The Duran Podcast - Zelensky - Zaluzhny, power struggle

Episode Date: December 5, 2023

Zelensky - Zaluzhny, power struggle

All right, Alexander, let's talk about either a coup in Ukraine or a Maidan 3. Actually, that is what Aristovic said the other day. He said there is either a coup coming or a Maidon 3. Now, Zelensky in an interview he gave maybe two weeks ago, he talked about how the Russians are planning a Maidon 3 to overthrow his government. an admission that Maidan 1 and 2 was indeed an overthrow of a democratically elected government and Dimitri Medved, if he pointed that out. But he said the Russians are planning on Maidan 3.

But you now have a lot of talk about some sort of change in the government, a regime change, coup d'etat. Something is happening in Ukraine. It looks like you have Zelensky and his team, Zelensky, Padoliac, Yer. Mac on one side. It seems like you have Zillusioni, I would say Klitschko now, perhaps Poroshenko, and some other oligarchs, perhaps, on the Zaluzni military side. And then you also have the Budanov SPU Intel, which it's hard to say where exactly they're tilting towards. You had this poisoning incident incident of Mariana Budanov and perhaps the Budanov is just kind of sitting back and

waiting to see what happens. Maybe he wants to seize power. Who knows? But something is happening in Ukraine. Maybe we won't have a coup or a Maidon three. Maybe Alenski will get certain intel from Budanov and he'll be able to prevent something like that happening. But I think it's pretty safe to say now that plots are being hatched. Plots are being hatched and they are clearly moving to some kind

of, you know, an event, some kind of a showdown. Now can I just say, of course, it's very interesting that Arrestovic talks about Maidun 3 as an alternative to a coup. Most people would say that my done 2 was a coup.

But anyway, there we go. I mean, I'm just, just just saying, I mean, how do you remove from office against his will a constitutionally elected president and claims that this is not a coup? I mean, it's presumably some sort of a coup. I mean, he's not suggesting, as far as I can tell, an impeachment process,

which apparently the Ukrainian system would make extremely difficult. So one way or the other, what Aristovic is talking about is a coup, either a coup, which is the normal classical coup, troops on the streets, police people rounding up prisoners, that kind of thing, the kind of coup that we're familiar with from Latin America and other places, or alternatively, he's talking about another kind of coup,

protests to the streets, squares being occupied, that kind of thing. I think that's the distinction. That's the distinction. That's the distinction he's trying to make, yeah. There's military guys or whether there's going to be people on my dot square. Exactly. And by the way, we are already seeing small protests so far, but they are growing in Kiev. They're there all the time, even.

The British media is picking them up now. People are, you know, demanding rotation of their loved ones who are in the army and that kind of thing. They're apparently appearing on the Kiev subway, all kinds of things of that kind. But for that aside, let's not talk about the mechanics. of this, it's absolutely clear that there is now a growing movement within the Ukrainian political military leadership to try to get Zelensky out. And they're all of them looking for ways to do it. They haven't yet settled on a way. And Zelensky is very well aware of this. And he wants to remain where he is. You've had his wife saying that she doesn't want to

want him to stay as president for another term, which you could argue is that she's trying to persuade her husband to bend toward this pressure, to step down. I mean, that's what it looked like to me. But Zelensky himself appears determined to stay. I think the people around him, people like Yermak, Podoliak and the others also obviously want him to stay. And a couple of days ago, Zelensky went on this very strange and mysterious tour of the various military people on the front lines. He went to Herzlons. He met with all the generals. He announced he came back and made an announcement about Ukraine building fortifications. It was all very muddled and not entirely clear, but it looked as if he was saying that Ukraine is going to go on to the defensive from this point on.

