The Duran Podcast - Ukraine Front Three Cauldrons & Trump's False Hope w/ Stanislav Krapivnik

Episode Date: September 27, 2026

Ukraine Front Three Cauldrons & Trump's False Hope w/ Stanislav Krapivnik

All right, everybody. I am here with Stanislav. Stannis, how are you doing? Thank you for joining us on the Duran and where can people follow your work. Good, good. Suffer for allergies a little bit. So apologies if I'm talking through my nose. A nose is clogged up. You can find me on X at Stanis Cropinik. Our names are too long. fit in. You can find me on YouTube at Mr. Slavic man, all one word, Slavic with a K.

Zmei Gerenich is my substack. I'm mostly using that as an archive or my videos. There's some of my writing on there. Then there's Telegram. Stastodian Abratna is the Russian channel and Stasas is there is the English channel.

I think that's everything. All right. Cool. Let's talk Project Ukraine, let's talk about the front lines. What is going on, Stanislav, on the front lines. There are big differences between what Ukraine is saying and what Russia is saying, what the Ukraine Ministry of Defense is saying and what the Russia Ministry of Defense is saying with regards to the front lines. There is talk about three cauldrons in Kharkov, in O'Rejov,

and in Dobro-Pilia. There is talk on the Ukraine side of things that they are pushing the Russians back in Liman with the Azov-Beletsky guys. What's the situation on the front line? Oh, I'll start from the south and go my way, work my way up. Unfortunately, for Hurson, just a lot of explosions and not Russian troops in the city yet. But the Ukrainians and Herson are, they keep them hopping. So when they entered that city, they put themselves right within a range of everything. or anything Russian drones find

that looks like military target, it gets whacked. It's a whackamo. And then we work our way up to Zoporosia. Yeah. Ariajof, honestly, I thought it would fall about right now, but it's still holding on. So I think there's not just enough effort being put into it.

It's come down as a secondary, because it is cut off. It's 50% in Russian hands. It's fully cut off in the north through the next village above the town and N08 Interstate has been cut off. There's about a 15-kilometer breach, 20-kilometer breach opening,

but that's fully covered. That's not 20, it's about 15, 1015, but it's fully covered by Russian artillery aviation by Russian drones. And that's through fields. There's no major roads leading in. So that makes anything coming in and out very difficult. and the rainy season is coming on.

So that's going to make it impossible. So I'm actually surprised that it hasn't been taken already. But that's the thing about war. It's always very hard to do precise analysis because you're dealing with human nature. Sometimes soldiers will stand a fight to the end. Sometimes they'll surrender their mass. Sometimes they run. It's always a crapshoot.

And sometimes the same guys are like extremely different in similar situations. So it's one of those. But it's going to fall no matter what. Whether it falls in another week, whether it falls in two weeks. It doesn't matter. Well, it matters for time-wise, obviously,

but it doesn't matter. The end result is it's going to fall. And that's the last fortified town on its way does up erosion. Now, I haven't said that. We go further east, Dobro Polia. I did an update, map update,

with Rick Sanchez, and we were coming in with Dobrapoli being 80% surrounded. And then it came in, it's like, nope, it's 100 now. You know, got to change the map real quick. Yeah, Dobropolia, which the Ukrainians and their bastardized version of Russian, Cabrales says, Dobrapol. Dobrapoli means good field.

In Russian, puyli means dust. So it's good dust, basically. That's what it's getting turned into. It's fully surrounded. the Dobrepolia was never a super fortified area. It was a logistics hub for the rest of the front. Because what most people are missing, it's not just north and south fortifications,

east and west fortifications. So what was happening for the last four years is every time Russia's pushing the Ukrainians out of one village, they just fall back or town. They fall back to the next village of town, which is just as fortified, and you start the process all over again. And Dobrapoli was the deep rear

that was the logistics hub. The problem is there is no deep rear. The hub reporea is the front now. So it's not nearly as fortified. The areas around it were not fortified. We're hastily fortified. They've been broken through, and it's fully surrounded. There's probably around 1,000 Ukrainian soldiers

trapped within, maybe less. It's hard to tell until you've cleaned it up. And every day it gets to be less and less. Because drones, artillery, sniper, fire, and so on, can continue reducing their numbers. So that's your second cauldron. It's a very effective cauldron in this point. What that also does is behind Dobro Poloholy are villages all the way up toward Nepe Petrovsk or Paltawa province.

It's just which has passed north of Nepeythrois. It's all villages. There's only a few large towns and then the city of Nepe Petrovsk itself, which is about a third on the east side of Nepe Petrovsk itself, and two thirds on the west side of the Nyeper. So there's not a lot of places to make a front. And there's not enough manpower to make that front. That's a stretch shot front. So we go further north, and we get into the forming cauldron, which is the last three fortified cities.

