A major setback strikes as Ukraine’s latest drone swarm offensive ends in failure 🎯💥 — sparking frustration and concern among Western allies. In this episode, The Duran breaks down the failed operation, its implications on the battlefield, and the growing tension between Kyiv and its backers in NATO and the EU 🇺🇦🇺🇸🇪🇺.
As billions in funding hang in the balance and confidence in Ukraine's strategy begins to crack, analysts warn of a shifting tide in the West's resolve. Is this failure a sign of strategic exhaustion, or the beginning of deeper fractures in the Western coalition? 🔍⚔️
Watch now for a deep dive into the military, political, and media fallout surrounding Ukraine’s drone warfare campaign.
#UkraineWar #DroneSwarm #TheDuran #MilitaryFailure #NATO #UkraineCrisis #Geopolitics #WesternAllies #RussiaUkraineConflict #Kyiv #UkraineStrategy #WarAnalysis #DroneWarfare #UkraineNews #NATOvsRussia #UkraineFrontline #UkraineUpdate #WestLosingPatience #MilitaryTensions #UkraineSupport
As billions in funding hang in the balance and confidence in Ukraine's strategy begins to crack, analysts warn of a shifting tide in the West's resolve. Is this failure a sign of strategic exhaustion, or the beginning of deeper fractures in the Western coalition? 🔍⚔️
Watch now for a deep dive into the military, political, and media fallout surrounding Ukraine’s drone warfare campaign.
#UkraineWar #DroneSwarm #TheDuran #MilitaryFailure #NATO #UkraineCrisis #Geopolitics #WesternAllies #RussiaUkraineConflict #Kyiv #UkraineStrategy #WarAnalysis #DroneWarfare #UkraineNews #NATOvsRussia #UkraineFrontline #UkraineUpdate #WestLosingPatience #MilitaryTensions #UkraineSupport
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NewsTranscript
00:00All right, Alexander, let's talk about the military situation in Ukraine.
00:05And perhaps let's start things off with the drones, the drones that continue to be launched
00:15from the Ukraine military into the Russian Federation, including drones that target Moscow.
00:22We did have the Russians retaliate for about a two, three-day period.
00:27They retaliated with drones as well as missile strikes into Ukraine.
00:32But recently, the drones continue to go from Ukraine into Russia in the hundreds.
00:38But now it looks like Russia has decided not to retaliate to those drone attacks.
00:45We even had a drone swarm allegedly target or threaten the helicopter of the Russian president
00:52on its way to Kursk.
00:54Anyway, your thoughts on the drones.
00:56Let's talk about the drones, and then maybe you can give an update on the actual situation
01:01on the front lines.
01:03Can I just say, this report which we've had from the Russian media, and not just the Russian
01:08media, but from Russian officials, including military officials, I mean, that Putin's helicopter
01:14found itself at what they said was an epicenter of a Ukrainian drone swarm.
01:20It has not received anything like the kind of publicity and, indeed, explanation that it deserves.
01:30I mean, what was that?
01:31Was that an attempt to assassinate Putin?
01:33Because some of the reports imply this.
01:36Or was it just that Putin was flying into Kursk and there were all those Ukrainian drones and
01:42it was all coincidence, which seems unlikely, actually, at least to me.
01:46I mean, that was an extraordinary thing.
01:48And you would expect the Russian authorities to be talking much more forthrightly about what
01:57that event was all about than they actually are.
02:00Whether there's been strong statements about this in private from the Russians to the Americans,
02:08whether there's been some explanations, whether the Russians, as they do, are constantly, you know,
02:14are looking, trying to investigate what happened, whether Putin himself has said,
02:19let's not make a big issue of this.
02:21I would really love to know.
02:23But and I think we just have to park that whole topic for the time being, because there's so
02:30little information about it.
02:31But I would have thought that this is a very, very big story and a very, very big event.
02:38I would just imagine if the helicopter carrying the president of the United States found itself
02:45at the center of a drone swarm launched by, say, the Houthis or the Iranians over the course of a
02:55trip to the Middle East, what the reaction would be.
02:58So it's a very, very strange story and a very disturbing and worrying one.
03:03But as I said, we'll just have to, for the moment, at least park it to one side.
03:07Now, I'm going to say a few things about this.
