The Duran Podcast
Putin confident, Zelensky unstable. Cuban missile crisis scheme
All right, Alexander, let's discuss the St. Petersburg International Economic Forum, and let's focus in on Putin's interview with mainstream big media reporters on the sidelines of the St. Petersburg Forum. He said a lot of interesting things. What really stood out for you as far as his comments. It was a Q&A type of session, Putin sitting at a table in the reporters, giving him questions about maybe 10 reporters or so, including Reuters was there as well. So that was interesting. Anyway, what were your thoughts? It was a very confident Putin, very relaxed Putin in gas from headquarters, you know, huge building in St. Petersburg, tallest building in Europe, I believe. But anyway, there he was very laughter center. That's right. It's a very striking, very enormous, very impressive. But anyway, there he was at a table. It was all very intimate in some ways. He's very relaxed, very confident, very pleased, I think, with the way things are going. And by the way, he's had a whole slew of economic news again, which is going to put him in an even better news. The World Bank is at the process of revising his figures and is saying that Russia has the fourth biggest economy in the world. And there's been a lot of comment about this and some pushback, but I gather that that is now actually a subtle thing that the World Bank is indeed going to, is in the process of updating its figures and is saying that. And they're giving Russia now a $6.45 trillion economy, significantly bigger than before, what they were giving it before, bigger than Japan's. And they're also saying that 40% of the Russian economy is underreported. So that probably means that its real size is more like $9 to $10 trillion, which would make it about the third of the size of the US, just saying. So anyway, he came along, very confident military situation is going well. But obviously, the big topic, the one that he really wanted to talk about, the one that he was being asked the questions about, was Ukraine. And I mentioned that he looked relaxed. It's important to say that because the last two weeks have been incredibly wild. We've had talk about nuclear, I'm sorry, about missile strikes on Russia, Western missile strikes on Russia. There's been an awful lot of people, like myself, I'm not going to make any secret about this, very, very worried about where the situation is going. Putin seems confident that he has the situation under control. And everything about the way he behave, the way he answered the questions suggested to me that he knows what he's doing, he knows what the Russians are doing, he senses that the Western powers are starting to run out of things that they can do, and he's pushing back. Now, about Ukraine, he said to two, I thought very, very interesting things. Firstly, about the missiles and about the attacks by the West, he gave a very clear indicator of what the Russians are going to do in response to what the West has just done. Now, in response to the West allowing cross-border strikes and rocket attacks on Russian positions, I said before that he would probably, the Russians would probably arrange for counter strikes or weapons to be made against Western military facilities by proxies, and he's basically said that he's what the Russians are going to do. He said there's a discussion that they're now talking about giving weapons to adversaries of the United States. He didn't obviously name who those adversaries were, but it's not difficult to figure out. It'll be countries like Iran, North Korea, all sorts of countries like that, perhaps to obviously China as well, but I suspect military cooperation there is already taking place. We're going to start to see countries like Iran and North Korea and others, equip themselves before long with hypersonic missiles and aerial glide vehicles and all of those kinds of things, which we already see, they're going to change the balance of power radically. So that's one thing he's going to do. And he didn't mention the other thing, but I'm pretty sure this is happening, which is that they're now also jamming the Russians, the American surveillance drones, but he talked about the situation on the battlefronts, and it was very interesting that he focused on the overall picture, and he again said Zelensky is an illegitimate president. He said that the Americans are keeping him in, and he made it clear that he's far as he's concerned. It's the Americans who basically run the show in Kiev now, because they want him to go on conscripting more and more people into the Ukrainian army. He is convinced that the conscription age is going to be reduced to 18, and I think he is right. All the pressure from the West is to do that. He said once Zelensky has done that and has taken all the criticism and all the abuse, the Americans will pull the string, and here we go. And that, I think, I think his analysis is spot on. I think that is exactly what is going to happen. And he said that Ukraine is only just about keeping up with its level of losses in terms of its existing mobilization. They're mobilizing around 30,000 people a month. Their losses are actually slightly above that. In fact, not slightly significantly above that now. So they're replacing experienced people with people who are not experienced. He said that Russian losses are far less around a fifth of what Ukraine's losses are. And actually, I think the trend is in the other direction. In other words, the difference is growing. And he seemed very confident about the war. And of course, he again explained that the conflict began in 2014 with the coup, as he put