Transcript – 42 chapters
01. Well, over the last 24 hours, much of the Russian media space has been taken up by a drone attack on a dormitory of a student building in a town in Lugansk region. One of the two regions in Donbass, Donetsk and
Lugansk. Lugansk region is a region which is entirely under Russian control and where all the citizens, all the residents now have Russian citizenship.
So this is a dormitory, a student dormitory and there were young people there, some of them children. And there
was an attack on this building by drones. And as of the time of making of this program, 16 people, 16 of these
young people have been killed. And this incident has attracted massive attention in Russia. It has been the major media story. There have been, as we know, lots of Ukrainian drone attacks across across Russia over the last few weeks and months.
Indeed, there was a large scale Ukrainian drone attack across Russia last night, but mostly these drone attacks attract little attention and little coverage in the Russian media. Um, surprisingly so for many people I suspect in the west, but the attack on this dormitory in Starobelsk was the exception. And it also provoked certain very interesting
comments from the Russian President Vladimir Putin, which he made in the Kremlin whilst he was addressing a meeting of the alumni of the highest school of public administration under the Russian presidential academy of economy and of economy and public administration in the Katherine Hall in the Kremlin and well the comments were very interesting, not just because of what they tell us about the Starobelsk attack itself self about which I will say a little more later in the program but about what he said in relation to the overall situation in the conflict and he also gave us hints about Russian policy altogether.
02. So I’m going to read out his comments and he said that last night the regime that ceased power in Kiev and he gave an adjective describing the regime which related it back to the ideology which existed in Germany in the 1930s and 1940s because of the sensitivities of this platform.
I’m not going to name the ideology by name. Anyway, last night the regime that seized power in Kiev perpetrated a terrorist attack on a student dormitory at the Starobelsk Pedagogical College. The attack was carried out whilst the
students were asleep. Now notice here that he refers to it as a regime. The government in Ukraine is a regime. He says that he’d seized power in Kiev and that he’d perpetrated a terrorist attack. And he relates it to the ideology in Germany of the 1940s and 1930s.
And he continues, according to the reports I have received, been receiving on an ongoing basis. Well
he then itemizes the number of people who were killed and injured at the time of his address and says that there are
people who were buried are still buried under the rubble, a horrible incident by every definition.
03. He then continues: “I wish to underscore, and this is a particular significance, that there are no military installations, special services facilities, or related agencies in the vicinity of the dormitory. There were no grounds for claiming that the projectiles struck the building as a result of our air defense or electronic warfare systems. No one can assert that the attackers were attempting to strike a certain target and that the drones having been intercepted by our systems allegedly struck this building by accident. The strike was deliberate. It was carried out in three waves involving 16 drones, all directed at the same location.”
04. Now that is Putin’s account of this incident. Um, what he says obviously points to this having been an intentional attack by the Ukrainians on this dormitory. He describes it as a terrorist attack. I am not there. I do not have access to all of the information. I always say when incidents of this kind that the right thing to happen is an independent impartial investigation in the full knowledge of course that nothing nothing of that nature is going to take place. What I
would say about this is that if this dormitory was indeed attacked by no fewer than 16 drones, as Putin says, then that is an extraordinary number of drones. And it does beg many questions about the motive behind the attack.
And well, so far as I’m aware, the Ukrainians have not attempted to answer those questions, or if they have done,
there’s been absolutely no coverage of this incident whatsoever in the media in the West, or at least in Britain. I’ve
looked through the media here and I’ve not been able so far to find any reference to this incident or any
comments or questions that might call into question some of the things that Putin has said about it. So, I’m going to now focus more on what Putin said about the ongoing conflict and where it takes us. And he said,
05. “We will investigate the details and they will be thoroughly examined.
Appropriate conclusions will be drawn.”
06. Well, I say that, of course, he’s already drawn some of those conclusions.
“However, it is clear and it is once again made evident whom we are dealing with whom we are fighting against and what we are fighting for.
This constitutes a manifestation of and then he again refers to the ideology that prevailed in Germany in the 1930s and 1940s and he continues,
07. “It once again serves to confirm the terrorist nature of the Kiev regime.”
08. Now, I have to say this straight away that when I read rhetoric of this kind from Putin, I find it impossible to believe that he seriously believes in a negotiated outcome to this war. How is it possible for Russia, for Putin himself?
