🇺🇸 Has the window closed for Donald Trump to distance himself from the Ukraine conflict?
In this timely episode of The Duran, hosts Alexander Mercouris and Alex Christoforou explore whether Trump can realistically "walk away" from the war in Ukraine — or if it's already too late.
Discussion points include:
🔹 What would “walking away” actually mean for U.S. foreign policy?
🔹 The pressure Trump faces from political and military lobbies
🔹 Europe’s role and reaction if the U.S. changes course
🔹 How this decision could affect the 2024 election and global stability
⚠️ The stakes are higher than ever — don’t miss this deep geopolitical analysis.
📢 Like, Comment & Subscribe for more strategic insights with The Duran.
#TheDuran #TrumpUkraine #AlexanderMercouris #AlexChristoforou #UkraineWar #USForeignPolicy #Trump2024 #Geopolitics #UkraineConflict #TooLateToWalkAway #RussiaUkraineWar #WorldPolitics #GlobalAffairs #ForeignPolicyDebate #AmericaFirst #NeoconAgenda #TrumpAndUkraine #PoliticalAnalysis #WarStrategy #MilitaryPolitics
In this timely episode of The Duran, hosts Alexander Mercouris and Alex Christoforou explore whether Trump can realistically "walk away" from the war in Ukraine — or if it's already too late.
Discussion points include:
🔹 What would “walking away” actually mean for U.S. foreign policy?
🔹 The pressure Trump faces from political and military lobbies
🔹 Europe’s role and reaction if the U.S. changes course
🔹 How this decision could affect the 2024 election and global stability
⚠️ The stakes are higher than ever — don’t miss this deep geopolitical analysis.
📢 Like, Comment & Subscribe for more strategic insights with The Duran.
#TheDuran #TrumpUkraine #AlexanderMercouris #AlexChristoforou #UkraineWar #USForeignPolicy #Trump2024 #Geopolitics #UkraineConflict #TooLateToWalkAway #RussiaUkraineWar #WorldPolitics #GlobalAffairs #ForeignPolicyDebate #AmericaFirst #NeoconAgenda #TrumpAndUkraine #PoliticalAnalysis #WarStrategy #MilitaryPolitics
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NewsTranscript
00:00All right, Alexander, let's do an update on what is happening on the front lines in Ukraine.
00:07What is the situation right now on the front lines, Alexander?
00:10What's the situation in the South?
00:12What's the situation in Khotkiv and also in Kursk?
00:17Maybe do a quick update as to what's going on in Kursk and Sumy.
00:21We just finished a ceasefire, by the way.
00:23A couple of days ago, we had the Easter ceasefire, a 30-hour ceasefire.
00:29That ended.
00:30Of course, both sides are saying the other side violated the ceasefire to be expected.
00:36But it was Russia's idea.
00:39Russia went along with it.
00:41Ukraine and Zelensky, they kind of muddled the whole ceasefire thing where we're going to reject the ceasefire, then we're going to accept the ceasefire, then we want to extend it to an unconditional ceasefire and stuff like that.
00:55But anyway, the situation on the front lines.
00:58Well, quickly and briefly, on the ceasefire, it's important to say this isn't the first time that Putin has declared ceasefires over religious holidays.
01:11I mean, he did that, I think, during the Christmas of 2023.
01:16It was actually a three-day ceasefire, much longer at that time.
01:20And, well, he did it again this time.
01:23And as I said, undoubtedly, there are political calculations and factors like that at play.
01:32But to my absolute knowledge, he proposes these ceasefires and sometimes unilaterally declares them because he comes under intense pressure whenever these religious holidays come up from the Orthodox Church to declare them.
01:50And, again, this is something I think Westerners find incredibly difficult to understand because they simply do not understand the Russian Orthodox Church and what it is and what its role is in Russian society and its own relationship with Putin.
02:06But I'm not going to discuss this further because this is a huge topic, which is another one for another time.
02:13Now, what has happened is this.
02:16We are in the last days of Ukraine's Kursk adventure.
02:24Now, this should have ended in March.
02:26The Russians recaptured Suzya in March.
02:31The Ukrainian forces collapsed around Suzya.
02:34It was absolutely clear that Ukraine was going to be pushed out of Kursk completely.
02:40The logical and right thing for Ukraine to do at that point was not to fight on for three villages
02:47and to sacrifice hundreds, perhaps thousands more troops, dead and wounded and lots of precious equipment, trying to defend three inconsequential villages.
03:02It was to pull back, establish stable front lines further inside Sumi region where the Russians are showing increasing signs that they want to mount a further offensive.
03:14Well, that would have been the logical thing to do.
03:17But of course, it was not what the Ukrainians did.
03:19They decided to cling on to these three villages.
03:22The reason they were able to cling on to these three villages is because they are slightly isolated from the whole area around Suzya and they're closer to the border.
