The Duran Podcast - Trump's Ukraine dilemma, escalate or walk away

Episode Date: February 7, 2025

Trump's Ukraine dilemma, escalate or walk away

All right, Alexander, let's do an update on Ukraine, and we can talk about what's happening on the front lines. We can talk about Kursk and Ukraine's catastrophic offensive or counteroffensive to a counteroffensive in curse. They're attacking the curse direction for what goals or what ends. I don't know. No one really just stands, except that it's most likely for media, a media. PR stunt. We have Kersk, we have other things we can get to on the front line, and of course, we can talk about the peace deals that are being leaked by the media, the Daily Mail, leaked the Strana peace deal, which you talked about a week ago, and they decided to leak it yesterday

as breaking news. My news. So Kellogg, and of course we'll focus on many of the things that Kellogg is saying and the Munich Security Conference, which just before you talk about, I don't know if you talk about Kersk first, but I would guess that much of the Kersk offensive is about creating some sort of narrative before Munich. I would guess that that's probably correct for Zelensky as far as an explanation why he's going. to Kursk. Anyway, what are your thoughts? Let us, in fact, start with Kusk, because you're absolutely correct. What you just said is precisely true, because, of course, the Ukrainians launched this completely ill-conceived, catastrophically executed, disastrous counterattack in Kuzk, trying to push back the Russians, trying to regain territory, trying to regain the initiative

in Kuzk region, which anybody who's been following... the trend of the fighting, not just in Kuzk region, but right across the front lines, would have known in advance was going to miscarry. And the moment it happens, the moment it starts, you get this triumphalist statements from Zelensky that the Ukrainians are fighting in Kusk, that this has been a tremendous success, that the Russians have failed to expel the Ukrainian army from Kuz, that the Ukrainians will continue to be there for, you know, for the duration. And clearly it was intended in advance of Kellogg's comments at the Munich Security Conference

and all the talk about ceasefires and all the talk about elections in Ukraine and all of that. It's intended to show to the Americans and to the world that actually Zelenskyy's there. He's still strong. He's still pushing back. He's still keeping the fight going against the Russians. And of course, it's absolutely unreal. It has no reality or substance to it. All it has done is that it has sacrificed more lives and more machines in Kusk, lives and machines, which are now running very short in Ukraine, in order to perpetuate the narrative that Ukraine is still in the battle.

Everywhere else across the front lines is the same story. I mean, the Russians continue to advance. It's been slower over the last couple of weeks because apparently there's been a midwinter thaw. Contrary to what some people are saying, by the way, this is not so unusual in this part of the world. You do get extreme oscillations in temperature, sometimes in the winter. But anyway, there's been a midwinter thaw.

There's a lot of mud. The result is that the advances have slowed. But if you're talking about Russian advances, they've never stopped. The Russians have now got a big bridgehead across the two small rivers, the Oswald, and the Jerebets rivers in the north. They've apparently cleared Torezsk. They've not announced it, probably because they're waiting to finish the baffle of Chassevya, which is perhaps a couple of weeks running a couple of weeks behind Torezsk. They've started to clear the remaining Ukrainian defences in southwest Dombas.

And the Ukrainians also try to launch a counterattack in the Prakosk area. And what I'm hearing, what I myself am hearing, is that this is miscarried every bit as badly as the operation in Korskastak. Zelensky appointed a new general to take charge of the ground force. called Trapati. Whenever that happens, whenever he appoints a general, you know that he's going to order an offensive and that that is what it's all about. The previous general, it probably ordered to do the same thing. Probably he says, no. Zelensky sacks him. He puts someone else in place. The new general carries out the attacks that Zelensky wants. The attacks end up

disastrously. But Zelensky is able to make his speech about, you know, how we're still there, we're still fighting, we're still keeping going. And it's all a media spin and presentation in terms of the actual battle. What is really going on on the battlefronts, it's not changing the dial, moving the dial in Ukraine's favor in any way. The key. The key. thing to understand about where we are in project Ukraine now is that all belief and conviction in this project in the West has now completely drained away. The Americans are trying to get out of it. There is still no consensus within the Trump team about how they're going to do it. So you get people like Kellogg and Walls, you say, you know, let's increase the pressure on the Russians.

