The Duran Podcast
NEOCONS search for VICTORY narrative in Ukraine
All right, Alexander, let's do an update on what is happening in Ukraine, and things are looking very bad for Zelensky. It does look like the collective Western parts of the collective West have finally realized that Ukraine has lost, and they would like Zelensky to accept some sort of negotiations, start some sort of negotiations, which taken to consideration territorial loss, though they're not saying it exactly in the way that I'm saying it. It's obvious that that's what they're hinting at. That's what these articles and these statements from various officials and leaders are suggesting, which is going to be difficult, if not impossible, for Zelensky to do. So where are we in project Ukraine? We talked about the fall of Uglidar. Toretsk is going to fall as well any day now. That's going to be another big blow to the Zelensky administration. And after Toretsk, it's Pakrovsk, and it goes on, and on, and on. And this really does remind me, Alexander of the Batsovo, and Oliph Shultz won in a contact Putin. The Kremlin says there's no such phone call scheduled, but German media is saying that Oliph Shultz, he is trying to get in touch with Putin. It does remind me of Merkel trying to get in touch with Putin, actually getting in touch with Putin, and convincing Putin to go ahead and agree to Minsk One and Minsk Two, eventually what would become Minsk One and Minsk Two. That was Merkel, though. Different time, different leader, different situation. Shultz is definitely not Merkel, and the situation has definitely changed for the worst between Russia and the collective West. So anyway, what are your thoughts on what is going on in Ukraine? I think you've summed it up exactly right now. We had an article a couple of days ago in the Financial Times, which said that at the General Assembly in New York called the discussion amongst the European diplomats. They didn't actually say the American diplomats, but I'm pretty sure they're involved as well, or at least some of them are, is about accepting that there have to be territorial concessions to the Russians in order to bring the fighting at least to a stop. And the reason this is the case is because everybody now understands. I think when I say everybody, I really do mean everybody. There might still be if you deluded people in London and Washington, and the British and American governments, but pretty much everybody else understand that the war in Ukraine is lost. When the economist writes an article saying that Ukraine and the West are losing the war, and that is the economist, which is grand central for the economy thinking, well, then you can definitely say that the war is that they understand that the war is lost. They all understand that the war is lost. So what they're trying to do is to try to save something from the wreck, and they're trying to get the Ukrainians to agree to some kind of territorial concessions to the Russians in return for a ceasefire. They're trying to draw the Russians into some kind of negotiation process. And I think if you put the pieces together with what Scholz is trying to do, he's trying to talk Putin into agreeing to send a Russian delegation to a new peace conference that the Ukrainians and the Western powers are trying to arrange somewhere. Nobody seems to know quite where the Swiss have said they don't want to have anything to do with it. Anyway, that's what they want to do. The problem they have is that on Zelensky's side, he doesn't want an end to the war. He can't afford to make concessions. We've discussed in program after program, his own thinking, far better for him for the war to go on than for him to face a situation where the fighting stops, and he has to hold elections and explain all his decisions, and perhaps face also the wrath of the hardline nationalists and that Financial Times article, by the way, for the first time, admitted their existence and said that they're well-armed and very angry and very radical. I mean, up to now, we've had this pretense that they don't exist, but now the Financial Times admits that they do exist and that there are significant political force. Anyway, he doesn't want to magically appear. They magically appear. Exactly. I don't know where suddenly we're told about them, that they might actually be a problem in trying to get this freeze of the conflict and all of that. Zelensky doesn't want to take on these people. He has personal reasons for not wanting the war to end, and besides, he probably is thinking not of an exit plan for Ukraine, as we've discussed many times, but of an exit plan for himself and escaping to the West, forming a government there, an exile, a government in exile there, keeping the fun they gain, is a much more attractive option for him than coming to a negotiated solution to the war, where he might find himself in all kinds of problems. So that's one set of problems that they have, but they have a far bigger set of problems, and this comes back to the Russians saying, "Well, we haven't scheduled a call with Scholz. Why were the Russians who are now conclusively winning the war, as everybody can see, who show every sign that they're going to win the war, irrespective of what the West does? Why would they agree to the sort of proposals that the West is now floating, peace conferences, discussions, all of those sort of things, which all of the West seems to be prepared to consider at the moment, is some kind of a freeze of the conflict on the existing battle lines with continued talk that because the fighting has stopped, steps can then be taken to bring the rest of Ukraine into NATO. The Russians are never going to agree to anything like that. From their point of view, from their perspective, fighting on and winning makes much more sense, and winning is what they're doing. Ukrainian resistance is weakening. Wugladar, the Ukrainians admitted yesterday that Wugladar has fallen to the Russians. Now we're getting reports that Torresk, as you rightly said, is about to fall. There's a crisis developing on the Northern Frontlines, near a place called Sversk, which is another fortified town that the Ukrainians