And they're all in a row with one interstate going right up the middle of them. They're almost one agglomeration with three names. It's Slavis, Kamatorsk, and, Dhrushka in the south. Now the Russian army to the east going in a frontal assault is about three kilometers out and pushing their way in. On the south, then that Constantinico has taken, the Russian military is moving up into, you get this clincher effect and it's coming up from the south and they're fighting already

on the edges of Dershovka. But there's also a spike coming in behind that. That's now cutting off, that's allowed Russian drone operators all the way in because they just, they burst through Ukrainian front about a month ago. To the south, I went in 10 kilometers deep. Now they're expanding it out, making it widen it out. It allows everything to be cut off that can come into those three cities from the west. There's been drone footage out of Russian drones flying up on those roads. It's just, it's a graveyard.

So it's basically already cut off. And when the rain comes, the fields will turn it on so you only have the hardback roads too. What the Ukraine is trying to do is to try to stop the pitcher from the north from Krasn-Lyaman. So they've launched this counter-offensive. Now, I don't understand who they use for this counter-offensive. It's the third core.

The third core used to be called the Azov Battalion, and then grew up in the Biazza Brigade, and now is the Azav Corps. The third Corps. This is their last big reserve corps. This is all the ultra-nationalists. These guys, by the way, have walked away from more than one fight where they just refused orders.

They refused to go into near-suicidal attacks. The point about the ultra-nationalists in Ukraine, there's two things to remember. One, they're their own power block, and they want to rule. Two, they're disorganized, within themselves because they have a bunch of different leaders and commanders. They're, A, are all using their formations as a point, military formations, as a way to enforce their will and to steal from the budget. And two, they really don't like each other because they look at each other as competitors.

Well, the biggest one of all is the Azov Corps. Remember, the original Azov, most of the original Azov fighters were either killed in Mariupil or surrendered in Maripul. and are sitting in Russian POW camps or prisons because a lot of them were out now at war criminals. So these guys are the remains of that plus everybody they've been able to pull in since then over the last four years, three and a half years. Now, Zelensky used to get rid of them because they're a counterpower block to him. And October 3rd, there's going to be a big demonstration in Kiev that's planned in Kiev and other Ukrainian cities by the ultra-nationalists, which is interesting because it was organized by a guy by name of Alexander Todor, Todov, who is a Bulgarian by nationality. But he was one of the ultra-nationalists fighting in Azov.

I think he's been arrested. But that's a big planned ultra-nationalist demonstration against Zelensky's government on October 3rd. So Zelensky's kind of desperate. It's got to get rid of these guys one way or the other. Their best way to get rid of them is utilizing them on the battlefield. And they got thrown in north of to do a counteroffensive around Krasniliman. Before going to the depth of the counter-offensive, to think to remember about these counter-offensives, Ukraine takes territory faster Russia.

They do it because they really don't care about their losses. The problem is Ukraine can never really hold that territory because by the time they take that territory, they've taken so many losses that they're incapable of digging in and holding hard by the time the Russian military organizes counterattacks. But usually that's not the point of it anyways, holding that territory. It's the PR victory. Ukraine needs a PR victory whenever Zelensky travels outside of Ukraine

to any of these begging conferences. And he just went to a begging conference in the UN meeting with Trump asking for more money. So they launched this counteroffensive. Supposedly, it's gotten some like 70 square kilometers, which isn't that much if you think of their. The frontage is about 30 kilometers wide, and so it's about two kilometers deep.

They're trying to push, what they're doing is they're trying to disrupt the Russian military on the northern pincher of the Kramatursk, the Slavids Karmatorsk der Zofka agglomeration. So the Krasnilman, Pinscher, that's supposed to be already heading down, cut into Slavits. That's been put on hold while dealing with the third core.

