The Duran Podcast
FAB-3000. Russia begins war. Macron, Ukraine will collapse
All right, Alexander, let's talk about the latest developments in the conflict in Ukraine. We have a lot to discuss. Missile and drone strikes. A couple of days ago, targeting the major cities of Ukraine, I would say, Kiev, Haute, Le Volv and then you had yesterday what could be the biggest missile strike towards the energy infrastructure of Ukraine. These missiles and drones were targeting Hautekof, the Nipro dam, the hydroelectric power plant, though from what I understand the dam has not been damaged but the control centers have been wiped out and reports of blackouts, no internet access, and while all of this is happening, you have Shoy Gu, touring a military facility as the announcement came out that Russia will be mass-producing FAB 3000 bombs. And of course, the front line, the Russians continue to advance taking over a village after a village and even the Russian Ministry of Defense is confirming that Russia is capturing villages from the moving west, from Hautefka and the northwest of the Dolbas area. Anyway, so much to discuss and then maybe the second part of the video will discuss what the collective as leaders and the geopolitical situation is going through as they see Russia. Can you say route now, the Ukraine military? Well, I think it's quite not quite a route yet, but getting very close and to anticipate the second part of our discussion, there's reports circulating that in France, the media is being warmed to expect to Ukrainian collapse at some point in the next few months. Now, you know, and that Macron apparently is becoming extremely concerned about that. But, you know, let's talk about these military developments because, as you correctly say, everything is coming together now and it's beginning to come together very fast. Firstly, we've had two very important statements from senior Russian officials. One is the most senior Russian official of all, who is Vladimir Putin, the president of Russia. He now comes and has told us that Russia is now moving beyond active defense, that their actions are starting to go beyond the concept of active defense. Now, that rather suggests that offensive, some kind of offensive, is perhaps starting to emerge on the scene. Now, of course, if you are a Ukrainian soldier, to you, what has probably been happening over the last few months on the Ukrainian battlefields since October at least, probably already looks like a Russian offensive. But the Russians haven't called it an offensive. They refer to it as active defense. All the indications are when Putin says that they're going to move beyond that, that the real offensive is going to begin. At some point over the next few weeks, months, probably won't be announced formally, but we are getting the sense that the Russians are sensing, that the defenses are cracking and that the time has come to apply even further pressure. And to rub that in, we've had comments now from Putin's spokesman, Dimitri Peskov. And they are really extraordinary. He says that first of all, Russia is at war. He said it started as a special military operation. But the rest made that impossible. They gave an open-ended support to Ukraine. They gave enormous amount of equipment. They prolonged and escalated the war. So, to all intents and purposes, Russia is now at war. Well, that, perhaps, is a statement of the obvious. But what he went on to say is something new. Firstly, he said that the priority for the Russians is to liberate all the territory, Russian territory, that the Ukrainians occupy. And that, of course, means the whole of her some region. The remainder of Don Vass, the remainder of Zaporogia region, which includes, by the way, the city of Zaporogia, which is absolutely crucial to Ukraine's war effort. So, that now is apparently the priority. That's what Peskov has said. But he went on to say something else. He said that Russia cannot coexist with the current Ukrainian government. Now, Medvedev, who is the deputy chair of Russia's Security Council and head of Russia's military industrial commission and who has been, you know, the hardliner in Russia, or at least he's been presented as that, the hard cop, if you like, to Putin's soft cop. He's been saying that for a very long time. But Putin has never said it. Peskov is Putin's spokesperson, spokesman. So, when Peskov says it, he is essentially talking to Putin. And in effect, what that means is that the Russian objective now is outright regime change in Ukraine. Now, we had a signal about that from Putin a couple of days ago. He gave another interview in which he referred to the regime in Kiev as a neo-Nazi regime. And I said at the time whether when Putin uses that kind of language, that basically precludes any question of negotiations and makes it clear that the Russians are working towards regime change in Kiev. So, we were all those statements and we are now seeing the facts that are backing that up. We have just witnessed over the last 72 hours what I suspect are the biggest missile strikes, combined missile and drone strikes against Ukraine that the Russians have ever carried out. So, on the first day, they seemed to be principally targeting Ukraine's military intelligence, you know, the organization headed by Kiril Abudanev. So, massive