The Duran Podcast
Zelensky, playing for time
All right, Alexander, let's talk about what is going on in the conflict in Ukraine. More talk about Siersky, perhaps resigning or being fired. Some talked about Siersky and Zaluzhnye wanting to surrender to the Russian military because they realize that Siersky and Zaluzhnye, I say Zaluzhnye, because there's talk that there's some sort of general top-level general mafia in Ukraine. And all of this was about getting Ukraine to surrender to Russia because the generals understand that this work cannot be won. And we have the second peace summit. Zelensky is saying that Russia is invited to this very kind of hymn that Russia is going to be invited to this peace summit or a Russian representative will be invited to this peace summit. But there is also talk which claims that Zelensky is just saying this because he's anticipating that Russia will not come to the peace summit. And when they don't show up to the second peace summit, that will show that Russia is not interested in in a peace. So what do you make of of all of this that is that is happening in Ukraine? I think that Zelensky has no real sincere wish to negotiate or to achieve peace. I think as I've discussed many programs as we've discussed on programs here, I think that Zelensky understands perfectly well that if there was a serious move now to achieve peace and to end the war with Russia, not only would there be an immediate political crisis in Kiev. I mean, the Azov brigade has already given warnings, basically telling Zelensky if he goes down that road, they'll be after him. I mean, quite explicit warnings, by the way. But not only that, but I think he also knows that even if he were to survive that physically, politically, he would be toast. I mean, he would not be able to remain president of Ukraine if after all these years of war and after all these terrible sacrifices, of which we would at that point begin to get finally something like a true measure and the Ukrainian people would get a true measure of it as well. Anyway, I think Zelensky knows perfectly well that he would not be able to survive politically if the war were to end. And as I said, his own personal position, his own physical position is at risk too. So I don't think he wants peace, but at the same time, the situation in Ukraine overwhelmingly points to the need for it. So I don't know for sure what advice Zelensky and perhaps Zelensky are giving, but Bezuglaya, who is one of the deputies in the Rada, is going around telling everybody that Zelensky is telling everyone that surrender now is the only thing that can happen, that the military is almost played out, that they can't keep on resisting for much longer, that Ukraine's resources are all but exhausted. So she is saying this, she is saying that this is what Zelensky is saying. Zelensky might be saying the same thing, but it does get the sense that the top military leaders understand how desperate the situation is becoming. Every single day, we get more reports of poorly Ukrainian casualties. They are now running according to the Russians at around 2000 men dead and wounded every day. Casualties, Ukraine cannot replace. Every day, we get reports of more Russian advances, more fortified positions falling to the Russians. This morning reports that a key road to the fortified town of Vuglita has been cut, that the Russians have broken into the main part of Chassafyar. This is now happening every single day. Ukraine being bombed and smashed, growing doubts about the abilities of the F-16s to achieve anything in the war. The European Union's promises of hundreds of thousands of shells have dwindled to nothing. President Pavel's plan to supply Ukraine with shells that were going to be bought on the international arms market have turned into a seek joke, just as we predicted they would do. The European Union claiming that they were going to produce 1.7 million shells, most of which would be supplied to Ukraine this year. It looks as if they won't be able to produce even as much as a third of that amount. Nobody thinks that they can produce more. Germany cutting, halving the military support is going to supply to Ukraine next year because it's facing a budget crisis. The situation in France looking incredibly complicated, the situation in the United States looking incredibly complicated, Britain basically exhausted, unable to do much more. So everything points to the need for negotiations. So what Zelensky is doing, this is getting his people to tell the New York Times, we're looking for a plan to negotiate, he's telling his people to spread stories about how Russia is going to be very kindly and generously invited to the next peace conference. All of this, it looks to me like Ukraine or rather like Zelensky himself, playing for time, hoping that something somewhere will turn up. They're telling the economists today that they again think that Russia is almost out of weapons. Remember that? We've heard that before. The article today in the Economist that Russia is almost out of weapons. It's tank stocks and infantry fighting vehicles are exhausted. We'll be talking about this in 20 years. Exactly. Anyway, apparently, you know, they're clinging clutching on to all those sorts of hopes. I don't think that Zelensky really wants negotiations. But the fact that there is this talk floating around about it shows how desperate the situation is and how great the pressure to end the war in Ukraine has now become. So what is Zelensky going to do? What is Zelensky going to do? I mean, Ukraine is being smashed. Yes. Is there some sort of a plan from NATO, from the collective West? I mean, do they have a plan? They were talking about a no fly zone in