The Duran Podcast
Kursk, Istanbul 2 and the negotiation trap w/ John Helmer (Live)
I recommend that everybody that is watching this live stream today check out John's amazing work. Francis with bears is the website he also has a list of all his books which you can go to the website and and plug into his his books and purchase his books that is on dancing with dances with bears that is in the description box down below that link and I will add it as a pinned comment as well. John thank you for joining us on the Duran it is a pleasure to have you with us. Thank you Alex. Thank you Alexander. Good to be here. It is great to have you with us let's say a quick hello to everyone that is watching on a rock fin on Odyssey and rumble how is everyone doing rumble today and how is everyone on YouTube great to have you joining us for this live stream a big shout out to our moderators for today Peter. Are you doing Peter I think I saw Zaraiel in the house as well Tish M. Tish M is helping us moderate. Thank you to our moderators and a big shout out to everyone that is watching on the duran.locals.com. The great locals community good to have you with us Alexander John. We've got to talk about the big story which is getting all the all the talk all the attention which is course but there's a lot that we can discuss with Ukraine and Russia and the collective West's involvement in project Ukraine so Alexander John let's let's talk about what's happening indeed and we're at absolutely crucial moment I've been talking to a number of military people these are ocean stress or Western military people but they're all in agreement about one crucial thing that we're at a tipping point in the wall. The Russian military now have the initiative and when we're talking about the initiative they're clearly winning the war victories in sight. We also have the electricity war as John Helmer has described it which is also now reaching a point of climax if you wish and at the same time we have rumors and rumbles about negotiations and John Helmer is perhaps the best person to discuss this with because he has been one of the most insightful and careful Russia watches for as long as I can remember I mean he's been there he's been keeping very very careful track about all that's been going on in Russia in Moscow. He knows the scene the character of the place and perhaps he can also tell us a little bit about the the discussions that are taking place within the Russian leadership. Now in a recent program in a recent article I should say that he wrote in dances with bears. He talked about the fact that there is tension over negotiations possible negotiations to end the wall and we now had some corroboration of this from two Russian officials. One is Dimitri Medvedev deputy head of the security council of Russia. He has talked about a negotiation trap he says the negotiations would be an extremely bad idea but that Russia almost fell into a trap with negotiations. The circuit took place yesterday on the Duran when we were interviewing Glendesen and myself Russia's deputy ambassador to the United Nations Dimitri Poliansky and he too confirmed that the Russians have been under considerable pressure from various countries in the global south and elsewhere to begin negotiations with the Ukrainians and it seems as if at one point negotiations were about to happen. However there is strong opposition to this John Helmer has talked about opposition from within the military which has its own ideas about how this conflict should be conducted and I think that is the topic which we now need to discuss. So John can I first ask you to explain what we exactly mean by the military. We have these concepts that are floated around things concepts like staff care and the Russian general staff and you tell us exactly or not maybe not exactly can you give us some idea of what these institutions are and what kind of identity, political identity as well as military identity they have and what the general outlook about the conflict is. Let's start there and then let's move on. These are profound questions and they have a long history so thank you for asking me for example, let me try and be brief so that we can interact. The idea of military, military, the Russian military taking political role was a serious threat throughout the recent, throughout the 20th century of Russia and the wars forced on Russia, World War I, World War II have left a history of reluctance on the political leadership to concede more than a limited military role for the general staff, for the commanders of the army groups and for the senior commanders of each of the major forces combined as a general staff with a military intelligence import known as the group. The staff cut as a word means staff, it was developed as a concept during World War I, it was a relatively informal group of senior generals advising and then taking over from the incompetence Nikolai II and started adopting the notion of an informal staff guy after having purged the general staff, having purged the Russian army and then trying to delay Hitler's invasion of Russia, he was then compelled to not only revive the imports of the military but combine the informal contact with military officers and improve the body up the line and down the line in the only way that one can if one's running a war, Russia's in no sense different from Churchill who had his own personal war cabinet and the Germans the same and so on and so on. So, the staff guy is an unclear body because we have on the one hand the sort of semi-constitutional pseudo-legal structures like the Security Council which formally has a defence minister on it, it doesn't have as a formal member that's either the general staff that you're asking of. The staff cut would be an informal group to whom the president, Vladimir Putin, results maybe several times a day for answering various questions and conveying certain lines and limits and restrictions. What you raise as an important point is that the deputy secretary of the Security Council, Dmitry Medvedev, ex-President Medvedev, came out very vocally and said no more negotiations, negotiations are a trap. What he didn't say but what can be read between the lines is he's saying Istanbul won, that's the negotiation which President Putin authorized, authorized personally, Ramana Brahmovich to mediate and organise in Istanbul, Turkey in the last days of March and early days of April of 2022 to reach a form of agreement through the Turks with the Ukrainians who are at the table and some form of terms was negotiated. The New York Times has published, usefully, some of the drafts of Istanbul won which was, I think, the last draft that you can read from the New York Times but I've reported much of this myself so if people can't be bothered to climb the paywall of the New York Times and I don't recommend, even if you've got to pay the New York Times, don't recommend climbing over it, you can see the terms that were initialed. Now it's generally thought that Istanbul won, was agreed by the Russians and then blocked by the Ukrainians who had initially did these terms which would have left Russia entirely exposed to the kind of long-range capabilities to attack which the Ukrainians were developing then and have successfully advanced now. In return there would have been these pieces of paper, I promised not to join NATO and some concessions on Navaricea, the four regions but there wouldn't have been four regions that would have been preserved for Russia, there would have been the Crimea and the Donbas, Donetsk and Lugansk. We