The Duran Podcast - War clouds are gathering w/ Willy OAM

Episode Date: February 26, 2026

War clouds are gathering w/ Willy OAM

All right, we are live with Alexander Mercuris in London, and we have the honor and the pleasure to have with us. Willie OAM, Willie, it is great to have you with us. You have a fantastic channel. Tell us more about your channel where people can follow you. And thank you for joining us on the Duran. Oh, boys, the pleasure is mine. Thank you for having me and thank you for your kind words on your show as well.

I do really appreciate that. Look, my channel is on YouTube, Willie OIM as per my name here. That is the Queen's Order of Australia medal for service to the nation a few years ago. And I also have an Instagram, but I don't post anything on that. That's more to do with my health battles with the brain tumor. But as far as my work, it's all on my YouTube, primarily focusing on geopolitics, but specifically more Ukraine, Russia. I will have a link to that channel in the description box down below.

We'll also add it as a pinned comment when the live stream ends. So definitely check out Willie's channel. It's a fantastic channel. And before we get started, Alexander Willie, just a quick shout out to everyone that is watching us on Odyssey, on YouTube and on Rumble and locals as well. And thank you to our moderators for everything that you do. So we have a lot to discuss. So Alexander, Willie, let's jump into it. And may I first of all also endorse what Alex said about Willie's channel and the fact that it is actually indispensable for people who want to understand the kind of topics we're going to be talking about today.

Willie's Channel is when I go to regularly, very regularly. I'll learn an awful lot from it and I advise everybody to go to it. So, Willie, we are in a time of great crisis. We have an American armada gathering close to Iran. we have tensions between China and the United States. The president of the United States is going to China at the end of March. There's some comment from Chinese sources that he basically invited himself there, that the Chinese didn't even invite him. He decided that he would go. So that's curious in itself.

But let us start with what is going on in of all places, Geneva again. we have more negotiations, negotiations between Iran and the United States, but also these very interesting, strange, tri-partite negotiations between the Russians, the Americans, and the Ukrainians. And my sense is that the last seat set of these negotiations, the ones that took place a week ago, didn't go well. Do you think there's any chance that this conflict in Ukraine is going to be sorted, negotiated, settled on the negotiating table? Because I'm doubtful. Look, the war will be settled on a negotiating table at some point. Will it be settled on the negotiating table this week, next week or next month?

I am highly doubtful of that. The intransigence of those involved to come to some level of compromise is. completely not there. They're not willing to really work to a compromise because at the moment there is a massive disparity in battlefield powers. Will end in negotiation? Yes, of course it will at some point but at the end of the day with war like this that the sword will carve out what the pen will sign at the end and this will be carved out on the battlefield and the pen will merely come in to codify the reality of the battlefield. It is not going to step in with the pen, and this has never happened in history, of which

then you negotiate your way into such a better deal than the war is. You don't come from a position of lower power and end up in a significantly higher position through kneeling negotiating. But to the first point of your question, you spoke about China, he spoke about Iran, you speak about what's occurring in Ukraine. And there's a common denominator between all these three, is the extension of the US. And the US only has so much power and they only have so much bandwidth to also allocate to each one of these conflicts. And there's a hell of a lot going on for an administration

of which some would say is not the most competent in trying to come to a conclusion, taking in many different factors on the international theatre. And the denominator of which is not in that is the Europeans as far as the EU. And my opinion, on the EU being left out of these negotiations is the adage of if you're not at the table, then you're on the menu. And if they're not willing to come to the table, then you're not there. And if your input to the table is merely a wish list, these more pragmatic, realist teams of negotiators, they're not going to be bothered reading your wish list. You're going to come that we want an end. Right. First of all, can I just say that I entirely agree with your point as somebody who,

who's studied and followed diplomatic history. I don't actually, it was part of my degree course. You're absolutely correct. Diplomatic outcomes in wars tend to reflect the situation that is carved out, as you rightly said by the sword. The sword does the carving, the pen finally writes it out.

Why do people find this difficult to understand? You talked about the Europeans. One of the things that I find so strange in Europe is that there is an enormous amount of resistance to understanding this there. The European positions seem to me extraordinarily declamatory. It's more about setting out what you feel should be the outcome than what the outcome is going to be. And I would say that I've had personal experience of this. I've had discussions with people about this. I had a conference that I attended in Oxford when I made exactly the points that you just made,

that ultimately it is the outcome of wars on the battlefield that determined the eventual settlement of those wars. But I'm always told this is wrong. This is so 20th or 19th century. this is not how it should be. Well, can you comment about this? Well, Klauschwitz was correct in his idea that war with politics by other means, and that has not changed. And what this war has shown us, and I speak about this all the time,

is warfare has not changed the fundamentals. It doesn't matter if drones came into play. It didn't matter when planes or machine guns or crossbows, all this came in. All that it does is a more efficient, effective killing machine. But war from banging your next tribe on the head with a, with a stick, through to flying an FPV into someone is at the crux of it, it is wanting to have a blunt force instrument to influence a political outcome. And Mr. Big Surge, who I'm sure yourself and maybe your audience is familiar with, he has a great line where he said, the sword predates and transcends

the pen. And I think that we have forgotten so much. much of that in the past, in the past few decades, especially in Europe. And what I say is, there's no excuse for the current European leaders to forget this. Because what I say is, if you know the term, you guys wrote the book. Like, if you're a German chancellor and you don't understand, or a French president or prime minister, if you're in Europe and you don't understand why war is fought, then you're not going to get anywhere on this. If you just head into these negotiations or analyzing the war and say all it is is a madman in the Kremlin,

you're not going to get anywhere. You're not understanding the calculation of why states go to war. And they're trying to turn this on its head going from, and I'm not saying I agree with the position of might is right, that that is what world history sadly shows us. And they're trying to change this into. that your morals, your ethics, your ideology, which is of course subjective to the state, that that then can outweigh and counter the might of a nation at war. So it's a very difficult position.

I'm not exactly sure how the Europeans at this stage completely have this idea. And I say the Europeans, but a lot of other Western states, that it's not going to be a realist power, pragmatic outcome, that they're going to be able to negotiate their way into some incredible position where Putin's in getting arrested through the ICC and all the territory is back without winning on the battlefield first. So let's just talk because you said something else that there is an imbalance of power. Can you discuss this? Can you explain to us what the imbalance of power on the battlefield at the present time is? Because that's obviously the key to understanding the ultimate outcome,

based on what we both agree. Well, this is something I ask every day because I myself, I say ideologically, I sit with the Ukrainian people. Ukrainian government is a different story, but I want to see these people thrive, survive, and I want to see the absolute best outcome. I have many friends and of many friends

who have sadly passed due to this war. But when I say their battlefield is absolutely has a disproportionate amount of power, it can simply come down to, firstly, who do you see advancing on the battlefield, but then there's more data points to step into as well. And I think the best data point at the moment is the loss of self-propelled guns of SPG artillery. Now, people may point towards casualty ratios released by the Ministry of Defence. And what I say is if you're believing those figures at wartime,

you're on the wrong channel with me. we saw the exact same thing the French tried to do this when the Germans were advancing on Paris in all of their communicates. They focus on massive losses to make up for the lack of ground. If you're even talking to me about loss of territory without taking into consideration other pieces, you can win an attritional war in reverse. But when we look at the strategic depth of these states, you have a state with, let's say, four times the population for math's sake. But it goes a step further where Russia is primarily

now volunteer fighters where Ukraine is completely reliant on conscripted soldiers off the streets as we see of the numerous amounts of footage. So there can actually be a disparity then in just the population where you have a willing participants in the war as well

and anyone who served in the military will get an understanding of someone who doesn't have the morale or the want to fight. But even if we go off those, numbers, Ukraine need to sit at a minimum of say 4 to 1. And by any reasonable, actually, data points that can be somewhat measured, and the MOD figures are not that. But if you go off UA losses or Media Zon, which is likely the best figures, likely skewed, but the best, it's nowhere near that. The best is, as I said, those SPG figures where what we have seen

is a dramatic increase in Ukraine's loss of SPGs and tanks, primarily because their tanks are being used in an SPG role due to the lack of SPG. Artillery is still the king of the battlefield. You might get more footage of drones, but artillery is still the king for rolling forward on operations. We've seen, and I can send you all the data points, we've seen a massive uptick in that, tells us two things. Firstly, wearing out the amount of Ukrainian Bldana domestically produced systems, there's not many

SPGs actually going to Ukraine anymore. So that is on your offensive and defensive capability, but it also actually tells us about the effectiveness and efficiency of Russia's drone warfare, which on that drone warfare is objectively superior at the moment to Ukraine's on the front line. And that has been a switch that we have seen in the past few years. We also know the electronic warfare capacity is greater in Russia too. My conversations behind the scenes, the number one concern is Russia's rise in electronic warfare. So if you look at that figure, and this is what I say, I've invited many of these pro-Ukrainian YouTube's onto my account and said, what I want to have the discussion with you is who is winning the war. Show me a measurable data set that

actually, if you are making the claim that they are winning, give me a data point, which is not just skewed through government propaganda and information, which I understand if I was the president of either state, I'd be pushing those figures too. I understand that is a very important part of war. I get that. We're analysts. We're not advocates.

