The Duran Podcast - Zelensky finally fires Zaluzhny

Episode Date: February 10, 2024

Zelensky finally fires Zaluzhny

All right, Alexander, let's talk about the palace intrigue in Kiev. Perhaps the longest firing process I have ever seen, but it finally happened. Zellusioni's finally been fired. And Sirsky is the guy. So why Siersky? Why did Zelensky go with Siersky? Do you believe that the United States wanted someone else? perhaps Budanov, do you believe that the European Union is happy with Zalusin being gone and

having Siersky in as the overall commander is the UK happy with this shakeup and having Siersky be commander? My overall impression very quickly is that Zelensky chose the the person who is the least threat to himself. Budanov would have been a huge threat. I believe the U.S. wanted Budanov. I believe the CIA wanted Budanov. And I really do believe that that Zelensky, my hunch is that Zelensky made this choice

that he wasn't influenced by anybody else. That's my hunch. I could be completely wrong. But I think Zelensky said, you know, if Budanov is the guy and if we go the CIA U.S. route, I'm in deep trouble. A lot of support for Zillusioni.

I need to pick someone who doesn't have that type of support and who's not going to be a threat to me. And I think he went with Siskke. And Sikki's not a very popular guy, by the way, not a very popular commander. But anyway, you can get into that as well. Yeah, absolutely. Why do you think all of this happens? I think you're basically right. I mean, I think all the indications were that were piling up over the last couple of weeks

that the consensus was we want Badanofin. We see the conventional war in Ukraine is ending. We want to move towards an insurgency war. This is the plan. Badana if is the person to organise it, he's reliable. He's somebody who works very closely with the British especially, and everybody understands that Zolluzni has lost it. By the way, I'd like to say a few things about Zilluzzi.

in a moment. But I think that everybody could see that Zalusini really isn't wasn't capable of turning the thing round and that a conventional war is really not an option any longer. So they all wanted Wadanov. But

Zelensky himself, very nervous about having someone like Wadanoff there, I suspect many people in the military not at all happy about being commanded by someone who has no background in command. So with Budanov being sidelined,

that only left Sirsky because Sirsky is the only person who could, in any logical sense, fill this place. And of course the thing about Sirsky is that if you look at the comments that have been all over the place, the economists today,

every one of them, No one likes him. He is not liked by the soldiers, he's not liked apparently by the other generals, he's not liked by the nationalist hardliners, he's not liked by the British, he's not liked by the Americans, even Julian Röbke, the journalist that Bill Seitin doesn't like him.

They all say he's a terrible commander, he loses hundreds of thousands of men in battles, his whole record is of a string of defeats by appoint someone like this well you're absolutely right he's no conceivable threat to Zelensky he's the last person to be able to organize a coup it's as if the Ukrainian other Ukrainian generals

would be happy to follow his lead so he's safe for Zelensky he's more safe than solution he was he's more safe than Budanov was because he's position is a weak one relative to the other parts of the military in

Ukraine that will make him more dependent on Zelensky and therefore he can carry out more loyalty Zelensky's orders so clearly there's been an enormous protracted bitter battle fought out in Kiev

we can only guess at some of the permutations of it Zaluzni clearly didn't want to go and resisted he's sacking. Badanov did not one moment he wanted it, another moment he didn't. There's a lot going on behind the scenes. But ultimately, one sense is that Zelensky got the general he wanted. And I also imagine the conventional war is to the benefit of Zelensky as well.

He can now put out narratives of 2025 counteroffensive, once again to split the Russian force, if COVASO, C of Azov, we need more weapons, we need more money. So I think even the narrative of a conventional war, instead of an insurgency war, for Zelensky, benefits him. Well, of course he does, because he has no role in an insurgency. I mean, he would have to go into exile. I mean, he'd probably go off to Florida or someplace like that. Difficult situation.

But if there was an insurgency, the person who was running the insurgency, who would presumably be Badanov, would be the one who would become the star. Whereas with a conventional war, Zelensky still has a role. He's still the president. He's still able to, you know, appear and give the interviews, travel around the world. And of course, he's got a notoriously aggressive officer who believes in attack all the time, which is seriously. and all his attacks, of course, have been debacles, starting by the way from the Battle of the Balzava in 2015, which many, many people say it was Sirsky,

who was basically responsible for. But anyway, he's got a very aggressive commander, somebody who's prepared to talk about offensives, somebody who's apparently prepared to defend Avdewka to the last man, which looks like a hopeless case, but he's got that kind of general, a general who will follow his orders, and a general who is loyal to him. Now, there's actually on that, by the way, an interesting revelation,

