The Duran Podcast - US cancels Ramstein, Zelensky in trouble

Episode Date: October 17, 2024

US cancels Ramstein, Zelensky in trouble

All right, Alexander, let's talk about Project Ukraine. Aletsky has returned to Kiev after a 36-hour tour of various European cities. He went on this tour because the main event, the meeting in Germany, the contact group meeting in Germany, which was going to address what are for Elenski-Kia shoes, which is long-range missile strikes into Russia. And entry into NATO, that meeting was canceled by Biden. The excuse that the Biden White House used was the hurricane in the United States. Biden canceled the meeting. Blinken was supposed to attend this meeting.

He also canceled. And instead, we got Zelensky traveling around Europe asking for more weapons, more money, long-range missile strikes into Russia, tourist missiles from Germany, fast-track into NATO, fast-track into the European Union. He was asking for all of these things, and it looks like upon his return to Kiev, he came up empty-handed. It looks like he got nothing from this trip. Actually, all the indications are that the Europeans and 10 Downing Street, they have now finally seen the riding on the wall, which is that Ukraine is losing, Ukraine is going to lose. The United States is pulling away. I really think the cancellation of the meeting in Germany, the Ramstein Air Base meeting, I really think that that hit home to a lot of NATO EU member states and even the UK that the U.S.

is out. Absolutely. That by the White House is being told to pull back. And so, you know, they sent the message to Zelensky, even Kirstomer. sent the message to Zelensky that it's wrapping up. It's wrapping up. Anyway, what are your thoughts about everything that's happened over the past a couple of days with Ukraine?

From a dramatic standpoint, and then we'll look at the military stuff as well. Absolutely. I completely agree with this. I think that this was for Zelensky, the worst trip around Europe he's had, all of the doors closed in his face. And I think you're completely right,

that the event that has acted as a shock was the American decision to call off Ramstein, the meeting in Ramstein. When Kirstama went to Washington a couple of weeks ago and tried to get the Americans, got, trying to get the Americans to agree to deep missile strikes against Russia, the Americans said, look, we're not prepared to talk about that. Now we'll talk about it when the Ramstein meeting happens. when Zelensky went to Washington and met with the Americans and brought his victory plan with him and also talked about deep missile strikes against Russia and accelerated NATO entry,

the Americans told Zelensky. Look, we're not prepared to talk about it. Now, wait until Rammstein. Rammstein then is called off. There is no date for it to be reinstated. making the point even more strongly. There were reports yesterday that Biden is actually going to fly to Europe to Germany

later this week. Some reports saying on the 18th of October but importantly, he's going to go to Berlin, he's going to meet with Schultz, but he's not going to have a meeting with Zelensky and the others in Rammstein. It's going to be a... purely bilateral visit.

Also, we're told, and we're also being told that the time that has been allocated to this trip by Biden is too short to accommodate a meeting like the one that was supposed to happen in Rauschstein. So in a kind of a way, that almost underlines the point that the Americans have cancelled, not just cancelled Rammstein, but they have in effect cancelled the entire discussion about Zelensky's victory plan, accelerated entry into NATO, deep missile strikes into Russia, and all of that. And alongside that, Zelensky himself was forced to call off his peace summit, which is supposed to happen next month in November. Nobody wanted to host it. Nobody apparently

wanted to turn up. The Americans are not keen. So that's all, that's all gone. So the Europeans seeing all of this, they understand that the Americans are walking away and they're not prepared to go beyond the point where the Americans have left things. So Stama tells Zelensky, no, you can't have missile strikes against Russia. We may have been keen for that in September, but the Americans weren't. The Americans are not going to go along with this now, and for that reason, we're not doing it.

So they said no. The British appeared to have said no. And we had public comments from Starman, so, you know, no war is ever won with just one type of weapon, which clearly isn't what Zelensky wanted to hear. So that was pretty cruel in some ways from the British. And in Germany, if we follow what the German media is telling us,

what Bill Seitin specifically is saying, well, Zelensky came along with his victory plan, he asked for accelerated entry into NATO, he asked for accelerated entry into the EU, he asked for terrorist missiles, and the Germans just ignored him. I mean, they just apparently didn't say yes, and they didn't say no. Well, we know we hear all of this.

