The Duran Podcast - Trump plays for time. Europe prepares for war

Episode Date: August 30, 2025

Trump plays for time. Europe prepares for war

All right, Alexander, let's talk about Project Ukraine. And it looks like we have some sort of security guarantee plan that has been formulated between the Europeans and the United States, where the United States is going to provide backup air support, satellite imagery and stuff like that. But as a backup function, a backup role. And the European Union, they will be sending troops to Ukraine. Of course, these troops will not be located on the front line. They will be located further back in the west of Ukraine in Bandera land.

And in the front line, you'll have Ukraine-trained troops closer to the front. And you will also have some sort of a buffer zone between Russia and those trained Ukraine troops. So this is the plan that the European Union, along with various U.S. officials, military, officials is what they've come up with. They're not even listening to the Russians. They're not listening to anything that Russia says. They're just talking between themselves and then creating these plans amongst themselves. And this is the way they see everything going forward when it comes to Ukraine. All of this hinges on some sort of a peace deal or ceasefire deal. They still call it a ceasefire deal. They still use those words, ceasefire deal. So they're not listening to anything.

that Putin or Lavrov for anyone in the Kremlin is saying about all of these fantastic plans that they have going on. They're just pushing forward with this stuff. What are your thoughts? Well, I mean, the first thing to say about this is that not only is this, not only are they not listening to what the Russians are saying, but they are by coming up with these plans, guaranteeing that the war will continue. So to the extent that Donald Trump is always talking about the fact that he wants to see the war end, he, by letting this whole idea of security guarantees escape from the box, I mean, he'd put it in the box. I mean, you know, when Macron and Stama first floated it way back in the early periods, the early weeks of his administration,

I mean, he basically said the US is not giving security guarantees. not giving any backstop. That essentially died then. Now he's let this thing gain traction. Apparently, all as a result of a very mismanaged call that he made with the European leaders just before he met with Putin in Alaska, which he was trying to sort of mollify them by going along with what they were talking about, about security guarantees. And of course, the risk he's running is that, of course, what this is going to do is it's going to make any attempt at achieving a peace in Ukraine, a negotiated peace with Ukraine, completely impossible, because the Russians will never accept this. I mean, they said that time and again, Lavrov has said this time and again,

the Russians have clarified completely that Putin never agreed to any of this at the meeting in Alaska. He was only talking about Istanbul-type security guarantees from April 2022. And I have to say this Trump again has walked into a trap. The Europeans laid it for him with this talk of security guarantees. They want the war to continue. There again, as you correctly say, talking about a ceasefire, he appeared to take the idea of a ceasefire off the table. And they're again talking about sanctions and tariffs and secondary tariffs. So he does this to himself all the time.

He appears to take a step in one direction with the Russians. He accepted that there would not be a ceasefire. But he always tries to give the others, the Europeans, the Ukrainians, a bone. And the result is he gets himself into trouble. And what he is trying to do is losing coherence. And I get the sense that some of the people in the Pentagon are not happy about this at all. Pete Hague says, I notice, is playing no part in any of these discussions, to all intents and purposes. And apparently Elbridge Colby met the Europeans and told them that the US role in these

security guarantees would be minimal, whatever that means. And we're now getting articles appearing in places like the Federalist, which is, of course, part of the MAGA movement. And they're being very, very, you know, still supportive of Trump. But you could see quite clearly that they're saying, straightforwardly, the only people who should provide any kind of security guarantees to Ukraine is the Europeans if they want to. This should not involve the United States. So again, he is putting himself in potential collision with his own base. Again, I don't understand why Trump does this to himself all the time. But he always seems to want to pacify. He's opponents because this is what they are. And for that reason, we get this whole complex discussion

about security guarantees, which the Russians will reject, just as the Russians rejected the previous idea of a ceasefire. Trump eventually got out of that after the meeting with Putin, But now because of the security guarantees thing that he's run, we can see that the Europeans are running with a host-seast-far idea all over again. Well, it's about pleasing the neocons because the neocons put the Europeans out in front. Yeah, exactly. And they deal with Trump, and Trump wants to please the Europeans because he knows ultimately that he's dealing with the neocons. And so you can't snub the Europeans. You can't push them away.

You have to deal with them because it's the neocons in the back. of all of this. And they're the ones that want to keep the war going. I mean, the Europeans want to keep the war going. The neocons want to keep the war going. So, you know, they're aligned on this issue. And Trump falls for it every time. Yes. There's a little bit of neocon in Trump as well. So, you know, he's got, he's got that going. What do you see Russia doing or saying about all of this? Or doing nothing or saying nothing or saying nothing. I mean, they're not doing nothing and they're not saying nothing. They've said that this is completely unacceptable.

Lavrov gave two press conferences an interview to Russian television and an interview to American television to make the Russian position absolutely crystal clear. I think what the Russians are going to do is that they've got Trump to agree that there won't be a ceasefire. And I think they're going to pocket that and they're going to keep it. I think they're going to hold Trump to it. And I think they're just going to continue from this point on. They're going to focus on the war. And that is what they're going to do.

