The Ukraine conflict has entered a chilling new phase 😨🇺🇦🇷🇺. In this gripping episode of Dialogue Works, Dmitry Orlov reveals shocking updates that could change the course of the war forever 🕊️. As tensions between NATO, Ukraine, and Russia escalate to dangerous levels, Orlov explains what’s really happening behind the scenes 🧠⚠️. With potential global consequences on the horizon 🌍🚨, this is a must-watch for anyone trying to understand the truth about the conflict, Western involvement, and what might come next.
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Keywords used: Ukraine conflict, Russia Ukraine war update, Dmitry Orlov analysis, NATO tensions, geopolitical breakdown, Ukraine frontline news, war escalation 2025, Russia’s military moves, Dialogue Works channel, Ukraine crisis explained, global political tension, Russian perspective, East-West conflict, current war news, truth about Ukraine war, US Russia relations, Ukraine analysis, war journalism, military strategy, world conflict report.
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#UkraineConflict #DmitryOrlov #RussiaUkraineWar #Geopolitics #WarAnalysis #DialogueWorks #NATO #EasternEuropeTensions #WorldNews #MilitaryEscalation #ConflictUpdate #UkraineWar2025 #RussianPerspective #UkraineFrontline #BreakingNews #GlobalPolitics #TruthAboutWar #WarTurningPoint #USAandRussia #InternationalRelations #WarFootageExplained
Keywords used: Ukraine conflict, Russia Ukraine war update, Dmitry Orlov analysis, NATO tensions, geopolitical breakdown, Ukraine frontline news, war escalation 2025, Russia’s military moves, Dialogue Works channel, Ukraine crisis explained, global political tension, Russian perspective, East-West conflict, current war news, truth about Ukraine war, US Russia relations, Ukraine analysis, war journalism, military strategy, world conflict report.
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NewsTranscript
00:00:00Thank you. Good to be with you.
00:00:30Mostly I just publish articles and the website where I do it is
00:00:59And that's where you can find all of my work.
00:01:14Most of what I publish is for subscribers to keep up the riffraff, but it doesn't cost very much.
00:01:23So I encourage you to subscribe and read the articles that I publish, which is where I put in most of the work.
00:02:01Well, look, none of the people that Russia is supposed to be negotiating with
00:02:27are agreement capable as far as Russia is concerned.
00:02:32Not Trump, who is only good for another year or year and a half before he loses the midterm elections
00:02:40and becomes a lame duck.
00:02:44Certainly not Zelensky.
00:02:46Certainly not the people on the Ukrainian negotiating team,
00:02:52which I can get into in some detail if you want.
00:02:55None of these people matter to the Russians.
00:02:59Now, as far as what's going on inside Trump's head, a journalist called him a chicken,
00:03:08asked him if he's going to chicken out again.
00:03:12And so that got Trump's panties and a bunch,
00:03:15and he started ranting the way he usually does with his fractured syntax
00:03:20and said some stupid stuff.
00:03:24So the Russian response to that was limited to Peskov, who is Putin's press secretary,
00:03:33saying, well, Trump seemed to be emotional.
00:03:37He seemed to be overwrought and, you know, should take it easy for a while.
00:03:42And so that's that.
00:03:45That's all the press time this question requires, I believe.
00:03:53And in your opinion, Dimitri, what's going on in Ukraine
00:03:58and the way that somehow Europeans are trying to manage the situation,
00:04:03I don't see Donald Trump being capable of managing what's going on in Ukraine.
00:04:09Do you think this behavior on his part is some sort of frustration
00:04:14that he cannot deal with Zelensky himself and he needs to put pressure on Russia?
00:04:23Well, no.
00:04:24I don't think Trump has much interest in any of that.
00:04:30He is much more interested in building a Trump Tower in wherever it is,
00:04:34Saudi Arabia, I think it is.
00:04:36He's also got plans for Trump Towers in other places in the world.
00:04:42And he's also very interested in making lots of money.
00:04:45The way that works is you impose tariffs,
00:04:49wait for stock prices to drop, buy a bunch of stocks.
00:04:54Then you postpone the tariffs, wait for the stock prices to recover,
00:04:59sell the stocks and pocket the profits.
00:05:05And so Trump is doing it.
00:05:08His family is doing it.
00:05:09His friends are doing it.
00:05:10Everyone's happy.
00:05:14Elon Musk doesn't seem to be very happy with that
00:05:17because Elon Musk kind of wants there to be a country
00:05:20from which he can launch his wonderful rockets.
00:05:23So if the United States goes bankrupt and disappears,
00:05:26it doesn't matter to him how rich Trump is going to be or his family.
00:05:30You know, he doesn't want a bankrupt country to deal with.
00:05:34And I can understand that.
00:05:36But the rest of the people around Trump, they really don't care about America.
00:05:41You know, they make America great again is, you know,
00:05:44basically a ruse for chumps at this point.
00:05:47That's not happening.
00:05:48And so what does he care about the Ukraine?
00:05:54He knows that it's lost.
00:05:57You know, all he's trying to do maybe is postpone the reputational damage.
00:06:05He's trying to figure out a way to not get blamed for, you know, who lost Ukraine.
00:06:10He wants it to be Biden's problem.
00:06:13He hasn't quite figured out how to make it Biden's problem for real
00:06:16because there was no Biden.
00:06:18And he can't quite find a way to prove that the Trump Politburo
00:06:24in the White House is any different from the Biden Politburo in the White House.
00:06:28You know, everybody is beginning to, who thinks about it,
00:06:32is beginning to realize that it really doesn't matter who the U.S. president is.
00:06:36The Politburo stays the same.
00:06:38You mentioned Elon Musk, Dimitri, and he just left the administration.
00:06:46He came to the administration to do some sort of changes to reduce the spending
00:06:52on the part of the federal government.
