The Duran Podcast - Trump; Oil sanctions, minerals deal and ceasefire obstacles

Episode Date: April 4, 2025

Trump; Oil sanctions, minerals deal and ceasefire obstacles

All right, Alexander, let's talk about what is going on with the diplomacy in Ukraine around Project Ukraine. Interesting statements from Putin, interesting statements from Trump. Putin talking about the UN, which we discussed in a video in detail, talking about the U.S. administering Ukraine. Zelensky going, the United Nations coming in. And then we got over the weekend substatements from Trump. According to NBC News, Trump spoke to NBC News and he said that he's pissed off at Putin. He's pissed off because Putin is saying that that Zeletsky is not credible. And then Trump threatened secondary sanctions, 25% secondary sanctions against Russia.

If according to Trump, Russia does not help get to a ceasefire. All of this is according to Trump, and all of this is what NBC News was saying in a phone call that they got from Trump after they did an interview with the U.S. President. And then on Air Force One, we had a U.S. President Trump walk back. That's exactly what it was, a walkback of the comments he made with regards to Putin saying that he was pissed off. At Putin, he absolutely walked those comments back, but he also did say that he was disappointed that Putin. had said that Zelensky was not credible, even though Trump himself, his entire administration, her calling Zelensky a dictator for about a month straight. Anyway, we're not going to get it to that. And then he lashed out at Zelensky. And he said that if Zelensky wants to renegotiate the rare earth deal, then there's going to be big problems for him. That's pretty much a summary

of everything that happened over the past three, four days. Can I just say one thing before you you talk about everything that's going on. I knew this was coming. And I'll tell you why I knew this was coming because Alexander Stubb, Stubb, whatever his name is the president of Finland, he met with Trump. They played golf together. And I just knew it that Stubb was going to talk about proche in Ukraine with Trump. And I knew that Trump listening to Stubb was going to come out with all kinds of antagonistic comments towards Putin and Russia, because that's very much how Trump is. He listens to these people, and then he goes on TV shows or interviews, and he pretty much repeats what they were telling him. So I knew that he was going to come out and lash at Putin.

It was obvious because he was meeting with Stub, and I'm sure that Stub was telling him all kinds of things about ceasefires and the evil Putin. And there you have it. And it took Trump about a day to calm down and then to walk everything back and then lash out at Zeletsky. Alexandria, your thoughts. Well, I think you've actually summed it all up because I don't think there's very much more to say. The key thing to say at the moment is that the negotiations at this point in time are stalled. We had an attempt. The Americans put enormous pressure on the Ukrainians.

The Ukrainians agreed to a 30-day unconditional ceasefire. which is very much what Trump wanted them to do. Putin has not rejected the idea of a 30-day ceasefire, but he says if there's going to be a ceasefire like that, things must be put in place in order to make it work. Now, I'm not somebody who's ever negotiated ceasefires, thank goodness, but I have followed these stories of, I've followed the history of wars, many wars that have happened in my time.

And it is something that everybody who has looked at these wars must know, which is that unless you actually put in place systems to make sure that a ceasefire is effective, the ceasefire is going to break down. Especially given the people who are involved in this conflict. But we had many, many ceasefire agreements over the course of the Ukraine conflict. There was midst one. There was midst two. There was the ceasefires that happened in the early weeks of the special military operation. And all of them broke down. And I'm going to say straight away, the reason they all broke down was because the Ukrainians never complied with a single one.

And unless you put mechanics in place to make a ceasefire work, then is ceasefire. simply will not work. Now, I think that was what Putin told Trump. Trump appears at the time to have generally accepted it. Then there were going to be discussions about working towards a ceasefire. We had those expert meetings in, we had that expert meeting in Riyadh between the Americans and the Russians. Trump suggested to Putin a mutual ceasefire for 30 days on strike. against energy systems. Again, there's no real monitoring. There's no real supervision of this ceasefire. As far as I can tell, Ukraine is simply not adhering to it. I mean, it's acting as if that ceasefire didn't exist. It continues to launch strikes against the Russian energy system

