The Duran Podcast - Ukraine, front line slow motion collapse

Episode Date: August 2, 2024

Ukraine, front line slow motion collapse The Duran: Episode 1976

Alexander, let's talk about the military situation in Ukraine, and it does look like we are seeing a slow motion collapse on the front line for the Ukraine military. In some directions, maybe not so slow in the progress directions. Things seem to be speeding up. But what's your assessment of the situation on the front lines? I would agree. I think it's actually speeding up. There are two, three places where the fighting,

is now incredibly intense. One is the, you know, Ocheretino of Degovka progress area where clearly the Russians are moving, and they're moving fast now. I mean, they're advancing, you know, many kilometers a day and fortified positions are falling one after the other, and the Ukrainians there are not fighting. Now, there was a very weird story that was circulating over the last couple of days, which has been picked up by the media, even in the West. And it actually illustrates quite well what is happening. So there's this village which is progress. Progress is on a hill. It's in this area of the Ocheretinov Devka sector. It's one of the outlying villages that form the defence lines for Pekrovsk. It had been apparently fortified under.

former president Poroshenko and it's on a hill so all of the indications were that it was a place where the Ukrainians would stand and fight and try to hold the Russians back who have been advancing rapidly right through this area and there's

reports also that if the Russians capture Pokrovsk city of about 50,000 bigish place not huge but it's firstly it's the major logistical and supply base of the Ukraine army in Dombas and apparently if you look at the front lines it's the hinge point so you know it's the place where the Ukrainians have to go through if they're going to keep the two parts of the front the front lines the front in Zaporosia and

Herson region and you know in the west and the south and the part in the north in the rest of Dondon you can keep them together. If they lose Pachrosk, they run a real risk of having these two big regions split from each other that the Russians will be able to break through and divide, in effect, the entire front line in both places. So Pachrowski is important and by definition, progress was important as well. And it was on a hill, it had been fortified. There was every reason to think, therefore that the Ukrainians would make a stand there. They didn't. The Russians just steamrolled up

and the village fell up basically without a blow. And then we got the reports that started to circulate over the next couple of days that two battalions of Ukrainian troops in that area had been surrounded and they've been told to stand and fight

but they refused to do so and they retreated and they broke through their encirclements. and this has been talked about and it's been built up as, you know, a major story and the achievement of the Ukrainians in breaking out of the trap. I don't know that there was a trap in this area at all. I'm not sure that there was any sort of trap. The Russians never claimed that they'd encircled or trapped two Ukrainian battalions in this area. What it looks like to me is as if the Ukrainian troops who had been tasked with the job of defending progress simply fled. And in order to, you know, make that, to spin that, to make it look better than it was, this, you know, story of the troops being surrounded and, you know, breaking through the encircumment was, you know,

constructed in its place because the fact is that the troops fled, apparently disobeying orders, and this key village fell. Now that tells us that morale in this area on the part of the Ukrainian army is very bad. The Russians are advancing irresistibly, and the Ukrainians don't seem to be able to organise a coherent defence to hold them back. And the same story is repeating itself in other places. So Toresk is a big mining and industrial town to the north of Donet City. It's quite close to another big town, big city called Gorlovka,

which is part of, in a kind of so, the Donets conurbation. The Ukrainians are heavily fortified in. It was supposed to be one of the most heavily fortified positions in the entire front lines. We've been fortifying it since 2014. The Russians began to attack this area Toresk back in June. And Ukrainian defences have simply collapsed. Again, fortified positions. But the Russians are just cutting through, like in a nice through butter.

places which one would have expected it would take months of heavy, groaning fighting for the Russians to capture. They're able to capture in days. And the speed of the advance there is astonishing. And going further north still, other important town, which is Chassev Yard. Chasovya is the gateway to Kramatosk, which is one of the sort of major cities that the Ukrainian still. control. Budanov, the head of Ukrainian intelligence, said that all the best men in the Ukrainian army are in either Harcalf region fighting the Russians along the border or are concentrated in Chasafyar. And the fighting in Chasafyar has been very intense and very difficult.

But even there, the Russians now apparently have broken through. we got reports some days ago that the Russians, in fact not just reports filmed some days ago that showed Russian troops in the centre of the town. Yesterday we got many more reports confirming not only

the presence of Russian troops in the centre of the town, but showing that they control a large area of the central and eastern parts of the town. And again, one sense is that resistance there is starting to

not as quickly as in the place that we spoke about, progress, nor as quickly as in Torres, but still we're starting to see the defences break down. So, yes, it's a slow motion collapse still, but it is a slow motion collapse that she's getting faster. It's a little bit like, you know, the avalanche. It starts with small number of pebbles, then the pebbles turn into bigger stones,

then the odd boulder falls, and then the whole, eventually, the whole cliff collapses. Yeah, the F-16 narrative, the Wonder Weapon narrative, is also crumbling. I don't know if you saw the Washington Post article, which said that don't expect any game-changing effects from the F-16s. So, I mean, they've come to the end of the road, as far as the Wonder Weapons goes as well, because F-16s, that's it.

