- 5/28/2025
Alexander Mercouris analyzes rising anxiety across Western capitals as Ukraine’s battlefield position weakens. German politician Friedrich Merz sparks controversy by backing deep strikes into Russian territory, while calls intensify for more sanctions—despite signs they're losing impact. With Russia advancing and morale fading, fear of a complete Ukrainian defeat is no longer unthinkable. A critical moment in the conflict, expertly unpacked. 🎙️📉
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NewsTranscript
00:00Good day. Today is Tuesday, 27th May 2025, and I'm going to suggest that we are in
00:07the early moments of the second big panic that we have seen over the course of the conflict
00:15in Ukraine. The first big panic, which gripped the West, came in the immediate aftermath
00:22of the fall of Avdeevka, a fall which the Western governments had not expected it led
00:29to panic statements by President Macron of France about deploying the need to deploy
00:36French and European troops to Ukraine to release Ukrainian troops to staff the front lines.
00:44It led to decisions to start debates about missile strikes deep inside Russia. It led
00:55to a whole series of decisions by Western governments. And it also incidentally led
01:03to a conference that was reported some months ago in the New York Times, a military strategic
01:09conference that apparently took place in Washington in the late spring, early summer of 2024,
01:17in which Ukrainian intelligence, Kirill Abudanov and company, apparently informed the U.S.
01:25that Ukraine was losing the war. If the trajectory continued in the same way as it had been going,
01:35then the war would indeed be lost, and that asymmetric, what were called asymmetric techniques
01:43therefore needed to be applied. And I've suggested in previous programs that over the course of the
01:51next few months, we saw these asymmetric decisions, these asymmetric actions being taken by the
01:59Ukrainians. The offensive in Kursk region, the drone strikes, the increasing intensification
02:08of the drone war against Russia, and the decision to authorize the use of missile strikes against
02:16Russia as well. Well, I'm going to suggest that we are now seeing something similar play out.
02:24And some of the things that have created, caused, attracted attention are perhaps understood best
02:34as manifestations of this panic. For example, the recent film of an apparent altercation between
02:46the Macron couple, which I'm not going to discuss further on this program, that could be one such
02:52manifestation. It is most unusual for a husband and wife power team when one is the president
03:01of France to behave in the way that they did, and it does suggest significant stress.
03:09Another example, and perhaps a more important one, is comments made by the German Chancellor
03:17Friedrich Merz, which have been sort of walked back or contradicted since then by other German
03:24officials. Friedrich Merz made a statement that the Western powers, Britain, France,
03:33the United States, and Germany – notice the inclusion of the United States – were lifting
03:41restrictions on use of weapons by Ukraine, specifically range restrictions. He did not
03:50say outright that Germany was delivering Taurus missiles to Ukraine, but clearly that was the
03:57implication. But notice that he was trying to imply that this was a collective decision made
04:04by the Western powers involving the United States as well. Well, within hours, the Vice-Chancellor
04:13of Germany, who's a member of the SPD, the partner party in Germany's Grand Coalition,
04:22said that there'd be no recent decision changing policy on the part of Germany.
04:30And then we had further clarifications from Merz himself, saying that in fact this was a decision
04:36that was made months ago, which could take us back to the time of the Biden administration.
04:45And, well, I'm going to here float my own view. I think Germany has now delivered Taurus missiles
04:52to Ukraine. I think it did so pretty much as soon as Olaf Scholz ceased to be Chancellor.
05:00I think the Taurus missiles have already been delivered to Ukraine, and I think that there
05:05is current pressure underway upon the White House to get them to authorize the launch of
05:15these missiles on targets in Russia. And there are reports that around 150 of these Taurus missiles
05:25are being delivered to Ukraine, and these were obviously taken from German stocks.
05:33The actual operational number of these missiles held by Germany is said to be 250,
05:41so that will leave Germany with 100 of these missiles that are operational, and a larger
05:48stockpile of these missiles that would need to be refurbished in order to make them operational.
05:55And there's some claims that these missiles are going to be laundered, if I can use that expression,
06:00via Britain. Germany's going to sell them to Britain, which is then going to supply them
06:05to Ukraine, a completely pointless operation because, of course, it's German technicians who
06:12would need to operate these missiles if they are indeed going to be used inside Ukraine.
