The Duran Podcast - Zaluzhny signals, war is lost

Episode Date: October 21, 2024

Zaluzhny signals, war is lost

All right, Alexander, let's talk about what is happening in Ukraine, and let's probably, definitely discuss this article from the Telegraph, which is signaling that even Ukraine's military, even the mighty one-time commander's illusionie, who is now currently the ambassador of Ukraine to the UK. he is even signaling that it's time to wind the war down. How is illusion he doing as ambassador to the UK, actually on a side note? I mean, is he active in the UK as ambassador? As ambassador. I mean, do you know?

He's all but invisible. I mean, he's not really exercising the proper functions of an ambassador. He's still involved in Ukrainian politics. I mean, he's doing so from far away from London, but to all intents and purposes, his primary focus is still Ukraine. And as far as I understand it, he's still in some kind of political alliance with Poroshenko, who will come to shortly, because Poroshenko has also had a bizarre meltdown. And Klitsko, yeah, that group.

I mean, those are the three. The three. The three. Yeah. That are aligned against Zelensky. All right. All right. Let's get into this telegraph.

article, very interesting. It was a very interesting article. Now, the telegraph has never up to now wavered in its utter devotion and support for Ukraine. If you want to read the telegraph's accounts of what's happening, it's all pretty much an adventure story, basically, you know, sort of thriller in which the Ukrainian single-handed, each one defeats a vast army of Russians. They go from victory to victory. the Russians always lose, they're always incompetent, they're always inefficient, the Ukrainians are always heroic and successful. Over the last few weeks, the telegraph has started to wind down. I've noticed this.

They've started to wind down their Ukraine war coverage. And every so often they've been a bit more realistic about the realities. But just a few weeks ago, they were publishing an article by the same journalist Roland Oliphant, who was saying that the Russian offensive had not gone at all well. They might have got fairly close to Pakrovsk, but it was clearly running out of steam. Interesting to read an article by the same journalist a few weeks later. Even he, after talking to Ukrainian soldiers, seems to acknowledge that the war is now unwinnable. unwinnable by Ukraine, they're not yet prepared to say that Ukraine is losing. But if you read

the interviews with the soldiers, the Ukrainian soldiers that he's spoken to, particularly one who's a drone operator, clearly they think that the war is lost. Okay. Why can't the collective West admit that they've lost this war? I mean, at the end of the day, that is, I just want to say that that is the, the important part to all of this, isn't it? Because Ukraine will keep on fighting, at least as long as they can, unfortunately, because the collective West pushes them to continue. Yeah. Well, this is the extreme.

The U.S. doesn't. The West doesn't let them. No. This is the extreme cruelty of the thing. Because if you go back to that same article, they're still hoping somehow that the West will pull it off for them. Not that they will win the war. They don't believe that.

The Ukrainian soldiers don't believe that any longer, but that the West will secure for them a better peace. And they want Western support to continue and to increase. And you remember we did a program a short time ago, which we talked about the fact that there's already a narrative starting to appear in Ukraine. That Ukraine is the only reason it lost the war is because the West, wasn't there, it wasn't fully behind them, a kind of stab in the back myth. You can see elements of that in this article. They're saying, you know, if the West had gone all in at the

beginning, giving Ukraine everything it wanted, everything it asked for, it would have won the war. And now the West must make up for that by giving Ukraine everything it asks for so that Ukraine can come out with some kind of acceptable peace. And the reason they're doing that is because the West still talks about supporting Ukraine. It still is stringing the Ukrainians along, giving the Ukrainians the impression that they can go on fighting and the West will be there and that will somehow bring the Russians, fight the Russians to a stand still. Even though the article itself, says that Western officials have assessed the mood in Moscow and on Putin's part. And they haven't noticed any sign of wavering on that side at all.

So we have this extraordinary situation. Everybody, everybody, Ukrainian soldiers, Western officials understand that the war is lost, but they're locked in to fighting it. And going back to the current moves that we see at the moment, it's exactly what we've discussed in previous programs. What you said, the United States especially is doing everything you possibly can to keep Ukraine still fighting until not just after the election, but until after the new president takes office.

