All right, Alexander, let's talk about Zelensky's marathon two-hour Q&A. Let's talk about statements that jungle Joseph Barel made following that Q&A. Let's talk about statements that Secretary of State Blinkin made following that Q&A. And I just want to say that during the Q&A, Zelensky said that he's confident that the US will not betray us. And I think within 24 hours, Burrell and Blinkin, they blew up that statement from Zolensky. That statement is not going to age well, that's for sure. So what's.

Going on here? Yeah, well, let's talk first about what Blinkin and Burrell have been saying because, of course, they have been absolute hardliners. They've been fervid supporters of Ukraine right through from the get-go. And in Barel's case to an extreme degree and also Lincoln's case, actually. And they have now, frankly, the tone of what they were saying, and indeed the content of it suggests that they've effectively or essentially given up. I don't want to press this too hard, but they're clearly very depressed. They realize now that funding for Ukraine is not going to appear in the United States on anything like the scale that we've seen in the past. It's incredibly unlikely that Ukraine is going to get $61 billion from the United States, and $61 billion in 2024 would anyway be around half of what it got last this year and last year. It's not happening. Blinket comes along and says the Ukrainians need to live on their own resources, that they've got to find ways of getting by without the United States. They've achieved all these great victories. They've managed to assert their independence. But now the point has come where they must stand on their own and stand by themselves, which is, of course, the diametric opposite of what Zaletsky is saying.

Celensky is saying. They mustn't betray us. We need more. We need 17 million shells and we need infinite amounts of money and we need more tanks and more machines and we need to go on the offensive next year. Not just this year, but on the offensive next year also. And Lincoln is telling him, No, that's not going to happen. You've got to sort it all out by yourself. I think that this is because the administration is now weighing the mood in Washington. The Senate failed to agree this week on some compromise deal to move forward with Ukrainian funding. I think that was a big blow to them. I think they really did believe that they'd be able to win enough support in the Senate. Jd Vance, by the way, who I think is shaping up to be the most impressive political leader indeed, and somebody certainly to watch. Anyway, he's actually published a statement in which he's challenged directly the whole mythology that if Ukraine goes down, it will be because the Republicans aren't providing funding. He correctly points out the offensive that happened in the summer was massively funded and massively supported. Ukraine had all the weapons that it asked for, and it failed.

Throwing more money at Ukraine isn't going to change anything. That is the gathering mood in the United States and the Americans are cutting Ukraine off. I mean, maybe not totally. Maybe it will take a few weeks or months before this is resolved. Maybe some money will be sat there, maybe some more weapons will be sat there. But gradually support for Ukraine in the in the United States, in the US is ebbing away. And Borrell knows it. And he knows also that without the US, there is really no game to play. The Europeans can talk. They can talk about €50 billion over four years, by the way, not one year. They can talk about all of that. But he knows perfectly well that without the Americans, this game is lost. He says that what we must do, we mustn't allow Putin to win his victory. He understands what a colossal blow for the EU specifically, a victory by Russia in Ukraine would be. Interestingly enough, he specifically talks about the EU. He says, We must do everything we can to achieve that victory. We must increase ammunition production and all of that. But he says this in a tone with words, which make it absolutely clear that he knows it's not going to happen.

He's just preparing now for his own departure, and he's going to leave this problem of collapsing Ukraine in someone else's hands. Because again, to reiterate, without American aid, without American financial aid, without American weapons, 80% of the weapons Ukraine has received from the West have been American. Without American weapons, the game is up. And Burrell knows it, Lincoln knows it. The only person who doesn't know it is Zalensky, who instead talks about our onward march towards inevitable victory, which he did, by the way.

And producing 1 million drones and mobilizing 500,000 people. Yeah. But Barel and the EU there, the end for Ukraine came when they agreed to a session talks for Ukraine.

Yes.

That was.

The end. Yes.

People are hailing that as the beginning of Ukraine's Europe integration. No, no, no. That was the end. Because now, Ursula and Barel and Michel and all these people can say, We did it. We did our job. Now we can move on to the World Bank and the IMF and the UN or wherever they're going to go, Tony Blaire's Institute for War, wherever they're going to be placed, they can get their new jobs. And like what you said, they can leave it to the next person. You're going to criticize Barel? Barel is going to say, Look, I accomplished the main goal, which was to get Ukraine on its European path. That was the end for Ukraine. That accession talks agreement was the end of Ukraine.

Exactly. For Europe. It was the wreath you put on the coffee. I have to say to put it like that. That's essentially what it was. Now, the Ukrainians themselves, I don't think they figured this out. By the way, on the question of Burrell himself and Ursula and Charles Michel, it is important to say that they continue to be obsessed by this issue as always, not the issue of Ukraine, the issue of Russia. Again, Lavrov gave a really very interesting interview, one of his best, in which he said, This whole conflict ultimately has not been about Ukraine at all. It's been about us. It's been about Russia. It's Russia that this is all focused on. You had another example of this because all three of these people, as I understand it, Michel, Ursula, and Morel went to Beijing. They met with Xi Putin there, and apparently to his increasing frustration, all they were talking about was Russia all the time. But you're quite right. They're going to walk away. They have no choice. Morel is clearly dejected about this, so is Blinkan. But with Congress now turning its back, they can all see that the writing is on the wall.