it, which took place in February 2014. That's the origins of the conflict. There was a massive departure from legality at that time and that the situation in Ukraine ever since then has got worse and worse. And overall, he seemed confident. He seemed relaxed. He seemed sure of what he was doing. He clearly believes that the military situation is turning out strongly in his favor. And he doesn't expect Zelensky to be empowering Kiev for very long. Yeah, he talks a lot about Zelensky's legitimacy now. No doubt about it. The Kremlin lawyers, they've studied the Constitution in Ukraine. And I imagine they're 100% sure that Zelensky is indeed illegitimate. And they've told Putin that and that's why Putin is comfortable to repeat that. Yes. Not only that, I think they've consulted various Ukrainian officials, former officials, who are now in exile in Moscow, including one of them, who apparently co-authored the Constitution, actually wrote it. And this person has actually given interviews. And he said that the Constitution itself is absolutely clear. The president's term is not extended by Marshall Law. Zelensky is relying on a piece of secondary legislation, just a law passed by the Ukrainian Parliament. And that law, by the way, is ambiguous in its wording anyway. But this person who co-authored the Constitution says that the Constitutional Court of Ukraine has made it absolutely clear already that legislation of that kind, secondary legislation, as lawyers call it, cannot affect the proper interpretation of the Constitution. It cannot fill out holes in the, you know, change, alter the meaning of the Constitution in the way that Zelensky and his officials wanted to. So I think the Russians are very confident of their legal position here. And I suspect anyway that they've got their sources of information and gear and in other places. And I think they're linking all of this to the mobilization that Zelensky's been kept in place so that he can tank up the Ukrainian army with more recruits, more conscripts, unwilling conscripts. One-stop process is exhausted. He's out. Yeah. Putin talked about Trump as well and Biden. And if he has any preference as to who would be president, which one would be better, Biden or Trump. And watching and listening to Putin at the Q&A, I got the impression that every escalation that the collective West NATO has done or is planning to do, including the long-range missile strikes in Russian territory, French troops in Ukraine. It's not going to knock Russia off course as far as their strategy with Ukraine, which appears to be going one step at a time, attrition, a slow, aggressive attrition, grinding down of Ukraine. And the fact that he talks about a Trump-Biden presidency and whether it's going to make a difference, maybe it leads me to believe that the conflict is going to stretch out to past the November 2024 elections. I mean, this will head to 2025. Yes, I think that is the plan. I think the Russians expect that the war will end probably next year, not this year, that the attrition process still has a long way to go. But the end, nonetheless, is now inside. What is basically happening on the battle lines is that the Russians are gaining ground, and they're gaining important ground, and they're doing it every day. They're making advances in all sorts of places in the South, southern Donbas now, in Halkov region. It seems that they're still making advances that there's been talk about Ukrainian counter-attacks being organised there. They're now pressing very hard around the town of Chassafyar. They expect, I think, that at some point over the next couple of weeks, they will capture Chassafyar, just as they captured of Devka in February. But beyond that, the bigger picture is that the Russian military is getting bigger, and it's getting stronger, and it's becoming better equipped. And it is also fully trained and now staffed by increasingly experienced officers, people who've tasted war, understand how war actually is fought, and who are able to lead the Russian military into battle. By contrast, the Ukrainian military cannot absorb these catastrophic losses. It's now forced to pull in more and more recruits, who are now becoming increasingly unwilling and unable to fight. And overall, the Ukrainian army is getting weaker. It's getting weaker by the day. The core number of soldiers who are willing to fight and die for Ukraine is shrinking. The army is being patted out by soldiers who are unwilling to fight in the same way, who's showing increasing signs on the battlefronts of not being prepared to break under pressure. And the breaking point, as I said, is now in sight. And of course, the wider the conscription drive is, the more that will grow, the more that problem that Ukraine's military faces will grow. And in addition, the more unpopular the whole set up in Kiev, not just Zelensky, becomes the more anger starts to be focused on the government in Kiev, the political system in Kiev, and on its Western sponsors. Now, it's a brutal approach to war, very ruthless and very calculated. But then, of course, Putin would say that war is ruthless, and this is the way to win. Yeah, that's the variable that we don't know. The plan may be to keep on going forward with aggressive attrition one step at a time. But we don't know if there's a collapse in Ukraine or what can happen. The legitimacy question of Zelensky, I'm sure, is being talked about in Kiev. No doubt about it. And the worse the conflict goes, I'm sure there are forces in and around the president who are whispering to each other, look, this disguise, illegitimate, anyway, we need to do something. We need to step in before an