We're not activists. We're analysing. And you can put the countries as X and Y. And if you put that, you will look at these data points and go, that country has significantly further depth in, say, armored warfare or machines, SPG, etc. significantly more people and they're losing on parity or less and the industrial capacity is larger. So I think that's important. What you will see is you are seeing by the data points on

the kilometre squares and as I say, you could win an attritional war losing ground. You could do that with elastic defence. But in a war like this, territory is a byproduct of attrition. And what we are seeing is that territory increase. And what we're seeing with that territory, I've got all the data points for this. We're actually seeing territory go up, loss of Russian systems go down and the loss of Ukrainian systems increase. And I've said, with war like this, I call it the theory of bankruptcy where you may be very, very slow and then you could fall off a cliff.

No one goes bankrupt overnight. You go bankrupt very quickly, but it seems like overnight next thing you lose your house, your wife and your kids. And that's what I say is a very sharp point at some point in this war, once the strategic depth, which is very obfuscated. It's very hidden behind the effectiveness and efficiency of drone. So we may not actually know how worn out that is until it's too late. And I think that we may, there's still a lot of fighting to go, but I think the sooner the negotiating process, likely the better. I think every, I endorse every point you make, about Ukraine as well, by the way.

I mean, we have never disputed the tragedy that this war has been for Ukraine. And we've always never, we've never questioned that, you know, Ukraine as a state, as a nation, has a right to survive and to prosper. The question is not that. The question is whether those who advocate a prolongation of the war, as in Europe we do, are actually. speaking in Ukraine's best interests and in the best interests of the Ukrainian people themselves. And your other point about let's call it propaganda. Propaganda is an absolute part of war.

It is there in every war. We should not be critical of it, but we should not mistake it for the truth. It's as analysts, that's what we need to do. We need to search beyond the fact. Both sides engage in propaganda. We shouldn't assume that the propaganda from one side is true and that the other is not. That's a major mistake that an awful lot of people, I think, in the West are making. Now, is it possible that this is not understood in Ukraine itself? because why, given what you've just said, is the Ukrainian government, is Mr. Zelensky, our other Ukrainian officials continue to take this very strong line? Is it because they're still being told things

by people in Europe, in the West, just keep on fighting. Sooner or later, we will come to your help, or is it because they believe they're in propaganda, or is it for some other reason that I and myself cannot fathom? Have you any thoughts about this? Look, I think it would be a range of different bits and pieces, but I do believe there is an element of which there has been a belief in your own propaganda and also in overall, say, Western propaganda too. But remember, at the start of this war, we were told Russia is running out of missiles. They have one or two more attacks to go.

And we do know for a fact that they're being told if you hang on for a few more months, they're going to run out of men and weapons and tanks, and you will push back. And sadly, Ukraine has learned the hard way that that then isn't the truth. And there's a very important part in a traditional war and strategy overall is propaganda must support military operation. It can't be the reverse. You can't have a military operation that is founded in propaganda itself.

I got dragged like nobody else for the Kursk offensive in the early days. And I said, I do not see this lining up with any single. piece of rational military doctrine. I get it on the optical front. I understand that. And that operation I see as propaganda driving a military decision, not a military decision then driving the propaganda. Ukraine is in a more difficult situation than Russia here on that military, optic, propaganda, informational warfare front. As I'm sure you know the term a Scherpont of clause, which basically speaking down to, we'll call it center of gravities, if you will. The Russian center of gravity of industry, decision-making strategy, that all sits in,

we'll call it Moscow. Let's just say it all sits in Moscow. The problem for Ukraine is their center of gravity of all those does not sit in Kiev. They still need to appeal to these center of gravities who they want to show their population wins on the battlefield. And if a commander in Kiev is saying the correct military decision is to withdraw here and come back to these lines and do this. But it looks on the surface as if you are losing, you may get outside influence driving things like the 23 offensive, things like Kirst, wanting then optical victories, which can skew then decisions made. And I think it is many different factors driving this, but I do believe there's a little bit of poison in the well as well with the belief in some of that

own propaganda, even down to potential casualties, even down to Russian support of this war, you've seen within Russia, there's a huge amount of support for the war, and even the Russian diaspora has a huge amount of support for the war. So the idea that no one in Russia supports the war, that is, that's complete horseshit. That just isn't true. I'm not saying they're right or wrong. I'm saying that what we have not seen is these massive rising up against Putin and it's all going to fall apart, if anything, we've seen the opposite. And so I think there was a little bit of drinking your own Kool-Aid a little bit too much, which is important for the society, but as Mr. Tataragami UA, who I think is one of the best analysts on Twitter has said,

he said to me in our interview, propaganda is always a double-edged sword. You always end up paying the piper for your own propaganda. And there is a lot of questions starting to be asked about that they were out of men, they were out of missiles, they were out of tanks, their industry was set behind, what's happening now? And Iran is the same thing. Everyone's going, Mr Trump, you told us that Iranian nuclear facilities were, quote, obliterated, and anything other than that is fake news media propaganda. And now you want to strike these again. Propaganda has a place that you always pay the piper at some point. I just wanted to say, I agree. I mean, first of all about Tarigami, I too also think he's an outstanding commentator. He's absolutely someone on the

Ukrainian side. I take extremely seriously and learn an awful off from, by the way. About propaganda and where it gets, where it can go wrong, I just wanted to say one thing, which I said in many places. I have many contacts, many friends, family in Germany, German family through my wife. they've told me very much a great deal about the effectiveness of German propaganda during the Second World War. Many of them live through the Second World War. And they all told me how they all believed it until, of course, the Red Army reached Berlin. I mean, that is the problem. I mean, propaganda can help in a war, but it cannot win it by itself.

Well, this is part of the Ukrainian manpower problem, is you said that the Russians are a week away from being defeated. and this. And if you were a young Ukrainian guy of my age, you may, well, why am I going to sign up then? Everything is fine. Everything's collapsing. I'm not going to sign up. Three years later, you're desperate for men. The front lines got way worse. You go, well, fuck that. I'm not signing up now. You pay the piper. Yeah. Can I just ask us a question? Because clearly you're somebody who's followed and been interested in Klausovitz. One of the points we made right at the outset of the war, and this I can absolutely say, by the way, is that the right. Russians are Klausovitzians to the call.

I mean, it is absolutely to their fingertips. I don't get the sense that Western political military establishments, at least in Europe and even extraordinarily in the United States, are any longer. And is this one of the fundamental problems that the Russians absolutely do think of it? They do, if you, even the sort of, cursory reading of Russian military things that I have done. You can see that Klausovitz is always there lurking in the background. Sometimes he's often directly referenced. In the West, we don't

do that. And that is one of the fundamental reasons why we misunderstand this war, or at least we have all of these wrong ideas about this wall. We think that Will can somehow replace fact, because a lot of what you're talking about is this, it is will, it is the desire to see an outcome and to shape it through exercise of will, disregarding the facts that are accumulating around us. I completely agree that there is a disconnect between the understanding, and this is what I spoke about, the fundamental that I just don't believe a lot of the Western analysts are gaining, is the fundamental of why this, and like I said, if you go into this as an act, and as an activist or an advocate, and you go, there's a madman in the Kremlin, and that's my position, that's fine.

But if you're making military decision or military analysis and you're starting with that position, you can do every step of the calculation beyond that correctly, but you're going to get the wrong answer because you're using the incorrect formula. Even if you do everything part, you're going to start with a quadratic equation when you needed something else. And this is the difference in this sort of short war thinking, fighting wars as if they were battles and a holistic view, nature of war as no more than, as I said before, a blunt force instrument of politics. And I believe, I'll pronounce his name here, but he was the head of the SRC, the Swiss intelligence service, Mr. Jacques Bo. And he speaks of Russia

seeing a very holistic view of war and how they see the tactics bleak. into operational victories. That operational victory, that bleeds into strategic victories, and then that bleeds then into political leverage. And they see this as a holistic, let's say, almost as an organism that you push here and it prods over here and you feel it there. And it's holistic. There's wins and there's losses. There's give and there's take. And it's a holistic view of war as an overall outcome, potentially over many years, where a lot of the short war thinking the West is obsessed with goes with high precision strikes, highly professional soldiers, minimal losses, winning and influencing then a political outcome

that has already been decided, not developing it. And this is what I've spoken about, why the Russians are more than happy to negotiate while the guns are firing, where we don't want to do that. We want to have a ceasefire, have a negotiated process, end under that. And that the Russians don't see that negotiation is outside of the military theater. They see it as all within that tactics, operations, strategy, politics, and part of that as a subheading is negotiations. And all of this is a holistic nature. Now, this can also mean then the inability to conduct very short war, highly professional operations. But in a large theatre where you're losing huge amounts of men, it's going to be for a very long time. We know this from Soviet.

the ability to replace and absorb is incredibly important. And I think that there's been this liberal ideology that is more on subjective rights and ethics and morals that has overtaken the ancient law of blood and power. And this is why many of Trump's decisions seem very, very foreign to a lot of the Europeans where you go, no, if you look at it through, I know, you guys speak about Professor Mayor Shimer a lot. If you look on his offensive realism or you look at defensive realism or just realism in general,

things really start making sense that ideology is left out of the picture and it is hard power, Bismarckian real politic, and that's where it's going. And this is why it is so unrecognizable to many that they believe that they're therefore,

because we are right, therefore we will be victorious. And what I say is, well, that's not really how it works because your right is subjective. And this is, as I say, that in real power politics, ideology gets thrown out the window when you're speaking about power. The capitalists, they will fight the communists to overthrow the fascists, and then they'll flip that on its head and go back into the Cold War with the communists. Again, just like I say, I don't care how ridiculous you think this statement is.

if Trump really started moving on Greenland, you go to a real politic structure. Do not think that we couldn't see a situation where the Germans and the French reach out to Russia and go, we need to balance back against this with another great nuclear power. At the absolute extreme of this,

but I say, if you believe, that's how the world works, which is what we have seen, particularly through the late 19th and 20th century, but there's just a gulf in their knowledge. And this is why I say, there's no excuse for these leaders not to know it. Because if you are the Europeans, especially the Germans, the French,

from Razen de Tutt, the real public, you guys wrote this book. It was you guys who did this. You should understand how this works. It doesn't mean it's right. It doesn't mean it's moral ethic, but you at least need to acknowledge what is happening. Absolutely. Can we talk a bit about China? Because this is the other, this is the future struggle.

