The Duran Podcast - Russia's Sky Campaign Isolating Kiev and Odessa

Episode Date: September 30, 2026

Russia's Sky Campaign Isolating Kiev and Odessa

All right, Alexander, let's talk about what is happening in Ukraine. We still have the blockade of the ports. We have the situation with Russia going after petrol stations, going after locomotives. We got confirmation from the steel industry in Ukraine, the steel companies, that there is zero steel being exported, being produced. So the steel industry has been destroyed, demolished. And now we have communications and internet. Internet. That is being dismantled by the Russian military.

What is going on here? It is going on and it is getting bigger and more powerful all the time. Because for some time now, throughout this month, we've had every single day, basically, Russian drones, Geraan drones, these are now these jet-powered, Geraan Fives, hitting targets in Kiev. We've had, in addition to those, we now have cheap cruise missiles that the Russians have developed, the Bundarol missiles that have already been used for some time, and which would be used to attack the ships in the Black Sea.

But now they're being supplemented with these dantee drones, sorry, missiles, cruise missiles, which are air-launched and very light and can be manufactured in the thousands. so the Russians are using those. They're also every couple of days conducting big missile strikes with Iscunders and circons and every so often the strategic bombers take off and they launch their KH101 cruise missiles too. So huge attacks in the sky pretty much every day, every night now. The only period when there was an interruption in attacks on Kiev was when Witgolf and Kushner were traveling between Moscow and Kiev, and that was only for a very short period. What the Russians are doing is that they are cutting off Ukraine to the extent that this is possible.

they've cut off the ports. They've established this blockade. They're cutting off the rail and road links to Europe. These can never be cut off entirely, but the traffic through them can be reduced significantly. And at the same time as they're doing that, they're obviously hitting the productive parts of the economy. and they are now attacking the communication systems. They're attacking the internet, the data centres, the mobile phone networks. I understand that before long, they'll be going after the Starlink system too.

And I've had a very complicated explanation how that's going to be happening. and it involves using the Raswet system. Basically, the Razvets system can identify where Starlink terminals are located and those terminals can then be attacked very quickly with drones and with these new cheap missiles. So all of this is happening. So they're trying to break Ukraine's domestic economy,

cut off Ukraine's road and railway connections with Europe. And at the same time, they're trying to cut off Kiev itself from the rest of Ukraine, from its ability to continue to control the rest of Ukraine. They're working towards isolating Kiev itself. And this is starting to remind me an awful lot, I have to say this, of the air camp. that the Americans and their allies conducted against Iraq in the last weeks of 1990 and early 1991 before the big American ground offensive that basically ended that war. It is a sky, an offensive in the sky and in the air on something like the same scale,

though it is even more carefully planned and structured and methodical, as you would expect from the Russians who do, when they start to do this sort of thing, do it in a very methodical way. Are they going to get the Ukraine government to relocate out of Kiev, the parliament and Zelenskyy? I think this is... First, there's some talk that this may be happening. Yes.

remember we discussed this in the summer. We talked about it then. We were well ahead again. Before the summer, we were, yeah, you were discussing, yeah, we were talking about this many months ago. Months ago. But as I said, anyway, I have to say, I think this is now becoming a real possibility. I read a report that it is becoming increasingly difficult for government, ordinary, civilian, governmental functions. to be carried out in Kiev, that transport links and communications links are becoming increasingly fragile. And what I think is going to happen is I think that Zelensky does not want to transfer the entire governmental system out of Kiev. If that happens, Kiev basically is hollowed out. Much of the population, I suspect, would at that point leave with the government. And if

the government is forced to quit Kiev, that will have an enormous psychological effect, but it will also, in practical terms, make the Ukrainian government, it will distance it from the battlefields in eastern Ukraine. It will mean that Ukraine will have less control over what is going on in eastern Ukraine, less contact with it, less ability to send its people to, you know, wherever, Slavians, find out what's going on there, rotate officers, do all that kind of thing. So I think Zelensky, what he's going to try to do, what the Ukrainians will try to do, what the West will want the Ukrainians to do, is keep some of the military institutions still in Kiev, the headquarters, but start gradually decanting more and more of the civilian ministries

and civilian departments to cities in Western Ukraine. And of course, you're going to start to see the embassies, the diplomatic representations of the Western powers, start to reduce as well. And there will remain a small number of diplomats in Kiev for as long as possible. But then, of course, that brings us to the next thing that's going to happen because the Russians have shown that they have the ability now to attack the trains.