00:06:55And right now he's out of the picture.
00:06:57In his recent interview, he said that the new bill on the part of the government,
00:07:03he said Donald Trump was mentioning big and beautiful.
00:07:06He said these two worlds are not coming together.
00:07:11You have it big or beautiful.
00:07:15And what is happening with the concept that gave Elon Musk some sort of opportunity
00:07:24to be part of the administration?
00:07:26Do you think, we know that Elon Musk was not interested in supporting the war in Ukraine.
00:07:30And do you feel that these people, as time goes by,
00:07:36and these people are getting somehow out of the administration,
00:07:40the concept of having a peaceful and a cooperative,
00:07:45a somehow compromise and cooperation with the other superpowers
00:07:49is fading away from the administration?
00:07:51Well, first of all, Elon Musk was instrumental in keeping the Ukrainian military alive
00:08:01by providing them with battlefield internet access.
00:08:05If it wasn't for Starlink, the European army would be uncontrollable.
00:08:11And he has never denied them Starlink access.
00:08:14So, he is a part of that war.
00:08:21And saying that he's against it or that he's for peace or something like that is,
00:08:26you know, I think is completely ridiculous.
00:08:29Now, the reason he joined Trump's campaign was that he,
00:08:34at some point, decided that the United States was financially worth saving from bankruptcy.
00:08:41National bankruptcy is all but assured for the United States at this point.
00:08:46But he tried, he thought that he could try,
00:08:49get rid of useless, resource-consuming federal bureaucracy
00:08:57and somehow redeem this federal system,
00:09:01which really doesn't have a chance at this point.
00:09:03But he decided that it is an impossible job.
00:09:08What did he, I think he managed to save something like $150 billion a year
00:09:14from federal expenditure.
00:09:16And then he saw Trump take that money that he saved and give it to the Pentagon.
00:09:22So, what good is that?
00:09:24And then Trump is now in favor of a deal with Congress
00:09:31that will basically raise the federal debt by over $3 trillion.
00:09:40They say that it's going to take place over several years, many years,
00:09:44but no, I don't think so.
00:09:46I think it's going to just jump to that amount relatively quickly.
00:09:51So, basically, you know, it turned out that, you know,
00:09:57Elon Musk didn't really have much to do, so he cut his losses.
00:10:01And then in addition to that, he has kind of a big family and lots of children,
00:10:06and they were getting death threats, you know, just like Donald Trump,
00:10:13just like other people in that cabinet of his are getting death threats.
00:10:17And he probably decided to try to find out how to make his family safer
00:10:25because there was clearly nothing that he was achieving
00:10:28as part of the Trump administration.
00:10:32So, I think that he's doing fairly reasonable things
00:10:36by washing his hands of the whole mess.
00:10:38Dimitri is so, right now, in the Trump administration,
00:10:45do you consider any sort of division when it comes to the conflict in Russia
00:10:49within the Trump administration?
00:10:51Many people are talking about, and I do believe,
00:10:53that there is some sort of division, a very important division,
00:10:57that is happening right now.
00:10:59On one part, we have Witkoff, who is willing to talk with Russia
00:11:02and understand what is the position on the part of Russia.
00:11:05On the other hand, you see Keith Kellogg, who somehow is on mainstream media
00:11:11everywhere talking about with Europeans.
00:11:14It's somehow the link between the Trump administration and Europeans
00:11:19to talk with them.
00:11:21We have Rubio.
00:11:22How do you find the Trump administration itself,
00:11:26and do you see these sort of divisions within the administration?
00:11:32I don't see divisions.
00:11:34I just see a cast of clowns, different characters.
00:11:39So, Rubio really wants to have some kind of a political future, right?
00:11:45So, he knows that America is the elite, not the country itself,
00:11:51but the ruling elite, is very russophobic.
00:11:54So, he knows that if he speaks in favor of peace with Russia,
00:11:59he's going to lose his political influence.
00:12:03So, he's going to kind of understand that Trump wants peace,
00:12:08but on the other hand, he understands that the rest of Washington wants war,
00:12:13even if it's a war they're going to lose.
00:12:15So, he's going to balance those things.
00:12:17Now, Kit Kellogg, he's just a senile old fool.
00:12:23I mean, he went out and said,
00:12:25the Kremlin hasn't sent me their memorandum on the peace deal.
00:12:30Who the hell is he to get to request that memorandum?
00:12:35Is he part of the negotiation?
00:12:38No, he's some clown, you know, that Trump sent there.
00:12:42He has no position, you know.
00:12:44He's not part of the picture, and he can't understand that.
00:12:49Therefore, he's just a senile old clown.
00:12:52And then we have Witkoff, who is a nice guy.
00:12:54He's a businessman.
00:12:55He was tickled pink to be received in the Kremlin and shown around
00:13:00and talked about all the wonderful business opportunities that Russia has
00:13:05for enterprising American businessmen.
00:13:10Should this nonsense with the Ukraine and with the European Union be left behind?
00:13:16And so, he's very happy about that.
00:13:19He made a lot of friends.
00:13:21He probably has a bright future in Russian business.
00:13:25Again, what does this have to do with Trump or with anything else?
00:13:29I don't know.
00:13:30I understand Witkoff.
00:13:31I understand where he's coming from.
00:13:33And what a clever guy.
00:13:36He parlayed his, you know, golf relationship with Trump into a conversation with Putin.
00:13:45And that is really something.
00:13:47And he's very happy about that.
00:13:49And I'm happy for him.
00:13:51So, that's the team.
00:13:53Now, you're talking about divisions.
00:13:55I don't think these people even talk to each other.
00:13:58Seriously.
00:13:59What do they have to say to each other?
00:14:02You know, what does Trump have to say to them if he doesn't really, if he's not part of the picture either?