03:33So they held on to these three villages, Gournal and Olyeshnya.
03:42Olyeshnya is not even a village.
03:45It turns out that it is basically a farm, you know, one of the Soviet era collective farms and its buildings.
03:53But anyway, they clung on to those.
03:55They clung on to an Orthodox monastery, big, powerfully built, heavy, you know, we've both been to Russian Orthodox monasteries.
04:07I mean, they're, you know, they're solid places.
04:11But of course, there's church, there's buildings there, you know, inherently a powerful defense position.
04:20But one very isolated and therefore one where it was very easy for the Ukrainian troops to be trapped in.
04:27They decided to cling on to those.
04:30They've lost.
04:31They're in the process of losing all three.
04:33Apparently, the Russians say they recaptured Olyeshnya.
04:37They recaptured the monastery after a bitter battle.
04:42It looked for a time as if the Ukrainians were going to surrender the monastery.
04:46But of course, someone, probably Zelensky said no.
04:50So the monastery has been badly damaged.
04:53But the Ukrainians have lost it.
04:57Apparently, they've been mostly driven out of Gornal village nearby.
05:03And that's the end of the Kuzk operation.
05:06I mean, it should it's been prolonged again by two or three pointless weeks to know that no value, no benefit to the Ukrainians whatsoever.
05:20However, in the meantime, the Ukrainians tried to carry out attacks, more attacks on Belgorod, you know, the other region in Russia.
05:29Again, there's been lots of explanations and reasons and rationalizations why the Ukrainians did that.
05:34It's all supposedly intended to complicate a Russian offensive in northern Ukraine, which might be coming.
05:43This is these are the reasons that are always been given.
05:46The real reason, again, is that the Ukrainians were driven out of Kuzk region.
05:51They desperately wanted, or at least Zelensky wanted, to say that he was in control of some pre-2014 Russian territory.
05:59So when they were pushed out of Kuzk region, they tried to capture these villages on the border, inconsequential, unimportant villages, Demidova, Popovka.
06:11Who's even heard of them?
06:13They failed.
06:14Again, terrible losses.
06:16So that's the story of that part of the battlefronts.
06:21Now, it is important because the Ukrainians have suffered losses.
06:27They're finding it very difficult to replace those losses now.
06:31We'll come to that in a moment.
06:33But their rationalizations don't stack up.
06:38And, of course, what they've done is that they've weakened their front lines in these places, lost more of their now increasingly limited stockpiles of equipment in order to hold on to territory in Russia, which was of no strategic value and was effectively lost to them.
06:59And they've weakened their positions, making it easier, not more difficult, for a Russian offensive to happen in Sumi region, if that is indeed what the Russians actually plan to do.
07:13Now, it may be, and we've got no actual information about this, but if the Russians do decide to launch an offensive towards Sumi region, and probably they do, then the Ukrainians are now in a weaker position, not a stronger position, to resist it.
07:33Now, that area in the northern front lines, everywhere else, and it's important to say this, everywhere else, the Russians are advancing.
07:44And they're now very close to what one could describe as the last major Ukrainian positions, defensive positions, east of the Dnieper and east of the two key cities, Zaporozhye and Dnepro.
08:08They're now literally on the outskirts of Konstantinovka, which is the southernmost town in the Slavyansk-Kramatorsk conurbation.
08:22If Konstantinovka is captured, then, again, it's difficult to see how Slavyansk and Kramatorsk can be held for very long.
08:32And, I mean, they're attacking from many different directions now.
08:35And they've been making significant progress around this area.
08:40There's some reports that speak of a collapse of Ukrainian resistance around Konstantinovka.
08:48And they are also very close now to a kind of encirclement of Pokrovsk.
08:56Now, an encirclement of Pokrovsk doesn't mean that they have their troops all around Pokrovsk, but that they're in a position around Pokrovsk to prevent supplies entering the town and to prevent the Ukrainian garrison that's trying to defend Pokrovsk from resisting.
09:17And so they've advanced to the west of Pokrovsk and to the northeast of Pokrovsk.
09:24And if you look at the map now, Pokrovsk is very much in a semicircle.
09:30So it's likely that when the big Russian offensive comes in the summer, it will be focused on capturing these three remaining, four remaining cities, Slavyansk, Kramatorsk, Konstantinovka and Pokrovsk.
09:45At that point, the Battle of Donbass is ended, and the Russians have been making serious moves now in Zaporozhia region.
09:56They seem to be approaching an important town called Orehov there.
10:02That puts them again within very strong striking distance of the city of Zaporozhia itself.
10:08I'm told that in places there's some 20 kilometers from the city of Zaporozhia, which is, by the way, within long range, artillery range of Zaporozhia city itself.
10:22Again, maybe not this summer, maybe in the autumn, maybe early next year, once these other places have been captured.