They've been attacking the railway station in Kiev. They've hit the railway station twice now. Eric Schmidt talked about how when he arrived in Kiev, the entire structure of the railway station was shaking. They've shown that they're able to hit the trains that move backwards and forwards between Kiev and Europe, the trains that Western officials use, in order. it to go to Kiev. The Russians can close the trains, but it's only a matter of time, I think, before they start hitting the decision-making centers, the bunkers, the deep bunkers, deep below Kiev. And of course, the civilian administration goes if a lot of the population leaves,

then presumably the general staff, the military headquarters, will move down. deeper inside these bunkers, but they will be more vulnerable. They'll be sitting ducks. They'll be sitting ducks. They'll be sitting ducks. They'll be sitting ducks. Exactly. What will they use to go after them, you think?

Well, who knows? First of all, there's the Erashni, which some people say has, does have ability to attack and destroy underground structures. Then they probably have other types of missiles as well. There is a very, very powerful North Korean missile that's coming onto the scene with an enormous warhead, apparently. But they also have something else, which is that people don't realize it, but the Russians also have bunker-busting bombs of the same type that the Americans do. There is one, the Fab 9,000, which carries 9,000 kilograms, 9 tons, in other words, have exploded.

It is designed for attacking bunkers. And, well, you can start with the more exposed bunkers, and then gradually, gradually, you can come and attack the deeper ones, just to say. Now, there's no air defence to speak of in Kiev. If all the things we're talking about start to happen, whatever air defence is left, going to reduce still further, at which point, of course, the heavy Russian bombers, the Tupolev's, can start to fly over Kiev and can start to drop these bombs. You have to imagine that if this does happen, this would destroy the morale of the Ukraine

military and Ukraine troops. Yes. learning that Kiev, the capital, is being effectively evacuated to a certain extent. But how do you, if you're the collective West, how do you argue that more money and more weapons need to be given to Ukraine because they're winning the war? And it's just a little bit more money, a little bit more weapons would result in a Ukraine victory. When the whole world is seeing everything shift to Lviv, they're seeing the, the

The Russians going after the decision-making centers, they're seeing the economy collapse. I mean, it destroys the entire narrative that they spent four years meticulously creating and putting together in order to keep the money and the weapons flowing. I think what they were simply doing that case is that they will construct a completely different narrative, that the Russians are barbarians, that they're attacking this beautiful city, that they're reigning death and destruction upon it, that they're attacking. not just bunkers, but hospitals and all of those sort of things, we will have an enormous outcry, attempts to put enormous pressure on the Russians to stop this bombing and agree that

lovely ceased fire that the West is so keen on in Ukraine in order to save the civilians and to prevent a humanitarian catastrophe. And of course, there will be the demands all over Europe from all the usual people that we can't sit back and allow this horror to continue over the skies of Kiev. We need to intervene directly. We need to establish a no-fly zone. We need to do this with the US Air Force, because let's be straightforward about it. The European Air Force can't do it. And that is going to be the new narrative and the new set of demands. We are going to see a complete shift in the way in which this war is described up to now. And there were more demands for war crimes, prosecutions of Russian officials, more threats made, more pressure on Russian economic

assets or trading partners, on all sorts of things. So going back to what we have been discussing often on these programs, what you talk about on your channel, we are. We are, going to see an enormous escalation in language and rhetoric in the West if the events that we are seeing over the skies in Ukraine and over the skies of Kiev themselves begin to play out. Just the final question. I wonder how this plays out with the Trump administration, given that much of this is going to happen after the midterms. Most likely you'll have a Democrat House, maybe even a Senate, possibly, a Senate. The Democrats are going to absolutely push for more war and more escalation and more support