own senses that he was going to the military trying to shore up support with them and that he didn't speak to Zalusini because clearly he sees and probably rightly as one of the key plotters but my impression was that what he was doing was telling the military look back me what is your price and the military said look the soldiers the general said look if you want us to back you the minimum thing you have to do is to stop these offensives these are attacks, let us go on the defensive. We're just frittering away our resources by doing that. So Zelensky, who up to this point, has insisted on the tax being conducted on every part of the front lines, went back to Kiev after meeting these military people. And as part of

whatever deal or attempted deal, he tried to close with them, agreed that you Crane is on the defensive from this point on and is going to try and build fortified lines. More difficult to do, by the way, than say, but that is what it looked like to me. Of course, whatever deal Zelensky thinks he's cut with the generals might not really be a deal at all in their eyes. We'll just have to see how it all plays out. But clearly, lots of things are going on. You've got rumors swirling around. You have MPs from Zelensky's party

sniping all the time at Zillusioni. There's clear indications that Zolensky wants to sack Zalusini because he clearly sees Zalusini as the chief plotter. You also get rumors and speculations about what Zillusioni himself is up to. Zillusioni is keeping very, very, very, quiet. He wasn't at this meeting with the other generals. And there's been reports of telephone conversations between Poroshenko and the former president, who's also an oligarch, and another big Ukrainian oligarch, Renat Ahmed, who I believe is not physically in Ukraine

at the moment. But anyway, lots of things moving on, the chess board is moving. And clearly, there is within Kiev now, a consensus amongst perhaps the predominant bloc within the Ukrainian establishment that Zelensky has to go. Is that conversation confirmed? I mean, I think it's 50-50. No, it's not. It's not confirmed.

I have to say this. I've listened to it. I'm slightly leaning to the view that it's genuine and there's two reasons. Firstly, if you are going to have a conversation, you know, Poroshenko trying to sort of carry out a coup and you wanted to fabricate it, would you really fabricate it by having a person like Ahmedov?

Wouldn't you be having Poroshenko talking to a military or intelligence person? Something of that guy. So that's one thing. second is that Ahmedo himself seems to be very unwilling to join the coup. And again, that does make me wonder whether, you know, if you were looking to fabricate a conversation, you would do it in quite this kind of way. It did make me wonder, by the way, whether it might be Ahmeda himself who was recording the conversation. It's that kind of complex business that, you know, is taking place in Ukraine at the moment. People are maneuvering and there's plots going on. There was

the incident about two weeks ago of the man who pulled a pin from the grenade and got himself blown up on his birthday. There was the poisoning of Wadanev's wife. Zillusionee's assistant, you mean? Yeah, absolutely. Sorry, Zillusionist. So he's on the Zillusioni side, yeah. He's on the Zilluzni side. He got blown up with a grenade, which is given to him. I mean, very bizarre incident, which has not been properly explained. Then there was the fact that Boudanav's wife was poisoned, and this does look like a real assassination attempt. All kinds of things are going on.

And it seems to me that this conversation between Poroshenko and Ahmedov fits fully within that, and somebody has leaked it. It might have been the Russians, who are probably listening into all these conversations. It might have been Ahmedov himself, But it does make it pretty obvious if it is true, if it is true, which on balance I think it is, that Poroshenko is engaging in some kind of a plot himself.

Yeah, well, Bortoshenko tried to leave Ukraine and he was denied. And he says he was going to go to Poland to talk about the trucker blockade and then talk to Americans, American officials about getting money into the Ukraine government. Nonsense. nonsense. I mean, he's clearly, what he's clearly wanted to do was to go away and lobby with the Americans for his coup. I mean, that's clearly what this is. It's crystal clear. Yeah. So yeah, he's obviously trying to drum up international support. Maybe there are people that that want him. I mean, I think that's the big question. What people, what, what countries, what governments, what organizations, what officials, in the collective West are lobbying for Zelensky to go. You know, maybe they wanted to meet with Bortoshenko to see how things are going. Are you progressing in your, in your little attempt to remove Zelensky?

I mean, are we talking about people in the EU? Are we talking about people in the United States? Three-letter agencies? The Polish officials, who could be lobbying various oligarchs and, and parliament officials and military officials to remove Zelensky. Well, that's an excellent question. And I think the first thing to say

is that any kind of coup in Kiev is not perhaps impossible, but becomes incredibly difficult if the Western governments were to decide that they still wanted Zelensky to remain in place. I mean, they basically control the political situation in Kiev. So for a coup to succeed

or to have any realistic chance of success, it would need some support from some government in the West. Now, my own sense is that if there's going to be an attempt to remove Zelensky the initiative must be coming from people in the United States.

