The Duran Podcast - Ukraine Kursk collapse. UK wants US backstop

Episode Date: February 23, 2025

Ukraine Kursk collapse. UK wants US backstop

All right, Alexander, let's discuss the military situation in Ukraine. We have a lot of stuff going on in the political and geopolitical side of things. The negotiations in Riyadh, everything that's happening between Trump, his administration, and Zelensky, and the European Union and the UK in Stommer, but there still is a war that is going on and the Russians continue to advance. What is the situation on the ground? In fact, the advance, the Russian advance, over the last week or so has accelerated. Now, this isn't something that you get reported much in the media.

A couple of days ago, the media in Britain, we're talking about how the Russian advance and stalls, how Ukraine had supposedly recaptured a village called Pichania, little village, you know, just this great victory that Ukraine had won, just southwest of Pacharov, a village called Pichania. In fact, I don't believe that the Ukrainians ever recaptured that. village, but there's no doubt that it's now back under Russian control. So this is the story, the spin that, you know, Ukraine had fought back, that the Russian offensive was stalled. It's accelerating,

and it is accelerating everywhere. And the situation continues to deteriorate for the Ukrainians, and it is deteriorating fast. Now, it's a very long front line, so it's difficult to focus on any specific part of it. And if one does, I find out how many times you end up giving a kind of catalog of different battles, all of which are being fought out at one at the same time. But that's the biggest and most important news is what is happening in Kursk region, because the Russians there have just captured a big village called Svidlikov, which is up close to the main road from Ukraine, from the city of Sumi in Ukraine to Sujah. Sujer is the one town that the Ukrainians were able to capture in Kusk, and which is now the place that they're desperate to hold on to. At least Zolensky is

desperate to hold on to. So the Russians are very close and perhaps have basically achieved the ability to cut off Ukrainian supplies to their garrison in Svindhikovo. In Suja. But Putin yesterday said that the Russians have now crossed the border in force and have established themselves inside Ukraine in this area, in Sumi region itself. And the way Putin expressed it, it looks as if there's a Russian offensive starting to develop. And I think that the Russian objective this time, is indeed to create a cauldron in Kusk region, to surround the Ukrainian troops there.

We're probably talking about several tens of thousands of them. And of course, if that happens, it will be a disaster and perhaps even a terminal blow, given that Summi is on the road, Sumi, Kusk, Sumi, all of these places are on the direct roads to Kiev, which isn't that far away, by the way, not from this place where the battle is being fought. There's lots of things going on in all sorts of other places. The Russians have crossed the Oswald and Jerobetz rivers. They captured one village off or another there.

They apparently captured most of the city town of Volchansk in Kharkov region. The Russians are pressing closer to the town of Konstantinovka. They've captured all of Toresk. They're close to capture. during Chas of Jaya, they're continuing to advance towards the Nipa, south of Prakowsk. They are gradually working to encircle Prakosk itself. I think the big news, the most striking news, Putin himself singled it out, are these events in Kuzk region, which is a disaster in Taliyo Zelensky's making, by the way.

What are the commanders on the front lines thinking right about now? Is the infantry, do the soldiers know what's going on with Zelensky, the United States, the commanders know? I mean, what are they just going, are they fighting on, not realizing everything that's happening back in Kiev? Or what do you think the, if you had to take a guess, what do you think the situation is? I think at the beginning, I think for the next couple of days and weeks, the fact that there are negotiations between the Americans and the Russians, that there's talks between Putin,

and Trump. I think the soldiers know about this, the Ukrainian soldiers know about this, but this is what I've been told by people who've studied war. This is probably for the moment very remote to them. Their immediate priority is to stay alive, to keep their positions on the battlefronts. It takes It's time for the effect of this to start coming home. But as the fact that the Americans are talking to the Russians begins to become better known, as the supplies dwindle. And they have already been dwindling. I mean, there's a rush of supplies from the US in the last weeks of the Biden administration,

but sometime around the early spring that they will run out. and it's looking almost inconceivable, the US will continue to send more supplies beyond that. Once those supplies start to run out, once it becomes clear that these American-Russian discussions are in earnest, then that will start to have an effect. And soldiers will increasingly say, why should we go on fighting? Why should we sacrifice our lives for a war in a war that is lost and for a president? who has lost all connection to reality and whose orders are becoming increasingly irrational. Now, the commanders, the officers, are in a somewhat different position because obviously

they're a lot better informed about the politics and the geopolitics than the soldiers probably are. But of course, they're also very, very deeply implicated in the walls. And they're probably also much more carefully monitored by the various security services that Zelensky and before Zelenskyy Poroshenko have created. So they will probably, at least at the moment, try to keep fighting, to keep the soldiers fighting. But even then, one wonders for how much longer. Bear in mind that before the American and Russian discussions got underway,

