The Duran Podcast - Ukraine Selidovo collapse. North Korea in Kursk?

Episode Date: October 27, 2024

Ukraine Selidovo collapse. North Korea in Kursk?

All right, Alexander, let's do an update on Ukraine and what is going on in Ukraine. What is going on in Russia with these North Korean troops? My God, North Korea coming in to save Putin, to save the day, it seems. We had all last week, we had the Pentagon. We had the Biden White House. They were saying they don't see any North Korean activity in Russia. And then all of a sudden, out of the blue, They come out with statements saying, yeah, there's North Korean troops in Russia.

There are North Korean troops inside of Russia. So let's talk about that as well, which is an interesting story. The front lines, not looking good for Ukraine, collapse, a cauldron, encirclement, collapse of Salidovo. I think that's coming any day now. Russia's going to capture Seledovil. Torezk, I imagine they're going to capture after that, even though the Ukraine military is saying that things have stabilized in Torezk. I don't buy it. And all across the front line, it looks like Russia is advancing.

And we have the Financial Times article, Alexander, which says that Zelensky is ready to take the first step towards a ceasefire, a freeze or a ceasefire. And his condition is that Russia stops targeting Ukraine's energy infrastructure. In return, Ukraine's going to stop targeting Russia's energy infrastructure. So where would you like to begin? Did I miss anything as to what's happening in Ukraine? You didn't miss anything in Ukraine. The key thing to understand is that what is driving all of this is, of course, the military situation, the military situation on the ground.

And what one needs to understand there is that the Russians are smashing it. I mean, they're moving forward. As I said, the Russian offensive, which began in October last year, has had its ebbs and flows, it's currently in a condition of flow. Salida was about to fall, as you absolutely rightly said. This morning, the 95% of the town is under Russian control. That might not be true. You know, we get all kinds of reports, but the photographic and film evidence we're getting

from there showing Russian troops, raising their flags in the center of the town, all of that is enough in itself to tell us what is about to happen. It's not just selidivor. It's all sorts of places. As you rightly say, I don't buy the story about Torezky having stabilized. The Ukrainians have repeatedly spoken about places having stabilized, and it turns out that they haven't. And the same is true. Other places on the front lines, Chassev Yard, the whole situation there has suddenly, if you were taking your news from the Ukrainians, taken a dramatic turn from the worst. It's been deteriorating there for weeks, but it has now got very, very bad.

And this is true everywhere, and it is true in the Kusk area where the Ukrainian troops have been smashed, even the London Times, I think, today. And it was the Financial Times, admitted that the pocket that the Ukrainians had created in Kusk region has been halved in size. And it's been squeezed on all sides. There's apparently thousands of Ukrainian troops trapped in all kinds of places in the Kuzk region. And bear in mind, we're now in the season of the rains. It's not easy to retreat or to move around muddy fields.

The Russians control all the roads, even when their troops aren't on them. Their drones do. And their drones are over the night skies of Ukraine every single day. Every day now, we have hundreds of geranium two drones flying over Ukraine. There's no air defense to speak of any longer. And everybody expects that in November the missile strikes, the big missile strikes will begin again. So this is a disastrous situation. And what we see from the Ukrainians and their friends are all of the manifestations of panic,

that come, consequent upon disaster. All sorts of bizarre and absurd things are being said. So we have, yes, last week we had Zelensky's victory plan, which, you know, appeared everybody was talking about that. Now it's all gone because, of course, nobody really supports it. Some pretend that they support it more. others pretend that they support it less. The reality is that nobody wants it. Lloyd Austin went to Kiev. He met with Zelensky. It's absolutely clear what he said to Zelensky is this victory

plan isn't going to fly. It's just not acceptable to the military in the United States of the Pentagon and to the wider American people. It's not possible. So the victory plan has turned into dust. the nuclear weapons thing that was first floated and then retracted, well, that's basically turned into dust as well. They can't produce a nuclear weapon in the kind of time they had. If they were thinking about a dirty bomb, which they might be and they might revive, it's not going to improve their position in any way, and it would be counterproductive for them. Isolating Russia has completely flailed. We've had the Briggs summit. The Ukrainians have been trying to pretend that the Brick Summit actually backfired on the Russians, because supposedly the Brick Summit people called for a peaceful resolution of the conflict.