03:08I don't think the Russians have stopped their attacks on Ukraine.
03:14I think what the Russians regularly do is that they launch massive attacks against Ukraine
03:20using missiles, ballistic missiles, cruise missiles and drones.
03:25They then wait a couple of days or weeks.
03:28They assess the damage.
03:30Then they move and they launch further attacks.
03:33And as for drone attacks, attacks with geranium drones, Geraan drones, I understand that they
03:39are now constant, that they happen every night.
03:41And the reason we don't hear about them so much is because they've become so much a matter
03:46of routine.
03:47So I don't think we should read too much into the fact that, you know, we haven't heard big
03:52stories and reports about the latest, very latest Russian drone and missile strikes.
03:57But the Ukrainian drone attacks on Russia are a very big and very interesting story.
04:08And one which, in my opinion, has been, again, downplayed in the West, even though it is a
04:16very important one.
04:18First of all, clearly, a very big industrial and technological effort has been made to try
04:27to build up these drone fleets that the Ukrainians have built up.
04:31And I said the Ukrainians, I don't believe it was just the Ukrainians.
04:34I should say that now right away and outright.
04:37A very, very big effort was created to create these drone fleets.
04:42I suspect that that started in the spring, summer of last year.
04:48There were all kinds of discussions and debates about deep strikes into Russia.
04:53At that time, there was a meeting which we know about from one article in the New York
05:00Times that took place in Washington, where the Ukrainian intelligence people came and the
05:05Americans met with them.
05:06This is the Biden administration, I say the Americans.
05:08And the Ukrainians were saying they were losing the war and that conventionally, if it continued
05:14in this conventional course, it would be ended Ukraine's defeat.
05:19And there was decisions made to start an asymmetric campaign against Russia to correct and adjust
05:26this.
05:27And I'm going to make a guess.
05:29And I don't use a guess, actually.
05:30I'm going to say that almost certainly a decision was made then to begin this major drone offensive
05:40against Russia.
05:41And I think industrial facilities were created probably in Ukraine, probably in Western European
05:47countries too.
05:49Drones were manufactured in the hundreds and the thousands.
05:54And this drone offensive was then launched.
05:57And this is the thing.
05:59It has been a complete failure.
06:02These drones barely get through.
06:06The Russian air defenses have now been developed to the point where they're able to shoot down
06:11these drones, bring down these drones in huge numbers.
06:15Every so often, one does get through.
06:18But even the Western media in Britain, for example, are now admitting that they're doing minimal
06:23damage.
06:24And I think this has come as a massive disappointment and shock, especially in Europe, that this
06:32whole project with these drones, these Ukrainians drones, the Ukrainian drone offensive,
06:38has proved so disappointing.
06:40And you see the signs of this all around.
06:43So you had Zaluzhnyi.
06:44Remember him?
06:45He's an ambassador in London.
06:48He gave an unbelievably pessimistic speech.
06:52He admitted that the Russians are now ahead in drones, that the technological war that
06:58he'd staked so much on is failing, that nothing is coming together in the way that Ukraine
07:05thought.
07:06He said that Ukraine can't expect any miracles.
07:09And then he said that basically the only way that Ukraine can survive is through some
07:13kind of technological miracle.
07:15So a very pessimistic set of comments by Zaluzhnyi.
07:24And then, of course, you've got the whole Taurus missile, Friedrich Mertz's story that we
07:29discussed a couple of days ago.
07:31Firstly, Mertz saying that, you know, the Europeans were going to lift, rather, the West was going
07:39to lift range restrictions on its weapons, which is clearly, as we discussed in a recent
07:45program, intended to set the scene for strikes against Moscow itself.
07:51Then we had the story, well, the Taurus missiles are going to be supplied to Ukraine, and then
07:57they're not going to be supplied to Ukraine, and then no decision has been made about Taurus
08:01missiles being supplied to Ukraine.
08:03Then we have this very strange agreement between Mertz and Zelensky about producing long-range
08:12missiles that can reach Moscow, 5 billion euros or whatever it is, which, of course, is just
08:20a way of saying Taurus missiles.
08:22They've already been delivered.
08:23They're already in Ukraine.
08:25They're going to be launched against Russia fairly soon.