outright collapse occurs. So I'm sure stuff like that is going on. These are the variables that we can't, which are very difficult to predict. And they may lead to a sudden end of the conflict, you know, before the 2025 timeframe. Indeed. Can I just make a number of points there? The first thing to say is that Zelensky's behavior, even by his standards, is becoming more and more unstable. We discussed in our previous video this extraordinary article in The Financial Times, which spoke about this incredibly difficult relationship that the Americans now have with him, about how he's becoming hysterical and paranoid and incredibly difficult and that his relationship with Biden and with the American officials has almost collapsed. But look at what he did this week. First of all, he gate crashed a meeting of Asian Pacific Defense Ministers in Singapore, the so-called Shangri-Laude dialogue. And that's supposed to be a meeting between Defense Ministers. But Zelensky showed up. He said unbelievably rude things about China. Said the China is, you know, the puppet of Putin. Now, I understand that is of course, enormous offense in China. Then he tried to chase apparently right around Singapore, President Marcos of the Philippines. Again, it's not exactly clear why, but they did have meetings. Marcos then decided to go back to the Philippines. And for some incomprehensible reason, Zelensky apparently without any prior notice got on his jet and followed Marcos to Manila. Apparently, this is all all arranged, all that, you know, the moment's notice. And again, people are asking, why? Why is Zelensky chasing Marcos of all people? What does he think that the Philippines can offer him? It all seems to be connected with this conference in Switzerland, which is now on the brink of total collapse. But it's very weird that Zelensky ever thought that that conference in Switzerland would deliver anything actually. But anyway, he's behaving in a very unstable, very erratic way. And I think this is must be causing a lot of problems and concerns amongst people in Kiev. But here's the problem. You talked about a crisis of legitimacy. This is insoluble. Let's say Zelensky steps down and someone takes over. What legitimacy does that person have? Does that person call elections? How are elections going to be conducted now? The whole thing looks to me as if whatever appearance of legitimacy still exists now hangs entirely on Zelensky himself. And as his personality, he was the elected president of Ukraine. He's unconstitutionally in office now. So the Russians think. So I think a lot of other people also think if he goes, the legitimacy crisis that he has created is going to get worse. That's my point. I think this legitimacy talk from from Russian from Putin is getting to him. And I think it's making its way into his inner circle and people in his outer circle as well. I think it's working. And to me, the conference in Switzerland for Zelensky was his way on the world stage to show that I am the legitimate leader of Ukraine. Because here I am at an international conference taking a photo with Xi Jinping on one side and with President Biden on the other. Therefore, I'm the legitimate president of Ukraine. It's only Russia that considers me illegitimate. For him, this conference was a way for him to cement his legitimacy. Yes. Not only on the world stage, but also back in Kiev. Because if the forces that may be thinking about moving in on his turf, if they were to see Zelensky in Switzerland, rubbing shoulders with Xi Jinping and with Biden and with MBS, then they would say, okay, this guy has the support of the international community. Now he sees all of that crumbling and he's getting on a plane following Marcos, following any leader he can to give him some legitimacy, some weight. It's astonishing and it's bizarre. But as you have correctly pointed out in your programs as well, by the way, this was the purpose of the Swiss conference in the first place. It was to consecrate Zelensky as president of Ukraine. You're going to turn around and tell Ukrainians, well, look, you might not have had an election, but all the world, everybody approves of the fact that your leader Zelensky is indeed your leader. Given that Xi Jinping and Biden and Lula and Modi, they all think that you're the leader of Ukraine, that must mean that Zelensky is the leader of Ukraine. That must mean that Zelensky is indeed the leader of Ukraine. The trouble is none of these people are turning up. And even Biden isn't going, which was a real blow. Biden isn't going. Modi apparently isn't going. Jai Shankar, the Indian foreign minister isn't going. Lula isn't going. Xi Jinping certainly isn't going and will be very, very angry about the things that Zelensky has been saying about China now. And so this ploy has failed, has failed completely. And as I said, the legitimacy crisis is gaining traction, is gaining traction around the world. It doesn't help that people don't like Zelensky, just saying. MBS, of course, also another person who's not going, just forgot to mention him. So all of these people are not going. Zelensky is looking increasingly washed out. But removing him is only going to create more problems. If they're going to be different problems, you're going to get an unstable and bizarre and eccentric person out of the way. But who do you put in his place? And whoever you do put in his place, the inevitable answer is going to be, who picked you? Who made you president? And of course, most Ukrainians and certainly the Russians are going to say the Americans do. They're all stuck with each other, the collective West, the US, Europe, they're stuck with