about creating air defence bubbles over Ukrainian cities,

which there just aren't the missiles available to do that. And it's now becoming increasingly clear that Russian hypersonic missiles can easily penetrate. Ukrainian defences, wherever, air defenses, wherever the Russians want to strike. So, you know, you spin all of this. You pretend that this is a new plan in order to tell the American people, well, actually, you know, Ukraine isn't losing. It's not been forced back. It's not on the back foot.

It's all really some cunning plan. We are actually conserving Ukraine's forces so that we can go back on the attack. in 2025 when the election is conveniently over. And in the meantime, we cross our fingers and hope that Ukraine can somehow hold things together until the election is out of the way. That is the strategy. And as I said, this is spin. If you look at that article, which was in the Washington Post, by the way,

I mean, one of the extraordinary things about it is the enormous amount of fantasy that is there at the same time, you know, talking about bubbles, air defense bubbles around Ukrainian cities of starting military industrial production in Ukraine, all this kind of thing. I don't think anybody who is familiar with realities of the war believes this any longer. But it's a story that they can say, Biden can say on the campaign trail, or so they hope, even as, as I said, it's the Russians who are now actually dictating the same. situation on the battlefield and even as also they keep their fingers crossed and hope that there isn't a Ukrainian collapse before the election. Exactly. Exactly right. All right. Putin,

St. Petersburg. Many interesting things connected to Ukraine. Yeah. This was an enormous event. And I mean, I think before we go into the heart of it, I mean, I think there's a point that I must make, which is, of course, the Putin, of course, is a presidential candidate now. He has an election coming in March. So he's been making a point. He's gone to Kaliningrad. He's been to St. Petersburg, which remember is his hometown. And I mean, one must see some of these events as connected to the election campaign.

Not that anybody has any serious doubts that he's going to win the election. But anyway, he goes to St. Petersburg. and he is there to commemorate the 80th anniversary of the lifting of the siege of Leningrad. Now, Leningrad, of course, was the name that St. Petersburg had during the Soviet period. Siege of Leningrad was the most terrible, harrowing events of the Second World War. The city was surrounded by the Germans and by the way, the Finns. They don't like to be reminded of that, but they were. The Germans and the Finns had a policy of trying to starve the city to surrender.

It never surrendered, but by some estimates, 900,000 people died of hunger. I mean, it's one of the most extraordinary examples of endurance in war that there has ever been. But, of course, it's caused a massive psychological blow to all the people who were experienced. who would have included Putin's parents. I mean, they were from St. Peter's Berger's home town. His own brother died during the siege. Now, this is a brother whom he never knew because he was born after the war.

But his elder brother, victim, died during the siege. And, of course, millions of other Russians were affected. And the siege of Leningrad, which is... appallingly little known in the West is an incredibly well-known and important event amongst Russians. I mean, it's one of the great stories of the Second World War, and it's one of the great tragedies of the Second World War. And, of course, St. Leningrad never surrendered, and the siege was finally broken in January 1944. And from that point on, the Russians, the Soviet Union was held the initiative on the battlefronts. And eventually, as we know, its army got all the way to

Berlin. So this is an enormously important, incredibly emotional anniversary. And Putin attended it. And of course, he had a guest who was Alexander Lukashenko of Belarus and they attended these events together. And the fact that they attended them together, again, highlights the extent to which Belarus and Russia have now come together. And of course, just as Leningrad suffered terribly during the war, Belarus suffered terribly during the war as well. But all of this, this visit is not just a campaign event, and it's not a historical commemoration, important though the history is. Putin made a whole series of speeches, and he had certain meetings in St. Petersburg. First of all, he met with people, veterans from St. Petersburg, people who have fought in the special military operation.

So he brought it up events up to date in that way as well. But he also gave a speech at a new memorial, which has been built in St. Petersburg, to commemorate the civilians in the Soviet Union who died during the Second World War, not soldiers now, the civilians. And he made a speech, a very powerful speech, in my opinion, a very emotional speech. There is no doubt at all that Putin was acting in speaking, in my opinion, what he truly thinks and believes. And of course, he never mentioned Ukraine specific. I mean, he didn't really talk about Ukraine over the course of the speech.

That would have been inappropriate. But when you drill into the speech, something's become immediately clear. He talks about how the Soviet Union. Union sacrificed and fought to defeat this terrible ideology. He spoke about how the Germans during the Second World War targeted civilians. He spoke about the atrocities that they committed. He spoke about events like the Holocaust. He talked all about that. But then he spoke about, in a way that sought to bring that up to date. He spoke about historical revisionism in the West, the attempts to sugarcoat or play down the realities of the Second World War. He talked about,

and then he went on to talk about people who today have the same views as the Germans did at that time, who also take action against civilians, who bomb someone. cities who target civilians as well. And he spoke a length about this. And it was not difficult to work out that the people he was talking about are the authorities in Kiev. And he went on to say that just as happened during the Second World War, when the Soviet Union eradicated, and he used that word, it's in the official translation of his words. eradicated the people who held that ideology, that terrible ideology, at that time, in the 1940s. Today, they will do that again.