I hope so it never comes. but this is the future of struggle that looms to some extent over everything. You talk to Americans, a lot of Americans. I mean, you always end up, in my opinion, talking about China. It always comes up with China. Are the Chinese like the Russians in terms that they also see war and politics and all of these things in a holistic way? Do they approach things in the same way that the Russians do?

After all, in some ways, they shape their modern military theory of what the Soviets taught them in the 50s and before. And is China any way of threat? I mean, is it actually seeking some kind of aggressive outcome in the Asia-Pacific? because this is a subject that is constantly brought up and talked about. I'd say China, even more so than Russia, see war and peace and chaos and order as all existing simultaneously and popping its head up at different times and even more holistic, almost to a point of spiritual, about the evolution, the deterioration and the then-reliven.

re-evolving of even through dynastic periods. And I've just spent a week in China over there with, so I spoke to students, I spoke to professors, I spoke to Westerners doing their PhDs who live there, or I even got the opportunity to speak to a Chinese Marine. Well, it was very, very eye-opening. I'd say that's a very rare occurrence to have to speak to a young soldier in the Chinese Marine. So I'd say it's even a step further. That they just say, see the world in ebbs and flows. And this goes back to the idea of all under heaven, that they see this is the centre and there's good, there's bad, there's peaks and there's troughs, but eventually we will make our way to the top. And one of the big things

that I've really come to terms with with China. And you read through the Pentagon White House released strategic report from last year. I can't remember exactly what it was called. It would be very findable. And every... Everything around China is framed as a threat when it may be strategic outcomes that cause a threat, but they're not doing it in that regard. Now, let me explain this. So, for instance, BYD vehicle makers, one of the largest vehicle makers on Earth is subsidized by then the government. Now, there's twofold for this.

So in the Western frame of mine, we'll go, that is a threat. they are trying to destroy our manufacturing. They're trying to get vehicles in, build their own manufacturing. And what I say is, well, that might be the outcome, but is it being developed in an offensive capability? Are they funding electric EV, B Y, D, Jami, V, are they doing this in the way of we want to have an offensive capability with this? I don't think that is the case. They're very, very passive in their movements forward and they're happy for this to take place over 100 years. So something that can be a strategic threat doesn't mean that the original thought process was in an offensive wanting to overthrow in time. And even when you go back down to Taiwan

and speak to this young Marine, that they just see Taiwan as a domestic issue. And he has said to me, We see, we don't understand why you were involved in this because we see this as a domestic problem. And he said, if Texas broke away from America and we came to get involved in that, what would your response be? And of course, you know, this is a very complex issue and the bloodshed would be huge. But one thing I had with this conversation with this young guy was this sort of Spider-Man meme of, you know, all pointing at each other.

And it was a bit of a, well, I told you, I was. told you hated me and wanted to kill me. And in the life, I sort of got told the same thing. And it's not. We're just young guys sharing a cigarette at the front of a area whilst in China. So things that are framed as a threat may not be there. And the chips is like this. The Chinese post program is like this. A lot of it is done in reaction rather than proactive. You bar the Chinese from buying certain types of chips. What do we expect? Do we expect? Do we, expect a state of 1.4 billion people and the largest economy on Earth by purchasing power parity to go, oh, yep, okay, we just won't have those chips. No, what they do is they then

spend billions and billions and billions developing a chip industry. We bar them from certain aspects in space exploration, so therefore they go, well, fuck, we have to build a massive Bay-DOW GPS system or global navigation system. We have to build space exploration and X, Y, and Z. Same with vehicles, same with all of this running forward. So I see it far more. as we are putting offensive strategic framing on decisions made, good business is not then having a military offensive outcome. And a clash between the Western states with, of course, America being the primary firepower in this and China would be just catastrophic for the globe to the point of extinction level event, even if it doesn't go into a nuclear war.

It would be an extinction level event. And there's a lot to say about the capacity to actually bring weapons, men and equipment into a single theatre. So say with, let's say Taiwan, if China do decide to make a move on Taiwan, they can bring the world's second largest military, second most powerful military, all to bear on one target at once. America may have a larger military, a more powerful military in China, but it is massively extended. It's extended from the Middle East to Darwin in Australia, across the US, across Europe.

How much can they actually bring to bear in one area? So what I see is China is they are incredibly passive, almost to the degree of pacifist and highly reactive to situations. But China really opened my eyes to... there with my headfield of what I thought China was, is this backwater totalitarian regime, and I went there and I found quite the opposite, that people would openly speak to me about topics of which I basically went, I know we've had six beers, mate. Are you going to get us in trouble? Like, you have just mentioned, you were talking to me about Tiananmen Square. You're talking to me about Taiwan or X, Y, Z, a very sensitive topics or censorship or surveillance. And then,

like, no. we're fine. It's not publicly on WeChat talking about overthrowing the government. Don't worry about it. It's fine to discuss. So I think a lot of our leaders may need to actually spend a bit more time in China and a bit more time understanding the motives that is going on behind the scenes and the long-term holistic view of everything from politics to warfare. But to answer your question basically is I think they actually go a step further than even their Russians. Right. And actually, some of your last points say exactly into the next question I wanted to discuss, because I was reading a report yesterday by the Center of Strategic and whatever,

the CSIS, which was looking at the US military deployments against Iran. And 41% of the current deployable US Navy is there. Now, that's not the top. total US Navy. The US Navy is very, very big, but a lot of the ships are in port, there are maintenance issues, of the ships that are at sea, and which can be at sea at short notice, around 40% of them are now located, are basically in the Arabian Sea, waiting for the order, if it ever comes, to strike at Iran. That, to my mind, highlighted exactly the point that you just made. I think it was somebody who once said that he who defends everything,

defends nothing. Even a power as strong as the United States cannot be equally strong in every place. And the United States, the days when the United States could be strong everywhere against the Russians in Europe, the Iranians in the Middle East, the Chinese in the Asia Pacific, those days are passing and might actually already have passed. Is that understood? Is that something that might actually deep down be driving American policy at the moment? Their desire to find a quick end of the war in Ukraine, the talk about a quick strike. I was very interested, by the way, by your comment,

that we are all into winning battles rather than wars. Could it be that this is what we're trying to do with Iran? A quick victory over Iran so that we can get all our fleet off to the Asia-Pacific region and try and confront the Chinese there. Because if that is the thinking, going back to your point about bankruptcy, and I was at one time, by the way, a bankruptcy lawyer, If you're doing that, you're juggling things from one place to another, that is a symptom of bankruptcy. I've seen that happen many times people moving assets and funds around from one thing to another, trying to keep everything going.

If that's what you're doing, then you are in geopolitics, then you are at risk of geopolitical bankruptcy. Anyway, your thoughts about this? Oh, I absolutely think that America behind the scenes and all of the ego-driven comments by Trump behind the scenes, these incredibly intelligent strategists are going, we are way over-extended. And this goes into a few topics, but let's start on the importance, the realistic importance of the Donbass to America. The loss of the Donbass has no strategic. issue for America as far as the survival of the state, the ability to conduct strikes may have

an ideological outcome. But if this is going to tie up American assets and American bandwidth for years and years and years, what my suggestion would be, if this isn't done quickly, you are going to lose their interest and they're going to go, this does not threaten our hegemony. But what does threaten it is the amount of time we're spending here compared to drawing Russia away from China. And this is one of the problems. While this is going on, the negotiations, America will not and cannot develop a working. I'm not saying kumbaya around the campfire and Trump and Putin hands shanties, but I'm saying a working relationship on resource, on minerals, on the Arctic. They can't do this with Russia. The bioproduct. The bioproduct,

of this, especially through Siberia, the melting of areas in the Arctic, is China getting their hands on basically unlimited resources, agricultural land as the climate shifts to warmer in this sector. There's a lot of articles, especially in Australian journals, regarding ideologically, we don't care how you think about this, leave that at the side. Re-engaging Russia is a very important sector for the Americans, because if China get unfettered access to parts of Russian technology, which China is limited on on some things around jet engines and as well nuclear propulsion, but more so around ability to have ports, land, food, minerals. If they get that over the Americans, it's a huge, huge problem for America to maintain their dominance and

hegemony. This is why the Dmitriev plan spoken about of one of the Russian negotiators at the moment of it was alleged 12 trillion, some are saying $3 trillion. And what I've said is that to Trump, that's almost too good of a deal to turn back. Because you go, look, we piss off the Europeans for another 10, they give up 20 or 30 percent more of the Donbass that they haven't gained. But this plan, this maintains our hegemony in the region and potentially globally, where if we keep in this struggle here for an area that doesn't actually have relevant to us on a strategic scale.

This has a huge, huge issue. But we also need to look at the extension of American power and the loss of American power as well. And Trump's address in the past 24 hours, this is something I see that maybe is understood, maybe isn't, because he's speaking about America's winning too much and we're more powerful than ever. And what I'll say is, as a non-American,

but an ally of American, someone who fought in an American war, America's soft power in living memory has never been less. You've pushed away the Europeans. You've pushed away the Canadians. You've pushed away the Australians. You've said that we didn't fight it in your war and participate. Instead of trying to attract our business to you, you've punished us for this.

