The Duran Podcast
Russia attrition war and fear of summer collapse
All right, Alexander, let's do an update on what is going on in the conflict in Ukraine. And let's start off this video with what is happening on the front lines. Russia continues to advance. Ukraine is running out of weapons. Kirby has admitted that Ukraine is running out of weapons. Washington Post is saying that Ukraine may run out of air defense missiles by the end of March. And the situation looks very bad for the Ukraine military. The 61 billion is not going to be coming in by this month. If there is going to be any money coming in, it's not going to be approved by the end of March. And you have these constant stories about the Czech Republic and these 1 million shells. That's the situation for the Ukraine military. Things are not looking good at all. What is your take? Well, they're going to get worse now because Putin came out this morning and said that Russian military is now moving beyond active defense. So they seem to be moving towards a more offensive positions. He did say that they continue to have the initiative right across the front lines, which of course, Tal is with what everybody who's been following this war closely can see. Now, we've had a lot of information. A lot of evidence has been, in fact, reports have been cascading in over the last 24 hours and they point to more Russian advances. But I think we can start to say we're close to breakthroughs again in many situations. Now, I get the sense that the two most important places where the fighting is going on at the moment are the other. Well, essentially, the most important place is central Donbas. Avdevka, Bachmut, areas between these two places, between Avdevka and Bachmut, places like Krasnogorovka, Perimobiesky, small towns, heavily fortified by Ukraine over the period from 2014, very much part of Ukraine's defense lines. Now, Avdevka itself, as we know, fell in February. The Russians captured it in February. That was perhaps the most heavily fortified place of all. Bachmut fell in May last year. The Russians have been pushing forward strongly in both locations. In Avdevka, Sierzky, who was the new Ukrainian commander, rushed apparently 15 brigades to try to hold back the Russians in the Avdevka area. And he sent them to try to regain control of three villages, Ponekorovka, Berdichi, has been a very fierce fighting for these three villages over the last week or so. The Russians appear to have reorganized their forces. The latest reports suggest that all three of these villages are now coming under Russian control. And that, if it's true, and it does seem to be true, unhinges Ukrainian defenses in precisely this area. So when Putin says they're moving beyond active defense, it's starting to look like they're looking to conduct an offensive in the Avdevka area as well. One gets the sense, similar things are happening in the Bachmut area, that the Russians are very close now to launching an attack on the town of Chassafjard, which is the next town west of Bachmut. Chassafjard falls apparently that opens the way to all sorts of other places, leading eventually to Klamatorsk and the deeper river. And between Bachmut and Avdevka, this string of small fortified towns, Perva Myski, Krasnogorovka, it looks like Ukrainian defenses are collapsing in these places as well. So relentless pressure by the Russians. And as you correctly said, more and more reporters, more and more observers, Washington Post, Kirby himself, reports in Bloomberg, reports in the Spiegel. They're all saying the same thing. Ukraine running out of men, Ukraine running out of weapons, Ukraine running out of shells, Ukraine running out of their defense missiles. Now running out of shells, the Europeans have quietly admitted that they're never going to produce the shells that Ukraine needs. It looks like the Americans have come to that conclusion as well. The US and the Europeans are very short of shells for themselves. They learned shells to supply to Ukraine. Perva came up with this idea of buying shells from undisclosed third parties. It's starting to look as if that was more smoke and mirrors. You might not have understood that, but it looks as if these deals are not in the bag as he's led everybody to believe they are. The earliest dated scenes that the Ukrainians will see any of these shells if they appear at all this June. So that's months away, weeks away. Lots is going to happen between them. And air defense missiles, there really isn't a substitute for that because there's a major shortage of air defense missiles across the West. We've discussed this many times. The West never expected, has never planned for a war in which it did not have air superiority. I mean, that's something that Western militaries have not been confronted with since 1943. So they don't have a history of putting major emphasis on air defense systems. Production of air defense missile interceptuses. Low in the West, Ukraine's air defense missile interceptors, the ones that inherited from the Soviet Union, largely destroyed or used up by now. The West can't make up the difference here. And the Russian Air Force is now rampaging all over the front lines, bombing constantly. And the Ukrainians have no counter to the air force, which is pounding and destroying their fortifications. So what started to get the sense that we are closer to a breaking point in Ukraine than we have ever been before. And I want to repeat again a point we made on these programs, many times in the past, when attrition wars lead to a collapse, the collapse is sudden. We saw that with the American Civil War of the 1860s. You remember your history, right up to late 1864, it looked as if the war was in stalemate, Lincoln in the autumn of 1864 was worried that because of the stalemate, he might not be reelected. He was reelected. And a few months later, the Confederacy suddenly collapsed. The same with Germany during the First World War. Years of static front lines in the Western Front, again, a sudden collapse. It was starting to, one sense is that we're not far from that position with Ukraine