06:20And the United States has already pointed out that Taurus missiles use American-made
06:29components, and that it's American software that would need to be used in order to conduct
06:37strikes inside Russia. So, quite probably, quite plausibly, what Metz was trying to do
06:45is he was trying to put pressure on the Americans by making this announcement to get them to agree
06:51to allow Germany to activate these Taurus missiles and to help the Ukrainians conduct
07:00strikes with them against Russia. I would quickly say that though the Taurus
07:07is a longer-range missile than the Storm Shadows and Scalps that have previously been delivered to
07:13Ukraine, I doubt that it will offer any challenges to the Russian air defence system
07:23that the Russian air defence system cannot cope with. Certainly, it is a stealthy missile.
07:31Certainly, it has long range and high speeds, though it is subsonic. Certainly,
07:36it operates close to the ground. It may be more advanced in some respects than the Storm Shadow.
07:44The Scalp. But the Russians have been working on developing counters to such cruise missiles
07:55since at least the 1970s, and I'd be pretty surprised if by now they haven't developed
08:03a very sophisticated air defence system capable of dealing with missiles of this kind,
08:08especially now that they have had vast experience countering these missiles
08:15in Ukraine itself. The Storm Shadows and the Scalps have not been especially successful.
08:23In fact, they've not been successful at all. The Atakams missiles, which function in a completely
08:30different way, they are more like supersonic ballistic missiles. Even Jake Sullivan himself,
08:42Joe Biden's former national security advisor, all but admitted that the Atakams missiles,
08:50of which it seems around 500 were delivered to Ukraine, turned out to be disappointing.
08:57Anyway, I'm not going to discuss these missiles, these Taurus missiles, further
09:02in this program, but the nature of Maerz's announcement suggests to me panic,
09:12alarm, growing alarm in Germany, growing alarm across Europe, and the sustained push
09:23that is being made to get Donald Trump to agree to further sanctions
09:30points, in my opinion, to the same thing. So, Donald Trump had what he considered to be
09:39a good telephone call with Vladimir Putin about two weeks ago. There was dismay and alarm across
09:47Europe when they learned about this call. The Europeans, however, have now restarted their
09:54agitation for further sanctions. The Americans, the hardliners in the United States, are doing
10:02the same. There's reports and rumors that Lindsey Graham is thinking of presenting his sanctions
10:12bill to the Senate, even without Donald Trump's agreement. This is clearly intended to put pressure
10:22on Donald Trump, and Donald Trump has responded. He was needled by criticism from Zelensky that
10:31the United States has not criticized the Russian missile and drone attacks on Kyiv.
10:39Donald Trump put out his statement. He posted a message on Truth Social, which has been seized
10:48upon by people right across Europe and in the United States as showing criticism and exasperation
10:57towards President Putin. Indeed, President Trump did say some very critical things about Putin.
11:05He said that Putin, he'd known Putin a long time, he'd got on very well with Putin,
11:11that Putin had gone absolutely crazy, however, that he no longer knew what he was doing,
11:16that he was launching strikes on Kyiv that made no sense, that they were killing people,
11:22and that if Putin continued along these lines, it could be the end of Russia.
11:27But what people didn't mention also is that Trump then went on to criticize
11:32President Zelensky in almost equally sharp terms. He said that everything that Zelensky says
11:40is counterproductive, that Zelensky basically needed to shut up, that Zelensky's comments
11:48were most unhelpful. And then, of course, Trump then finished by saying that all that he was
11:54trying to do was end the war, to save lives, and this war wasn't his. He hadn't initiated the war
12:03in any way had he been president from 2021. The war would never have happened, and that it's
12:10Vladimir Putin's war, and Vladimir Zelensky's war, and also Joe Biden's war, but not Donald Trump's
12:19war. Anyway, so it was actually an example of Trump obviously needled by criticism that
12:27he'd not criticized the strike on Kyiv, coming out and making, if you like, equivalent criticisms
12:37of both Putin and Zelensky, but of the media class, the commentariat, the Europeans,
12:45people in the United States, seizing on his words of criticism of Putin himself to restart this
12:53tiresome, recurring narrative that we hear trotted out week after week, month after month, about how
13:04Trump is supposedly finally losing patience with Putin, that he has finally seen through Putin,
13:12that he's going to suddenly become tough on Putin, and that he's going to become tough on
13:19authorizing sanctions on Putin and on Russia in order to force Russia to the negotiating table.
