The Duran Podcast - US-Ukraine diplomacy time wasted, as Russia gained huge advantage

Episode Date: January 26, 2026

US-Ukraine diplomacy time wasted, as Russia gained huge advantage

All right, Alexander, let's do a video on the UAE talks that have concluded talks that took place on Friday and Saturday. And we had the U.S. and Whitkoff give some statements as to the outcome of the discussions, anonymous sources speaking to various mainstream media outlets in the U.S. Wittkoff struck up a positive tone about the talks. Russia stayed silent. There was not much coming from Russia. But today we did have a statement from Peskov. And Peskov's message was pretty clear. Don't expect much. And it wasn't as friendly as some of the stories painted out to be. because the U.S. mainstream media was painting a picture of everyone is buddy-buddy,

and everyone's getting along, and they're having lunch, and they're talking, and it's this great positive atmosphere. Peskov, he toned it down quite a bit with his statements. Anyway, what are your thoughts on where we are with these talks? Absolutely, and here again, we have another example of how the Russians, and I have to say this, are very, very poor. In fact, they just don't get this business about information management because they obviously say to everybody, you know, we've had these talks. Let's keep it all quiet.

Quiet. Let's keep it silent. They say absolutely nothing after the talks. Whitgough and Kushner, the two anonymous US officials, but I'm no doubt that they were the two anonymous US officials. Of course, talk to the US media. They give their own spin. Everything is going along famously. Everybody's getting on with each other.

We've managed to bring everybody together. Our mediation is going magnificently. And, of course, that fills the newspapers, and it shapes people's perception of what happened. We've discussed this so many times that the Russians let this happen to them time and again, constantly. And they never seem to get it. And they never seem to understand how much damage to their position, their overall position it does. Anyway, let's get past that. Now, what happened?

What happened on Friday and Saturday? I think putting aside what people are saying, you can actually, and I speak now as a form of negotiate, I've done lots of negotiation, I've done lots of mediation in my time. You can get a lot of a sense of what happened by looking at who was there and how these talks took place. So the first thing to say is that contrary to what I'm. I imagined, I imagined that there would be two sides, the two sides would be in separate rooms, that the Americans would be going backwards and forwards.

That's how mediation works. That's how shuttle diplomacy works. That's what Kissinger used to do. Anyway, it turns out that it wasn't like that at all. They all met in one room, and we've had a photographic study. There was a horseshoe table, the Ukrainians on one side, the Americans in the Americans in the middle, the Russians on the other side. So that means that the Americans were present at every point in the discussions and that the Ukrainians and the Russians were also there. Everybody, in other words,

was in the same room. Now, that does not look like a mediation exercise to me. And bear in mind, I've done a lot of mediation. I accept mediation in a diplomatic setting might be different. But to me, this looks like a negotiation, a negotiation in which there's three parties, the Americans, the Ukrainians and the Russians, and they're all talking to each other all the time. And that is different. That is a completely different dynamic. And it suggests to me a negotiation, ultimately, the main parties, between the main parties, the Americans, and the Russians. Just to say, the Ukraine is obviously there,

but the Americans are becoming directly involved in the talks. So that is one thing. And then the other thing is, look at who was involved on each side. So the Russians, we've never been provided with a complete, I mean, the Russians are not giving us the names of all of the people. We've discussed the fact in previous program that their chief negotiator is Admiral Kostugov, who is the chief of the GRU and a former spy,

and he's an intelligence officer and he's a military officer. We know that all of the other members of the Russian delegation were military or intelligence officers. In other words, they are from the security and defense establishment. The Ukrainians, centers, they always do, a very complex delegation, up of all kinds of different people. But again, there were military and intelligence people there. So Budanov, who is now chief of staff, but he was head of military intelligence. Gnative, who is the chief of the Ukrainian general staff, and Ski Bitskybitsky, who was Budanov's number two at military intelligence. And he still had number two at military intelligence. And he still had number two at

military intelligence, and one gets the sense that he's the person who's running it on a day-to-day basis. So a Ukrainian delegation, which includes people like Umerov, Arachamia, civilians, but it's, again, got a significant number of military intelligence and security people there. And on the American side, we get the Trinity of Kushner, Witkoff, and Gunbao, the people who went to Moscow and met Putin. They were there for only part of the time, I think, because Kushner and Witkoff had to fly off to Jerusalem to meet Netanyahu on the Saturday. But the Pentagon was that.