And you can see why. We've had that article about three weeks ago in Newsweek, that they were saying that the United States is telling Zelensky that negotiations have to be opened with the Russians now by the end of the year. If that doesn't happen, then consequences will follow. Zelensky is ruling out negotiations. He's ruling out elections.

He's closing off, if you like, lines to do what the American, according to this Newsweek article, want him to do. And it could be the case. In fact, it plausibly is the case that if there is an attempt to get Zelensky out, the initiative isn't coming partly from Ukraine, but also from some people in Washington. And again, a couple of days ago, I think it was in the London Times. there was another article which said that the US and Germany are now limiting supplies of weapons to Ukraine in order to get Ukraine to agree to negotiations.

And we know that Zelensky is refusing to conduct negotiations. So if that report is also true, and I have my doubts about that one by the way. But if it is also true, then again it could be that some people, in Germany are also involved in this, that they also understand that Zelensky has exhausted his potential, if they put it in the kind of way that they would say, and that they're also involved in trying to leverage him out. Now, I have to say there are other people in Europe especially who are heavily invested in Zelensky as an individual, and I think they might find it very, very difficult to endorse a coup.

Ursula. He's in Ursula, exactly, Ursula. Annalina, Joseph, the British government, all of those people. So I, and, you know, I, I, I'm far from convinced that this is a united, that the collective West is necessarily united behind this thing. But I am increasingly getting the feeling that the Americans are absolutely fed up with Zelensky, that they want to end this crisis in Ukraine in some way to clear the decks for the election next year, that they can see the trajectory of travel on the battlefront.

And they want negotiations to begin as soon as possible. And they see Zelensky is standing in the way. and that's why they're trying to either bypass him or leverage him out. Remember, those articles that have appeared, the one in Newsweek, for example, in the previous one you remember in time, which said that he was delusional and messianic and all of those kind of things, the mere appearance of articles like that suggesting that the Americans are losing confidence in Zelensky

would probably be reason enough in Kiev for people there to start saying to themselves, the Americans no longer have confidence in Zelensky, let's get rid of them. And it may be that some of those articles might have appeared precisely for that purpose. Yeah, I mean, Zelensky has to stay in power. because it's the only way he can survive.

I mean, even if they were to cut Zelensky loose, even if he listens to his wife's advice and says, okay, honey, I'm not going to be president in March 2024. I'm out. And they go and live their life. Even if they let him take all the money that he's accumulated, he understands that without the protection of that seat as president, in Kiev, he's, what kind of life is he going to be living?

Yes. I mean, he understands all of this. So, so he, the only thing he can do at the moment is sit tight. Was that exact? To stay in place at all costs and see if something pops up, if something happens, if, if he can find some sort of exit out of this. So, I mean, for him, this is like, this is about his survival. And he knows it. It absolutely is.

And if anybody has any doubt, if anybody has any doubt about that, about the nature of the game that has been played, just consider the fact that one person has been blown up pulling a pin out of a hand grenade, and another person has been poisoned with heavy metals, you know, Budanov's wife. So this is a game being played for very, very high stakes

within a culture, which endorses, political assassinations. Remember the Ukrainians and I'm not making, you know, I'm not speculating now, it's been confirmed in the American media, have a long history of carrying out assassinations. They've recently carried out a few in Russia. So this is this, this, that this is the kind of culture that we're talking about in, in Ukraine. Zelensky understands that very, very well. And of course, he's frightened. Who does he trust? Does he trust Yerdmak? Does he trust Pudol? should he trust Budanov,

Budanov, the man that has indirectly hinted at being the person behind all of these assassinations. And does he trust the neocons? I mean, here's a question for you. On the one hand, the neocons, they've supported Zelensky completely. And they've been pushing Zelensky to escalate and escalate as much as possible to attack Russia. as much as possible to do whatever he can to hurt Russia.