Now, they're not going to change their policies. They're not going to change their language. They're going to remain as virulently hostile to Russia as they always are. The European political class is going to continue to be that. We see further moves in Germany to aggravate relations with Russia even further. We see Germany's get a position of Armored Brigade in Lithuania, or so they say. We see similar rhetoric in Britain. They're not going to change their policy, which is about Russia, not about Ukraine. But Project Ukraine is lost, and they know it. Deep down inside themselves, they know it. And if you listen and watch Barel as he's talking, you could see this.

Yeah, that's the narrative shift that we have now. It's not about Project Ukraine anymore, it's about the Russian threat. And even Putin brought this up in the statements that he made at the Defense Ministry. He said that now the narrative is all about the Russian threat to NATO. So Ukraine fades away and now NATO and the neocons and the collective West, they focus on the Russian threat to NATO and they can put money into defending against the Russian threat. That's essentially where we're heading.

Absolutely. Remember, the EU has enormously empowered itself as a result of this crisis. They've been imposing sanctions on Russian oil. They've been blocking access to Russian aircraft. And of course, they're going to use the Russian threat to Europe to do that even more. They're going to start giving the EU itself more and more of a military dimension. They're going to whisper behind the Americans back that look at what the Americans did over Ukraine. We can't really trust them. We've got to integrate and centralize and control even more. We've got to do away with the veto that member states have. We've got to empower the commission even further. They're going to use the Russian bogey in order to push this further still. The EU is becoming an anti-Russian project, like all pan-European projects eventually always do, by the way, every single one, from Napoleon's continental system to the various arrangements that the mustache man in the fort is conjured up. The EU in that one respect is a similar, it's just another iteration of this. They're going to use the Russian bogey as the pretext to centralize, to integrate, to control, to impose even more controls on European businesses, on European information flows, European speech things-.

Central bank.

Digital currencies. -central currencies, all of that than before. Censorship. Yes. Before long, we'll be getting EU policing agencies, an EU equivalent to the FBI, for example. We'll be seeing all of this. It's on its way. Barell and Ursula and Michel, clearly already, and they're all thinking in these terms and they're going to do more of it, more and more and more of it until and unless people in Europe finally say enough and finally wake up to the fact that the bear is not on the prowl and is not coming their way. But that is what we're going to see over the next few years.

Yeah, to counter the Russian threat. For the US, one last question. So for the Biden White House, I imagine the plan going off of Blinkin's words, he said that it would not make sense to completely ditch the investment in Ukraine. I mean, he used those words, the investment in Ukraine. And he did say that it's important before we let Ukraine go off on its own into the world, he said it's important to help them make it through the winter, spring, and summer. So I think it's safe to say that their plan is, as we have been saying for a long time now on this channel, going off of, I imagine, the advice of Jake Sullivan, who is, as we have been saying at the end of the day, he's not a diplomat, he's not a policy guy, he's a campaign manager. The plan is let's just get Ukraine to November 2024. I think going off of Blinkin's words, winter, spring, summer, let's just get them to November.

Absolutely. That is exactly right because, of course, we've got to avoid a collapse in Ukraine before the election. Because that is what this is all about. It's not about winning in Ukraine anymore. It's not about achieving regime change in Moscow. We understand that's not going to happen. Ukraine isn't going to win the war. It's going to lose the war. But we have to try and play this out and prolong this as long as possible, create a narrative shift. Do you remember I sent you an article by Gideon Rackman, which he actually talks about this quite straightforwardly, that a US official actually told him straightforwardly, What we've now got to do is we've got to ship a narrative on Ukraine. It's there in an article in the EFT. They're now talking about this with each other quite openly. Control the narrative, prevent the collapse this year. If you can't do that, make sure it's the Republicans in Congress that get the blame. At the same time, reassure the American people that this isn't really going to be an open ended commitment anymore because clearly the American people aren't keen on that and they want to move on to more important and serious things.

This is what this is all about. It's all about narrative management and PR and the elections now. Nothing else the wider, grander ambitions have gone. You could see that. They're now telling the Ukrainians to go on to the defensive. Lincoln tells them you can actually perform well with even a fraction of the money that you had before. You can somehow hold it together. You go on to the defensive, so we avoid this total collapse. We've sent a general to Kyiv to explain to you how it should be done and you do something else. Here again, I have to say to you, Alex, this is... I remember you telling us, telling me on these programs that this is what they would start to do two years ago, which is gradually, gradually, gradually make this story disappear. We've just had the Washington Post, for example. They have that column on the top with all the various topics that you could press the button and you'd find, and Ukraine was won. And surprise, surprise, yesterday that column vanished. It's no longer there. It's this great country trip. We're going to be having more and more of this over the next few weeks and months all the way up to November.

All right, we'll leave it there. Theduran. Locals. Com. We are on a Rumble, Odysee, Bitshoot, Telegram, Rockfin, and TwitterX, and go to the Duran. Shop, 20% off, season, sale, holiday season, sale. Use the code Christmas20. Take care.