Driscoll, Dan Driscoll, the U.S. Army Secretary, Alexis Grinkevich, who is an American general, and he's the overall commander of US forces in Europe. And he's also, by the way, the NATO's supreme commander. So they are all there. So we have a meeting. And we've talked about this before, which looks mostly to have been a meeting and a discussion between military intelligence and security officials.

Who was not there? The CIA was not there. There's no critique from the CIA. There is, as far as I can see, no one from the State Department, which is very interesting. There's no one from the Russian Foreign Ministry there either. But the civilian intelligence agencies, the SPU, the CIA, the SVR, they're not there, and the foreign ministries are not there either. So this is a meeting of military intelligence officials.

And first of all, if you again drill through all of the things that Whitgoth, Koshner said to Politico and to Axios, you see, you read that all this, that they covered, they discussed all the things. Well, these people are not going to discuss all the things because they're military. security security people. They're not in a position to make political decisions. All things, and that there's talk about de-escalation in the politico version of what Whitcomb and Kushner said, that the focus is on de-escalation. Remember, we discussed that in our previous program, that it looked to me like the Americans were trying to give the Russian some reassurance, that the Valdai attack would never happen again. De-escalation to my mind seems to point to some of that.

And we've had comments from Medvedev today. He again brings up the Valdai attack. He says the Valdai attack shows, you know, the kind of people we're dealing with. And we have to use our own unusual capabilities to sort of keep things balanced and to calm the other side down. And that seems to me to allude to the Oreshnik attack on Levov. So clearly, I've no doubt, by the way, they did discuss the Valdai attack. There was a discussion about the Valdai attack. Some words of reassurance, perhaps, on the American and Ukrainian side. But remember, the SBA, those kind of people, they're not there. The CIA are not there. There's also other

discussions about military issues. Undoubtedly, the Russians again, pushing for the Ukrainians to withdraw from Dombas, at least. Apparently, that's the first step in what looks like a complex negotiation. Zelensky then goes out. He says absolutely not. We're not withdrawing from Dombas. He makes a whole succession of statements about this. What Putin has been talking, about in the past is that we need to have proper structured negotiations with properly organized negotiating teams. Back in August, he proposed the setting up the three working parties within the framework of the talks that were taking place at that time between the Ukrainians and the Russians in Istanbul. Of the Ukrainians'

never agreed to the setting up of the working parties. The Ukrainians in December said that the Istanbul process is over, that they are no longer interested in the Istanbul process anymore. What looks to me to have happened is that the Americans have come to Moscow and they've told Putin, Right, we understand where things are going, things are getting out of control. We need to get the negotiations up and running. We agree that there should be a working party to discuss security and defense issues, to discuss Dombas, military situation there, to discuss intelligence and security attacks and all of those things. The first working party is set up.

The Ukrainians were told in Davos, you must go. and this time in order to make sure that there's going to be some progress. The Americans, the Pentagon, is also there. So the first working party, it met on Friday and Saturday. The Russians have just confirmed that there will be another meeting next week. There's clearly been minimal progress on any of the substantive issues. The Americans have made out that everybody got on very well with each other. Peskov contradicted that.

He said that the atmosphere was not friendly and that it's important for people to be constructive. So clearly, things are not going anywhere near as well or as quickly as the Americans are saying. The Americans talked up the fact that there was, that they were saying. that down to lunch together. But again, if you are involved in negotiations, you know that what often happens is that in the middle of a negotiation, people go off to the room next door, where there's refreshments, and the negotiations continue under that format. That is not unusual. In fact, it's absolutely typical. I've done that myself many times. And again, the Americans intent on talking all of that up.

Russians downplaying it. So no substantive movement, no breakthroughs. A working party is not the venue where you would expect breakthroughs. But after the events of December, after Valdai, after the meeting between Trump and Zelensky, in Washington, after Davos, you see finally that a working party has been set up. And we might, just might, be moving towards a more organized, conventional negotiation of the sort that the Russians have always wanted. If you remember again, going back to the meeting between Witkov Kushner and Putin in early December, Putin said we need have a proper negotiation. We need proper negotiating teams. I know of no other way to do this. The Americans have made the first step, it's a small step, and it's in that respect, a positive thing, that they're involved, and that the Pentagon itself, Triscoll and Grinkevich, are involved too.