Is this going to be a game changer? No. Is it being advertised as a game changer in the West? Absolutely. It's PR. It's all PR. Yeah, they're going to cause a lot of problems. They may cause the extension of this.

siege for a couple more months than it should have gone, the end result still going to be the same. And the question is, because these ultra-nationalists are also looking out for themselves as a power block, how long will they stay in the field before they retreat just to save their own strength? Because ultimately, they want to grab power in Ukraine. And for that, you need to have an army that's still there, not an army that's laying and rotting in the fields around crossing the amount. So that's that. Then we move our way further north, because this is a lot of the way.

already Harikov Oblast. The Krasn-Liemann, we're going at the Harcoff Oblast. We go all the way up north, we see that there's still a pocket. There's about a thousand Ukrainians left in that pocket in the northeastern edge of Kharkov Oblast. Now, I was on RT, and the journalist that was covering that before that, before they came to me, was talking about, all this is a catastrophe for Ukraine. No, it's not a catastrophe.

for Ukraine. Let's be realistic about this. At that point, it was about 2,000 Ukrainians surround it. It's like, that's what they lose every day. Their losses are between 1,500 to 2,000 killed and heavily wounded every single day. That's an extra day of losses. So to say that it's a catastrophe for Ukraine, it's not. But it is a big bonus for the Russian military because you can, by closing out and destroying this pocket, you take a perimeter that is about 100,000, kilometers and you compact it down to 10 kilometers because you know that the entire perimeter pocket it just compacts down to just that pocket and you take out 2,000 troops it makes uh it gives uh you a lot more freed up troops to concentrate on the next uh pocket and the next pocket and the second

pocket is already starting to get formed uh uh in further south there's movements uh movements from kupensk there's movements from the north so what looks like before they take khadikov uh the russian military is going to sweep in to take everything up to the Severnadezka water reserve, which is east of Harkov, this big giant artificial lake, which is a very long water reserve. It's not that wide, but it's very long. So it looks like they're going to plan to just move everything up to that point, and then cut off Harkov fully from the east. And they're cutting off Harkov logistics from the west with Sumi. Sumi is a slow move forward. I'm not sure why they've taken so much time to move forward. the Sumi area.

So that's the battlefront right now. Ukraine is stretched. The anti-aircraft systems are gone for all intents of purposes, to the point where Russian fighter bombers were striking directly into Addessa, something they wouldn't do earlier because of the anti-aircraft systems. And the one thing you could say about the Patriot, well, the Patriot is a piece of crap when it comes to trying to take out ballistic missiles, even though the PAC-3 supposedly designed for ballistic missiles.

We've seen that the intercept rate for ballistic missiles, those counted up by Professor Postal, the intercept rate for ballistic missiles, but the back three is about 5%. So for $100 billion, you know, 20 interceptors, you may take out a half a million dollar ballistic missile. Not a great trade-off. It does do pretty decent work on fighter planes, on fighter bombers. So that's on aircraft and on helicopters, fixed wing, rotary wing aircraft. It's still actually a pretty decent system. So the fact that the Russian fighter bombers are coming in and striking around Edessa and points in Adessa,

tells you that there's absolutely nothing to fear. The Soviet system is gone depleted. The American system is gone depleted. And whatever Europeans have given, it's definitely not in Edessa. It's probably concentrated in Kiev, even though. in Kiev, it's also not doing all that much. Boris Johnson got to change his underwear.

For first time in his life, probably first time in his life, he actually heard something explode. It was a train that was taken out, a locomotive that was taken out about 300 meters away from where he was. So he wasn't any danger, but I guess he got a little moral inclination

to feel what it's like. For all the wars, he's more than happy to promote. And the bigger aspect of that is there's been about 500 locomotives have been destroyed, both by the Russian military and by Russian partisans working inside of Ukraine. I have videos of Russian partisans setting locomotives on fire in different parts of central Ukraine. The partisans are from the Russian population of central Ukraine. A lot of people are afraid to say anything that they're Russians, but they lack. because of the S. Boo and other security organs, but they'll act at night. They'll go out partisan. In Russia, it becomes a verb, too, to go partisan and burn down certain infrastructure like that.

So that destroys, heavily damages the logistics. Is Putin ramping things up, the Russian military? Have they been wrapping things up over the past, say, six months? Or does it appear to be business as usual? wrapping or ramping ramping ramping ramping ramping things up militarily

I wish they're wrapping things up fully I don't know if they're rapping I don't know if they're rapping I haven't heard Putin's rap yet but who knows

maybe he's got to wrapping things up like a little bowtie you're talking about rapping I'm talking about wrapping I'm talking about wrapping anyway I can't imagine

Putin rapping but that would be an interesting site I could he once he once sang I believe a Sinatra song

Didn't he? He did, he did. But rapping is a different. So, Leske plays the piano in an interesting way. Yes, he does. He's the, yeah, we're getting off course. Are they ramping? Yeah. Are they ramping up the military operations and the military activity?

Or is this business as usual for on the front lines? The slow, the slow grind are they accelerating? On the front lines, it's business as usual, except the business as usual is accelerating because the other side is running out of troops. And it's going to continue further accelerating because the drone war wall, let me phrase it, the drone wall has a lot of issues with it. First of all, the Russian military, it's now field tested the arena system against drones. The arena system is a system that's designed to take out missiles, incoming missiles on tanks. So you basically get a block about this big, a little bigger of that. It's got a radar system in it.

