The Duran Podcast - Zelensky losing ground war, trying to spin drone war

Episode Date: January 26, 2025

Zelensky losing ground war, trying to spin drone war

All right, Alexander, let's talk about the military situation in Ukraine, and let's focus on Dombas. And the situation in Dombas looks really, really bad for the Ukraine military. What's going on? Well, I think the situation doesn't look bad. It looks absolutely disastrous. And it is becoming really gruesome, specifically in one place, which is this small town of Velika and Novo Silka in southwest Donbass. There, the Ukrainians have managed to get themselves trapped.

I say they've managed to get themselves trapped. This is an important strategic place. Velika and Novo Silka is of some strategic significance. It stands as one of the final barriers to the Russian advance, to the Dnieper, and we've discussed in many places, how dangerous it is for Ukraine if the Russians do reach the Dnieper in central Ukraine. But again, the Ukrainians decided to hold on in Velika and Novo Silka for too long. And Velika and Novo Silke was supposedly an easy place to defend because there are three rivers,

three different rivers that crisscross it. And that looked like they provided a strong water barrier and a strong defense line. What has instead happened? It's, is that it's turned into a trap. And it seems that there's an entire brigade of the Ukrainian army there, the 110th brigade whose soldiers are furious because they weren't, they weren't withdrawn and are saying that they were abandoned and in effect betrayed. And there are also all sorts of other Ukrainian soldiers there.

So the Russians are now saying spreading messages to the soldiers in village. Novosilken, telling them surrender. Now is the time for you to surrender. But of course, the Dik, the Ukrainian soldiers still get orders from Zelensky and Syriksky to fight to the last. It seems there really is no exit from Velikaya Novosilche. So this looks like, I mean, it looks as if it's going to be the biggest disaster in terms of manpower losses. that Ukraine has suffered since the collapse of Avdewka last February. I mean, it's extraordinary that this should happen over a small town that is, yes, of some military significance, but not of any very very great military significance.

Now, everywhere else, it's the same story. I mean, the Russians are continuing to advance. They've captured more villages around Pakrovsk. They've, both to the west of Pakrovsk and to the north of Pakrovsk, sorry, to the east of Pakrovsk, as Ukrainians themselves would admit, is being gradually surrounded. Apparently, the Russians are bombing it and there's FPV drones operating over it continuously. Toretsk, the only remnant left is the coal mine, and the coal mine is in the process of being captured, apparently there's only a few territories on the coal mine that are still under

Ukrainian control. Chassefiyar, the Russians have captured the city center, the local council building, the local council building, apparently the railway station, the main railway station, the industrial zone, factory district, all of these places. Again, the Ukrainians trying to cling on, again, for no obvious and logical reason to some of the outskirts of Chassefya. It makes no sense for them to do so, but that is what they're doing. And at the same time, the Russians have crossed the two rivers, the two small rivers, the Jerebets and the Ostgold rivers. They're being set to surround Kupiansk and to capture

Lehman fairly soon, reversing the entire Kharkov offensive that Ukraine carried down. out in the autumn of 2022 when it recaptured these places. It's a terrible situation. And the losses that the Ukraine is suffering are terribly high. And the manpower losses are terribly high. Now the Ukrainians, rather than acknowledge this, what they are saying, what they are trying to tell everybody is, yes, we are losing the ground war. Our army is being defeated and destroyed.

We are losing now really important territory. The Russians are indeed getting closer and closer to the river, you know, the need them. But we are still in contention because we are able to launch these drone strikes deep inside Russia and this somehow offsets what is actually going on on the ground. Now that is absurd. If you follow what has been happening with these drone strikes, they cause minimal damage to the Russian economy, and they barely affect Russian society at all. They are in no way comparable to the missile strikes that the Russians launch on Ukraine.

But increasingly, we see a kind of false parallel being made by the Ukrainians between this supposed air offensive that the Ukrainians are going to be. conducting against the Russians, with this ground offensive that the Russians are conducting against the Ukrainians. And to my mind, that tells us ultimately what this is all about again, this drone offensive on Russia. It's PR again. It's trying to persuade the West and particularly perhaps Donald Trump, that Ukraine is still

in contention and that it's holding its own. when everybody who follows the war closely can see it is not. Yeah, it's spin. It is absolute spin, but, you know, the media is behind it. So Ukraine has full collective West media support. And they make it out as if Ukraine is still in this thing because you're launching drones into Russian territory. They never really, you see that the media never gets into the details anymore

of what's happening on the front lines. They avoid everything that's happening on the front lines. the media now, the collective West media, just avoids it. And so they focus on the great success that is Ukraine's drone program. And when you take a step back, Alexander, it does make a sick, weird kind of sense. If you're Zelenskyy, you know you've lost this war. You know the situation is God awful. But once again, your only hope is to get U.S. boots on the ground, not even European. Zelensky even says it now. He doesn't care about European soldiers in Ukraine. He has no interest in European soldiers in Ukraine. What he wants is U.S. boots on the ground.

