The Duran Podcast
Battle for Donbass coming to an end
All right, Alexandra, let's do an update on the military situation in Ukraine. What is going on on the front lines? It definitely looks like the Ukraine military is collapsing now. What does this mean? What's the timeline for this collapse of the Ukraine military on the front lines? It's hard to predict, but all the indications are that things are going very badly for Ukraine across the entire front, and we are seeing some sort of a collapse or retreat from the Ukraine military in this conflict. What is going on? I think that's exactly right. And I'm going to say something else. I think that there is still a huge amount of denial about this in the amongst the commentary at in the West. The ones who continue to support the continuation of the war, some of them were saying amongst them, or at least realistic amongst them, like Julian Hapka, who writes, "We are coming to exactly the same conclusion as the one that you've just given." He actually has posted a message in which he's actually said that the Ukrainian defenses in Donbass are collapsing, and that is exactly what is happening. We're seeing this happen in right across the line of contact. The Russians are now taking positions, and we're talking about heavily fortified positions in place after place, location after location. The Ukrainians are simply not resisting in the way that they once were. What is happening is that the Russian advances are now isolating the three major towns, which are basically all that is left of Ukrainian controlled Donbass. Two of them, of course, are Slaviansk Klamatorsk, which is in the northern part of Donbass. That was where, by the way, the uprising against the mind-unmovement began in 2014. The Russians are now taking all of the places around, or coming very close to doing so. Lehman, Sivesk, Chassafjar, we're getting reports every day now of Russian advances in all of those places. Once all of these places are taken, Koopiansk as well, Slaviansk, Klamatorsk, look undefendable. There is no real hinterland behind them that the Ukrainians can use in order to establish an effective defense of these places, at least none that I can see. The other third place is another town, further west called Pakarovsk, which is the major supply base, apparently, that the Ukrainians develop in order to keep their frontline troops in Donbass supplied. The Russians are now within about 20 kilometers off Pakarovsk. Again, all of the 45 positions around Pakarovsk are falling. Every day you hear another place, a 45 line falling, a village, a 45 village falling. Everyone gets the sense that Ukrainian resistance, once it had been fierce, is becoming token. So I think now, within sight of the end of the battle for Donbass, Donbass, this major coal mining, iron and steel, heavy industry region in eastern Ukraine, which rebelled against the Ukrainian government after the Maidan coup in 2014, where the Donetsk and Lugans people's republics were set out in 2014, which the Russians went in to Ukraine in February 2022 to protect. Anyway, this long, difficult battle for Donbass, a very difficult place to capture is densely populated. The geography is bad, there's lots of rivers and canals and streams. The ground is apparently very soft, all of that kind of thing. Anyway, this place, this difficult, important battle, looks like it's about to end. In the battle of Donbass ends, Ukrainian positions east of the Dnieper river, including in places like Harkov, become undefendable and we will probably see a collapse in Donbass. My guess is by late summer, early autumn, and perhaps just possibly an overall collapse of the entire Ukrainian defence positions in eastern Ukraine, east of the Dnieper before the end of the year. That looks to me a potential, a possible trajectory of events might be overstating things a little but I don't think by very much. Okay, so CNN, they ran an article a couple of days ago and they talked about how the Zelensky government faces a double whammy in terms of their difficulties with this conflict. The first one is the situation on the front lines, which you just outlined, CNN admitting that Russia is winning, that's basically what they admitted, Russia is winning, Russia is advancing, taking village after village and the Ukraine military is collapsing on the front lines. And they mentioned the second problem that these Zelensky regime faces and that is a possible Trump presidency. CNN claims that this is why Zelensky has started to talk about negotiations. What do you think these Zelensky administration has to do now, given that things are looking very bad on the front lines, very bad. Everyone is now admitting to it. Even though there are, I agree, there are certain analysts and publications that are trying to cope, but reality is reality. And in November, there is the very, very real possibility, probability that Trump will become president. And just one final thought, Alexander, Trump and JD Vance, they have not tapered down their talk about getting peace in Ukraine, in Ukraine, solving the situation. As a matter of fact, Vance has gotten even more aggressive with the foreign policy in relation to Ukraine. And to Europe, Vance has basically said, "I don't care about Europe. It's their problem. Ukraine is their problem. We need to deal with America." So, these Zelensky government has not been able, even though he spoke with Donald Trump as Zelensky, they have not been able to get Donald Trump or JD Vance to tone down the rhetoric about solving the conflict in Ukraine, about finding a peaceful sort of solution, about pulling out of Ukraine. It's actually had the opposite effect, I think. So, what happens