00:14:08He's more concerned about building more Trump towers around the world.
00:14:13So, that's where it stands.
00:14:15You know, it's a circus.
00:14:16It's an absolute circus.
00:14:17Donald Trump was asked after he posted two, he tried to attack Vladimir Putin two times on his social truth.
00:14:34And he was asked by the press, did he know about what has happened with Vladimir Putin when he was going to the Kursk region?
00:14:42He said he was not that much aware of the drone attack and all of that.
00:14:49Do you feel that Donald Trump, since he took power, is somehow getting isolated from what's going on, considering the conflict in Ukraine?
00:15:01Because before coming to power, he was somehow, when he was talking about the conflict, the casualties, everything, he was somehow knowing what's going on there.
00:15:13Right now, it seems that as time goes by, he's totally getting, his comments are not connected with the reality of what's going on in Ukraine.
00:15:24Is that all about the information that he's receiving, the time that he doesn't have right now for the alternative media?
00:15:32Or is that the problem with the briefings that he's receiving from the intelligence?
00:15:38Well, the problem is that he can't do anything and he's frustrated.
00:15:43He wants out.
00:15:45He wants the Ukraine gone.
00:15:47He doesn't want to hear the word Ukraine ever again.
00:15:51It doesn't matter what happens to the Ukraine, whether it gets nuked or what.
00:15:55He just doesn't want it to exist.
00:15:58He's sick of it.
00:15:59He can't pay attention to all the stuff about Ukraine.
00:16:02It just makes him mad.
00:16:04And I perfectly understand it.
00:16:05He's surrounded by people who are treating the Ukraine as important.
00:16:09And the fact is, it's only important to Russia.
00:16:11And these people you've mentioned, you're talking about just his administration, or he is receiving a lot of pressure from Europe, from the European countries?
00:16:24Well, both.
00:16:27There's basically, you know, a gravy train that these people have been riding, the gravy train to Kiev and back.
00:16:36All of these billions and billions that got sent to the Ukraine, a lot of that money got laundered and has been used to line the pockets of everybody in Washington, everybody in the European Union.
00:16:47And they want that money to continue.
00:16:51Trump is trying to deprive a lot of corrupt officials of their income, of their ill-gotten gains.
00:17:01Of course, that's not very popular at all.
00:17:04I'm surprised he's still alive.
00:17:05These people have killed people for less money than that.
00:17:10So, you know, I understand his frustration.
00:17:14And how is that going to influence the process of negotiations?
00:17:22We know that we had Zelenskyy and Ukrainian team in Istanbul talking with Russians.
00:17:29And it seems that there would be a new round of negotiations between the two parties.
00:17:36Looking at what's going on in Ukraine, it's somehow simplistic.
00:17:42It's somehow you have to be so much naive to think that Ukraine is asking for any sort of agreement.
00:17:55They want not only the eastern part of Ukraine, but they want Crimea back.
00:18:01And these things are not going to, these pictures, the picture on the part of Russians and the picture on the part of Ukrainians are not even compatible.
00:18:12They're not coming together.
00:18:14How is that going to help Donald Trump?
00:18:17He said that he's going to be out of the scene.
00:18:20He's going to be, he's going to let Russians and Ukrainians talk to each other.
00:18:24Is that going to help him?
00:18:26Well, I think the negotiations are sort of useful because at some point, somebody on the Ukrainian side will have to sign the articles of surrender when Russia wins.
00:18:38So it's useful to keep channels of communication open with some official who can sign those articles of surrender and then maybe get hung.
00:18:48That's what happened after Nuremberg at the end of World War II.
00:18:52The people who signed the articles of surrender on behalf of Nazi Germany were then tried at Nuremberg and hung.
00:19:00They were executed.
00:19:01So maybe that's the bright future for these negotiators on the Ukrainian side.
00:19:07As far as actual achieving an actual agreement.
00:19:12Well, here's an interesting fact.
00:19:15Vladimir Medinsky, who is the head of the Russian delegation, received death threats, not just against him, but against his family members, against his children from some Ukrainians.
00:19:28And when the Ukrainian delegation was challenged with these facts, the head of the Ukrainian delegation said that the threats, the death threats came from the Ukrainian Nazis and that they don't control those Nazis.
00:19:44Okay, so keep in mind that the previous time there was a negotiation between Russia and the Ukraine, Istanbul won, which was canceled by Boris Johnson.
00:19:58One of the people in the Ukrainian delegation got shot in the middle of the street in Kiev.
00:20:05So there are a bunch of Nazis that nobody controls, maybe the CIA controls them, who knows, in Kiev, making death threats against anybody who tries to achieve peace, or even says that they're trying to achieve peace.
00:20:23And they're out of control.
00:20:25Now, what is the point of negotiating a peace agreement with people who do not control the situation in the Ukraine, in what's left of the Ukraine?
00:20:38There is no point at all.
00:20:40So I think that this is just, you know, some exercise in public relations.
00:20:48It's not really an exercise in diplomacy.
00:20:51This is all just to present some sort of a picture for the media, and maybe to keep channels of communication open for when the time comes to capitulate.
00:21:05And I think that that's all that's going on.
00:21:09As far as ongoing negotiations, well, I think it was Kit Kellogg who said that the next round of negotiations is ready and will take place in Geneva.
00:21:25Who the hell asked him that?
00:21:28And secondly, is Switzerland suddenly neutral again?
00:21:32It hasn't been for a while.
00:21:34It voted for anti-Russian sanctions, not a place for holding those negotiations.
00:21:42Istanbul is more likely.
00:21:45But the question is, after these death threats, why would Russians participate?
00:21:49That clearly the Ukrainians are not competent to engage in such negotiations.
00:21:56Plus, who would sign the agreement if an agreement were actually completed and negotiated?
