The Duran Podcast - UK peak panic as project Ukraine crumbles

Episode Date: October 4, 2023

UK peak panic as project Ukraine crumbles

All right, Alexander, let's do an update on Ukraine. And I think a good place to begin is the UK and some of the statements coming out of the UK. Perhaps we can talk about the U.S. And the statements coming out of the U.S. Since it was announced that Ukraine would not be Ukraine, would not be included in this stopgap resolution. and we have some crazy statements out of the U.S. And then maybe we could talk about what's actually going on in the moment on the front line. So maybe we're doing things a bit in reverse this time.

We usually start with what's going on on the front lines. But I really want to get to the crazy comments coming out of the UK and the U.S. So let's begin with the U.K. Absolutely. Well, I think things are becoming increasingly unhinged here. We've had, firstly, a very bizarre interview with War on the Rocks. by Admiral Radican, who is our chief of staff, if you like, he's the head of the British military.

All is going well. The Russians are on the brink of collapse. All we need to do is keep going, and not just that the Russians are on the brink of collapse, but the military in Russia is on the brink of collapse, and the whole country is apparently on the brink of collapse. I'm summarizing hugely, but in essence, that is what he said.

Then we had this extraordinary statement from Grant Shaps, who is our new Defence Secretary. And he comes out and he says that Britain is now seriously thinking, deploying troops to Ukraine itself on training missions there and that British ships, the British military might play a role in escorting. Ukrainian grain ships. So that would imply some level of direct involvement by Britain

in the wall. Within hours, the Russians responded, firstly, with a strong message on his telegram channel from Dimitri Medvedev, making it absolutely clear that as far as the Russians are concerned, any British troops in Ukraine are targets, the Russians will come after them, And of course, Medvedev also spoke about, you know, the fact that the whole situation was becoming dangerous and that there were some crazy people in the West. He used a very strong word.

He called them morons, in fact, were dragging the world towards World War III. That was what Medvedev said. And then a few hours later, we got a comment, we got a major backtrack from our Prime Minister, Rishi Sunak. then came out and said, well, actually, that's not what we're going to do. What Grant Shapp says has been misunderstood. He wasn't talking about sending troops to Ukraine. Now, he means after the war. He doesn't really explain the comments about the grain ships and escorting the grain ships or anything like that.

But it's clearly a major backtrack. And then just a few hours after this, we get an equally craig. in fact, completely unhinged article in the Daily Telegraph from the former British Defence Secretary, Ben Wallace. Again, Ukraine is on the brink of victory. The Russians have suffered staggering losses. Two and a half thousand tanks have been destroyed. Thousands of machines are destroyed. Their army is on the brink of collapse. The country is on the brink of collapse. What we must do is give Ukraine everything. Ukraine wants. Everything's a Lensky wants. He disclosed, by the way, independently, that he was pressing Sunak to give Ukraine

another two billion dollars of aid, two billion pounds of aid, my correction. So he was wanted to get Ukraine to be provided with even more aid. Oh, and by the way, he slipped out the fact over the course of this article that Ukraine's, the average age of Ukrainian soldiers, is now above 40. He says this is all because President Zelensky cares so much about the future of his country that he's not willing to sacrifice. It's young people, but he must now do that

because Putin is in the process of mobilizing by stealth the whole of Russia. So everybody, all men apparently must join the Ukrainian army. Now, I'm going to make a number of conclusions. I think what it shows is that there are some people in Britain who've just completely lost it with this war. They wanted to continue. They're very, very concerned and very, very angry

about all of this talk about freezes and ceasefires and negotiations and all of these things. They're noticing that the mood is shifting in the United States. They're noticing that the mood is shifting, even in Poland. Perhaps they've been rattled by the election in Slovakia. We'll talk about all of that some other time. But anyway, the point is that there's clearly a battle underway within the British political leadership

between those who want to push for the most extreme solutions, people like Radican and Wallace, and Sunak, perhaps a little bit more connected to reality, is trying to keep things a bit more under restraint. My own view about the Grant Shapp's comments, by the way, is that he was flying a kite. He was sending up a kite. He was wanting to see how the Russians would react to this proposal

to send British troops to Ukraine and how the Russians would react to the suggestion of British troops in some ways the British escorting Ukrainian grain ships. And of course, he also wanted to see how British public opinion would react.