So you're not attracting business. And this is what I've said about China gaining power. On the day Trump put in the 15% blanket tariff, say, four days ago. The same day, China lifted tariffs on every single African state, but I believe S to 1, maybe it was S to 1, one of them. They lifted it. And they're doing through attraction, not punishment. And no one likes, if I said, come to my house, I've got three beers, that's more attractive than I say, if you don't come to my house, I'm going to come and steal your beers. That is how it is going. And what I've said is American soft power has nothing has had the impact on

this soft power like the rhetoric at the moment, but also the backing of actions in Israel, Gaza. That has stripped out the American power massively, especially from the Europeans, and especially with China gaining further. What I say is I often think that the amount of power in the world is a net figure that doesn't increase or decrease. It just changes whose hands it's in. And let's say through the later half of the 20th century, it was 80% in the US and the other 20% was within other powers. And all this is doing is doing that there's still a hundred points of power, but America's losing a lot of that international power down to a lot of former soldiers like myself or others going, you've just said that we've done nothing

and I had friends die in the war. And what is this? And Canada, with deals with China, the UK, with deals with China. And all China's doing is they're like, just do the exact opposite decision to what you guys doing and we'll just suck up all of that, all of that soft power as being lost. So it's not just hard power to bring to bear. It's also the ability to maintain allies, relationships, friendships, that increases the power from there. Because the US, at the end of the day, is only, I believe, around 4% of the global population. At the end of the day, that it's still very limited, very isolated in your sector of the world. what has done fantastic for America is the greatest country likely to ever exist.

But at the end of the day, stepping into the future, you're a country of 350 million people that other countries are fast, very quickly catching and potentially going to overtake. And that's one of the things this young Marine said to me was we were very disappointed because we always saw Russia, we had them on this pedestal, and we've seen the surpass of them with the failures in Ukraine. And he said, but there's extra motivation because we see that we realistically could be in the number one position. You know, it's interesting that you say all of this because, of course, in Britain, and this is, I suspect, a sore issue in Australia, if I may say. But we went through all of that ourselves here in Britain about imperial overstretch.

And the British in the first half of the 20th century made many, many decisions to try to deal address the problem of imperial overstretch, and they didn't do it well. And one of the reasons, perhaps, why we had the two world wars, was precisely because we didn't manage these problems intelligently or effectively or recognize exactly the point that you've just made, that maybe in the mid-19th century, power was 80% with Britain and 20% with everybody. else but by 1900 it was no longer so and one would have thought that having that history behind us we would be more understanding of these things in Britain than we actually are I mean if people were to read for example the speeches of Joseph Chamberlain from the early 20th century

I think they would learn an awful lot about the current strategic crisis that we're facing. Anyway, just that's all, because of course... But that's the idea of the European States not reading their history. And what I say is like, if you are Kerstama, if you are Murs, if you were Stub, and you don't understand the books you literally wrote on these ideas, I have no pity for where you were going. And you see this delusional messaging from people like Kaya Kallas or Ursula von der Leyen,

But you're like, that's not what war shows us, not what politics shows, it's not what power shows us. This is a wish list. It's all, I wished Ukraine would retake and sweep through Crimea and sweep back through the Donbass and have the 91 border. But if you are stepping into a meeting with the Russians who are realists, with the Americans who are realists, and I want to even say Ukrainians are realists, but they're being pushed by these more ideological or idealist figures. you're not going to get anywhere with that. And that's where a lot of the hatred comes across from myself is the best way anyone's ever described me is

I'm a pro-Ukrainian realist. I'm not a pro-Ukrainian idealist. And what I'm not willing to do, and you touched on this earlier, I'm not willing to sacrifice a generation of people and the survival of the state in this ideal idea that Ukraine swings back through and takes all of this land, I'm not willing to sacrifice an entire generation

for that. Now I know it's easy for me to sit back here and go, but it's not your land. You are correct. And it's not my guys who have fought and died either. I understand that. But if you look at the demographic crisis, you look at the potential losses, you look at the situation in the state, you look at the bullshit rhetoric coming from the European states of, oh, you're allowed in NATO, you're allowed in EU, but not yet. I go, Jesus, guys, the survival of the people sits first for me. And that is my number one priority is the survival of the people of the state, not the wet dreams of some who sit in their ivory tower within these European capitals,

who they are not willing to be at the table. Salus Populi is supreme Alex. The salvation of the nation is the supreme law. That's what the Romans said. And maybe they were the first realists. Willie, thank you for this amazing program and this extraordinarily thoughtful and powerful answers. If you could just wait a little, I'm sure that some of our viewers have questions. I add over to Alex now.

Willie, you have time, five, ten minutes to answer a couple questions. Might. As long as you guys need. Awesome. Awesome. All right. Let's begin with Matrix X, Matrix 2, who says, how is it that Russia has only been able to occupy an additional 1.5% of Ukraine since January 2023. Frontline movements have slowed to a

glacial pace. Well, the front line is moving at an incredibly slow rate. And when people bring up these ideas of movements on previous wars, what that doesn't take into account is the efficiency, the effectiveness of drone warfare and the leveling of the battlefield that drones have done. Now, we also need to take this into account as well and go, shit, we look at the power disparity between America and whatever other state or Russia and Ukraine and go, if they get a good grasp on these drones, it is going to move very slow, regardless of the back end latent power, as I believe Mayor Scheim would say, back to your population GDP, that it has moved very, very slow.

But you also have to see that the number one priority for Russia, was not gaining territory. The number one priority of an attritional war is to reduce state potential. So what the Russians ultimately want to do, they initially wanted to do it through maneuver warfare, which failed, therefore switched to attritional warfare,

which is why we saw an economist coming to the chief of defence, is they want to remove the potential of the state. Therefore, influence politics, influence the military, influence allies, aka, say, NATO or other Western systems. So to reduce potential, if you can't do it through manoeuvre

and overtaking the capital, taking over the government, therefore it is grinding the state to such degree that it becomes defunct and in the areas of what you want power, then you gain it. So that is the number one priority is the destruction of the potential of the state, not exactly territory. But on that too, taking territory in war now is unbelievably costly. As per we have seen, armoured assaults are a one-way trip at the moment with the amount of drones. And we need to take into account that a couple of dudes in a tree line with a bunch of drones against a military is unbelievably effective.

And we need to learn this very, very quickly because I was an adversary of America and I, I was looking at these countries of which America may step into. The first thing I'd do is deploy a number of drone operators and go, hey, this is going to increase the cost of this massively. So that's why it's moved at glacial pace as well as initial large losses, pulling back economic woes. There's been a lot of struggles. This isn't an easy war or four years and three days or something at this point.

It's moving very slow. But you need to understand too. You can look at some of the propaganda, I believe, from the First World War, that had what I call linear warfare bros or constant warfare bros that go, well, it's 100 square kilometers per month. Therefore, it will take a thousand years to reach this. And what I'll say is war doesn't work like that. War does not follow a constant or linear trajectory.

It may be flat, it may go up and down, or it may be then exponential. So you can't have projections along a lot of, linear or constant line. Bismarck says this is a great trio. Thanks, Bismarck. Mama Alaska says, excellent analysis. Thank you. Gentlemen. And from Open View, Ozzy, hi, Willie OAM. I was fascinated by your China trips and what you discovered, any plans to visit Russia anytime soon.

Look, I tried to visit Russia a couple of years ago and was denied. media accreditation and couldn't go, I would just be very concerned about my safety there as well. I'm very open about failures, calling out certain bits and pieces of corruption, of compromise, of operations as well. So I would love to visit Russia completely independently, and I don't want anything influencing any of what I see or say. And this is one of the big things of my trip to China is unlike a lot of other YouTubers who take interesting money from other areas, I will say how it is and see it how it is. And look, at the moment, Russia, there's a lot of tension. They are a state at an existential war. This war has become existential for Russia. Russia cannot just pull back to that

border and maintain some level of order. The soldiers would, and this is a lesson too on the other side of this, is the ravenous sentiment that may grow in Ukraine if they believe they're going to get an unfair deal, as per what we saw for the Germans at the end of the First World War. That's something the Europeans, the Americans, the negotiating teams have to take into account too is, and I speak of it, is my video today, is the ability to turn inward. similar to Wagner PMC. So I would love to visit Russia. Now is probably not the time for someone like myself as a often contrarian orator. But I'd love to. After the war, I want to visit

everywhere, everywhere that I can to go and get an idea and a feeling. As I said, China, it blew me away. It changed my mind on many things. It cemented some different ideas too. and entering a state at war of which you've been outspoken about, it can always influence it. If you feel that you are under threat, that can also influence it. Same with China. I didn't tell anyone that I was going to China because I didn't even want unconsciously me to report differently from backlash that I'd get.

So if I put up a post to 100,000 people and said, I'm going to China and I get all this hate, I might try and trickle in bits and pieces to unconsciously draw myself out of that hole. So if I went, I wouldn't tell anyone and it would just be all going, but definitely not until the end of the war and things really stabilised. I spoke to a few guys about interviewing some of the Wagner PMC guys who did the mutiny on Russia when they ended up in Belarus,

and I went to contact or contact to contact, and was told, do not come. So, yeah. All right. Stephen says, I love watching Willie. and since you mentioned Wagner, Lili, NSM says, now a couple of years have passed.

What do you both make of Wagner, leader, Progoshin's death? Was it Kremlin orchestrated or are there other theories? There's a lot of other theories. It appears Cremlin orchestrated.