know what these terms were as of March 17, 2022, we know they were rejected by April 15 a month away but it's generally thought that the Ukrainians backed out under pressure from Boris Johnson, then Prime Minister of England and the President of the United States and the Americans. In my view and I've argued the point provided whatever evidence that people listening can review, this was not blocked by them, the Russian reaction to the terms initial was so profoundly hostile on very good grounds and the grounds we go back to understand where all the pieces of paper that have proved to be worthless because the United States puts its signature, the British put their signature, the French and NATO and what have you put their signatures, the Poles to Minsk 1 and 2 and of course the agreement that would have preserved peace in the Ukraine and the new election evict the Yanukovych and remain present, all those bits of paper were worthless and it's been the very strong conviction of the military, the general start, military intelligence, it's fair, the foreign intelligence service and thus of the security council that you could not negotiate the long term security in Russia on the terms that were initial in Istanbul. Now by referring to Istanbul too I don't mean to say that the negotiations would resume in that place, they have to resume if there resumes anywhere, somewhere. What we know is that Viktor Orban, the highly pretentious prime minister of Hungary, followed the highly pretentious ex prime minister of Israel, a man called Naftali Bennett, inputting himself forward as a mediator for negotiating terms, unlike Bennett who put in accepted as an intermediary, Orban actually went from President Putin in July to went back home, changed his shoes, then flew to China where he got a very cold welcome, very cold reception and then he flew on to see he went to an NATO meeting in Washington, got the cold reception as best we can tell from the Biden administration and then flew down to Florida where he got a very warm welcome from candidate Trump. Now what we know is what Orban has said and what we think happened was that despite the denials that Putin and his spokesman, Mr Pescor have said that they didn't give him a message, what they did say was what they had to say about the possibility of an end of war outcome and that's a message which Orban talked to Trump. Now what we also know is what Trump's military advisors General Kellogg and a man called Fleets, F-L-I-E-T-Z, a national security advisor during the Trump presidency, had put together a peace plan for Ukraine, half of which were spent decrying the capabilities to Biden administration for getting them into the war. I'm not being able to get them out but underlined the possibility of a partial lifting of sanctions, partial whatever that meant and they didn't say and it underlined the Trump conviction which he displayed in the notorious debate with President Biden that he could end the war the day after he was reelected if he's reelected. So what we see are a bunch of signs from the United States and we've seen other signs in Washington, Washington Post, New York Times of American conviction that Putin is ready for negotiations. We've also seen a recent claim in the foreign policy magazine from a think tank that George Soros is financing in Washington that Americans think that various Russians they talk to in Moscow also want an end to war on some sort of negotiated terms. Now none of these let's say message carrying a message signaling involved, a member of the Security Council or somebody who claims to know what's going on there, a member of or even a retiree from a Russian intelligence service. Retires from the Russian intelligence service don't go on podcast shows and advertise their careers as ex-intelligence agents or ex-military service kernels or majors as we see in the United States and use their credibility working for either the evil empire or America First Empire as credentials for saying something different now. We don't have anyone, anyone serious in Moscow indicating a willingness to back away from the principal objectives. And let's remind what they were. The principal objective is demilitarization of the Ukraine. So in order that Russian territory which now includes Pearson's upper roger, Donetsk and Lugansk and Crimea protects them from long range attack and the range is now politics, the range is now geography, the range is now military, range is anywhere from 500 case to 800 case depending on the ingenuity of either the Americans or the Ukrainians or the British or the French in firing long distance weapons at Russia. There's no readiness to drop that objective unless it comes from Putin and Putin has hinted that he would drop that in return for what he calls terms that he's already put on the table and there's some contradictoryness there. The second objective is denarcification of the Ukraine and that has to mean regime change. It means no Zelensky. It means the end of the particular fascist factions. We're all familiar with them. You do a terrific job Alexander reporting it day by day. We know who they are. These cannot rule either in Levov or in Kiev to dictate a future in which they will continue to fight Russia forever and that's what those denarcification means, the elimination of those who want to fight Russia forever and to liquidate Russia just as the Germans wanted, just as the Ukrainians who allied themselves with German occupation in Western Ukraine wanted. The Galician region of Ukraine is a Nazi region. It has spawned people like the Deputy Prime Minister of Canada, Christia Freeland. It has spawned the government capture in Canada. This is a serious problem for Russia and it will remain a problem and those folks can't be trusted to put their signatures on paper on anything because we know what they mean and what they've meant, what their grandfathers meant has been the same. Race, war against Russia and Russians since 1945 and before. So I've spoken maybe too long but I'm basically trying to tell you that institutionally it's normal for politicians as good and clever as President Putin to say different things out of different sides of their mouth to address different constituencies. That's normal. The contradictions between one thing and another are normal also. They have to be resolved politically for some reason or other. Even the smartest of retirees on US podcasts don't understand that Russian politics is a wee bit more democratic than the United States in the sense that they're running a war. They are putting corrupt generals in jail for corruption. They are arguing over what should be the final goals of the operations of these two objectives and they're asking. The military is without them asking for President Putin to take his foot off the brake to implement these goals rather than reserve negotiating terms which is what it looked like before August 6th, the invasion of course. I don't know whether you had the opportunity to watch your program with Poliansky but what he actually said was this and it was very interesting. He said that there'd been this pressure to begin negotiations, to go back essentially to Istanbul too. He didn't mention Hordban but quite plausibly one of the people he was talking about who was coming along and was saying putting the pressure to begin the negotiations was Hordban, might be China as well, might have been India. Who knows? But he said that one of the things that happened on the 6th of August following Kursk is that the pressure went away. Suddenly clarity was obtained both