And fairly recently he gave an interview in which he discussed how his own brother died during the siege of Leningrad during the Second World War. Leningrad, which is of course besieged by the German army. I find it impossible to imagine that Putin genuinely sincerely believes in a negotiated resolution of this conflict. Anyway, he then
continues,
09. “I want to appeal once again to the members of the Ukrainian armed forces as I have done
before. Do not follow the criminal orders of that illegitimate thieving junta. Otherwise, you two become
complicit in their crimes.
10. Now, to my to the best of my recollection,
Putin made his call to the members of the Ukrainian armed forces to disobey the orders of the Ukrainian authorities.
um directly after the start of the special military operation in February 2022.
I have no recollection myself of him ever having repeated this call since. But now he is doing so again. And he is doing so whilst using further words to describe the Ukrainian authorities which currently exercise power in Ukraine. He refers to them as il an illegitimate thieving junta. Not in other words a government. The expression junta was one that the Russians regularly used to describe the Ukrainian government that was established directly after the Maidan events, the seizure of power in February 2014 an event which the Russians always referred to as a coup for several weeks afterwards, referring to the government in Kiev or the authority that took power in Kiev after those events as a junta was the standard practice in Russia.
However, later on in 2022, as negotiations between the Russians and the Ukrainians got underway, the negotiations that led first to the first Minsk agreement of September 2014 and then the second Minsk agreement of February 2015. Putin at least dropped the use of the word junta to describe the Ukrainian government and for a time appeared to acknowledge Porochenko who was at that time the elected president of Ukraine as the country’s legitimate president. So he has now reverted back to the language that existed in the immediate post 2014 period. He refers to the current Ukrainian authorities as an illegitimate junta and he’s telling the members of the Ukrainian military no longer to obey that junta’s orders.
And then he continues,
11. “The reasons for this kind of criminal behavior from the Kiev regime are clear. You know them
better than anyone.”
12. He’s now addressing the people in the hall in the constant it is the constant failures at the front. The loss of positions of towns of territory. The situation on the battlefield for the Ukrainian forces is gradually going from difficult and critical to catastrophic.
Western aid is not helping. It gets stolen on a regular basis. They just cannot help themselves. Neither is
forced mobilization where they snatch people off the streets like stray dogs and then throw them to the front line.
And on that note, desertion is also rising catastrophically for the enemy.
It is becoming widespread. Well, there are some people in the West who dispute his description of the situation on the
battlefield, but very few people, I think, who are familiar with the situation in Ukraine would deny the factual truth of what he says about forced mobilization and the increase in desertion and the spread of corruption.
And about corruption, he then continues,
13. “What makes things even worse for the ruling elite in Kiev is the all-consuming corruption that is rotting society from within. Corruption the regime’s leaders are covering up. In reality, they are participants in these corrupt schemes themselves. That is why they then help each other, flee the country, seek refuge in Israel and elsewhere abroad. And this is clearly a reference to some extent to the existing corruption scandal in Ukraine.
Everyone in Ukraine and around the world knows that the Ukrainian government is corrupt through and through.
Embezzlement is everywhere. It has got to the point where they are stealing military equipment and personal protective gear meant for those being driven to the front like cattle, sent to die for the very people who are plundering Ukraine and its foreign aid.
And then he continues,
14. “The Kiev regime clearly needs crimes like this. They need them to distract attention from what is happening at the front and inside the country to provoke a reaction from Russia. And then we know this, we have seen it many times before to blame everything on us, on Russia, on our country, all the escalation, all the consequences of such crimes. I repeat, we have been here many times before.
15. So what Putin is saying is that the reason, the motive for this attack on the dormitory in Starobelsk is to provoke the Russians into taking massive counteraction.
And then the Ukrainians and their supporters in the west will ignore the incident in Starobelsk which as I said at the start of this program has not in fact been reported scarcely in the west at all. We’ll focus instead on the Russian retaliation and we’ll talk about Russia having been the party that is escalating the conflict and which is responsible for the spread and escalation of the conflict which is taking place. And Putin says that this has repeatedly happened over the course of the conflict. And few people in Russia, by the way, would disagree with him about that. And he says that this is what in the crisis that the Ukrainians currently find themselves in.