in exactly the way that one would expect it to. And then we also had the agreement on the Black Sea, which we discussed. We did a short live about it last week. We pointed out there that basically that takes us back to what was agreed, appeared to have been agreed in 2022. Guterres, the Secretary General, brokered it. Other one brokered it. Again, it didn't work because the Ukrainians basically ignored it. They continued to smuggle weapons on their ships, heading to Odessa and the Europeans went back on their promises to relax sanctions, to reconnect the Russian agricultural back to the SWIFT system and to lift other sanctions to allow exports of Russian food and fertilizer. And exactly the same thing has happened again, only this time

it's happened much more explicitly. From the Russian point of view, this had been a useful exercise because the European Commission said, no, we're not going to lift or relax the sanctions in any way. And then Oscella came out and made a statement saying the same thing. And so is Olaf Schultz. And though Britain is not a member of the EU any longer, Stama said the same. He said on the contrary, sanctions need to be tightened up, not relaxed. And so here we have Trump. He wants a ceasefire. He is keen to have a ceasefire. And he finds that the ceasefire just isn't happening.

And Stubb, the president of Finland, who is a diehard Russifer. I mean, if you followed his political career in any detail, you will know that he is an absolute visceral loathing of Russia and of Putin himself. Anyway, along Kempstubb, he tells him, look, it's all Russia's fault. It's the Russians who are entirely to blame. Trump goes out of that, goes on to, you know, speaks over the phone to NBC. He repeats some of the, he, you know, frustration boils over. He repeats some of this to NBC.

But notice even then, even then, he's not. fully committing himself because he says, if it's the Russians who are breaking ceasefires or who are not in earnest about negotiating peace, which is not certain. I mean, there's not exact words that he uses, but he's already saying it might not actually be the Russians who are to blame. But if it is then, then I will impose tariffs on countries that buy Russian oil, a completely empty threat, by the way, because all of those countries, China, India and all the others, know that he's going to impose tariffs on them anyway. So anyway, then he says that.

And then he also says that he wants to speak to Putin again this week. And that's perhaps really where all this is heading, because he's not speaking to Zelensky. He clearly has lost all patience with Zelensky. Zolensky was presented with his. this astonishing new mineral rights extraction deal, which is, by the way, not that different when you really unpack it from the one that he was supposed to sign in when he came to Washington back in February. I mean, we pointed out then that this was a very sketchy document, basically a memorandum of intention.

Well, the Americans have now filled it out. And if you take a step back, you see that the two are not inconsistent with each other. I mean, the memorandum of intention and the 60-page final agreement, which we haven't been shown, are not actually in contradiction with each other. But anyway, moving on from that, Zelensky say he won't sign it, Ukraine won't sign it, The EU won't play ball on sanctions relief. The Ukrainians are violating the ceasefires. Trump wants to speak to Putin, and he wants to see whether there's any way forward that the children can come up with together.

That's basically what happened over the last couple of days. Can you talk a little bit about this secondary sanctions threats? Just very quickly. I mean, what do the Russians think when they hear this stuff from Trump, the secondary. sanctions on Russian oil threat, 25%. They shrug their shoulders. Tariffs, tariffs, sorry. Tariffs.

I mean, first of all, he's not even talking about secondary sanctions. He's talking about tariffs. Yeah, secondary tariffs. He's talking about secondary tariffs. Exactly. But as I said, he's going, the Russians know that he's basically heading towards imposing sanctions or rather tariffs. I mean, in a few days, he's going to have so-called liberation

day, he's going to impose tariffs on the European Union, possibly on Britain as well. The British are quaking, by the way, of the thought of that. The Russians know that he's going to impose tariffs. The world knows he's going to impose tariffs. Russia's big oil importers, the countries that Russia mostly exports oil to now, are China in India. China, by the way, has now overtaken India. as the big buyer of Russian oil.

The Chinese know that Trump is going to impose massive tariffs on them very soon because all of the signals point in that direction. I think that it's most unlikely that any tariffs he's going to impose on Chinese goods are going to be any higher as a result of the fact that China is importing Russian oil. oil, then they're going to be anyway. I think the Chinese know that. They've already issued statements saying that if there's a tariff war, a trade war, any other kind of war, China is ready for it.