strikes across Kiev, apparently targeting locations connected with Ukraine's military intelligence. For all we know that hunting Badanev himself, it wouldn't surprise me. And then the following day, an even bigger missile strike, combined missile drone strike targeting Ukraine's energy system, something that the Russians haven't done for a long time, but did on an absolutely massive scale, knocking out power stations, knocking out internet, causing massive disruption across Ukraine. And all of this in a very sophisticated way, much more sophisticated than the missile and drone attacks we saw last year. We had large numbers of drones moving across, you know, geranium two drones moving across the night sky circling around, causing confusion to Ukraine's air defenses. We had missiles moving almost apparently to Ukraine's western border, before turning ground and attacking positions in Ukraine further east. We've apparently had massive interference and jamming of the Ukrainian air defense system. And that air defense system itself is now close to total collapse. We've seen multiple attacks by the Russians on Patriot and S-300 systems on the front lines, according to the Russian defense minister, five Patriot missile systems have been destroyed over the last few weeks. Large numbers of S-300s have been destroyed over the last few weeks. We've had comments appearing in the U.S. media that Ukraine is and the daily telegraph in London, that Ukraine is now so short of air defense missiles that they're going to have to stop trying to intercept all of the various missiles that the Russians launch at them. They don't have enough missiles to do that. And with the Russians pounding away the damage to the air defense system continues, the missiles continue to be depleted, even as they try to husband missiles. So it's a terrible situation. And of course, with the air defense system collapsing and probably committed now increasingly to trying to defend against these huge missile strikes, we see an intensification by the Russians of the bombing of Ukrainian positions right across the front lines. And this is now on a scale that I think probably even exceeds what the U.S. Air Force does. It has done in places like Iraq and Libya, well, not Libya, but Iraq's specifically during the two Iraq wars. And as you rightly said, announcements from Schuygüh, at least not from Schuygüh, it was all done very cleverly. So Schuygüh visits a factory in Nizhnytok Novgorod. This is a major military production factory. He's told about the accelerated production of precision-guided bombs. And the factory director sneaks out confirmation that the Russians since February have begun serial production of precision-guided Fab 3000 bombs. So up to now the Russians have been using three types of bombs in Ukraine, Fab 250s, Fab 500s, Fab 1500s. That gives us the nominal weight of these bombs. Well, a Fab 3000 is twice the weight of the heaviest bomb used by the Russians up to this time. So one of these bombs carries apparently a charge of around 1500 kilos of high explosive. For comparison, a normal, a typical 155 millimeter shell carries explosive charge of just seven kilos. So I guess it's a nice sense of what devastating power these bombs have. And with all the bombing, with the bombing apparently likely to intensify, we're getting also further reports, as you said, of the Russians pounding away and smashing the Ukrainian front lines. They've broken through apparently. But apparently they have broken through enough Devka. They're capturing more villages. They're pounding the Ukrainian forces to the west of Avdevka. They appear to be starting a battle near Baekomod for a further town called Chassafjard, which is key to Ukrainian positions at central Donbas. They are also hitting bombing hard at place called Civersk further north than Baekomod. But the whole thing is becoming, you know, absolutely devastating at every level across the entire battlefronts. And you can understand, why Macron is starting to worry that the situation is getting out of control. If he really is true that he thinks this, and we could be seeing a collapse within a few months. And there doesn't seem to be anything that can reverse this. We go back to what Putin said a couple of quite a while back, actually, in 2022, when he said that the Russians hadn't really started yet, well, we're now seeing that they're starting. I mean, the real Russian attack on Ukraine is beginning to develop, and it is on a colossal scale. Before we get to some of the geopolitical statements and comments from yesterday, what does it tell you, the news that Russia is mass producing now, these fab 3000 bombs, and the collective West can't even match Russia, can't even get close to Russia when it comes to production of artillery shells? Well, it's astonishing, actually. I mean, it's too the entirety, actually, the entire collection. It tells you, it tells you so much, not just about you know, Russia, but about the state of the collective West. I mean, you know, production of artillery shells is not rocket science. I mean, you know, we've been doing that, shells probably not that dissimilar for today's shells were being made 100 years ago, you know, during the first world war, but apparently we've lost the industrial skills now to do