also. They fired the Air Force spokesman the other day as well, since you were talking about the air superiority, which I thought was an interesting move. What if, I mean, I've actually asked this a few many times before in the past to answer this question. But I'll ask it again. What if they get the body? What if Ukraine gets the 61 billion? What if they get the 800,000 or 1 million shells? What if they find a way to replenish their air defense missiles? Does that change anything? Well, the last is very difficult to see how it can be done. And I mean, that is an important thing to say because even theoretically, there's only a finite number of air defense missiles around the world. I mean, there's lots of shells around the world. I mean, lots of countries of shells, India shells, Brazil shells, lots of countries of shells. If you could find ways to get all of these countries to give up their shells, you could get quite a lot of shells. But air defense missiles in the West are in very short supply. And not just in the West, but in the global South everywhere, nobody apart from the Russians, it seems, has planned for an air war quite like the one that we've seen play out in Ukraine. So I don't myself see how there is any solution to that problem. If the 61 billion dollars is passed within the next few weeks, which it might be, I mean, we wasn't discount that possibility, it will buy Ukraine a few more months of time. It will probably get Ukraine past the November election, which I suspect now is the priority. Over that period, Ukraine will still suffer attrition because the Russians will continue to advance and bomb. It will not be enough to change the situation on the battlefronts, but it will slow the process of collapse down. But we will eventually get to that point of collapse. Anyway, people are now increasingly speculating. Now, these are Western observers that we could be looking at a collapse in the summer. If that 61 billion dollars isn't approved, if it is approved, well, perhaps we will see the collapse in the spring of next year. That's how does the 61? Can I show you how does a 61 billion prevent the collapse? I mean, militarily, I doubt it's going to make a difference, the 61. If you don't have air defense missiles to buy, if they don't exist, then it doesn't matter if they get 500 billion. If they're not there, they're not there. So, okay, they can purchase shells. But if you don't have air superiority, the shells aren't going to make that much of a difference. If Russia is controlling the skies, I think the shells don't really change much of the trajectory of the conflict. Do you mean that the 61 billion, what it does for the Zelensky regime is that it pays salaries, it keeps people in his orbit supporting his administration because they're being kept well fed, and they're being kept paid, and the military's being kept paid, or at least top commanders are still getting money in their pockets. I mean, is that what the 61 billion does? Does it keep the state functioning, even though the attrition continues? That's exactly what he does. Ukraine currently has a $37 billion home in his budget for the whole year. Now, to stress, if we're talking about the United States, $37 billion, what's that in a country where they rack up debt at the level of a trillion dollars every three months. But in Ukraine, $37 billion is huge, and they have no domestic means of making that up. I mean, they can't raise taxes or cut spending or do any of the kind of things that one would normally do to deal with that kind of budget deficit. So, what the 61 billion dollars would do is, yes, it would provide some more weapons. I mean, we know there are always some weapons you can send. You can always supply some more shells, some more attack on missiles. You can lean on the Germans to supply some of their tourist missiles, maybe. You can probably rustle up some extra tanks, and undoubtedly, as I said, we'll be able to rustle up some more shells. You won't be able to solve the problem of air defense missiles, but you might just be able to hold things together to be glue and sellotade, rather than anything more concrete than that, for a few more months, to get you to the autumn, maybe. Not much, I think, further beyond that. But by the way, you are right to raise this question, because it is not guaranteed that the Russian military is getting stronger all the time. They're building up their forces continuously. We don't know what they might have planned. And of course, for the Biden administration, the biggest disaster of all would be if Congress approves the 61 billion dollar aid package. Some of that money is distributed, which it could be, and then Ukraine collapses before the election anyway, which is not impossible. I mean, that would be a disaster, that would be an absolute disaster. And, you know, it's not an inconceivable scenario, by the way. I wonder if you're Sullivan or Blinken, the guys that are really running the show at the White House, and who are very concerned about the campaign, the 2024 campaign, I wonder if they risk it. I wonder if they're thinking like you're thinking. And they're saying, you know, Project Ukraine is the most important thing on President Joe Biden's mind. But if we give the money, and they still collapse, which is very possible, and they collapse around the September, October timeframe, that would be a disaster for the Democrats and for the Biden reelection. I mean, that would guarantee an election defeat for Biden. I would imagine that would guarantee an election defeat for Biden. Strategically, I would say it's better. Strategically, I would say what we've been saying for a while on this channel, which is better to cut your losses sooner rather than later, and just dump it on the Europeans. The Europeans aren't going anywhere. They're still going to be tempted on the US. So, you know, I mean, you still have some time. Well, exactly. And I think this is what they're doing, actually. I think in some ways, this is my own sense that Sullivan and Blinken, Sullivan especially, Sullivan is the real decision-maker here. I think