Because, let's face it, they are the real other party to the wall. That's my take. Krenkovich is delusional. Driscoll is good. Right, so they balance each other out. Exactly. That's another, I mean, you've made a very good point here because, because, I mean, the Americans are all over the place.

There is enormous divisions. I mean, normally you would expect someone from the State Department to be there. They're not. You would expect somebody from the CIA to be there, or at least from the civilian intelligence people. Because remember, the CIA is running the drone war, and they're not. Well, they were represented by Budanov. Exactly. Exactly. Exactly. And even in the Pentagon, there is no unity.

There's civilian officials like Dan Driscoll, who is very much clearly on the Elbridge-Colby side, if I can put it like that, of the equation. But he's balanced out by Grinkevich, the military officer who is an anti-Russian hardliner. So the Americans, I mean, they're divided. There's a very coherent, unified team on the Russian side. The Ukrainian team is chaos. As there's a mix of political figures. People like Umerov.

I'm not even sure what you call Amreroa, a political figure, by the way. Anyway, let's sort of dwell into that. Yeah, we know. We know. We know what you want to say. Exactly. But, you know, and, you know, this.

Bidana, from Bada, Skibitsky, and all of those people. So, one small step. The trouble is that the military timetable on the battlefronts is far ahead of negotiations. I mean, if a working party like this had been set up a year ago after Trump took office, then, I mean, you know, there would have been time and space to get things. moving. We are in a very different place now in the war. And that is going to have an effect. And the Russians are saying it, by the way. They are saying that there is movement, there's constant movement on the battle lines. And we are, you know, events in the diplomatic field are not

keeping pace with events, I'm sorry, events on the diplomat. are not keeping pace with events on the battlefield. Trump screwed up. Yes. And Peskov called them out on it. The Russians have called them out on it. They keep on saying, we need to return to the Anchorage formula. Those are the words they use, the Anchorage formula.

Yes. And what they're implying is that we had everything sorted out in Anchorage. Yes. That would have given us time to let diplomacy work and to come up with a solution that addressed the root causes, but Trump walked away from it. He decided to go with Keith Kellogg and with Scott Bessent, and he thought he's going to win the conflict, the economic war and the military war. And the Russians are pretty much saying it. I mean, you have to read between the lines, but that's what they mean when they say we need to return

to the Anchorage formula. And Peskov said it again today in his interview. Yes, we have to get back to the Anchorage formula. The EU and the UK are not at the table. No, exactly. And they're not even complaining. They're gone. They're not even complaining about it. They're not even saying anything about it.

And there were reports which claim that Ukraine and Russia met in a separate room without the United States as well. So what do you make of what I've said? The second is not impossible. Bear in mind something, the Russians have never refused to meet Ukrainians. I mean, they have, in fact, repeatedly said that since the first day of the special military operation, that they are prepared to meet the Ukrainians. It is the Ukrainians who have refused to meet with the Russians.

And by the way, you talk about the EU, Zelensky is again complaining that the EU is not at the table. He says that when there's a final discussion, the EU must be at the table. I think we're now beginning to understand, by the way, why he was so angry in Davos, why he got so furious in Davos, because he's been strong armed by the Americans to send this delegation to meet with the Russians in Abu Dhabi. The Americans are there. The Europeans are not. So he's furious. He says these people are weak. They're useless. What sort of allies of mine are these? They never do that which they promise, and they've left us isolated by ourselves in this negotiation with the Americans and the Russians. And we're there in that format without our European friends. I mean, that was an astonishing speech that he made in Davos. And you can get a sense now, finally, of why it's happened.

But going back to your original point, you're absolutely right. Trump wasted the better part of half a year. He had a meeting with Putin in Anchorage. If you go back to what happened in Anchorage, that was the moment to move forward with working parties, like the one that has just taken shape in Abu Dhabi. In fact, I remember that Putin proposed setting up at working parties. And there was even a conversation of phone call between Putin and Trump when the Europeans and the Ukrainians were in the White House in after Anchorage, in which Putin again said, let's set up these working parties. And nothing happened.

We had months of talk about, you know, for more sanctions. There was going to be the bone-crushing sanctions that Lindsay Graham was talking about. We had the sanctions on Rosneft and Luke Oil. We had the talk about the Tomahawk missiles. We had all of that. And the result is the war has moved forward. We've only got the first working party. The working party has only started work.