00:22:04There is no one in legitimate constitutional authority in Kiev.
00:22:10Not the president, not the parliament, nobody.
00:22:15So there's nobody to sign a peace agreement, but you can get anybody and their dog to sign the capitulation agreement and then shoot them.
00:22:24You know, that's fine.
00:22:26There's precedent for that.
00:22:29The point that you mentioned, Dimitri, is so much important that who's running the show in Ukraine.
00:22:35We know that during the Biden administration, many people were arguing that the Biden administration as the head,
00:22:43it was Antony Blinken, was running the show in Ukraine.
00:22:47But it seems that wasn't quite the case in Ukraine.
00:22:52When you look at Europeans today and the way that they're resisting the policy of Washington,
00:22:58who's behind Europeans?
00:23:00Who's running the show in Europe?
00:23:02Who's running the show in Ukraine?
00:23:05I would argue it's not Donald Trump.
00:23:06Maybe some little group, some people within the administration are connected with Europe.
00:23:13But after all, we have to understand the complexity of what's going on in Ukraine
00:23:18and the role, the important role of Europe in Ukraine.
00:23:25You're taking that.
00:23:27Well, you have NATO falling apart.
00:23:33That's kind of the important thing.
00:23:35I recently wrote a long article about that.
00:23:37But NATO is quickly disappearing.
00:23:41So you have two different military alliances taking place, forming in the Balkans.
00:23:47You have a military alliance forming in Scandinavia, separately from NATO, just bypassing NATO.
00:23:57And then you have talk about some kind of rearmament in Europe, kind of becoming free from the Americans.
00:24:08There's talk of Americans pulling out.
00:24:11Oh, that's reasonable.
00:24:12Americans are running out of money.
00:24:13In real terms, the Pentagon budget has been shrinking because of inflation.
00:24:19You know, in absolute numbers, maybe it's going up.
00:24:22But in real purchasing power, it's going down, down, down.
00:24:27So they have to start liquidating all of these overseas bases, et cetera, repatriating the troops, et cetera.
00:24:35So Europe is trying to do what Europe usually does, which is get ready to go to war against itself.
00:24:42There is no chance of it going to war against Russia.
00:24:47That's just a ruse.
00:24:49That's what they're saying to each other due to lack of imagination and to paint a happy picture.
00:24:55But what usually happens when external influences, such as the Soviet Union, such as the United States, are withdrawn from the European subcontinent, is that the little European countries, little national states, nation states, they start going back, going to war against each other.
00:25:17England and France had been at war with each other for 200 years.
00:25:23It's just nonstop war.
00:25:25And the last 80 years have been an aberration because Europe has been, for most of that time, well, for half of that time, divided between a Soviet sphere and an American sphere.
00:25:39And the Soviets and the Americans didn't want to start a war with each other because it would be suicidal.
00:25:44And then Russia disappeared but kept its nuclear arsenal.
00:25:47So, again, there was no chance of war between the United States and Russia.
00:25:53There is still no chance of war between the United States and Russia because neither side is suicidal.
00:25:59But they're pulling out of Europe.
00:26:01So, the Europeans will go back to slaughtering each other like they usually do when there is no supervision, no outside supervision.
00:26:09So, that's what we should expect.
00:26:11So, within that context, you have sort of the smaller countries kind of going their own way.
00:26:18So, you know, Poland and the Baltics are kind of like a, you know, a little circus, little side show.
00:26:25Then you have the Scandinavian countries thinking they could do something together.
00:26:31And then you have the Balkans being the Balkans getting ready to cut each other's throats again.
00:26:37Perfectly reasonable to expect that that's exactly what will happen.
00:26:41And then you have the big boys, supposedly, which is Britain, France, and Germany, right, snorting cocaine together on a nice, friendly trip to Kiev.
00:26:53But when they're not high on coke, they don't look very happy together, I notice.
00:26:59They really need the cocaine to stay civil with each other.
00:27:02And, you know, Britain seemed to be doing well, but then it turned out that it didn't have any troops at all left, hardly any ships left, kind of a disaster.
00:27:13And then, what's his name, got caught having his property, supposed property, torched by some Ukrainian male prostitutes that he forgot to pay.
00:27:25So, that he's not really, you know, leader of a rearming Europe candidate anymore.
00:27:32And then Macron got punched by his wife, husband, whatever it is, husband Doid.
00:27:37And so, that kind of put him out of the running.
00:27:40So, now we have this Fritz character who is sort of the Bundeskanzler, although nobody really wants him to be the Bundeskanzler.
00:27:49It seems like nobody really wants that job in Germany anymore.
00:27:55And he's sort of playing up being some kind of a military hero, reliving the memory of his Nazi grandfather, of whom he's very fond.
00:28:11But I don't think that that's going to go very far either.
00:28:14So, it seems like Europe would need to go to war against itself, but doesn't really have what it takes anymore.
00:28:25It's just so anemic.
00:28:28You know, it's sort of like, you know, a fight in an old folks' home where they throw plates of porridge at each other.
00:28:37You know, it just doesn't seem like they have what it takes to actually fight a war with each other either.
00:28:44Dimitri, when we talk about Europe, and I would assume that you're not considering the European Union, you're talking about European countries.
00:28:58In that concept, what is the role of the United Kingdom in running the show in Europe?
00:29:04Do you think that somehow, because recently we had the conservative leader, Kami Beidonok, on Sky News.
00:29:14She mentioned that the war in Ukraine and the war in the Middle East are proxy wars on the part of the United Kingdom.
00:29:22And I was somehow shocked in the way that she was picturing what's going on on both fronts.
00:29:36Do you feel that the United Kingdom is somehow too much involved in Ukraine that we are not aware of?