Budanov, the Ukrainian intelligence chief, already said that Ukraine can go on fighting for at most six months, and then beyond that, it's curtains. Do you think that the Trump administration is now getting accurate information as to what is going on on the front lines? I mean, what would happen if, for example, Kursk was, the Ukraine forces in Kursk were, wiped out in the next three to four weeks. Would Trump get that information now? Yes. Do you think that Tulsi Gabbard is now playing a role in perhaps getting the right information to Trump, to the president? Yes, I think so. And I think Radcliffe as well, actually, who's the CIA director, who's also playing a role, by the way, in the negotiations too, just to say. So I think they will be providing him with much more accurate information. But beyond that,

there isn't the same impulse in Washington from the administration to spin the information all the time, which is what the Biden people were doing. I mean, quite plausibly, the Biden people, Lincoln Sullivan and co. Were getting quite a lot of information that was probably accurate, but they didn't want to share it if they wanted to create these narratives because they were committed to prolonging. prolonging the wall. So that impulse has gone. Now, if there's a disaster of the kind that we've been talking about in Kusk, that will be impossible to conceal anywhere. How would that have an effect on everything that's going on in the negotiations, the normalization of ties between the US and

Russia, support for Ukraine by the United States? Could that change the EU or the UK's position right now with Zoreski and in Ukraine. If we see a military disaster in our Kusk region, if the Ukrainian troops get trapped there and there's a cauldron and they're forced into a mass surrender or something of that kind, then it will be an absolute crisis and it will alter the entire dynamic. It will drive home to people in Europe finally

that the war is indeed conclusively. lost because it's debatable whether Ukraine itself would be able to survive such a blow. Just saying, I mean, we are talking about a military catastrophe. Now, bear in mind, when Avderka fell a year ago, there was several weeks of panic in Europe over this. I mean, this is the moment when the Europeans and the Americans, by the way, I mean, the Biden people first realized that not only was Ukraine not going to win the war, but there was a possibility that it might lose the war. And

if you remember, that was the time when Macron came up with plans to first started talking about sending troops to Ukraine. And there was talk about launching missiles against Russia and all of that kind of thing. That was the agenda then. If there's a disaster in Kusk, the panic is going to be magnitudes greater than it was after the fall of Avdaevka, because I said, this is going to be impossible to conceal. At which point, the political dynamic is going to be completely different because the Americans will say, well, we told you so, this war is lost. There's no point in pretending that it can be won. What Hegg said, you know, talk about, you, talk, look at the realities of the actual situation. We can, the only way forward is to deal with

the Russians, whereas the Europeans who continue to resist that logic, I could see that the hysteria will get even greater and they'll be talking about sending expeditionary forces to Ukraine and will get even more pleased to the Americans to give what staff are called a backstop and guarantees for those forces. and the Americans would probably say no, and the quarrels and the arguments between the Europeans and the Americans would get bigger and bigger, and the Americans would become even more frustrated and exasperated. So you can see how it could all turn out very, very messy and very, very, very difficult.

And then of course, there's the Ukrainians themselves to consider, because if there's this disaster, how do the Ukrainians themselves react? Did they continue the war? They try to keep fighting, even if the army disintegrates, there will always be some nationalist brigades that will probably want to keep fighting. What do the Ukrainians themselves do in that situation? Does Zelensky finally begin peace talks? I cannot believe that, by the way.

I think that Zelensky's whole position now is that he will basically never negotiate. And I don't think he will ever change his stance. I do that he can change his stance. I think emotionally probably by now he can't change his stance. That's where we could start perhaps to see coups in Kiev and all kinds of things. So, you know, we are close to the endgame militarily. And that is going to drive the geopolitical endgame as well. That's why it's so important finally that the Americans and the Russians are talking again.