And it will have heard over the last couple of days the statements from the United States, the information from the United States that Hague says is now telling everybody that war against China is America's only priority. Everything else, Europe most importantly, can look after itself. So the Chinese know that they're in the crosshairs. They have no reason to stop importing Russian oil. And as for India, it doesn't run a trade surplus. It runs a trade deficit. So, I mean, again, sanctions, massive across-the-board sanctions on Indian goods is not going to make that enormous difference to India that people think it will. And I suspect the Indians probably anywhere calculate and say to themselves that given that India is an absolutely key part of the

American geostrategic landscape, you know, Alcus, we're not Alcus, but, you know, the quad and all of that, the Americans are unlikely really to follow through with that threat, given that they are targeting China as well. So I think the Russians see this as a bluff, which is what it basically is. It's Trump again, letting off, wanting to attract, gain Putin's attention, trying to get Putin to agree to speak to him this week. Clearly, there's no moves up to now to speak to Putin and trying to get this diplomatic process back on track,

even though all of the obstacles to moving forward are not coming from the Russian side. The Russians, to the extent that they are willing to, able to, given the military dynamics, are in fact trying to move the process along. And up to now, they have not taken advantage of the somewhat confused way in which the Americans themselves have conducted the negotiations, which, by the way, is largely the product of American inexperience. Yeah, Putin is very patient with Trump. Yes.

He's showing a great deal of patience in this entire diplomatic process with Trump and his team. I wonder how much patience he has left. Trump, when he lashed out at Zelensky, he said that if Zelensky does not, if Zelensky tries to renegotiate this rare earth deal, and he's going to have very, very big problems. Do you think that a deal, which is, by the way, a deal which is impossible for any, any administration, anywhere on planet Earth to sign off on? I mean, it's an impossible deal to agree to. And if you do sign a deal like that, I don't care if you're Zelensky, I don't care if you're the president or prime minister of any country, if you were to sign off on a deal like that. You would probably be removed next day. But do you think that this is Trump's way of creating an opening so that if, if and when,

Zelensky does not sign this deal or tries to renegotiate it that Trump can finally walk away from this? Or will he remain stuck in this back and forth with Ukraine? because it is getting kind of ridiculous at this point. This rare earth minerals deal is kind of becoming the joke. In my opinion, that's the way I'm looking at this. Anyway, your thoughts. Well, can I just say Trump finds himself in exactly the position that we said he would find himself in

if he got involved in the negotiations to try and end the conflict in Ukraine. He's finding that he's trying to move towards some kind of ceasefire and peace settlement and what he's finding is that he's getting problems on every side. The Russians cannot agree to the demands that he's making for unconditional ceasefires. And they warned him about that months before the inauguration. He just doesn't seem to have understood the warnings that the Russians were giving him. And he's found that the Ukrainians are not playing as he wants. wants them to.

And he finds that the Europeans are doing so either, that the Europeans are working 24-7 to try to sabotage the negotiations, which is, well, I mean, that's another story. We'll discuss that maybe in a different program. But, I mean, that is exactly what we said would happen if he got himself bogged down in negotiations to move forward with this, you know, to try to settle this conflict in Ukraine.

He should have simply walked away. Now, I personally believe that this is the moment he walks away. He's got this mineral rights extraction deal. Zelensky is saying now that he's not going to sign it, that it is unacceptable, that it treats aid provided to Ukraine by Biden as debt. Ukraine cannot afford to pay that debt. It basically hands over to the United States control of Ukraine's entire mineral wealth. It is clearly.

Forever. Forever. Forever. Forever. It is straightforwardly incompatible with EU membership. I mean, I mean, the Ukrainians and the Europeans would have to come up with incredibly convoluted mechanisms to try to get Ukraine admitted. into the EU, if this agree, it will ever done.

Well, maybe they will. I mean, anything is possible. But it is incompatible with Ukraine, ever becoming a proper, fully fledged member of the EU, which is probably good for them. But anyway, this gives the Americans, this gives Trump, he's, what I called it, he's get out of jail card. He can just say the Ukrainians are not listening. They're not doing what we said.