It picks up a warhead coming in or RPG round. It shoots this block out forward. The block is basically just a mini-clamour mine. It explodes in the way of the warhead and shreds it. And it works pretty decently against missiles and RPGs. Now it's been reprogrammed for drones. And there was a Russian column, this was about a month and a half ago. There was a Russian tank column that was, well, two of the tanks were destroyed.

But since the last drone video, Ukraine drone video was a drone flying into the hatches down. The crew got out. But it wasn't the fact that it was destroyed, the fact of what it took to destroy them. These systems had about 12 of these arena boxes on them on each of the turrets. it was where as earlier it's taking between four to five drones to damage and maybe destroy a tank or at least mobility kill it and then come in and finish it off through hatches and things of that especially on the crew leaves it took between 20 to 30 drones to take each one of these tanks out the arena system there were 12 blocks they all fired off you can see some of the videos

where the drones are getting destroyed by the arena system plus all the other armor that was added onto these tanks. So what this means is a whole different level of logistics. Because the way these drone operators work, these are teams between one to three people. They go out to the front line as close as they can get the setup. These guys are carrying their food, whatever they have on there in their backpacks, their ammunition, their rifles, extra battery packs, control packs, and drones. They're just covered in drones.

The Russian military does the exact same thing. So they're carrying, you've got to figure they're carrying about six to ten drones a piece. Plus, you've got to remember you carrying the RPG rounds. Each RPG rounds weighing around two kilos. You're carrying six drones. You've got to carry 12 kilos of RPG rounds on top of everything else. So they're carrying a pretty good load out there. And they're doing it by foot.

You can't really drive out there, any vehicle driving within 10 kilometers of the battlefront that's going to get killed in either direction. So they get out there and they set up shop somewhere. and they started launching drones. Now, when it took three to four drones, say you've got two guys that are carried 20 drones. Previously, they could take out more than a platoon of tanks with 20 drones. If you're looking at four drones, a tank on average,

or maybe five drones a tank, you're looking at four tanks. Now all of a sudden you're looking at one tank, if it's going to take up to 20 drones. And the Russian military can put a hell of a lot more of these arena systems are just 12 blocks on a tank. You can put a lot of them out there. So now you've got a problem of logistics, and you've got at least partial mobility that comes back in.

Equally, they had another issue with this. They had another up-armored tank with active defense systems on it. And it had a plow on the front. It was plowing the battle. It was plowing the road up to Doperopoldia, as the Russian military is moving in, moving it to allowing to move hardware. The tank took 40 hits, 40, 40, 40 hits.

It came back under. its own power. It was one messed up looking tank. But it was able to survive. The crew survived. The tank survived. It came back limping, but it came back. So you're looking at possible resurgence of at least limited mobility, which is something the Ukrainians can't handle. On top of that, there's the weather effect. When the rainy season comes in, which would be like almost any day now, if maybe we're ready, you'll check the weather, what the weather patterns are. It varies between late September or early October. With the rain comes to fog.

And if you've never been in the fog down there, and I've been in that fog plenty of times, it's Pissoup fog, and it literally rolls in. Well, the problem in Pissu fog is, A, you're not going to fly drones in the fog. You're going to crash into something. You can't see where you're going at all. You've got a visibility.

You're in a car, you have a visibility of about a meter, meter and a half. You can't fly drones over the fog because you can't see what's in the fog. It's pointless. You're not going to see any tariff. especially if it's people moving by foot. But thanks to satellite uplink, if you've got a phone, you know which direction you're going.

You're not going to get lost in the fog. The Russian infantry utilizes the fog quite a bit to quickly move up to Ukrainian positions and engage in a close combat. And a lot of those guys from the Ukrainian side, A, there's not enough of them. So position that should be held by 10 guys are being held by two guys. And B, it's mostly these guys that are holding out on the. these remote positions are the guys have been dragged off the streets.

Their morale is crap. Their training is not existing. A lot of them don't have food. If you look at some of the photographs of these guys that are being taken into POWs, they look like they came out of a concentration camp. Their skin and bones, because they've been shoved out there at their front

stay and die against the Russians. Well, they decided not to. The other thing that starts is the rain. The rain itself is a hindrance to any drones. FPB drones. We're not talking to airplane-style drones. FPV drones are not that stable. So you get a good wind going, you get rain going,

you get heavy snow going, but drones don't fly. They can't. So that weather itself is already going to be acting against the Ukrainians, which allows the Russian army to slug up and get close and comfortable with the enemy. So they've got time is running out, and the drones are not going to be able to save them because the drones are not going to be able to fly,

a good chunk of the next six months. So is the operation accelerating or is it moving as usual? Well, it's moving at the same up tempo, but it's accelerating because the enemy is running out of forces. That's on the ground. That's on the ground. That's on the ground. In the air. In the air, it's accelerating.

