The Duran Podcast - Ukraine Encirclement, Slavyansk and Kramatorsk on the Brink

Episode Date: August 22, 2026

Ukraine Encirclement, Slavyansk and Kramatorsk on the Brink

All right, Alexander, let's talk about what's happening with Project Ukraine. Let's talk about the situation on the front lines. What's going on? Well, the situation on the front lines for Ukraine goes from bad to worse, despite the fact that the media in the West and Western governments are still in general in denial about this. But we have... Ursula says that Russia is losing the war. She's losing, absolutely.

She's been quiet for a while, but I just want to point out that she did say that. I think the reason why Ursula is saying that is precisely because things on the battlefields are going wrong. And there are increasing hints and worries and concerns about this starting to spread across Western governments. And perhaps in some places, even reaching Western publics. And because what Ursula wants to do is to hold the line. She's obviously totally committed to Project Ukraine. She's perfectly well aware that in some parts of Europe now and the West, there are growing doubts about what is happening.

She's also aware that in the Eastern Germany, in two East German-Lander, there are important elections happening this month. And so she doesn't want people to start saying to each other, we're throwing good money after bad, this war is being lost, the Russians are winning, we've got to rethink the strategy, we've got to reopen diplomacy with the Russians. And for that reason, she tells us, pay no attention. to anything that you are hearing about the war going badly and about Ukraine losing. Believe me, instead, we are actually winning.

So that, I think, is what Ursula is doing. The fact that she's come up with this extraordinary statement is a sign not that things are going well, but things are going badly. Notice, for example, that when in that statement, she doesn't actually, provide again any real update about the situation, the true situation on the front lines, or even a distorted account of the situation on the front lines. But let's now talk actually about what is in fact going on on the front lines. So there are three places which I think are important.

Firstly, there's Oreckhoff in the south, in Zaporosia region. Then there is a very complex battle going on around the town of Dobropelia, which is in western Dombas, and which is on the southern flank of the line of fortified cities, Slaviansk, Kramatrosk, Drushivka and all of the others. And then there's another battle, very complex metal, going on in the north, in the area of the town of Lima, which all sorts of Russian sources, and occasionally from time to time, the Russian Defence Ministry sort of tell us the Russians have captured. But where the main battle seems to be in a place called Nikolaevka, which is basically an eastern suburb of the town of Slaviansk. The important thing is that the Russians are winning in all three.

So if we start with O'Rejof in the south, O'Rejof is the major town, the one town in Zaporosia region that the Ukrainians still control, apart from the big city of Zaporosje on the Dnieper River. Everyone, all of the important mappers now concede that the Russians are inside O'Rejof and are storming the town. It looks as if the supply roads into O'Rejov have been cut. It seems certain that the town is going to fall very soon. As soon as it falls, the entire defence positions of Ukraine in Zaporosia region crumble. And within a relatively short time, the Russians will be outside Zaporosia city and in the area of the Dnieper River in central Ukraine, which we've discussed in many programs,

is the key to winning the war, that is the Russians reach the center of the Dnieper, central Ukraine in this area, in the area of the two big industrial cities, Zaporosia and NEPRO. Nehro is not that far away to the north from Zaporosia. Then it is an existential moment for Ukraine. Ukraine faces a crisis that it might not be able to survive. So that's the first battle.

The second battle in the area of Dobropelia in southern Donbass is more complex. There are lots of operations being conducted by the Russian forces in this area in Dobropelia itself, in villages, what appear to be small villages to the west, to the east rather, of Dobropelia, and in another town called Alexeyevot-Drujivka. This, however, is an important area. It appears that the Russians are now close to storming and capturing Dobropelia itself. Some reports suggest that they are further ahead in capturing this town than they are O'Rejov. And if they do capture all of these places, then they surround Drusivka, Alexeyevu, Drusivka,

and they position themselves where they can advance northwards and, in effect, surround the Ukrainian troops in Slavut, Jansk and Kramatosk. And it looks as if this is happening and it's happening very fast. And Putin recently appointed a very aggressive commander to take charge of this particular battle. And we can see that since he appeared on the scene, the advances by the Russians in this area have accelerated. And lastly, the area in the north, we see a proportion. We now have admissions that the Russians have indeed entered the village of Nikolaevka's, which is, as I said, essentially a suburb of Slaviansk and a big thermal power station,