now? I agree with all of that. Can I just also add that Rick Grinnell, who is some people think the likely pick for Secretary of State in a Trump administration, he has also made exactly the same points as JD Vance has done. He had a meeting with various European officials. And he said, "Look, Ukraine is not a core interest of the United States. It's your problem. It's not ours. We've got other things to think about. You sort it out. And we've had other comments by people like Eldridge Colby, who also looks like he's a rising figure in the Trump team. Incidentally, interestingly enough, this time around, Donald Trump seems to be working to get an effective foreign policy team together, foreign policy and national security team together, before he becomes president. So, we're not going to look towards improvising and coming up with all kinds of people. But Rex Tillerson, who he didn't know before or anything of that kind has happened the first time around. Now, let's talk about Zelensky. The important thing to understand is that the military situation, the deterioration of the military situation, is irreversible. This Russian advance is going to continue, regardless of what the United States does, if we have a situation where in November, Kamala Harris is elected president of the United States and announces her undying fealty in support for Zelensky, that's still not going to change the situation. The Russians are now definitely going to win this war. I think every objective analyst can see this. It's it's clear the events that are evolving are not of a sort that you can simply turn around. And in fact, we've had a flurry of articles which are clearly planted articles appearing across the Western media, the really interesting articles, the important articles, which are telling us that the West cannot change the situation. We've had an article in Radio Liberty saying that the Europeans are nowhere close to achieving their artillery shell production targets. They're only producing a third of the shells that they said they would by the end of this year. We've had an article in Reuters that says the same about the United States that shell production in the United States is in chaos. That again, it's probably reached a plateau at 36,000 rounds a month, which is nowhere near enough. And again, this isn't going to change any time soon. And we've had another article from Reuters, which I discussed yesterday in my program on my own channel, which is about a patriot missile production, which is stuck at 500 missiles a year, which is again nowhere near enough. So this cannot change. Now, that means that for Zelensky, the worst outcome, if he's being honest with himself, being objective about things, he is the worst outcome for him and for Ukraine. Or at least let's put aside Zelensky, for Ukraine, the worst outcome would be the election in November of a president, Kamala Harris, who says that she's going to provide unstinting support to Ukraine, support that she cannot deliver on. The best outcome for Ukraine is the election of a Trump-vanced team, which is much more realistic, and which might, if approached properly and intelligently, help the Ukrainians out of the mess that they're in, out of the hole that they've dumped themselves into, and find some mechanism or means for them to agree a piece with Russia, which preserves Ukraine. So if Zelensky or the team around him were thinking about this rationally, that's what they would be thinking, except I don't think that is what they're thinking, unfortunately. I think on the contrary, they are thrashing around. They are pretending to the Trump team that they want peace when I don't think they really do. I think that they are talking about peace initiatives that they are completely insincere about, because when you drill down and look at the actual statements that they are making, there is still no real glimmer of realism there in any part of them. I think they still believe, they still imagine that there is some kind of magic formula that the United States can come up with, which will deliver them victory. They can't bring themselves to believe that the United States cannot prevail over Russia in what is after all the proxy war. And if Trump and Vance do win an end American aid, then I think that the Zelensky team and the people around Zelensky are probably already preparing the narrative of betrayal, which is that they want they going to fall back on and rely on when they set up their government in exile in London or wherever it is. So I think that's what they're going to do. But it is worth saying, again, that if you had a government in Kiev that really cared about the future of Ukraine, quietly they would welcome the election of a Trump, Vance administration, which was realistic about what America can actually do and might work with the Russians and Ukraine to try to find a solution to this conflict, which, as I said, at least preserved some kind of Ukrainian state, probably west of the deeper. If you had a government that really cared about Ukraine, they would have enforced Minsk one, Minsk two, they would have not torn up the March 2022 ceasefire agreement and they would not have listened to Boris Johnson and they definitely would not have listened to Biden and a Biden White House. But we don't have that. Zelensky, his team, their very lives are tied into the war. And I think that's a big problem. I mean, their own self-preservation is tied to the continuation of this war. The Europeans, the EU, their reputation and their power is tied into the war and tied into America's commitment to the war, not only their power, but a lot of their money is tied into the United States commitment to