It's heavily accelerating. There's estimates, Russia. has destroyed anywhere between 60 and 90% of Ukraine's warehousing capacity. And it depends who you listen to, of course. So let's say something in the middle, 75. Now, Ukraine destroyed, with the warehousing that we saw, Ukraine destroyed approximately 3 million square meters of warehousing, which sounds oppressive until you realize and read the statistics that Russia is building

for the last four or five years, Russia is building around 5 million square meters of warehousing space per year. Different locations, obviously. So basically, Ukraine took out half of one years, or Ukraine, NATO, took out half of one years warehouse capacity, construction capacity. And it's being replaced, actively replaced. And if you drive in past any major Russian city on the outskirts, all you see is either huge warehouses or huge warehouses under construction.

I mean, gigantic warehouses. So on the flip side, you know, Ukraine, it's a 3,000 grieven fine for taking a photograph of empty shelves because the shelves are empty. The warehousing that stored the food for distribution to stores is gone. And the food products are gone with it, which is good because it helps get the civilians out of the way. They can't survive. There's no food. There's no fuel. There's no heating.

So the civilians are going to start moving. moving westward, which frees up the battlefield. You know, about two years ago, Zelensky flying high as it usually is, blurted out that they can't really remove all the civilians from the front lines because then the Russian army advances a lot faster. Translation, we need human shields. We know the Russians won't kill the civilians, so we just use them as human shields. This helps get rid of civilians. They can't survive. There's no food, there's no fuel. They'll start to move on their own,

whether like it or not. So that, again, that clears up the battlefield. And like I said, Russia plays are now hitting Addessa, so something that we haven't seen yet. They're directly hitting Adessa. Right. What do you think Putin's strategy is, the Russian military strategy and Putin's strategy and all of this?

Do you think he still is hoping for a diplomatic solution? Do you think he wants reproshmoan with the United States and specifically with U.S. President Trump? In Ukraine, though, I think I'm done. Look, my friend Larry Johnson, had dinner along with Mersheimer and the judge. They had dinner with Lov and Mersheimer, John Mersheimer flat out asked Lov, you know,

are you looking for negotiation? Lov told them no. There's nobody we can trust in Europe. That's it. It'll be on the battlefield. And when Trump came out and said, in Europe, he said, in Europe, right, right. Well, when Trump came out and said, you know, well, the Ukrainians are ready for ceasefire, you know, we were talking to, no, we're talking to Russians, you know, immediate ceasefire. And they said, well, we didn't ask for it.

So, no, thank you. It's, you know, what they need is Europe is screwed. Well, Europe, the EU is screwed. The potato statistics came in for the harvest, down from 27 million last year, down to 20 million. they're very low grade. There's talk that by mid-spring, there will be no potatoes in the EU. There'll be no vegetables in the EU. Prices are skyrocketing.

In fact, the potato futures went up 80% last week for the EU. The diesel is a crisis. By the way, the Ukrainian armies having a large problem with diesel because they get their diesel from the Europeans. And there's no diesel. Just like there's none of diesel inside of Europe. itself, which also counts for the agriculture sector. They need to get the ports open, to get ships in and out, to get the wheat and the sunflower

oil into the EU. Otherwise, the EU is facing starvation, at least the northern portions of the EU. I know Greece, you can go eat carob trees and things like that, if you're really starving, eat the snails like the French do, demonstrated by my guide in Crete. So you won't starve. It may be miserable, but you won't starve. The Italians won't starve, at least the southern Italians. But Northern French and the Germans and the British and everybody else

in Northern Europe is going to have a much more difficult time of it. So they need to get that weed out. So they're desperate to get some kind of a deal. It's all temporary, obviously. And I think from the Russian side, they're done with it. They don't see any bonuses for themselves. They don't give a damn about the PR effect anymore like they did with the grain deal. And the Turks, by the way, are screaming too

because the Turks are losing a huge amount of money because Turkey buys up a lot of Russian wheat mills it into flour and sells the flour to the EU all over the European markets. And they're no longer getting the flour because, again, if you're going to move flour, I mean, you're going to move the wheat, you've got to move it in bulk. It's pretty expensive to try to move it by truck across Georgia.