I have been reading through the final statement of the Brick Summit, not the final, the main statement, the Kazan statement. It doesn't refer to Ukraine at all. Ukraine isn't even mentioned in it. What it does refer to is the importance for the peaceful resolution of disputes, wherever possible, and mediation and all of that. But it doesn't lend any support to Ukraine at all. There is nothing there that the Ukrainians can cling on to. So isolating Russia has failed. So we come up now with the next series of absurd stories and fantasies, of which the most extreme at the moment, the one that's gaining all the attention is the story that there's 1200 or 12,000 or 15,000 North Korean troops

heading towards Ukraine, preparing to fight the Russians. No explanation, no real explanation from anybody as to why the Russians would want the North Koreans to fight in Ukraine. The North Koreans have categorically denied this story, by the way, a fact which nobody seems to be paying any attention to. I've read somewhere that these photographs of these so-called North Korean soldiers training in Russia are actually photographs of Laotian soldiers, soldiers from Laos, training in Russia. Anyway, I don't know whether that's true or whether it's not. There might be North Korean soldiers who are training in Russia. What has sparked this story is that North Korea and Russia have recently agreed a security treaty with each other, in which they make themselves formal allies, just to say.

And Putin has presented that now for ratification by the Duma. So people have jumped. The Ukrainians have said, you know, this proves that North Korea is now involved in the war, their troops are coming. all the reasons to think that these troops are coming. That proves that third parties are involved in this war, the North Koreans specifically. So that means that other countries, other third parties, our allies, the Western powers,

they should send troops to Ukraine. That's really what this is all about. It's an attempt to try and justify sending, or to cajole the West to send troops to Ukraine. I've come to a clear conclusion that isn't going to happen. So that is going to fail as well. And I'm also sure that in a couple of weeks' time, we will hear nothing more of these North Korean troops

when they fail to appear. I mean, there may be North Korean people doing construction work and then they've been North Korean people helping with logistics. But there's no reason to expect that North Koreans will be fighting alongside the Russian army in Ukraine, it would make no sense for them to do so. Brian Belletti in the live stream we did with him explained the enormous interoperability problems

of having North Korean troops fighting alongside the Russians in Ukraine. But you stir up that story again in a desperate attempt to persuade the Western powers to become directly involved. And all of that fails. so you refloat an idea from the summer. You start talking about negotiations with the Russians. Last week, you were ruling out any negotiations with the Russians. You were saying you weren't going to negotiate with the Russians at all.

Now you are going back to a story that circulated in the summer that Ukraine and Russia were on the break of agreeing a truce, on attacks, on each other's energy infrastructure, Zelensky says, let's have talks about that and let's agree. And that could be a first step towards more negotiations. This is the same man, as I said, who was threatening Russia with nuclear weapons and protecting negotiations last week. He's now proposing that this week. We had that same story back in the summer.

The Russians denied it then. They said that there was no truth to that story then. on the Duran, in a program we did on the Duran, Russia's deputy ambassador to the UN, Dmitri Pollyansky, who I interviewed with Glenn Dyson, he specifically told me, you know, we have no knowledge of any contacts with the Ukrainians at all. And Lovov said that this story was just a trick by the Ukrainians to try to get the Russians involved in a working party, which was trying to work towards acceptance of Zelensky's peace plan.

The Russians are showing complete silence about this. They're completely uninterested in this idea. Why would they agree to such a thing at this time? So one desperate ploy after another, but real substantive proposals that the Russians could work with no one is making because no one is making, because no one can. Zelensky cannot.

We've discussed why in many places. The administration in Washington, their only interest is in keeping the war going until the election and probably until the new president is inaugurated so that they can all walk away and say that the disaster didn't happen on their watch and the Europeans are there

left hanging out to drive, they have no idea what to do. But Berbock has made other extreme comments this time about Moldova. She's not able to really come up with any proposal, any idea that she can suggest any program for change or Ursula can do so is absurd. So we're not going to see any progress at all. No change in any way on any issue.

But as I said, all of these desperate things floating to the surface instead. They're all signs of how bad the situation on the front lines has now become. Yeah, I don't think we should be expecting any initiatives from Perpac. I agree with that. Let's start with the first desperate initiative. Let's say it's true. Let's say it's all true.

12,000 soldiers are training in Russia, as Austin said, well, they actually said 3,000. But let's take Zelensky's number. Let's give him the benefit of the down. Let's say 12,000 North Korean troops are training inside of Russia, in eastern Russia, they said. And maybe 3,000, according to Kirby, are possibly, he said, possibly going to go to Kursk. So what? I mean, Kersk is Russia still.

So what? That's my question to you. So what? And even if, and let's say take it even further, my follow-up question to you, is let's say those 3,000 troops or those 10,000 troops actually go to Ukraine and fight. So what? Does it make a difference in the conflict? Does it make a difference in the trajectory of the war? Do we not have soldiers from other countries fighting in Ukraine on all sides? I mean, this has been documented, actually, that you do have mercenaries, soldiers speaking

different languages, however you want to label them, fighting in Ukraine. I mean, you know, what difference does any of this actually make with regards to the conflict in Ukraine? It makes no difference. I mean, that's the other good point. I mean, there have been tens of thousands of Polish soldiers, for example, fighting in Ukraine, in Ukrainian uniforms. Everybody knows it. Senior Polish officers have been involved in the fighting in Ukraine. everybody knows it.