13:27And sure enough, we're now getting leaks in the Wall Street Journal that perhaps in order to
13:34preempt Lindsey Graham, Donald Trump is indeed now considering sanctions. The ridiculous banking
13:41sanctions. Banking sanctions against a country whose entire banking system has been cut off
13:49completely from the Western financial system, that the banking sanctions have been dropped,
13:56but some other sanctions are going to be introduced. Who knows what those sanctions
14:03are going to be, but to repeat again, I get the sense that Donald Trump's heart
14:08isn't really in on this, and apparently there was a meeting between US and European officials
14:15to discuss tougher sanctions enforcement, and that meeting apparently fell apart.
14:23There was no disagreement on what could be done. I suspect that what happened is that over the
14:30course of that meeting, it became clear that tougher sanctions enforcement would ultimately
14:42bring a total stop to world trade, and is really unachievable. Anyway, all of this, in my opinion,
14:54is a manifestation of panic. A sense that things are going seriously, very, very badly wrong
15:01with Ukraine. And why is this happening? Well, I'm going to suggest a number of reasons. Firstly,
15:09I think the penny has now finally dropped right across the collective West in the United States
15:16with Donald Trump, with the Europeans, that this mighty effort we have seen since January
15:25to browbeat, bully, seduce, influence the Russians to agree to a temporary ceasefire
15:33that would freeze the conflict and prevent Ukraine being ground into dust, that that
15:40mighty effort has failed. The Russians have refused to be bullied, bribed, or intimidated
15:48into agreeing to a ceasefire. All of the attempts to sweet-talk Putin into agreeing to a ceasefire
15:55have failed. Putin has consistently said that he is not interested in an unconditional ceasefire
16:03intended to lead to a freezing of the conflict. He wants a final settlement of the conflict.
16:13He set out his terms last year at his speech to the foreign ministry on the 14th of June 2024.
16:23He's not intimidated by the sanctions. In a meeting, which I think took place in the Kremlin,
16:32he actually told officials and participants that they should not let themselves be frightened
16:39by all this talk of sanctions. Sanctions are here to stay. They will always remain in place.
16:45Russia has learned to live with them and to adapt to them, and it will continue to do so,
16:51and its sanctions and talk of sanctions should not affect Russia's decisions.
16:58And I think that finally, as I said, it's been understood in the West that the ceasefire,
17:07that much-desired, longed-for ceasefire – longed-for ever since Donald Trump became
17:15president, ever since it became clear that Ukraine was going to lose the war – this
17:20ceasefire, as I said, that they've been working towards, this attempt to freeze
17:24the conflict, they now understand that the Russians are not going to agree,
17:28and it isn't going to happen. And I think there's been a second reason for the panic,
17:35and that second reason goes back to that series of meetings that took place in the spring and
17:42early summer of 2024 – the time when there was lots of talk about asymmetric means to enable
17:51Ukraine to win the conflict. And as I said, at the time, since then, one of those asymmetric
18:00means was supposed to be the drone war. The idea of launching vast numbers of drones
18:08against targets in Russia, it was assumed that these would indeed start to make real damage,
18:15inflict real damage on the Russians, that they would cause the Russians to disperse their air
18:22defense assets, that this would weaken the Russians overall, and that it might actually
18:28cause significant economic damage in Russia and political crisis in Russia, and might indeed
18:37change the entire pattern of the war. And over the last couple of months,
18:42ever since Ukraine started to crank up its drone production and started to hit targets inside
18:49Russia with large numbers of drones, and ever since Ukraine started to use drones more actively
18:58on the battlefronts, there has been a sustained narrative peddled across the West about how
19:10Ukraine had managed to stabilize the situation, that the drones were giving Ukraine a big advantage
19:19over the Russians, that they'd slowed the Russian offensives, and that they were bringing the war
19:26home to Russia, to Russia itself. And I think that in particular, the role the West has played
19:38in making this drone offensive possible is insufficiently recognized.
