The Duran Podcast
EU, NATO angry as Orban visits Moscow to talk peace
All right, Alexander, let's talk about what is going on in the conflict in Ukraine and also let's talk about Orban, the Prime Minister of Hungary's surprise trip to Moscow. This started off as a rumor, but Orban is going to Moscow, that's how it looks, that he was in Kiev about a week ago, maybe even less, and as he went there to talk ceasefire with Zelensky and now he's going to Moscow. Everyone is very upset, by the way, Alexander. Charles Michelle is upset, Donald Tuskas is upset, they're all coming out with statements saying that Orban does not speak on behalf of the European Union, but he is the president of the EU, counsel Hungary has the rotating presidency, and it looks like Orban is trying to get a ceasefire, trying to get some peace, but the globalists, they don't want any peace, so maybe we start off with Orban and then we talk about what is actually happening in the conflict in Ukraine. Yes, what Orban is doing and being criticized for is what everybody now agrees, I say everybody, because even some of these people that we've just been mentioning agrees, needs to happen. We had a so-called peace summit in Switzerland about three weeks ago, Russia, as we know, was not invited and did not participate in that peace summit. The peace summit was an absolute debacle, as we discussed in our various programs, most countries around the world stayed away, they had to engage in all kinds of manipulations to bump up the number of signatures on the final communique. They included the patriarch of Constantinople, which I found astonishing in the communique until Erdogan found out about it and complained and they had to remove his signature. Everybody was saying, everybody was telling them, Brazilians, the Indians, the Chinese, the Saudis, the Turks, everybody was saying, you have got to speak to the Russians, you're going to have to have negotiations with the Russians, discussions with the Russians in order to settle this conflict in Ukraine. And even Zelensky is now coming along and saying, at the next peace conference, we're going to have to have the Russians there. So what does Orban do? He speaks to the Russians. What everybody says you need to do in order to solve this conflict and how do they react? They are furious. They're furious because, of course, the last person they want to see solving the conflict in Ukraine is Orban, who they loathe for all sorts of reasons, because he's a sovereignty, because he protects, he defends Hungarian national interests. So they're furious about that, but also because viscerally and fundamentally, most of these people may pretend that they want to see a settlement of the war in Ukraine. But in reality, as their comments show, in truth, they don't. So they're angry, they're angry because it's Orban, and they're angry because, well, he's actually making serious moves to try to achieve peace. I think this is a game-changer when it comes to the conflict in Ukraine, to project Ukraine, because like you said, for the first time, I can't remember when we had someone, a world leader, or a leader of the collective West, actually speaking to all sides, making trips to meet with everybody on all the sides of the conflict to try and resolve it. I mean, has anyone done this in the last, in the two plus years of this conflict? I don't think so. No, Erdogan kind of, I mean, kind of very young, maybe you could say. Well, in the very first weeks of the conflict, there was this attempt to try and set up a negotiation. And Lukashenko in Belarus and Erdogan in Turkey acted as mediators as did Naftali Bennett, the Israeli Prime Minister. But of course, all that then failed as we all remember, and Zelensky said from that moment on that he was not prepared to negotiate with the Russians anymore. And then I seem to remember that some about a year or so ago, the Austrian Chancellor briefly visited Moscow, very mysterious visit, but it didn't lead to anything suffice to say. And certainly he wasn't brokering talks or engaging in any kind of mediation at all. So, and of course, Xi Jinping has appointed a Chinese official, Li Kui, who has been trying to go to Kiev and to Moscow, and he's been listened to very politely in Moscow. And he's gone to Kiev and the Ukrainians have been frankly rude about him. So the only actual world leader, the only person who is a big name on the international stage, or the ban is by the way, is Viktor Alban, and he's finally done what ought to have been done years ago, which is that he's going from one capital to the other, trying to engage in shuttle diplomacy, trying to see if there's common ground between these two countries and trying to see whether or not there's any mechanism to get a negotiation and a peace settlement going. I don't expect that he's going to have any success, because he's own side, and remember, he's a member of NATO, and it's a member of the EU. He's own side, in other words, NATO and the EU, instead of supporting him in what he is doing. You're repudiating him, and how can any mediator succeed in conditions like that? But, and it's a huge buck, but if in November there is an election in the United States resulting in a new administration, then at that point what Alban is doing now might become extremely consequential. Yeah, I agree with you, 100%. Or Bob seems to be looking at this from a six months out, and I wouldn't be surprised if he's had communication with the Trump campaign. I'm not saying he has, I'm not saying this is coordinated, but it wouldn't surprise me if something like that has taken place. I mean, he's traveling with Peter Sioso, the Foreign Minister, so I mean this is a serious delegation that is going to Moscow. You're 100% correct, the EU, not only do they not support him, they're lashing out against him. NATO obviously is not happy, it's not happy, Zelensky, regime, the minute Orban left Kiev, they said they don't agree with with a ceasefire. They didn't even wait for Aban to get on the plane before saying that they don't agree to anything. So I mean, yeah, the entirety of the collective West doesn't want to end this conflict, but Putin has repeatedly said that he's open to negotiations, he even said it in in Astana. We'll do a separate video on Kazakhstan and the SCO, but Putin did say once again he