The Duran Podcast
Kursk Changed the War - Dmitry Polyanskiy (Russian Rep to UN), Alexander Mercouris & Glenn Diesen
Hi everyone, and welcome. I'm joined today by Alexander McCurris and also Dimitri Polanski, the first deputy permanent representative of the Russian Federation to the United Nations. Welcome. So we really appreciate you taking the time because we've been wanting to speak with you regarding this invasion of Kursk to get the Russian perspective from the seemingly objectives of this to how the Ukrainians have been doing and also the Western position, the impact on the direction of the war, Russia's response to both Ukraine and NATO for that sake. So I thought maybe you could start with the Western position because it seems to be riddled with a bit of ambiguity. The UK obviously seems very excited but the US has been very quiet in terms of commenting on the invasion. They appear to have at least some involvement in terms of supplying the intelligence. I was just wondering what's happening on the diplomatic front. How are the Americans explaining these actions to you and their involvement? It's very easy to answer your question, Glenn, because they are not explaining it at all in terms of implementing actually the UN. And in general, I need to say that our Western colleagues are very modest in expressing any reaction to what's happening. And this is quite visible if you compare the situation a year ago. We take a benchmark, the Ukrainian Independence Day. So I recall that a year ago there was a big performance of people standing in front of a Security Council telling that they will support you clearly until the end and all these things. This year, nothing happened like this. One reason, of course, is that it is Saturday, but it has never prevented UN members and Security Council members to express their support if they want to. They can do it on Friday or Monday, no problem. This time, my impression is that they were waiting until the last moment to call for a meeting on Ukraine, which they did. And it will happen tomorrow afternoon, because they were really at a loss on how to react to this adventure, because this adventure opens a very unfavorable side of the Ukrainian regime and of the Ukrainian armed forces, because what we saw in Kurs, actually, we saw it earlier, but it was very hard for many people to believe, especially in the global south. Now they see quite visibly the true colors of the Kyiv regime. So first of all, it's an aggressive regime, and it started the War of Aggression again, and so on people in 2014. That's the important threshold we warned about it repeatedly. We were saying that there is a war that we need to stop. We were counting on the members of the Security Council. It endorsed a resolution 2202 about Minsk agreements, but it had done nothing to implement it. And on the contrary, under the guise of this resolution, western countries were arming Ukraine. The Kursk incursion also showed the terrorist nature of Kyiv regime. They are targeting civilian population. They are taking people hostages. They are killing pregnant women. They are targeting civilian cars and ambulances by UAVs. This is visible. It's important to conceal it. They are looting stores, and they are boasting about it on social media that they are looting stores. This is the picture that the West always tried to not to highlight. Now it's very difficult to do so. And of course, a lot of countries from the global south in the cool wars of the UN are now saying that, why did Ukraine attack Russian territory, which is international acknowledged before 1991? We do not distinguish in Russia between this territory and the territory of the new subjects of the Russian Federation that joined recently. But for the world, I understand that this is a problem for some countries. They will say that we do not acknowledge these regions to be part of Russia. But this is about Russian territory that was there after 1991. And this is a problem for a lot of our partners from the global south. And it's visible that western countries are a bit perplexed by this action. It's hard for me to judge whether the UK is celebrating or not celebrating, because there are different reports. And it's hard to imagine that it was, frankly, it is very hard to imagine that it was concealed and performed without approval from the West, especially from the United States. Because US provides intelligence, US there are mercenaries, there are military advisors from the UK, US, and other countries. There are a lot of witnesses who are saying that there is a lot of English, Spanish, and Polish speech there at the border. So it's clear that they were involved. To what extent? I don't know, frankly, I don't have the information about this. It's for the others to judge. But of course, because the West is covering all the actions of Kiev regime, the West has given a kind of blank check for Kiev regime for quite a long time. It's always covering and it's responsible for this adventure. As for the targets, well, it's very difficult to read a madman's mind, of course. But it was clear from the outset, I think they were not concealing the aims. They wanted to divert Russian detachments from the Eastern Front to weaken the pressure on Donbas, which they failed miserably. And you see that the intensity of fighting in the East hasn't