it, and the resources to do it. And well, you get the sense all these political leaders, all these administrators rattling around like in a box, trying to find some solution to this problem, and unable to find a solution to this problem. And it tells you that management systems on the West have effectively collapsed industrial skills in the West have essentially collapsed. The people who running things, the political leaders, don't have a clue what to do in this sort of situation. And we see instead desperate expedience, you know, get more money, buy it from the Sudanese or the Egyptians or the Pakistanis or the Saudis or whoever it is. And that was, you know, President Powell's ideas, the only thing they can come up with apparently. And well, President Powell about a week ago said that, you know, the Ukrainians would be receiving these shells that they're buying on the international arms market sometime in April, except now it's not going to be April, it's going to be at the end of June. If, of course, these shells appear at all, we don't know what state they're going to be in, or how workable they are, whether they even exist. So the whole thing is, it shows you how utterly shambolic and disorganized the West has now become, and how actually unfit it is to conduct serious war. I think we discussed recently, astonishingly insightful article by Alex Virginian in the Royal United Services Institute for the Royal United Services Institute, American officer discussing the industrial nature of war. And saying the West isn't remotely ready to fight it. The Russians are, the Russians understand industry, they have vast numbers of engineers, they have vast numbers of skilled workers. Shoyuku visiting this factory in Nizhny Novgorod was talking about how the capacity of the factory has increased, how it's been further modernized and modern machine tools, one wonders where they've come from, by the way, perhaps in Braden Russia, perhaps imported from China, who's to say. But anyway, they've expanded the size of their factory. They've got proper management, they've got worked out, he talked about this, the supply chains, the production of the sub-components to make the shells. And the result is they've been able to increase shell production, 22-fold. And he said that the current plan for shells has been exceeded, they were expecting to make the number of shells they are making now in the third quarter of 2024. So they are ahead of their own plan. Yeah, everything that the collective West has been saying over the past two years has been complete BS, all of it. Russia is running out of weapons, Russia is, Ursula is saying, Russia is removing chips from washing machines or whatever. The BBC is saying that Russia is going to resort to fighting with shovels, John McCain's famous statement about a gas station masquerading as a country. It's all been BS, all of it. And now we're finally starting to see that it's Russia. Russia, that could actually make stuff. And it's the collective West that can't. In the one country, Alex Hared, before we get on to Macron and what they're saying about the conflict, your thoughts, the one country that may be probably, possibly could have manufactured something, Germany, the United States, well, maybe the United States. Who knows? Maybe it's illusion, maybe someone else will never know, will we? You talked about this with Ambassador Demetri Poliatsky, your representative Demetri Poliatsky. They decided to destroy the Nord Stream pipeline. So I mean, everything is just being exposed now. All of it is being exposed. And now the Russians are starting. And now the Russians are starting. Oh, you absolutely correct. Can I just say, but you're absolutely right. I mean, Germany isn't was until, you know, two years ago, an economy which still took industry seriously. It has lots of skilled workers. It has lots of engineers. It's got a deep engineering background. And if you spend any time in Germany, you know, that a lot of people in Germany still have the necessary technical skills. Their entire industrial economy is falling apart. And by the way, they can't organize military production anyway, because apparently even that is a problem. I mean, we're getting all kinds of claims about rhinemetal, producing many more shells. There's even stories that rhinemetal is now making more shells than the United States is. But I don't believe these claims. And I've seen that they've been contradicted in other places. But Germany could have done something but the political system in Germany, the administrative system in Germany, which is ultimately the European system, stands in the way and the policy of the United States and of Germany with Nord Stream and all of that has made that impossible. But perhaps the really horrifying case is the United States and Britain. They talk about Russia being a gas, a gas station masquerading as a country. Well, I would say with Britain, why not say Britain is a hedge fund masquerading as a country? Because that's what it's starting to look like. With the United States, it's a bit more complicated. Yeah. Yeah. All right. So that's a good segue into what the political class in the collective West is starting to say about the conflict in Ukraine. We have from Politico's French version website called the Playbook. It's