I mean, it's a bleak. It's a bleak military situation and outlook. I mean, there is no path to victory. Or at least I can't see one. I don't know. I mean, I cannot see one at all. The other thing is absolutely the F-16s. We were told about how, you know, they were going to be the game changer.

It turns out they only have six pilots to fly them. Six against the Russian Air Force. It's hundreds and hundreds of pilots. and advanced aircraft. Of course, the F-16s are, to be honest, I mean, they're quite old to go back to the 1970s, and yes, they've been refurbished, but they're not even by American admissions

up to the level of the advanced Russian fighter jets that they would be up against. But, you know, we've had articles that have appeared about shell production in the US and Europe, that is far below target. and barely shifting upwards, we've had articles again appearing that Patriot missile production is basically plateaued,

that they've hardly managed to increase it to any significant degree. Germany's cutting back on arms deliveries to Ukraine. Britain has given up effectively making arms deliveries to Ukraine. And there is a manpower. crisis. Now, the Ukraine has been undertaking a mobilisation over the last few months. We've been hearing huge amounts about that. There's been all these pictures of men being seized on the streets and things of that kind. But there was a report yesterday. Well, there's been a number of reports

over the last few days, one from Estonia, which said that Ukraine, all it is doing with this mobilisation is trying to plug the holes in the Ukrainian. units to try and reduce, you know, plug the holes that have been inflicted by the Russians through all their various losses. There's not enough men being provided by this mobilisation to create reserve brigades. So Ukraine is almost out of reserves. And then there was another report yesterday, we said that despite the mobilisation, the great majority of Ukrainian soldiers are still the same soldiers that were conscripted or joined up the army back in February and March 2022 that in fact mobilisation is producing relatively few extra men to fight in the war so given all that

it is impossible to see you know what the pathway to survival is let alone victory I think this is something again which many people in the West are in complete denial about. They're not looking at the situation as it really is. They want to still believe that there's some kind of stalemate, that there is still time to turn the situation around in some way, or at least wait, you know, it will take a couple of months or even years before the collapse comes.

And, you know, they're not recognising. how bad the situation on the front lines has now become. Ukrainian troops retreating against orders, which is what seems have happened in progress. Ukrainian troops giving up 45 positions at incredible speed, places in places like Toresk, towns like Pocrosk becoming threatened, and key supply lines about to be cut. and the, you know, the veteran motivated soldiers becoming fewer and fewer in number

and finding it more and more difficult to hold the line with, and being replaced where they have to be replaced by soldiers who are far less motivated and are not prepared to fight in the way that the older soldiers were. Yeah, it's too painful for them for the collective was to realize what, to realize what, happening. Yeah. Agreed. Okay. Any other final thoughts? Well, you know, the story, I mean, I think that

on the one hand, I mean, the West is in denial about this. I think much of the rest of the world, you know, the major powers, China, India, Brazil, they can see the direction of events.

And they be making a big effort over the last couple of days to get the Ukrainians to see sense. So Orban went to Kiev. He got the raspberry from Zelensky. And the only result of that was that he got oil supplies from Russia cut off, which is, I mean, petulant and childish and stupid, but there it is.

And the Ukrainians sent their foreign minister Kulayber to China. It's taken some time for a genuine sense to come out of what happened over the course of that visit. But it's clear that Kaleba came with no new ideas, still insisting that Ukraine must be given back all its territories. Apparently the Chinese are furious about this. And the Chinese foreign minister Wang Yi had apparently a very angry meeting with Tony Blinken. And if you read the Chinese read out carefully, it looks to me as if Wangyi basically blamed the Americans for this Ukrainian pig-headedness.

Modi is now trying, is the next person who's going to try to get the Ukrainians to be a little more realistic and a bit more rational. I think he's going to come away. Every bit as frustrated and disappointed as anybody else. and in the West, well, the Biden administration is not going to shift policy nor are the Europeans, it seems.

We're heading towards a smash. It's now, I think, almost hardwired. I don't think there's anything that's going to stop it. Yeah, well, Orban, China, Hungary, China, India. They made one last effort. It's not going to help. And Ukraine is just trying it by time. The Aletsky regime is just trying to buy time to figure out a way to exit this thing in one piece.

Yeah. Well, Elam Rolf knows it. Patrushchev knows it. Everyone knows it. That they're just trying to buy time. Absolutely. And I think they think, you know, that they can get the Chinese and the Indians and all of the others to sort of some of the country. Well, the Chinese and the Indians and the Hungarians and the Brazilians and all of these are getting more and more angry with the Ukrainians.

And the Ukrainians, of course, simply will not accept this. So as I said, we're heading for a smash, and I think that there is absolutely nothing now that anybody can do that can change it. As you rightly said, this is the last sustained, serious attempt to try to stop this, to try to help the Ukrainians out of this disastrous situation that they find themselves in. But it's achieved nothing because the Ukrainians don't want to talk. I mean, it's as simple as that. I think they would, psychologically, it is easier for them to lose than to negotiate. And that's the situation that we're in. All right, we will end the video there at the durand.locals.com.

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