I move it in bulk in this case means you have to move it by sea and the black sea is pretty closed right now, include the Turkish ships that have been hit coming out of Russia, Turkish-Azerbaijani ships have been hit carrying wheat out of through the Azov Sea and coming out of the Noverdicek ports. So everybody's suffering for that area and they're very desperate, but all they can offer to Russia is what?

I ceasefire and we'll start to war up again after we rearm. I think there's absolutely. no interest in any kind of, ceasefire right now in Moscow. What about with the United States? I mean, Russia keeps on blaming Europe. Lavrov at the UN blamed Europe, even blamed Europe for the Maidan, without really recognizing that it was the United States and Newland and McCain and Paiet. He was putting much of the blame on the Europeans.

Sure, the Europeans play their parts, but they play the, the part that the U.S. gives them. I mean, they're simply vassals. We know this. Everyone that watches this video knows this. Obviously, Lavrov and the Russians know this. Why do they keep on playing this theater where it's all the Europeans' fault, but the U.S., or at least parts of the U.S.

I don't want to say the entire U.S. government, because I do believe there are parts of the U.S. government, which would like to completely just disengage from Ukraine because they see it's a loser. policy, but the dominant foreign policy parts of the U.S. government absolutely want to keep the conflict going, have no problem seeing the Europeans, as you say, suffer and starve. They have no problem with that. As long as it also delivers pain and suffering to the Russians, they're fine with it. So why does Russia play into this narrative? Why does Putin continue to play into this narrative? Why did Lavrov just the other day play into this narrative and put all the blame on Europe and none of the blame on Newland and McCain and the neocons and the deep state and piet and all of these guys?

You know, I speak to different. Wouldn't it be better to just be honest and just admit it that this is a U.S. proxy war or a U.S. proxy war? Look, the U.S. admitted it's a proxy war. Sure. Rubio has said it. Rubio said it on the media to the media. It's a proxia war. It was a year ago. So now he's maybe backing, trying to back.

That's why what I'm telling you is no big revelation. It's no big shock what I'm telling you. I mean, even parts of the U.S. government, Rubio, who is a neocan. He's even come out and said, yeah, we support Ukraine. Yeah, there's a proxy war. Absolutely. I don't know if he actually said proxy war, but he did say in a Senate test. Did he say prox war?

He said prox war. He said a month ago. Okay. This is a month ago. This was a more than a year ago. Yeah, like a couple of months ago, he was asked point blank by U.S. lawmaker, is the United States supporting Ukraine? He said, yeah, absolutely, supporting Ukraine. Oh, yeah.

So how do you answer that? What do you think is going on? I think, well, no, you know, I speak to plenty of members of parliament that I know. And they all know what's going on. I mean, there's no delusion there that the U.S. is a fully at war with Russia through the Ukrainians. I think at this point, it's more on a diplomatic front where we know the U.S. is involved. Well, we know that U.S. is number one involved. We are trying to keep Trump somewhat contained by talking with him.

I think kind of the same policy that the Chinese, the same approach Chinese have. I mean, just recently he was in the U.S. after Trump and the Republicans passed the super-crazed psychopathic sanctions from hell, the Graham sanctions right from his, uh, dope in hell, uh, that, you know,

it's going to, I think 500% tariffs on China for buying Russian oil and trading with Russia. The Chinese said, yeah, whatever, but they're still talking. And they've invited Trump,

uh, we'll talk in the G20. They're, they're trying to keep them contained. I guess that's a best, best word, uh, on some kind of a leash from going on,

absolutely, uh, doing something absolutely stupid. I think the Russians, they're trying to do the same thing. You know, you don't, you know it's the U.S. You counter the U.S. where you can. You proxy the U.S. back in Iran.

I mean, that's obvious enough. If Russia's not saying that. But you still play nice on the diplomatic front to just to keep the piece at some kind of level as opposed to go all out. But I think from the, I would say from the U.S., from the American side, well, from the Russian side, would like to have some kind of deal with the U.S., but I think they've kind of come pretty much

to realize that there's nothing that's going to happen, at least not with this president. It's not nothing's going to happen. And he's not worth any word he gives or any paper he signs. The Versailles' surrender document to the Iranians, that lasts for three days. Not that I think Trump understands what Versailles' meaning is. He'd have to have to read a few books for that. But he backed off of that from after three days. days. This is signing anything with Trump is absolutely pointless. But you want to keep him at

least partially rational because he feels he's been insulted. He's going to do something stupid. And then things will get wrapped up. That's my view on it. Do the Russians that the Chinese actually believe that Trump is ultimately making the decisions? Well, let's be honest, he does make some decisions. I mean, the president is not all-powerful or anything even close to that, but he does have some amount of leeway and what he can do, especially short-term decisions. Long-term policy is, of course, preset. There's a lot of elements that help form it.