They're not prepared to sign the steel. They want more money. We want us to give us more money, more weapons to fight. This losing war, the United States has already given far more than it should have done. Let's end it now. Let's move away. Let's let's call this whole thing off. And if you want to balance that and say that the Russians aren't playing ball either,

where he can impose all of these tariffs that he wants to on China and India and all the rest, which, as I said, he was likely to anyway at some point or rather, or at least that's the messaging we've been getting from the White House, especially with China ever since his inauguration and indeed before. So, you know, he can just walk away and let this wall finally take care of itself. I would have thought this is his great opportunity to do that. And maybe he has worked intentionally his way to this particular point. Yeah, it just sounds like such a difficult way to get to the point where you're out of the conflict in Ukraine when you could have done it in a very simple way.

way when you entered office on January 20. It's kind of going around in a circle zigzag to get to a point which could have been very easily done the minute you- It's Donald Trump. It's Donald Trump. I mean, you know, he has his qualities and he has his faults. Sometimes he takes the long way around. I mean, I'm not absolutely sure that he is going to disengage.

That was my question. Will he disengage? We don't know, but if he does, as I said, he'll have done, he'll have taken the long way around to get to the same point that he should put himself in on the day he became president. Would disengagement mean that weapons and intel sharing stops? Will he allow the drawdown from Biden's term to just run out and then maybe? come summer when it does eventually run out, no one even talks about it. Would that be a possible scenario that unfolds in the next three months? Or do you try and renew the drawdown,

go to Congress and ask for another 50 billion or another, whatever, 100 billion, whatever the amount is come summertime? Well, the clean, strong, decisive, and I think ultimately, easier to sell thing to do would simply be to stop military supplies and intelligence sharing now. Just say, the Ukrainians are not prepared to sign the Mineral Rights deal. They're not abiding with the energy truce, which they're not, by the way. I mean, I think here the evidence is overwhelming. I mean, these attacks in Russia, I mean, this attempt to try and claim that these are Russian force flags, either as absurd fraction. Russia's. Russia's hitting their own energy is what they're saying.

Infrastructure, exactly. I mean, this is absolutely absurd. So Ukraine is not complying with the energy truce. Ukraine will not sign the mineral rights deal. So stop now. I mean, you know, so this is, you know, we've given the Ukrainians months to sort things out. Zelensky clearly isn't interested in doing that. We're going to stop now.

And I think if that was the decision Trump made, you know, people like Lindsay Graham would not be happy probably. But I think the American people, at least those Americans who have voted for Trump, would be happy. That's my own personal view. That would be a strong move. It would be a decisive move. It would be a clean break. The risk with waiting until, you know, the money is exhausted and not exercising the drawer authority. drawing authority and all of that, is that it's messy. It gives weeks and months in which, you know, the Europeans and the Ukrainians can start coming back and Lindsay Graham can start coming back and saying, well, look, you know,

Zelensky is prepared to change his mind. He's willing to change the agreement in some ways or willing to sign it in some form or, you know, It just prolongs the process. And of course, the moment Trump comes back and says, well, you know, I've now heard from Zelensky and it looks like he is prepared to work with me, I can absolutely guarantee that what will then happen is that Zelensky will do what he always does. He will go back and walk back all of the agreements that he's made with Trump. That is what he always does.

Whenever he starts getting dribbles of weapons, dribbles of money, some degree of intelligence sharing, he reverts to the person he always is, which is someone who consists on his maximumist goals and wants to achieve victory. And of course, he's got the Europeans backing him. So I personally believe that Trump should end it now. But we are again talking about Donald Trump. I don't think he's going to do that. think he's going to go for the messy solution. He's going to say he's going to wait until midsummer.

He's going to tell the Ukrainians you've got until then to get your act together. And I'm afraid this story is going to go on playing and playing. And we'll probably have to do lots of programs over the next couple of weeks and months discussing every conceivable move. But I think that's more likely what he's going to do because I think he doesn't want to upset people like Lindsey Graham. And he's probably also got people like Wolse, Rubio and Kellogg whispering into his ear and telling him, you know, you've got to try and we can't just walk away. And you've got all of that and, you know, Stubb, Macron, all of those. And I think he's more likely to take that course than he is to take the course of simply cutting things off. Now, I think eventually we will get

to the point where aid is cut off because I find it very difficult to believe that Trump is indeed going to return to Congress and ask for another $50 billion appropriation or anything of that kind. I mean, that would make a complete nonsense of everything that he's been saying up to now. But, you know, you never know with Trump if the Ukrainians sign the mineral extraction deal and pass it, which is not impossible, by the way. I can imagine he come to Congress in the summer and say, well, now the United States, he's going to get his money back. So even any money we send them in the future, which is not true, by the way. If the Ukrainians sign this deal, they will eventually go back on it.