And you must understand that the British authorities keep very close track on how British opinion moves. I mean, the kind of opinion polls we see published are only, you know, the tip of the iceberg of what goes on.

Also, you know, you get letters to newspapers, comments on email on threads and things. They don't get all published, but they're quickly forwarded to Whitehall. And I'm pretty sure that what happened after the Grant Shapp's comments was that there was a massive negative reaction from most of the British population. And Sunak, who's very, very careful, is trying to pull back. But we can see that there are others, Ben Wallace and Radikin and people like those who are. who want us to press forward.

So it gives you a sense of the kind of debate that's taking place in Britain and it also shows how completely detached from reality people in Britain those who advocate further escalation have become. Yeah, Ben Wallace also brought in a World War II reference. You started to see a lot of leaders in the Collective West referencing World War II now,

rewriting the history of World War II and basically making Russia into the villain. Yeah. That's what they're doing here. Yes. And I think it's just really, it's interesting to see everyone in the collective West. Yes. Always referencing World War II now when they're talking about Russia and the conflict in Ukraine. But, you know, we have the neocons in Britain and we have the neocons in the U.S.,

which pretty much are in the same state of. panic. Lindsay Graham, he gave an interview. He was on Face the Nation. He said that, obviously, he's disappointed with the fact that Ukraine didn't get any money in the resolution, the Stop Gap resolution, but he said that the Senate is preparing 60 or 70 billion more in aid this year. And of course, he told Face the Nation that, look, Ukraine has to be. to win. It has to defeat Russia because if it doesn't win and defeat Russia, well, then we've got a problem with China and Taiwan. So I find it very interesting that the narrative has indeed shifted to create this connection, this linkage between the conflict in Ukraine and a possible

conflict or escalation in Taiwan. I mean, the neocons have connected these two issues together now. And I just would like your thoughts on that. And of course, Biden. Biden, he said that McCarthy, I guess he was, I don't want to say promised, but in Biden's address after the resolution passed, he made it appear as if he spoke to McCarthy on the side. And McCarthy signaled to Biden that they're going to get the $24 billion to Ukraine in a separate package. And Biden said, don't worry. We're not going to abandon Ukraine.

We're going to Americans. Americans do not worry. Ukrainians don't worry. We're going to make sure that we get the money to you. Rand Paul is providing resistance. J.D. Vance is providing resistance. In the Senate, they're saying no more money to Ukraine. But all the neocons are signaling that a lot more money is going to be provided to Ukraine. Absolutely.

I think the thing to understand about what has happened in Congress is that this was entirely a procedural battle. It was about the administration's attempt to tack on financial aid to Ukraine onto another much bigger budget appropriation, which covers the costs of the government going forward and other things. The administration didn't want aid for Ukraine to be set as to be voted for a part in a specific Ukraine funding bill. And the reason they don't want to do that is not because they think that a Ukraine funding bill will fail in Congress.

There is a majority in Congress, both in the House of Representatives and even more in the Senate for funding Ukraine. So Ukraine is going to get money. I mean, I think this is something that people need to understand. These moves do not block funding for Ukraine. Ukraine is going to continue to get funding, probably $24 billion, perhaps even more.

What the Biden administration wanted to suppress, wanted to conceal from the American people and the world is the fact that opposition to funding, this wall in Congress is growing. They didn't want the world to see that there's perhaps, well, I'm not, I'm just trucking figures out of the air now. Perhaps 100 Republicans are going to vote against this allocation. They want to preserve the appearance that there is unity right across the political class

in the United States behind this issue, because of course they do not want it to become an issue in the forthcoming presidential election. So that's what this whole battle was all about. This whole argument in Congress was all about. The tactic failed. From this point on, they'll be putting forward a Ukraine funding bill and it will pass. Now, I don't think when Lindsay Graham talks about $60 billion, I think he's talking. I mean, I don't think it will be that much.