Zelensky, Zelensky stuck with them. And they don't know what to do. Another interesting point that Putin brought up was the fact that Ukraine really is of no interest to the United States. And basically, what this is all about is the United States trying to save face, is pretty much what Putin said. They can't stomach a defeat at the hands of Russia, because they will feel as if they've been weakened, they've been embarrassed, their invincibility is gone. This is what he was talking about. And it's not really about Ukraine anymore. It's just about the fact that they can't take a defeat at the hands of Russia. It's going to diminish their power. It's going to diminish their control. It's going to diminish the illusion of their invincibility on the world stage. So they're doing everything they can to keep this thing going until something comes up. And I think that's where we are with the collective West. They're angling for some sort of Korea type of freeze, perhaps, some sort of armistice, treaty, no treaty. That's fine. And they're hoping that Ukraine will do something, something, some sort of win somewhere, however small, where they can then start negotiations with the position, well, we've got some leverage over Russia. So this isn't a complete loss. We've broken even at a minimum. It's a break-even and we're at an armistice and we haven't lost face. And we're still this mighty US and this mighty NATO. And we're still this invincible force. And we've managed to break even in Ukraine. I mean, that seems to be where the West, the collective West is, is angling for right now. And I've said pretty much that. He did indeed. Of course, he's absolutely right. And he's absolutely right that apparently there is increasing discussion again about the Korean armistice idea about which Putin is extremely unenthusiastic, by the way, to say the least. I mean, that's absolutely clear. But there is a lot of discussion going on about it now. But, and you also write that he's that the Ukrainians that they are trying to push the Ukrainians into a successful offensive in some place. In fact, over the last couple of days, the group of forces north of the Russian military, the people who are conducting operations in Haruka region, are saying that they expect Ukraine to try to launch a big counter offensive in Haruka region to push the Russians back beyond the border. And that this is entirely intended to do exactly what you said. It's intended to provide, you know, a public relations win so as to give the impression that Ukraine is still in contention, perhaps to put Ukraine in a better position in future negotiations. And North group of forces north, they've got a very interesting website, by the way. Anyway, they're saying that they know all about this and they have the situation fully under control and that this plan is going to fail. We'll just have to wait and see about that. But you're absolutely right. And that is indeed what Putin was saying, that the Americans want to keep the wall going to the last Ukrainian. They want to say face, they want to preserve the image or the mirage, that they're the great invincible superpower, that the West is still overall in control. They don't really believe any longer that they can win the wall, but they're trying somehow to turn things around or to slow things down. So as to basically trick the Russians into some kind of deal on American terms, the last is goes a bit beyond what Putin actually said, but you can read it into his words. Now, what Putin said there is doubly effective, firstly because it's actually true. That is, in fact, what an awful lot of people in the West are saying. If you read articles now, especially in places like Foreign Affairs and Foreign Policy in all of these places, they're full of these ideas. I mean, there's an article recently, which has appeared, we can't negotiate with Putin now, we've got to achieve some kind of military success, and only then can we begin negotiations. So what what Putin says is true, there are those discussions and those plans and those thoughts in the West now. And the West is indeed more than anything else afraid of a military defeat, a spectacular military defeat in Ukraine that will shatter his reputation for invincibility. But Putin is saying it for another reason as well, because one of the things that we have learned over the last couple of months is that what Putin says is heard amongst the population in Ukraine. We've now had data, polling data, which shows that when Putin makes speeches about Ukraine, and this has been come increasingly true apparently over the last few months, millions of Ukrainians switch in presumably using VPNs and all that in order to listen to him. And remember, they can understand Russian, they can hear what he says. So what Putin is doing is he's telling the Ukrainians, why are you fighting? You are not fighting for Ukraine. The Americans are using you. They're prepared to fight to the last Ukrainian in order to preserve face. Is that really the cause that you want to sacrifice yourselves for? So he is speaking to the Ukrainians as well. Yeah. No doubt about it. He's speaking to the Ukrainians. Final question. Do you think the long-range missiles, one of the purposes of trying to escalate, and eventually they may get there of giving Ukraine permission to launch missiles into pre-2014 Russia, is to try and manufacture some sort of a win, some sort of leverage over Russia, so that they could get to the negotiating table without losing face. We managed to knock out one of your military bases in one of these regions. This is a huge victory for us. Are you ready now to negotiate Putin and Russia? I mean, do