which is located nearby, which is an important fortified position. If these places fall in conjunction with the fall of Lehman, then the Ukrainians are outflanked from the north as well. And we have a major encirclement, the biggest, encirclement of the war up to now, probably tens of thousands of Ukrainians, Ukrainian troops trapped in the two fortress cities of Slaviansk and Kramators. So we are looking at an emerging operational crisis and it is coming on fast. What's going on with Whitkoff and Kushner? Well, they were supposed to travel to Kiev. They were supposed to travel there last week. They're supposed to travel there very soon, and then after Kiev, they're going to make their

way to Moscow. At least that's what we're being told. But it looks like the Russians don't really want to meet with them. The Russians do not want to meet with them. We've had comments from Lavrov, from Ryabkov, from Peskov, from all sorts of people now, all sorts of Russian officials. They say, you know, if Witkoff and Kushner insist on coming, well, we're not going to going to shut the door on them. They can even meet Putin if they like. But at the end of the day,

if they come empty-handed, as they did when they came in January, they mustn't expect that that's going to change anything. I mean, they might as well in that case save themselves to trouble and miss and skip what would otherwise be a completely pointless journey. And Ryabkov, who is a Russian deputy foreign minister and Ushakov, who is Putin's aid, they've already said, they've just, in fact, made comments within the last few hours, both of them saying that, you know, if we're going to end the war, if the fighting in Ukraine is indeed going to stop, it's really all very simple. All the Ukrainians need to do is to concede completely all the demands that Putin set out in June 2020.

Istanbul Plus and all of that. And maybe there might be even further demands that we're prepared to make beyond that. Ryabkov has now left that possibility open. He said the decisions, the settlement, the reasonable, he said that we're prepared to listen to any reasonable proposals. But they must be based, firstly, on the demands we have already our. outlined and the evolving military situation on the ground. And we see that the situation on the ground is evolving very fast and is very different today from what it was a year ago at the time when Putin and Trump met in Anchorage. Now, Whitkoff and Kushner clearly have no new ideas

beyond what they proposed last year. We had the Anchorage proposals, which the United States failed to honour, and which are now basically outdated. And there was that 28-point plan, which was never really a plan, that was cobbled together with some help from Kirill Dimitriyev,

late in the autumn, early winter. I think the Russians think that that was just another attempt to spin them along. Kushner and Witkoff came to Moscow in January, and they didn't have with them any of the important documents that the Russians asked for, especially the documents in which the United States supposedly was outlining security guarantees for Ukraine. And apparently the meeting with Putin didn't go at all well

as a result. So I don't get the sense that there's anything happening before. The Russians are basically saying we see no prospect in negotiations at this time and we are not prepared to make any concessions at all. On the contrary, we are much more likely. In fact, we're all but certain to be raising our demands very soon. Did you catch the article on the Atlantic about the drones hitting Russian airports? Absolutely. It is all over the place.

1,000 AI powered. Using AI mapping, yeah, like map check technology, I believe it's called. And not human operations. it all and they were going to create a drone swarm towards Moscow airports. Daily drone swarm of a thousand drones every day in order to shut down, completely shut down the airports in Moscow and force the oligarchs and the elite of Moscow who they believe, Ukraine believes, are the people that are traveling via Emirates or Turkish air. outside of Russia to pressure Putin to capitulate.

This was their plan. This appears to be Fedorov's plan. According to the Atlantic, Zelensky, it's made out to be skeptical about this. And the Atlantic reports that Zelensky was worried about civilian casualties, but then greenlit the plan. Anyway, it was called M&M, as in the candies, M&M because of the drone swarms. and this was their latest Hail Mary initiative, which has now been put on pause because Vodotov was fired. What do you make of this reporting?

It sounds like they're trying to, I believe they were going to go through with this, actually. I believe this is another one of their Hail Mary plans to try and win the war with one big, big operation, which seems to be the only strategy of the collectivist has when it comes to fighting Russia. It does appear as if they're trying to make Fedorov look extremely sinister while trying to paint a rational picture around Zelensky, even though he greenlit the operation, the planning of the operation. It does present them as being skeptical about such a thing and worried about such an operation. Your thoughts? Well, it's a very interesting article, actually.