They continue to advance militarily in Ukraine. They've made more advances in Gupians, Kitsievsk, in Lehvers, in Lehman, in Pakrovsk. They've launched more missile strikes and drone strikes against Ukraine. I think they are probably calculated that. sooner or later, given that there isn't going to be a ceasefire. And Trump has said that there isn't going to be a ceasefire. As the military pressure increases, there's going to have to be negotiations. If there are going to be negotiations, then as Trump supposedly has already told people

in private, the pressure will be on the Europeans and the Ukrainians to make the concessions. And we're going to see this idea of security guarantee. fall away, that is possibility one, or they will continue to be intransigent, in which case the Russians will catch the whole of Dombas, and they will capture the city of Zaporosia, and they will probably capture the city of Herzl, and they might go on and capture all of eastern Ukraine, east of the Dnieper, and they might cross the river, they might do all of those things, and they will be in one way or the other the war in Ukraine. I think this is more likely where we're heading, I mean, many people have said that this war is going to end with a military solution.

And again, it's starting to look increasingly like that. Well, Wikoff said that they're going to end the war at the end of the end of the year. They've got a proposal on the table, he said, is what he told Fox News. There's a deal on the table that Russia presented. He said that the United States can work with this deal. Ukraine's not going to like it much. Obviously, he's talking about root causes June 2024, Istanbul, plus that's the deal that he's talking about. But he's saying that the United States and Russia, they are working on getting to some

sort of a resolution with Ukraine by the end of the year. I mean, what do you make of that? And Russia and Russia continues to go along with the fiction that the United States is the neutral mediator in all of this. And they also continue to heap a whole bunch of praise on the Trump administration and Trump's efforts to mediate a resolution to the conflict in Ukraine. I mean, Russia is playing along with this. Yes. Well, I think what the Russians ultimately want to do, and I think this is the thing to understand,

is that they want to settle this conflict in Ukraine directly with the Americans. And I think this is why they want to keep the doors open to the Americans, and they want to discuss things with the Americans, and why they don't want to turn the situation with Trump completely off. But you have to be very careful about these kind of comments from Whitgov, because the Americans have been doing this ever since Trump was inaugurated. They've said in the past that a ceasefire was almost agreed, that the terms of the ceasefire were almost agreed,

that a ceasefire would happen next week or in three weeks or by April or by Easter. and we saw that that never happened. And now they're saying the same about the final deal. The Russians have made quite clear what sort of a deal they want, which is Istanbul Plus. And Istanbul Plus excludes the security guarantees that we're seeing being talked about now. The chances that Europe goes into Ukraine. Great. A bankrupt, in recession, European Union going into Ukraine, led by the UK, which is about to get a bailout, possibly get a bailout from the IMF. And also led by France, which is also possibly about to get a bailout from the IMF, not to mention could possibly be seeing snap elections. What do you make of all of this talk, all of this planning? Is this just about keeping busy? Is this just just. about distracting people's attention away from the tremendous catastrophic problems at these countries,

all of them, the UK, Germany, France. They all have at home, all of these economic migration debt problems that they have. Here they all are playing Churchill and playing the general and they're scheming and plotting the invasion of Russia or the deterrence force into Ukraine. Is this all just show in theater? Yes, I think it is. And I think something else. I think it's exactly what you said. I mean, it's partly the politics of distraction.

But I think one of the parties that they're distracting is themselves. I think one of the – it is a well-known phenomenon with political leaders. There's books that have studied this, by the way, leaders who face in some manner. problems at home, or problems which for them are insurmountable, which is that they retreat into foreign policy. And they engage in all kinds of utterly pointless diplomatic activity, or what they imagined is diplomatic activity, in order to keep themselves busy and say to themselves that they're important. I remember one example was Edvard Girach, one of the leaders of communist Poland, the one just before the solidarity crisis. And he was a perfect example of that.

I mean, he was hosting meetings between Brezhnev and the French president at the time, Giscard, doing all of those things, even as the situation in Poland was spiraling out of control. Because that made him feel important and consequential. It meant that he got invitations to the White House and the United States. Kremlin and all of that. And of course, in the end, nothing that he was doing really in the end mattered or changed anything. And I think this is partly exactly what we are in truth seeing. The Europeans want to tell themselves that they're important. They want to tell the Americans that they're important. They want the Russians to think that they're important. They want the world to think that they're important. Most of all, they want their own people to think that they're

important, and they want they themselves to think that they are important. So they're going off and they're doing all of these things and they're holding all of these meetings and they're sorting out the logistics as they believe, even though the militaries apparently are very, very skeptical about this and that's being, you know, understating it. And they're going through all of the motions of all of these discussions and they pretend to each other that this is all for real, and it's all serious, and nobody, ultimate, everybody knows ultimately, deep down, that this is completely unreal and it's never going to happen, because the Russians have said no. I mean, it's as, I mean, they cannot have said no in more straightforward and emphatic terms. And I cannot believe that there is some secret at between the Russians and the Americans that contradicts so completely, is so diametrically opposite, not just to what the Russians have always been saying, but to what Lavrov, who is, after all, the foreign minister, the Russian foreign minister and who was present