have. There are reports, the Russians claim that the Ukrainians took 70,000 losses in September. Unbearable losses, unsustainable losses, if true. And the Russian advances are continuing to accelerate. Given that that is the situation that has been presented to Putin every day, why would he want to stop now? Why would he accept a freeze, a freeze of the conflict, when he has already rejected it many times when he was in a much weaker position? So, on the one hand, it's clear that Ukraine is being abandoned. The Western powers are starting to dip away. Biden probably still remains committed to the project, so does Starmer. But the Germans are giving up. The other Europeans, most of them, maybe not the Baltic states, maybe not Ursula, maybe not the European Commission, maybe not the NATO Secretary, but the Germans, the Italians, the French ultimately. They're all giving up. The Pentagon is giving up. They're all giving up. But they still cannot make that imaginative leap to accept that if the war is going to end on terms, the terms have to be Russian. Even Poland appears to be giving up. What do you think? Absolutely. The statements coming out of Poland, especially from people like the Defense Minister, are pretty much were tired of you guys. That's the sense that I'm getting from Poland, but tired of all this. It didn't work out. That's Poland, which has been Ukraine's number one supporter and neighbor. Exactly. And which has made the biggest commitment and which has sent the most aid and the largest numbers of volunteers, lots of Polish men fought in Ukraine, lots of casualties and all of that. It's very interesting, by the way, because the previous Polish government, the one that was led by law and justice, this time last year was coming to the same conclusion that a Ukraine was, as I remember them saying at the time, a drowning man that wanted to pull everybody down, then the new government, the one led by Don Tusk came in, and it was going to renew the commitment to Ukraine. It was going to be loyal to the NATO Atlantis project in Ukraine. It's taken them about a year. The situation has got far, far worse than it was a year ago, and they come to the same conclusion as the previous Polish government. I think that Ukraine has run out of friends in Poland. Yeah. I would say that that's a Lensky has run out of friends. Yeah, it's a Lensky. Of the world. I think people are just not hot on Zelensky anymore. You have articles talking about how people are not taking a fascination towards a Lensky, like they once took in the beginning of the conflict, the next Churchill. But you also have a narrative that is being formed, that has formed, to explain away the loss. I think that's probably the biggest indicator for me that that project Ukraine is about to be dumped, in that the collective West media and much of the collective West leadership past and present are basically explaining away the defeat to Russia in that the green light for long-range missiles was not given. The collective West, the leadership of the collective West, Biden, for example, was not courageous enough, was not strong enough, decisive enough to allow Ukraine to hit Russia hard. If only Ukraine was allowed to hit Russia hard, it would not lead to Ukraine's victory, but it would have put the needed pressure on Putin. It would have put enough, it would have placed enough suffering onto the Russian people, so that Russia would have been forced to the negotiating table and an agreement would have would have been hammered out. That's the excuse that they're going to use. People should not be fooled by this. It's narrative building, it's narrative formation, it's cope, call it whatever you want, but this is what they're going to use to explain away the defeat. We could have brought Russia to the negotiating table. We could have come out of this conflict with some sort of a stalemate or some sort of a victory or some sort of a compromise. If only certain decisions were made to allow Kiev to hit pre-2014 Russian territory and hit it hard, then we could have come out of this with something, but that decision wasn't made. Here we are. That is exactly what that is, and it's all over the place. There was an article in the Atlantic, for example, which talks about the abandonment of Ukraine. It's not because the war was unwinnable. From the start, it's not because people underestimated the Russians, that the Russian army was much more powerful than people realized that Russian industrial resources were far greater, that Russia's technological resources were far greater. No, it's all because Biden is this dithery person who won't authorize weapons being sent to Ukraine in sufficient numbers and in a timely way to turn the tide of the battle, and who also is refusing to allow deep strikes into Russia. Never mind that it's the pentagon that's actually making these objections, and never mind that stockpiles of weapons across the West, including in the United States, are being depleted. We don't worry about those things. We don't even really address those things. Well, the closest that's come to addressing those is this article in the Atlantic, which says that actually, even if there are problems with stockpiles, what we should have done then is run down the stockpiles completely. We should have given Zelensky literally everything, everything he wanted, even if that left us with nothing, because if we won the battle then, well, we might have nothing ourselves, but we wouldn't need anything because these terrible Russians would then have been defeated. A bizarre argument to make, and I noticed that the people who were making it were both US Marine officers, ex-marine officers, which I can't believe that they really think something like that. I'm sure they understand perfectly well that that kind of thinking is illogical. It is complete narrative construction. There was no quantity of weapons that could have changed the war. The United States has given vast numbers of artillery pieces. Pretty much its entire stockpile of artillery shells, high mass launchers, enormous abundance, many, many more armored vehicles than apparently the Pentagon was ever happy with, and