The president could do something maybe slow it down, maybe derail it some, or speed it up. But yeah, but he's not all-powerful or anything close to that. But short-term, he can do something stupid. I mean, he's capable of doing something stupid. There's enough people like Hexat that will follow orders. Because he's, if Trump doesn't give him a pardon, Hexat is looking at the rest of his life behind bars. So some analysts would argue that Trump has been more lethal towards Russia than Biden.

Oh, yeah. He's approved. It's been working. Yeah, he's pushed the long range strikes into Russia. He's pushed the strikes into refineries. He's pushed the strikes that have hit, that have hit. many civilian targets. He's pushed strikes that have hit civilian passenger trains. He's, he's been much more antagonistic and much more lethal towards, towards Russia, towards the

Russian military, and towards the Russian civilian population than Biden ever was. Why would, I mean, I wrestle with this as well, trying to figure out, why would Putin, or even Xi believe that that Trump is is easier to to reach some sort of some sort of understanding within

than an administration in Biden that they never talked to because they understood from the get-go that that Biden is not worth dealing with and Biden never dealt with the Russians either but you know Trump has been much harder on Russia

the Russians? I don't, well, one thing, I don't think he's been harder on the Russian military, because pretty much so there's nothing to be harder on the Russian military with. Targeting civilians, absolutely. Would have this happened under Biden? I think absolutely would have happened under Biden just the same. The danger of Trump isn't in what the U.S. military can provide, because it's pretty limited of what it can provide nowadays. And most of what it could provide, lethality-wise, was provided during Biden's period. You know, the best thing that Trump did for Russia was start a war with Iran. That took out whatever reserves the U.S.

had on missiles and things that to defend Israel and Jordan, which is just a front line for Israel anyways. The danger of Trump isn't in that. The danger of Trump is in that Biden was predictable walled. There's no negotiating with him. This is a fight. There's no put any hope on making some kind of, kind of deal. Trump provided that hope. And hope, there's a good Russian saying, hope dies last.

Nigeria's do, um, myriad, and that, that has put a break on Russia doing what it's doing now a year ago. It should have done this a year ago. And no, we're going to have negotiation with Trump. There was even a ban on, well, not ban. There was, they, they, on Russian television. Guidance. Guidance. It was a guidance. Yes, we know. Which I pissed a lot of people off. Yeah, yeah.

I pissed a lot of people off because I ignored that guidance when I was invited in various talk shows and just sat as sad as it is. He's not our friend. He's an enemy. He's worse than Biden because he's giving you the delusion of hope. And that's the worst delusion you can have. And yes, I think it's been much worse than that. There's basically a year lost.

And Kushner kind of threw that in Putin's face the other day. Yeah, we'll be here in a year talking about this. Like, well, you know, first of all, second, Kushner is about as much of a diplomat as I'm the Pope. He's a sleazy hardball real estate, just like Whitkoff. They're used to playing hardball. It doesn't work in World Balls. It's expression against no superpowers.

But he's stupid enough. He did it because that's what they are. They're arrogant. ignorant. So I think if nothing else, that that'll hopefully push things forward even faster. But as far as the strikes, they would have come under Biden. Yeah. I mean, Kushner just, he said point blank to Putin, we're going to be here another year. Yeah. I mean, yeah, he absolutely threw it in Putin's face because he isn't a diplomat or a politician. He's a business guy, a New York, New York real estate guy. So,

So let's close out the video and talk a little bit your thoughts about what's happening in Iran. What do you think is going on there? There are reports that the U.S. blockade is getting ships through the Strait of Hormuz using the southern route, using the Oman route. There has been an uptick in the amount of tankers that have been able to go through that southern route. there are confirmed reports that Iran has presented the United States once again with a deal, which is basically the Versailles Memorandum. They've presented it once again to the Trump administration, telling the Trump administration to that if the U.S. agrees to reagrees, because they agree to it once, if they re-agree to the

memorandum, then there could be some sort of a resolution with the conflict. and the Strait of Hormuz could open up. There is talk about a U.S. strike after the midterms, a big U.S. military operation after the midterms. Real quick, to wrap up the video, how do you see Iran playing out? Well, there are tankers getting through Iraqi tankers, by the way, but they're paying Iran passage.

And that's been admitted. True. There also, there is, I mean, there is, I don't want to say it's a huge uptick, because you used to have 140 tankers passing through. Right. But there has been, and I believe it's around the 15 to 20 tanker mark that's passing through the southern route.