reached considerably. Today, I saw the reports of our Ministry of Defense that the medium tempo for the liberation of Donbas is now 11 square kilometers per day, which is quite a big tempo. It's much more important than it was or the course can occur. So the 45 positions that had been prepared for many, many years since 2014 with all these concrete equipment and very much fortified, they are being lost right now. So now they are the last ones who are doomed to fall. And the Ukrainian public is discussing this openly. So this is the key result of the Kursk adventure, because he had sent the reserves to Kursk, the reserves that people were expecting on the Eastern Front to somehow count a Russian penetration there. One thing, the other thing, of course, he was planning to take more land, he was planning to get deeper, he was planning to get as deep as to the Kursk nuclear power station, evidently to bargain it for the future and to kind of reinforce Ukrainian negotiating positions. Again, he miserably failed. This is quite clear. Instead of reinforcing Ukrainian position, I think he weakened Ukrainian position very much, because now he has to take care of this territory. They have to militarily provide their detachments for some supplies, other things, which is very, very challenging task under the fire of our army. And the losses that they are having there are incredible. They are comparable to the losses that they were having during this so-called counter-offensive a year ago, maybe even more important. And this is visible. The equipment is damaged, people are being killed, people are being taken, they are being they surrender and all these things are also visible on social media. So this is a very bad picture for Ukraine. So it's really very hard for me to explain what was the reasoning, but if there was any reasoning, I think that it didn't work. That's quite sure at this stage. Could I ask because, of course, Mr. Grossi is now the nuclear power station. He's talking about the fact that the nuclear power station is vulnerable. In case there is an attack, the Russian side has already reported that one attack has taken place. Is it possible that part of the reticence of Western governments is because they're not really very happy to be openly associated with what might have been an attack on a nuclear power station? That is one question. The other question I wanted to just quickly say is this. We've had lots of reports in lots of discussions about discussions that were supposedly taking place between Russia and Ukraine using Qatar as some kind of a broker or mediator or something like that, about interruptions to the missile wars, which surprised many people. The Russian government has now said these discussions were not happening, but they've also seemed to be saying that for the moment, because of what has happened, in course, there aren't going to be negotiations, that the possibility of negotiations has been ended. Can you perhaps enlarge a bit on that? Just those two things. Okay, so starting with your first question. First of all, we were repeatedly warning about the aims of Ukrainian armed forces, of Kiev regime, armed forces to create some kind of provocation on the Zaparorgian nuclear power station, about a power plant. There are inspectors of IAEA present at the site, and it's a very hard task for these inspectors to, on the one hand, acknowledge the damage that is being done to the station. On the other hand, to try to ignore the fact that it is being done by Ukraine, because Ukraine is always trying to use this very strange perverted logic that Russia, which is really trying to hit our own station, the station which is under our control. So most people, of course, don't buy it. Some of them don't show it openly, but for IAEA, it was an awkward situation always. And Mr. Grossi was trying to avoid putting blame on anybody saying that there was an attack, but it's hard to IAEA to see what was the source of the attack, a very clever position, but a difficult one, frankly. In terms of Kursk, it is even harder, because if we imagine that we, all of a sudden, decide to attack our station, which is deep in our territory, with our own UAVs, this is something that I don't know, it doesn't fit even into a madman's mind. So Mr. Grossi is now visiting Kursk, and he said that the station was attacked, and it's very easy to connect all the dots, even for those who were skeptical, saying that it was attacked, of course, by Ukraine. And if Ukraine is attacking Kursk power plants, so of course, it's reasonable to kind of connect more dots and saying that it is, it was doing so even before, but in regards to the power of power plants. So again, this is from the PR point, a very bad situation for Zilensky and for his regime. As for negotiations, I frankly had no information, and I heard that my colleagues that were denying that there were any negotiations in Qatar, and I doubt very much there might be some humanitarian contacts on the exchange of prisoners, that was happening all the time. Maybe in Qatar, maybe in other things, Turkey was very instrumental. United Arab Emirates, but this is not negotiations. This is humanitarian meeting where people decide concrete issues and the politics are being put aside. This is not about the parameters of the possible peace deal. There are no negotiations