So they want to keep the war going. for another four months, another three to four months, because that is the major priority now, not to have Ukraine collapse on the present president's watch. And Sullivan's watch and Blinken's watch. And Lloyd, and Lloyd, and Lloyd, Austin's watch. He's in Kiev, by the way. He's just gone there. Apparently, he's telling the Ukrainians.

Surprise. Exactly. It's a surprise visit. But apparently he's telling the Ukrainians, the U.S. is right behind you, but we're not going to give you more weapons. We're not going to give you long permission to use your long-range missiles. We'll give you everything we can short of those things that you're basically asking us for. So it's all about keeping the war going for the next three to four months. It's unbelievably cynical. And I think we need to

to clarify that the U.S., Europe for sure, but even the U.S., they don't have anything more to give. I mean, they can empty out their entire inventory of weapons. Sure, they can empty out everything they have, and they still won't win, and they know it, but for any military, they can't do something like that. You know, like the U.S. military can't empty out all of their weapons and give it to Ukraine. obviously that that can't be done. But they've given everything.

That's why, you know, when you hear reports of Ukraine isn't getting enough weapons or Ukraine needs more weapons or anything like that, which the media every now and then talk a lot. They talk about it a lot. The honest truth is there are really no more weapons to give, or at least not in a significant amount that will make any difference whatsoever. And then you don't even get into Ukraine's soldiers, the attrition. They've given all the money they could, the economic state of Ukraine.

My philosophy has always been, the way I've looked at this conflict, if NATO and the U.S. could win this war, they would have done it. They would have done everything they can. But they can't. They would have given whatever they could. They can't. But that is exactly correct. What was last year's summer offensive about it was an attempt to win the war. It was an attempt to defeat Russia, to break through to the Sea of Azov and to the Black Sea,

to isolate Crimea, to put Crimea under siege. That was not intended to achieve a stalemate in the war. It was intended to defeat Russia. That was the plan. They gave Ukraine everything they could. as they thought to achieve that. And it failed. And they've been giving Ukraine attack them's missiles, many more, by the way, than they've officially admitted to. You can see that by counting the numbers of attack of missiles that have been used. And apparently the stoppile is not large, and apparently

it's running down. They've given Ukraine, the British and the French, who've given them huge numbers of storm shadows and scalp missiles. And the stoppile there is apparently all. almost exhausted. The real reason they're pressuring the Germans to give the Taurus missiles is because there are so few storm shadows and scalps left. They've stripped themselves to the furthest possible point in terms of Patriot missiles and other air defense start air defense missiles. Europe is now critically short of air defense missiles. The United States still has a few, quite a few, but of course it's now got to think about Israel and what's going on in the Middle East. It's got to also think about the Pacific. It doesn't have many more spare

missiles to give. And the S-16 saga has turned into a total and absolute shambles, as many people said it would. First F-16 that was operated, crashed because it seems pilot error, because the pilots are insufficiently trained. The F-16s, we're told that there's going to be a complete re-calibration of the entire training program. They're not going to be operating properly until March, except, of course, it's most unlikely they'll be operating even in March, not at the rate this is going. a complete, a complete disaster. As all of the people who understand these things, including the key people in the Pentagon,

said, so there is nothing more to give. The Ukraine's been given everything that could be given, the Shells saga, the artillery Shells saga, we've discussed that many, many places. Pavel's plan to buy shells on the international arms market, which they didn't find enough shells, a significant portion of the ones they got were duds. The Europeans have only fractionally managed

to increase shell reduction. The intentions to do so were unsuccessful. The Americans are a little bit more successful there, but then again, nowhere near enough. So, I mean, it just isn't possible. And again, this is where Ukraine, Ukrainians are not being told the truth. They're still being fed the lie because it is a lie that the West is so much, so powerful, so industrially strong that he can provide unlimited quantities of weapons as it did during