said that Russia is ready for peace and negotiations and it can even be based on the Istanbul agreement. You had Nigel Farage coming out and saying this conflict was provoked. You had Trump coming out and saying absolutely this conflict was provoked on the all in podcast, getting a question from David Sachs. And now you have Orban doing this shuttle diplomacy. Something is changing. I'm not saying it's going to change overnight. But you know, Orban is the type of politician who does look into the future and he understands trends. If there's one thing that I remember from my trip to Budapest that really stood out from talking to the people in Budapest was that Orban is a politician who everyone told me who sees five years into the future. That is a secret to success. He understands where things are shifting towards the momentum of sentiment, of public sentiment and what's happening in politics and geopolitics and he rides that wave. He follows that shift, always looking after the best interest of Hungary. Anyway, what are your thoughts? I completely agree with all of that and I think that is exactly right. And I think that one of the things about Orban in this situation is that he's not only riding, surfing the tide or to change the metaphor. He's not only adjusting to the change in the weather, he's also making the weather. The very fact that he's, which is what by the way strong and effective politicians do. The very fact that he's now talking to both sides, even though the Ukrainians treat as him in the usual, bullish way that they treat anybody who suggests negotiations, the very fact that he's talking to both sides is going to facilitate a process of future negotiations. There is a global consensus now starting to congeal, which says the war was provoked. The Russians have a point. The West did push much too far in driving NATO eastwards. It's been picked up as you rightly said by Farage in Britain, by Le Pen in France, by all sorts of people in all sorts of places, but outside of the collective West, it's, in fact, it's a truism. It's not even disputed there. It's accepted increasingly, well, it is accepted by Donald Trump himself. Ukraine, it's very survival is now at risk. The Russians are being reasonable. They want to protect their security. There is therefore a basis for negotiations and if negotiations are rejected, it is the West that is preventing those negotiations taking place. So I think this international consensus is starting to form and it will have an effect. We've seen how it has an effect in the Middle East. You remember we said right at the beginning when there was all that crisis after the Hamas attack on Israel that we'd start to get resolutions from the Security Council calling for ceasefire and people said it wouldn't happen and in the event the diplomacy worked pretty much as we expected it would and the Israelis eventually had to come pull back and the US had to change its position. We're in the same process now with Ukraine. It's going to take a long time to play out. It will probably take many months to play out. But the world community does not support further escalation. They want to see this war end. They are blaming the West for the fact that it has been prolonged. They are absolutely sick and tired of Zelensky and he's, you know, act, this performance that he puts on, they're completely unimpressed by it and they support negotiations and most of the world agrees with what Audban is doing. Yeah, I do feel like, for lack of a better word, Taboos, narrative Taboos have been broken. Yes. The war was provoked, that was a huge narrative, Taboos that has been broken now. It was an unprovoked war. That was what the Biden White House based their entire script for Ukraine on. And now you have Audban actually engaging in diploma. Yes. This is huge. Absolutely. Absolutely. Huge. And it's smart from Audban's position because whatever happens, whatever happens, he will always be the EU leader who can say, I tried to find peace and I worked the diplomatic angles and as things get worse and worse for Project Ukraine or Ban can say, I told you so, you're up. I told you so Zelensky, you didn't listen to me. I told you so Ursula and Charles Michel and Ghostop was going to replace Michel and Kaya Kallis is going to replace Burrell and every, I told you so. I was right, you were wrong and he's going to be able to say that with confidence and that brings us to Ukraine, which is collapsing. So, and he thoughts on what I just said and the situation with Ukraine. You're absolutely correct. I mean, Audban is one of those extraordinary individuals who is bigger than, who's makes his country seem big. Hungary is a relatively small place. I mean, it is a small place and it's not Brazil. It's not China. It's not India. It's not the United States, not even Germany or France. And yet, it plays this outside role in world affairs because, or, or Ban has that personality, that force of personality and that skill in absolutely, as you said, identifying and navigating the currents, you know, the currents of world affairs. And also, can I just say, acting with sanity and humanity in this affair, I mean, he's always opposed this war and he was right to, he's always been skeptical about the Western policy and he's been right to and you're absolutely right. It will be in a position when it's all over, the big losers in this are going to be the Europeans because they, they went all out on this. They went all out with what the US administration was doing and they're being, they're finding themselves in a situation where whatever happens now, they're going to be left hanging out to dry because if either the, if, if there's a change of administration in the United States, it's all the indications are that it will get fully behind what Audubon is doing. And if the current administration in some form is reelected, well, it's increasingly looking isolated and probably in its new iteration, even it will probably start looking for a way out. And besides, and there's a way to come back to what you've been dutching on, the situation on the battlefront is becoming cataclysmic. Nobody who is following the situation closely on the battlefronts anymore seriously believes that this war can end in any other outcome than a Russian military victory. So they're going to lose, the