with Ukraine. The last negotiations that took place in Istanbul. And you know the outcome. It was in 2022. We came to a very favorable arrangement for Ukraine. Ukraine initialed all these arrangements, but then UK interfered. Boris Johnson said that there is no need to reach a deal with Putin, because Zilensky is capable of defeating Putin with the help of Western arms. That's what happened. I think now it's a common knowledge. As for what's happening now, you recall that in June, President Putin made a very, I would say, generous proposal to Ukraine, generous because of the real configuration on the France. It was a proposal for possible peaceful settlement of the Ukrainian crisis. But it was, first of all, it was immediately rejected as such. But Ukrainian officials were trying to contemplate a little bit, and they were philosophic about this. There were no outright rejection when Kuleba was in China. In context, with India, they were saying, "Yes, we need to think about, and maybe we should bring Russia to a negotiating table." They seemed to be very peaceful. A lot of my colleagues from the Global South were encouraged by this. They were saying, "Oh, you see Ukraine, because of the situation on the front, would be more open to real negotiations. Maybe we should take this chance to reach the peace deal." We were not commenting on this, but we were also, of course, noting that there was this change, obvious change of rhetoric and an attitude from the part of Ukrainian officials. But Horsk was a total rejection of this. Immediately, all the hopes for negotiations were bashed, so it was a clear choice of the landscape. Instead of going to a negotiating table, he chose escalation. This was one of the immediate results of Horsk. Immediately, they took out of the cupboard the Zelensky peaceful formula. They started saying that the only way to achieve settlement would be on the basis of Zelensky peaceful formula, which is not a peaceful formula, as you all know. They were saying that they were planning to organize another conference within the line of the the Bergenstalk, and to see how they could further implement the Zelensky peaceful formula. So the rhetoric, again, has changed. Now it's absolutely funny to listen to all the statements, because the Ukrainian army stuck in Horsk. Ukrainian army is losing east of Ukraine, Donbas, with a very, very, very, very weak pace. And again, they had a chance, we warned them that any new proposal will be worse than the previous one. Of course, this proposal was worse for them than the one that that was made in June. That's my feeling. And there is a total unanimity in Russian society about an acceptability of any negotiations. At this stage, and the fact that he had a choice, he had a good proposal on the table, a lot of countries were lobbying for starting negotiations, direct negotiations with Russia, or indirect negotiations on the settlement, on the basis of what Mr. Putin proposed, he rejected it. He bashed the hopes of everybody who was betting on these kinds of negotiations. That's what we have after Horsk. So how scarce, how do you see the how this Kursk nation would impact further direction of the war, because Russia appears, as you pointed out, to be taking advantage of Ukraine opening another front by pushing towards the Pokrovsk direction. As you said, they have all this multi-layered, defensive, well fortified lanes, defensive lines there, but they're not properly manned anymore, as all their best men and equipment were sent into Kursk. So I was just curious, how do you see this nation of Kursk impacting the war? And also, can you say anything about what Russia has, have their objectives or priorities changed as a result of this? And will Russia demand, it will increase its demands? Because you mentioned Putin gave a generous peace settlement offer. But in the future negotiations, will the terms change? If so, well, I'm not everything hasn't been determined, obviously. And I was wondering if you could say anything about this? Well, I don't want to speculate on this, frankly, because this is the question, which is much above my payroll. And I'm not the one who is being part of this decision-making circles on this kind of negotiation. We are diplomats, we are working at the UN, who receive instructions. Of course, we can easily see the change in the rhetoric of our friends and fools. So we are involved in a little bit more difficult kind of planning. It will be for my president to decide what to do next. But as for the military situation of Ukraine, I don't think you need to be a military expert to realize that what the key for regime has got is a big, big pain in the neck, because they need to provide for this part of Russian territory, which is very small, as you might see on the map, which doesn't contain anything important, because there are a number of villages. And most of them were empty. There were some people who were left there. Mostly, they just didn't want to leave because of their houses and it was their voluntary decision. Those who wanted to leave, they were given an opportunity to leave, though it was, of course, done in a hurry. But there are some people there, that's true. But it's not something that contains any military objects or any important city, just a number of villages. The biggest of them, I think, is a