the Second World War, except, of course, that he can't unless it does what it's accusing the Russians of doing, which is running a full mobilization war economy, which, as we've discussed before simply is not militarily acceptable in the West. So yes, they've done everything they possibly can and more. They've gone further on several issues than the Pentagon would have liked, and it hasn't worked. Yeah, war economy. There's no way they could do a war economy. There's not one country in Europe that could handle a war economy. It would collapse. All of Europe would completely collapse. And the United States would not be able to handle a war economy. economy either, not now, not in the state that it's in today. Not going to happen. And I think this is

why you're hearing the rhetoric coming out of NATO, people like Kavoli and Ruta, the new Secretary General, why they're shifting the narrative, they're manipulating the narrative so as to make it be about spending more into NATO. We have a strong Russian military now on our borders. Whatever happens in war, whatever happens in the war, they're saying, Russia's going to be there and they're going to be stronger than ever. So we need all of the NATO members to really ramp up the spending into NATO. They're out of weapons. They're demilitarized. They need to replenish the stockpiles. And they need to figure out an excuse to keep NATO going, to keep the spending going into NATO, to even ramp up the spending going into NATO. So I mean, they're really flipping things

around to the detriment of Ukraine, to the Ukrainian people and the Ukrainian soldiers, but to the benefit of NATO. At the end of the day, this is now about bettering NATO for them. It's not, it's not about Ukraine anymore to me. This is about Ukraine's lost. Now we've got to figure out a way to keep NATO alive, keep it growing, keep it thriving, and to replenish all the weapons that the Russians have destroyed. Absolutely. Carvali's comments were really very interesting. I mean, you're talking about the Russians having a much better army now than they did before. Do you remember all that business about weakening Russia? It's turned out, even Kavoli can see that it's made Russia stronger.

So this is what it's all about, is holding NATO together, increasing the funding for NATO. But what we've seen, and we've seen this repeatedly, is that increasing funding, which you can do is not in itself. enough. It is not the solution to the problem unless you set out and to work out a proper industrial program. And doing that takes years a proper industrial program to be able to build tanks and shells and guns and drones and all of the other things in the sort of quantities that are being spoken of when you no longer have the industrial base and you no longer have the engineering skills and you no longer have the organisation. Doing that from scratch is something that will take at least five to ten years and it would require a degree of focus and a degree of, you know,

financial and intellectual discipline and managerial skills. which I just don't get the sense. Certainly in Europe, maybe they do to some extent still exist in the United States. But in Europe, they simply don't exist at all. And it's not going to happen at a time when budgetary crisis right across Europe, at a time when the United States is already adding a trillion dollars to its debt every three months. I just don't see how this is possible.

I think people need to be real. And they need to understand. Firstly, I think they need to, they need to fess up to the Ukrainians to tell them straightforwardly, look, we have done everything we can. We cannot do more. It didn't work. You're not going to win. In light of this, what you need to do is to negotiate because the alternative is you're going to lose. And they need to fess up to themselves and to the people of the West. Not the thick. to do any of those things. NATO cannot admit defeat, right? They can't admit that they lost. That would be a disaster for NATO. Absolutely. Absolutely.

Well, of course, if they did, if they did that, that would be an internal crisis right across the West. It would mean, suddenly, a recognition that we're no longer as powerful as we pretended to ourselves that we were. And, of course, countries around the world, is. Israel, Taiwan, to name two, might on that basis start to reassess their policies and to come to conclusions. Now, that I think actually would be a good thing. If countries like, say, Taiwan and Israel decided that they didn't have an overwhelming force supporting them, they might start

to adopt more realistic policies. But in Washington, they're terrified of that. They're terrified that if they admit that they're weaker than they are, then they want people to think. If they admit that they're weaker than they want people to think or than they represent, then they're afraid that their allies will peel away. It's a lusjni. He is positioning himself as the man who,

can negotiate, do you think? Because I mean, you read his statements in this article from the telegraph, going back to the article in Telegraph. By the way, the title of the article for everyone that may be interested in this article is even Ukraine's fiercest soldiers want the war to stop. Zaluzni, is he positioning himself as someone who can negotiate with Russia, who is a realist as opposed to...