like a subsection of Politico. They say that citing anonymous sources that Macron told a meeting of French politicians and party leaders for a working dinner that Ukraine is going to collapse. He's worried about a Ukraine collapse. Macron also said that what is needed is less talk and more mobilization of Ukrainians. I'm paraphrasing what Politico said, but citing these anonymous officials, but basically Macron said, "I want to turn things around and stop commenting about the conflict and actually start to get Ukraine to mobilize." Then we had the NATO, I believe he's the NATO commander or coordinator, commander Bauer from the Netherlands. He was in Kiev at a summit. And he said that NATO can provide weapons and they could provide money, but we just can't provide men. So you need to mobilize now, Ukraine. This is what he said when he was in Kiev. And then you had Joseph Burrell come out with a comment saying, "Don't worry, citizens of Europe, you're not going to be fighting in Ukraine. We're not going to send you to fight in this war, the citizens of Europe, but we still need to support Ukraine and we've got to give Ukraine money so they can fight the Russians." It seems to me like even Europe is starting to give a message to Ukraine, which is something along the lines of Ukraine, mobilize now, fight the Russians so you can give us the time and space to do whatever we're going to do, which I imagine is war economy and stuff like that, which we've been war bonds and all of these things. Is that correct? I mean, this seems to be the message that Europe is now sending Ukraine, mobilize, mobilize and fight, which is not that much different than the message coming from the Americans. Lindsey Graham, Sullivan was in Kiev, Austin talked at a defense minister's meeting as well in Germany. They really didn't say anything new other than Ukraine, keep on fighting and we'll try to get you money. No boots on the ground from us. And that seems to be the message. I mean, what is your read ethics? You're absolutely correct. They're not prepared to reach out to the Russians. They're not really looking for discussions with the Russians. Richard Haas at the Council for Foreign Relations is still mumbling away about the need for a freeze. Russians are not interested in that. We saw, as I said at the beginning of the programme, what Peskov has said about this, so there's not going to be a freeze. They've run out of weapons to send to Kiev. I mean, that's the simple basic line of it. I mean, they can't get Europeans can't get Ukraine. They can't get to Ukraine more shells. I mean, they're not able to. They're not able to get to Ukraine more tanks and armoured vehicles. Ukraine is running out of air defence missiles. The Europeans can't make the difference. The Americans are still stuck with this very complicated parliamentary problem that they have over the $61 billion appropriation. There's been a good article about this on the Hill. It looks like we're nowhere close to any resolution of that problem anytime soon. Congress, the House rises until the middle of April, with no real progress being made there. But besides, the state of American arsenals at the moment, and of American production of weapons, especially air defence missiles, but even of shells, is such that, again, the Americans can't make up the difference for Ukraine. So what they're all doing, they can't talk to the Russians. They can't supply weapons to Ukraine. The option of sending troops to fight in Ukraine, which Macron was talking about, you know, a week or so ago has basically been ruled out. Nobody wants to do it. They're all scared of the Russians. They all know what an absolute disaster it would be, and the sense that European publics would oppose it also. So what they come up with instead is Ukraine mobilise. Send your young men to die, because that will buy a small time. Time for what? Well, they're sort of saying to Ukraine, if you're prepared to sacrifice the lives of your young youth for a few more months, we might get it right. Probably they're saying to Ukraine, we will get it right. But why should anyone believe them now, given the record? I don't. And I can't help but think that the real agenda here is not to get the war prolonged at the cost of all these thousands of lives of young men, so that the Europeans can sort out their arms production, and the Americans can do the same, and the Americans can sort out all their appropriations issues and all that. It's to buy time until the American elections, to prevent a collapse happening in Ukraine before then, so that there isn't a debacle in Ukraine, which the terrible orange man might use in order to get elected. And I think both for the administration in Washington. And by the way, for the Europeans also, that is now the big priority. It's no longer saving Ukraine, it is preventing the election of the orange man. It's as simple as that. Yeah, we've actually been saying this for a while now as well. Knowing Sullivan, knowing blinking all these guys, they're going to be looking at November 20, 24 as a key date in order to try and get a project you create over that timeline. But you know, for Europe, if Ukraine collapses after November 2024, what does it mean for the European leaders? I mean, in the United States, you can understand the