It is an open secret, one which is freely discussed in private across the West as well. The Russians have recorded it many times. Way back in the summer, if you remember, there was a Russian missile strike on a hotel building in Kharkov. There were so-called French volunteers there. Again, it was widely known that these were people from the French Foreign Legion. They had in theory left the Legion and had been enrolled in the Ukrainian forces, but everybody knew that they were there on the instructions of the French government. So it makes absolutely no difference.

It would be no different from what has already been going on in the conflict in Ukraine for some time, and it is not going to change the trajectory of the war. 3,000 Korean troops, 12,000 Ukrainian troops, 8,000, 3,000 Ukrainian troops are not going change a war where the Russian army is estimated by the Ukrainians to number 840,000 by the end of this year. I mean, it's just a useful addition in numbers terms to that total, but it is hardly going to change anything significantly. And in terms of open Western involvement in the conflict, again, what Western governments or race, what Western commentators avoid saying is that once more, this is a red line that the West has said on itself. Western governments have repeatedly promised their own people that they will not send their soldiers. own people to fight openly in Ukraine. So there it is. My follow-up question to you is, is this perhaps

their way of making the argument to their citizens to send troops to Ukraine? Is that possibly the play that they're going to make? The neocons. I mean, the neocons are going to jump on this if they haven't, if they haven't put this together, this narrative together, but they're going to definitely use it to make a couple of arguments. So would one of the arguments be, well, North Korean troops might be going to Ukraine? So Macron go ahead and send 10,000 troops to Ukraine. And the people of France, to the people of France, you see, we have to do this because Russia is doing this.

So, you know, you've been resistant to this in the past. Now we have a reason to send those troops. Is that the argument that they're going to make to their citizens? And my follow-up question to you is maybe this is not about Ukraine. And maybe the collective West or the neocons are looking at North Korea. Maybe this is a way to further demonize North Korea. Maybe they're afraid. I was thinking about this in the morning.

Maybe they're afraid of Trump's presidency and maybe another reproshmoan with North Korea. So they're looking to stir things up in anticipation that Trump may want to talk to Rocket Man another time. I mean, is that possible? I think it is highly likely, by the way, and I think that is a very good point, and it's one we need to explore. But briefly, on the topic of whether telling everybody in Britain, France, Germany, the United States, etc.,

we must send our troops to Ukraine, our men to fight in Ukraine, because the North Koreans are there. I can say now, that won't fly. I mean, I think that's a ridiculous idea. I don't think that, you know, the people in any of these countries will be impressed by it in the slightest. They made it absolutely clear in an opinion poll and survey after survey. They do not want their countries directly involved in this war in Ukraine.

And they do not want their soldiers there. The French don't want their soldiers in Ukraine. The Germans absolutely do not want their soldiers in Ukraine. The British do not want their soldiers in the Ukraine. Yes, special forces. and people like that are there. Foreign Legion troops and people like that are there. But the everyday, you know, the regular army,

they do not want them in Ukraine. They don't want to fight the Russians and they do not want to fight the North Koreans as well who have a reputation which is either comic or scary, but anyway, not one that you really want to take on. So I don't think this is going to fly at all. I don't think it's going to fly in the United States either. But about North Korea,

you are absolutely correct. First of all, it's been widely overlooked. It's hardly talked about, but we are going through another of those regular episodes when relations between North Korea and South Korea have become extremely bad. You know, the North Koreans and South Koreans have been bombarding each other with leaflets recently.

Then recently, this is, I mean, I'm not followed the story. very closely, but I understand that South Korean drones flew over the territory. North Korea dropping leaflets, Kim Jong-un and his government were furious about it. He's called it an act of aggression. He's been calling up troops. There's been pictures in the North Korean media of tens of thousands of North Korean men rallying to join the army at a time when the nation is under threat. So there's been very severe tensions on the Korean Peninsula at the moment.