You know, we're fully behind you. But basically, they palmed him off. They were completely evasive, like the Americans. They clearly are not going to go there. And in the meantime, Schultz is again reiterating. No terrorist missiles for Ukraine, no deep strikes into. Russia, Germany remains opposed to both. So Zelensky returned to Kiev and this time he came completely empty-handed. Even the 50 billion dollar loan or the 35 billion euro loan, which we've

talked about enormous length in various programmes, even those have not materialised. We've explained in previous programmes the enormous difficulties with those loans. There's no sign of them yet. Zelensky's been given a few dribbles of cash, you know, 1.7 billion from the Germans, but he knows that he's nowhere near enough. The Germans are saying they can't give any more. The time when they could provide Ukraine with heavy weapons has gone. The British is saying the same. The French is saying the same. So Zelensky returned to Kiev without the Americans. Project Ukraine is over. are walking away and Zelensky and Ukraine, the Ukrainians are on their own. Yep. And Europe is helpless without the United States. Absolutely helpless to deal with Project

Ukraine to prop it up. And what a slap in the face from the Biden White House. They cancel the Ramstein meeting. And then a week later, two weeks later, he says he's going to go to Germany. He's going to accept some award, some order of merit award from Schultz. What a slap in the face to Zelensky. I mean, if that's not a clear message, I don't know what is. No, I agree. As I said, it's almost cruel. I'm not going to say pretend that I'm sorry for Zelensky because I am not.

It was expected. It was expected, though. It is in, absolutely. But you can almost see someone in Washington planning this. in a way that is going to humiliate Zelensky in the worst way. I mean, it's the clearest, as you said, the clearest signal that he calls off the key meeting, which is the one in Ramstein, and then he's going to go to Germany, but to do something completely different. It is the clearest possible signal that the Americans have had enough and are walking away.

And I say the Americans, again, I want to stress, there's still advocates for Ukraine in Washington. There's still people who want further escalation and all of that. But the overwhelming impression I'm getting is that the Pentagon has said, no. Enough's enough. We are not prepared to commit further and deeper into project Ukraine. We can see that the writing is on the wall. The time has come to call a stop. that's what they're doing.

Yeah. Even neocon lights like Mike Johnson. Yeah. Who's not a full-on neocon, but he's, I would say he's like a light neocon. He even put out a message in an interview, actually, he said that he is done with, I mean, he said it. He is done with Ukraine. That's pretty much what he said. No more money.

I don't want to give any more money to Ukraine. He said it as blunt as that. So I mean that, you know, it's. The message is clear. Yeah. So the military situation in Ukraine, the energy situation in Ukraine, the energy situation in Ukraine, it's all going terribly wrong for Zelensky. Torezsk is about to collapse.

Russia is about to take Torezsk. A lot of fear about Russia capturing Pachrovsk for not only for military logistic reasons, but also because of the steel industry. the coking plant in Pakrovsk. And then you have the debacle, the catastrophe that is Kursk. Yeah. Where do you want to start? Well, let's actually start.

Let's start with the catastrophe. And then the energy infrastructure as well, if you want to address that as well. I mean, the key thing to say is that everything right across the front lines is falling apart. I mean, certainly Ukrainian soldiers are still fighting. There are particular brigades that are putting up intense resistance in various places, but it's beginning to look incredibly, increasingly fragmented. And we're starting to see now reports. We don't see reports.

We see comments from various Ukrainian officials and commentators and bloggers. And, I mean, the demoralization is there. clearly know, they're clearly starting to get the sense that the war is lost. It's no longer a question of fighting for victory. It's a question of fighting to preserve the image of, you know, the heroic resistance. And in some cases, an awful lot of cases, an awful lot of people are saying, well, why are we fighting at all? But let's talk about course first, because this is the one that Zelensky invested his credibility in. Everything is falling apart now.

Now, there were two places where the Ukrainians entered Russia. One was the area around Soudja, this town that they captured back in August. They still hold Soudja. The Russians, however, have launched a series of counter-attacks. It looks like all of the villages around, the important villages, one by one are being recaptured. There was another big Russian advance just a couple of days ago. It's still ongoing, by the way. I mean, the Russian offensive, if I can call it by that, or counterattack is still taking place there.

It's looking as if within the next couple of days, Soudja itself will be essentially isolated and encircled. And there is a very real possibility that Ukrainian troops in Kuzk could find themselves completely cut off because the Russians are getting very, very close to the supply lines. The logical thing would be for the Ukrainians to pull out of Kuzk. They should have pulled out of Kuzk, by the way. Immediately, I mean, we discussed this on programs. I made my own belief very clear that the objective, the original objective, was to cap,

the Kost Nuclear Power Plant. I've seen, by the way, that Julian Rebke, the German journalist for Bill Zyten, has recently published a tweet which, or message, which to me, looks like he's lending credence to that view. I've no doubt of it myself. Anyway, when that failed to happen,