That's what it appears to be on the surface. The other theory that I've been told that holds some water And I believe this was discussed on the podcast I did with one of the Wagner PMC guys who did actually participate in this was they don't believe it was Kremlin orchestrated. They actually believe it was a French team, or at least French influenced, because it lines up very closely to Wagner operations in Mali

and then the overtaking of some of the French power into the Russians there as well. there's a couple of other bits and pieces around this as well, even down too, there's a belief that it came in a crate of wine. We do know the French operate extensively through many separate countries. So that is the other theory that I've heard that may hold some water. Beyond that, look, I don't really know, but it was a very public, very, very, very famous assassination of a very powerful member within Russia. Alexander, your thoughts? Says to both of you?

I'll say straight away. I remember the incident extremely well. What happened was that shortly before Brigodgian's death, there was a meeting in the Kremlin, which Prigogsian attended with various Wagner commanders. And Putin said, you know, this is the proposal we're going to make, we're going to set up this new organization. You can all join. There will need to be some changes

and will you all work with that? And Prygosian said no. And I saw how Putin looked at all of the other commanders and said, well, you know, it's for you to decide what you do from now on. I'm not, I'm paraphrasing. He didn't quite say that. But it seemed to me that he was dropping a very clear hint as to what needed to be done. And that's that was the impression I got. So basically Purti said, look, you've got this very attractive offer. I'm laying it all out. Pregojin is standing in the way. If you want it, you have to basically find some way of resolving this problem with pregoshin. And about a week later, he was dead. So I remember that very well. And I, um, I, I think that's exactly the way these sort of things are done.

It's certainly in Russia. If you want to get a sense of how things like this are done in Russia, I would advise reading the memoirs of a former Soviet agent, Pavel Sudoplatov, who had interactions with Stalin, and the point was that Stalin never ordered anybody directly to be killed. He would simply say, well, you know, There's this person, he's causing us a problem, he's involved in all sorts of activities,

he's far away in France and Germany, they're unhelpful to the Soviet Union, what you think. And Suda Plattiff would understand that that was essentially, if not an instruction, at least a hint, that that's how this, you know, that this person needed to be removed

and then assassination would be arranged. So that's what I think. Go to that book. It's called Special Tasks. And it's by Pavelsa de Plattiff. It has an awful lot of very interesting stories. And it tells you an awful lot about how the secret police agencies of that period used to work. I don't think in that respect, Russia has changed.

Seeker says, why does, no, Willie, Willie does have his biases. But just as on his channel, it must be admitted he is a very bad. balanced analysts, very balanced analysis, a very hardworking journalist. We all have our biases. Every single person has biases. The question is not to let your biases cloud your judgment. Willie doesn't allow his biases, which I also have. There's a fantastic quote.

There's a good quote that says, The Quest for Truth should always supersede one's ego defense desire to be right. and that is what we must. We must be on a quest for the truth. And if that upsets us, well, we can't let our ego defense desire, then obfuscate that ending that we need to find. Demur says one of the better live streams I've seen.

Hope the three of you can do this again sometime. Legends. Thank you for that. Gio Stone says, great analysis by all. Thank you all for the years of coverage. Thank you for that. And let's do one more.

Let me look for the question from Paul. But I remember it, Willie. It was, Paul was asking, with the Afghanistan defeat that the United States had under Biden, can the U.S. suffer another defeat militarily, politically? No. The defeat in Afghanistan is unbelievably embarrassing. And it is a defeat. Like, I served in Afghanistan.

And when people say we weren't defeated, it was it was the government giving up and didn't want to fund it. I go, well, what do you call that? What do you call it? If Russia doesn't want to fund the war and they pull out and Ukraine retakes, Don't ask, what do we call that? If the Taliban were there and now they're back in charge, it is a defeat. And the US has had an absolute string of defeats. And this gives you an idea of the balance of warfare when you're fighting an enemy that has time and their side. as the Taliban has said with, you may have the watches, but we have the time.

And we saw the Soviets have a similar-ish defeat also, well, the communists in Afghanistan. And I applaud anyone to read the book called Afghanistan. And that gives a, if any Western commander who want to step into Afghanistan with the coalition read that book in the first six months for operation, we would have looked and gone, fuck, maybe this isn't going to work. And I just don't think the American population has the will in the new digital age where so many more people are more interested in politics and outcomes and worried about money to go and spend a trillion dollars on something and have a defeat. And I also don't think that the current populations are actually willing to suffer the losses.

it would incur to have a victory either, to have a victory in a war any time now. The cost of this victory has gone up 10-fold minimum. And what I've said is Australia, devastatingly, lost 42 soldiers in Afghanistan. If we had those same operations now in drone warfare, we would be lucky to lose 10 times, maybe a hundred times more.

The cost of doing similar operations of this has skyrocketed with this drone warfare. If drones didn't exist, we would see a very different battlefield in Ukraine. But of course, hypothetical, they do exist. And we need to take into account this balance of warfare is hugely different. And in more connected, maybe even more empathetic,

society, are we really willing to suffer that level of loss again? I've had a couple of discussions with people in the, in the, in militaries discussing, we need to think about now. What do we do when we step into a theatre and there is a video of a coalition soldier or Australian soldier or British soldier being killed by a drone striking him? and the video goes online to dubstep music before we know he's been hit, before the family's told any of this. We need to think about that as a realistic case now.

How will society react to support further on of this war? Now, Russia and Ukraine, there's a highly conservative, highly nationalist societies. Ukraine is in a fight for its life. Russia is now in a fight for its life as well. But in these more conservative national societies, they may be able to absorb that far better. In my opinion, if Australia, say Australia and China had a similar war to Russia, Ukraine, I don't think our society, being as progressive as it is,

could anywhere near absorb the losses of which Ukraine has as a smaller state. One more. One more for you, Willie, from Paul. And we haven't talked about this. I think it would be good to talk about the power outages. Callis says Ukraine is winning, but 2 million dead, 200,000 deserted. Klitsko saying leave the capital. No power stations, no water, no heating, dependent solely on the West for weapons, ammo, intel.

I fear come spring, disease will be rife. You're going to have an EU problem. What are your thoughts on the energy strikes and where they could lead to, especially in the spring, like Paul says? Look, I'm not willing to speculate on losses, but I would say the Russian and Ukrainian losses, given different elements, are probably fairly similar. Russia has got superiority of fire. on the battlefield, and I put drones as a form of artillery. I don't see the kinetic-style drones. I actually don't see them more than just highly effective and efficient artillery. But Russia's been on the offensive, which typically you may lose more.

So I think the losses are probably similar. We've had a lot of people, of course, flee Ukraine and move across into the West. We've got a lot of missing in action. We have a lot of that. As far as strategic strikes, Ukraine has been unbelievably resilient. given the capacity of these strikes, hitting, heating facilities, electrical facilities.

But then also we have the other problem now with this blackmail, energy blackmail, the Rusba pipeline with Hungarian Slovakia, looking like, hey, we don't want to play fucking ball anymore on this, which I think many people understand FITSO or Orban's position on that and say you are prioritising a non-block country before our own independence and sovereigns. So what will come spring?

I don't know. I think that Ukraine still has a lot more depth than we may think and a lot more populist resistance too. This is one of the things about strategic strikes that Churchill, the Germans, they all knew. What strategic strikes, you would really think would evaporate the support of the war due to the suffering of the people.

It's quite known. It can actually do the opposite. It can actually cement support in these areas for the war. And this is where I've said, a lot of these strikes on the capital, it's difficult, it's cold, it's terrible. Are these energy facilities?

Are they a dual-purpose target? Absolutely they are. Am I justifying strikes on these? No. If I was a commander invading a country, that's one of the first things I'd hit, and it's the first things we hit in many nations when we have invaded,

we as NATO plus Australia, if you will, we have on states. There are 100% dual use. Do I think this will lead to an absolute crash and crises? I don't believe so as soon as people are thinking. I think it'll hold on far longer. The resilience of states is always underestimated. When it looks like it won't, it'll continue grinding forth. But the future, I think the sooner that a deal is made, the better position it's going to be. As there's less cards on the table, territory is more important to Ukraine than is Russia at the negotiating table.

And as we've quoted him before, but as Mr. Big Surge said, if you've got cards, you need to play them. And sadly for Ukraine, their cards are areas of which Russia doesn't occupy yet. So there's a hell of a lot of problems in this. My big concern for Ukraine is actually recovery from this. And I fear that there's going to be a lot. lot of promises made by the Europeans and NATO, which are not going to come to fruition. Putin has openly stated there is no problem with Ukraine joining the EU.

The EU could invite Ukraine at any point, and they haven't. And I go, I tell you, I would hate to see if they don't get in, what then happens. It goes back, though, to the idea of the meme sent to me from a friend of mine saying, if you really want to sanction the Russian economy, invite them into the EU. But I just hope that this can end in a fashion of which Ukraine is still a functioning state, of which then they don't have internal unrest by these pro-nationalist, old nationalist forces within the state. And I spoke to a friend today of which I shared on my channel that said,

really, I've been telling you since 2016, mean. If this comes to an unfair deal, there are people willing to march on the capital. And that would be just a catastrophe because what then do we do? Does NATO deploy to stabilize the capital? Does Russia keep going? It's a catastrophe. And I just, I want the best of the people suffering to stop because I'm sick to death of young Christian men killing themselves all through Europe, when Europe itself is in an economic and demographic crises from the Siberian part of Russia through the European side of Russia, all the way to the UK, is in a civilizational erasure crisis at the moment.