Europeans are going to lose, however it goes. And the person who as you rightly say will be in a position to say to them, I told you so, you led Europe into disaster. You've left us cut off from vital Russian energy. We become uncompetitive. We have a conflict with Russia. We've probably lost Russia as a part of the European system. Well, probably forever. And it's all because you've made these disastrous decisions again, as most people who follow us know, I recently been to Germany. And I've seen now the effect of the cut off in energy supplies, I've actually seen it close up. I've seen this huge jump in prices, for example, for pretty much everything that you see in Germany and the malaise that's affecting the economy in Germany. And I've seen it in close up and I've heard what Germans have to say about it. The odd one is going to be able to turn around and say to these people, look, you should have listened to me. I was right. You followed your ideological obsessions and look where it's led us. Of course, they will hate him even more for it, because the one thing nobody likes is ever to be told by the person who was right that they were wrong, but there it is. So they're going to be that is that is the someone cut out that snippet from this video and posted all over Twitter, Twitter X. They're going to hate him even more for being correct, absolutely. What is going on in Ukraine on the ground? Very quickly. I mean, very, very quickly, I want to watch this, when that watches us and watches your videos, knows that things are going terrible for the Ukraine military. Just very quickly, Zelensky in an interview with Bloomberg says that he has 14 brigades ready to go, but it's just that he's not getting weapons from Washington. That's what's holding it. That's what's holding back a huge offensive anyway, your thoughts. I mean, this endless mantra from Zelensky, he's never got enough weapons. I mean, he wants presumably the United, even if the United States military gives him all of his weapons can still come round and say it's not enough. But let's spend too much time on what Zelensky says, there may be 14 brigades in reserve. If you're talking about 2000 men per brigade, that's about 30,000 men in reserve, nowhere near enough, by the way, certainly not enough to conduct an offensive, even if they were all fully trained and equipped, which of course they won't be. The reality is on the battlefronts, it goes from disaster to catastrophe and he's doing so every day now. Now, a quick rundown, the Russians dominate the situation on the skies. They've been blasting away at Ukrainian airfields. What's left of the Ukrainian air force has been systematically dismantled. They lost seven Sukhoi 27 fighter jets, their best fighter jet, by the way, in one air strike on one airfield. There have been several other similarly disastrous air strikes on other airfields. And on the front lines, they're losing men at rates that are unimaginably horrible, between 1500 and 2000 men a day and they're losing ground now. We've discussed many times on these programs that the West is fixated on territory rather than actually looking at the effect of attrition on the Ukrainian army. Well, the attrition is continuing and it is getting worse. Remember, if we're talking about 2000 men being lost a day, then that's double the size of the force that Zelensky says they have in reserve in a month. Ukraine will lose in a month twice as many as the force that Zelensky says they haven't reserved. I'm out and it's not pushed out too far. But everywhere on the front lines, they're in retreat. They failed to launch their great counter-offensive in Harkov region is looking increasingly likely that they're going to lose Volchansk. Battle is still going on there. Ukrainians still experiencing terrible losses. But all the fortified positions in Volchansk are being lost. In Chassef Yar, the other major strategic place where the battle has been raging. This is the west of Bachmann. It opens the way to basically the Nipa and to the capture of these two remaining big towns, Slaviansk and Kramatorsk. The Ukrainians have just lost their most heavily fortified positions in Chassef Yar. This is the micro-district that was located there, area of high-rise buildings. They've just been driven out of it. It looks like the rest of Chassef Yar will follow at some point over the next couple of weeks. Further south still, an area called Torek, a town called Torek, supposedly after Amdeka, the most heavily fortified position that the Ukrainians had along the front lines. The Russians have broken through all of the defences. They're now deep inside Torek. As a major operational crisis, we're getting reports that Ukrainian troops there instead of fighting back are actually surrendering. In the Avdevka area, remember Avdevka, which they captured in February, Russians continuing to advance. They look like they're about to cut off one of the major supply roads. They're closing in on this other important town of Pacrossk, which is the major Ukrainian logistical centre. And further south still, the Russians mopping up in another town called Krasnogorovka, about to cut further communication lines and looking like before long, they're going to bring the whole of southern Donbas under their control as well. Wherever you look, it is a crisis for Ukraine. And this weeks after, months after, the US Congress authorised a further appropriation for Ukraine, the weapons have been supplied and they are making no difference. The Russian offensive is gaining momentum. The Ukrainian army, Zelensky himself, says he doesn't have enough weapons to hold it back. And in spite of all his boasts about the 14 brigades that he's got in reserve, the result, the reality is he doesn't have enough men either. Yeah, nothing's going to make a difference. The attack arms, none of these new wonder weapons, F-16s, attack arms, permission to strike pre-2014 Russian territory, none of it is going to make a difference. And Durban knows that, just to close the video, he understands this. Exactly. Exactly. Okay, let's end the video there, the duran.logos.com. We are on Rumble Odyssey, but she tell the Grand Rock Finn and Twitter X, and go to the Duran Shop, pick up some limited edition merch. The link is in the description box down below, take care. [MUSIC] [MUSIC]