And the Ukrainians clearly still very, very... unresponsive and Zelensky not wishing to make any movement in any kind of direction and the Americans divided between themselves. I mean, an American delegation, I described it as ragged. I mean, you have Witkoff Kushner and Grunbaum, all there, very informally dressed, by the way, very inappropriately dressed in a negotiation of this kind. They are obviously, completely, completely completely out of their depth. They don't have the expert knowledge to discuss these things. Driscoll, as you said, is good. Glynkovich. Not so, not good at all. So the Americans still divided. We are barely at first base.

Zelensky claims that Ukraine and the United States are 100% in agreement with security guarantees. He's just waiting for Trump to sign the document. Yeah, that's what he says. He might even... Trump doesn't side. He had him in Davos. He could have sided in Davos, but he didn't. Well, exactly.

And I mean, the point about the security guarantees is that the Americans, having had a fairly clear-up position in the weeks after Trump became president, which is that they were not really in the business of giving security guarantees. again, they sort of agreed to do so after Anchorage without consulting the Russians. So now we've got to get through all of that, and this is a real problem, because the Americans have been negotiating all about security guarantees with the Europeans and the Ukrainians. The Russians have said, no, absolutely, this is, we have to talk about this between us. you can't agree security guarantees for Ukraine without first discussing that with us. And we've got our own concerns. We've got our own security to think about.

We want the whole business of the security system in Europe talked about as well. So the Americans have messed up on that. And then in the Politico piece, after the briefing by the two US anonymous officials, Kushner and Witkopf, one of them says, well, you know, this coalition of the willing of the troops that the Europeans are going to send there, it's all useless, it's unimportant really. All they can do is put up a few men and a couple of helicopters, and none of this is really important, which to me suggests strongly that the Americans, or at least some people in the US, are thinking on rowing back on that as well. So, you know, again, the Americans muddled

everything after Anchorage by making all sorts of commitments which they should never have made. So Zelensky talks about security guarantees. He has been promised them. The Americans at various times, Trump at various times, and said, absolutely, we're okay with giving Ukraine security guarantees. They never found out whether the Russians were okay with the US giving security guarantees and what effect that would have on the war. So again, you get the sense. of negotiation that has not been run efficiently at all. Perhaps, perhaps this working party might be the moment when it finally gets on track. But to repeat again, we are very late in the day now in terms of the military realities

on the battlefronts. And there's talk about getting this whole thing sorted out within eight months. I think that's a very optimistic timetable for a conflict as complicated as this. And that would require anyway the US getting Zelensky or whoever replaces Zelensky, if anybody replaces Zelensky on board. And of that, there is absolutely no sign. And in eight months' time, well, the military situation will be different. And some people, Gordon Hahn, for example, question whether the Ukrainians will even be there fighting.

Perhaps they will be, but they'll be in a weaker position, they're much weaker position then, than they are now. So this has all been left far too late, and it may not lead to anything because up to now, the negotiation hasn't been handled well. And we basically had a whole year of maneuvering and trying to work out things and the Americans coming up with all kinds of plans and proposals, which the Russians were never going to agree to. But all of which has wasted a huge amount of time. I just mentioned Whitkoff and Kushner's trip to Moscow on Thursday. And we've already talked about this. But again, if you read Ushakov's description of that meeting, I mean, he never said that there was any negotiations done at all. I mean, the Russians are asking, look, we've heard all about these various things that you've been discussing with the Ukrainians and the Europeans.

Now the time has come. You must tell us what you've been talking about because we don't know. And according to Ushikov, most of the meeting, the three and a half hours, was devoted to the Russians finding out what Witkoff and Kushner have been talking about. I mean, this is not the way you discuss a negotiation like this. Yeah, we spent a year, the United States spent a year with Trump talking about how he gets along with Putin and then how he's disappointed with Putin, then how he gets along with Putin, then how he's disappointed with Putin, then how he's going to give Tomahawks to Ukraine,

that he's not going to give tomahawks to Ukraine. And eventually he settled on a defeat of Russia. That's the bottom line. He settled on a military and economic defeat on Russia. That's what he was convinced to do. And when that didn't work out, they decided to send drones into Valdai. That is the year of Trump's foreign policy with Ukraine.