19:47Probably, perhaps, many or most of these drones are indeed made in Ukraine itself.
19:55It's possible that some of the drones are being made in Europe, just saying. I don't know whether
20:01that is actually the case, but it would certainly not surprise me. After all, other weapons that are
20:07being supplied to Ukraine are made in the West. So, the drones, perhaps some of them are made in
20:15the West too, but the components obviously mostly come from the West. The guidance, I suspect,
20:25is provided by the West. Western inputs from satellites and other intelligence
20:35probably are necessary to guide the drones, the drone swarms to their targets.
20:42And, well, I would not be surprised if Western personnel are not directly involved in
20:51the guidance of these drones against targets in Russia, except that this Ukrainian drone offensive,
21:03involving hundreds of drones, hundreds of drones every night sent towards Russia,
21:10is failing. The drones are simply not getting through. Every so often, an individual drone
21:19does manage to hit or strike a target, but they are relatively small. They do limited damage.
21:28The Russians appear to have been preparing for this drone offensive for some time. One gets the
21:34sense that the targets, the potential targets of this drone offensive, the city of Moscow,
21:41the major military industrial facilities, various other Russian cities, they have,
21:49one way or the other, been hardened and have been prepared for these drones. And I get the
21:54sense that the Russians have also learnt to track the movement of these drones, to identify the
22:02course that these drone swarms are taking, the better to intercept and ultimately destroy them.
22:09So, this drone offensive, in which I suspect high hopes were invested in the spring and summer of
22:182024, a drone offensive into which Western, as well as Ukrainian, resources have been poured into,
22:31a drone offensive which has been endlessly talked about and touted in the media, is failing.
22:40And it is failing at one and the same time as the Russian missile and drone offensive on Ukraine
22:48is now becoming ever more effective. So, obviously, the Russians are able to launch
22:55similar numbers of drones against Ukraine as Ukraine is launching against Russia.
23:01Except that the Russian drones, the Gerand drones, are much more powerful. They operate at much
23:08higher altitudes, far higher than they did when they were first used. They've clearly been perfected.
23:15There are many different types of Gerand drones now. There are drones that fly at high altitudes,
23:21there are drones that conduct diving attacks, like, sort of, dive bombers. There are drones
23:31which actually operate with sirens, which make frightening sounds like Germany's Stuka dive
23:39bombers you did during the Second World War. There are Gerand drones with larger warheads.
23:46The drones have developed abilities to manoeuvre and bypass defences and can apparently now receive
23:56signals from controllers in Russia itself. And some of them may actually use some degree of AI
24:06technology to make them autonomous, though I'm not going to pretend that I know all of the details.
24:12And every night there are hundreds of them, and their numbers are increasing all the time. So,
24:19I read an article somewhere in the media which said that whereas in 2022-2023 the Russians would
24:28launch around 30 drones a night, now they could be launching up to 100 or 200 Gerand drones over
24:39Ukraine every night. And it could be that that production, as production of these drones grows
24:47in Russia. We will be seeing up to 500 of these drones being launched against Ukraine every night,
24:58night after night. And Ukraine's air defences are becoming critically depleted and that they're not
25:08able any longer to shoot down most of these drones as they once could. So, the Economist
25:15is claiming that Ukraine is still able to shoot down 90-95% of the Gerand drones. But I'm now
25:23reading articles also in the Western media that admit that the true proportion of Gerand drones
25:34that Ukraine is currently shooting down is closer to 30% than 90%. In other words, the majority of
25:45the drones are getting through. And of course, it's not just drones because the Russians do have
25:51missiles that they're able to launch against Ukraine and they're able to launch these missiles
25:57also, night after night. And we now have extraordinary varieties of different missiles.
26:04So, we have the Kh-101s that are launched by the strategic bombers. We have the Kalibr missiles
26:12launched by the ships of the Russian Black Sea Fleet. These are subsonic missiles, similar in
26:20some respects to the Tomahawk missiles and the Taurus missiles and all of that, that they are
26:26becoming more stealthy. They're becoming more difficult to shoot down. Apparently, they've also
26:31developed capabilities to manoeuvre as well. Ukraine can shoot down these missiles. There's
26:40film showing what is said to be a Hawk air defence missile shooting down a Russian Kh-101 missile.
