The Duran Podcast - Zelensky forgets Donbass, focus on North Korea

Episode Date: November 13, 2024

Zelensky forgets Donbass, focus on North Korea

All right, Alexander, let's talk about what is happening on the front lines in Ukraine, as well as what is happening in Kursk, 50,000 North Korean troops now in Kersk, Alexander, according to the New York Times, which are 3,000 to 10,000 to 12,000. Now it's at 50,000. Next week, it'll be 100,000 in Kersk, in Russia. And anyway, the situation in the front lines is looking very bad for the Ukraine military. I believe the next area town to be captured by the Russians is going to be Krakowvo. Yeah.

We are getting reports that the Ukraine military is blowing up a dam in the area as they're retreating and trying to slow down the Russian military. And one other thought. Isn't it interesting that as Russia continues to grind down the Ukraine military on the military, the front lines. The collective West media is not talking about any of this. What they are focusing on are all of the stories about Trump talking to Putin and Trump plans for Ukraine and stuff like that. They are absolutely avoiding the horrible situation that the Ukraine military finds itself in on the front lines. What are your thoughts? That is absolutely true. The last is the single most important point of all because they started to wind down their Ukrainian coverage.

They began to reduce it, I remember, after the defeat of Ukraine's summer 2023 offensive. And it's gradually ebbed away. But over the last couple of weeks, as things have gone from bad to worse to catastrophic, they have stopped talking about it, talking about the actual movements on the front lines at all. Once upon the time, you pick up your copy of the New York Times or the Guardian here in London and you'd find all about stories about battle going on for this place or that place or the other place and it was also discussed in great detail. Sometimes it was even quite interesting, but now all that has stopped.

We don't have any stories anymore because there isn't anything good to say about the wall. You have generalities, general comments. mostly pointing to a deteriorating situation about Ukraine being out of men, about the fact that there's lots of desertions in the Ukrainian army and that sort of thing. But as we discussed about a week ago, there's also the contrasting narrative that the Russians are suffering enormous losses, that their offensive is going to run out of steam eventually, that all Ukraine needs to do is to keep fighting, and the balance of the war will turn back in their favor. In reality, the real things that are happening is that the Russian advance

is accelerating. It is gaining momentum. So about, in October, the Russians captured Uglada and Selidovo in southwest Donvas, which is where the big battle is taking place. The Russians have advanced rapidly since then in this same area. It looks like they're in the process of encircling and storming this town of Kourajovu in this area as well. This is another of big fortified towns. Once Kuragovu is captured, the Russians control a continuous belt of territory, reaching all the way basically down to the Black Sea, all the way out north to Pakrosk, which, you know, they reach, they're just a few kilometers outside Pakrosk, and they've been there for several weeks. And they'll have cut off all of the huge belt of territory, Thakros. they'll be in a very strong position to start encircling Pachrosk itself.

This has been their tactic increasingly to surround places before they launch direct attacks on them. When that happens, resistance in Pachros will crumble very quickly. I suspect much faster than people suppose. And of course, the Ukrainians' suffering large numbers of losses in this area. Many of their troops apparently unwilling to fight. There's a major desertion issue for the Ukrainian army now, which is something that the Ukrainians themselves admit to. And, well, it's in this area in southwest Donbass that the big major battle of the war is taking place. But everywhere else, the news is equally bad in Korsk region.

It is catastrophic. The Russians slicing up this cuss pocket chunk by chunk, taking more bits of it back under their control, inflicting heavier losses on the Ukrainians. Zelensky ruling out any possible retreat from the cuss pocket because for him his prestige is tied up with it. There are now growing reports that he's basically given up on Dombas. that he's no longer interested in what's going on in Prakosk, Kouragovar, in any of these places, that he's single-mindedly focused on Kuzk and the area nearby, which is the area around

Kiev itself. And of course that plays directly into the Russians' hands, so they're gradually whistling away this pocket in Kusk, conflicting immense attrition on the Ukrainians there. But, of course, don't talk about the fact that the Cosspocket is collapsing. Don't talk about the disaster, the Ukrainians are suffering everywhere on the battlefronts. Talk instead about fictitious conversations between Putin and Trump and also talk about the North Koreans. And the fact that there's 3, 5, 10, 12, 13, 15, 50,000 North Korean troops assembling, of course. and they're the real danger and the real enemy. And there's even been a really extraordinary article.

I think it was in the New York Times, but it might even be the Washington Post. I forget which one. New York Times. New York Times. These are enormously fit and tough and lean and young men who are far better physical, the mental condition than the Russians.

They are the real danger. The Russians are tired and old and creaky and exhausted and they're not able to fight. It's the North Koreans who are going to do the fine. for them. Yeah. When Kursk collapses for Zelensky is going to be the North Koreans that won Kirste. They saved Russia.