that he has to go through the motions of trying to get the $61 billion package through. So, you know, you get sort of occasional, well, occasionally, you've got statements in the administration that, you know, unless Crane is provided with the $61 billion, then Ukraine will collapse. So, he goes through the motions of still pushing for that. It keeps the president happy because the president is obsessed with Ukraine. And it gives him an alibi if the $61 billion is not provided, and Ukraine collapses. But at the same time, he probably, deep down, doesn't want Johnson and the House of Representatives to actually pass that $61 billion package. So, I suspect that, I don't think that's too complicated, by the way. I mean, if you work with politicians in a parliamentary landscape, which I haven't really, but I know a little bit about it, it is the kind of thing that they can think about, you know, that we have to pretend that we want something and push for it to satisfy our supporters and our boss, but actually, deep down, we don't. We'd rather that it wasn't provided, and the whole thing went failed, and then we can blame the Republicans come the election when it has failed. So, I wouldn't be surprised that those calculations are taking place in Washington. Now, the other thing that seems to be happening, and this is, again, we come back to Putin's interview with Sergey Kiselyov. It does seem that the administration is now finally fully throwing his weight behind Richard Haas and the people at the Council of Foreign Relations, and that there are approaches now being made to the Russians about freezing the conflict. And I think, again, the idea might be not so much to get the Russians to agree to that, as to create doubt and confusion on part of the Russians in the hope that that will slow them down. And we saw, we also what Putin said about that, that he's not going to agree to a ceasefire simply because the other side is short of ammunition. This isn't how it works. But, you know, you could see that, you could see that also with Macron coming up with that bizarre proposal that the Russians agree to a ceasefire during the Paris Olympics, Olympics that they're excluded from. I mean, you know, that, you know, that we could be seeing mounting, it might become public pressure, by the way, over the next few weeks. It might start to become more public pressure demanding or, you know, insisting that the Russians agree to a ceasefire. And, you know, saying, you know, if the Russians don't agree to a ceasefire, this proves that, you know, they're not really serious about ending the war and all that talk about negotiations and all that is just purpose. So, you know, be prepared for that. Putin was preparing the Russian people for it. He said that people who come forward with those kind of proposals are dangerous, and they're trying to lure Russia into making decisions, which will not be in its interests. Yeah. My final question to you is, is what, if you're Sullivan or the United States, the Biden White House, if you're the Biden White House, what are your risks of Ukraine collapsing sooner rather than later? If it does collapse later, especially before November, then you're toast if you're the Democrats of the Biden White House. And you know, it's going to collapse everyone, everyone understands that Ukraine has lost his conflict. I mean, everybody is now openly saying Ukraine cannot win. They have lost. So, everyone knows this now. Yes. There's no doubt about this. Yes. So, if you're Sullivan and you're the Biden White House, specifically Sullivan, you say to yourself, if it collapses before November, we're screwed. Because the Trump campaign's going to run on this big time, Afghanistan, and now at Ukraine. Maybe you can get it past November, 2024. But now that's looking very, very doubtful. That's a huge risk to try and get this past November, 2024. Maybe he can pull it off. But that's a risk. So, what are the risks that that he has to face if he just allows the 61 billion to not get approved? And he just lets Europe just take on Project Ukraine. I mean, I understand the narrative that's coming out, especially for the neocons, which is NATO is going to collapse. Europe's going to collapse. The Europeans are going to be upset with us. Our entire security infrastructure in Europe's going to fall apart. China's going to look at this as weakness. I don't think any of that's going to happen. I mean, I don't see why NATO would collapse. I mean, as long as the US is willing to put money into NATO, that's all that NATO needs is just the US money, whether it has Ukraine or not. NATO collapses if the US pulls out of NATO. It's that simple. And for the Europeans, my view on the Europeans is they have nowhere to go. No matter how upset they are with the United States, because they dunk Ukraine on them or because they pulled out of Ukraine, what do you care? Where's Europe going to go? Nowhere. Europe has no options. Their only option is the United States on an economic level, energy, political support. The US is the only game in town for the Europeans. They cut off whatever bridges they had towards the East, whatever agreements or contacts or negotiations, relationships that they had with the East. So I'm just trying to figure out what are exactly the risks that Sullivan has? If he does decide to say, you know, let's just pull out of this now, now better than later. Right. We must distinguish the risks that the United States would run and NATO would run from those that the Biden administration and the Democrats would run. You're absolutely correct. If you create collapses this year, next year, whenever it happens, it really makes no difference in terms of US security. US prestige around the world will suffer. It will be seen to have suffered a geopolitical defeat. Russia's Russian prestige and authority will have been greatly increased. The situation with the, you know, the bricks will be given added force. All of that, that's already happened. I mean, we've got that baked in the cake already. Whatever you do, I mean, you know, it's not an existential issue for the