10:31And Slavyansk, Kramatorsk, Konstantinovka, Pokrovsk, Orehov, they will be in a position not just to reach the Dnieper, but maybe to break through, take these big cities, Zaporozhia, maybe even Dnepro, maybe reach the outskirts of Kiev.
10:53We are much closer to that critical point in the war than people understand.
10:58And just to repeat again, a point I have made many, many times, in order to win the war, in order to make resistance by Ukraine impossible, the Russians do not need to advance all the way to the Polish border.
11:16If they establish a strong position on the Dnieper, if they capture these two cities, Zaporozhia and Dnieper, Ukraine can no longer function as a coherent military entity.
11:31At that point, you would start to see the cumulative collapse, which we might already be seeing, it's going to accelerate, and it's going to become irreversible, because this is Ukraine's heartland.
11:49What does the Trump administration do?
11:55What does the United States do if they see this collapse in the next six months?
12:01They say they're going to walk away.
12:03What does that mean?
12:05Well, this is it, because if we get to this point, if we see over the next couple of months,
12:13the cities in Donbass fall one after the other.
12:19And by the way, you know, again, there's this assumption that, you know, these battles for these cities will be long and protracted.
12:27Well, they might be.
12:28But bear in mind, if we go back to 2022, the Russians were able to capture Mariupol, Severodonetsk and Lysychansk, cities that are bigger than the ones that we are talking about now, very quickly, in a couple of weeks.
12:45So it may be that, you know, there is going to be a titanic battle for these places, or it may be otherwise.
12:51I mean, we don't know yet, but let's assume that by late summer, early autumn, it looks as if Ukraine's entire military position is indeed collapsing.
13:04The United States, Donald Trump has said that he's walking away.
13:08I think the pressures on him at that point to re-engage and to provide some kind of new military packages for Ukraine are going to be enormous.
13:22And I think also at that point, there will be enormous pressure on Trump to get him to support the deployment of European forces into Western Ukraine.
13:34The French to Odessa, the British to Lvov and other places, maybe even Kiev.
13:42The pressures are going to start building on Trump all over again to re-engage in that kind of way in order to avert a collapse and an American defeat.
13:54Because now, unequivocally, it will be seen as an American defeat.
13:59It will be seen as an American defeat because of what we know about the extent of America's involvement in the war, what the New York Times article revealed to us.
14:09But it will also be seen as an American defeat because the United States, instead of using the election and the transition from one administration to the other
14:21as a kind of clean break exercise, attempted to commit itself to negotiations and as a result, acted in some way to try to preserve Ukraine.
14:34So the pressures are going to be enormous on Trump.
14:38And I don't know how he's going to react to them.
14:41I mean, the sensible thing he should do, the best thing he should do is resist all of these pressures.
14:46Say this isn't his war. It's Biden's war. He wasn't involved.
14:51It wasn't his choice. He always thought it was a mistake for the United States to become involved.
14:58He should stick to the position of stick to that position.
15:02An alternative that he could do is start against some kind of diplomatic outreach to the Russians.
15:10See whether some kind of agreement can still be reached.
15:15But at that point, it will be an agreement even more on Russia's terms than an agreement now would be.
15:24And the Russians would undoubtedly at that point insist on making it a strictly bilateral negotiation between Russia and the United States.
15:34The third thing that he could do, which is I'm afraid what I think is most likely to happen,
15:39is that he will buckle under all this pressure and he'll make those commitments to the Europeans and to the Ukrainians.
15:47And then the crisis, which appeared to be abating, will intensify all over again.
15:52I don't think he will see it through.
15:54I don't think he has any intention of putting the United States in a dangerous position in the face of what even he must then realize is a lost war.
16:06But who knows?
16:07And, you know, it could be very, very, very dangerous when we reach that point, which you've just asked me about.
16:20Yeah, he could do a kind of he could take it down the middle and say, OK, the money to Ukraine has stopped, but we'll keep the weapons somehow going and we'll keep the intel going.
16:34And it'll all flow through the Europeans.
16:37So he could take that that kind of approach, which which he can go back to the American people and say, you see, I got us out of Ukraine, but I'm going to always support our European allies because, you know, we have this this unbreakable bond and NATO and all of that stuff.
16:56So he can he can come out with something like that, which kind of kind of gets him out of Ukraine, kind of gets him out of the defeat, or at least he can package it as not being defeated by Russia.
17:08And we know that, you know, he's he's good at the marketing of it, so he can package it as as the United States was was not defeated by Russia.
17:18We got out of this this mess that by this that Biden got us into.
17:23But he can also please the neocons and the military industrial complex and the Europeans in a way as well.
17:28So he could take a kind of middle middle approach.
17:30My own view is that it's probably too late now for Trump to simply walk away.
17:39I think that he could have done this in January.
17:43I don't think he can do it now.