externally in the sense that all of these various external parties suddenly realized that negotiations was impossible because the Ukrainians also were saying one thing and doing something completely different. He didn't say he wasn't talking about the situation domestically because of course he wouldn't because he's a Russian diplomat but maybe he meant that too that the pressure to begin negotiations. There's no question. We must accept that their internal pressures, significant constituencies and some of them talk very volubally to US friends and they want to be loved by Americans. There is the oligarch constituency that has for many reasons are wanted to protect their own assets from sanctions and we've seen President Putin being particularly forgiving of those people, for running away from Russia, for redefining their nationality, for trying to shield their assets and protect themselves from sanctions and we've just had the case in Paris of the arrest of Pablo Durov who ran away thinking he could save himself. Well, he has it. Never mind. We can come back to that story later. There are serious political pressures inside Moscow because Russia is not a one man state. It is a polity in which there are fundamental economic interests in ending the war quickly and not occupying the Ukraine. I don't think there's a military willingness to occupy Ukraine but to demilitarize Ukraine something different, to fight a long distance war, a long term war when the world is at war with Russia economically, to destroy Russia's economy, to destroy Russia's shipping, to destroy Russia's currency. These things aren't going to be lifted partially by whoever's the next president in the United States. The world has been transformed by the war and Russia's political lineup in Moscow isn't to the advantage of the oligarch groups. They have suffered. They want to recover. They're playing a political game with the Kremlin as you would expect them to play how it plays out when they are, for the first time, fundamentally at odds with the military and the intelligence services and the security council. Well, that's something that made Vadiv's message had to highlight. Mr Polanski is, as you said, a diplomat who must represent the state, not the factions of the state, but it's worth pointing out that the foreign ministry is between two hard objects between a hammer and an anvil to use an old-fashioned communist symbol and they have done their best to articulate their view. The foreign ministry's view was encapsulated in an non-aggression treaty term, set of terms, tabled in December 17, 2021, when the Americans threw that in the rubbish did immediately, derisively, and the NATO followed. That was the countdown to the war that began February 22, 2022. It was the rejection of the foreign ministry's treaty of non-aggression and reciprocal security in Europe that would have prevented war. Istanbul I came nowhere near those terms and it was discreditable for a member of the foreign ministry of Russia to go to Istanbul and sign anything in contradiction with that, but he did it because Abramovich was coaching him and Abramovich represents himself. Can you tell us a little bit more about the institutional forces because it's not that would be opposed to a peace treaty? You mentioned the military, by the way, I should say, if we're talking about the Russian general staff, we're talking about an institution that has existed for over a hundred years in its current form, set up as I understand it, in its current form, directly after the revolution. It's one of the most storied military entities on earth, having been myself in contact with professional organisations. It is impossible for me to believe that it doesn't have a very, very highly developed corporate identity and its own political perspective on things. An organisation like that clearly must have views, but it's not just the general staff. When you talk about the military, it's not just the military, there is a wider public opinion, there's also other economic forces that are developing in Russia as well. We've seen actually a resurgence in many different parts of the economy that are growing. The industrial side of the economy is expanding rapidly. Technological growth is growing. There's also businesses, smaller businesses that are developing as well. Now, do these yet have their own view? Because from what I can see, they're actually doing quite well out of the wall. Are they perhaps a new economic balance that might actually, to some extent, shift the economic and political balance against the oligarchs, the people we know as the oligarchs? I think you've put it very well, Alexander. There is a shift in the economic balance, therefore the political balance against the old oligarchs, who ran major mining, major metals, major transportation sectors, which they had stolen from the state, and whose profitability depended on a zero price of capital, and whose profitability was not taxed because they shipped those profits abroad. I mean, we're not here to talk about the history of the oligarchy. I've been doing it for, I don't know, 35 years. It's a dismal story, and it got me into a particular conflict with a particular oligarch who arranged to try to kill me. That's that. I survived. Here I am. But the war is bad for their long term, even though some oligarch sources told me, and they're at the bottom end of the article you just mentioned, that they are having a terrific time, that they've gotten used to living in Russia instead of in Kensington, or in Mayfair, or in St James's, or near the Alise in Paris, or wherever they like to live, and wherever they like to take their holidays. They're getting used to being Russian again. That generation might get used to it. Their children no longer count. Their children are British citizens, American citizens, French, whatever, and are never going to come back and don't count politically, can't count. The oligarchs are able to transfer by inheritance the political power. Political power comes out of the gun, as Mao said. It also comes out of the industrial capital, as Marx, Lenin, and Stalin have already pointed out. You've identified what any old communist education will tell you. He is a transfer of underlying economic power, which turns into political pressure on Mr. Putin. It gives everybody a very different ideological impression, an idea of what the future of Russia should be like. So here we are, a bunch of foreigners are talking about how Russians should think about the future of Russia. Well, it's a free world. They may or may not listen to us, but military officers also carry one thing that's very important. And I'm a memorialised Sergei Akhamev, the Russian Marshal who committed suicide. And I memorialise him every Sunday in August, to memorialise a man who preserved the honour of his uniform, of his rank, and his sense that the Russian army stands for a moral defence of the country, which he could no longer accept, either from Gorbachev or from Yeltsin. And he asked and said in his suicide, you can read it on the website, Akhamev said, "I have earned the right to step out of my life." Now, that is not possible, except from a Russian Red Army officer. And that tradition is unique in Russian history. It doesn't have anything to do with the Church, not to be disrespectful to the Church. It's a Red Army tradition. It's a Russian Army tradition. And it is best for us. They don't talk to us, but we can understand them. That is a special kind of political force now. Why? Because from a military point of view, NATO, the United