reason, the rationale, if you won't even call it that from Sullivan, and these campaign guys, let's not have Ukraine collapse as Biden is campaigning. After November 2024, if it collapses, and even if Biden loses, even if he loses, Ukraine collapses after November 2024, and we can blame it on the Republicans and Trump. We can blame it on Trump for sure, right? Even if Ukraine collapses on November 10, 2024, it's all going to be Trump's fault. Fine. You can see where they're going. But what about the Europeans? I mean, why the Europeans signing up to this strategy from the United States? Because I guess my question is, how does it affect them, whether it's October or November or December or September? Because they're absolutely spooked at the thought that if Trump becomes president of the United States, he's going to take steps to end the grift, which is what NATO is all about, that for many Europeans, for many European governments, absolutely petrifies them. They don't want a president in the United States that's not interested in Europe, is not interested in NATO, is more focused on American internal problems, and perhaps the long-term challenge from China. With Biden, however much they may be uncomfortable with him in many ways, despite all that he's done to them, and he has done some terrible things to them over the last two years, the Europeans nonetheless feel that this is someone who, you know, is the puppet master who is interested in calling the strings, and I want to make it go, I don't mean Biden as the person, I mean the administration, it wants to pull the strings in Europe. If Trump comes in, the terror they have is that the puppet master will have gone, put the strings down, and the puppets, which is what they all are, will collapse, and that's what really frightens them, it's very much like, I mean I can remember this, what happened in 1988, 89 when Gorbachev was coming along, and was talking about Peristroika and Glasnost and all of that, and the East European, the Communist leaders of Eastern Europe were absolutely terrified, because they said to them, "So is my god? The Soviets are no longer backing us in the way that they did before." And you get something of that same sense about Europe now. Yeah, I wonder, maybe we're getting ahead of ourselves, but let me just throw a question to you, speculation, but I wonder if the Trump campaign or the Trump team, if Trump does win in November 2024, if they have understood that the collective West, the Biden White House, and the Europeans, and the Europeans are looking to pin the collapse of Ukraine on him. I wonder if our bond, when he was at Mar-a-Lago, told him this or warned him about this. I'm just throwing this out there to you. That's exactly what he did, I'm sure that's why he went. I mean I think it was an old bond who probably wanted to go to Mar-a-Lago, and I'm sure that he went there precisely in order to warn Donald Trump of that very backed. Remember, we were discussing a few days ago how Macron was saying that he'd been given inside information that Donald Trump wasn't going to win the election in November. So you can see what's going on in Europe as well. So I think that Trump is absolutely being informed of this, and he does have some pretty capable people in his campaign, and I think they understand that too, and that of course is going to make the Europeans even more nervous if they wise up to this, because it means that they won't have a president if Trump is elected in November. They won't have a president this time next year who is less friendly to them. They will have a president who is actively hostile to them, because of the steps they are taking to try to prevent his election. So I mean you can see how this is all working out, and how they're getting ever deeper, they're sinking ever deeper in. In Britain, where I am, the shadow of Donald Trump now looms over everything. They are very, very nervous about this. David Cameron, Lord Cameron of Foreign Secretary is going around saying that we must get NATO and everything else sorted out in case this terrible orange man actually wins. Let's go back to the mobilization. What's going on there with the mobilization in Ukraine? When I read about these mobilization plans, I think that yes, you can mobilize 25-year-olds and 25-year-olds and younger. That's fine, but this is not going to happen overnight, even if this passes the rata, even if they manage to put something together for mobilization, given all the pressure that they're getting from Europe and from the United States. They're the ones that are pressuring the Zelensky government to send the young to the front lines to be annihilated by the Russians. This is coming from the European Union and the United States. Otherwise, Zelensky would be calling up the Russians. At least you would hope that someone of these Zelensky administration would be calling up the Russians and surrendering, because when you look at everything that's going on, that is the absolute imperative right necessary thing that he has to do today. He has to surrender when you see everything that's happening, but even if he follows the orders of the collective West and they finally get some mobilization going, we're talking about a complicated and lengthy process. Are we not? Oh, absolutely. I can just