The Americans and the Russians weren't talking, and we found ourselves in the kind of military position that we are in. If Biden was still in the White House or Kamala Harris was, if Blinken and Sullivan were still making the decisions, then God help us, who knows what they might do in a situation like this. Right, a final question. What's going on with the British typhoon fighter jets that are going to be patrolling the skies for the UK.

the 3,000 UK troops, that's Dahmerwasse, ascended to Ukraine, and what's going on with the EU and their plan to rush out, I believe the number is 6 billion euros, I believe that's the number. Rush that out to Zelensky for support, for weapons, as well as one, one and a half million that they announce, artillery shells. What's the deal with all of this talk?

Well, first of all, the 3,000 troops is about the maximum of the British, it turns out, consent. And those troops would not be well-trained and well-organized or any of that kind of thing. Now, the typhoon fighter jets idea is an incredibly dangerous one, and the Americans need to be alive to what the British are trying to do, because those fighter jets, those British fighter jets, which would be patrolling the skies over Ukraine, would be based in Poland, which is, of course, NATO territory. So the Russians have always said that they will not accept any kind of peacekeeping force from any NATO country.

And I think we could take that as red. I mean, they will not change their position about this. That will be an absolute red line for the Russians of the negotiations. Lavrov has made that crystal clear. Now, that logically should mean that this Typhoon Jets idea will never see the light of day. But I would not be surprised if at some point Zelensky and Stama come to agreement, an agreement by themselves, cutting out the Russians, for something like this to happen. And, of course, if we then get a situation where, despite Russian opposition,

British fighter jets start patrolling Ukrainian skies, try to impose some kind of no-fly zone over the Russian. Well, of course, the Russians will shoot the aircraft down, and quite plausibly, they will do what they have warned they would do before, which is that they would launch attacks on the bases in Poland for which the British jets would be operating. And with the Ereschnik missiles that are now coming off the production lines, from midsummer, the Russians would be able to do that, just saying. So this is what the British, I suspect, actually the ground plan that they're preparing, they would say to the Americans, look, we understand that you are not giving a backstop or guarantees for peacekeeping forces from NATO in Ukraine. You said that you will not be part of that. But the Russians are now attacking NATO bases in Poland.

Those are covered by Article 5. So you must act, you must get into direct confrontation with the Russians to prevent that happening. So that is the trap that has been laid for the Americans again, not so different from the trap that Macron was trying to lay for the Americans last year when he was talking about sending French troops to Ukraine. I hope the Americans are aware of all of this. And when Stama comes to Washington and presents these ideas to them, the Americans should say an absolute clear now.

And the EU, the artillery shells. Oh, yeah. And all of that. Just real quick. Yeah. Yeah. They've had three years to get their act together, to produce shells, to arm Ukraine, to do all of those things. They've not been able to do it.

They cannot do it. They cannot produce that kind of volume of shells in Europe. They're talking about going through the stockpiles. There are no stoppiles left in Europe. The German military has reported to Scholes that the German army is in an appalling state. It's run out of equipment and ammunition because it's all been sent to Ukraine. The same is true in Britain. There's been reports about this in the Daily Telegraph.

They could try to buy some of these shells from the United States, but the United States needs to produce shells to fill out its own inventories. We would be back to President Pavel's idea who find one and a half million shells on the the international arms market. And we saw how that turned up. So, I mean, it's absurd. It is rhetoric. And the six billion euros, what is that going to do? Again, we're talking about weapons that don't exist. Europe doesn't produce surface to air missiles comparable to the Patriot missiles. They can send more iris-tees, but those have to be produced. I mean, the production, line for those in Germany has only recently been opened. Basically, Germany produces

IVTs and then sends them to Ukraine already. Impossible to increase the production of those. And as for the French and Italian missiles, the production line of those is closed and they can't send anymore. This is just rhetoric. It's just posing. It's just. just pretending that Europe can do things, which it cannot do, and which all Europeans deep down know. The reason they're doing this is to try to impress the Americans and to tell the Ukrainians that just go on fighting because we're going to come to your rescue. And also to try to prepare the European public for the 700 billion euro on the budget that they're going to try and cobble together through floating Eurobonds,

which is really what this is all ultimately about. More Europe. More Europe, absolutely. Yes, they're answered everything. All right, we will add the video there at the durad. Dotlocal.com. We are on Rumbleaudet. Bitchie, Telegraph, Rockfinit X.

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