States, through the Ukraine, have the capacity to fire 1,000 kilometre missiles at Central Russia, including Moscow. The war has been fought to protect Russia and its new territories. So that means, and Medvedev has said it, but Medvedev exaggerates to put himself closer to the military. That means no Ukraine lying between the current line of contact and the Polish border. What does that mean? But Russian military honour, Akhamev's honour, is a political force. And in war, what implications does it have for let's say Korsk? Why wasn't Korsk? I'm better prepared. Did the military understand what was happening, but were told not to take preemptive action. Why were the regional officials of Korsk, Belgorod and Breance denied the opportunity to put their regions on war footing? War footing means emergency powers. War fitting means state control, state planning. It's bad for business. So there are political, economic, business constituencies who do well, as you've said, Alexander, out of war, out of production, just like Lockheed and General Dynamics and Ryan Metal and so forth in the West. There's that sort of constituency, but there's also the constituency that President Putin is concerned of. People who want to live normally, and everybody's visited Moscow knows. Moscow is one of the most normal cities in Europe these days, or never mind, Europe, compared to the United States too. That's a success Putin has had. But once you've got an invasion of Russian territory like Korsk, then the military imperatives take priority, not the oligarchnet priorities and imperatives. Now, on the subject of Korsk, I'm not sure whether you're aware of the fact, but I've discussed this extensively on programs that I've done, but two months before the Operation Korsk began, a person, and I can't unfortunately identify who this person is, but somebody who's very well informed about some of the discussions in Moscow, not all of them, obviously, told me that the military had detected that there was a Ukrainian builder close to the Korsk border, and that the Ukrainians were planning an operation in Korsk and that the military in Russia were aware of the fact. Now, I got that message two months before the Korsk operation began, and he said, he told me that people within the military were making preparations for it, and then when Korsk began, he contacted me again, reminded me that he provided me with this information. I was very, very skeptical. I said, it looked like they'd been completely taken by surprise, all of those things, and I asked him whether possibly it might have been that the preparations that were taken, the shifting of special forces to the Korsk area, the deployment of people of that kind, might have been done by someone without authorization from Putin, from the Kremlin, and he said he didn't think so, but he didn't think it might be possible. He did accept the possibility that something like that might have happened. Anyway, what you make of this, I mean, I did have that information, there's no doubt, I have all of the emails, I have them all there, one day maybe I'll be able to publish them. Well, you've got your source, I'm not going to argue with it, I believe it's complete nonsense. There have been some people who've got no reputation for veracity, who claim to report from the West in a pro-Russian fashion, who made the claims that General Gerasimo was taken by surprise, that the group didn't know what was coming. I've read some intelligent, balanced, honest US military experts argue that the Ukrainians were able to hide themselves in the forests and so forth. I mean, this is nonsense. I've seen and we all can see if one has to do as much study as you do, Alex, and you do, Alexander. I have to do many of our Russian colleagues do every day, 24 hours a day. You can see plenty of evidence that there was, it's impossible to concentrate the kind of hardware that was assembled. It's impossible to mask the heat signatures that men make in forests. Trees don't give out heat signatures and the Russian technology for detecting assembly of men can sort the difference out between a tree and a man. This is nonsense. Second, since there was that detection, the question is, what was done about it? Why, for example, was the electric war raids on August 26, on August 26, not on August 5, why was the electricity allowed to run in Tsumi region? Why were the trains allowed to run into Tsumi unloading all this equipment, unloading all these men? Why were the roads occupied? Those questions have been put by some who are ill-informed or running a factional fighting Moscow to the blame of General Gorasimov and the general staff. I don't believe a word of it. On the other hand, you've seen some Russian patriots say, oh no, no, no. The general staff, Gorasimov, the group, knew what was coming and set a trap. They lured them in so they could kill them. No sense of mentioning names. Some of these people are more right than wrong, but on the notion that there was a calculated trap's wrong. It's wrong. I think your source was right. The sources I've had suggest much the same, and everybody gets to be right retrospectively. That's one of the things we give ourselves, since we're not in line for the Pulitzer Prize. Never mind that. In my view, there was ample forewarning, and the military have to tell the political leadership we told you so, and that particular cycle has been repeated throughout this conflict. It was repeated in 2014, when Russia was had to scramble, put in had to scramble away from the Olympic Games in Sochi to save the Crimea. The Russian side has had to scramble past the mistake, the disaster of the battle of the Antonov Airport, in which some political intelligence believe that you could have a special forces operation with 350 men dropping into the suburbs of Kiev and trigger a coup in Kiev that would eliminate Zelensky and wind up the war quickly. That was a terrible mistake. Russia had to learn from it and come back and repair the damage. There are many middle-level officers, junior-level officers, ordinary soldiers, ordinary folks in the street, and the Kremlin, who understand that mistakes, bad, bad mistakes have been made, and we're not being disloyal to say we made mistakes. The issue in war is how quickly can you repair them and damage from mistakes, and what do you do next? And in relation to your objectives, are you more or less secure after you've had your mistake and learn from it? Well, I've written an autobiography of my mistakes. You can judge for yourselves whether I'm still alive and learning from, but Russia is a great state, and it's learning. Now, I don't think a trap was set. I think a political foot was on the break that exposed Korsk and still exposes it. These traps haven't been wiped out quickly. It took more than two weeks at best. You may have better memory Alexander. You do positional work every day, but it seems to me it took two weeks before the Russians began to seal off by air and artillery the resupply routes and seal off the force in Korsk. It's regrettable that General Gerasimov had to recite a scripted lie in front of President 14 to say 900 men came in and had been stopped. It's embarrassing. Why did he read a script? Because it was cleared by the Kremlin, and he wasn't cleared to say anything else. We now know that there are at least 9,000 of them. So it isn't over yet, and the latest bulletins I read from this morning overnight indicate that there's what's optimistically called stability. But that means that the Ukrainians are fighting with diminishing supplies. It's not