Let's try and find ways to make the Russians make concessions. Let's try and get a ceasefire. And then this is what Kellogg is saying today. I mean, things that the Russians have already rejected. You seize fire and then get the negotiations going. People who still can't quite accept that this war is lost. Apparently, there's another faction within the Trump team. There's much more realistic. They say this war is lost. Let's just cut off the aid. Let's just walk away. Let's dump it on the Europeans and the Ukrainians. Just that, you know, this is your problem now. Even in Europe, though, I mean, the conviction has drained away. Germany, France, Italy, Spain, nobody really believes in it. In Britain, there's still some people who do, like probably our prime minister,

Mr. Stalmer. And in Osceola probably, he's now so deeply committed that you can't give up on it. And you get Mark Rutter saying crazy things about the fact that the front line is moving in the wrong direction. But when you take a step back, I think it's quite clear what's going on. Project Ukraine has failed everybody

except a few deluded fanatics can see. it. And the only question now is how it's going to be wrapped up. Yeah. The Trump White House should just drop this thing. Absolutely. I mean, you know, they have a golden opportunity to drop it. Yeah. With all the U.S. AID stuff and Zelensky's comments to the Associated Press, his comments to the Associated Press during the interview about the $124 billion that's gone missing. Doesn't know where it is, what happened to it. All of these comments take,

taken together and all the revelations about USAID and all of the corruption there gives Trump once again, not the first time he's had this opportunity. Once again, he has an opportunity to just drop this. Drop it. Get rid of it. Dump it on the UK because in my opinion, Stommer wants it. He wants it. So give it to him. Ursula wants it. Give it to her. And just drop this because this is such a loser policy. Yes. And it's going to take Trump down. It's going to take him down.

It's going to take him down. He is going to be called the person that lost Ukraine. And there's going to be no ceasefire waltz and Keller. Why are these people still believing that they can win or that they can get a ceasefire? I mean, this is to the point of, of, of, ridiculous. I was going to see a different word, but I mean, everyone knows that this is not going even as a heart of us said, there's going to be no ceasefire. Lovov said it 100 times. They've all said it 100 million times. No ceasefire. Yes. It's not going to happen. Absolutely. Given that

the very fact that we're talking about trying to end the war is a sign that we've lost the war. I mean, if America, if Ukraine really was winning the war, there would be no initiatives to try to end it. So the very fact that there are initiatives coming from the West now to try to end it is a sign that the war is lost. But there are some people, and there will always be some people. There are some people who simply can't internalize this. They can't accept the fact that all this energy and effort and money and treasure and weapons ultimately have proved so completely unsuccessful against the country that they still indoctrinated and hardwired to think is the gas station masquerading as a country governed by a corrupt kleptocracy and all of those things. So this is the problem. And you have to overcome those people, Mike Wolfe and Kellogg.

And my own guess is that Trump's instincts probably are pulling him in the direction of those people who say, let's just pull out, let's just let it go. But he still has, I think, also this impulse that you can't cut and run if we just do. if we just do that, it will be Afghanistan all over again. Apparently, Mike Walsh is obsessed with Afghanistan and the failure that happened there. And apparently some of the other people in the Trump team are as well. They don't want to be in the same position

that the Biden team was in Afghanistan. What, of course, the reality is exactly what you said. if they stay, if they continue, then it really will be Afghanistan. It will not just be Afghanistan. It will be worse than Afghanistan. It will be Saigon. But, you know, that's the real danger. Whereas, as you absolutely rightly said before, before the inauguration, I would just say

this Biden's war, nothing to do with Trump. We can just pull away, let it end. Stop the aid, stop the weapons. Talk about the USAID now as well. USAID throw that in there as well. Exactly. Now, I think there are, I think this is the positive sign. I think there are some people in the Trump team who understand that.

One can guess as to who some of these people are because, well, they make public comments about this. Elon Musk, David Sachs. I think Pete Higgs says is someone. else who thinks in that way. Apparently, there's going to be another Ukraine donors meeting coming up in a few weeks. The Americans in the Biden period always chaired it. Apparently, Pete Hegseth says, I am not going to chair it. Who is going to chair it? John Healy, the British Defense Secretary. So you can already see that he is shuffling responsibility to Britain.