city of 1,000 people, not that 1,000 were present there, but its nominal was 1,000 before. It all started. So that's what they got. And there are a lot of forests there which really are very good smokescreen for the sabotage groups, so it's very difficult to fight with them. It was the region which was very bad for Nazi Germany, for Germans in the Second World War, because of partisans, because of sabotage groups which easily operated in the forest. But apart from small sabotage groups which penetrate from the forests in one region and another and being eliminated and targeted, it's very hard to to wage, to introduce army there. It's not suitable for army maneuvering. Apart from forests, there is also a lot of open terrain which is easily being targeted from from UAVs, from artillery, from satellites, so they are very much exposed there. And there is a price for this exposure. The price is immense. They are losing a lot of people there. So at the the apex of this invasion, they were losing 1,000 men per day. This was a very, very big loss. They lost a lot of military equipment. You see the pictures of tanks, you see the pictures of artillery and rocket systems. Everything is being damaged. And it's hard to see what is the plan B right now. So they are stuck there. They are exposed. They are losing people every day. They are losing equipment every day. They have to introduce more reserves there because otherwise they will have to leave and it will be a big, big blow to Zinnensky's reputation. I don't see that our military command is in a big hurry to kind of liberate this territory with one push because it will imply certain losses. I think it's a from military point of view. It's a favorable position that we have right now. We can further eliminate them and take a push later into the neighboring regions of Ukraine, which will be much weakened and which will not have a lot of troops to defend them. I assume that's what I can read from military analysts. But in any case, it's quite clear that they haven't obtained what they wanted. And they got absolutely rumbling of the Eastern Front. Everybody is speaking about these, even those who are ardent defenders of Kiev regime, they are saying that they are losing a lot of villages, a lot of cities. And they are now about to look back off and they don't have the fortified lines of defense over there. And this happened only because of course, because it was weakened. All the reserves were taken from there to Kursk. So they didn't achieve anything in Kursk and they are losing miserably in the Eastern Front. That's the direct outcome of this situation. It's dynamic. It is developing. I think that we have before the rain comes down and before the terrain becomes muddy and not very profitable for military action, we have about a couple of months. It's a long time. You can achieve a lot during these couple of months in Donbas and Kursk and elsewhere. So I wouldn't predict where we will be in October and what will be the position of the regime in October. But it's developing very intensively, very rapidly. And we are all following these developments with a big attention. I think you're absolutely correct in your assessment of the military situation. And I've been speaking to former American military officers and they take the same view. There is one thing I would further ask though, which is that Zelensky, the Zelensky government, is trying to leverage this affair in Kursk to try to get the United States to agree to the Ukrainians using long-range missiles to carry out deep strikes into Russia. Now, your president, President Putin, has pointed out, and by the way, the same American military officers I've been speaking to agree with him, that it is impossible to use these missiles, the storm shadows and the attackers without the Americans and the British being directly involved. Now, do you think that is going to happen and what will the Russian response be? Is this something that is going to provoke a response from Russia if these missiles are used in that way? Just before you answer that, a very interesting article in Politico said that it would make no military sense to do this because these missiles can't reach any particular targets there. But even more interestingly, I thought there was worries in Washington that if they did this, it would be a line that would be crossed, which would make it impossible in the medium term for the United States and Russia to improve relations. Going long beyond, far beyond the situation in Ukraine, the conflict in Ukraine now. Can I have your thoughts about this and whether there's any view that you can tell us about it? Well, first of all, of course, I don't want to speak on behalf of the American side. They have their own considerations, and they have a long history of support of Kiev regime, at least from 2014. You recall the investigation by New York Times, which showed that the CIA was there in 2014, 2015 at the border with Russia, and they were already preparing some kind of military action against Russia. This was a big, big revelation, I think. So when I said that there is no plan B for Zelensky regime, but I think there is a plan C for Zelensky. And this is to achieve the involvement of the West. This would be the best case scenario for him, because he realizes that, first of all, there is no Wunderwaffe