This is what they’re now trying to do again.
And then Putin nonetheless goes on to say,
16. “The Russian Foreign Ministry has been instructed to inform international organizations and the international community about this crime.
17. And in fact, there’s been a meeting, I understand, of the UN Security Council when the Russians have tried to draw global attention to this incident, though as always I don’t get the impression that there is much interest in what the Russians say much global interest and certainly none in the west but then he continues uh “but of course you and I both understand that in cases like this we cannot limit ourselves to statements from the foreign ministry that is why the ministry of defense has been ordered to submit its proposals” and that was basically where his comments ended. So Putin has asked the Russian defense ministry to come up with proposals for retaliation by Russia for this incident. Now this is an appalling incident and as I said without knowing more I don’t want to say more though I don’t
have very much reason to doubt what Putin says. I I’m going to say something here. Um, I might in other circumstances have treated some of Putin’s words with greater scepticism were it not for the long history, for example, of shelling Donetsk, the capital city of the Donetsk region, which the Ukrainians have undertaken ever since the 2014 crisis and which has been covered extensively by people like Patrick Lancaster for example.
18. But anyway, beyond that I want to focus again on what Putin has said about the government in Kiev about in effect Zelensky though is he is careful not to name him. He’s said that the government in Kiev is illegitimate. It has no authority. It is a regime. It is connected to the – It has adopted the ideology that prevailed in Germany in the 1930s and 1940s.
It engages in terrorism and it has just done so again in Starobelsk. And he says this is who we are fighting and what we are fighting against.
Again, I ask this question when you read comments like this when you listen to comments like this, can you seriously believe that the person who is making them has any sincere belief that there will be an a negotiated resolution to this war?
I personally find that impossible and that in turn makes me deeply sceptical about the entire negotiation process which we have seen which has been underway since Donald Trump was inaugurated president on the 20th of January 2025 and which the Russians now are saying is basically indefinitely suspended.
It seems to me now fairly clear that Putin, whilst he was prepared to negotiate with Donald Trump, never personally
believed that this process would ever lead to a negotiated resolution.
Certainly, if you take seriously what he has just said, he has always at the back of his mind known that the Ukrainians
would never comply with any of the ideas for a resolution of the conflict, which Donald Trump floated.
And well, according to Putin’s own account, he directly asked Trump in Anchorage whether Trump really would be able to make the Ukrainians agree to the concessions that Putin and Trump had agreed with each other. Putin has Trump said that he would. He clearly hasn’t done so. And in light of what Putin is now saying, I can’t really imagine that
Putin ever had any serious expectations that it would be different.
It seems to me that in light of these words, Putin went through the motions of negotiating with Donald Trump,
not because he really imagined that it would ever lead to the end of the war in Ukraine itself.
But most probably because he saw this as a way to make Donald Trump and the United States eventually disengage from the entire war. In other words, he was offering the Americans in effect an offramp.
And well, what he is saying here echoes what his foreign policy aid Yuri Ushakov said in Beijing after the meeting between Putin and Xi. Um during that visit, Ushakov made several comments about the good relationship that existed between Putin and Xi.
Some members of the Russian media then asked Ushakov whether this bore any resemblance to the spirit of Anchorage that supposedly existed between Trump and Putin following the meeting in Anchorage in Alaska in August last year.
And Ushakov said that he knew nothing of any spirit of Anchorage. As far as he was aware, no such spirit ever existed.
And whereas there absolutely was a spirit of Beijing, a genuine friendship and commonality of feeling between the Chinese president and the Russian president. Now here a certain degree of cynicism is in order because the expression the spirit of Anchorage is entirely a Russian one and one which Russian officials including from memory the Russian foreign minister Sergey Lavrov have themselves used. So when Ushakov says that he knows nothing of a spirit of Anchorage and has never believed that such a thing ever existed, he is being disingenuous.
He must surely know that the spirit of Anchorage was something that the Russians themselves at one time talked about. I don’t remember, by the way, ever reading or hearing the Americans use that term, but whatever.
It’s a term that Ushakov has now buried.