And I tell you, it doesn't help in a fucking war that costs hundreds of billions of dollars and hundreds of thousands of lives, whether they be Ukrainian or Russian or if other countries were to step in. Yeah. On Arban, Niko says, Orban will lose the election,

but at least he'll go down swinging. He blocked the EU loan and energy to Ukraine after they attacked the Druzbubat pipeline. I don't know if he'll lose. The polling is not looking, good for him, but I don't know. I'm thinking he might actually win. We'll see.

Look at the polling for many different elections, and it's always BS. But the big thing with Orban will be if the EU step in and do what they did in Cal and Georgioscu in Romania and make up some bullshit on the back end and then kick him out. Yeah. From Jeff Fowles,

what Aussie animal scares you the most? I don't like snakes. And I think that is a completely fair thing because we have a lot of snakes here will kill you in 40 minutes, but you'll get bitten by one of the outback where you're eight hours from the nearest hospital. That's scary. Tai ponds and that kind of thing. We have some crazy shit. Big spiders. I've seen videos of big spiders in Australia too.

Monty says, would the effectiveness of drones on the battlefield start to drop if Russia were to start taking out American surveillance and communications? assets that underpins them. Of course they would, but it's more what is then the response from America if they start doing this. So look, by the absolute letter of the law, like we've said, if you just put X and Y on this, if Russia launched a number of missiles and took out, you take out a couple of Starlight satellites, and then you get, I forgot the effect, someone I'm sure, will put it in the comments, where you basically get the amount of fragmentation of a satellite in orbit, then will take out everything else within that period within that section of orbit.

If they targeted Sarling, that is a completely targetable system just as if Ukraine took out a glonast satellite. That is a targetable due use. But you need to then see the flow on effect of this too. The big thing for Ukraine is this reliance on

radio control drones which the, and have many conversations behind the scenes about this is the Russian electronic warfare is very, very concerning to many nations about how quickly this has actually been able to develop and how quickly a lot of this information is getting likely relayed back to Beijing. So the drones will, but as always, offensive weapons always tend to be always slightly in

front of defensive weapons. You build a sword, then you build the shield, etc. The big movement we've seen in drones is then the movement into fiber optics, which of course are unjamble. I know Ukraine is trying to catch up on that. That has been a large battlefield multiplier for the Russians, especially we saw them come into the fold in Kursk. I made a video on this the other day about battlefield depth and where I think that the infiltration zone of what we've seen, the battlefield depth for Ukraine is being shadowed by their effectiveness of the drones. And if something were to happen to those drones, it would be catastrophic.

So right here and now, let's say every Russian drone got turned off on the front line, just theoretically. It would be a very bad situation, but the amount of strategic depth of having other assets in men is still very large. If the Ukrainian drones theoretically just got turned off, that would be catastrophic because we don't actually know the actual level of depth there and a good way to get somewhat of an idea on this is the pericity of the front line down around the Pokrovskoi front where we do see infiltrations of 10, 12 kilometers by the Russians through lines, we don't see the reverse of that through those porous lines too. So we get an idea of how effective drones are.

I've said this for years. Ukraine is very good with drones, but you cannot put all of your eggs in one basket. And there's an over-alliance on drone warfare. At the end of the day, you still need men in a trench at the front line. infantry is still, is still, artillery is the king, but infantry is still what sees and hold. You cannot seize and hold ground with a drone, at least not yet, and at least not in the near future. Okay.

Final one for you, Willie, from NSM. To what extent do you think China really influences Russia decision making in foreign policy, as well as policy in other areas? Alexander has hinted at this in the past, especially regarding Russia's Ukraine policy? I think there is definitely some influence, but I think we underestimate some of the concern that Russia may have also about the loss of a pillar of their sovereignty swinging to China as they've been sanctioned also. And I think there is concern, and it depends if you believe the credibility of the reports, but I believe it was in New York Times, reported there was leaked FSB,

documents that did speak about the concern of further Chinese infiltration into try and influence Russian domestic politics and foreign politics decisions more and more and the one to still maintain that level of sovereign decision-making. The idea that China is influencing Russian politics as much as, say, Germany or France or the UK is influencing Ukrainian politics, that won't even be close. Is there intelligence sharing? Is their military sharing? Yeah, to a degree, have we seen, I know that people like,

Vladimir Zelensky and others, well, it's Chinese funded China. If China started actually militarily arming Russia, you wouldn't see 400 grands. You'd see 4,000 Guarans day after day after day. This is what I've said about the industry is if Russia has the capacity to make 1,000 Guarans a day, China makes 82,000 cars a day. I believe it's 32 million a year. The industrial might of that

wouldn't be a few motorcycles or UTVs bought. It would be astronomical. So I do believe there's a bit of concern about Chinese too much Chinese influence in Russian policy too, that Russia doesn't want to become just an arm of China. And you always need to be concerned with this as a state when your pillars of sovereignty start getting too reliant on a foreign state.

This goes into the argument, if we leave all ideology aside, has Germany or one of these nations become more sovereign for cutting off Russian energy? The answer in this is no. You have three pillars of sovereignty. You have energy, military and trade. What a country like India does fantastically is they balance these against each other. If you can't be very sovereign, you balance them. So India, they import Russian weapons, they import some Western weapons. They import some Western weapons. a whole bunch of different piss. No one can cut off a single source.

They import Western energy. They import Russian energy. Take a country in Europe, for example. These three pillars of sovereignty. The trade was very reliant on the US. The military, very reliant the US. Energy, they could balance their sovereignty back against the US with Russia.

Now they've cut off that energy. Those three pillars have massively swung into the US. Now, I understand. And the reasoning for this, the problem is, though, now that those three pillars are with the US, if the US says jump, you sort of have to say how high, because if all your, if your F-35s, buy them and if they just don't deliver certain systems, they'll get two hours in the air and they won't fly again, and your energy and your trade. So there is a real argument to make that Europe has become actually less sovereign,

maybe rightly so, but less sovereign to this, and you can actually put that onto Russia. Now, Russia is actually far more independently sovereign than people would like maybe to admit. But since the export of energy all over the world, it's really come down to really two nations of China and India. They do need to be concerned about these countries now will have more political pull within their systems. And I do think that Russia will seek to open up an ability to balance against this, particularly with opening up channels of energy, potentially back to the US. Why, as we spoke earlier in this, the Demetriah package is very attractive for the US, but also very attractive for Russia.

Russia is not on, say we have the great state powers, Russia, India. You've now got these hyperstates of America and China. And Russia, I believe in the future, will become the balancer between the two. Let's say America and China have very similar powers. Russia would be able to tip that balance of power. and I think they will capitalize on that power shift that they can have between the two. As we could say, the British did in the early 20th century between Germany and France at different times as well, where you can shift the balance of power on similar nations of strength.

Fantastic. The Vlad says I'm thrilled to finally see this collaboration, huge fan of both Willie and the Duran. Keep up the great work. I would love to see Brian in the mix as well. That would be the ultimate street to see. cool. That would be great. Thank you very much. The Vlad, thank you very much to Willie O.M. for joining us on this live stream. Willie, once again, where can people find your work? Look, I'm sure there'll be a link below, but if you just type in Willie O.A.M. on YouTube,

you'll see a whole bunch of my stuff. But I've also got a number of playlists that are from my podcasts through to China, through to the files with a pH that has come out in the U.S. recently and down to then my daily Ukraine updates. So yeah, like I massively appreciate the invite to come on and speak to you gentlemen and share my my two cents. It really does mean a lot. It was a great stream and we appreciate you coming on in the Duran. Fantastic work. I have those links in the description box down below. Thank you so much, Willie O.A.M. for joining us. Thank you very much, Willie. That was a marvelous program. By the way, this is the book. I'm now going to show people books in my library this is the book by so the platov that i was mentioning special tasks

perfect thank you very much willie oam everybody the links in the description in the description box down below definitely follow his channel he's doing great stuff absolutely thank you guys thank you all right alexander you there absolutely all right great stream great guests uh great conversation great interview you. Very good show. I enjoyed it. Absolutely. You ready to answer the remaining questions? Remaining questions, absolutely.

Let's do it. Haruko, thank you for that. Super sticker, Nikos. One second. Disinfo, 2050 is a new member to the Duran community. Welcome to Duran Community. Let me pull up this question from Nikos. Sparky says, great work, Alex and Alexander. Thank you, Sparky. Thank you.