00:29:44Well, I think it's not really a secret that Zelensky is being kept alive by a detail of British officers
00:29:59who are basically keeping him from getting killed by his own people.
00:30:05As far as the general role of Britain in world affairs, well, they hide behind the channel.
00:30:18They're okay with fighting wars against pygmies armed with baskets of ripe fruit and flowers.
00:30:26But as far as fighting real wars with real enemies, they would rather not.
00:30:33And what they're really expert at is getting different people to fight each other, different nations.
00:30:41They're really good at stirring up trouble.
00:30:44And so what you're quoting is basically, you know, within the British tradition of how to provoke a war on the continent somewhere,
00:30:54while the British just sort of stand back and laugh and maybe profit.
00:31:03Dimitri, you mentioned that Donald Trump wants to pivot from Europe to maybe to Asia to fight an economic war with China.
00:31:17But we know that the way that the European Union and European countries are manipulating him in Ukraine is making it much more difficult on the part of the administration in the United States to go after that sort of plan.
00:31:33They're talking about right now in Germany, they're talking about lifting restrictions on the range of the arms provided to Ukraine.
00:31:41Do you feel that Germany, together with the United Kingdom and France, these are three important countries in the Western part of Europe,
00:31:50who are somehow supporting, somehow not totally supporting the government in Ukraine, are they going to escalate?
00:31:59Are we going to see?
00:32:00Because this drone attack on the Russian president is not something small, something tiny to just be ignored.
00:32:10If they do something, with what has happened in the Kursk region, we know what was that.
00:32:15We know these sort of terrorist attacks.
00:32:18How big they can escalate the conflict to somehow block the Trump administration in terms of shifting or pivoting toward Asia?
00:32:30All right.
00:32:31Well, that's like five different questions.
00:32:35Let me try to tackle each one.
00:32:37First of all, the attack, drone attack on Putin's presidential helicopter.
00:32:47I don't know who dreamt that up, but that's nonsense, okay?
00:32:54Complete, utter, ridiculous nonsense.
00:32:57The drones that the Ukrainians send into Russia basically blow up schools, hospitals, and churches, and some apartment buildings.
00:33:11Ninety percent of them are shot down.
00:33:15There is no Ukrainian drone that can fly into another region and attack a helicopter, especially a presidential helicopter.
00:33:25That's just preposterous, okay?
00:33:28Now, the fact is that there was some Ukrainian military action, drone action, taking place in a region where the presidential helicopter was.
00:33:37Well, la-di-da.
00:33:38Was it in any danger?
00:33:41I don't think so.
00:33:43If it was in any danger, it wouldn't have flown there because there are people whose job it is to make sure that the president remains in no danger, okay?
00:33:52Now, in terms of these drone attacks, Ukrainian drone attacks on Russia, well, that's just terrorism, first of all.
00:34:06They can't attack military targets because they're too well defended, so they don't even try.
00:34:13They try to bomb gas stations sometimes because that makes good news footage in case somebody shoots a picture and uploads it.
00:34:21They can show a big kaboom, and that makes them happy.
00:34:25In terms of actually achieving any strategic aims, it doesn't achieve anything for the Ukraine.
00:34:32It doesn't make the inevitable defeat of the Ukrainian army any different than it would otherwise be.
00:34:43But it's provoking a Russian reaction.
00:34:45So the Russians decided, why shoot down individual drone aircraft when we can shoot down the factories that make them and the container ship that supplied parts for them that was docked in Odessa, which is what the Russians did.
00:35:03Now, they did that bombing run at night when there weren't any workers in those factories because those are Ukrainian workers and Ukrainians are Russians.
00:35:14And when the war is over, those workers might go to work at a Russian drone factory building drones for attacking actual enemies of Russia.
00:35:25So why kill them?
00:35:27So why kill them?
00:35:27They're useful.
00:35:29And so very few people got killed, and that was accidental.
00:35:33That was not intended.
00:35:36The attacks were on ships and industrial zones.
00:35:39And that was just a way of cutting the expenses because, you know, anti-aircraft missiles, et cetera, are expensive.
00:35:54And why not blow up an entire factory instead?
00:35:57That's just cost efficient.
00:35:59Now, in terms of escalation, you asked whether, you know, there might be some sort of escalation in the Ukraine.
00:36:11Well, it bears pointing out that there was no escalation when there was a chance that the Ukraine might not lose.
00:36:19There is no chance now that the Ukraine might not lose.
00:36:23All the Ukrainian army is doing now is static warfare.
00:36:30They send in people to hold positions in trenches and dugouts for the Russians to bomb and take over.
00:36:40And the Russians do it slowly, carefully, ponderously, not in any sort of rush because, really, the longer it takes, the better it is for Russia.
00:36:51There is no rush at all.
00:36:52And so there's no reason to expect that this situation will change, except at some point the Ukrainian front will crumble.
00:37:02Because for how long can people just go into trenches and get blown up?
00:37:09There is already 400,000 Ukrainian troops missing.
00:37:14Nobody knows where they are.
00:37:16They might be dead or they may have walked away.
00:37:18They send people to the front and they surrender to the Russians or they filter through to the Russian side one by one and surrender.
00:37:26Sometimes they surrender, you know, entire formations, surrender.
00:37:30The problem there is that when they try to surrender, they're attacked by the Ukrainian side, which tries to kill them.
00:37:39So that's keeping people from surrendering as much as they would.
00:37:43But at some point, most of the Ukrainian military will just decide to go over to the Russian side and there will be nothing to stop them.
00:37:53And then they might pick up some new weapons and some new flags and go to march on Kiev, which would be wonderful.
00:38:02Because to to to really end this conflict requires a civil war in the Ukraine.
00:38:08So that's the thing we expect.
00:38:10So the other part is why.
00:38:13Well, it is the Ukrainian conflict preventing Trump from what starting a war with China.