And well, the Americans have buried it, too. The US Secretary of State Marco Rubio has now come out and he’s also
said that there really isn’t any point in continuing the negotiations with the Ukrainians and the Russians. There is no
sense in having one meeting after another meeting going over the same ground again and again, circling round indefinitely the same talking points.
In light of that, the whole process that was kicked off by Trump last year is now in indefinite suspension.
And well, according to Rubio, if the sides eventually change their mind, which by the way, I think is extremely unlikely, the United States remains there and it is still able to act as a party offering its good offices to facilitate the negotiations.
Um, but it is not directly involved in trying to negotiate an end to the conflict in Ukraine anymore.
So that was Rubio, that was Ushakov, and we now have Putin. My own opinion here is that Putin himself probably says to himself that whatever criticisms he came under last year and this year for his dealings with Trump, he has been at least in part successful.
The Americans were offered an off-ramp.
They haven’t fully taken it. They continue to provide intelligence assistance to Ukraine. The CIA continues to be involved in guiding Ukrainian drones in their strikes in targets against Russia. International agencies like the International Monetary Fund which are partly funded or mostly funded by the US government continue to provide funding to Ukraine.
But then Putin probably never seriously expected that Trump and the United States would ever entirely walk away.
The key point is that the United States is no longer as committed or as directly involved in the war as it was during the Biden era.
19. We no longer have massive appropriations approved every few months by Congress at the request of the administration transferring large quantities of weapons to Ukraine. That has now ended and the result is that the conflict has become much more a conflict between Russia and Ukraine and Russia and Europe causing in the process growing tensions between the Europeans and the Americans.
So from Putin’s point of view, well, he might not have achieved everything that he would have ideally wanted. He didn’t get the Americans to cut off the Ukrainians entirely.
But then Putin might say to himself, well, I wanted that, but was it ever seriously going to happen? He has managed nonetheless to make it possible for the Americans to reduce substantially the aid to Ukraine that they have been providing.
So anyway, it looks to me that the entire negotiating process that has been so distracting over the last year is now over. Ushakov basically buried anchorage and whatever agreements Putin and Trump made with each other about Ukraine in Anchorage.
20. And Putin, also it seems to me, has now essentially read the negotiating processes last rights. It’s over. So that it seems to me is the single most important takeaway from this statement that Putin has just made. Now there is more here. He has described the military situation in Ukraine in ways that are very different from those that you read in the western media at the moment. And by the way, on some of the commentary channels. He speaks of a catastrophic situation for the Ukrainians. Constant failures at the front, the loss of positions of towns of territory. The situation on the battlefield for the Ukrainian forces is gradually going from difficult and critical to catastrophic. Western aid is not helping. That is what Putin says. And he is describing a Ukraine which is altogether in an impossible catastrophic situation. A government that is illegitimate, that has lost touch with the wider population, that is causing collapse and a miseration, whose organizing principle is corruption, a predatory, ideologically extreme, incredibly dangerous government.
What he’s essentially describing is what you might call a failed state.
And isn’t that exactly the way that Putin’s deputy Dimitri Medvedev has also just described Ukraine?
And is it not also similar to the description of Ukraine recently provided by the Russian commentator Sergei Poletaev.
So altogether a story of a hollowed out, essentially destroyed, profoundly dysfunctional country whose military
is finding itself in a situation that is moving from the bad and critical to the outright catastrophic.
21. I said in my program yesterday that it seemed to me from some of the commentaries that I’m reading in Russia
that there’s already now a preparation, a psychological preparation taking place inside Russia amongst some of the leadership and commentary out there for a situation somewhat analogous to the one that Russia faced in the Caucasus in the mid 2000s when the conventional war against the fighters in Chechnia had been won. But Russia had to confront for roughly a decade a prolonged insurgency and as the Russians would say a terrorist war which reached all the way to Moscow itself.
22. So anyway, here we see Putin using the same language talking about terrorism and talking about terrorism in connection with the authorities in Ukraine. So when you actually go beyond the turn, it turns out again that the substance of what Putin is saying and the substance of what Medvedev is saying is not really quite as different as people sometimes assume.
Now that’s Putin. Another Russian official has also been speaking and he’s been speaking also in extremely adversarial terms and that is um Sergey Lavrov, the Russian foreign minister who has become increasingly hardline in his
rhetoric about the situation in Ukraine and about the situation in Europe and about the European Union and about the whole situation in Europe alto together.