And so if you try to get into the mind of Zelensky, which is a horrible thing to try and do, but if you try to get into his mind, his hope, his only Hail Mary strategy left is to get U.S. boots on the ground in Ukraine. You now have a President Trump. in office and you realize one thing about Trump so far in his first four or five days, which is that he believes much of what the collective West media is writing and reporting about Ukraine. So if you get the picture out that you've got a shot to win, if you get more money, it can produce more drones and build up this big military industrial complex in Ukraine,

then you can fight Russia. head on, then maybe you can get to a point where Trump says, okay, you guys are really, you know, doing great. You're able to fight Russia, so we'll give you the guarantees and the support. I mean, that's his twisted logic that I believe he's trying to follow and implement. That is exactly his plan. I mean, ultimately, it's been Zelensky's policy, at least since the 2023 counteroffensive failed. It's to try to find. find some way of dragging the United States itself into the war. He knows he cannot win in any other way. So, you know, we have all these, I talk, all this talk about peacekeeping forces,

and he wants 200,000 men deployed to Ukraine. It's been an article about this in the Financial Times saying that this is unrealistic figure. But the point is, when you're talking about 200,000 men, put aside how unrealistic that is, that is not a peacekeeping. force. That is a war fighting force. That is what Zelensky wants to do. Now, he probably has all kinds of scenarios in his head. One scenario is he gets Trump to force the Russians to agree the ceasefire. The ceasefire is going to be backed by this big Western military contingent. Zelensky's insisting it must include Americans and that it must be backed by security guarantees. So what he would have been backed by security guarantees. So what he wants then is he then wants to engineer us.

What will he will then do? As this night follows day, he will engineer a situation where the ceasefire breaks down, he will blame the Russians for it, he will then demand that the United States enforce the ceasefire and he will say that he needs a no-fly zone, he needs unlimited military support, missile strikes across Russia, all that kind of thing. That's what Zelensky is trying to do. And in order to achieve that, he's got to convince Trump and the Americans that Ukraine is still a battle worth fighting for. So he's losing the war on the ground.

He knows that perfectly well. Contrary to what Trump says, he shows no real sign of wanting to negotiate. I don't believe he can. And therefore, he's trying to find he's coming up with all kinds of complex ideas about how he's going to get the Americans involved in the war. And that is something that Donald Trump needs to be particularly careful of because, as we've discussed in many programs, Zelensky is a very manipulative individual,

and you need to be very careful of what he says and what he's up to. If you want to understand what a manipulative individual he is, then go to someone who knows him well, who is his former spin doctor, Aristovic, who has been giving long interviews and discussions, describing exactly the kind of person that Zelensky is and the kind of person he's become. You don't even need to go there. You did a video the other day, and you talked about the Istanbul Agreement, where I believe it was at the W.EF at a media session, Q&A session at the WEF when he was asked about the Istanbul agreement.

And Zelensky claimed that he couldn't move forward with the Istanbul agreements of 2022 because those agreements told Ukraine that Zelensky can no longer be president of Ukraine and they would maneuver in Medvedevichuk, which is just a complete, flat-out lie. Yeah. But he just said it right there. in front of the media and everyone believed it. And that's his strength, though. He understands that. The media backing of him is his strength. And he also understands, he's so manipulative that he understands that it's the media and Trump's belief in the mainstream media that is Trump's weakness.

So he's going to play his strength and he's going to play Trump's weakness. Exactly. That is exactly correct. I mean, Zelensky is someone that Trump needs to deal with very, very carefully. I think this is one of the things that Trump, again, perhaps doesn't understand that he doesn't have a partner in negotiations in Zelensky. He can negotiate with Putin. Putin is somebody who negotiates in a, I mean, he's a very tough negotiator, but he negotiates in a straightforward and logical way. But Putin discovered in March and April 22 that Negotiating with Zelensky and his team is entering into an impossible world. Everything shapeshifts and moves about, and you think you've got an agreement that you did,

Putin thought he had in Istanbul, except that it all falls apart because Zelensky walks away. The same could happen. It could very, very easily happen with Donald Trump. And Donald Trump also need to remember that this isn't the first time something like this has happened. with American leaders who find themselves in Zelensky's position. I've said this before, but President Chu of South Vietnam also refused to negotiate with the North Vietnamese. He was always coming up with all kinds of demands and proposals and all sorts of things, which made absolutely no sense at all. The Americans had enormous amount of trouble with him after the Paris peace agreement

to breached it and precipitated the collapse of South Vietnam. And of course, the same thing happened with President Garny of Afghanistan, who Donald Trump presumably remembers because he had dealings with him. Again, Garny refused to negotiate or deal with the Taliban. refused to be party to the agreements in Doha. It's exactly the same as with the Delensky. Zelensky, what he has done, what he is skilled at is he's taken manipulative, brought manipulative behavior lying to the media, if you like, spinning fables and stories.

He's raised it to an art form. And exactly as you say, because the media in the West is very receptive to all the things he says, he's able to get away with it. All right. We will end the video there. The durand.com. We are on Rumble Odyssey, Bitcher, Telegram, RockFit, and X, and go to the Duran Shop, pick up some merch like what we are wearing in this video update. The link is in the description box down below. Take care.