08:28But, you know, these are not actually German-made missiles.
08:31These are missiles that the Ukrainians themselves are going to be making through this enormous
08:35project that the Europeans, the Germans are putting together.
08:39And I suspect that what's happened is because of the complete failure of the drone offensive,
08:46there's now, this is what has led to the decision, essentially, in Europe, at least, to now move
08:52forward and to try to escalate again, to try to reach Moscow with Taurus missiles, which have
09:00the range to strike targets within Moscow.
09:02Legitivi, which is one of the more reliable Ukrainian telegram channels.
09:09Legitivi says, actually says what we said a few days ago, which is that the Taurus missiles
09:15are almost certainly already in Ukraine.
09:18And it appears to confirm that.
09:20Legitivi says, is saying the same thing.
09:23So we're going to see over the next couple of days, weeks, months, we're going to start
09:28to see Taurus missiles launched at Moscow.
09:30I suspect Russian air defences will quickly deal with that.
09:33But the Russians, in response, are making all kinds of usual threats.
09:38They're saying, you know, this could open the way for strikes against Germany as well.
09:43And of course, as we know, the Russians can outmatch whatever the Ukrainians and the West
09:49throws at them.
09:50The Yoreshnik missiles will be coming into service fairly soon and all of that.
09:55But put that aside, put the story of the missiles aside.
09:59I think that this failure of the Ukrainian drone offensive, which we can now talk about
10:05with confidence, has been a massive psychological blow, not just to the Ukrainians, as we saw
10:13with solutionist speech, but especially to the Europeans as well.
10:17I think they counted very, very heavily on this drone offensive, achieving things, which
10:25it has completely failed to do.
10:29The U.S. is also behind this, though.
10:31It's not just the Europeans.
10:33Well, of course it is.
10:33I mean, the meeting.
10:34So the U.S. has negotiated.
10:36The meeting where all this was agreed took place in Washington.
10:41So, I mean, if I'm right about this, I'm confident by the way I am.
10:45And of course, it's U.S. targeting data, which is enabling the Ukrainians to launch these drones.
10:55So when Trump stopped intelligence sharing for one week in March, what he was doing, what
11:03we can now see he was doing, was he was putting a spoke in this drone offensive.
11:10And I think, as I said, there was enormous confidence that it would be decisive in changing
11:17the balance of the war.
11:20And then Trump lifted, you know, the prohibition on intelligence sharing.
11:27So the drone offensive was then carried out and there was probably expectations that it
11:32would achieve great results.
11:34And now there's the shock when it hasn't.
11:36And you could see people upset and angry.
11:38For all I know, some of Trump's anger, which he's expressed in his true social posts, is
11:45again, he may have been told, let this drone offensive play out because it will finally
11:52give you the leverage over the Russians.
11:54I was going to say the same thing.
11:55That you think it will.
11:56And now he's suddenly realized that it hasn't.
11:59That's exactly what happened.
12:00And I was going to say the same exact thing.
12:03I think that Kellogg and Rubio and all these guys, all these brilliant generals in the U.S.,
12:10they told Trump, just allow these drones to do what they're going to do.
12:16They're going to crush Russia.
12:18It's going to be very embarrassing for Putin and for the Russian military.
12:21And then you will finally have leverage over Russia as you go into negotiations.
12:25And Trump went along with it.
12:28And yesterday, two days ago, he got very upset with the fact that the drones did nothing.
12:35And so he lashes out at Putin.
12:37Right.
12:38And now I'm positive.
12:40I'm positive that the generals are sitting down with Trump again.
12:43And they're saying, OK, just forget about the drones.
12:45You've got a new plan.
12:47The plan now is for you to green light the Taurus missiles and trust us.
12:50The Taurus missiles, they're going to get through and trust us.
12:53The Taurus missiles will give you the military leverage that you need.
12:57Putin is playing with fire.
13:00The Taurus missiles are an amazing wonder weapon.
13:03They're incredible.
13:04They're super duper uber hypersonic.
13:07The hypersonic that they're not hypersonic, but they're the hypersonic.
13:11I know.
13:11I know.
13:11But they're telling Trump they're even better than hypersonic.
13:15And remember, it was Putin that stole the hypersonic plants from Obama.
13:19So, you know, they're telling him all of this stuff.