this war. And of course, you have NATO. NATO needs this war to continue. NATO needs to claim that they they achieve some sort of victory in this war because if they cannot say this, well, NATO is useless. I believe Lavrov, he really said it best a couple of days ago, a week ago, when he said that what's really going on with NATO is that that NATO has to achieve a victory in Ukraine, or at least say that they achieved the victory in Ukraine, because if they do not do this, well, then NATO member states are going to ask questions about how good of an investment NATO business, this business of NATO really is. Should I really allocate 3% of my budget to this alliance, which when all is said and done, did not defeat the Russians in Ukraine? So what do you think of what I've just said to close out the video? No, you're absolutely correct. And you point that you're making, actually, is that NATO, the Zelensky government, the other supporters of the war, are ultimately more concerned about imagery and narrative construction than they are about reality. So from their point of view, if they can't achieve a victory in Ukraine, and I suspect that there are still some people who are deluded enough to think that they can, but that the majority no longer do, it's important to them, not to negotiate, because that would be an admission of defeat, which they can never accept, and an admission that this defeat was probably unavoidable, and was a defeat inflicted upon them by the Russians. What they need to do, or what they think they need to do, instead is to create a narrative of betrayal. That is all the fault of Gigi Vance and Donald Trump and Rick Grinnell and Eldridge Colby, they've come along, they've stolen victory from Ukraine, and in fact, if it had been otherwise, if there'd been all that support for Ukraine that people had talked about, if Ukraine had been given the F-16s and the Atacom's missiles back in 2022, then it would have won. So this is going to be the narrative that they're going to construct, and their priority now is to create it. They're more concerned about that than about anything else. Well, just to close out the video, the Trump White House, the Trump campaign, I'm getting ahead of myself, the Trump campaign should not let them do this. Of course not. Of course not. Now, Trump is a good communicator with the American people, but the person who is particularly skilled at exploding all the myths here is Gigi Vance, just to say that Colby and Grinnell have been pretty straightforward about it as well. The thing that supporters of the war in the West never address, they've never addressed it at any point during the war, is the fact that resources are finite. There isn't an indefinite number, a patriot missile interceptors, or Abraham's tanks, or Bradley infantry fighting vehicles, or artillery shells, or any of the things that Ukraine would need in order to win the war. Ukraine does not have an infinite reserve of manpower that he can use to find. So this is what this is all about, ultimately. It's about resources. There aren't the resources to beat the Russians. It is as simple as this. And well, obviously, you have to address the lessons of that. You've got to work to try to get your defense plans and industrial base sorted. And perhaps a Trump Vance administration might get around to doing that. But it won't be easy either, because of course there are lots and lots of people in NATO, in the United States, who are very happy with the way things are. Because as you've often said, this is a grift, the grift can only work if it continues in the way that it has been doing for so many years, which is lots and lots of money for very little, and sometimes for nothing at all. Yeah, absolutely. But the Trump team, they have to start now to get the message out that you don't try to pin this. This is the message that they have to get out. Don't try to pin the Ukraine collapse on us. This is all your fault. NATO, Biden, White House, Sullivan, Blinken, Ursula, you guys got in this mess. You guys got us into this mess. They have to get that message out there, because they're definitely, I think you're right. Actually, we've said it in many videos over the past year. They're definitely going to try and pin the collapse on Ukraine on Trump. If we get to this point, and we've come to this point, we said in many videos, if we get to this point where things are looking favorable for a Trump election win, and things are looking very bad for Ukraine, they're going to try and pin all of it on Trump. So he's got to get on top of this with the messaging. The truth. Absolutely. Yes, the truth. The truth. One of the interesting things, by the way, about that Reuters article about artillery shell production in the United States is that it admitted that the problems that Ukraine is facing with shells are nothing to do with the delays by the Republicans in voting through that $61 billion appropriation, that in fact, there just aren't enough shells. That is the problem. Now that is the point that J.D. Vance was making right the way through. So he's got the facts on his side, and that always helps you in any argument. I mean, I should say that. I mean, I've seen this play out in many places in law, in academic work, and of course, in politics. If the facts are on your side, then however hard the other side joins to spin them. If you do your job properly, you should always win. Yeah. Well said. All right. We will end the video there. The Duran.lockers.com. We are on Rumble Odyssey, but you tell a grand rock fan and Twitter X. And go to the Duran Shop Pickup, a limited edition T-shirt. You will find a link in the description box down below. Take care. [Music]