Even if they sign it, they will eventually go back on it. But, you know, that's Trump. You can never be completely sure. I think he's going to take the messy route. And I think sometime in the summer, the aid will finally be cut off. Bear in mind, military events on the ground anyway are going to gradually impose their own outcome. The Russians continue to advance.

They're breaking through to the NEPA, even as we're making this program. There's been more reports about this. So come July, August, when probably the money and the weapons run out, you know, we're could be looking at a completely different situation from the one we're looking at today. Yeah, just a final question. Is Putin being too soft with Trump? Yeah, I think lots of people in Russia say this. I do think he's being soft in terms of the substance. I mean, to repeat again, at what we made in many programs, he's not actually given anything away. This is something that is well understood in Russia. That's not to say that he has

isn't acted in good faith or that he isn't serious what he says to Trump that he would like to see a negotiated solution. We've explained why many times that he wants ultimately in Russia's interests a good relationship with the United States, or at least if not a good relationship, at least a stable one where there is security on Russia's Western border. I mean, we discussed this also on many, many occasions. But so he's pulled his verbal punches. He constantly speaks favorably of Trump as an individual. He is willing to go along with an often chaotic American approach to negotiations. And we now know, because Lavrov has told us, that the Russians were not informed in advance when the expert groups met in Riyadh, that the Ukrainians were being invited to come to Riyadh as well,

and that there would be a large Ukrainian delegation hovering around in the Ritz-Karlton Hotel, being constantly briefed by the Americans as to what was going on, and were the Ukrainians put in a position, therefore, to make any proposal that they wanted. I mean, the Russians were not expecting that. They'd not been told about it in advance. They felt that they were being pushed into agreeing a document with the Ukrainians in Riyadh, which they had not intended to do. And they didn't like it.

But they are not publicly complaining about this, because in spite of everything, they still want the process to continue. But this cannot be assumed. One can't assume that the Russians will accept this indefinitely. Sooner or later, they will also tell Trump, look, you can't get your act together. You talk about wanting peace. We believe you want peace. But until you put to us coherent proposals and back them with a coherent negotiating position,

it makes absolutely no sense for us to waste our time with talks which ultimately lead nowhere and bring us back. always to the position that we were in at the beginning. So, you know, it's something which, again, the Americans need to sort out because Russian patience is very great. Putin's patience is very great, but it isn't infinite. Trump should take here, by the way, a leaf from Lula's book, you know, President Lula of Brazil. Not, I know someone that Trump has much time for, but Zelensky sent an emissary to speak with him, an ex-Prime minister of Italy.

And Lula simply showed him the door. He said, I'm not even prepared to meet you. And that is what Trump should do. Just a final thought. I think Trump should take Putin's offer about the UN. Seriously. I think Putin is giving him a great idea, which is something that the entire international community would support and get behind, with the exception of the EU and Ukraine. But if Trump said that's a great idea to have the UN administer Ukraine, I'm on board for that. It's a game set match. Well, and again, we come up against the contradictions and inconsistencies in Zelensky, in Trump's own position.

On the one hand, he says that Zelensky is a dictator, that he won't hold elections, that in itself implies that the situation, the internal situation in Ukraine is very bad, which, by the way, it is. And then at the same time, he goes on and insists that Trump must, sorry, that Putin must accept Zelensky's legitimacy.

Again, Trump needs to sort out his messaging It doesn't make much sense to talk in this way. He's got to, and I agree with you, by the way, I think it is a workable idea. At least it's something to discuss. Very workable. It's been done before. A friend of mine, by the way, works for the UN, was part of the group that was sent to East Timor to carry out the trustee-shy. then.

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