More probably it would be something like $24 billion. But, you know, if $60 billion is what is proposed, there might even be votes for it. It becomes more difficult the more money you propose. But it will pass. So this is an important issue in terms of US domestic politics going forward into 2024 into the election. But it is not important in relation to US support for Ukraine.

I think this is a point that people need to make, have absolutely clearly understood. So there's going to be a battle. Ukraine is going to get its money, but we're going to see that there will be a significant vote against this in Congress, in the House, by Republicans, and a small but growing number of Republican senators. You mentioned J.D. Vance, but there'll be others as well.

You know, Rand Paul, obviously. They'll be voting against it too. And the unity, in other words, on this issue of the uniparty has been shattered. So this is the story of what has happened here. Now, it has really angered people like Lindsay Graham. They are indeed panicking because, of course, it also touches on the control these people used to have over the Republican Party. That is clearly slipping now. The Republican Party is slipping out of their control, and that is disturbing for them.

But this is all ultimately about domestic people. politics. And what do you make of the the World War II narratives, the China, Russia, Taiwan, Ukraine, linkage? Right. Right. The World War II narratives and the China-Taiwan linkage. Again, it's very important. But note that this is specifically an American thing. You get sometimes people like Beirbog weighing in to talk in the same way about China. She calls Xi Jinping a dictator. But basically, if you're talking about Britain, if you're talking about Europe, people in Europe and in Britain are much less interested and worried about China. There is a big, strong, visceral antagonism to Russia, so you can play that up. But there isn't just animus towards, you know, China in Europe and in Britain in particular that there is.

to Russia. So Ben Wallace, Radican, those sort of people, they are not talking about China at all. But in the United States, again, it is different because the United States now finds itself in a situation where the neocons have manoeuvred it into getting into an adversarial relationship with China. They've been promoting the science.

to the American people, that China is the great challenge to the United States, that if China overtakes the United States economically and becomes the number one military power, well, that will be bad for the world, but it will also be bad in some way for the United States. This has gained a certain degree of traction. It's gained traction amongst Republicans in Congress, and more widely in the country. So the neocons are saying, look, let's talk less about Russia. Let's talk more about China, because that is a better way to mobilize support for Ukraine. Of course, it's easy for them to do this because it's consistent with.

their original plan, which was to defeat Russia, break Russia, isolate China. So it's an easy thing for them to argue in the United States, and that is why they're doing it. It is incredibly cynical with respect to Ukraine, because of course what they're saying at the same time is that Ukraine is being sacrificed, not for its own freedom or for its independence, but as part of some great chess game between the United States and China. So we should not overlook the cynicism of this as well. No, these are how psychopaths think. I mean, I was going to say the same thing with the chessboard. It's what we've been saying for a while now with the neocons. Everything is a big chess board. And here they are now talking about how you have to damage Russia in order to deter China.

We're starting to hear the narrative about the 3% military spend for 50% destruction of the Russian military. That's gaining a lot of traction as well. They're obviously trying to sell the American people a package of a long war as well as a year and a half of of spending investment success in this long war between China and Russia. And I'm just wondering, can you tie this into the Blinken doctrine? Does this somehow tie into this war between China and Russia? Yes. Yes, absolutely. I mean, for Blinken, you know, Blinken is, of course, a neocon, an arch neocon.

It is absolutely the fact that China is the great adversary. He said that very, very clearly, but of course for him also, as an original neocon, confronting Russia now is part of the greater confrontation with China and, of course, supporting Ukraine or in whatever way one can, is also part of that confrontation. And that's where all those World War II metaphors, similes come in. because of course we're now in a long war, and it's not the kind of, it's not just like the Cold War. The Cold War, mostly, was a time of peace. There wasn't direct fighting between the Great Powers.