say before I answer to that, when the history of this war is written, the behavior of the West or the Western leaders pushing, coercing Ukraine to take this disastrous step is going to be one of the most shameful and horrible things. I mean, the judgment of history is going to be incredibly harsh over this. First of all, Ukraine doesn't have that many young men between 25 and 27 or between 18 and 27 to sacrifice. Oh, this would be a demographic disaster for Ukraine. It would be a disaster for its economy, disaster for its future. And I'm not even talking about the tragedy that the young men themselves and for their families, which is an unspeakable thing, what is being talked about. But in every respect, you are absolutely right. They talk about, it's again, it's the way in which you said this previously, this people in the West assume that you dial up shells like you dial up a pizza, or you dial up men as you dial up a pizza, you have to recruit them, you have to send out people that we fan out across the country to enlist them against passionate resistance now for many people across Ukraine and from the families, not just the young men themselves, but from their families also. So you have to enlist them, you have to train them, you have to arm them, training soldiers who have no experience of serving in any army before. I mean, the soldiers, the oldest soldiers who are fighting in the Ukrainian army currently, they may not have received a huge amount of training, but most of them will have been through the conscription that Ukraine routinely has. So I mean, they will have some previous familiarity with war and of how to fight and military life. Many of these young people, people certainly from age 18, won't. So they will be coming into something that is totally new and totally alien to them. And you're supposed to train them up, takes about a year to train an infantry soldier, to have even basic understanding of how to fight, at least that's how long it takes the Russians to train their soldiers. So you're going to send them into battle after just a few weeks without any proper training, without proper officers or proper non-commissioned officers, most of the best non-commissioned officers in Ukraine. And now either dead or severely wounded, the American media has been talking about all of that. And you can send them against this Russian juggernaut, this Russian meat grinder, as the London Times called it the other day, the meat grinder that's moving further, ever, ever more methodically westward. It is an unspeakable thing. And you're absolutely right. It's not going to change the direction of the war. It's just going to feed more blood sacrifices to the god of war. I mean, it is unspeakable, what is being suggested. Yeah, it's really hard to believe what the collective west is pushing Ukraine to do. When I hear their statements about just keep on mobilizing, just mobilize, I'm left speechless. I mean, the collective west should be telling is a landscape or there's a landscape administration should realize on its own enough, it's over. Not even we can take this step of mobilizing our youth and sending them to fight what I consider at this moment in time to be the most powerful, most prepared military on this planet. This is madness. I mean, even someone like Zelensky, even these people who I am, I'm not a fan of any of these guys. But my god, even they must realize that this is beyond crazy. It's despicable. It's horrific. Just surrender. It is without a doubt over. Yes. I mean, everything we talked about in the first part of this video shows that this is over. Yes. I agree with every single part of what you say. I mean, the Europeans are not prepared to send their own men to die in Ukraine, which is what would happen, by the way, on that topic, pure people's story, who is one of these deputy speakers in the doomer and who, by the way, is, I believe, related in some remote and distant way to left all the story, the writer. Anyway, tell French television, your troops, if your French troops go to Ukraine, we will come after them. Make no mistake about it. They will die. So, Europeans are not prepared to do that. They're not prepared to sacrifice their own people to die in Ukraine. As you correctly said, your Zippurrell has just come out and confirmed that. He said that. But even as they're not prepared to take that step, rightly, they are demanding that Ukraine do that very thing, which they are not prepared to do themselves, mobilize their young people and send them to fight against what is unequivocally now the most powerful army in the world. I mean, they're bigger ones. China's is bigger. America's is not as big, by the way. But they don't have now the battle experience and the military equipment on the kind of scale that the Russians do, not at this moment in time. Maybe the Chinese, after a effort, might be able to surpass it. Maybe the Americans could do. But at this moment in time, the Russian army is the most powerful in the world. And it is vastly more powerful than the Ukrainian and vastly more powerful than any army, other army in Europe. And you are demanding, you're not suggesting, you are demanding that Ukraine throw its young men to the slaughter against this overwhelmingly powerful army that is moving westward and doing