13:21And Trump is going along with it again.
13:25So the U.S.
13:27And here we come to the question again.
13:30The U.S. is playing the mediator.
13:35But they're coordinating and commanding attacks against Russia.
13:44That's exactly what's going on here.
13:48And Putin goes along with it.
13:50And Russia goes along with it.
13:52And soon we're going to have the Taurus missiles.
13:55Absolutely.
13:56That's what we're going to have.
13:57Indeed.
13:57I mean, as night follows day, we're going to get the Taurus missiles.
14:01And, of course, they will fail.
14:03And there's only 150 of them apparently going to be used for something like that.
14:08And I agree.
14:08But some might get through.
14:09I mean, some guys.
14:10We have to be honest.
14:12Some might get through.
14:13And there is a risk.
14:14There is a huge risk.
14:15There is a risk that they get through and they do considerable damage.
14:19Real damage.
14:19Absolutely.
14:20And, you know, all that going on.
14:22And that's going to create all kinds of political pressures.
14:27And the pressures in Russia will not be, however, to negotiate.
14:32But it will be to escalate the war.
14:35And that, of course, is the reckless and incredibly dangerous game that is being played in the West.
14:41And they consistently get this wrong.
14:46And one would have thought that by now, after three years of war, with all these brilliant military plans, you know, the autumn 2022 Kherson offensive, which we now know failed.
15:01It did not succeed.
15:02I mean, this is the extraordinary thing.
15:03I mean, it was intended to result in the recapture of Crimea, not just Kherson City, which nobody was interested in.
15:10But we learned from the New York Times.
15:13It was intended to recapture Crimea itself.
15:16And then the summer 2023 offensive.
15:20And then the Kringy offensive and all of these things.
15:23We should know by now that all of these wonderful master plans that these Western leaders come up with, these Western military people come up with,
15:31the Atakams missiles that are going to bring the Russians to the negotiating table,
15:35the F-16s that are going to change the whole direction of the war,
15:39the storm shadows and the scalps, the destruction of Russia's Black Sea fleet.
15:45None of this comes anywhere remotely close to achieving the objectives that these people tell us that they will.
15:55In fact, what they always do is prolong the war by a certain period of time, leaving at the end of it Ukraine's position weaker.
16:03But these people never give up.
16:06So the drones have failed.
16:09This huge, great drone offensive into which vast sums, probably development sums and subcomponents from the West and,
16:19you know, satellite and data imagery and all of that was provided.
16:22That has failed too.
16:25And so, of course, we don't go back, tell ourselves we're dealing with a peer adversary who is able to counter every step that we take.
16:35On the contrary, we go and escalate.
16:37We do something else, something incredibly dangerous, something incredibly reckless.
16:41We are going to now talk about launching missiles at Moscow itself, something that never happened during the Cold War, something which is beyond reckless, something which will certainly wreck.
16:57I mean, it could ease, I mean, I can't imagine negotiations taking place between Russia and Ukraine, whilst the Ukrainians are launching missiles at Moscow.
17:08Something which could destroy relations between the United States and Russia, and something which could invite massive Russian retaliation.
17:16Bear in mind that the Russians have far more powerful missiles than the Taurus.
17:19The Taurus missiles are supposed to be coming into service in big volumes sometime in the summer.
17:28In other words, in a few weeks' time, we could be seeing all kinds of Russian counter-strikes.
17:34And beyond that, just as everything else has failed, I'm confident the Taurus missiles will fail as well.
17:41Some of them might get through.
17:43Some of them might do real damage.
17:45Some of them might kill a lot of people with all the political effect that that will have.
17:49But they won't change the trajectory of the war.
17:54I agree with that.
17:55But, you know, you said that these people never give up.
18:00The problem that I see is that, and you're right, they don't have a reverse gear.
18:06But these people never give up.
18:10But the Kremlin always comes back and accommodates them.
18:14And I think that emboldens them even more.
18:24And I think it asks the question, does anyone actually believe Russia's threats or ultimatums?
18:32I mean, Russia said they're going to strike here.
18:35They're going to strike there.
18:36They're going to use an Oreznik.
18:37They're going to use this.
18:38They're going to use that.
18:39But this is our final warning.
18:41This is our final ultimatum.