and he came in the Daily Telegraph, and it said that way back in 2022, Zaluzni had been strongly opposed to Ukraine's Harkov offensive. He saw it as a diversion. This is from the Daily Telegraph, not from telegram sources. So this is almost certainly real. he thought Zaluzni did that the Kharka offensive only resulted in cosmetic achievements. Again, that's the Daily Telegraph's words,

and was not worth the cost to Ukraine, and that the whole thing was Sirsky's idea. And that tells us a lot about the dynamic between the two men, because Siersky and Zilluzni also didn't get on. But Sirsky gave Zelensky against Zoluzni's wishes a big PR victory. Because ultimately, that is what the Harkov offensive was. Zollusini, by contrast, has never given Zolensky any sort of PR victory. And that is one of the reasons why there is this enormous tension between the two men

and why instinctively Zelensky prefers Searsky over Zillusioning. So what happens to Zillusioning now? There are rumors that he could be ambassador to the UK. I thought Resnikov was already going to be ambassador to the UK. Everyone gets exiled to the UK, I guess, to be ambassador. But what happens to Zillusini? Poroshenko, Zillusioni, Klitsko. They seem to be an item.

these three. And Bortoshenko actually came out to the defense of Zillusioni the other day in the parliament. So where does Zilluzni go? Does he take his money and run and disappear and just say, okay, I'm out? Now I can live the good life somewhere in Italy or France or the United States. Or does Zilluzni hang around in Ukraine, hang around in Kiev, team up with Bortoshenko, with Klitschko and perhaps make a play at power. What happens to the general? It is a very, very interesting question about what Zillusione is going to do. Now, I think the thing to understand about Zilluzni is that putting aside the question of

how good a military commander he is, and I'm not going to get into that in this program, but I understand there's growing doubts about this. I mean, again, the Daily Telegraph, straightforwardly said that he was a clown. I mean, that was how they described his illusioning, that apparently he likes to clown around, and that there are people who think he isn't serious enough for his job. He's also a relatively young officer.

Well, they might be scapegoating him. Yeah, well, they might be. But, I mean, he's a relatively young officer. He's about 50, which, you know, is young for a general to run a wall as confident. as this and he was promoted over the heads of a lot more, a lot of other generals who were more experienced than himself, including by the way, Siersky. But Zalusli has two advantages and they are essentially political advantages. One is that he is Ukrainian. I mean, he is a Ukrainian born in Ukraine and that makes him much more acceptable to the national. others like Sirsky, Siskis is Russian.

He was born in Russia in the town of Vladimir, which is in central Russia. His parents are still alive and they're still there. They are supporters of President Putin, as it turns out, and he has a brother who is still in Russia who won't talk to him because they feel completely differently about things than Sirsky does. So Sirsky is a Russian. and that automatically is going to make him suspect to the Ukrainian nationalists who are such a powerful force within Ukrainian society.

The other thing about Siersky and most of the other top generals in Ukraine is that they are Soviet products of the Soviet military system. They train through the Soviet Union. I mean, Siersky trained at the Moscow Higher Command School and he was an artillery officer in the Soviet army. He served briefly in Afghanistan and in other places. He is a product, as I said, of the Soviet military system. Zulusini is not.

He received all his military training in Ukraine. His entire military background is in Ukraine. To the extent that he's received any training, foreign training at all, it would have come from the Americans. So that already tells you that Zolluzni is going to be popular with some people because they see him as an authentic Ukrainian general, uncontaminated by Russia, uncontaminated by the Soviet system.

And remember, you know, Syski was an officer in the Soviet Armed Forces. he would presumably at one point have been a member of the Soviet Communist Party because if you were an officer in the Soviet Union that was basically what you had to be. So Zaluzzi is free of all of that. He's gone out of his way to associate himself with the hardline nationalists.

He has had pictures of Vandera in his office, he's appeared in photos recently with top people within right sector, one of the very hard-line nationalist organisations. And of course, Poroshenko and Klichko, who you mentioned, are both veterans of the Maidan movement. They were there when the Maidan events took place in 2013, 2014, and when there was the change of power in 2014.

Zelensky is not. So you can see a situation where Zalusini, you know, the Ukrainian general, connected to Ukrainian nationalists, allied to people like Poroshenko and Klichko, could if he chose, form a kind of nationalist military opposition to Zelensky. and Zelensky, who is not an ethnic Ukrainian, as we know, has now a commanding general who is also not an ethnic Ukrainian. He's actually a Russian.

And you could put all this together, and if things start to go wrong on the battlefronts, you can just imagine how Zalusni and Poroshenko and Klitschko, if they decided to work together, could form a very, very powerful opposition to Zelensky indeed, drawing on all the old Maidan forces in Kiev, seeking the support of all the various nationalist militias, and already there's been calls, by the way, for a new Maidan. So just saying, so that, you know, it is a potential thing that Zalusini could do. But of course, it's his choice.