26:48But there are other missiles that Ukraine cannot shoot down. And there are now admissions,
26:55again in the Western media, that to the extent that Ukraine was ever able to shoot down
27:02Iskander ballistic missiles, those capabilities have gone. Russia is able to launch Iskander-M
27:14missile strikes across Ukraine. And the range of these missiles appears to have grown.
27:20Some of them, either way, may be North Korean missiles. It's been debated. It's probably true.
27:27I don't know what proportion of these missiles is Russian, what proportion is North Korean.
27:32If they are North Korean, it's probably the case that the Russians have adapted and improved them.
27:39But anyway, ballistic missiles are now able to hammer Ukraine, again, night after night,
27:47and the Ukrainian air defences are unable to counter them. And of course, there's also the
27:53hypersonic missiles. We've been hearing rather less about these. But of course, they do exist.
27:58The stockpiles are growing all the time, the Kinzhal and the Tsirkon. And lurking in the
28:07background, there is their mighty brother, the Oreshnik. Production of it is probably growing.
28:14We don't know how large the stockpile is or to what size it's going to grow. But there's reports
28:21that it will be ready for mass use in the middle of the summer. And well, we see the effect of this
28:28every day. The Antonov factory in Kiev, a place where Ukraine perhaps produced many of the drones
28:36it's been using to launch attacks against Russia, it has been hammered over several nights.
28:44And we're starting to get people like the rather capable spokesman of Ukraine's air defence system,
28:55Yuri Ignat, gradually admitting that Ukraine's air defence system is now starting to break down.
29:04And that gaps in coverage are increasing. And that there are insufficient numbers of missiles,
29:17interceptor missiles, to deal with all of the Russian missiles and drones that are coming in.
29:25So, we're told that the SAMP missiles supplied by France and Italy have run out. The Krotal missiles
29:34supplied by France have also run out. We're told, I read somewhere, that Italy no longer has any more
29:42interceptor missiles for this system, which it can supply. And France has only small numbers of
29:49these missiles. Production of Patriot missiles has grown, apparently. But again, there is a
29:56shortage, a general shortage of these missiles. The United States, as US Secretary of State Marco
30:05Rubio recently acknowledged, no longer has Patriot missiles to spare. We've been hearing an awful lot
30:14recently about attempts to supply Ukraine with more Patriot missiles supplied by Germany
30:22and Israel, refurbished missiles. But this only plugs holes for about a day,
30:34because the current scale of the Russian missile and drone offensive is simply overwhelming.
30:44The Ukrainian defense is. And bear in mind, there's always this uncertainty as to
30:51the quantities of missiles that Russia is able to produce. But in terms of Gerand drones,
31:04we could be looking at production rates of around 500 a day. And clearly, Ukraine's air defense
31:11system simply cannot cope with numbers like that. And by the way, we hear very little anymore
31:20about the F-16s. They were supposed to be operating in some sort of air defense role.
31:27It looks as if they're being swamped as well. So, if you put all of this together,
31:33you begin to understand why Metz is now panicking and saying, we need to launch
31:40deeper strikes with our Taurus missiles against the Russian hinterland, why there's been this
31:47renewed sanctions push. The Russians are not interested in a freeze. They're not interested
31:55in easing off on their demands. And the West is starting to realize that it's out of options
32:09and that the Russian offensive is simply going to continue.
32:14And even Zelensky today has spoken about the fact that a big Russian offensive is coming.
32:24Now, I'm not going to go through a detailed account, again, of the events on the front lines.
32:34But I've been reading reports by people like the journalist from Bill Zeitung, Julian Rybka,
32:41enthusiastic supporter of Ukraine. And he, contrary to these articles you sometimes read in
32:50some places saying, you know, that the situation is in stalemate, that the Russian advance is slow
32:56and incremental and all of that, and that the Russians aren't really winning the war.
33:01He, on the contrary, is starting to panic. He's talking about a collapse of Ukrainian defenses
33:07around Konstantinovka and around Pokrovsk. He sees the Russians pushing forward in both places.