over yet, and this is a serious, serious warning of the mistakes that were made. So how do we repair it? How does the Russian side repair it? How does the Ukrainian side fight on? What does the United States think? As we approach November 5? Do you think there's going to be a negotiated end to this war, or will the General Staff in the end get its way? Because I get the sense myself. You said in your article that the General Staff sent you know that they've almost reached that point in victories in the hand. I find it very difficult to see any outcome to this war that ends by negotiation. Whatever Putin, people around in Pescov, people in the foreign ministry, the oligarchs won. The momentum now is such that I think that there's not going to be a negotiation. And I don't get the sense that Zelensky himself is interested in negotiation. He's talking about victory plans and things like that. He could almost be scripted by the hardliners. If we want to call them hardliners, the Medvedev and the General Staff and Gerasim and all of those people in the military in Moscow. What is your sense? I mean it is Putin going to pull a negotiation out of the hat suddenly out of nowhere. At the moment he's saying he's not interested in negotiations. I'm not asking it because none of us knows. But what is your sense? Well, let's put it this way. There's no point in asking what our sense is. We can be wishful thinking. We can be hopeful thinking. We can think from religious or ideological points of view. The approach I've tried to take, that's not a new approach. It's not even an original one. It's take a look at the way the man has been making decisions for the last 25 years. Have a look at how he should absolve the problem of coal mine disasters, methane emission disasters in the coal mines of camera river and the eastern Siberia. Take a look at the way the president has solved the problem of air pollution caused by steel and coke making in the region of Chileabas, in the city of Chileabas. It's not disloyal or anti-Putin. It's simply methodologically and evidentially clear. Putin says one thing, does another. And the forces on him are the normal political forces in any democratic country, including Russia. The owners of the coal mines suppress the methane and they go on blowing them up, killing dozens, if not hundreds of miners, not recently, happily speaking, but it goes on. As for the pollution in Chileabas, it's disgusting and it's gone on for 20 years and it's caused by Igor Zuzin, who put in once made a parade of insulting and then apologized and is cared for ever since. I've written a book, I don't recommend if you're not interested in shipping, if readers are not interested in shipping, on how many times the president changed his mind over how the national shipping company of Russia or soft conflict, the now leading oil and gas tanker fleet in the world, should be led and all of that evidence was paraded in a high court action that last almost 15 years had cost $200 million on both sides. I mean, it's an awful case, but it provides evidence, never, never trolled through it for me, of the way in which president Putin says things, changes his mind, depending on who is pressuring him on what he thinks is best and so on. I don't see why the man's style of thinking, of decision making, on issues like coal mines which blow up, oil tankers which plow through the sea or polluted air in Chileabas, why should he think differently and decide differently with those things, then he will decide this war. I don't see, he will and so the issue you raise, and it's a fine one, does August 6, does the invasion of course rule out negotiations? I see Medvedev's statement, as a declaration, we told you so Mr President, we want your foot off the break, we want to go all the way to the other end of the Ukraine, the Polish border, that by the way has been on the views of my in-laws, that's been the popular Russian view, certainly of people my age, but a lot younger. Yes, there is a significant pollable minority that wants negotiations, but the overwhelming issue, how is Russia's security to be defended, now involves driving those weapons to the ends of the west, to Galicia, to the Polish border, so on what basis can a negotiation succeed only on military terms, first there must be military capitulation before there can be a negotiation, because the paper is worthless. John Kelmer, thank you very much for your forthright, clear and comprehensive answers to all my questions. Now if you can just stay a little, I'm going to hand over to Alex, he's probably got some questions to put to you from our viewers. A lot of questions, let's get started, from Matthew, excellent discussion as per Alexander. John, what do you think in terms of the likelihood now of a USA intervention in Ukraine, will it go down like Syria or pack up and leave in Afghanistan? Oh no, I think the US is heavily engaged, I mean it flies around safely on the Black Sea international zone of Crimea. I don't see any particular direct intervention beyond what the US is already doing, I don't see that from an American point of view, why should they do more than they're doing, from their point of view they're succeeding, I mean this is the weirdest situation in which the propaganda war has been won by the West and the US administration goes into a presidential election declaring they won the war, they've penetrated Russia, they've done all these things that are right, no no they don't need to do anything new, they'd be awfully careful about who gets shot down, what nationality the pilot will be of the first F-16 that flies and is shot down, they'll be very careful, but I don't see that the American administration needs to do anything that he isn't already doing. Matthew asks, will consent for long-range strikes be given? Yes, I think it's inevitable, the question is how long is long-range? Go on? Yeah, no go ahead, how long is long-range? The implication there is, does, is Russia facing a barrage of new missile attacks beyond Varanish, beyond Moscow, beyond Rostov, beyond the field, beyond the refineries, and where would the launches be launched from? I mean, we've had last night, Hamas attacks, on the Coratov nuclear reactor, of course, the Ukrainians were shelling and rocketing, that nuclear act as they've been doing it, the Zaparogen nuclear reactor. Will permission be given? Will the Ukrainians do it? Will the US blink while they launch? They have to launch from further away, because finally, the general staff has the permission to strike out the Sumi region. Do they have permission yet just to eliminate artillery operations from Tienega region? Gradually, the longer range they fire from, and I don't believe they will stop, the longer range the Russian reaction will be, it will work badly for them if they do, but I think they will. Atros asks, "What are the benefits of Putin waiting till before or after BRIC's summit to finish the job in Ukraine? Would he not want to finish before?" I hadn't thought that the BRIC summit amounts to a significant moment in this process. The US election is significant in a Russian calculation. There are always senior Russians who want to be loved by my Americans. There are many Russian oligarchs who want to be loved by Americans, and have sent their children to be loved by Americans. This sentiment I've experienced since 1991. I think the crucial turning point from President Putin's calculation from the oligarch constituency calculation is whether Trump wins on November 5 or not. If he loses, there's no "hope" in the oligarch constituency