Does he go to London and get the cushy job of ambassadors there, in which case he basically drops out of Ukrainian politics? Or does he stay in Kiev, participate in the political conflicts that are taking place there, involve himself in the political struggles and palace intrigues, and hope to find it way back with Poroshenko, potentially Klichel, and establish some new kind of hard-line nationalist governments you know, self-identifying is straightforwardly Ukrainian and committing itself to the struggle against, against Russia.

So it's potential, it's potential interesting situation. Kind of nonsense that Solutione would be ambassador to London, isn't it? I mean, it's just kind of ridiculous. It really is. Well, it's a signing. You didn't mention Timosheko either. Well, Timoshenko is also there circling, and bear in mind that Poroshenko and Timoshenko hate each other. And Timoshenko is a very interesting political politician, very astute and cunning politician,

utterly on principles and deeply corrupt, but nonetheless extremely cunning. And she seems to be positioning himself, herself in a different way. She's not exactly saying this, but she's draw up. the hints that if things go the other way and you want someone in Kiev who might be prepared to open negotiations with the Russians, she would be the person to do that. I mean, her power base has been central Ukraine, not Western Ukraine. She's always had a tricky relationship with the hardline nationalists. So if Zelensky and Sirsky fail, if and, you know, Pichko, Poroshenko and Zalusini make a move,

it's not impossible that all of those other people who think, you know, we've got to find another kind of way out, this hard-lying nationalist movement, which is, to be clear, only a minority in Ukraine, is leading the country to disaster, will take us to an even further disaster. It's not inconceivable that they might coalesce behind Demoshenko. So, you know, we'll see.

Yeah, I feel that Zelensky was really left with a bad option and a terrible option when all of this started to surface up, to bubble up. Budanov would have meant that Zelensky would have been removed eventually. And Sisky, well, you explained how that weakens Zelensky's position at the end of the day. without the Europeans at this point in time without the Europeans Ursula Borrell Macron Schultz Berbach Zelensky really has no more support. Sunak, I think Sunak does have a liking for Zelensky as well. We know that Boris has some sort of thing with Zelensky. But you know, you do get the impression that the Americans, they want to Budanov.

They're done with Zelensky. and Zelensky seems to have caught wind of the fact that the Blinkins, the Newlands, the Sullivans, they don't really want Zelensky in power anymore. Probably the Grams and the McConnell's as well. They feel like he has failed the neocons. And that's why he ultimately told Budanov no and went with Sirsky, but it's that EU support, this type of bond that he has with these EU officials, that really is keeping him afloat.

But he really didn't have a good option in any of this, whether it was Budanov, Sirski. Either path that he was going to take is eventually just going to lead to his ousting one way or another. That's how it seems to me. I agree. I mean, I think that this replacement of Zaluzziouzni with Sirsky is to be straightforward about it. It's an act of desperation. I mean, the military situation is becoming increasingly difficult. Zelensky seems to have lost the confidence.

of the Americans, or at least the dominant faction in the United States. And you're quite right. The Europeans built up Zelensky to a ludicrous degree. So did the British even more, by the way. And they are his last real constituencies, the only real constituency he had left. If he left Zollusionian Post, and we've discussed this in various programs, If he'd left Solutiony in post, then he would have become essentially president in name only

and would have had to step down. And his fate thereafter would have been an uncertain one. And I think we need to say that. So what he's done is he's brought himself a little more time by getting a general in place who is not Wodanov, who might have. have been a who would have been a potential danger to him and got a general who may be deeply unpopular and deeply incompetent but who for those precise reasons is not a danger to him it's the kind of thing you start to see when regimes start to disintegrate Poroshenko made this extraordinary

speech in the ukrainian parliament it was which he was openly calling for Zelensky to step down. And I said in the video I do on my own channel that it reminded me of Pavel Milyukov's speech in the imperial state Duma in November 1916 criticizing the Tsar and basically saying that the Tsar wasn't running the war effectively, which, to be straightforward,

it was a precursor of the sequence of events, which eventually led to the Tsar's abdication. And again, if you go back to that time, 1916 in Russia, there was again lots of appointments and people being brought in essentially to buy time, to try to stabilize the situation. And of course, none of that in the end succeeded because all the motion, the movements,

to force the abdication were in place and to be frank this appointment looks like that it's another desperate attempt by a drowning man to buy himself time hoping that something will turn up and um you know um looking for someone who he can rely upon yeah well duda did say that ukraine was was drowning and it's going to pull everyone down with it. So anyway, all right, the durand.orgals.com. We are on Rumble Odyssey, picture, telegram, rock fin, and Twitter X and go to the Duran shop, 15% off all t-shirts. Take care.