the West of Ukraine. They were talking about the airfields in the West of Ukraine, where the F-16 would take off from. They've been talking about isolating Crimea. France was talking about sending troops to Odessa. I mean, do they have a plan? Is there something that's going to save Zelensky? Is that what he's holding out hope for? No, I think they've never had hope. He doesn't know. He doesn't know. I don't think NATO has ever had a plan. I think that they have had various schemes, like isolating Crimea, by, you know, bombarding the place with missiles. Only that hasn't really worked. And the latest story is that because the missile launchers are being destroyed by the Russians, where they are located, because the Russians now have complete surveillance of the area with their drones, that they're actually pulling out the missile. So that didn't work. So the idea of sending French troops and other troops to Ukraine, European public has now shown in repeated elections that is dead set against that idea, too. So I don't think they've got a plan basing the fighter jets in Romania and Poland. The Russians have given strong warnings against that. The Pentagon isn't keen on that idea because it doesn't want to get into a clash with the Russians. And the no-fly zone idea that Zelensky floated when he went to Poland, getting the bulls to shoot down the missiles over Ukrainian territory. Well, the polls were clearly blindsided, but they've now clearly been told again by the Pentagon. We're not interested in this, and the polls have pulled back on that. So I don't think they have a plan. I think that Zelensky to the extent that he has a plan, it's this. Firstly, hold on for as long as you can in the hope that something, as I said, will turn out. Maybe the Russians will run out of tanks. Maybe Putin really will fall ill with cancer. Maybe there will be big protests in Russia. Who knows? But I think that even Zelensky in his common moments realizes that none of that is very likely. So I think he wants to hold out until the basically the bitter end, and then when it's clear that everything is going to fall out, fall apart, he's going to try to do what Ghani did in Afghanistan, and Tu did in Vietnam. He's going to get on his plane and fly with his briefcases and suitcases to the Western, to the United States, and perhaps hope that he can set up a government in exile there. I think that is his plan, actually. I don't think he has anything more sophisticated or planned or thought through than this. He probably calculates that his prospects of survival, both physically on this earth, and secondly, politically. And remember, if he's able to create some kind of government in exile, he has in a kind of a manner, survived politically. He can still receive funding from Western governments that would still support him, even if the Western governments lost interest. There would probably still be NGOs and philanthropists and all sorts of people who could provide something. So that, I think, for him personally, would work better than trying to conduct a negotiation, which would put him in peril of his life, and which would result in his complete political disgrace. So I think that's what he's going to do. Yeah. A government in exile, a type of act two, to the Zelensky play, which would mean that he would get, maybe he won't get billions of dollars, but he'll get hundreds of billions of dollars. So I imagine that he thinks that's the best solution for himself. Yeah, I could definitely see that that being his game plan, but you have to wait until you have to time it right. You have to wait until the very end, right before the collapse, minutes, before the collapse to get on your plane and to have your suitcases packed with cash and to get out. Yeah, he's going to have to time this very, very well. Yeah. But Easter, Cuba's as a tune, Vietnam, Ghani and Kabul, they all did it. And he has to pick his destination, the right destination as well, where he's going to be protected to set up this government in exile. Yeah, so Lavrov is in New York. He was attending the UN Security Council meeting, and he said some interesting things about Ukraine, Project Ukraine's failure and collapse and how it will affect NATO. Yeah. What are your thoughts on what Lavrov said? Yeah, I think the first thing to say is that Lavrov clearly doesn't believe in any of these Ukrainian overtures. I mean, this is absolutely obvious to me from what he was saying. Basically, Lavrov's point is that the Western powers have used Ukraine, that Ukraine has failed, that they're hoping in some way to sort of cast its side, that they won't be able to do that without this having a massive impact on their own credibility and their own ability to function as a future organization. And I think he's right. He said that the narrative about the fact that if Ukraine loses, then Russia's going to invade Estonia and the Baltic states and move into NATO territory. He said that's a manipulation. The truth of the matter is, according to Lavrov, is that if Ukraine loses, that it's going to be the Baltic states and other NATO member states that are going to lose their trust in NATO and in the U.S. protection of their country with regard to the NATO umbrella. And they're going to start to leave NATO, which will eventually lead to the collapse of NATO and the collapse of the European Union. What do you make of that thinking about Lavrov? He is absolutely right. If NATO fails, well, not if NATO fails, NATO having failed in Ukraine in this absolutely spectacular way. And remember, Ukraine is a big country, large population, big army, heavily built up, trained and reinforced by the NATO powers. If NATO can't win it, defeat the Russians in