That's been the neocon plan. So they've been encouraging Zelensky, and they've been his biggest backers. But, you know, even Lindsey Graham, even the hardest of the hardcore neocons, Lindsey Graham said six months ago that elections, actually Graham, Elizabeth Warren and Blumenthal, they went to Kiev and they told it, I believe it was Newsweek. It was, I think it was Newsweek or PBS. They said, no, Ukraine is going to have elections. They want elections because for them, they see Zelensky as a loser.

In other words, we gave you all this money. We gave you all this support. We completely, we supported you full to win this war. And they're probably saying you didn't succeed. And so they want Zelensky out, but they don't want Zelensky out in a way where they could say regime change or coup. They wanted to make it seem, you know, the neocons. They wanted to make it seem like it was a democratic process. So you've got to imagine that even the hardcore neocons are half turned, not are half turned against Zelensky in a big way.

And they want elections. I mean, they're on record saying they want elections because for them, that was a soft way, a soft way to get Zelensky out. Well, that's the American people would then believe, oh, Ukraine. See, it's a democracy. What a beautiful democracy. So Lensky, oh, Zelensky lost the vote. Oh, well. You know, that's how democracies function. Evil Putin. You see how democracy's function. You know, that's what they wanted to do. And even that's now fails. I imagine they're double angry at Zelensky because he won't leave. Well, this is exactly correct. And can I just say, you ask me, whom does he trust? I don't think at the moment Zelensky is able to trust anybody. Perhaps the person that he still has some residual trust in. is the person within his government team,

who many people speculate, controls him. And that, of course, is Yarmak, who, you know, you see Yermak, he's a, I mean, he towers over Zelensky, and, you know, he's a, he does seem to dominate Zelensky as well. But, you know, if you look at Zelensky, if you look at his, how he looks now, I mean, he looks exhausted and stressed and very, very frightened, I would say. This is my own feeling about how he looks. But I don't think he trusts anybody.

Amongst the Western allies, I suspect, again, the people he probably still hopes might be there to provide him with some help in Kiev. The EU can't help him in Kiev, but who might still have some people in Kiev who could help him. The people he would turn to there, presumably, are the British. Because, as I said, they're so heavily, politically, personally, in some cases even emotionally invested in Zelensky.

But I don't think he has many people any more that he trusts, that he can trust. As I said, he rushed to meet the generals. He's trying to get the generals on side, keep the generals on side. I think at some point over the next few weeks, he's going to make his move against Zalusli as well. He's going to try and blame Zalusini, for the failure in Avdaevka, which is getting closer by the day.

Every day we see, we get more news about how the whole situation in Avdaevka is getting for Ukraine worse and worse. So I think that perhaps everything is still in, everybody's waiting for this battle to end, the Avdavka battle to end. And then we will see who wins the power struggle. Either Zelensky manages to sack Zalusin, which will be a sign that, you know,

he's probably on top in the power struggle. Or if not, if Zalusti is still in place, then it would suggest that the generals and the others are now starting to combine behind him. And, you know, we could probably see some move being made against Zelensky, an overt move being made against Zelensky over the course of the next few weeks. I mean, you've been saying on your programmes

that Avdavka is crucial, and I think you are absolutely right. Now, if we go to the US, their big concern is to try to avoid what happened in 1963 in Saigon, where the Vietnamese, the South Vietnamese generals,

got the green light from the White House, JFK's White House, to organise a coup against President Ziem of South Vietnam. Siam was an increasingly unstable leader who was clearly losing support. And there was a coup, and the coup ended in Ziam and his brother being murdered by the army.

I think the United States would not want that to happen this time. And it's widely accepted today that the coup against Zienn essentially destroyed political legitimacy in South Vietnam and was a critical factor in the eventual collapse of that country.