Just as you said, the British want to take ownership, we'll give it to. I think that's what he wants to do. I think other people, John Radcliffe, probably CIA, others as well, maybe Tulsi Gabbard, if and when she's confirmed as DNI, they will be arguing for this. And I think as it's always the way with Trump, he takes time. And sometimes too much time. And if he really starts getting drawn into discussions about seized fires and freezes, like Kellogg is talking, I mean, he really does risk getting himself into all sorts of trouble,

which he could quite easily afford. Yeah, they're also shutting down the DOJ is going to shut down the department that they set up to go after Russian businessmen. assets. So that's also being shut down. And those resources are going to be reallocated to go after cartels or whatever. But that's also a sign that there are forces in the Trump administration that are just trying to drop project Ukraine because they realize that it's just a losing policy, a losing initiative. Even the Wall Street. Just to say, ultimately that side will win because the events on the ground. It's the time. But exactly. You said it's the time.

Time. Time is running out. I mean, time is running out. I mean, if you look at the situation on the front lines, at the moment, there's never been a pause. The Russians have always been advancing. Ukraine has always been suffering. Catastrophic losses. I read somewhere that, you know, there's been a slowly, the Russians were saying that in November,

Ukraine was losing 2,200 men a day. It's only losing 1600 men a day. These are, 1600 men a day is catastrophic. It's terrible. It's more than 30,000 a month. More than Ukraine can replace. And this is supposed to be happening during a quiet period. And we've had more information about Russia's economic condition.

Or you remember all those articles. It's heading towards a crisis. It's about to be collapsed. collapse, we now see that in December and January, against all the expectations, growth rates right across the board in every sector accelerated, tax receipts accelerated. I mean, you know, there's a lot to discuss there, and we can talk about it some other time, but clearly the Russian economy isn't going to collapse anytime soon. And sometime in the spring, the The Russians are going to mount the next big offensive.

Parkrovsk will fall. Konstantinovka probably will fall. The Russians will reach the deeper, probably by midsummer. There isn't the time for the Americans to sort themselves out. They need to make the decision to cut off Ukraine now and to start distancing themselves from it now. And if the British want to lead, let them. Yeah, I completely agree with you.

And I'll even add on to that. If given everything that we know now with these revelations on the corruption side of things, with Doge and everything that's come out with USAID, how in God's name will the Trump White House or the Pentagon be able to give Ukraine weapons or money in a month? to. Now that everyone understands that everything that's been given to Ukraine has pretty much just, you know, been siphoned off to go elsewhere. You have corruption. You have Reuters articles talking about how tracking systems are not able to track all the weapons that go to Ukraine from the Pentagon. I mean, how do you explain to the American people after everything that's coming out

now? Well, we're going to give another $5 billion to Ukraine or $10 billion to Ukraine. This is a dead end for the Trump administration. Absolutely. Just by the way, can I just make a quick observation here? I mean, all that he said about the revelations, about, you know, $100 billion. And that's Zelensky is telling us that $100 billion have disappeared. Nobody can account for them. That's Zelent.

But we have all of the other revelations coming out of the United States itself. things going astray, no proper accounting, valuations manipulated all the time, you know, to make things look cheaper than they actually were so that weapon stocks are being depleted, payments to all kinds of shady people, bribery corruption all over the place. This would not be a surprise to anybody who has been following our programs. We've been talking about this for years that this was all a gigantic grift. And there it is, it is, but you're absolutely correct as well.

When you say, when you say that how do you go back to Congress, how do you persuade Marjorie Taylor Green? And I just mentioned her because she's one of the most outspoken people. that, you know, you want another $20 billion for Ukraine after you've acknowledged that all of this other money has gone missing, how do you justify giving more weapons to Ukraine when we learn that all the weapons have gone astray, that the attack and stop byle has been massively depleted, that things were, the price of items was artificially lowered, to make it more acceptable, the stopbiles have been run down,

it's going to cost huge sums of money simply to make, to replace what has already been given away. Well, you can't. I think people like Marjorie Taylor Green, and most of the Republicans, I suspect, now in the House of Representatives at least, would be furious. You're going to get yourself straight into another public row.

You're going to have all kinds of tensions and problems. So this thing cannot run. And you said years ago, years ago that this was a grift, and now we could see that it was. Maybe he's going to say he's getting rare earth minerals for the money, which don't exist. Which don't exist? This is just a fantasy. It's an absolute fact. This is the latest.