so. Whilst you're not prepared to do the same, in terms of your own soldiers, and in return for promises of future aid, which you're never going to keep. I think it is horrible. It is so cynical, because they all know it, by the way, I mean, you know, make no mistake, they all deep down know what it is they're doing. It is so cynical, and it is so cruel, that as a city, I have no words for it. Yeah, I don't want this video to run long, but I want to ask you one more question. Going off of the comment that I made that you made about the strength of Russia's military, how damaging has the media been in this conflict? Given that many of the narratives have tried to portray Russia and successfully to a large portion of the collective was population as a military that is the second best in Ukraine, as a military that is weak, as a military that is drunk, as a military that is disorganized, as a military that wasn't even able to capture Kiev in three days, that narrative that you always hear them talk about, how Russia was so incompetent, they couldn't even capture Kiev in three days, they couldn't capture Ukraine in five days or three days, look at what the US did in Iraq, look at what NATO has done around the world, the Russian military, they're not even second-rate, they're even lower than second-rate, and we've been hearing this narrative for two years, how destructive and damaging has this narrative been to Ukraine, to the soldiers in Ukraine, to trying to get to a peace, because if the media would tell the truth, then perhaps, maybe, just maybe, more people in the collective West, even people that don't like Russia, even people that don't like Putin, at least maybe they would have said, you know, I don't like Putin, I don't like Russia, 100% pro Ukraine, but at least, I don't know, the BBC is telling me that Russia's military is too powerful, I mean, can you comment on that a bit, and then we'll end this video. By the way, the comment, you know, that Russia has the second best military in Ukraine, that ridiculous, silly comment, I've heard no less a person than Tony Blinken say it, I actually heard him say that, so, I mean, you know, it's not just the media that says this, it's, I mean, some of the political leaders have been saying, and of course, it was always nonsense, and it has been terrible nonsense, it's been disastrous, evil nonsense, again, you know, you read, you go to the media, not so much I should say the American media, but certainly the British, and it's like, the way they describe the war has been a sort of cartoon level. I mean, by the way, that Putin made that same point himself, again, in an interview, a short time ago, that, you know, that they describe war as some kind of a cartoon, you know, brilliant, ingenious, clever, flexible, heroic Ukrainians fighting these disorganized, drunken, incompetent, bungling hordes, the only advantage they have is numbers, and it has been such a consistently false image that it has led us to precisely this point where we are now, because as you rightly said, if people had told the truth, right from the first day, that, you know, the one thing that Ukraine cannot prevail in is a war with Russia, and it's obvious, and certainly along war with Russia, that, you know, Ukraine might lose a good war with Russia, but prolonging the war with Russia will not only mean that Ukraine loses that war, but that it is itself going to be destroyed, and that hundreds of thousands of its people will be killed, terribly wounded, scattered to the winds that its industries will be smashed, that everything will be, well, blasted in the way that we've seen now. If people had been told that, I've no doubt about it, we would have had a completely different perspective on this war, and by the way, we would have had a completely different perspective on the whole nature of geopolitics. One of the reasons why people have been prepared to go along, for example, with NATO's Eastward Expansion is because they've been constantly, for years, sold this narrative that the Russians are weak, and that they can't really resist, and that the West can do whatever it likes, and the Russians will collapse on, you know, like a house of guards, if the West says boom. And, you know, really, most people in the West, at some level have believed that to be true, and as you said earlier in the program, we've seen that it is utterly, completely, disastrously wrong. We've talked about, I would just go about, we talked about shells, how the Russians are able to outproduce the Western shells. And I said, that's a simple technology, but the Russians are outproducing the West in technology, technological weapons as well, hypersonic missiles, air defense missiles, the radar systems, anti-tank weapons, a man and drive bombs, you name it. So it's not just that the Russians, you know, produce huge volumes of, you know, simple things using First World War technology, that they're able to produce, outproduce the West, right across the board, in every sphere of military technology, except possibly military aircraft. All right, we will end it there, vidaran.locals.com, we are on rumble, out of sea, it's shoot telegram, rock fin and twitter X and go TD Duran shop, 20% off Greek flag t-shirts for Greek Independence Day, use the code Greece20. Take care. [Music]