that would turn the situation in favor of Ukraine. Neither F-16s, nor Storm Shadow, nor anything else. They can inflict certain damage. Like everybody was saying, "Oh, these highmars, for example, is something. Oh, attackams is something that will change the tides." No, it didn't, because we adopted, of course, to do this, and now we're destroying them, and we destroyed them, even during the Kursk incursion. So they were used by Ukrainian troops to hit the targets within Russia. So his best dream would be to drag the West into the direct confrontation with Russia, because then he will have the chances. If there is all an old war, then it will not be worse for Ukraine, because everything is already very bad and gloomy for Ukraine, not for Ukraine as a country, but for his regime, because he has now lost any credibility, any legitimacy, since me. He doesn't want to hold elections. He understands that if this military escalation stops, and if people start to ask questions, then he has very good chances to get on trial, and at least to lose power, that's for sure. So he doesn't want this scenario. That's why, of course, he wants to provoke the West. He wants the West to engage in direct confrontation with Russia. So his calculations are absolutely clear for me. As for the calculation of the West, I hope that there are still sane people in the West that realize what might be the consequences of such a scenario. And such a scenario, of course, will become much more likely if there is an agreement on using long-range rocket systems within Russia. So far, I think they had this common sense of prevail. I don't know how it will happen. I don't want to speculate about this. I heard that my colleagues in Moscow were warning about very harsh and resolute response from Russia if it happens, and I don't want to speculate more like this. But again, you should bear in mind that this would be the biggest present to the Densky regime, if there is more escalation, and if the West becomes even more involved in this section, then it is involved right now. It is involved. It's not a secret that there are military counselors from the West, and a lot of them die, and then we will see some obituaries in papers about some general falling from the rock somewhere in Switzerland, all of a sudden, when there is one person, it can't be happened, but when there are dozens of such scenarios, this is very suspicious, but it's up to what the Western public to decide. So the West is involved, the weapons is being used, German tanks are on Russian territory, which is a very triggering picture for Russian mine. Of course, now they are being conducted by Ukrainians, but it's still an enemy, and it rings a bell very much. By the way, I forgot to mention one more thing, which was exposed during this incursion, and this is the widespread Nazism in the Ukrainian army. So there were a lot of Nazism in Syria displayed openly when the Western correspondents who entered illegally our territory with the Ukrainian troops were asking them, and they were not concealing it. A lot of people in the West saw it, and the conclusion was that, yes, this is deep-rooted, this is something that Russia was wanting for a long time, the West was rejecting it, but if you are admiring Hitler, if you were a swastika, then most likely you are an easy. It's no need to explain to us that it's not an easy some guy who is just very much wanting the best future for Ukraine, what kind of best future can be for Ukraine with the swastika, with the swastika as an easy and senior. So this was also one of the very important outcomes of this Kursk adventure. I was curious though, because when this Kursk invasion began, it seemed as if it was almost a consensus among Ukrainian commentators, Russian, as well as Western, that this would be a mistake, but then once they began to take territory in the Western media and among politicians who are more enthusiasm and support, suggesting that this was suddenly a good idea, now we're kind of returning to reality again, where the devastating losses are being accepted. But obviously there's no good opportunity to restart a diplomacy or a negotiation with the Ukrainians, but is there any change in attitude among Western leaders in terms of are they willing to do you see a change in the willingness to sit down and start at least to talk about a possible diplomatic solution, because it appeared at least in the media to be some shift that at least now they're talking about the fact that Ukraine is not going to get its territory back. We're talking less in the media about the fact that the Ukraine needs to restore its neutrality in a peace agreement, but would there be any changes on the ground for you in terms of well, at least some shifting attitudes, some willingness again after two and a half years to actually sit down and talk and yeah. Well, let's distinguish between two realities. One is what's happening on the ground, the other is what you can read in Western media. So of course a lot of correspondence trying to put this very upbeat tune about Ukraine being capable of inflicting victory to win over Russia in a war. There were some kind of bravado in Western media at the beginning. And if you read for example BBC, which I don't, but sometimes I see these pop-up messages saying that Ukraine has achieved something