Again, I mean, in a kind of sense, you know, I think we both pointed out. This is now making it all transactional. But Ukraine cannot pay. It doesn't have the money. We all know that. We've seen what the real situation with the money in Ukraine actually is. And as of the rare earths and the lithiums and whatever, to the extent that they exist, the Russians are sitting on. Yeah.

So the Wall Street Journal, they put out an article with the title, It's Russian Men against Ukrainian machines on the battlefields in Ukraine. And they say in the article, after nearly three years of fighting, Ukraine is desperately short on infantry to man the trenches. They are outnumbered at least five to one along most of the Eastern Front. And the men they have are mostly older, recently conscripted and lacking motivation and experience in battle, Ukrainian officers said. That's from the Wall Street Journal. Well, that's from the Wall Street Journal. Is it a Zelensky tells Pierce Morgan that Ukraine's losses are 45,000, by the way. Of course, people, people just reproduce that. Nobody says anything. Zelensky says that Ukraine should be given nuclear weapons. Hardly anybody

says it. It's hardly reported anywhere. You do have Kellogg says that, you know, the chances of Ukraine be giving nuclear weapons is between zero and nil. He said getting back their nuclear weapons, which shows again, a complete. lack of understanding of all of this. But I mean, you know, Zelensky says these absurd things, the reality out there on the front lines, as I said, old, exhausted men against a Russian army that's getting bigger and stronger all the time. And there is a point very soon now when this is all going to start tumbling down. I mean, the Russian defense minister in a recent comment actually talked about as cascading collapse.

And that's what we're going to see. Yeah. This is Biden's war. And I tried to solve it, but I couldn't. And also, by the way, there's all kinds of corruption. So best to leave this alone. That's all he has to say. That is all he needs to say.

he's electoral baseball support him. That's what they want him to say. That is what the people in the House of Representatives who backed him, you know, all the way. That's what they want him. They don't like Zelensky. They don't like what he is and what he stands for. They've never forgotten how he turned up in Congress wearing his, you know, t-shirt. This is not a popular war in the United States.

So what persists with it? What is being lost? Okay. Final question. Is there a possibility given the article that leaked from the Daily Mail, the revelation, breaking news from the Daily Mail about the Stranah peace plan, which you may want to explain exactly what's going on there? But is there a possibility of some sort of a rushing?

agreement to terms that the Trump White House may possibly put out there? I mean, maybe ceasefire, maybe security guarantees, maybe Ukraine entering the EU, maybe peacekeepers in

Ukraine, maybe a DMZ, everything that's not talked about, basically, and everything that we know from Kellogg as well, because the two are kind of Yes. They have a lot of overlapping what Kellogg is thinking and what Stranah, the peace plan that they claim is Trump, what that's saying as well. Do you believe that there's anything that Russia may say, okay, we can get on board with these points in a possible, a possible peace plan scenario?

Because I think you're right. I think where we are heading towards is Kellogg presenting some sort of, the ceasefire, DMZ security guarantees type of plan to Russia. I think that's where we are heading towards. Do you see anything that points to Russia softening or Russia agreeing to any of these possible plans floated their way? We can only judge this from what the Russians are saying, and they are saying categorically no. Now, we discussed the strana. plan, the peace plan. So as you're right, he said about, well, I think it's about 10 days ago, actually.

I mean, it was more than a week ago. I mean, it's fascinating how the Daily Mail has just discovered it. Just, just a second. My own personal view about the Stranap Plan, which Zelensky insists was never presented to him by the American so that it's not an American plan at all. Well, that's Zelensky. Maybe he's telling the truth. Maybe he's not.

But my own sense about it is that. It comes from inside Ukraine itself. It's been cobbled together by some of Zelensky's opponents, you know, Klichko, Poroshenko, Zaluzni, those sort of people. Budanov? Budanov, absolutely. I mean, Budanov clearly now has gone over to that side. I mean, that revelation, you know, that he said that Ukraine is six months and then things will start to go terrible. It's obvious that it was he who leaked it and he's now being investigated for it.