There was a very, very ugly war in Vietnam, which played a very big role in politics in the 60s. There was also a very ugly war in Korea right at the start of the Cold War. But overall, the great powers preserved peace with respect to each other and indeed understood and respected each other's proxies. This time it's different.

This time this is a much more kinetic, a much more violent confrontation. And of course it is a confrontation that has to be protracted, or so the neocons hope over a long period of time. So you've got immobilized people's, support for this. And this is where talking about World War II comes. So you talk about World War 2. You say that just as happened in World War II, so today we are the good people, we are on

the side of virtue and truth. The other side is the enemy that we must defeat. You draw all kinds of false parallels between that war and the struggle that we are in today. And to the best extent that you can, you conflate today's enemy with the enemy that we fought in the Second World War, rewriting history in the process. So this is what is going on. before you get into the discussion with what's going on on the front lines, the fact that they're making Russia out to be the villain in much the same way that Hitler, that Hitler, Germany was the villain in World War II is, it is going to anger the Russians in a way. I think the collective West will never understand. That's my take on it.

It is, I can't think of a more provocative, a more insulting narrative to develop for Russia than equating them to the mustache man and rewriting and rewriting and rewriting the history of what happened in World War II so that you erase them from World War II from any of the of the victory of World War II. You erase them. And you don't even erase Russia. You somehow hint, you imply it the fact that they were the actual villains in World War II. I mean, it's about as sick and perverse as you can get, but they're doing it. You're absolutely correct about this. Anybody who has any knowledge of Russia knows that the Second World War is one of the most important events in shaping modern Russia's political and emotional identity.

Every single Russian family has some connection to what happened in the Second World War. I mean, 27 million people died in the Soviet Union, the greater majority of those from within Russia. But the Russians, it is the fact that they were the country that made by far the biggest contribution to the defeat. of fascism and to the defeat of Germany is absolutely fundamental. It's a core issue of their identity. And of course, they will be furious about this. For them, it will be absolute outrage and the deepest type of sacrilege. And it will be further confirmation that the West is out to get them, that it wants to deny everything about their past, their history, their contribution, to the world, their positive contributions in the Second World War.

It will confirm their belief that the West is implacably hostile to their country. And it will, of course, make them want to continue the war and to increase, to strengthen their alliance with China and their move towards the global south. This is so badly miscalculatured, It is almost beyond understanding. But then, of course, the neocons have never really been very interested in what Russians think. In fact, I would argue they've never really been interested in that at all,

because they don't think about Russians as people very much, and they don't think about Russian politics, real Russian politics, and real Russian opinions very much either. They see it, as they see, everyone. everything else as a pawn on the chess board, but also in the case of Russia, as a country which many of them viscerally loathe. Yeah. I don't know. Did you catch the speech from Condoleezza Rice? It's all over telegram and Twitter. I think she was speaking to an auditorium in Stanford. I'm not quite sure. But she said that she had sat in on the meetings with Putin and his team when she

was working for the Bush administration. And she actually said that, okay, Putin is an authoritarian, crazy dictator. She said that. But then she said, Batrushchev is not too intelligence. Shoygu is dumb. And Yerazimov is a drunker. That's pretty much what she said. I mean, I think she actually called Shoygu dumb, stupid. And she said, Patrushchev is also not that bright. It was, I couldn't believe what I was hearing from Condolees. Mr. Rice, one of the people who orchestrated the Iraq WMD, lie, debacle, crime, whatever you want to call it. Ed worked for George Bush, George W. Bush, and she's calling Putin and his administration dumb. You worked for George W. Bush.