00:38:20Oh, my God.
00:38:25OK, so cockroaches in the White House are preventing Americans from flying to the moon.
00:38:33That's that's kind of like the.
00:38:36The relative scale of these things.
00:38:40And there's the Ukraine.
00:38:41It's it's a static conflict.
00:38:44The Russians are going to win.
00:38:45Everybody knows it.
00:38:47It might take a year.
00:38:48It might take two.
00:38:49Nobody cares how long it takes.
00:38:51It's a foregone conclusion.
00:38:53Right.
00:38:54On the other hand, you have the United States and China and the people who mostly don't want to go to war against China are people in the Pentagon who know that without Chinese imported parts, the U.S.
00:39:08military is dead in the water because they don't make their own stuff anymore.
00:39:13There is no industry in the United States that can keep the military industrial complex going.
00:39:21They depend on China.
00:39:23So China without the United States would do just fine.
00:39:27It would cut to maybe two and a half percentage points of office GDP growth for a year if it doesn't find new markets for its products, which it probably will.
00:39:41It might not make as much of a profit on the exports, but I think it would do just fine.
00:39:48And the United States would just be dead.
00:39:52The United States, Walmart is the biggest retailer in the United States.
00:39:58Something like 85, 90 percent of everything on Walmart shelves is stickered made in China.
00:40:04So basically, well, already the head of Walmart went to talk to Trump and say, look, if we lose the China trade, we're dead.
00:40:19And what do we do?
00:40:21And Trump told them to not raise their prices.
00:40:27Which is wonderful.
00:40:28Don't raise prices on Chinese stuff.
00:40:30So that's Trump's solution to the whole problem.
00:40:35So the idea that there's going to be a war between the United States and China is basically the same as predicting that there's going to be a war between the United States and, I don't know, the Andromeda galaxy.
00:40:50You know, it's attacking the Milky Way.
00:40:54The two galaxies are colliding.
00:40:56So we should do something about that.
00:41:00Dimitri, we when when we talk about Donald Trump and the situation with the tariffs, with the sanctions, we have to remember that just recently, the U.S. Treasury secretary, he has mentioned that the Biden was so weak in terms of putting sanctions on Russia.
00:41:22And when you look at the way that Russia, what is the main misunderstandings on the part of the United States when it comes to the Russian economy?
00:41:46Well, two things.
00:41:50One is that Russia is a champion at import replacement.
00:41:54It loves sanctions because it's really hard to make your own people stop buying imports for no reason.
00:42:03It's like, I want you to stop buying imports and make your own stuff.
00:42:07How about no, we like imports.
00:42:13But if the exporter on the other side says, we will sanction you, you can no longer buy our stuff, then the Russian government has has no choice but to promote import replacement, maybe put some some government money behind it.
00:42:31And lo and behold, now Russia is independent in lots of things.
00:42:38Some of this is really helpful to Russia.
00:42:41For instance, there used to be a lot of imported European cars and a lot of European car makers making cars in Russia.
00:42:49And then they up and went, you know, 2022, they just abandoned people who worked for them, closed factories.
00:42:59The Russians reopened those factories, started making the same cars and eventually other cars, signed deal with Chinese automakers.
00:43:07So now European car industry in Russia is not very well represented and never will be again.
00:43:16And meanwhile, Russia is completely flooded with Chinese cars.
00:43:21So the Russian government now has to step in and, OK, from next year, all new taxis will be Russian made.
00:43:28They could be Chinese, but they have to be made in Russia.
00:43:31So all of that sort of stuff is going on.
00:43:37Aircraft building in Russia is blossoming because because of sanctions by Airbus and Boeing, especially Boeing.
00:43:44There are some some problems with spare parts, but really localized problems.
00:43:50And most recently, the Russian government has realized that it's short of industrial workers.
00:43:55So it's reorienting higher education in Russia so that it will produce more high tech welders and fewer bloggers and, you know, economists and journalists and sociologists and lawyers and other useless riffraff.
00:44:19Because Russia needs industrial workers, not useless people who just run their mouths.
00:44:30And so those are all positive developments, you see.
00:44:33So more sanctions, please.
00:44:35That's the message from Russia, please.
00:44:38If the United States imposes really, really serious sanctions, can I propose some sanctions?
00:44:44OK, I think Microsoft should just completely ban the use of Microsoft products on Russian territory.
00:44:52I think Google should just completely pull out.
00:44:57Those are two big ones.
00:44:59But basically, a complete ban on all American software would be very helpful.
00:45:05Also, American pharmaceuticals.
00:45:07Why don't you ban all of those?
00:45:08Because then they would be made in Russia and in India, and that would be fine.
00:45:15So those are just some ideas to throw out for new sanctions, in case Besant wants ideas.
00:45:25Dimitri, you mentioned the internal attitude of Russia towards sanctions.
00:45:30But when it comes to the BRICS and the way that we know that when they're talking about sanctions, it's not just all about the United States.
00:45:42It's about how capable is the United States to put pressure on China and India as the main two important partners of Russia.
00:45:52How do you feel about these two countries, mostly about India?
00:45:59It seems that we know that China knows what would happen if they can harm Russia to China.
00:46:07But when it comes to India, do you see the difference between the two countries, China and India, when it comes to the sanctions?
00:46:14And how different India is from China?
00:46:16Well, these are giant countries that are rather hard for the United States to hurt.
00:46:25Half of all the oil that Russia exports goes to China and isn't being sold for dollars.
00:46:33It's ruble-yuan trade.
00:46:35So the Americans don't even know how much money is involved and how that trade goes.
00:46:40It's gone dark for them.
00:46:43Russia also exports a lot of oil to India and keeps Indian refiners busy, earning a lot of rupees in the process.