17:45And I think he's going to one way or the other end up doing pretty much what you've just said.
17:50He'll back the Europeans and give the Europeans whatever help support he can without committing the United States to some sort of a way.
18:01Conflict with the Russians, or at least he's going to try to avoid that trouble is, you know, even if the United States provides arms to Ukraine via Europe, it's still isn't going to be enough.
18:13I mean, this is where I think he's been catastrophically misadvised.
18:20The way things are going at the moment, it's looking.
18:27Well, I mean, there's no doubt about it.
18:29I mean, Ukraine's ability to keep on fighting is slackening.
18:35Now, the Ukrainians themselves, Sirsky, has admitted that the Russian army is getting bigger, that they are replacing, not only replacing their losses, but that they are actually recruiting beyond their losses, significantly recruiting beyond their losses.
18:55Sirsky himself admitted that the Ukrainians are not replacing their losses.
19:01And if you go to, you know, Ukrainian websites, articles, things of this kind, you find this all over, all over the Internet.
19:07Even an official of Zelensky's own office admitted that this attempt to get volunteers from the 18 to 24 age group to sign up for the army has only produced 500 people.
19:22500, which is, you know, less than a day's losses.
19:25So the Ukrainian army is getting smaller, the Russian army is getting bigger, and it's looking increasingly as if there is a massive discrepancy in power.
19:40Now, the Ukrainians have been talking up this topic of drones.
19:44They say we've sorted out production of drones.
19:47The Russians can stop drones advancing.
19:50You know, we can use the drones to stop the Russian advances.
19:54The reality is that it's the Russians who hold the advantage in the drone war.
19:59Again, you have to be following the war closely to see this.
20:04But Russian drones now operate over all of Ukraine every night.
20:10We have the Geranium 2 drones.
20:12They're becoming, there are more and more of them.
20:15They've been supplemented by other smaller drones, but which can also range right across Ukrainian skies every night.
20:24Some of the Geranium 2 drones have become reconnaissance drones with advanced optics.
20:31The Russians have established increasing drone dominance on the actual battlefields.
20:38Again, this isn't widely understood.
20:41But the focus on drones, and I think this is partly the purpose of focusing on drones, is to draw attention away from the fact that Ukraine is now falling catastrophically behind the Russians.
20:59Not just in all other areas of equipment, but in about the single most important area of equipment of all, which is artillery and bombs, Russian bombs falling all over Ukraine.
21:12More bombs are falling on Ukraine than at any time since the start of the war.
21:18There are many more fab bombs being dropped on targets in Ukraine this spring than was true last spring.
21:27The Ukrainians have installed jammers in all sorts of places.
21:31The Russians, however, have continued to improve their fab bombs.
21:36And it's clear that most of the fab bombs, despite claims you occasionally see, are actually hitting their targets.
21:46Meanwhile, the Russians in artillery.
21:49Well, Siersky admitted that back in the summer and autumn, they were firing 40,000 rounds of shells a day.
22:00He said that in the winter, that fell to 20,000 rounds a day.
22:06He tried to say that this is because of Ukrainian success in destroying artillery depots.
22:12It was more likely because the Russian offensive slowed in the winter because of climate conditions and rotations and all of that kind of thing.
22:21It's been pushing up.
22:23It's now, according to Siersky, back up to 28,000 rounds a day, probably before long.
22:30When the big offensive begins, it'll be back to 40,000 rounds a day.
22:35Ukraine has had a big shipment of shells from the United States because Biden sent lots, large numbers of shells to Ukraine.
22:44And that's helped them through the winter.
22:46But that is running out.
22:47Probably they got shells from Syria via Turkey.
22:53Erdogan apparently sent lots of shells from Syrian army stocks.
22:57We don't know what the conditions most of them were.
22:59But anyway, they were provided.
23:02Those are probably running out because shell use in this war is so fast.
23:08And again, probably we're going to see in the summer another massive discrepancy in power between the Russians and the Ukrainians.
23:22And the Europeans can't make the difference, even if they are supplied with weapons by the United States.
23:30Their own militaries are now massively depleted in terms of weapons.
23:34They don't have the shell production, the tank production, the anti-aircraft missile production to balance the Russians.
23:48The United States doesn't.
23:50And we've now had a piece by David Ignatius, practically, if you like, a spokesman of the U.S. intelligence community within the U.S. media.
24:05But he said as much that without the United States, Europe can't plug the holes.
24:12And the reality is with the United States, Ukraine couldn't plug the holes either.
24:19So that is the reality of this war.
24:23If Trump continues to send more weapons to Ukraine via Europe, it will prolong the war, but it won't achieve victory.
24:32It won't defeat the Russians.
24:34It will simply mean that the results of the victory, the Russian victory, will be more catastrophic for the West than it would otherwise be.
24:44All right.
24:46We will end the video there.
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