And can I say, first of all, that the idea that Zelensky is going to. reject an operation of this kind because he's worried about civilian casualties. After all that has happened in this war, I find that most bizarre. And I don't think anybody should think that, you know, that's really the reason this operation was called off. Straightforwardly, I don't think this operation has been called off. I think the Ukrainians still want to do it. I think, obviously, it was indeed Fedorov's brainchild,

I think some people in Ukraine, people like Siersky, the uniformed military, came back probably and said, this plan is nuts. It's not going to achieve the results that we wanted to achieve. It's going to be another phenomenal diversion of resources away from the front lines where our forces are collapsing and are being defeated. it is only going to provoke more missile strikes and drone strikes by the Russians against our critical industries, which are now beginning to have an effect on the situation and the front lines as well. Armies need fuel, they need ammunition, they need equipment. If the Russians are striking warehouses, machine plants, fuel depots, refineries, refineries, then the army, the Ukrainian army itself, starts to lose supplies. And of course, what the other thing

that Siddisky said to Zelensky is that this is all fantasy. What we need is to intensify mobilization so as to get more troops on the front line because we are critically short of infantry and we cannot hold our positions. And we saw that. We see that every day. So I think the military probably were not keen on this idea. I'm talking about the uniformed military. And I think the other people who were probably unhappy with this idea were some people in the United States. We've had all this constant pressure from the Ukrainians on Trump and on Musk to allow use of Starlink. And I think that probably was connected with this particular strategy, this attack on the airports. Now, can I say something? I still think it's going to come.

When we read articles like this in the Atlantic, the iron rule of such articles, when they tell us that this is a plan which was cancelled, what they mean is that this is a plan that is a plan that is coming. I think a decision to do this has been made. And it's coming within a few weeks at most. The problem it has, first of all, is that again, it completely misunderstands, as we've said many times, the actual political situation in Russia. It assumes that Russian business people are oligarchs with some kind of political authority who can force Putin to bend to their, will and who can remove him from power if they choose, that is utterly wrong. That misunderstands the politics completely. It also hugely underestimates the patriotism, if you like, the political

feelings of the business people themselves, most of whom support the special military operation. The fact, the great majority of them do. Put that aside. The other thing is, I think, in operational terms, this is going to fail. We have had major drone strikes carried out against Moscow over the last few weeks, sometimes thousands of drones, and they are not succeeding in getting through the Russian air defenses. And the Russians have been improving their air defenses around Moscow all the time. They built tall towers with radar sets and pancers. These are air defense missiles and cannon systems.

And they're able to stop drones and shoot down drones. And, well, it may be that there are new, more stealthy drones being prepared to carry out these attacks. There's some reports about this. and they might be more difficult for the Russian air defenses to intercept than the drones that we have seen used up to now. But one way or the other, the iron law of this war is that whatever the Ukrainians do, whatever the West does, it might have some impact for a couple of days, even a few weeks, but fairly quickly the Russians get on top. of it, just as they've just done with the fuel situation in their country, just as they've done with all sorts of other things that the Ukrainians have attempted in the past. So it is not going

to succeed on its own terms. And of course, in the meantime, the actual military situation on the front lines gets worse and worse for Ukraine. Going back to what you said, it's again an attempt to sow fear within the Russian population, to make them afraid and to think that that is somehow going to turn Russian sentiment against the war, I think it's much more likely to harden the mood in Moscow even further, in Russia even further, and make the Russians even more determined to succeed in the war. Yeah, they're going to cause some sort of, of trance. tragedy, catastrophe at one of the airports. That's what they risk doing.

Well, it did. But this isn't something that is going to deter them. I suspect there are even some people who wouldn't mind if something like that happened. That's the iron rule, as I said, of this war up to now. In Washington, it might be different. If there are any objections to this, I think they're much more likely to be found among some people in Washington than in Kiev. Yeah. Well, whatever they do, Russia's going to hit them 10 times harder if they go after the airports. That's also something that...

Absolutely. That's been happening. So, yeah, all right. We'll end the video there, the durand.orgal.com. We're on X. We're on Rumble. We're on telegram. Go to Durant's shot.

pick up some merch those links in the description box down below take care