00:46:57It gets to invest those rupees in Indian production of various kinds, including refineries, and then profits from the refined products being exported to Europe.
00:47:09So that's a good situation.
00:47:10And then there are the sanctions.
00:47:14After all, Russia does require some things that are sanctioned goods by the United States, by the European Union.
00:47:22Now, those sanctions just make those things cost a little bit more.
00:47:27But it's BRICS nations that are involved in making sure that Russia still gets those things.
00:47:33And there are so many different channels.
00:47:39Today is Kazakhstan.
00:47:41Tomorrow it's India and then Turkey and then back to Kazakhstan, et cetera.
00:47:47So that the Americans would never be able to actually track anything down.
00:47:53And they can't.
00:47:55And so Russia gets everything.
00:47:57So there are a lot of, for instance, there are still a lot of Western cars in Russia, Western made cars that need spare parts.
00:48:06Do you think there's a problem getting those spare parts?
00:48:09No, I could make a phone call and the spare part is there.
00:48:12It's more expensive than people would like.
00:48:15But that's called parallel import.
00:48:18And that goes through a lot of BRICS countries.
00:48:21So from the BRICS countries point of view, they make good profits on parallel exports to Russia, parallel imports from Russia's point of view.
00:48:32They want that to continue.
00:48:33So from the BRICS point of view, more sanctions, please.
00:48:36If we assume that the war in Ukraine is somehow crucial and important for the military industrial complex of the United States,
00:48:52do you feel that the Golden Dome right now, the concept of Golden Dome in the United States is somehow a, somehow Donald Trump is, because Donald, can we say that Donald Trump is trying to convince the military industrial complex to withdraw from these endless wars in the Middle East?
00:49:18Because they withdrew from the fight with Yemenis.
00:49:23And right now Donald Trump doesn't, as you've mentioned, he's not interested in the war in Ukraine.
00:49:28He's somehow giving them some sort of alternative source to feed the military industrial complex by this concept of Golden Dome.
00:49:37And nobody, and many people are arguing, military experts are arguing it doesn't work.
00:49:42It wouldn't work for the United States.
00:49:46Okay, let's start from the end.
00:49:48The Golden Dome is a physically impossible thing.
00:49:53It is not a defense system.
00:49:56It is a way of handing out money, billions of dollars in money.
00:50:02The recipients of that money are Elon Musk, number one, and number two, three, and four are major supporters of the Trump election campaign.
00:50:14It is payback from the Trump administration to his friends.
00:50:19There will never be any Golden Dome defense system because it's physically impossible.
00:50:23Now, in terms of military industrial complex supplying what exactly to the Ukraine, the Ukraine is not constrained by weapons.
00:50:41It is constrained by manpower.
00:50:44There are fewer and fewer Ukrainians willing to die for no reason.
00:50:50They go to the front, they hide in bunkers, they try to surrender, sometimes they die trying to surrender, sometimes they succeed in running away, a lot of the time they just die.
00:51:03So that's the war.
00:51:04What does that have to do with the American military industrial complex?
00:51:08How do you feel about Trump 2.0, the new administration, when you compare it to the first Trump administration?
00:51:24We had the tariffs put in on a lot of countries, mostly on China, and he decided somehow to back down.
00:51:33And we had Donald Trump going to war with Yemen in the Middle East.
00:51:38Then he decided, he learned the lesson and he withdrew from the Middle East, from the Red Sea.
00:51:45And with the negotiations with Iran, do you think that there is a learning curve in the new administration, or we're going to have a, after all, we're going to have a flat line, as we saw it with the first administration, Trump 1.0?
00:52:04Oh, I think Trump is pretty much finished as a president already, a hundred and some days into his administration.
00:52:11It's clear that, you know, everything that he said during the election campaign was just, you know, him lying as if he's running for office, which is highly traditional within the American, quote unquote, democracy.
00:52:26He's having fun.
00:52:27He's having the time of his life.
00:52:29He's making money like crazy.
00:52:32All of his friends are making money like crazy.
00:52:35He's found this Golden Dome scheme for handing out billions of dollars to his friends with no accountability because there's no physical system behind it.
00:52:45There's not even, there's not even theory behind it.
00:52:49Just to name.
00:52:53You know, it's a wonderful time to be Donald Trump.
00:52:57It's not such a good time to be America.
00:52:59Um, and Donald Trump will probably continue helping himself for as long as possible.
00:53:06At the end, he'll probably get, hand out pardons to all the people around him, just like Biden did.
00:53:14That seems like a traditional thing.
00:53:16And then we'll have the next group of criminals rush into the White House.
00:53:21That seems to be a tradition now.
00:53:23How do you feel about the talks between Iran and the United States?
00:53:32Do you see that Donald Trump can resist the pressure coming from Israel?
00:53:37Or we're going to see the same sort of attitude as he had in his first administration?
00:53:43Or what we've seen from the Biden administration?
00:53:47To what extent he's capable of sustaining or somehow getting along with the pressure coming from Israel?
00:54:02Well, as far as negotiations with the Persians, those can go on for centuries, as we know.
00:54:12So give or take a century, maybe we'll have a result, maybe not.
00:54:17So as far as Israel, I think it's more of a personal thing.
00:54:22I think that Trump basically hates Netanyahu at this point, really, really hates him.
00:54:30And doesn't want to see him.
00:54:32So he flew to the Middle East.
00:54:33He didn't go to Israel.
00:54:34He didn't talk to the Israelis.
00:54:36He didn't invite Israelis.
00:54:37The Abraham agreements, whatever, were not even mentioned, as far as I can tell.
00:54:46He was really talking about, you know, taking lots of money from these rich Gulf states.
00:54:55Because they have lots of federal reserve notes, lots of treasuries, right?
00:55:01They want to dump those because the dollar is going down, down, down.