Alex Alexander G. says, good to see Willie on the Duran. Absolutely. Great to have him on. Come on. YouTube, come on. All right. Okay, here we go. From Nikos, Russia has three red lines, missile strikes, ship blockade, and nuclear

Ukraine. I follow the ship events closely. And this month, the seizures have stopped. Since the blockade failed, the West went back to strikes. France, Britain, and Denmark have. have given Ukraine-Hymars and flamingo missiles, which are effective. Well, I do that they're very effective. I mean, one flamingo got through and did some damage to the Vodkins factory, which I discussed in one of my programs. But the iron law with missiles

of any kind that the West supplies to Ukraine is that they have a short period of about six weeks, the Russian air defense system then manages to get on top of them. And then the effectiveness goes down very fast. The British media, by the way, today on the question of the air defense system, the Russian air defense system, is now saying that it's become so effective around Moscow, specifically that British and intercontinental ballistic missiles, sea launched ballistic missiles can no longer be sure of penetrating Moscow with nuclear weapons in the case of a nuclear war. So I do think what should overstate the problem that these missiles and drones cause. The big mistake the Russians made or the big mistake that Putin made is,

is that having set a red line over missile strikes into Russia, after they started in 2024, in November 2024, he didn't take decisive action to enforce it. And the reason he didn't take that decisive action is because he trusted Donald Trump, which is, as we see, a huge mistake. In relation to the two other things, seizure of ships and nuclear weapons to Ukraine,

I think the Russians have learned their mistake and they're going to enforce their red lines, and we see that with the ships. Matthew asks, Alexander, do you still believe the West won't provide nuclear weapons to Ukraine? Yes, I do. I think that at the end of the day, however unbalanced and the Western leaders are,

I think there will always be enough people who have just retained enough grip on their sanity to stop doing this. For Britain and France to do it, I mean, to say it would be beyond reckless and unbelievably dangerous for them is a massive understatement. But let's just say it succeeds. Let's just say that they're able to smuggle nuclear weapons to Ukraine,

and this somehow changes the calculus on the battlefields. That, of course, is the end of the nuclear proliferation treaty. At that moment, more and more countries around the world start to acquire nuclear weapons. Given that Britain and France are relatively small nuclear powers, that will ultimately lower them in the hierarchy of power around the world. world. I mean, the big superpowers, China, America, Russia, they will probably retain a big advantage. But Britain and France would lose it logically and historically, Britain and France, for that very reason, have been amongst the most committed champions of nuclear non-proliferation.

So for them to breach that would not just be an extraordinary act of folly, but it would actually weaken their global position overall. If they really are thinking of doing this, if there really are some people in London and Paris thinking of doing this disastrous thing, then that tells you more than anything how desperate the situation in Ukraine has become. Yeah, I bet you that the Russian foreign intel caught some chatter of French and British officials talking about stuff like this because they're just so crazy. But I don't think they'll turn this into policy. But they're mentioning this in their cocktail parties or wherever they're hanging out and they're saying this bad shit crazy stuff.

Absolutely. It is bad shit crazy at multiple levels. Yeah. Tazando, welcome to the Drand community. Fuzzy Balls says the Hobbit Zeletsky not in Ukraine, 87% of the time. Yeah, she is out of Ukraine a lot. Yeah. That is true.

Very true. Fuzzy Balls also says that country born in 1947 has had five of its president, prime ministers born in Ukraine. Jeffrey Epstein, ESPN. Oh, okay, I get it. Jeffrey ESPN files. He was pushing to draw Russia into war. well perhaps yeah all right thank you for that uh fuzzy balls from from nichos the the elites aren't

afraid they are angry and hateful at russia and they are willing to end the world to destroy them i'm not the only one saying this i think they are very i think one one second let me get to the part two i'm trying to get part two here it is uh putin addressed the terrorist attacks and the nuclear threat in the FSB speech. He knows Russia must take all of Ukraine this year or everything else. Well, I don't know about this year, but I think you're starting to see more and more people talk about that. But anyway, going back to your first point, I think they are afraid. I think Western elites are very afraid.

If you look at their rhetoric, if you see their anger, remember when people get very, very angry, that is almost always, in my experience, a sign that they're afraid, especially when they are angry in this particular way. The problem is people who are frightened and people who are angry very often do incredibly reckless and very, very desperate things. And it's more that they will do extreme and dangerous things out of fear then they will do them because they don't have that fear. I think that's the thing you need to understand.

It's frightened people you need to be worried about. Zahir, thank you for that super chat. Paul says, thanks to Bojo, we've had second, third, and fourth anniversary, with many more to come. After the Afghan withdrawal, the U.S. kid, okay, we answered that question. So the anniversary, thanks to Bojo. Oh, absolutely. I mean, one day, one day one would like to hope that Bojo, there will be a reckoning for him. Because what he did, I mean, I think he played an absolutely central role in causing the war to happen at all, by the way. I mean, he was one of the people whose rhetoric got, you know, almost created the conditions for the war before it started.

But then what he did, causing the war, absolutely, absolutely. But I mean, I mean, the way that he acted over the Istanbul treaty, I mean, he should absolutely one day be called to account for it. And, you know, account for it, not just in ways that would be embarrassing. But, I mean, I think he should be put on trial over it. How much of that do you think was Biden ordering him to go there? Well, absolutely, it was. No doubt about it. But Johnson himself has never shown any embarrassment or shame or doubts over this.

Biden is gone and he still talks it the same way. Yeah, notice Biden doesn't say anything anymore. Blinken, Sullivan, yeah, they all disappeared. They've all disappeared. Paul Walker says the MSM skews the reality of the conflict. Yeah. Very true. Nico says telegram was banned in Russia and Dutov was charged with terrorism.

I'm okay with that. He is an ungrateful Russian liberal who chose the West. You know the paradox is that just before we started watching this program, all of the Russian ministries still published on telegram. Just to say. Nico says, I noticed that there is no dissent in the Russian Council when Putin told Medinsky to directly inform them about the theater talks.

They accepted it. Everyone is talking the same way from Putin to Medved, to the Duma to Peskov, Putin failed to uphold the strikes line, but he defends the other two, which is why Russia will never let France and UK to put nukes in Ukraine. Peskov said that if Estonia hosts nukes, they'll use nukes on Estonia. Oh, I agree about nukes, but as to what goes on within the Russian Security Council and what discussions take place there, of that, of course, we simply do not know. I mean, Medinsky and Kostakov came and reported there, but I'm sure that there was a lengthy discussion and lots of questions and lots of answers given.

And as I said, as to what the nature of that discussion was, I mean, the Russians have not briefed us. And we don't know. From Jiu-Jitsu Sila, do these Western pilots not know that they risk their lives and bring grief to their families by eagerly sacrificing themselves for a corrupt. Epsteinian elite that doesn't give a damn about them. Yes, I think some of them don't think about the consequences. Perhaps they don't have the full information. And of course, some people, there are always some people who will take incredible risks, either because they need the money or because the excitement and the danger attracts them,

or because they feel that they have no choice in some ways, or because they are ideologically and politically committed to the defense of Ukraine. The psychology of people is extraordinarily complex and almost infinite, and people will do extraordinary things for all kinds of different motives. The more important point is that there are those pilots there. Paul says the drone factory in the UK, location name, company name to lookup address is a massive OSINT Fubar. Will it burn out before any production?

Probably. Nico says Modi going to Israel and hugging Netanyahu was another disgrace. This is why India is not a superpower yet. Ultimately, they prefer to serve the West. I agree, but India is not yet a superpower. India makes a whole point and is extremely careful to try to maintain good relations with all sorts of people. But if you're talking about Modi, it's important to understand that he's part and his political movement has always been more sympathetic towards Israel

than, say, Congress has been. Because the BJP, which Modi leads, I think this is not unreasonable to say, is more Hindu-focused and therefore more suspicious of the Muslim states and tends to see Israel as a potential ally. Niko says, The elites aren't afraid. They are angry and hateful at Russia,

and they are willing to end the world to destroy them. I'm not the only one saying this. Who can address the terrorist attacks and the nuclear threat, the FSB speech. I think I've already answered that. I mean, I think they are afraid. And as I said, to repeat again, I think fear drives them. It makes them more reckless, not less. From, one sec.

From Paul, F-35s can't fly. the miles there and back would need K-135 tankers, which would have to loiter over Iran, Saad won't be 100%, especially after the 4D radar. I presume that they would not actually refuel over Iran itself. I think that would be incredibly dangerous. I presume they would refuel before the aircraft reached Iran. But I'm not going to go into the details of this. Of course, the point about tankers is that they are not stealthy.

And advanced radars could certainly track them. From Sticky Marks to Alex C, my name is Stix, hence Sticky. So am I one of those sources familiar with the process regarding the RN divers get gluey in Portsmouth, LNPs from Nana Weirdo in Yorkshire? Yeah, okay. Thank you for that. we answer the progosian question from Klaus if we have free media in the West why do they all write the same thing?

Good question. I mean, you're absolutely correct. I mean, there's been a deluge of articles about the four years of the special military operation across the British media. And in fact, they're all identical. I mean, they're not in word for word, but they all say the same things. They all repeat the same cliches.

They all repeat the same memes. I mean, it's quite obvious that it's an orchestrated operation and that people have been told basically what to write. Nico says, if you want to be interviewed by a mainstream media reporter, Miss Hadley Gamble might be willing to do that. She has integrity and a YouTube channel. Okay. Okay. Nico says, I made lists about culture when I was younger. but it took time.

AI has helped me to do it faster now. So I am making the top 10 worst Greek leaders list. The number one is predetermined. And no, it's not Papadopoulos. It's the person who drove you from your homeland, Alexander, and lost Cyprus, Dimitrios Yonidis. I agree. Well, he didn't drive me from my homeland.

The person who drove me from my homeland, as a matter of fact, was Papadopoulos. But I agree. I think Yonidis was a far worse individual. And Nico says if Venezuela stopped and defended his spoils after World War I, he would have been one of Greece's best leaders, but he was a dreamer and he caused a disaster. Well, there's a lot to say about Venezuela. And we should do a program about him, and I'll be very, very interested in your views. My grandfather, as I think I mentioned in an earlier program, actually I've worked as his secretary for a time.

knew him very, very well and remained a staunched mire of Venezuela, right up to the end of his life. Thank you for that super sticker. Stanimovic, thank you for that. Do we answer the one about the drones? Yeah, for sure, where to take out the American surveillance? Yes, we answer that. What Aussie animals scares you the most?