So I think the US is... I mean, I think there are people in the US, in the CIA, and within the foreign policy, establishment who remembered that, whether of course Biden remembers it and Sullivan remembers it and Lincoln remembers it and there's another matter. I think there will be people like, you know, William Burns, for example, the CIA director who will be very, very concerned not to have something like that play out in Kiev again. But of course, when things start to move,

when the squares fill up with protesters, protesters, to be frank, in some cases, will have been bust in, and might have been paid to be there, these things happen. When the streets start to fill with protesters, when armed men start to move, the whole thing becomes extremely unpredictable

and can take all sorts of extraordinary terms, and it doesn't follow that the United States can then control, the situation. In 1963, Kennedy made it absolutely clear to the Vietnamese generals, and South Vietnamese generals, that he did

not want Ziam hurt, and yet Ziam was killed. Yeah, just on a final note, I bet you the money issue is also going to be a determining factor as to which party comes out, which faction comes out on top.

If Zelensky can secure the 50 billion from the EU and the 60 billion from the US or something close to that. And I imagine he's bought himself sometime. But if that falls apart, I mean, people, the generals, all these people don't get their money, then I think it's game over. Well, well, let me now be completely cynical about this. I think this is what is driving the whole thing at the end of the day.

I mean, I can be absolutely straightforward about this. I don't think anybody in Kiev any longer seriously believes that Ukraine is going to. I mean, I say anybody, anybody within the elite, any of the people we're talking about, Poroshenko, Ahmedov, Zeluzny, Zelensky himself, all of those, any of those people, seriously believe that Ukraine is now going to win this war. I don't think that any one of those thinks this anymore. what has probably created this crisis in Kiev, or what's driving this crisis in Kiev,

is that the spigot of money from the tap has now been turned off. And I think that this is really what is concerning them. So, by the way, that was the same was true to a great extent in South Vietnam in the 60s. So they need to keep the money flowing. even if they are calculating, as many of them probably are, that sooner or later they're all going to have to leave Ukraine. They want to make it be absolutely confident that when they do leave Ukraine,

there's all that money in the Channel Islands, and the Turks and Kikos, in all of these other places, which they can fall back on when that happens. So for them, keeping the money flows going is the overriding priority. And I'm not saying that there wouldn't

have been plots and conspiracies against Zelensky. Had the TAP still been on because of the deteriorating situation. But the fact that the TAP has now been turned off is probably what is giving this whole

thing, this particularly frantic quality at this time. Now that's my take. It's a very cynical one. But, you know, if you know, Ukraine, you will know, you will know that, you know, being cynical, it's usually being, being right. Why is it cynical? I mean, it's, at the end of the day, isn't it always about money? It's been, well, about you. Hasn't this whole project Ukraine been about money at a very basic level?

Absolutely. Well, absolutely. That's exactly what I think. And I think anybody who's followed Ukrainian politics over the last, not just, you know, not since my done, but going all the way back to 1991 can see that. Yeah. You know, just on a final note, when all of this wraps up, I joke around about this, but in five years there's going to be some

Ukrainian lieutenant general, lieutenant colonel, who's going to end up buying football clubs in the UK. And everyone's going to sit there, scratch their head and say, where did this guy get all the money? And, you know, if you go from back far enough, you'll see that he was somewhere in the hierarchy of the Olenski government.

or the Ukraine military, and now he's buying, I don't know, give me a football club. He's buying Man United or Tottenham or something, you know, and everyone's going to be like, okay, that's that's exactly what's going to happen. Well, this is exactly correct. Can I just say, I mean, of course, with the big purchases of things in London, I mean, because, you know, I lived through this. I was aware of what was going on. I was, you know, I wasn't exactly on the cutting edge, but I knew all the people who were

in Britain. Well, I knew a lot of the people who were facilitating it. The money came pouring into London after Vladimir Putin became president. That wasn't because Putin was green lighting it, quite the opposite. It's because all the people who, you know, the oligarchs, all the people who had made themselves very, very rich in the 90s, were starting to see that the writing was all on the wall and were taking their money out.

And that was exactly what happened then. And I suspect it's exactly what we're going to be seeing. Probably are already seeing playing out now. There's already an awful lot of Ukrainian money in London, by the one. Just saying. All right. We'll leave it there. The durad.

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