18:43We warn you about escalation.
18:45This is a dangerous.
18:46They say all these things.
18:47Yes.
18:48But the Russians always come back to accommodate the requests of the collective West, especially of the United States.
18:55Well, this is, again, the criticism that's made of Putin.
19:00And at the end of the day, if there are missile strikes on Moscow, even if none of them get through, by the way, there will be very many angry people in Moscow who are saying to Putin, what on earth are you doing?
19:13Why are you carrying on with this fiction?
19:15We can negotiate with these people.
19:17Surely the time has come for us to start taking tough retaliatory measures.
19:21The Russians have it within their power to do that.
19:23That is the thing that people always in the West disregard.
19:31It's not that the Russians don't have the capacity to react.
19:35It is that they have in the person of their president an incredibly, exceptionally self-disciplined and restrained man.
19:45But that very self-restraint is being consistently painted in the West as weakness.
19:55And you're absolutely right.
19:57What it does is that it gives all of these people, you know, the hardliners in the West.
20:03It encourages them always to demand even more whenever they're, you know, one of their particular projects fails.
20:12I mean, we know now, coming back to the very point that you were making, who was really conducting the 2023 summer offensive?
20:20It wasn't the Ukrainians.
20:22It was the Americans and the British.
20:24They were in charge of it.
20:26They were trying to defeat the Russian army, killing Russians, providing the weapons to kill the Russians and threatening Crimea itself.
20:34They were actually laying plans and doing the commanding and the strategies and things of that kind.
20:40I mean, any other country that that was done to, other than Russia, possessing the capabilities that Russia has, would have responded in a different way, completely different way.
20:54And as I said, the criticism, as I said, of Putin will certainly be there if this happens again.
21:00And eventually, I suspect there will be a snapping point.
21:04And I don't know what it is, but that's the risk we seem to be determined to embrace in the West.
21:12Well, I get the sense that the leaders in the collective West, most of them, actually believe that Russia does not have the capacity or the capability to respond.
21:26I mean, I think they actually have internalized it.
21:28They actually believe that Russia militarily is unable to respond to the tourists.
21:33They're unable to respond to anything that the collective West throws at them.
21:37I'm not saying all of the leaders of the collective West.
21:40I'm saying a lot of them actually believe that whatever they throw at Russia, even if it fails, as everything has failed, I think they actually believe that Russia, whatever we do to them, Russia will not respond.
21:53And I actually believe that they believe that the media spin on some of the things they've thrown at Russia, like the Kherson, the great Kherson counteroffensive or the great Kharkiv counteroffensive or Snake Island or anything like that.
22:07I actually feel like a lot of the leaders in the collective West and a lot of the military leaders actually believe those were not failures.
22:13You say they're failures, but I think they believe they were successes.
22:16Oh, yeah.
22:17I'm going to correct what you say.
22:18I think all of them believe it.
22:20Obviously, I mean, we're not talking about, oh, you know, Orbán and Fizzo and Rudzic and people of that.
22:27I mean, they can see the realities.
22:31Salvini can see the realities.
22:33But the people who make the decisions, Ursula, Sama, Sunak before him, Macron, obviously, Mertz, undoubtedly.
22:43And they all believe this.
22:44Maybe people like Kavoli or...
22:46Kavoli believes it.
22:47I mean, the fact that he commanded an army, an offensive that ended in total failure, he believes it too.
22:55Because as far as he's concerned, it wasn't his fault that the offensive failed.
22:58It was the Ukrainians.
22:59They didn't follow his orders.
23:00If they'd followed his orders, all would have been well.
23:04So, I mean, they all believe it.
23:05They all collectively believe it.
23:07And I also believe what you say about the capabilities, that they think that Russian capabilities are inferior to the ones that the Russians undoubtedly have.
23:17I mean, look what we're reading at the moment about the Patriot missiles.
23:22Patriot missile systems are the only missile systems that can shoot down Russian ballistic missiles.
23:27This is the narrative that is being spread all over the West, that Patriot missiles are the most effective missiles at shooting down ballistic, Russian ballistic missiles.
23:37It seems that Patriots are able easily to shoot down ballistic missiles.
23:43And then, you know, squirreled away, we also have admissions in parts of the media that the Patriots have been completely unsuccessful in shooting down ballistic missiles.