Lavrov, for example, has again spoken over the last 36 hours about the European Union as being no longer an economic union, but as a hostile alliance.
23. He says that all regions of the Eurasian continent have in effect been designated a zone of NATO responsibility.
The alliance, the NATO alliance is extending its infrastructure towards the far east under the pretext of containing China. And then he continues,
24. “The European Union has now become almost indistinguishable from NATO. What began as an economic
block designed to enhance the welfare of European citizens has transformed into assemblance of the North Atlantic Alliance. Discussions are already underway regarding reduced reliance on NATO given the cooling of American commitments to defend Europe. The proposition which is being put forward is to establish a new military block
based on the European Union. For what purpose? Precisely to contain Russia.
25. Now again, when I read comments like that and bear in mind the even more forthright comments that Medvedev very recently made in which Medvedev actually straightforwardly said that it’s time to stop to give up the idea that Ukraine can join the European Union.
This is something that the Russians have been prepared to go along with up to now, but they should not consider it any further given that the European Union is now clearly evolving into a political military organization hostile to Russia.
26. Well, Lavrov, the Russian foreign minister has now more for forthrightly and more straightforwardly than he has done at any point up to now come out and said exactly the same thing. The EU is a military alliance. It is a military alliance directed at Russia.
It has ceased to be an economic organization, an economic association.
He doesn’t exactly say it in these comments, but it makes absolutely no sense. This is the logic of Lavrov’s words. It makes absolutely no sense for Russia to accept that Ukraine can possibly join in. Now, Lavrov has gone on and said further things and he’s also talked about the importance of completing the special military operation.
27. “When we talk about the need to strengthen Russia’s influence across the world and enhance its appeal as a civilization, a partner and a party that always follows through on agreements. The only goal is to achieve all objectives of the special military operation, so our friends and neighbours as well as our opponents and enemies are keeping the closest eye on it. This is why the primary goal of our diplomacy is to do everything possible in our area of operations to create the conditions necessary for our troops to act as effectively, successfully, and decisively as possible in the special military operation.” Again, these words need to be passed extremely carefully. He says that Russia’s opponents and enemies are keeping the closest eye on the process of the special military operation and are judging Russia and its overall position in the world based upon it.
28. But Lavrov says, “So are our friends and neighbours.” Which friends and neighbours precisely? Well, Russia’s biggest neighbour by far, the neighbour with whom Russia now has the most important economic and other contacts.
And the one with which it shares by far the longest border is of course China.
And Lavrov says that when we talk about the need to strengthen Russia’s influence across the world and enhance its appeal as a civilization, a partner and a partner that always follows through on agreements. The only goal is to achieve all objectives of the special military operation.
29. Well, what he is clearly referring to is Russia’s relationship with China because over the course of Putin’s recent visit to China, Russia and China published together a joint statement which well was very different from the sort of joint statements that you normally see provided, published by the west. But it was in this particular case a particularly interesting joint statement because it specifically referred to Russia and China as civilizations.
In fact, the preamble of this statement reads as follows: The Russian Federation and the people’s founding of China are civilizations with ancient histories.
And it continues: they play a constructive role in maintaining the global balance of power and improving the system of international relations.
And this declaration contains all sorts of very interesting language. It talks about the dangers of conducting hegemonism, the importance of developing harmoniously developing an equitable and orderly multi-polar world.
Um it denies the concept of first class countries and second class countries.
It says there is no universal path of development and no first class countries or peoples exist. Differences between
states natural in such a diverse and complex world should not be an obstacle to the development of equal, respectful and mutually beneficial relations.
And the statement continues that all civilizations have the same validity, have the same value and carry the same weight across humanity. All of them carry the same weight as each other. In other words, Western civilization is in no way superior to any of the others.
30. Well, Lavrov was in Beijing when this meeting with the meeting between Xi and Putin took place. He will have
participated in the discussions to prepare this joint statement. Sometime before the meeting between Putin and Xi
Lavrov himself was in China as I remember where he was meeting with the Chinese foreign minister Wang Yi and it
is highly likely that he was preparing for this meeting between Putin and Xi and over the course of it he probably
played a role in drafting this statement and we can see that in his latest comments he is again referring to some
of the language in this statement, the fact that Russia is a civilizational state, not just one European state amongst many, but a distinct civilization different from those of Europe.