of a partial lifting of sanctions, as the Trump plan often. There's no hope of mediation with the Kamala Harris successor administration. I think November 5 is the issue. I don't believe the global South, the Chinese, the South Africans, or the BRICs represent a significant break on the Russian military operations, and I don't believe that the BRICs countries, as allies of Russia, strategic allies of Russia, represent in summer a significant turning point in either the terms to be acceptable, because it's all very well for a country to recommend a negotiated settlement, but if they can't guarantee the outcome, they tell Russia to negotiate, what the hell are they offering? Pardon me, I think one could be very courteous and polite to us, allies. No serious ally tells you or tells me that I should do something, and then says I'll see you later when the results come in, and I'm at worse off than I was before. No, no, that's not going to happen. No, the decisive moment for negotiation is November 5. If Trump loses, Medvedin's wish comes true. Rob one asks, will we see movements and shuffling towards a coup when Zelensky travels to the US? What realistic pressures or chances are there? It's easy to beat me down to a leadership change. I'm an old man. I've been in Russia for extra 35 years. I don't pretend to follow Ukrainian politics. What do I know about Zelensky in his group? All I can say is that on all appearances, and I'm adverting to that, these chaps are making profit at the sacrifice of all the Ukrainian people. The longer the war goes on, the richer they get, and they've got their planers ready. They've got their safe havens as the last generation of Vietnamese generals did. The South Vietnamese generals did. They all end up in California, Connecticut. God knows where they'll end up, but in the meantime why should they give up a good thing? A 2,000 Ukrainian men were killed yesterday. I don't know, maybe 2,000 today. 7,000 dead in course already. These chaps mint money with that on that bloodshed. Why should they give up? No, no, no. Irene wants to get Zelensky. He's the symbol. He's the poster boy of moneymaking. I can't see that. Irene wants to know what do you think about the fate of the Crimean bridge? The fate of it didn't be there. What do you mean? Do we think that the Ukrainians will attack it? Of course, they'll keep attacking it. Yes. Do I think that the planning and the targeting and the surveillance, that the British aircraft and the U.S. drones, the U.S. air force and U.S. Navy drones are providing to assist the attacks on the ground. Do I believe that eventually the Russians will attack and stop and neutralize those? Yes, I do believe that will happen, but will the Crimean bridge survive? All of this? Yes, it will. Matthew asks, surely all it will take is one storm shadow into a city or a nuclear plant and it's World War III. Your thoughts? No, I don't think so. I mean, I don't know. I should say it should be understood to be minimizing the danger of World War III or of nuclear exchange. The efforts the Ukrainians have made to generate a near nuclear exchange, a near nuclear disaster by attacking Zaparocia, that's been going on for two years. I think Alexander's reported very effectively on the dirty bomb attempts that the Ukrainians with the British help have been developing for months, if not years. I don't see that we're on the verge of World War III militarily speaking, but we are already in World War III in every other sense economically. The world is now broken into two major economic financial trading blocks. The U.S. and the sanctions war of Europe has have destroyed globalization and created two war like at war blocks and Russia must learn to survive that. China must learn to survive it. India must learn to survive it. Everybody must learn which side to be on and whether it's possible to, let's say, be on both sides at the same time. Mr. Modi of India is a very professional politician. He's trying to do that in an Indian way. In the Indian interest, we can see the same attempts being made all over the world that's friendly towards Russia, in China, in Turkey, in Saudi Arabia, in Iran. The world has been easy in World War III, in an economic sense, capital, money, in every other sense, but shooting. We're not in World War III, but shooting. We're in World War III already for everything else. Ralph Steiner asks British and American strategies to cripple energy supplies to nations attempting to break free of their financial domination via London and Wall Street. Does crippling allied nations not concern them? Sorry, I didn't understand. What do you understand to be the question? I think it's a reference to Nord Stream 2. Nord Stream attacks on the Nord Stream pipelines. Right. So, what's the question? Frippling their allies not concern the United States and the UK. Sorry, I'm a bit slow. Why don't you answer it, Alexander? If you answer, I'll be actually interested. I mean, the point that I think the question is, is that they launch an attack on the energy system. This is intended to affect Russia, but it has a terrible effect on Germany instead. Yes. Is this something that the Americans and the British are indifferent to? The fact that their own allies are paying the cost of this kind of economic and sabotage war? Well, I think this is fundamental. I agree with the questioner. It's fundamental to the war against Russia, race war, the race hate, the propaganda war. It's been fundamental since before '45. It was fundamental for the Germans that if the Soviet Union, if Russia exercises itself in Europe to its capacities, Europe is diminished, dwarfed. Now, from the US point of view, the winner of the Western part of the war, that one of the victors over Germany, the re-creator of Germany, France, Italy, Greece, etc., and Britain too. If US empire in Europe is to be preserved, the Germany must never, ever, ever be in a position to be free enough to make a long-term strategic partnership in economic terms with Russia. So, the destruction of Germany is the next best thing. If you find Russia to the death but can't, well, why not cripple Germany? In the meantime, that's what's happened, and the Germans have, hopefully, the Greens in particular helped with this Germanic side. Well, I'm not against Germanic side as a strategic principle for the freedom of small countries who suffered from Germans. From the German wars inflicted on all of us for the last 100 years. But from a Russian point of view, Europe would be safer and more independent of the United States if Russia, Germany, and France, and England had a modest revenge. And on time, at the very least of Germany and Russia had, well, that the symbol of the destruction of German, Russian, on time, forever is those explosions of Bonham Island, September of 2022. That's it. No more Germany, no more German freedom in independence. And on with the destruction of Russia, that's a U.S. war goal. Rabuan asks, "So this is just a waiting game for Russia. Lead Europe, lead NATO. What does the end look like to you? How much of Ukraine?" Oh, well, good question. I'm old. How much longer do you think I've got? I would say this is not the end of the capitulation of the Ukrainian military capacity is a lot longer than the American wishful thinkers would are on their podcast. I don't see the capacity to demilitarize the Ukraine to the west of Kiev this year. But, you know, we've seen the August 26 raids, the electric war raids that aimed at electric capacity shouldn't be won off. And then we rest for two more months because the Ukrainians