Ukraine should have pulled its troops out of Kusky immediately. They should have been pulled out in August. They were not going to achieve anything. But Zelensky kept them there. he kept them there. He spun all kinds of stories about how this was forcing the Russians to divert troops from the Donbass and how he was going to use this territory to trade for Ukrainian territory. All absurd. All absurd things. The Russian army, by the way, is published a withering commentary about this. That, you know, does Zelensky seriously believe that we're going to give away important places

like the Zaporosian nuclear power plant and Ugladar and all of those places in return for a few tiny villages in a forested region. As far as work concerned, all of this is our country now. So anyway, the Russians on the brink of surrounding Soudja, the Ukrainian troops there at serious risk of being cut off. The Ukrainians tried another offensive, a little to the West, trying to capture a village, called Glushkova. The attack completely failed. The Russians have pushed them back across the border.

Another disaster. Thousands of troops, over 20,000 troops, according to the Russians, killed or wounded. In this adventure, hundreds of tanks and armored vehicles of which Ukraine has very few and which the West is no longer supplying replacements. Loss. the whole thing has just been a complete debacle and one which given how much Zelensky personally invested in it when it ends, which it will very soon, it could affect his position in Ukraine. It's the sort of thing that everybody in Ukraine

associates with him. If it's seen to fail, he will be. the person they will blame. I mean, most Ukrainians will specifically blame him. Elsewhere on the front lines, it gets from bad to worse. As you rightly say, Toresk is on the brink of falling, important, fortified city, 30,000 people, the entire conurbation, an area where before the war, around 60,000 people had lived incredibly heavily fortified by the Ukrainians. resistance there is ebbing reports that the Ukrainians are gradually pulling out. The Russians control all the major positions in Toresk.

That key city at the heart of Dombas, which held together fortified positions for the Ukrainians in a key area of central Donbass. It's about to fall. And elsewhere, the Russians advancing. As you say, they're very, very close to Pakrovsk now. They're capturing all sorts of places around Pakrovsk. Reports of Ukrainian troops surrounded close to Kouravo, another small town. Ukrainian troops supposedly about to be surrounded in Kouraqvulovar itself.

Ukrainian troops supposedly surrounded in Selidavo, as well. You can get, you can spend an enormous amount of time, I'm analysing the details. But the point is, it's going wrong everywhere and going wrong everywhere at once. And no replacements. Zolensky's recruiters now grabbing people in nightclubs and at rock concerts.

There's some extraordinary pictures of this, which have appeared, including, by the way, the British media, the Daily Telegraph published them, which is, you know, quite astonishing events, creating enormous tensions in Ukrainian society. The Russians now launching missile strikes at shipping, sailing to Odessa in the Black Sea. And again, a further sign that the West has lost interest in this war, once upon a time had this happened, had this happened,

happened six months ago or a year ago. There would have been an enormous outcry when the Russians started to do this, you know, attacking merchant ships in the Black Sea. Now nobody says anything. It goes by and it's completely unreported. So merchant ships being attacked in the Black Sea. The Russians say they're ferrying weapons to Ukraine. They probably are. But anyway, the energy system essentially broken. No sign that it can be brought back into as any kind of state of repair before the winter. Ukraine facing major blackouts across the winter and coming to Pachrovsk. Well, the main source of cooking coal for Ukraine's steel industry, a part about to fall under Russian control and coal mining around Pukrovsk must have ended weeks, if not months ago.

the extent that the Ukrainian steel industry continues to function, it must be doing so on the basis of, you know, previously hoarded stocks of cooking coal and imports from places like South Africa and Australia, which of course Ukraine was painful. So, I mean, it is a disaster, whichever way you look. But no sign that Zelensky is seriously looking for a diplomatic way out. He continues to insist that his peace plan, which is one which requires the Russians to concede victory to Ukraine. That's the only way forward. The Americans unwilling to start any diplomatic initiative themselves. So everything is falling apart and nobody's looking for any way out.

The United States is not interested in a diplomatic initiative anymore. It's obvious. They don't even talk about it. They don't even mention it. They don't care. No, no. They don't care. Blinken doesn't say anything.

Sullivan doesn't say anything. They've dropped Ukraine. They've completely dropped Ukraine. So, I mean, so my question to you is the Europeans. How come the Europeans don't call up Russia and say, we need to get out of this mess? because Zelensky is not going to do it because Zelensky, one last point. My view of Zelensky right now is that he's completely focused. He can't con anybody else in the West anymore.

So now he's focused on just presenting this illusion to the Ukrainian people for as long as he can. That's why he's talking about releasing the victory plan to the public and to show his plan. He's now just focused on conning the people of Ukraine so that he, He doesn't get any type of Maidan situation until he figures out a way out of this mess. But the Europeans, how come the Europeans aren't saying, geez, the U.S. is just, as long as it takes, they're done with Ukraine. They've ditched Ukraine. They've dumped Ukraine on us.