I mean, and she's a neocon. There you get an idea of what you just said as to how. the neocons view the Russians and actually I'm sure view the entire world. Well pretty much I mean you know they think that they're geniuses and everybody else is a fool who can be either lied to manipulated or played or whatever I mean you know this is very much their their outlook but there it is I mean that is how these people are and you know they're not going to change and it's interesting that the mask dropped the extent that it does. I want to make a further point, by the way, that, you know, in the Cold War, the Soviet Union was a closed society. I mean, Russians didn't get direct access to what was being

said about them in the West. There were the, you know, the voice of America broadcasts. There was the BBC. But the number of Russians who actually listened to these programs, it's debatable how many they were, but they were certainly not a critical mass of the population. Probably not. Today it's very different. Today, Russians know immediately. They know at once what people are saying about them. They know about the fact that we're now casting doubt on their contribution in the Second World War.

Not casting doubt, we're sort of engaging, denying it entirely, you know, erasing it from the narrative, the narrative about World War II. They also know what we think of their leaders, what we think of them generally. They see the way they're depicted in Hollywood movies, which are still shown in Russia. They've surprised people to learn. So, I mean, you know, this is very different

and much more dangerous in some respects than it was during the Cold War. All right. Let's wrap it up. with a summary as to what is going on on the front lines. Well, I'm glad you left it to last, because actually there isn't very much going on on the front lines. I mean, I say that I have to take that back immediately

in the sense that lots of people are getting killed, lots of fighting is taking place. But if you're actually looking for any big advances by Ukraine, for example, and it's offensive, for the moment, they're just not happening. There's been, in for anything, they're starting to lose ground increasingly in different places, not just in places like in the north, Randkupiansk, where the Russians launched this micro-offensive of their own in the summer. And a offensive which might be gearing up, some people think, so some people think this offensive is about, you know,

the Russians have in the north is about to get a lot more serious. But even in places where Ukraine has been attacking as part of its own offensive, it seems that the Russians are now actually clawing background. So in the area of Rabatino, for example, the village which has been captured by the Ukrainians, I don't know how many times, at least in the media, the Russians are apparently launching countertacks and they've recovered some ground. In the Vremovka salient area, they're doing the same. same in Bachmut and then around Bachmut they've been doing the same so it's basically a stable situation on

the front lines but one in which gradually now we're starting to see a shift with the Russians clawing back the initiative and perhaps starting to introduce more reserves now there is this tantalizing suggestion that the Ukrainians are thinking

as some kind of big operation across the NEPA, that they're going to try and, this is presumably their last ditch effort, that they're going to try and send men in boats across the NEPA, kind of try to break into the Russian defences that way, and that this might happen at the same time as there's another Ukrainian attempt

to recapture the Zaporosia nuclear power, plan. The Russians have been talking about this a lot, whether the Ukrainians really are planning that. I can't say, but if they are, it seems to me an extremely full-hardy idea, but one way or the other, it would certainly, I think, be by this point, their last throw. Their major offensive, the big plan to try to break through on the front lines through, you know, the, Surovikin line, all of that up to this point has been a failure. And I noticed that even the Institute for the Study of War, this neocon outfit run by the Kagan-Newland family, basically, as far as I can see,

even they now seem to be admitting that the Russians are now attacking in more places than the Ukrainians are. At least that was my take from their latest summary. Yeah. Yeah, you're hearing a lot about the ZMPP. now as well. Zeletsky sees this whole thing as a movie. Everything they do, all the decisions they make, we'll lend it on this point.

We've said this many times. All the decisions they make are cinematic and scope. And he's now come back to the seizing of the Zaporogé nuclear power plant, right? I mean, that's going to get, that's going to get him the money and support that he needs since the big counteroffensive failed. And we can see the damage that. that is done. Exactly. That's exactly what it's,

that's exactly what it's all about. I mean, you know, this is, he thinks, he thinks like an, like an actor and a film director. He doesn't see war. He's not somebody who understands war well. And I don't think he's interested in war as such. He's more interested in the theater of the thing than in its substance. And of course this is a disaster for Ukraine All right, we'll end it there

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