31. An important distinction, and one which Russians have been avoiding or careful not to make until now.
And well, what Lavrov is saying is that China has embraced Russia because China as a civilizational state recognizes in Russia a civilizational state like itself.
However, Russia’s importance as a civilizational state, its influence, the weight it carries in international relations and the weight it carries in terms of its relations with China specifically depends ultimately on Russia winning its war, its war in Ukraine. Achieving the objectives of the special military operation.
When we talk, these are his words, when we talk about the need to strengthen Russia’s influence across the world and enhance its appeal as a civilization, a partner and a party that always follow through on agreements. The only goal is to achieve all objectives of the special military operation.
Our friends and neighbours, China, in other words, are keeping the closest eye on it.
32. So what Lavrov is saying here is that in order for Russia to be taken seriously by China, it must win in Ukraine.
Its entire relationship with China depends upon it. There is a narrative which you occasionally come across in the west that the Chinese are annoyed by the fact that the Russians launched the special military operation that they’ve expressed doubts and frustrations about this, that the special military operation in and of itself has been an issue for China and that China would prefer that it went away. Where here we have Lavrov telling us the opposite that on the contrary for the Chinese it is important for them to see that Russia is indeed an important, a powerful, a civilizational state and that Russia’s value as a partner is ultimately measured by Russia’s success in the special military operation.
33. Now that is interesting in itself, but it follows directly from Putin’s trip to China when of course the topic of Ukraine will undoubtedly have been discussed as between the Chinese and the Russian leaderships.
So what Lavrov is also telling his audience is that the Chinese want Russia to win. They absolutely want Russia to win because as far as they’re concerned, the relationship between Russia and China is one that China has now invested heavily in and it wants to be sure that this investment is going to pay off and that its partner and ally ultimately in this war is going to be successful.
So it’s an interesting disclosure of thinking by Lavrov and I doubt that it’s one that only he shares.
I’m sure that it is widely understood across the Russian leadership. I remember that back in 2024, China for a time appeared to be urging Russia to agree to a ceasefire.
The Russians appear to have persuaded the Chinese that the better objective from Russia’s point of view ultimately was a victory in the form of Istanbul plus and apparently the discussions which have just taken place in Beijing have confirmed that this is and remains the Chinese position.
34. It may be a difficult fact for people in the west to understand, but Russia after very careful diplomatic manoeuvring over the last three years, the last two years especially, has managed, as it thinks, to place itself in a position where it can fully concentrate on the war and it senses that it has the backing of China.
And well, as for the United States, I think the feeling in Moscow at the moment is that they’ve seen the Americans off. So that it seems to me is what in Moscow they are feeling at the moment.
35. Anyway, that then brings us back to the topic of the war. Well, it remains my view that the major battles are the ones that are taking place in Zaporozhe where the Russians have just captured Vesnayatelsa and apparently Vish
Vijka breaking through Ukrainian defences on the Gshaw River and moving closer to Orejo and where the Russians are steadily tightening their grip on Konstantinovka.
36. But rather than focus on that today, which I’ve discussed already in various programs, um I want to return to the
topic of the drone war because there’s been a very interesting article in the Daily Telegraph which is about the fact that there are now all of these Ukrainian drones which have been flying over Sweden, Finland, the various Baltic states which have triggered a political crisis in Latvia and which have led to the shooting down of a Ukrainian drone by Estonia and which led to some really astonishing comments by the speech Swedish prime minister which I talked about yesterday.
37. Now I have now read these comments of the Swedish prime minister properly and I now understand that what the Swedish prime minister was basically saying was not that NATO should fully take charge of Ukraine’s drone offensive against Russia, but rather that NATO should make sure that Ukrainian drones are not misguided towards friendly countries, Sweden, Finland, the Baltic States and others, but should rather be guided properly towards Russia. A somewhat less aggressive statement than the one I thought he had made and which I discussed in my program yesterday.
38. And this is where the article of the Daily Telegraph becomes interesting because the Daily Telegraph is claiming that all of these drones that are flying over the Baltic States and Scandinavia are drones launched by Ukraine in good
faith towards Russia.