33:17And he's talking increasingly about the fact that Ukraine, the Ukrainian troops on the battlefronts,
33:24are short of practically everything. Men, armored vehicles, machines. And
33:34that article in the Daily Telegraph, it turned out, about the successful way in which the Russians
33:43are conducting the war, the new battlefield tactics by Russian-like infantry pre-pinning
33:49the Ukrainians down in various positions, then cutting off their supplies using artillery and
33:58drones, and then smashing their defenses using fab bombs. It turns out that that all originates
34:05with a study of Russian tactics that has been conducted by the Royal United Services Institute.
34:14It seems that fab bombs, contrary to David Axe's claims about their loss of effectiveness, are,
34:22in fact, on the contrary, massively effective and incredibly dangerous to the Ukrainians on the
34:29battlefronts. And that Ukrainian defenses are being smashed and chewed up on the front lines
34:39all the time. And I'm going to make my own suggestion here that, in fact, the realities are
34:48that Ukrainian losses are probably now spiking. And I'm going to make a further guess,
34:55and this, to some extent, now goes against the media's own claims. I think Russian losses,
35:02at this point in the war, are starting to fall again, and probably fall significantly.
35:09Now, briefly, we're getting further news on every battlefront, and in every battlefront,
35:16it is a Russian advances. It looks as if the Russians are, indeed, now fighting inside
35:21Unakovka in Sumy region. It looks as if they have captured a whole belt of territory along the
35:28Russian border, north of the Oskol River. There are reports of a logistic crisis
35:37facing the Ukrainians defending Siversk and Liman, that the Russians are close to capturing the
35:45village of Rytlokub – I always get it wrong – and that this is going to open up the way for
35:52further Russian attacks on Liman itself. There's also reports that the Russians are now fighting
35:58inside the village of Kolejizy, which is very close to Liman. There is now film evidence which
36:05confirms, apparently, that the Russians have, indeed, captured the village of Verkhokamyansk,
36:12which is located, apparently, just four kilometers west of Siversk, and that the Russians are
36:19gradually gaining territory all around Siversk. And my own view is that, despite denials, the
36:28Russians have, indeed, captured the village of Torskoye, and are, indeed, close to cutting off
36:34supplies to the Siversk group. So, in that area of northern Ukraine, it is one crisis
36:43after another. And I gather that there's been more film – I haven't seen it – showing Ukrainian
36:49drone attacks on Russian positions in Volchansk, north of the Volcha River, which again reinforces
36:57my own belief that the Russians are in effective control of the entirety of Volchansk, north of the
37:04Volcha River, and that we could be seeing a Russian offensive to clear the remainder of Volchansk,
37:11south of the Volcha River, fairly soon. But the real big crisis is coming in the
37:19Konstantinovka and Pokrovsk area. And I spoke, I think it was two days ago, about the Russians
37:26establishing a semi-cauldron of the Ukrainian forces south of Konstantinovka, following
37:38their capture of the village of Zarya. Well, apparently, they've now captured Zarya at that
37:46time when I spoke. They'd only captured part of that village, but also the entire village of
37:52Romanovka. It now seems that this cauldron is going to be supplemented by a further capture,
38:02is in the process of being supplemented by a further capture of territory to the north of this
38:08area where this cauldron already is. So, you could be seeing another cauldron inside the cauldron,
38:14in effect. It seems that several battalions of Ukrainian troops are now in very, very serious
38:23risk of being encircled, and the options to retreat to Konstantinovka itself have been lost,
38:32and some kind of disaster is unfolding there. And in the Pokrovsk area, it looks as if the Russians
38:41have successfully completed their fight for the village of Malinovka to the east of Novoekonomichne,
38:52that they've pushed north from Malinovka, that they've captured other villages to the north-east
38:59of Malinovka, and they're in the process not just of encircling, or at least preparing for the attack
39:10the key village of Novoekonomichne, essentially a suburb of Myrnograd and Pokrovsk to the east of
39:20Myrnograd and Pokrovsk, but that they're already actually starting to position themselves
39:28where they could threaten communications and supplies being sent to Pokrovsk
39:33itself. In fact, it looks as if the situation of the Ukrainians in Pokrovsk is now becoming
39:42extremely grim, and we could even find ourselves in a situation that might even
39:49start to resemble Mariupol, where two brigades of the Ukrainian army, in effect, became trapped
40:00and were forced into surrender when Mariupol was entirely encircled by the Russians earlier in the
40:08war, in 2022. Anyway, there's other reports from other places too of Russian advances in southwest
40:17Donbass, of the Russians now making further progress in Zaporozhye towards the town of
40:25Gulyapolye and Orekhov, and well, lots of things going on. And all of this before the two big
40:35reserve armies that the Russians have stationed have so far even been committed, and with all of
40:43the indications being that the Russians have not started the biggest part of their offensive,
40:53which will probably begin in late May, early June. Well, we are already, of course, in May.
