The Duran Podcast
Belarus joins SCO. Eurasia grows stronger
All right, Alexander, let's talk about the SCO meeting that wrapped up in Kazakhstan. Belarus is a full member. This is big. Very big for Belarus, a big deal for Lukashenko and for the people of Belarus. Putin was at this event, of course, as was Xi Jinping. Interestingly enough, Modi did not attend. I believe Jai Shankar, the foreign minister, was at the event. I don't know if you see any meaning in that. What are your thoughts of the SCO and then maybe we can talk a bit about what Putin said to the media on a lot of topics, especially Project Ukraine and getting to some sort of ceasefire and stuff like that. So SCO in Kazakhstan. Well, indeed, Shanghai cooperation organization. It's this big umbrella body that brings together all the various institutions that make up basically what you might call Eurasia. So there's the collective security treaty organization, which is an alliance of former Soviet states of which Russia is at the core. There is the Eurasian economic union, which is an economic alliance of former Soviet states with Russia at the core. There is the BRICS, which must never forget. And then there is the SCO. So the SCO, as I said, sort of closes the loop. It brings them all together. It's both a political organization. It has some kind of military security aspect, but it enables people who are not, for example, members of the BRICS, like Erdogan of Turkey to attend and participate very actively and fully because Turkey is a member of the SCO, I believe. And at the same time, you could sense that all of these various pieces, all of these things are gradually slotting into place. All of these leaders, they talk of things together with each other and things begin to move and work their way out. Speaking of Erdogan, Putin, by the way, had a very, very interesting meeting with Erdogan in Astana. They discussed Ukraine, obviously. They discussed economic matters, obviously. But they also discussed Syria in very, very great detail. And it looks like there's going to be a concerted move now to finally create some kind of peace agreement in Syria, which will mean that the Americans are finally and fully going to be pushed out to Syria. And Erdogan certainly seems to want that to happen. So all of these leaders were there. The most interesting fact, the leader who I thought was by far the most interesting, who had the most meetings, who seemed to be involved in the most detailed discussions was Putin. This was one SEO meeting, which I won't say Putin dominated it because there's all sorts of strong personalities there. But he was the one who everybody seemed to want to meet and seemed to want to listen to and who had the most interesting things to say. And you mentioned the fact that Modi isn't there. Jaishankar, of course, was there. But Modi himself is heading to Moscow. He's going to be in Moscow in three days. So I think the reason he didn't go to Astana is because he wants to be in a one-to-one meeting with Putin. He wants to make it a one-to-one summit meeting with Putin. He didn't want to meet Putin twice in just a few days with the first meeting happening against a backdrop of lots of other meetings with all sorts of other people. So Putin is now the single most interesting political figure in world affairs. And he had an awful lot to say. And what he is doing, and remember Russia also chairs the bricks now, what he is doing is he is developing the entire picture of how Eurasia is going to start to be formed. So he talks about the necessity of creating a global financial system, a new financial system, a new trading system. He talked an awful lot about security. And remember, the SEO is a security organization. And he is basically talking about a Eurasian security system to replace the purely European security systems, which have existed in western Eurasia, if you like, and which Russia has been, I think, many Russians feel altogether too involved in the past. So this was the most interesting part of it. He is the person who is now elaborating the vision, Xi Jinping clearly shares it. You could see it from his comments, but it's Putin who is acting now increasingly as the frontman. Yeah, I got that sense of the SEO as well. So what are some of the interesting things that Putin said? He spoke to the media and he made some very interesting comments from Astana. A lot of the comments connected to Ukraine. And also talked about Trump and the possibility of negotiations with the new administration, which I thought was interesting. What were your thoughts of what Putin said to the media? Well, in a kind of a way, he didn't say anything new. Anybody who remembers his speech of just three weeks ago at the Foreign Ministry Board will find that essentially he's saying the same things all over again. He's saying, look, we're always willing to talk. We're prepared to sit down and negotiate. We've set out what we consider our minimum conditions to be. We're not interested in a ceasefire, just for its own sake, or the freeze of the conflict, but we are absolutely willing to negotiate. And Donald Trump says he has his ideas on how to settle this conflict. We don't yet know what those ideas are, but we're certainly prepared to look at them. We're prepared to look at any ideas which are made in good faith. And that's the key, because he said, we are prepared to talk. We do have our minimal conditions. The problem is we don't feel, we don't get any sense that there is any good faith on the other side. The Ukrainians talk about, well, there are people who talk about ceasefire. Whenever we've agreed to a ceasefire with the Ukrainians before, we did that in March 2022, when we pulled back from Giv. We did that in 2014, prior to Minsk 1. We did that with Ukraine again in 2015 with Minsk 2. Whenever that happens, the Ukrainians go back on it. The West takes advantage. We're not going to let ourselves be put into that situation again. So yes, we're prepared to talk, we're prepared to negotiate, we're prepared to talk about things, we're prepared to listen to what people have to say. We set out what our own views are, which we insist must be taken into account. We made it absolutely clear that for us, security issues are paramount. We're prepared to negotiate. We're prepared to negotiate at any time, but unless the Ukrainians pull out of the four regions, pull all their troops out of the four regions, then they will not be a ceasefire, even whilst the negotiations are underway. I was just thinking about how David Cameron, when he got the prank call from Vovon in Lexus, he said that Ukraine is fighting for Kazakhstan and that Russia is going to eventually, when they're done with Ukraine, Putin has his eye on Kazakhstan. I was just thinking how ridiculous those statements are from David Cameron, who was in Kazakhstan for a few days, and now you have Kazakhstan hosting the SCO. I don't understand how incompetent, how could you have these collective West leaders, they're so incompetent, and they say such dumb things. Anyway, how big is this for Belarus as well? It's huge. It was just a thought that was running through my head as you were describing the SCO and it being hosted in Kazakhstan. I'm just thinking, what a disconnect. The West, the collective West has with all of these organizations that are building this multipolar world. I mean, there is such a disconnect. We're living in two different planets, it seems. It is huge for Belarus. It secures Belarus' overall position because Belarus, obviously, is a key member of the collective security treaty organization, which is a military alliance with Russia. It was this part of the Union state with Russia. But remember, the SCO is not a military alliance, but it is an organization with a security aspect. Within it, the biggest military power is, of course, China. China has a very big and very strong relationship with Belarus. Now, in effect, because Belarus is a member of the SCO, China is edging towards a situation where each two is acting as guarantor for Belarus' security. So this is an enormous event, and given that the SCO, as I said, is the anti-chamber to enter into all kinds of other things. Eventually, I suspect Belarus will want to become part of the BRICS, and we can see that another big step is being made in that direction also. So it's a huge event. It means, again, that the whole strategy that the West has followed since 2019, when there were the protests in Belarus, that strategy has completely misfired. Belarus is integrating with Russia. It's integrating with China. It's becoming part of Eurasia. It's becoming part of an entirely different global system of security, economics, and trade entirely independent and separate from the West, and doing so whilst secure as well, protected as well. All the chaos that's happening in the collective West, and then you look at what's going on in Kazakhstan, what happened in Kazakhstan, and I mean, it's just night and day. No, absolutely. All right. We will end the video there. TheDRad.locals.com. We are on rumble, Odyssey, Bitchew, Telegram, Rockfin, and Twitter X, and go to the DRAD shop. Pick up some limited edition merch. The link is in the description box down below. Take care. [Music]