Ukraine, there is absolutely no way that it can defeat the Russians and the Baltic states. And if young Britain's Germans, Frenchmen and Italians are not prepared to fight for Ukraine, they're not going to be prepared to fight for the Baltic states either. And the current generation of Baltic leaders probably will refuse to accept this. But future generations of Baltic leaders may begin to understand that. And though I think Lavrov's expectations that they will all quit NATO are a bit of a stretch, there is no doubt at all. There is no doubt that defeat in Ukraine, especially on the scale that we're about to see, is going to severely damage the credibility of the whole NATO system. And that he might ultimately not survive this. It's going to undermine NATO in two respects, one in the way that Lavrov was talking about in the countries like Finland, the Baltic states, Sweden, the other states will now say to themselves, "Is the United States really going to defend us from the Russians?" It shouldn't be perhaps instead be rethinking what we have been doing over the last 30 years. Perhaps we should look to the Russians instead. So there's that collapse of credibility. But the other one, which I think people aren't picking up on, is that for many people in the United States, it's now become clear what a dangerous thing these open-ended commitments that the NATO bureaucracy has foasted on the United States are. Most Americans do not want to fight the Russians in Ukraine. Most Americans do not probably want to fight the Russians in the Baltic states. We're going to start seeing a shift away from NATO amongst the American public as well. And not just the American public, but the political class. And that is playing a key role, I think, in the rise of Donald Trump. Ultimately, isn't the fear that the money's going to dry up to NATO. I mean, most of the money is coming from the United States. Most of it is from the US. And if NATO starts to, I don't even want to say a backdrop, let's just say if NATO stops expanding, it's just contained and doesn't continuously try to expand, then effectively, there's no need to continue to pump it up with so much money. And that means if there's no money going to NATO, well, there's no money going to all of the bureaucrats who are in and around NATO, as well as all the think tanks and NGOs that are also associated with NATO. I mean, isn't the big fear at the end of the day and the military does so complex. At the end of the day, it's all about NATO not expanding anymore. It needs no more money being pumped into NATO. And that's bad for all of these entities, which are feeding the NATO racket. Absolutely. What purpose does NATO now have? NATO was originally created in the 1940s to withstand the Soviet Union, which was in those days the ascendant superpower in Europe. It was led by Joseph Stalin, the Red Army was the biggest army on the European continent. It was the country at the vanguard of a revolutionary ideology, which was spreading across Europe. So you could argue then convincingly that you needed an alliance to hold that all back. And that was the purpose of NATO throughout the Cold War. Then after the Cold War ended, it acquired its new purpose, which is as a prop and instrument of the hegemonic power of, well, let's call it the United States, but if you prefer the near cons vision of the United States. So NATO has expanded constantly, it brings in more and more countries. It links them to the Washington system. The near cons are an overall charge of this. All kinds of people in Europe do very well out of it. There's a constant grift of money and financing and all of that. And the inherent logic of that kind of NATO, very different from the earlier NATO, is that it constantly expands. In Europe, it expands in Eurasia, it isolates the countries and ultimately destroys the countries, which the near cons identify as the enemy. First Russia, then China, it expands ultimately to the Asia Pacific region as well. If NATO cannot do that anymore, if NATO is stopped, if the whole process of NATO expansion ends, if it's isolated in itself, well, what purpose does itself ultimately? Because it's no longer an effective mechanism for expanding near-compower. So at that point, it loses its second purpose and there isn't realistically going to be a third one. So the whole thing starts to wind down. There's less interest in providing it with the money and with the support and with the personnel and all of those things. There's less interest in creating this vast array of think tanks and publications and NGOs and agencies that cluster around it and feed off again the money that the US taxpayers are providing. There is some brave talk in Europe of keeping NATO going without the United States, which is a ridiculous idea. It's absolutely ludicrous to think that that can happen. The point about NATO was to have the United States in Europe. I mean, it's just a stupid idea. So without perpetual expansion, NATO will die sooner or later. It will first of all turn into a zombie organization that has no real function and then it will gradually die because people won't take it seriously. Any more, the money will gradually stop, the institutions will fall away, the exercises will decline, the governments in Eastern Europe will start to cut their own deals with the Russians and with others and the whole thing will finally implode on itself. And the world will be a much better place. Absolutely. All right, we will end the video there, the Durand.locos.com. We are on Rumble Odyssey, Bitcheek Telegram, RockFit and TwitterX. And go to the Durand shop, pick up some limited edition merch. The link is in the description box down below. Take care. (upbeat music)