We answer that. I mean, seriously, Taipan snakes are the most poisonous and dangerous in the world. They are fight at the centre of Australia, so you're unlikely to meet them. But all snakes in Australia are poisonous, by the way. Not that that should deter you from going to what every account I have heard says that it is an incredibly beautiful and extraordinary country, with extremely friendly people. And by the way, there is a huge Greek community in Australia. Melbourne, right?

Absolutely. Melbourne, exactly. Kane says, is it true that 20% of Crimea is ethnically Ukrainian? And why did the Soviet Union ceded to Ukraine then? Well, I don't know about the ethnic mix of Crimea. I mean, all I will say is that everything that I've heard suggests that support for Union with Russia there was overwhelming and remained solid. And there's never been any sign of any dissension since. Now, why did it, why was Crimea transferred to Ukraine?

It was a decision taken in 1954 by the former Soviet leader Nikita Khrushchev. There was no proper explanation apparently given. It was very unpopular with the people in Crimea itself. Of course, it is important to remember that in 1954, Ukraine was part of the Soviet Union. And nobody, I think, at that time imagined that that would change. So it was like transferring it from one regional government, control by one regional government to another regional government. I mean, I don't think it was seen as that important. But I seem to remember also that it was done as part of a commemoration of a treaty that was made in the 17th century or something at that time.

Nikita Khrushchev himself came from Dombas and was for a long time first secretary of the Communist Party of Ukraine. he'd been based in Kiev. He was, you know, politically and culturally, very close to Ukraine. I mean, it's likely that that had part in it too. Festec J says, are analysts afraid to debate Brian because he brings policy papers to back his claims, whereas everyone else relies on their reputations? Well, we're not afraid to, we're not, we're not afraid to debate with Brian. Brian Belennais.

He's one of our best guest. Exactly. We do it with great pleasure. And, of course, he does bring policy papers. And we also look at me. I guess he means debate like the Pierce Morgan types of debates, I guess. I don't like doing those. I don't know about you, Alexander.

No, I wouldn't be like. Those types of debates. No, of course. I don't know if those debates are helpful to be quite honest. I don't think they are. They make for good viewing, I guess. Yeah, absolutely. Gio Stone says, Alex, what are the best actions of defense for Iran?

How will this end now? A long-term war? Is this the end of the U.S. Empire like the Roman Empire? Well, this is what the Israelis are talking about, a long war, cutting off the Straits of Hormuz, launching ballistic missile strikes across the Middle East, sustaining a long war in the kind of way that Vietnam sustain a long war against the United States. there was one thing that Willie said, which I'm going to hold to it, which is that in the West, we plan for a quick battle.

In Russia, they plan for a long war. And that's the difference. M.D. Boussier, thank you for that super sticker. Open view, Ozzy says, hi, I'm not sure what the U.S. is trying to do in Iran. The attack hasn't come yet. And they're looking for an off-ramp. How would war mongers react?

I don't think they are looking for an off ramp. I was very, very alarmed by Trump's words about Iran in the state of the Union address. I mean, they deeply shocked me, actually. So I didn't get the sense that he was looking for an off ramp at all. So that's what I would say. Now, as I said, what the actual objective in Iran is? Well, there was this meeting in the White House where members from Congress were briefed. Of course, it was the Democrats came out.

They said that they couldn't discern a real plan or a real objective. They were the Democrats. They don't like Trump. Maybe one shouldn't place too much weight on that. But for the record, it conforms exactly with my own view. I don't think they're looking for an off-ramp. I agree with you, Alexander. Yesterday I was, or two days ago, I was thinking they're looking for an off-ramp.

After the State of the Union speech and some of the articles that came out today, for example, the one on Politico and then J.D. Vance interview. Yes. I think they're looking for a way to get approval numbers up for this war. Exactly. I think they want this war. They just want buy-in from the American public. And they can't figure out how to do this.

Exactly. So they get Israel to attack first. That's the new great idea. Or keep on saying that or going now with this WMD narrative, which is that Iran is building nuclear weapons. Yes. Which they keep on. Yeah. Intercontinental.

I think they're looking for buying because the polling data is really bad on this war for Trump. Exactly. Yeah. Jungle Jin says chances of a major preemptive nuclear strike by Israel upon Iran, rendering current preparations by Iran irrelevant? I don't think so. I don't think the Israelis will do that. And I'm going to say something else.

I assume, it's only an assumption, but I assume that before Israel is able to use nuclear weapons, it needs to get the consent of the US. And I suspect that, as is the case of the British nuclear deterrent, the Americans have some control, some actual material technological control. over Israel's use of nuclear weapons. So I don't think the United States wants a preemptive nuclear strike on Iran.

I think I've been an absolute calamity and a total disaster for Israel, by the way, as well. So I don't think that is going to happen. If we get drawn into a long war and Israel starts to see this as an existential issue for itself, then I'm afraid these possibilities are possibilities. we're going to have to discuss and face. But I don't think a preempty strike is likely. USA now says the Dow is over 50,000. Dow is over 50,000.

Paul Walker says, no Palestine action in Russia. I bet Yuri Besmanov told us all years ago what would happen to the West and been sleepwalking ever since into it. Well, yes. I mean, I don't know that there's any need for a Palestine action. in Russia because the Russian government is actually fairly sympathetic to the Palestinians, just so,

and manages to maintain good relations with Israel at the same time. Elsa says, good day, gentlemen. Thanks for doing what you do. Thank you, Elsa for that. Iranian kiddo says many different people have lived in Crimea throughout history. The Tarians were the earliest recorded indigenous people mentioned in Greek sources. Absolutely. We were lots of Greeks there. I mean, Yalta, the town of Yalta, which the famous beach resort, that's a Greek name. It was a Greek foundation.

It comes from Yalos, which, as Alex, who lives close to the sea, will tell you, he's all about to see the word yalos. So there you go. Sticky Mark says, I've got a Duran in Tatters Tee. Will there be an Alexander-themed, just saying one, just wondering, just wondering away from the bay.

Oh, okay. Thank you for that, sticky marks. Yeah, we'll create a mug with some more of our sayings, sure. Yes, absolutely. Thank you. Zizi Karayanis, thank you for that super sticker. Iranian kiddo says Ghats and Huns moved into Crimea in late antiquity. Turkish people started to settle there from the early medieval period onwards.

Yes. Russia's mostly began moving in starting the 18th century. Yes, all of which is true. but it said, don't forget the Greeks. We were there. We called it Herosanis in the past. And the actual real, true city of Haasson is in Crimea, not where Potemkin and Catherine, the Greek,

we founded it, which is, as we know, in what is now Kershon region, to the northeast, to the northwest, I should say. Exactly. Herson. Nerson, yeah. Junkul Jin says U.S. has any control of Israel? I think probably it does, at least at this level that I'm talking about, the actual military control in case of war.

I'm not talking about politics, which is a completely different story. Alexander, that is almost everything, almost everything from Iranian Kido, Basporian Kingdom in Crimea in the 5th century BC was actually the first Hellenic state with non-Greek, majority. population. Absolutely. This is absolutely true. And by the way, Iranian Kedios, I'm sure you know, the Skithians and the Samarsians who were also present in Crimea were an Iranian people. They spoke Iranian languages, as we now know. A long-time listener says Mariupol is Greek too? I think Mario, well, there's a very big Greek population in Mariupol. Huge. Huge. But again, I don't think this an ancient Greek or Byzantine foundation. I think this was another one of these places that was created by Catherine the Great and Potemkin. They gave all these places in the late 18th century

Greek names because they wanted to basically establish this concept of Russia as the protector of the Greeks and they gave, Catherine gave her eldest grandson who was going to be lead Russia, the name Alexander. So he was going to be Alexander the great, Alexander the first of Russia he became, the emperor, the Tsar of Russia. And the youngest son became Constantine. He was named Constantine. And the plan was that eventually the Russian army would get to Constantinople. And he would be found the Byzantine Empire. So that was that was the plan at that time, but it was never executed. Alexander, who you say was the best

Russian leader. I think it was certainly the best of the Russian SARS in my Russian SARS, yeah. Iranian Kido says it was mostly composed of Scythians and Samarishans nomadic Iranian people of Esteppe. What did I just say? So there we go.

Definitely Iranian peoples, yes. That's everything, Alexander. Let me just do one quick check. And your final thoughts as I look over. It was one of the best. I think that was an absolutely outstanding live stream. And it was fascinating to see such a deeply intellectual person. And somebody who actually takes clouds of it seriously.

There's so few people who read him. But somebody who understands the metrics. and realities of one. I just wanted to say quickly that, again, to repeat, I am a liquidation, I was used to be, for much of my life, a bankruptcy and liquidation specialist. And I've seen exactly this, that everything seems on the surface to be stable.

And you know that beneath everything is starting to fall apart. And then what was it that Hemingway said, you go bankrupt slowly, and then you go bankrupt quickly, all at once. And that's exactly how. And that's exactly how it works. Gio Stone says, how will the world react to a nuclear strike? I cannot give you exact details, but the day after it happens, we are living in a completely different place.

That's all I will say. All right. We will lend it there. We'll lend it on that note. Not the best of voice. Thank you, Gio Stone, for that. We'll come back this afternoon with videos on your channel, Alexander Mercuris, and on my channel as well. Definitely check out Alexander's channel and my channel.

And if you have not subscribed to this channel, please subscribe to this channel. Like this video. Share this video. Duran Shop. Substack. Thank you to our moderators. Thank you to everyone that watched us on Rumble, on Odyssey, on locals, and on YouTube. the duran.locals.com.

Definitely sign up to our locals community as well. Alexander, let's get back to work. Absolutely. All right. Take care, everyone. And Willie OAM's information is in the description box down below. Yeah. Take care.