41:03Perhaps in June, July, August. Well, we shall see. Anyway, all of this, we can see how it's
41:10coming about. And every so often, whenever there's a quieter period in the war, and there's never
41:18completely quiet periods of the war, and there's never been a time since the failure of Ukraine's
41:24own big offensive in 2023, by the way, when the Russians have not been advancing somewhere.
41:31Anyway, but whenever the pace of the Russian advance appears to slow for a while, because of
41:36climate reasons, because of the need for the Russians to rotate their forces, to build up their
41:42logistics, there's the narrative always resumes that there is a stalemate, and that Ukraine can
41:50keep on fighting indefinitely, and all of these sort of things. And then the Russian offensive
41:59gets going, and then the panic starts. And we are, or so it seems to me now, back at that point
42:09when the panic is again starting to take hold. And I'm going to make a prediction, which is that
42:17over the next week or two, we will see the panic grow. And there will be ever more extreme demands
42:26for things that the West should do, demands that even more sophisticated weapons be sent to Ukraine,
42:34though there is now, I think, a growing crisis in terms of weapons that can be supplied
42:41to Ukraine over the next proximate period, because stockpiles have already been so
42:49depleted. As I said, Italy is without, apparently, air defense missiles.
42:55Britain is without self-propelled howitzers. Germany has run out of weapons and its army,
43:03its military, is less supplied with weapons than it was in 2022. The United States, even the
43:11mighty United States, is finding that it has to devote production to supplement its own inventories
43:22of artillery shelves. There's a general shortage of air defense missiles. But anyway, look forward
43:29over the next few weeks for demands that more advanced fighter jets be supplied to Ukraine,
43:36that Western air forces consider no-fly zones over Ukraine, things of that kind,
43:44even as the situation deteriorates. And mounting pressure on Donald Trump
43:50to try to get him to go for the massive sanctions against Russia. Senator Rand Paul
43:57has already pointed out what a completely disastrous thing for the United States it would be
44:04if Lindsey Graham's bone-crunching sanctions were, in fact, ever imposed, that the party that would
44:14suffer from them would be the United States and the West, less so Russia itself. So, there we are.
44:21That is where we are. Now, of course, just to repeat again, it's a point I make in program
44:26after program, there are always options. Donald Trump, to his credit, has sought to pursue them.
44:36Ever since he became president, he has made a serious effort to try to establish a dialogue
44:41with the Russians and to find a negotiated solution, at least to end the fighting,
44:47if not to end the war. He has faced contrary pressure from Europe every inch of the way.
45:01Whenever he's attempted to speak to the Russians, whenever he's called Putin,
45:06whenever his negotiators have met with Russian negotiators, the cry goes out across Europe
45:13that this is a mighty betrayal of Europe and of Ukraine. And, well, it's wrong that Trump should
45:24be doing this. The only thing he should be seeking is an agreement by the Russians to stop
45:35their advance, with no other concessions made to the Russians at all, and with the implication that
45:43that advance will be rolled back at some point in the future as well. That is the only terms
45:51upon which the Europeans, the Ukrainians, people like Mr Aaron West Mitchell in the United States,
45:59ultimately General Kellogg himself, seem prepared to bring the war to a stop.