Now, when someone talks like this, when he talks in this very emotional way, attending ceremonies of this kind in his own home city, himself talking about the experiences of his parents, himself referring to the fact that he lost a brother in this siege. To my mind, it's absolutely clear that emotionally, psychologically, Putin has crossed the line. He no longer has any intention of negotiating seriously with Zelensky or the people around him in Kiev. His objective now is to destroy this government in Ukraine once and for all because he considers itself it to be the inheritors of the ideology and tradition that the Soviet Union fought against and defeated in the Second World War.

So I think that people have speculated about what Putin's intentions are, I think he gave us the clearest possible sign over the course of his visit to St. Petersburg that what he's now aiming for is not some kind of negotiated solution in Ukraine. It is straightforwardly victory. Okay, a final question. Do you think the Izolensky regime understands this? Do you think the collective West, Europe and the United States understand this? And when do you think Putin changed his objective?

Right. Yeah. For the beginning of the conflict, at least for like the first year, I would say that Putin's objective was a negotiated settlement. That's how it looked. What do you think changed his view on this? I forgot to mention, by the way, that I also think, I understand, I haven't seen the actual moment when he did that, but I understand that he also again referred to Odessa while in St. Petersburg as a Russian city. Just saying. Now, about what Zelensky and the collective West make of all of this, I think one of the

fundamental mistakes they make is that they don't take Putin seriously. I think that they assume him to be some kind of, well, they assume him to be as cynical and as calculating as they claim and as corrupt as they claim and as cynical as they themselves are. So I think that they don't understand that when Putin talks in this way, he means what he says. So I don't think that they have paid much attention to what he was saying in St. Petersburg, certainly not as much attention as we have done. I don't think that any of the leaders of the West, Schultz, McHulnach, Biden have been briefed by their intelligence agencies fully about what Putin said or the impact of what he said. I don't think they would understand, even if they were briefed, how important these words of

Putin are, Putin's arm, for understanding his deeper feelings and his thoughts about where the war is going. So I don't think they understand it. And of course, all of this applies to Zelensky as well. I think that they still think that, you know, if they can manage some little victory on the battlefields or tidying up the sanctions there or talk to some oligox here, they still think that, you know, eventually, if they push hard enough, Putin will. come round to their way of thinking, or maybe they can get rid of him, or something of that guy. I don't think they understand that Putin is as serious as he is, and I don't think they understand the traction, the emotional weight that all of this carries for Russians. I think this

has been the mistake they have been making all along. I mean, they've made many other mistakes underestimating Russia's economic abilities, underestimating the resilience of Russia's military. But I don't think that they understand any of this in any way at all. And I think that is one of the fundamental problems. And I think that because they don't understand it, they will continue in the way that they always have coming up with their various plans and schemes and policies for Ukraine,

always doing what they have always done, which is ignore and disregard the other side's views. Now, when did Putin come to this view? Now, I think that this has been a long journey for him, but I think that there were a number of staging posts that led to this. The first was the collapse of the Istanbul. negotiations. I think that he saw there how utterly implacable the West was. I mean, he thought that he thought, I suspect other people in the Kremlin also thought that a deal could be done.

And what, they almost had a deal. And they saw that the West came out to wreck that deal. And they heard people like Lloyd Austin come out and say that the aim. of the West was to weaken Russia, and they also had Boris Johnson saying about, you know, Russia must be defeated. And at that point, not just Putin, but I think most of the Russian establishment understood that this is a war, that they're involved in a war, that this is an existential conflict, that there is not going to be a negotiated settlement with the West, that the West is every bit as implacable about Russia as, you know, the Russians had feared that it might be. And I think Istanbul was a very, very important staging point.

But then I think the other thing that has hardened Russian views, and it's a cumulative thing, has been these Ukrainian attacks on Russian cities, the assassins. nations within Russia, the sort of terroristic type activities that have been conducted. And they've been seeing the sort of dishonest way in which the United States has handled that, pretending that it is not involved and even disapproved, even whilst it is facilitating these things. And again, I think the Russians have said to themselves, well, this is a regime that does these things. It's backed in doing that by the West. We can't seriously negotiate with these people. They're not just out to defeat us now. They're clearly got even more aggressive intentions like

that. We're getting all of these reports more and more of them about how they want to break up our country and basically end us not just as a great power, but as an independent power. So I think it has been a process, but I think at some point, perhaps around the time of the pre-Gosjean mutiny, who knows, I think Putin finally came to the view that there really isn't any point any longer in talking about talks. He's always going to say, well, if people come forward with substantive proposals, we will consider them. But he doesn't any longer believe that those substantive proposals will come.

And in his own mind now, he's committed to achieving full victory in Ukraine. Okay, we will end it there. The durand.com. We are on Rumble odyssey pitch-chute telegram. Rockfin and Twitter X and go to the Duran shop 15% of all t-shirts. Take care.