air defence missiles, again, depleted its stockpiles to critical levels, so that they're now worried about whether there'll be enough to help the Israelis counter Iranian attacks. Well, that's the reality. But of course, if you're a neocoth, you don't ever admit that you made a mistake, that you miscalculated, that Russia was stronger and more organised, and more firm than you claimed, what you say instead, is that we would have prevailed. The only reason we didn't prevail is because there was weakness on our side. There was people who were pugilanimous and indecisive, and that next time, next time we find ourselves in the same situation, beat against the Iranians or the Chinese, it mustn't make the same mistake again. This time, we must go all out, and all out, and that way we will achieve victory. So they're preparing already psychologically for the next war, because that is what this narrative is all about. Yeah, if only they had given javelins, if only they had given leopards, if only they had given Abrams and F-16s, they gave it all. Yeah, they gave it all. They gave of every wonder weapon they had, and then some, and put all the money that they gave to Ukraine as well, on top of all the wonder weapons, 200 billion, 300, 500 billion, no one even knows, because there hasn't been a proper audit. No one even knows how many hundreds and hundreds of billions have gone. They gave everything. The West gave everything they had to defeat Russia, 16,000 sanctions, and they lost. That's just the god honest truth of the situation. And so this comes to my final question to you. What is the number one concern now of collective West leaders? What is the number one concern of the neocons as they try to figure out a way to ditch Project Ukraine? My thinking is that their concern right now is their power. How did they not get blamed for this? I mean, how were they? We talk a lot about Zelensky figuring out a way out of Project Ukraine. How do all of these guys, the Ursula, the Analinas, all of these people, how do they get out of Project Ukraine? The major priority now, the thing that they're all worrying about, once they realize that these freeze ideas aren't going to happen. The major priority then will be to blame someone else, to shift responsibility away from them, and to pass it to someone else. And we can already see who's going to be. All of these articles are blaming one person, Joe Biden. He was the president. He didn't give Ukraine all the weapons it wanted. He didn't give it the permission to launch deep strikes into Russia. He didn't give them 5,000 tanks, 20,000 armored vehicles, and 5 million shells, even though these don't exist. He didn't impose even more powerful sanctions against the Russians. No explanation what those additional sanctions would be. He didn't do any of these things. So that was why we lost. It was a brilliant plan. It would have worked or would have been well. But unfortunately, we had this dithery old man in the White House who wasn't prepared to make the decisions that the situation called for. And it was only because of him and the other weak people around him, the Sullivan's, particularly Jake Sullivan. They're also going for him a little. It was only because of those people that in the end, we lost. That's what their priority is going to be. And then they will say, just as I said, previously, we're still strong. We're still powerful. The West still has all of the advantages. What we need to do is to retrieve this defeat that we suffered by starting another war somewhere else to prove to the world how strong we are. Although cyclists can repeat itself all over again. Only they won't call it a defeat. No, no, they won't call it a defeat. What they're already saying is that Russia has suffered a strategic defeat. They don't explain what, why? But they're already saying that. You can already see that those words appearing in various articles. Supposedly, presumably, it's because it's relations with Italy and France and Germany have been ruptured. Of course, the strategic defeat, the actual strategic defeat, has been suffered by those countries, not by Russia. But anyway, that is what they're also going to say. So Russia suffered the strategic defeat. We didn't lose, but we might have won. We might have won even bigger and better, except, of course, as I said, it was weakness, especially specifically in the White House that brought us down. Yeah, well, of course, Russia lost. Russia lost their economies in tatters. They're isolated and put in suffering from four different medical conditions. Absolutely. So what if Biden says, you know what? And there are actually reports talking about this. What if Biden says, you know, okay, long-range missiles attack homes into pre-2014 Russia. So the final excuse that they have is gone. Yeah. He says, okay, the final excuse for all out for victory plan is gone. And Biden says, okay, go ahead. Then what? What do they do? Well, because it's not going to change the trajectory of the war. No, no, which is one reason the Pentagon is saying no, there was just one reason the Pentagon is putting his foots down and saying, you know, the risks are too big. The Russians would almost certainly retaliate somewhere in some way. And we don't want to do this, because it's not going to change the trajectory of the war. Who come up with something else? They say that Biden shouldn't have given Ukraine a 35s, you know, the stealth fighter jets. They say that he should have put boots on the ground. They say that we think he should have declared a, you know, a no-fly zone and shot down the Russian air force. They'll always come up with something. The one thing these people don't lack is imagination. So they will always come up with some explanation and some reason for their defeat, because that is actually what it is, rather than face the reality that they got it wrong. All right, we will add the video there. They're duran.locals.com. We are on Rumble Odyssey, Bitchewed Telegram, Rockfin, and Twitter X and go to the Duran Shop, pick up some merch like what we are wearing in this video today. The link for the shop is in the description box down below. Take care. [Music]