46:06And they've run into the fact that the Russians obviously are not going to agree to that. It was
46:12obvious that the Russians would not agree to that. And there are no realistic options
46:23whereby the Russians could be brought round to agree to that. This is something, on the Duran,
46:31we've been trying, hammering away, trying to get people to understand, well, basically ever since
46:38the collapse of the original Istanbul talks back in April 2022. So, we are being brought closer to
46:49that point of crisis. And, well, the point of crisis which is completely foreseeable all the
46:58way back in April 2022, because people insisted that Russia is the gas station, masquerading as
47:07a country, that it has no scientific or industrial base whatsoever, that it's a house of cards, you
47:13only have to blow at, and it will come tumbling down, that the Russian army is made up of
47:21incompetent and corrupt generals, and the soldiers have to fight with shovels and all that kind of
47:30nonsense. We had all of these endless narratives, and they're now leading us to this point where,
47:37and they're now leading us to this point where, as I said, the decision has to be made.
47:46Either we actually do begin serious negotiations, and I suggest that these are serious negotiations
47:55that need to be conducted not by Ukraine, and certainly not by Europe, but by the United States,
48:03to come to some kind of agreement with the Russians, which will have to concede most
48:09Russian terms, probably all Russian terms, the key Russian terms, in terms of the conflict in
48:15Ukraine, but which might, just might, bring us to a point where some kind of general peace in Europe
48:24can be secured, one which secures what is left of Ukraine in return for promises of security
48:35guarantees to the Russians. Difficult to get the Russians to agree to this, but Putin still seems
48:41open to that idea, and perhaps it can be negotiated, and it can be brought about.
48:50Or the alternative is that we wring our hands, talk about ever more reckless ideas,
48:57launching tourist missiles at Russia, imposing bone-crunching sanctions, we gamble, we take more
49:03and more risks, and, well, the outcome this time will be complete defeat for Ukraine.
49:12Those are the only two alternatives that exist, and if people who continue to say
49:21that we can't compromise, we can't negotiate, because that would be appeasing aggression,
49:27and if you appease aggression, that will inspire more aggressors in other places that might,
49:35for example, lead Xi Jinping in Beijing to do something which we would judge bad in Taiwan.
49:45Of course, the Chinese probably wouldn't see it as bad, but anyway, let's skip that.
49:49Well, all I will say is, how much worse will it be if we are faced with an absolute clear-cut defeat
49:58in Ukraine, which is what we are now, in effect, seeing. Now, I'm going to finish this program
50:07with a metaphor that I think it was Major Reisner of the Austrian army first came up with,
50:14that this conflict in Ukraine has been one which pitched a lightweight boxer against a heavyweight
50:21boxer, and initially, because of his influence in the war, he was able to win the war,
50:28because of his nimbleness and skill, the lightweight boxer was able to land some blows,
50:36but the longer the fight continued, the power and weight of the stronger, bigger,
50:45more powerful boxer inevitably would begin to tell, and that is what we are seeing.
50:53We got a precursor of that, a big precursor of that, in the summer of last year, and today,
51:01we can already see that the blows the Russians are landing on Ukraine are getting stronger
51:08and mightier all the time, whilst the Ukrainians, by their own admission, shorter men,
51:15shorter machines, their air defense system breaking down, their economy, as their own
51:22former commander-in-chief, Valery Zaluzhny, admitted, in a catastrophic condition.
51:29They cannot take this indefinitely, or probably even for much longer.
51:37Daniel Davis, Lieutenant Colonel Daniel Davis, made this very point in a recent article
51:44which appeared in 1945, and he is right. So, either you support negotiations with the Russians,
51:53conducted, as I said, it has to be, by the United States, I cannot see who else can conduct them,
52:01except a peace in Ukraine on Russian terms, or you go down to total defeat,
52:12you go down to total defeat, with all the consequences that will follow.
52:19That is the reality we are confronted with today. Sanctions, Taurus missiles, all of that,
52:28not only cannot change anything, on the contrary, they will only make our own situation worse.
52:35Well, this is where I finish my program today. There will be more from me soon.
52:39Let me remind you again, you can find all our programs on our various platforms,
52:43Locals, Rumble and X. You can support our work via Patreon and Subscribestar,
52:49links under this video. Please remember, if you have liked this video, to tick the like button,
52:53and to check your subscription to this channel. More from me soon. Have a very good day.