We better call Russia and solve this situation because this could end up catastrophically for Europe. The energy grid collapses. Ukrainians, flood the EU. What happens then? I mean, you would think that Ursula and Schultz and Macron and Maloney and all these people would be calling up Putin 24-7 begging him to figure out a way out of this mess. But they're not. No, they're not.

Now, let's just quit. First of all, I completely agree with you about Zelensky. I'm not going to matter to what you said because I think you've got it exactly right. On the Americans, just to illustrate. the point that you're making, that the Americans are not interested in negotiations. There's a report today in the Russian media that unofficial contacts were made by some people in Moscow to the US embassy there saying, look, we are in this position. Do you want to talk? I mean, is there anything you want to tell us? And the embassy came back and said, no.

We're not interested. We're not prepared to talk. We're not prepared to talk about anything, apparently. They're ghosting Ukraine. It's like they're ghosting Ukraine, the US. Exactly. Exactly. So, I mean, obviously, this is from the Russian media. We weren't part of that.

But anyway, that is what the Russian media are saying this morning. Now, on the Europeans, you're absolutely right. Apart from the Ukrainians themselves, it's the Europeans who have the biggest stake in this. I mean, you know, they're the people for whom if it all goes wrong, which it is, I mean, it's going to go wrong. You would have thought that they were the ones who would be looking for some way out. They're not making any attempt to do that. It's as if without the Americans, they can't move.

They can't move on a military or economic front to help Ukraine, and they can't move on a diplomatic front without the Americans either. They're hiding always behind the Americans. And I think the reason isn't that difficult. They are incredibly divided amongst each other. And beyond that, the hardliners amongst them, Ursula, Macron, Schultz, in Germany, one has to also talk about Mouths, the leader of the CDU, who's taking a very hardline on Ukraine. All of them, they can't reach out to the Russians, especially without the Americans, because they don't want to be exposed to criticism from those European leaders like Viktor Orban come along and say, I told you so. They don't want to face that.

That is in fact the single thing that they're most afraid of. So, you know, Europe is de-industrializing, is economic collapse. well, not collapsed, but recession looming across Europe now, living standards have been crushed. They don't want to come out and say, look, it all went wrong. The Americans have abandoned us. We have to talk with the Russians. They're not prepared to do that by themselves. All right.

So a military solution is what we're going to have imposed by Russia. Yes. as we've been saying. As we've been saying all along, because to be absolutely realistic about this, the moment this conflict began in February 2020, that was always the most likely outcome. There was this enormous attempt that the Russians

and the Ukrainians made in March 2022 to come to a deal, and they had it there, and they both initialed it. But without the Americans fully backing a deal like that, it was never going to happen. And when the Americans prevented a deal and are still showing that they're not interested in a deal,

that means that a military solution is the only outcome that can be. And I think that's how it's going to remain. I don't think there's going to be any deal. I think it's going to be a military solution. outcome. Sometime in 2025, we must prepare for a Russian occupation of Kiev, because to my mind, that is where we're heading. It's preventable. I think there could be negotiations, there could be diplomacy, but there isn't any sign of it. The Americans aren't interested. The Ukrainians are

unable to do it, and the Europeans are too divided, and they won't do it. They certainly don't want to do anything without having the US backing them and providing them cover. Yeah. So, so weak the Europeans. They really are weak. The whole world. The whole world can see it. You know, it's astonishing.

I can remember back in the early 1990s when, you know, they started to move forward with Maastricht and the single European Act and the establishment of the, you know, the market. that Europe was going to become the great superpower of the future. That it was going to get its influence in the world was going to grow. If they pursued the EU project, they would take over from the US as the leader of the West. Well, we can see where all that has led. Europe has never been more powerless, more weak, exposed as more weak. and all the world can see it.

The Chinese, the Indians, the Africans, the South Americans, the Russians, they can all see it. And they look at Europe today and they say, my God, these people, what have they become? How the mighty have fallen. They say, what have they done to themselves? I think that's what the world is saying. What have they done to themselves by going along on them?

this regime change of Putin adventure, which is what this was all about. Exactly. In 2022, the U.S. didn't want to deal with Russia because they still believe they could get regime change. Now the U.S. doesn't want a deal because they just don't care. Exactly. They just don't care. Exactly. It's out of the news cycle, and everyone can forget about it in the United States,

but the Europeans are going to have to live with this. Correct. Yeah. All right. We will end the video there. The duria. com. We are on Rumble, Odyssey, bitch, shoot.

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