United States. It is not an existential issue for NATO. As you correctly say, they will keep running because what else can they do? I mean, if Donald Trump makes the decision to pull the US out of NATO, then of course, NATO collapses, but that's not what he is saying he's going to do. And, you know, people are pretending that that's what he's saying he's going to do, but he's never actually said that. So I think that's the first thing to say. So there are, there is significant damage to the United States and to NATO from a Russian victory, but it is not, you know, uncontainable disastrous damage. The show will go on. It will be kept on the road. Now, for the Biden administration and its prospects of re-election in November, the risks are much greater. If Ukraine collapses before the autumn, before the election, as you rightly say, I think the damage that they will suffer will be enormous. I mean, it's difficult to see how they can come back from that. But what they will try to do, presumably, is criticize the Republicans so that this wasn't, in fact, Biden's fault. It was Donald Trump's fault. It was the Republican's fault fair to blame for this. Trump was ultimately responsible for the debacle of in Afghanistan. It was, that was what happened there. You know, Biden had to pick up the pieces after Trump shattered the vase. You know, there wasn't the time to do that. And Trump also, because of his interference and his success in rallying House Republicans, is responsible ultimately for the defeat in Ukraine. And that is what they will run in, run with, because frankly, that's all they've got. Now, I come back to some points you were making last year. I remember, from about the summer, when it was already starting to become clear that Ukraine's offensive was failing. I remember you saying at the time that the Democrats need to think very clearly about whether they really want to run Biden as their candidate in the election, and about what they need to do with this project, Ukraine, if they look for another candidate at that time, they said to the president, you know, you've done a wonderful job, Mr. President, that, you know, you're a bit old now, things move on. You're a more dynamic person, someone I can use them, perhaps. They'd had a different candidate who'd not been, you know, immersed in this thing in the way that Biden is, and who was able to project a more dynamic image. And if this new candidate had suggested that he support you to cease fire or some kind of freeze in Ukraine, and efforts have been made in the autumn to try to come to some kind of understanding with the Russians, which might still have been possible then, well, something might have been achieved. But that window to do those things was small. It really was the late summer, the early autumn, at most. It's too late to do any of these things now. They lost their chance. They threw the opportunity away. And now all they can do is keep their fingers crossed, stick with Biden, because he's their candidate, go on demanding the $61 billion and hope for the best. That doesn't sound like a winning strategy. That's for sure. I still think that better for them, for the Biden White House, to pull out of this now, than to risk it on trying to get Ukraine over the 2024, the November hump. Well, I agree. I mean, what they could do, I suppose, is this. They could say, look, the House, Johnson, Trump, never going to approve the $61 billion. It's all their fault. In large of this, we can't do any more. We tell the Europeans that. We tell the Europeans that. It's not yours. Tell the Europeans. It's not for you to sort out. We're hamstrung here. And it's your problem. Whatever happens from now on, lay the entire blame on Donald Trump. And get Ukraine out of the election narrative. I think that's my main point is people will talk about it for a couple of weeks. The Trump campaign will seize on it and they'll try to blame it on Trump. Everyone will know that this was Biden's mess up. Everyone's going to know it. That Biden really screwed this one up. But as we get to the summer, people will start to forget and you have control of the media and you tell the media, don't report on Ukraine anymore. Just don't know more stories about it. And at least you get it out of the campaign narrative so that the Trump campaign doesn't use it against you come August, September, October. Oh, absolutely. This is correct. I mean, that is exactly right. So, make sure that Ukraine coverage is relegated to page 47. The Washington Post and the New York Times, only a few Americans read anyway and get it off the, you know, the big television stations and that kind of thing. And, you know, I could see that. I mean, that would be a strategy and it's the kind of thing that I suspect people like Sullivan who are, you know, narrative manipulators ultimately. I mean, that's how they run campaigns. That's probably what they will try to do. They should, they should try to do. Yeah. They have a major problem. They have a major problem. And that, I think, is the president himself who I think remains obsessed with this. Again, if you go back to Putin's interview with Sergei Kissilioff, he talks there at length about this furious round he had with Biden back in 2011 when Biden was sent by Obama to dissuade him from, to discredit Putin from standing again for the Russian presidency. So, there's a lot of vicarious, you know, visceral anger on Biden's part towards Putin. Obsession with Ukraine. He's got other reasons, as we know, to be in concern about what's happening in Ukraine. So, handling the president is going to be very difficult throughout all of this. Yeah. That's, that is their big problem is the hatred of Putin and Russia and the emotional connection that they have with Project Ukraine, not even so much Ukraine, but Project Ukraine, of course, the financial, the financial laundering that went through Ukraine as well. So, I mean, those are those are the big obstacles. Yeah. Absolutely. Absolutely. No doubt. Yeah. Okay. We will end it there at the durand.locals.com. 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