I don't think these tensions are going to lead to any kind of military crisis. I mean, we've seen this happen many times. But it also makes it most unlikely, given that this crisis is underway at this moment in time. that the North Koreans would be sending some of their best special forces fighters to fight all the way, far away in Cusk, and logically then would be needed in North Korea as well. I think it is highly likely that North Korean soldiers and officers are being sent to Russia for higher command training. That is fully plausible. That used to happen during the Cold War when the Soviet Union and North

Korea were allies. The Russians now, of course, have a huge amount of information about how to conduct war that they can share, and it's quite plausible that something like that is happening. But again, to come back to the original story, I don't see that the North Koreans would want to send their best troops all the way to fight in Kuska this time. But the point is, coming back to your point, demonizing North Korea, making North Korea look bad, particularly in advance of a Trump administration, if that is what we get, is certainly part of the agenda, and also helping the current government in South Korea, which is extremely pro-Western and pro-American, and which apparently is also quite unpopular or so I have heard. So you don't want any move that will help North Korea

and the US after the current administration comes in, it loses office, you know, to start to seek a rapprochement, especially given that North Korea's overall geopolitical situation, as a direct result of what the neocons have done has improved so dramatically over the last few years. A couple of years ago, as the Financial Times admits, by the way, in an article today,

North Korea was an almost completely isolated country. Its relations with China were very bad. The Russians were supporting sanctions against North Korea in the security country. and were enforcing those sanctions. Contacts between the North Koreans and the Russians had gone down to very, very low levels.

Now, the Chinese are talking to the North Koreans and trade between North Korea and China has resumed. But what's happening with the Russians goes far beyond that. The Russians are now agreeing a security treaty. Mutual trade is resuming, apparently on a big scale, scale, the talk of energy exports, the talk of technology exchanges, there's talk of all kinds of things. So the siege of North Korea has broken down. And North Korea arguably is a much stronger position than it has ever been. It's no longer, as I said, a besieged country in the way that

it was. It now has a powerful nuclear weapons capability. So if you're a neocon, and you want to keep the conflict with North Korea ongoing for as long as possible. You may be worried that people in the United States looking at that will say, well, look, this policy that we have been pursuing towards North Korea for the last 30 years has been a complete failure. Let's return to the path of rapprochement. So they want to block that, and they want to block that by saying that the North Koreans are actually in league with Lucifer's representative on earth,

Vladimir Putin himself, and how can you possibly work with or have any context with that terrible country? All right, a final question. Why would Russia agree to this ceasefire deal that's being floated by the Financial Times, allegedly floated by, well, floated by Zelensky. He did say it at a conference. Yeah, by Zelensky's health, why would Russia, I mean, you know, energy infrastructure,

it seems like Ukraine's energy infrastructure absolutely is on the brink of collapse, but Russia's energy infrastructure from Ukrainian drones hasn't even been dented in the slightest. So why would this be some sort of bargaining chip? I mean, that Zelensky's highlighting. It's a point I made many times, by the way, that, I mean, every so often the Ukrainians managed to send a drone against a refinery and damage is done and a fire happens and there's lots of smoke and people run away and say, this is a huge event. And the reality is that the Russian energy system is so colossal and so spread out over so many places that these

attacks that the Ukrainians have been doing with their drones are completely insignificant. They're minor pinpricks. They're not even registering in the trade, well, they're not registering in the trade totals. And they've had no effect on domestic prices of oil and gas on the domestic Russian market. Some people have made the point that the Russians have at various points in time, restricted exports of, say, you know, some kinds of diesel products and things of that kind. This is not unusual. This is something that the Russians regularly do, and it's partly to regulate market movements. It is not actually connected. I want to stress this. It is not connected to what the Ukrainians have been up to. Now, when this story was first floated back in August, when I think it was the New York Times were saying that the Kusk operation had prevented an agreement for this mutual cease-exam. fire along those lines. I was baffled because I couldn't see why the Russians would agree to something like that. I mean, it was so lopsided, as far as I could tell in Ukraine's favor, because the Russian

attacks have done colossal damage by comparison to Ukraine's energy infrastructure. The Ukrainian attacks have done minimal damage to Russia's. Why would the Russians agree to something like that? I mean, I couldn't see it then. And what then happened was the Russians said, it's not true. Old story has no reality to it. There was no meetings. Qatar was not involved in mediating anything of that nature.

This whole story was a fake. And I have to say that the same lack of logic for the Russians in agreeing to this proposal now. The same logic that's applied then back in August when that story was first floated, applies to the Russians even more now. I mean, they're on the verge of winning in Ukraine. The energy system in Ukraine has been brought

to the point of almost complete collapse. There are reports that the Russian missile strikes are going to resume in November. I can't see why the Russians would want to stop. It doesn't make any sort of sense to me at all. All right, we will end the video there. The durand. Dotlocals.com.

We are on Rumble Odyssey, Bitudeau, Telegram, Rockfin, and Twitter X. And go to the Duran shop, pick up some merch like what we are wearing in this video update. October 20 is the code that you could use to get 20% off all of our merchandise, October to zero. The link to our shop is in the description box down below. Take care.