00:55:05What Trump wanted to do was to get the Arabs to buy American stuff, whatever it is, you know, buy American artificial intelligence, buy American whatever.
00:55:21It doesn't matter.
00:55:22Just so long as there's something American to soak up all that money.
00:55:25Because otherwise, the dollar would just continue dropping.
00:55:30And that was partially announced.
00:55:34I think he got, like, plans for what to do with a trillion or two of Arab money.
00:55:41But the dollar is still sinking.
00:55:43So maybe it isn't working.
00:55:46As far as war, again, you know, Trump is not about war.
00:55:50Trump is about money.
00:55:51He's a businessman.
00:55:52So he understands that, you know, he has to sell stuff to the Arabs.
00:55:58I think he sold them a Trump Tower, maybe two.
00:56:02You know, that's a big deal for him.
00:56:05As far as war with whatever, with Yemen, well, the way that went is it's a huge humiliation for the United States.
00:56:14So they're trying not to talk about it.
00:56:16And the deal is, okay, Yemenis, we'll stop bombing you if you stop sinking our ships.
00:56:22Is that okay?
00:56:24And the Yemenis are like, yeah, okay.
00:56:26We actually don't care.
00:56:28We care about stopping the flow of goods to Israel.
00:56:35And the Americans who initially dove into the fray to open up the flow of goods to Israel are like, okay, well, we're not going to talk about Israel anymore.
00:56:46Okay.
00:56:46We're upset.
00:56:47And so that's basically it.
00:56:51That's the situation.
00:56:54Dimitri, from what we've seen in the Middle East, you've mentioned the latest visit of Donald Trump to the Arab states.
00:57:02And we had the Foreign Minister of Saudi Arabia, the Defense Minister of Saudi Arabia going to Iran, talking with the Supreme Leader of Iran.
00:57:15How do you feel about the way that the Middle East, the picture of Middle East today, comparing to what it was during the Trump's first administration?
00:57:25We had Saudi Arabia, all of these Arab states against Iran, against Yemen.
00:57:32Right now, they're trying to improve the relationship between Iran and Saudi Arabia, which was, by the way, an attempt on the part of China and Russia.
00:57:42What that approach model that has happened that has changed drastically the picture of the Middle East.
00:57:47How what was done before Donald Trump coming to power in terms of Iran and Saudi Arabia has changed the picture of the Middle East and the new face of the Middle East that Donald Trump is facing right now?
00:58:01Well, I think that the big change is from Trump 1 to Trump 2 is that when Trump 1 was happening, the shale oil boom was still happening in the United States.
00:58:15And the United States had a lot of leverage over the oil producing countries in the Middle East.
00:58:24They had to compete with each other for market share, which in a market that wasn't really very profitable because the Americans had the ability to flood it with shale oil and actually tried to crash the market.
00:58:42Supposedly to hurt Russia, but also to exert influence on other Arab states.
00:58:50Now, shale oil is dying.
00:58:54It's not growing.
00:58:55It's not shrinking, but it's not profitable either.
00:58:59If the oil price is anywhere below about 60, 62 a barrel, the entire shale oil patch as a whole becomes unprofitable.
00:59:08There are little bits of it that can produce oil around 40 a barrel, but there's little of that.
00:59:15And the whole thing, the rig count is falling.
00:59:19Smaller companies are getting ready to go bankrupt again.
00:59:23And overall, the shale oil boom is over.
00:59:27It is really over.
00:59:28You know, that Klondike has run its course.
00:59:31And what that means is that the Middle East doesn't have to be at each other's throats anymore because they don't really have to compete.
00:59:38There's a shortage.
00:59:40There's coming up a big shortage for their product.
00:59:44They can all collaboratively corner the market and be rich.
00:59:51And so why fight with each other if everybody is rich and happy?
00:59:54You know, people fight with each other when resources are scarce.
00:59:59But it looks like resources are going to be plentiful for them in terms of money, scarce for the rest of the world, which because, you know, you see the shale oil in the United States has, for the past 10 years or so, made up for the overall shortfall in oil production everywhere else in the world.
01:00:20The decline rate hasn't gone anywhere, but it has been made up temporarily, made up for temporarily by shale oil from the United States.
01:00:28If shale oil production drops, there's nothing to compensate for it.
01:00:34There's just going to be a global oil shortage.
01:00:37So the Middle East is gearing up for that eventuality.
01:00:41I think if that happens the way that you mentioned, the security of the Middle East would be of particular importance for the United States.
01:00:55And some sort of because the policy of the United States in the Middle East was some sort of chaos for many years.
01:01:04Is that the new reality of the United States is changing the policy in the Middle East, is going to change the policy in the Middle East?
01:01:12Well, right now, the Arabs are willing to pay the United States to keep the United States from stirring up trouble, because the last thing they want is for defenseless American troops in the region to get hit by anyone.
01:01:28And so that is kind of like the really odd leverage that the United States has on Gulf states, because it has American hostages there.
01:01:44And it's a dumb position to pay us money or our soldiers will get hurt.
01:01:54And as a result of that, you will get hurt, too.
01:01:57You know, that's a preposterous sort of situation.
01:02:00But that is the best bargain that the Americans are capable of driving at the moment, it seems.
01:02:09Thank you so much, Dimitri, for being with us today.
01:02:13It was all fine.
01:02:15And let us know how we can follow your work.
01:02:19Okay, well, go to https colon slash slash boosty, B-O-O-S-T-Y dot T-O, T-O stands for the island of Tonga, where I don't live, slash Club Orlov, Club O-R-L-O-V, and read everything that I actually publish, because I don't really like to talk into the camera that much.
01:02:44I prefer to write.
01:02:45Thank you so much, Dimitri, for being with us today.
01:02:50Great pleasure, as always.