are ingenious chaps, and they get to work and repair things. And as accurate as Kim Jong-un, it's under all the missiles and drones that are used, as accurate as they are, their capacity to destroy electric frameworks, electric grids, electric distribution plants and so on, is limited. And they have to, the electric war has to be sustained until there's no, toilets don't flush. And the entire country's lights go out and stay off. The fact is, that the electric war has to be sustained and there's no clear indication that Russia has the will at the moment or the political permission at the moment to sustain it. If there is a sustained electric war campaign and a sustained railways war, the cup of railway delivery to the east, to the fighting zones, if that was sustainable, and it seems to me it would take three more months before winter, then winter will take a very much quicker toll on the country's capacity to defend itself. But I don't see that a single raid like August 26, I'm not the only one saying this. I mean, one can read the military bloggers today re-evaluating, Vinchuk of Reba has re-evaluated the raids. He can understand to say something was hit doesn't mean it, it's lights up in that region. Alexander, you do this every day and you do it very well. The detail of what was hit on day one, isn't the detail of what stays off on day three? So in terms of timing, my guess is no better than the next persons. But if I don't see sustained electric wars, if I don't see sustained railway war, I don't see an end to Ukrainian capacity to continue fighting. I don't see an end through this coming winter and certainly the motive to continue making money at this death machine remains as high with the Zelensk in his gang as ever. And so you get the Canadians jumping in this Freeland, no matter whether her political career is finished soon or not, the capacity of the Allies to support this is supported by their constituencies. So until we see who wins in November 5 and what they really intend to do and what the capacity to do is I see not a stalemate, the same sort of steady expansion from region to region are going westward and that could take another year. All right, that is, I don't know all the questions that we got. Thank you very much, John Hilmer for joining us. The blog is "Dances with Bears." I have that in the description box down below. I will add it as a pinned comment as well. Thank you so much, John, for joining us on the Durand today. Thank you, Alex, and thank you, Alexander. Alexander, you're muted just to say thank you very much, John, for coming and, as I said, for providing holding detailed and excellent illnesses. Thanks. I hope I'm right. I hope you're right. I hope we're all right. Thank you so much, John. Take care. Goodbye. Bye. Okay, let's answer the remaining questions, Alexander. Yeah, absolutely. Let's see. Let's go back to Ralph Steiner says, Ben Wallace said, "Britain is like an Amazon warehouse full of military equipment capable of defeating Russia. Will David Lammy commit the remaining 157 challenger tanks to the current battle of Kursk?" There aren't 150 remaining challenger tanks. There are bits and bobs. The achieve you put them all together could create 150 challenger tanks, but even then they wouldn't work. That would take a very long time to do. I have sources within the British military world. We are basically tapped out. There's very, very little else that we can realistically give. Unless of the challenges, they didn't do very well in Ukraine. They didn't do very well in Zaporogia, and they haven't done very well in Kursk. Jeffrey Brown asks, "Do you gentlemen feel that the money laundering schemes of Ukraine and Israel that the U.S. political elite has been profiting from at the expense of their own taxpayers are coming to an end?" No, I think that they want to continue with them and that they will. Ukraine might be coming to an end. In fact, it probably is, but they'll find another one. This is a machine that keeps working. Afghanistan was a colossal such scheme. Most of the money that went into Afghanistan didn't stay there. It went straight out and went to all kinds of other things. That's why you see so little evidence of things that it might have left behind. You find very few roads, a few factories, no railways, nothing of that kind was built with all that money, but they will find something else. Mama Alaska says, "I'm grateful to Alex Alexander and the Duran." Thank you for that. Petros says, "If Kamala refuses to have a policy page, Trump should make one for her and direct people to it during the debate to force her hand." That's not a bad idea. You must give him that advice. Ralph Steiner says, "The British Empire has long considered all continental Europeans to be inferior, not only morally and intellectually, but also militarily from the island fortress of old Blighty." Is this still true? I think that it is increasingly not true, but I think that there might be some residual elements within upper class British society that still think like this. But if so, I think they're coming up for a shock. I think that overall the political economic situation in Britain at the moment is so dismal that I think that it's going to be impossible to sustain even those kinds of illusions, even amongst the most deluded people in Britain for much longer. Commander Crossfire says, "Good day. Love and peace will prevail." Thank you for that, Commander Crossfire. John Scott says, "Ukraine will prevail." Thank you, John, for that. "From Beverly Trout, such great summary by your guest and insightful questions by Alex Alexander." Thank you, Beverly, for that. Ralph Steiner says, "Brian Berlettich says, if Ukraine War turns into a disaster for the Anglo-American Empire, that an attempt at extraction will occur in 2025 to move resources against China. Will China be easier to defeat?" No, but it will be a very, very different type of conflict. There will be enormous pressure on China economically. And of course, China is a country that still depends very heavily on imports of raw materials. I mean, it's not self-sufficient in raw materials. And this is why Russia is so important because Russia has an excess, a huge excess, of raw materials. So that is what binds China and Russia together. Sanjeva says, "Not related today, but a correction, Alexander, about Modi's visit to Ukraine. He only spent a few hours in Ukraine, excused with security, not even a day. Former Indian civil service officers bitterly criticized Modi for going. He will never go again." I was angry to make my thank you for that, Sanjeva, and thank you also for the correction. Can I quickly say? I wasn't sure how long he was there, but I'd heard that he was there for up to two days with one very optimistic spin. It's very good to know that it wasn't so. And thank you, as I said, for the correction. For the record, I too think it was a mistake. I think that Modi is trying too hard to remain friends with everybody. And when it comes to a conflict like Ukraine, I think it's a thankless task. I think that going to Kiev is not going to impress or please the Russians. There was a rather stiff conversation between him and Putin, according to the Russian readouts afterwards. And at the same time, it's not going to impress people in Washington or in Kiev, who are always going to want from Modi far more than he can get. So I think you should have kept away, and I think the Foreign Service officers in India, who you told me, are criticizing his decision to go. We're right. Eric Hatchet says, love you guys. Thank