23:54But people believe the first and are unaware or close their eyes to the second.
24:02They believe the narrative spin about the success of the Patriot missiles and they ignore every other part.
24:13So, I mean, I remember the very first time when the Patriots were deployed to Ukraine, which is back in 2023.
24:19There was, you know, tremendous euphoria.
24:23The Russians managed to strike at the Patriot ballistic batteries in Kiev with Kinzhal missiles.
24:31And immediately we have the articles appearing all over the media that said that the Kinzhal had failed.
24:38The Russians had been proved that their Kinzhal missiles were overrated.
24:43The Patriots were wonderful, even though we saw the explosion, the enormous explosion, which could only have been the destruction of the Patriot missiles, which, of course, the Russians said had been destroyed.
24:55But, you know, this is one of the great problems.
24:59People in the West, the decision makers in the West, constantly prefer the narrative spin to the reality.
25:10So Yuri Ignat, the Ukrainian air defense spokesman, was saying, for months, we have no capability to intercept hypersonic missiles.
25:21And then he's disciplined and told, you've got to change your whole narrative there.
25:25So he finds that he's even sat for a brief time and then he's brought back.
25:30And then he says, you know, we are succeeding in shooting down hypersonic missiles.
25:35And people just go along with this and believe it and internalize it.
25:38And today we are seeing what is clearly the essential collapse of Ukraine's air defense system.
25:49We have admissions to this effect right across Ukraine itself.
25:55The Ukrainians themselves, not the government, obviously, but the Ukrainian telegram channels are full of this.
26:01But we still have, you know, the narrative about the success of the Patriot missiles and all that Ukraine needs is a few more Patriot missiles and they will somehow turn the whole situation around.
26:15So Italy has no more air defense missiles, very Samp-T air defense system.
26:23France apparently is desperately short.
26:27Germany is very, very short of interceptors, Patriot missile interceptors.
26:35I don't know whether Britain has any at all, to be honest.
26:38I don't know what Britain has, but don't worry.
26:42The Russians have none of these capabilities.
26:44They can't actually defeat us.
26:47We can just go on doing whatever it is we are doing.
26:49And we don't need to fear because this is beyond what the Russians can do.
26:55And, of course, Putin, as I said, because I'm sure he's also given assurances to some of his foreign allies, to Xi Jinping especially, that he will act with restraint.
27:14Acts with restraint and it's misrepresented in exactly the way that you say.
27:20Yeah, why should Putin give these types of assurances to China or to Xi Jinping?
27:27I think he did that right at the beginning.
27:29I think he did that.
27:30At the beginning he did that.
27:31Why should he do that anymore?
27:32Well, I don't know.
27:33Yeah.
27:34But I don't know.
27:35I mean, maybe that has changed.
27:38I mean, I was actually recently told, by the way, that in, you know, by Sophia Midgif, a small town voice, that in fact, in China, the social media is now openly saying that if European troops enter Ukraine, that China will start lifting restrictions on weapons supplies to Russia.
28:00So that the mood in China has hardened on the war very, very considerably.
28:06I cannot access Chinese social media because I don't speak Chinese.
28:11But, you know, I've heard this from more than one source, by the way.
28:13So it could be true.
28:15Maybe by now that maybe by now positions have hardened to that level.
28:22But, you know, that that is, I think, if Putin has a blind spot, it is that he is so good at diplomacy that he over relies on it and doesn't perhaps, you know, say to himself, well, there's a time to put diplomacy to one side and to go with the more straightforward kinetic arguments that the time has come.
28:48Not just to make threats, but to actually act on them, because unless one does, they will just go on doing whatever it is that they're doing.
28:55And, you know, it'll be the tourist missiles next.
28:58But we shouldn't, I think, I think there's also, you know, it may be a mistake to overanalyze Putin and what the Russians are going to do.
29:08The key thing to say is, at this particular point in time, that the Ukrainian drone offensive has been a complete failure.
29:17I suspect we will one day get articles in the New York Times discussing it just as they want, just as they recently discussed Ukraine's summer 2023 offensive.
29:29We will get the admission again of the extent of the US investment and not just the US, the European investment in this offensive, probably as great as that for the summer 2023 offensive.