Once again, it's not 140. But it is an increase. Yeah. Well, the problem is, well, those tankers are heading towards Southeast Asia. Right. They're not heading to Europe. They're not heading to the U.S. Diesel, I sent a photo by a friend, diesel two days ago was now at $10 per gallon.

Not quite the same price as diesel in Germany, which is running about 12 euro per gallon, if we were kind of in gallons, 3.8 liters per gallon. So Europe and the U.S., by the way, on the brink of the economic collapse, because when there's not enough diesel, and diesel's too expensive, everything gets more expensive. And the U.S., everything runs on diesel, like even the trains run on diesel. Limited of the trains are compared to everything by truck. So when diesel is getting that expensive and it's getting that scarce, the whole economy is going to suffer very, very badly, right in time for the elections.

So Trump's not going to do anything until the elections. obviously enough. He can't afford to, little is getting out, he can't afford to have that kind of. Especially when the Saudis have lost their Red Sea pipeline. The Houthis did a very good job on that. And they've closed off

what was it, Baba Mandel? Baba Mandel, well, that end, the Baba Mandel's end of the Red Sea. So you still have the Suez Canal, which by the way would be very easy to block off, because as we've seen before, if one or two tankers are hit and they can't move, that's it,

so those canals closed. That's well within the ability of, I think, of the Houthis to do. They really wanted to go after that. So we're looking at shipping that the only place that shipping could go east of west is across the Panama Canal. That's $2 million now for passage through the Panama Canal up from about $60,000,000. And grain ships, by the way, grain ships are standing. line and the grain is rotting, the corn's rotting, while the big fuel tankers are going through.

So that's going to have that knock-on effect. The U.S., it's signing a document with the U.S. makes as much sense as Russia signing a document with the U.S. for the Iranians. The best thing the U.S. could do is just to slink out of there, but they won't. That Trump won't do the best thing he can. he may conduct Trump's strikes I'm sorry Trump's

he may conduct strikes after the elections but again for how long can the US do this Iran is shown that it can take the pain and it can dish it back out several folds from what I've been told

by different contexts that know Vance and have contacts in the administration they're all in shock right now what Iran has been able to do to the Jordanian basis which have absolutely no bunker

systems built in. They, and then the photos that leaked out through to CBS, from different military people taking photos on their bases, or what was left of these bases, the 13 American bases in the Middle East are destroyed. I mean, they're levels. There's, they're non-functional bases. Everything's destroyed. Everything's destroyed.

Everything's damaged. Equipment is destroyed all over the place, including a very, very expensive aviation equipment. There's not much Trump can do at this point, unless the Iranians just lift the, and lift their hands up and go, go ahead, rebuild your bases, we don't care. They're not going to do that, I don't think. Not at this point. So what can he do?

I think the economics is going to start putting a lot more pressure on in the next two months on Trump administration, on the EU. There's going to be a certain level of desperation. But then again, you've got the flip side of the Israeli elections are coming up. And as bad as Netanyahu is, his competitors

make him look like a moderate. So they're going to, when they come to power, more likely, or if Trump or somehow Trump helps and Netanyahu stays in power, we're looking at Ben Gavir demanding becoming a minister of defense because the army needs a new breath of strength. It needs to be, it's not politically active enough, I guess, in mass murder. Well, the Iranians are going to be, and everybody else in that area,

is going to come under pressure again when the genocide kicks into the next year. I think that's going to play the spoiler card in any direction. we go. Because how far, how long can Iran ignore, again, Lebanon being hit, the Hezbollah being hit, or any kind of escalations with Hamas or Houthis, or into Syria? There's a certain amount of leeway that Iran has, but that I think is going to get evaporated away with the new Israeli government. If they go the way, they look like they're going to go. And what can the U.S. do? That's a big question. What can Trump do if the Israelis aren't going to allow him? Look, you know, I mean, let's not delude ourselves. The Democrats are just as much an employee of the Israelis as Republicans.

Maybe it's a little bit less. Either way, they're both owned organizations. And the Israelis can't win this unless the U.S. is there to provide, at least to provide equipment and bodies in fighting Iran and maybe fighting not only Iran, the Houthis. but they can't win otherwise. And that's going to have an effect on Iran, too. So it's hard to tell. There's a lot of variance at play right now. Very hard to tell.

Stanislav, where can people follow your work? Okay, so there's X at Stanis Kripivnik. There's YouTube, Mr. Slavic Man, all one word. And then there's X, I'm sorry, there's telegram, Stastoday Abratna, is the Russian channel, So there's the English Channel. All right. Those are in the description box down below and as a pinned comment.

Thank you. Thank you.