However, Russia using electronic methods has successfully hijacked these drones on route towards Russia and
has cunningly redirected them so that they are now attacking targets or entering instead of Russian airspace the airspace of Ukraine’s own allies, the Baltic states and the Scandinavians, leading to all the problems that we have heard. And the Daily Telegraph is anxious to assure us that all of the comments from the Russians about the Ukrainians carrying out these drone operations over the airspace of their neighbours, all of the complaints from the Russians that all of these countries have opened their airspace to enable Ukraine to conduct drone strikes against Russia via the airspace of these NATO countries.
39. All of this is untrue and false and propaganda. What the Russians are actually doing is they’re conducting all of these attacks on all of these NATO countries, but they’re doing so cunningly by hijacking Ukrainian drones, using them to attack these countries, but also because the drones are being conducted, the drones that are carrying out these attacks are Ukrainians, that supposedly gives the Russians plausible deniability in terms of what they’re doing. Now, this is actually a rather interesting claim and one does have to wonder a little whether it might be true. There are some reasons to doubt this article. That’s putting it mildly. But I noticed, for example, that the article claims that the Russians have been able to jam the GPS guidance systems used by these drones. But I’ve always understood the GPS doesn’t work inside Russia and that the drones actually operate using the Starlink system and apparently balloons that Ukraine has launched um to enable them to be guided onto targets inside Russia. And according to the Russian authorities, the Ukrainians have also managed at times to piggy back of signals generated by Russians Russia’s mobile phone network and to some extent by its own internet systems. So this is what I’ve always understood, but the Daily Telegraph article refers to GPS and I’m not sure that Ukrainian drones in fact do use GPS. So that’s one reason why I am more than a little sceptical about this article.
40. Secondly, if the Russians really are jamming these drones in something like the way that the Ukrainians are saying,
wouldn’t this be done by jamming and interfering with the Starlink system, which is what I understand the Ukrainians’ primarily use to guide and control their drones. Now, there’s been lots of rumours and reports that the Russians have indeed on many occasions succeeded in jamming the Starlink system.
I’ve already spoken about how the Russians provided technology to Iran in January of this year to jam the Starlink system, which proved instrumental in enabling the Iranians to defeat the protest movement that emerged within Iran, then. But if this story in the Daily Telegraph is true, then we’re not just talking about jamming.
We are talking about Russia somehow being able to piggyback on the Starlink system so as to effectively capture the drones in mid-flight and then redirect them against targets in NATO states. Now, if that is the case, then that is an important technological advance and one which I’m going to guess will have NATO extremely concerned indeed.
41. And that might be part of the reason for the panic and dismay we are seeing across the Baltic states and Scandinavia at the moment. Now saying all of this, again I want to stress that I don’t know anything about this, and the Daily Telegraph makes assertions, but it provides little by way of evidence in fact provides no evidence at all, I correct that that would substantiate or confirm what it is saying. It is purely declaratory. And well as a result I’m sceptical and I’m entitled to be. I mean these are Ukrainian drones and I would have thought that that still tends to point the finger towards Kiev rather than Moscow.
42. Having said this, there is a side of me that does wonder whether there might be some truth to this story. I mean, the Russians know perfectly well that the Western powers have been very, very heavily involved in Ukraine’s drone activities after all. The matter is hardly disputed, many of the drones are made in Europe.
I can imagine a situation where the Russians, if the capability existed, might want to turn this all against the Europeans
by hijacking the drones in the way that the Ukrainians are saying, so as to redirect them into the airspace of NATO.
countries, there would be something appropriate, some might say even elegant about doing it. But I want to repeat
again that I don’t know that this is actually so and I don’t want to push the fact. Anyway, for the rest, the Ukrainians are still claiming that there is going to be a major Russian offensive targeting Kiev itself.
They’re claiming that it will happen in the autumn. They’re making various claims again, various counterattacks in
various places, mainly in Zaporizhzhia and north of Slovyansk. Again, I suspect that this is intended to distract attention from the fall of Belaya Tserkov and the Russian advance on Orikhiv and the deteriorating situation in Kostiantynivka.
But I will talk about all of that later in other programs when the opportunity arises.
From here, 1:06:29 , Alexander Mercouris starts with another item.