in the room when Trump and Putin spoke together. I cannot believe that he would be something so completely at odds with what, you know, with what Wighoff might, you know, any kind of secret agreement that Trump and Putin might have arrived at. I mean, he would know what the real diplomacy, what the real position between the Russians and the Americans actually is. And he wouldn't be going out making those statements if the Russians have made these kind of enormous concessions, which would almost certainly be, you know, very, very unacceptable to very many people in Moscow anyway. Speaking of Lavrov, I mean, he's been making all sorts of very interesting comments

recently. He's been talking about how for the Russians, it's not about territory, this idea that this is all some kind of great land grab, which is the sort of consensus for you in Europe. and to some extent in the United States is all wrong, that there has to be protections for Russian speakers, there has to be a restoration of the rights of the Orthodox Church, that Russians everywhere in Ukraine, not just the four regions, have to be protected as well. That, of course, was one of the original demands of the special military operation, remember? Impossible. to see how all of that can be done without a change of government in Kiev.

And sooner or later, that topic is going to have to be addressed. And again, Trump was utterly dismissive the other day when he was asked about the Russian objections to Zelensky's legitimacy. And again, I don't think that Trump is wise to simply write that off as simply as he is. I mean, he still wants this meeting between Putin and Zelensky. Remember, we were told that meeting. It's going to happen on, you know, another, another one of those things that was about to happen. And of course, it never did that.

22nd of August. 22nd of August, exactly. So, you know, the Americans are always talking up this process. And we see that in reality, the Russians have never agreed to any of this. And I think that Trump does at some point have to start addressing the question of Zelensky's legitimacy. And I think any plan to just substitute Zoluzzi for Zolensky, I don't think that's to work Kaiser. And I think people, if they really do want a negotiated solution to this conflict, which is, by the way, in everybody's interests, everybody's objective interests, not the people

who are profiting from the grift you've been talking about, not from the people who want to keep the Ponzi scheme going, not those people. You know, everybody's, you know, the people of Europe, the people of the US, the people of Russia, the people of Ukraine, their objective interests would be to seek to get an agreed peace. If people really want to work towards that objective, then as I said, all of these concerns that the Russians are bringing up need to be addressed. But of course, as we know, the leaders of Europe, the neocons and the United States are not interested in any of that. they would far rather the war continue than that there'd be a piece. There have been editorials in the British media would say that quite openly better a continued war than what they call a bad piece. Yeah, definitely.

They want to keep the war going, no doubt about it. And, you know, Trump, by putting this new timeline, which is the end of the year, I see it as his way of saying, you know what, we're just going to also just kick the can down the road because we don't have any solutions, we don't have any answers. We can't admit defeat. At least we can play the part of Mediator, and maybe that'll get us a Nobel Peace Prize, but at least we can play that part. And every couple of weeks, I'll post something on truth social about how bad Putin is or how unreasonable Zelensky is.

He can put something out like that every couple of weeks. And maybe by the end of December, Russians will have made a, enough progress so that it forces Ukraine to actually accept Istanbul Plus. The problem is, will Istanbul Plus still be the deal that is on the table? I mean, that's the thing that they're not considering. No, of course not. That is exactly the problem. I mean, the further west, the Russians go, the less willing to make concessions, any kind of concessions, they are going to be. Their demands are likely to increase. I mean, we've already spoken about how Russian officials like Lavrov have cast doubt on Ukraine entering the EU, for example.

That hasn't yet been officially confirmed as something that the Russians will object to. But, you know, if we get to a situation where the Russians are on the NEPA, probably they will object to. Yeah. What do you make of the secondary sanctions at that? the EU is looking to implement in their 19th sanctions package. I mean, this is a disastrous idea. The EU cannot defeat the Russians economically, so they're going to take on the rest of the world instead.

I mean, how does that work? How does that make any kind of sense? I mean, this is stupidity. All that it is going to do is going to make an awful lot more countries angry with the EU. They're going to say, look, you're coming after us. What has this got to do with us? You've got problems with the Russians, sort it out with the Russians. You're coming after us instead?

I mean, you can imagine there's going to be absolute fury. There's going to be more members, candidates to join the Briggs. There's going to be all of those things. I mean, it makes no sense at all. It's so stupid that only idiots like Kayakales, Ossila von der Leyen, and Friedrich Mets could have come up with it. Yep. It keeps them busy, though. Absolutely.

It keeps them busy coming up with 19th sanctions packages. Yes. Going after China and India. Wow. Ridiculous. Anyway, we'll add to the video there. The durand.com. We're on Rumble at X.

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