29:47And the fact that it has completely failed, I am, I think it explains an awful lot of the panic and fear and confusion that there is in the West now and as allusion is extraordinary statements in London and things of that kind.
30:04Now, the drone offensive has failed.
30:09Every other offensive that they've launched against Russia has failed.
30:13Next up is the tourist offensive.
30:15That's obvious.
30:16That's going to fail as well.
30:20You know, what are they going to come up with next?
30:23Where does this all end?
30:25Do we have to get to the point where you have the collective West troops on the ground?
30:30Is that going to be the next idea that they come up with?
30:32The Financial Times is saying that this idea has been completely shelved.
30:38But who knows?
30:38Maybe they'll bring it up again.
30:39No, no, I confidently predict that it will be revived.
30:43It's one of these ideas that's been shelved many times and is eventually always revived.
30:47If it looks like Ukraine is going to go down to defeat, you could be absolutely confident that there will be people who will push it.
30:55And, you know, this is the dangerous game of escalation that is being played.
30:59And as I said, this is what Putin's moderation is making possible.
31:07Yeah.
31:08What's going on on the front lines?
31:10It's we've talked in previous programs in the past about how the Ukrainians are being battered.
31:21This time it is on a completely different scale.
31:25The Russians are on the offensive on every single part of the of the front lines.
31:31There is no part of it where the Russians are not on the attack now.
31:38The Ukrainians are desperately short of men.
31:40They were relying on drones to fill in the gaps on their front lines because there's large areas of the front lines, apparently, where there are no Ukrainian troops.
31:51The drones are failing.
31:52The Russians are starting to shoot down the Ukrainian drones.
31:56They found methods to counter the Ukrainian drones.
32:00They have far, far more drones now than the Ukrainians do.
32:05And the Ukrainian front lines are disintegrating everywhere at the same time.
32:12So Volchansk in Kharkov region, the north of it apparently has fallen.
32:17The Russians are now outside Siversk, a fortified town a little bit like Uglada, right up in the north.
32:24It looks like the battle for Siversk is about to start.
32:28There's been a collapse of Ukrainian defenses in the Konstantinovka area.
32:33This is the town at the southern end of the Slavyansk, Klamatorsk, Konstantinovka, conurbation.
32:41The Russians have surrounded, effectively surrounded it, and they've surrounded apparently significant groups of Ukrainian troops that are located to the south of Konstantinovka, perhaps two cauldrons.
32:55The Russians have now advanced well to the west of Konstantinovka and are able to cut its communications from the west.
33:06And now they're advancing well to the north of Konstantinovka, on the eastern side of Konstantinovka, cutting communications to Konstantinovka from the north.
33:16It's very soon going to be the case that all the major supply roads to Pokrovsk are going to be cut, and Russian drones are destroying vehicles, Ukrainian supply vehicles on all of these roads.
33:30The Russians are again pushing hard towards the Dnieper.
33:34They are apparently advancing towards an important town called Guliapolje in Zaporozhye region and Orehov.
33:42Everywhere, right across the front lines, you can see that the Russians are pushing forward.
33:49The Ukrainians are crumbling everywhere.
33:52And the reports over the last couple of days say that the situation has now become so bad that the Ukrainians are now committing their remaining reserves to try to hold their positions in Konstantinovka and Sumi region especially.
34:09And this, of course, is a disaster because the major Russian forces, their two reserve armies, have not yet been committed.
34:19And one suspects that those reserves will be held back by Ukraine in order to counter those Russian reserve armies when they're committed.
34:27But the Ukrainians have been forced to deploy those reserves already.
34:33So it is a terrible picture.
34:36And going back to what we were saying before, more than a year, about a year ago, there was the final admission that Ukraine was losing the war on the battlefronts, which is why they went for this drone offensive, which, as I say, has failed.
34:51And we see how the reality of that is playing out on the battlefronts, not just every day now, but every hour now.
35:00Now, in the Russians, the other thing is they're capturing villages and fortified positions, not just every day, but in several places every day.
35:13So, you know, two or three villages a day, whereas once, you know, say in 2023, it would take weeks to capture any particular village.
35:23Now it's happening all the time in every place continuously.
35:28All right.
35:29We will end the video there at theduran.locals.com.
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