They saved Russia. That's going to be the narrative. Absolutely. You know the interesting part about Kersk is that Putin at Valdai, he said that Ukraine was staying in Kursk, even though the losses were catastrophic. I believe Putin put the number at 30,000 casualties in three months. But they were being effectively ordered to stay in Kursk, at least until after the election, so that it didn't do any damage to the Harris campaign.

But after the election, we were getting reports that Siersky was trying to get out of Kersk, was trying to retreat, but he's not having any success getting out of Kersk. And Zelensky, he complicated things in Kersk where he could have pulled out of. of Kursk now that the elections are over. He complicated everything by layering in this North Korea narrative, which has now even committed him further into Kersk. I mean, he's building a lie on top of lie, story on top of story, and it's completely trapping him in Kersk. Meanwhile, everything in Dombas is just falling apart at a much quicker rate than I think any of us expected. Absolutely. Far quicker rate than I suspect the Russians themselves expected, by the way.

Because to be clear, Donbass is the big battle of this war. When the Russians win the battle for Donbass, when they capture all the territory of Donbass and reach the NEPA for the many reasons we've discussed in many programs that we have done, at that point the war is ended. It is no longer going to be possible for this already very weakened Ukraine to continue and sustainable for much longer than for anything like the length of time that we've seen up to now. The Russians breaking through to the NEPA will be as decisive as the North Vietnamese reaching the Mekong Delta in the Vietnam War. happened? Vietnam collapsed, just to explain that to Americans in terms of a context that they might be able to understand. So, you know, we are much closer to that point than I think

people realize. Now, about, of course, there's one thing else I have to say, and I just want to say this in parenthesis, which is that the Russians have now done all sorts of big formal, you know, presentations about Kusk. And they have made it absolutely clear that they believe, and in fact they don't just believe, they believe they have conclusive information that the original Ukrainian objective was to capture the Kuznuclear power plant. They've done, the Russian Defense Ministry has done a presentation about this. detail presentation about this.

Shoygu has spoken about it. Of course, he's no longer the defense minister. He's the secretary of the Russian Security Council. Other senior Russian officials have talked about it. Even Putin himself has touched on this. So to be clear, that is now absolutely unequivocally the Russian view. Of course, Zelensky denied it last week, as we discussed, his denial. I found completely unconvincing.

It's obvious to me at the time, we discussed this on our programs, way back in August, that when it became clear that the course of nuclear power plant was not going to be captured, the Ukrainians should have called the whole operation off. But they didn't, and here they are. So that takes us to the other problem for Ukraine and for the Zelensky regime, which is the energy infrastructure. The Wall Street Journal is reporting that the energy infrastructure is in a very bad state in Kiev.

We are getting reports that there are blackouts already in the major cities. And the Russians haven't even started to target energy facilities with missiles. What we've been seeing is big drone strikes from Ukraine. Ukraine to Russia, which are not doing anything, but from Russia to Ukraine, which are depleting air defenses, interceptor, missiles, and Patriot Systems. And this is going to compound the Zelensky regime's problems in a massive way. What do you think of everything that's going to happen this winter with the energy situation inside of Ukraine? All the indication. All the indications, are that the Russians are going to resume missile strikes in a big way against Ukraine

sometime, maybe at the end of this month or in December, in the run-up to whatever big offensive the Russians conduct once perhaps Pachrosk's fallen. The energy infrastructure in Ukraine is now functioning at the most basic level. Another big series of strikes that, of by the Russians of the kind that they launched back in, you know, the spring and summer of this year, will simply cause the entire thing to crash. And we won't just have rolling blackouts across Ukraine. We will have a whole situation where Ukraine goes dark. That is what we are looking at. That is what the Russians choose to do. Now, the Biden administration is aware of this. They're apparently trying to send, to Ukraine all the remaining Patriot and other air defense missiles that they can lay held on.

There's even a claim that they're sending up to 500 of them. 500 is not going to be anywhere near enough, nowhere near enough, to withstand the kind of strikes that the Russians could launch at the energy system. And by the way, the drones, the Russian drones, had become an awful lot more effective over the course of this year. They're now, the Russians are able to launch literally thousands of these drones every month. I mean, where it was previously three or four hundred a month, now it's around 1,500 of these drones a month.

And the drones have become far more sophisticated. And they are also doing significant damage. So the energy infrastructure, it's a crisis, the economic situation is a crisis, the prospects of getting loans. Sorry? Go ahead. I was going to say demographic as well. Yeah, prospects of loans from the EU and the U.S. are now starting to fade away.

And as you correctly said, the demographic situation is catastrophic too. All right. We will end the video there. The durand.com. We are on Rumble Odyssey, pitch, you telegram, rock, fin, and X. Go to the Duran shop, pick up some merch. like what we are wearing in this video. The link to the shop is in the description box down below.

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