That's it. Yes. Yes. I've summed it up right there. Absolutely. And here we are now. And here we are. And here we are with Russia can take out Ukraine's energy infrastructure with a couple more strikes.

That's where we are now. Exactly. Precisely. And of course, he also spent a huge amount of time listening to people like Lindsay Graham, having golf with people like Alexander Stubb, talking to Macron and Starrmer, having meetings with mouths, telling Zelensky, why don't you use missiles to strike Moscow? He accomplished nothing. He really didn't. I mean, good on him that he opened up dialogue with Russia, but after opening up with dialogue, he went in a completely chaotic opposite direction. Yes. Unfortunately.

Yes. Well, absolutely. He imagined, he's the great deal maker. He thought that you can do this kind of way. He listened to us, the people from the CIA who told him, let's take. take out Putin and that will make it work or something like that. And anyway, you're quite right. Here we are. Yeah. So where do we go from here? There were also leaks claiming a Putin Zelensky meeting.

Well, again, it's the same people who are leaking these things, who are again. This is clearly Wickoff and Kushner again, telling us, you know, that there's going to be a Putin Zelensky meeting soon. But there's no grounds to think this. The Russian media haven't commented, the Russians themselves haven't commented about that. But, I mean, I think Peskov statements today, belated statements, by the way, I mean, the Russians should have been there talking about this right from the first day. But, you know, they had this understanding with the Americans that it was all going to be kept secret. They should know by now that the Americans will never keep anything secret.

They'll be going out there spinning. There's not going to be a Putin. Zelensky meeting anytime soon. We've had a single meeting of a working party. There will be more. It's going to take a long time. We've got months of hard work to do in the diplomacy. There has to be other working parties as well.

Because remember, the people who are the Russian part of the working party are up to now only military intelligence and security officials. There's no one from the foreign ministry there. Lavrov is not there. Ryabkov is not there. The people who could actually negotiate political terms, they are not there. Medinsky, for the authority, is not there either. So, I mean, you know, we've only got one working party.

It's had one, I wouldn't call this an unsuccessful meeting, but it's a meeting that's, you know, just, it's, you know, you put your toe in the water. That's all that was. One of the Russian participants, we don't know who that was, but told Tass that I wouldn't say that this meeting produced no results. Very Russian. But, I mean, the number of double negatives there tells you how little substantive progress was actually. made. No substantive progress was made at all. I mean, they're just bouncing ideas off each other with the Ukrainians being very sulky and negative about everything, basically. I mean, that's what's

happening. So we're at the start of a very complex, very arduous process. If you know anything about negotiations, you know that if it's done properly, this can be ultimate, it can ultimately lead to something. The first couple of meetings, nothing seems to be working out at all, and then eventually you start seeing the cracks begin to appear, and then over a year, sometimes longer than a year, you can start to see movement, especially as the situation on the ground changes. But it's been left very, very late, far too late in the day. It should have been set up in January of last year, or February last year, not now. It should have been set up at the latest in August.

We're now at the end of January, 2026. As you correctly said, the energy system in Ukraine is close to collapse. We probably don't have a year of fainstaking negotiations. Yeah, Ukraine doesn't have that time. You know, if they want to expedite the process, Ukraine can contact Russia and they can capitulate. Or the United States can contact Russia and they can capitulate, accept the terms. Absolutely.

That would make it quick. That would make it, they're not going to do that. In fact, the Ukrainians are still talking about ceasefire. They're going to try and involve the Americans all over again. And it's quite likely that at some point this whole thing will go off the rails as everything else has done. Yeah, we got the 90 billion, the frozen hours. It's going to continue like to, yeah.

Which hasn't yet materialized, by the way. By the way, I mean, it's all, it's all very... The oligarchs are fighting. Olensky's never in Kiev. He's in Poland or Lithuania now discussing stuff with Poland and Lithuania. It's a complete mess. And he was in Cyprus, I believe. Yes, he was.

I mean, it's well, you know. Yes, he was. And then on the very day that he left Cyprus, I'm not going to get into it, but on the very day that he left Cyprus, the Olensky curse hit the Cyprus government and there was a mini scandal. So, I mean, there you have it. Well, there you go. Yeah.

Well, there you go. There's a long, long road, which should have been done a year ago. Exactly. At least. A long and twisted road. I mean, negotiations, it's always that way. But, I mean, you know, a long and twisted road, but Ukraine itself is running out of road. That's the situation we are in.

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