you think that might be the real underlying purpose of all the panic to escalate to the the long-range missiles, the Russian territory thing? Can I just say this? For the moment, the Americans are abiding us, are abiding by the Russian Red Line on this. I mean, Putin just said this is a red line, and they pulled back. I've no doubt, by the way, that the water plan, which had probably been hatched in the autumn, to supply Ukraine attack of missiles, and to launch missile strikes inside pre-2014 Russia with those missiles. But Putin has said that is a red line, and I think they pulled back. I think as night follows day, they will cross that red line. I mean, I think this is a certainty. I mean, they crossed every red line up to this point. There's no reason to think that they will continue indefinitely to abide by this one. So that's what I am going to say. That is exactly the plan. They want, if they can't win the war as it is being fought now, as if they can't win the war at all, probably their calculation is. Let's launch long-range missiles into Russia, and that way we will do one of two things. Either the Russians don't respond, and that will create pressure for them, and it will put their cities and their bases under pressure. This is, by the way, what they were saying back in the autumn, and that will force the Russians to negotiate because the weight of these missiles is going to be overwhelming. I think we've seen, by the way, over the last few weeks, since the attackers were introduced, that that is not true. Just say. The other thing is, let's try and provoke the Russians into some massive crisis, whereby they respond to our red lines in an extreme, overly provocative way, where you create a huge international crisis that then scares the whole world. People like Lula, Sichimping, Modi start phoning up Putin and say, "My god, this is going to stop. Humanity is at risk." A negotiation then takes place, and a compromise reached, which is essentially the compromise that the Americans want. In effect, that they're trying to create a kind of Cuban missile crisis situation in order to engineer an outcome that is a little like that, which was achieved as a result of the Cuban missile crisis, which, remember, the Americans in the '60s spun as a win. We know more about that crisis now, and it wasn't that, but that makes a great deal of sense. Now Putin, Putin is showing that he's not going to fall for this. He is going to enforce his red line, but he's going to enforce it in a different way by arming the Iranians and the North Koreans in a way that's going to tilt the balance of power. I wouldn't be surprised if we start seeing arms deliveries to places like Cuba as well. That explains all the fear-mongering in articles like the one on the telegraph. That one really got me thinking, the one on the telegraph the other day, where they had the five layered corridors and all the arrows going towards the Russia border plan that has come up in the last two decades on and off again. A ridiculous scenario that the telegraph was pushing, but right away when you read an article like that, you say the purpose of this article, or at least one of the purposes of this article, is to really ramp up the fear level to 12, and I think that's the whole purpose of it. It's how do we manufacture a type of Cuban Missile Crisis? We don't really want World War III nuclear war, but how do we make it seem so like we're going to get World War III nuclear war, and then in comes Joe Biden, the great next Kennedy-like figure, Trump Kennedy-like figure, he negotiates the off-ramp, and it's a victory for the United States, and they save face, and the neoconsay face, and any final comments on what I said, that's exactly what's going on, I think. I'll make a bet, that's what's going on. The idea of Biden is the next Kennedy is absolutely laughable. What's going on in their minds? Exactly, I agree. I think that is the plan, actually. I think that's been the plan now for some months. It's the kind of stupid plan that Jake Sullivan has a scheme that they would come up with. It's a scheme. It's a scheme. It's a ploy. It's not a strategy for winning the war. We should not overlook the fact that it is a terrifying gamble all the same. It assumes that if you do actually succeed in triggering a Cuban missile crisis, that you can keep control of it. I mean, one of the things about the Cuban missile crisis, which we need to always understand, is that Kennedy was not looking for one. He wasn't looking for a Cuban missile crisis, nor, by the way, was Khrushchev. They were both looking for ways out, right from the first moment. That was why they were able to negotiate and come to a mutually satisfactory agreement. In this situation, artificially creating a Cuban missile crisis is bonkers. It's completely crazy, but it demonstrates the level of desperation that some people have reached. Exactly. It's crazy, but when you look at it from their perspective, what else can they do? Well, there's lots of things they can do. They can pick up the phone. Logic of things they can do, like negotiate. But of course, we're trying to put ourselves in there, in their mindset. Exactly. Exactly. What they do, and Jake Sullivan has said it, they're doubling down, that they're gambling forever higher stakes against someone booted. Who, as we see, plays poker far better than they do, and who also holds the stronger cards. All right, we'll end it there. The demand at locals.com. We are on Rumble Odyssey, but you tell the Grand RockFit and Twitter X and go to the Duran Shop Football 24 and pick up some very cool football shirts, t-shirts and jerseys. Take care. [Music]