you, Eric, for that. Ralph says, if, as John says, Kamala is crowned in the USA press and media as the great victor in Ukraine and destroyer of the hatred of the hated Russian bear, will this catapult her to being one of the greatest USA presidents? Well, absolutely. I mean, Lincoln, Roosevelt, Washington, they'll be, they'll be, they'll be absolutely nothing before the careless genius of the president who is to come. Well, Pelosi said that, that Biden should be on Mount Rushmore. So maybe Biden and Kamala. Because of that saying, absolutely. Yeah. Thank you, Ralph. For the record, for the record, I think the bubble has already started to burst. Notice that there's been rather less euphoric talk recently. And I even saw some critical article about it appearing in the Guardian, of course, which, you know, says an awful lot in mind. Yeah. Elza says, it's one of the most quoted blogs by Alexander. I imagine, dances with bears is what Elza is. Oh, absolutely. Yes. Yes, absolutely. Ralph Steiner says, Keir Starmer is increasing immigration to the UK and raising taxes as he warns of tough times ahead in Britain. Are Brits bracing for a wartime economy? This is an excellent question. What I get to say is this, the messaging from the new Labour government is unique. I've never known anything quite like this ever before. Most governments, when they come in, they're saying, you know, we're now in charge, things are going to start getting better from now. This government is coming in and saying, the things are going to get worse. They're going to get very much worse. They're going to get really, really, really, very, very fast. This is a strange pitch for a government to take. And the opinion polls are showing that Starmer's popularity is tumbling. So it's an odd thing. I only think that what we're going to see in Britain is a major push. I've said this already. I'm repeated again, a major push towards tightening controls, media controls, protest controls, all of that sort of thing. And the pressure that we're going to see on people through their living standards, with their economic life, is part of that as well, just saying. From Matthew Alexander, John was very optimistic, it seems, about the absence of USA intervention. Thoughts, particularly with the long range strikes permission. Now, I think that there will be permission to launch long-range strikes. I think that there has never been a situation where the Ukrainians haven't asked for something, have asked for something, and they haven't forgotten it. So I think they will get that permission. But I'm going to say something. I think the moment of maximum danger, in respect of that, in terms of the war, has already gone. If this had been agreed to in May, it would have been very dangerous. If it's granted now, at a time when the Russians are close to capturing Pakhrosk and advancing to the Nipu, militarily, the point of it has been lost, what it is going to do, if it is granted, which it will be, is going to solidify that mood in Moscow around people like Medvedev. By the way, Gerasim, if I'm sure as well, that there is absolutely no way that we could ever have any kind of dialogue with the US, the US's hostile towards us. It's directly complicit in launching missiles directly at Russian territory. And I think at that point, we're going to be back in a situation where Russia and the United States are not just adversaries, but actual enemies towards each other. And that's going to shape the entire geopolitical landscape from this point going forward. And we'll see the Russians providing weapons to American enemies around the world and things like that. And this global confrontation between these two powers will start to escalate. And we will be in a Cold War situation, probably a much more edgy and angry Cold War than with the one we saw before, with many other very, very powerful players around the world, most of whom will be on the Chinese side, or on the Russian side. Sorry. Ben Lind says, cheers and thank you for, thank you all for a great discussion. And Matthew says, so will Britain be at war soon? No, I don't think so. I think that if you are, if you live in Britain, the mood here is not amongst people is not in any conceivable way sympathetic to the idea of war. Some, a small group of people in Westminster and Whitehall might ache for it in their own ways and be deluded enough to wish it. But if they try to lead Britain in that direction, they will have a massive political crisis on their hands. I've never known a government to lose support and popularity as quickly as the government we have now. And Deuce Abscundis says the tightening up of the information space regarding social media feels like the prelude to war, the war drum propaganda is off the scale. It is. But I think it's the other way around. I think the word proper propaganda is being used in order to justify the tightening of control on the media space. And the reason that is happening is because those who exercise power across the West sense that the mood is shifting now very strongly against them in Britain, in Europe, in all sorts of places. And tool fate says, is there any effort being made to boost the defense on the Eastern Russian border? And the same goes for the USA in Alaska. People tend to forget how close these rivals are geographically. I don't know. It's the short answer. All I do know is that the Russians and the Chinese are conducting significant exercises together in these regions. So I would have thought the Russians have covered. Okay, Alexander, those are all the questions. Let me just do a quick check and make sure we got everything your final thoughts. I thought there was I was a fascinating program. Again, I mean, I think that Helmer has an adept and understanding of Russian affairs that you won't find from anyone else in the West. And I say that even even the academics don't have this sort of granular feel of what is going on there. Because of course, following this country for decades, he's been there many times. He's met many of these people. He's met people from the military from the military side, which is rare by the way. The military doesn't generally communicate very much with Westerners. It's very difficult to reach through to them and compare what Helmer says about the military with what someone like our former British Defense Minister Ben Wallace says. He's just published an article in the Daily Telegraph. And he talks about things that he discussed with Russian generals, including Gerassimov, when he was there in February 2022. And he completely fails to understand them. It is astonishing to see how ignorant the British Defense Secretary is about the Russian military. But when you talk to someone like Helmer, and when you talk to him about oligarchs and people like that, you see that he has that sense of granular knowledge that no one else does. But Matthew says, "Thanks for the responses and the content." Thank you, Matthew and Christopher. Welcome to the Duran community. That is everything, Alexander, a great live stream and great to hear John Helmer, his thoughts on everything. Thank you to everyone that joined us on Rockfin, Odyssey, Rumble, YouTube, and the Duran.locals.com. Thank you to our moderators as well. Thank you, Tishim. Thank you, Peter. Who else? Zaraiel. And everyone that was moderating today. Thank you so much, Angry Warhawk. Thank you for moderating. And Alexander, that's it. Tim Gibson. Thank you for that. Super sticker. Thank you so much. All right, let's get back to work. Let's get some videos up. Absolutely. Take care, everybody.