So I think these are the people who come up with this plan. And I think what they're trying to do is they're trying to sell it to Kellogg. I think it's that way around. And perhaps they're succeeding because there are things there that are attractive. You know, Ukraine doesn't join NATO. Again, when you unpack it, it's not actually. cast iron as it looks. You get Ukraine changing its constitution. You get a resolution from the NATO Council. Ukraine can change its constitution back. The NATO Council can always reverse

a decision in 10, 15, 20 years time. So, given that all of that has happened before, I doubt that the Russians will accept that. And it talks about, you know, it talks about, you know, you know, the Ukrainians pulling out of Kuzk region, and Russians are going to dry them out of Kuzk region. But critically, the thing that for the Russians is going to stay is they say they want to ceasefire and they want the right that the Americans can go on providing Ukraine with all the weapons it needs and wants and that the Ukrainian army, there'll be no restrictions on the Ukrainian army. I cannot imagine that the Russians, will agree to either of those propositions.

As you said earlier, the Russians have consistently rejected a ceasefire. They've been saying that over the last couple of days. I mean, it's not, you know, that they said this six months ago. They're saying it now that they won't accept a ceasefire, that they won't accept a free, that they want a long-term, sustainable peace settlement, and that they will accept nothing else and that they've had too many ceasefire in the past to trust the Ukrainians or indeed the Western powers

to abide by one now. So I don't think the Russians are going to accept any of this and this particular plan, which as I said I think has a Ukrainian origin. It may be something that Kellogg likes, but the Russians are bound to reject it. One final question. One more final question. What if this is the plan that's presented to Moscow, something along these lines, the Kellogg Plan or the Strenov Plan and the Russians, they turn it down?

What happens then? What does Trump do? What should he do? Should he then say, I'm done, I'm out, or do you think he's going to escalate? I mean, what do you think is going to happen? possibly happen, what do you think should happen? Well, this is an excellent question because this is where it becomes really dangerous. Because of course, if Trump takes ownership of this plan, when it's rejected, he's going to find that he has absolutely no real leverage over the Russians. And it would be very difficult to interpret what happens as anything other than a personal diplomatic defeat for him.

That's the risk, it's the same risk that you were highlighting earlier in the program. That's why he really shouldn't get involved in any of this. It's dangerous for him to try. Now, what he ought to do is he still should do what you said. He said, look, we presented this plan. We think it's a good plan. The Russians have said no. It's all up to them.

There are the people who've rejected peace, but we've done all that we can and we can't realistically do more. We've seen the realities of how the money was embezzled. We've seen how the war is being lost. This is not a core interest of the United States. We should walk away. That's what he should do. The risk is that Mike Wilson's Kellogg will come along and say, to him, look, you own this plan, you put this plan to the Russians. The Russians are saying,

now you've got to increase the pressure on them. You've got to increase sanctions pressure and more pressure and do all of those things, in which case, I mean, he really will own the war. And when the Russians stop besieging Kiev, which is what that would inexorably lead to, then he will face a disaster, a foreign policy disaster for which he will be blamed. Yeah, and the media is going to jump on it. Absolutely. Yeah, and they're going to blame him for everything. And Biden and Blinken and Sullivan, Newlands, they walk out of this.

Exactly. No problem. And Robert Kagan has already written these, is preparing the ground for the attack on Trump on the basis that he lost Ukraine. Yeah, well, all right. We'll end the video there. We've done many videos on this, so, you know, we'll see what he eventually does. Just to repeat again, watch about all of these revelations about the embezzlement, the disappearance,

the disappearance of the money, the non-existent accounting. Listen to our programs. Listen to your clown shows, the programs that you've done on your channel. Time and time again, if you were listening to any of this, I mean, none of this would be a surprise to you. Just say, listen to the American people. Listen to the American people. They want out of this. They want out of this.

And, you know, as so often is the case, their instincts are the right ones. They've understood this far better than all these clever people, so-called clever people, and the think tanks, then the NGOs and all of that, all these expensive lobbyists and all these terrible analysts and all of those people and the commentary at and all of that have done. People, you want a vindication of democracy, which by the way, I absolutely believe in, just to quickly say, well, you want a vindication of democracy. Look at who has been right about this. Those people who turned up in Butler, Pennsylvania, and all those places who were against the war,

and it understood that right from the beginning. Yeah. All right. We'll end the video there. The durand.com. We are in Rumble Odyssey, British, Telegram, RockFit, Necks, and go to Durant Shop, pick up some merch. Like what we are wearing in this video, update, the link is in the description box down below. Take care.