for Zelensky. Yes. Trump is going to be put to the test his administration as to whether the U.S. will intervene or can intervene if they even can intervene in this. I mean, they can do things. I mean, you've described sending warships into the black. sea. There's Starlink over Russia. There's Tomahawks. There's getting the Germans to send the tourist missiles. I mean, there's various things that the United States could do to intervene, which doesn't

involve boots on the ground, but still would be a massive, huge escalation that could take us to the very brink. Trump is going to be put in that position where he's going to have to have to make a decision. You're going to have the Democrats, not that the Republicans were any kind of restraint. But the Democrats are going to also carry the leverage of impeachment and you're a Putin puppet with them. Yeah. So they're going to, they're going to push for continued escalation all the way to, to a hot war. You're going to have the Europeans putting pressure on Trump, the neocons, the deep state,

the intel agencies in Radcliffe. Yeah. And so the Trump administration is going to be put in a position where they're going to either have to say, guys, we can't intervene. Or they're going to. interviews. Yes. Well, when you say... And it doesn't mean boots on the ground. I just want to stress, I'm not talking only about boots at the ground or boots on the ground. Like we've described in a previous video recorded a week ago, there are other ways that the United States can escalate things

to a very critical level. Absolutely. Can I just say something? When you say that Trump is going to be put to the test, the absolute iron rule of this second administration is that whenever Trump is put to the test. He fails the test. He always goes along with whatever it is, the neocons and the deep state are asking him to do. And I have no reason to believe, by the way, that this is going to be any different. There will be certain factors in the United States, which will perhaps provide some restraints. They are not going to come from Donald Trump. And I think that's the essential thing to say. Firstly, there are people in the Pentagon who will understand how incredibly dangerous this is. Even some of the uniform military people are getting to understand how dangerous

this is. They're going to say, what is being asked of us coming on top of the debacle we have already experienced in the Persian Gulf and this festering crisis that we have with China, which is not resolved. Trump and Xi Jinping met in the United States. Xi Jinping had this visit. No progress appears to have been made on any substantive issue. There was a two-month extension of the trade truce, but that was all. So the problems as China continue as intractable as always.

So there's going to be those voices, and they're going to be particularly strong in the Pentagon, which say, we simply cannot do this. You are asking too much of us. Our resources are indeed great, but they are not so great that we could take on the Chinese, the Iranians, and the Russians all at the same time. And taking on the Russians, even by themselves, is going to be just stretch our resources to breaking point and quite possibly lead us into a further debacle with more demands for even greater escalation. So I do know that there are these people in Washington, in the Pentagon, there are those voices.

They do exist. They will be there. They will be counseling against this. And they will probably be counseling against it more strongly than they did in the run-up to the attack on Iran. So there's that group. And then there is the wider sentiments within American society. And here I'm going to say straight away. I've been twice to the United States, once with you when we went to Chattanooga, and second time when I was in Chicago. The overwhelming impression I have is that the vast majority of Americans really do not want to get deeply involved in a conflict with Russia over Ukraine.

I say the vast majority of Americans, no doubt, all kinds of opinion polls will be produced, which argue otherwise. But Chicago, I went to Democratic City, you know, absolutely. And nonetheless, you know, people there talk about Ukraine. You see the eyes glaze over. They absolutely are not interested and do not want to become involved in a conflict of that kind. So how important these factors of restraint are going to prove to be, I don't know. We do have to acknowledge that this is going to be an incredibly dangerous moment that we're going to see in Ukraine in this conflict over the next few months.

Because I am confident, by the way, that what we outlined over Kiev, the war in the sky, is going to come about in something like the form that we've just been talking about. So this is going to be an exceptionally dangerous moment. We'll just see how it works out. But as I said, don't under any circumstances, trust, place any faith in Donald Trump. He is not going to be the person who pulls us through this.

Once I thought he might be, But by now, anybody who believes that it's Donald Trump who's going to help us through, I'm afraid they're living in the land of illusions. All right. We will end the video there. We are on substack. We are on locals, the durand.locals.com. Look for us on X as well and on Telegram.

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