again, which is not corresponding to the ground, then of course you might have an illusion that this was a brave move from Ukraine which will give its benefits. You might recall also how the counter-offensive was also mediaised a year ago. At the beginning, Western media was adamant saying that yeah, Ukraine has started, the tides are changing right now, and now Ukraine is pushing back. I don't think it lasted long. And this time it lasted even fewer time than it was last time, and Alexander is absolutely right that most analysts are now absolutely blunt about what is the position of Ukraine right now. It has to defend, undefendable, and absolutely unnecessary operation which attracts a lot of resources and which deviates the attention from the crumbling Eastern Front. This is the sad reality which they face. So it's very hard to put on an upbeat tune in such circumstances. As for the Western countries, well, my observation from what I see in the UN is that they haven't yet lost all the hopes for some positive outcome for them of this Ukrainian crisis, though they have become much less confident. And they also have become, it was on the eve of the incursion, they have become more isolated because this is a group of countries. They have blog discipline, they deny obvious things, and they absolutely don't want to speak about peace, about realistic peace. The majority of UN members were demanding to start some kind of meaningful negotiations, realistic negotiations that could bring an end to this crisis. And they were also very keen to pay attention, pay due attention to the root causes of this situation, because it's not unprovoked aggression as the West was trying to frame what happened in February 2022. There were reasons for this. There were rules for this. It was there was a war which happened since 2014, and we came there to stop the war. So it's very hard to deny and the countries from global size, from the global south, our Chinese partners, they are quite clear about this. They say, if we want to avoid this kind of crisis, we need to tackle the root causes. We need to tackle the question of European security. We need to tackle the question of the enlargement NATO. All this thing is should be tackled altogether. It's known as the most important, important shortcoming of the Zelensky formula, so-called Zelensky formula, because he just wants to tackle the period from February 2022, and in the way that it is favorable for Ukraine, for everybody to sit and to decide and then to impose the decision on Russia. Of course, it will not work. People, serious people are saying, let's sit together, let's analyze everything, and let's do everything to eradicate any possibility that there would be situations like this in Europe, in the upcoming future. That's the serious approach to negotiations which we share, and we would, again, prefer, I'm not saying at this stage when there is a Ukrainian army in Kursk region, but we would prefer to settle the goals of our special military operation by diplomatic means. We reiterated it repeatedly. If there is no outcome like this in the minds of our Western colleagues and their Ukrainian puppets, then we will have to decide it's on the battlefield. That's what we are doing. In the meantime, we are not wasting time. We are just moving the operation forward. Ambassador, I have no actual questions. I just wanted to say thank you. I know that your time is limited, but I will make two quick observations. I know you're also very heavily involved in the discussions about the Middle East crisis and, of course, the Ukrainian problems. I wanted to say that, in my opinion, the fundamental problem, the core reason why none of these crises have ever been resolved properly is precisely the one you've identified. There have never been good faith negotiations. There have never been good faith negotiations ever since the start of the crisis in 2013 with the protests on My Down Square, never at any point. As for the Middle East crises, you can go all the way back to the 1940s, and there have never been good faith negotiations, and there certainly haven't been good faith negotiations since the events of last October. That is the problem. Until that changes, we're going to have the problems. The crises will continue, and they will be resolved in the way that you say. The very last point I want to make, it is a quick one, is that I suspect that one of the reasons for the reticence of your colleagues from the West especially is because, as we say, in Britain, victory has many fathers, but defeat is an orphan, and I think that is now becoming increased. Thank you for these remarks. I just want to thank you as well. In our media, we never really get to hear what Russia is arguing anymore. We do really appreciate this. Thank you so much, Mr Polanski. Thank you. I'm always open to Western media, but they know one rule since my experience was not very favorable for them. I said, I can do it only live, and most of them don't want to do it live. They want to edit what I say in the way they want it to sound, and this is not what I can accept. That's why, since a certain moment, Western media is not very much favorable for organizing interviews with me and my colleagues, so they want to stay comfortably numb. Okay? Thanks, Ian. Thank you very much. Thank you very much, the best. [Music]