Latest / International Flavor: Where the Truth Tastes Better / Trump, Putin, and the Alaska Peace Pageant: Now With Extra False Flags

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Trump, Putin, and the Alaska Peace Pageant: Now With Extra False Flags · International Flavor: Where the Truth Tastes Better

• 0:00
  Hello, good evening, and welcome.
• 0:02
  I am Samuel Trapp.
• 0:04
  This is International Flavor you are listening to, and this is also being put
• 0:11
  out on damradio.com forward slash live, where I am every Sunday through
• 0:19
  Thursday from 9 p.m. to 10 30 p.m. Central Standard Time, that is Chicago
• 0:28
  time, and I encourage you to join me on a regular basis.
• 0:34
  We pick up here our topics of sometimes legal interest, our topics of cultural
• 0:41
  interest, and we do international events with an international flavor, where we
• 0:48
  like to say where the news just tastes better.
• 0:53
  I'm a world traveler.
• 0:55
  I've been to 54 countries, and this coming week I'm headed to Belarus, to
• 1:04
  Latvia, and to Russia.
• 1:07
  Now, I've been to Russia plenty of times, but we're going to be headed into
• 1:12
  Belarus as well, and when I get into Belarus and Latvia, I will give you some
• 1:19
  reports from there.
• 1:20
  I should be there over the weekend.
• 1:21
  I'll be recording some shows live.
• 1:24
  I've got some events lined up when I get to Moscow.
• 1:27
  Nothing too serious so far when I'm in the Belarus and Latvia regions, but I'm
• 1:34
  certainly going to be recording some thoughts and some processes while I'm
• 1:40
  there, both in English and in Russian.
• 1:43
  If you like to listen to my show, you can also listen to me in Russian
• 1:48
  on my YouTube channel, which is at Samuel Trapp, and it's also called
• 1:57
  Mezhdinrodny Fkus, and it's a sister station to this station.
• 2:01
  I only do that one once a week, though, for a couple of hours, usually on
• 2:06
  a Sunday, and what with the traveling coming up, I'm going to attempt to get
• 2:10
  that done this weekend so I can add a show, and I've got a few events
• 2:18
  lined up.
• 2:18
  There's a lot going on.
• 2:20
  There's an actual AI and robotics show going on in Moscow that I hope to get
• 2:27
  to.
• 2:28
  There's an international fashion that I hope to get to, but I'm today going to
• 2:35
  spend a little time focusing on my thoughts on the upcoming, it's coming up
• 2:41
  tomorrow, Friends and Neighbors, where we have Vladimir Putin and the old
• 2:47
  Trumpster getting ready to meet together in Alaska.
• 2:54
  Now, I've always wanted to go to Alaska in the summer.
• 2:58
  I've only been to Alaska in the winter.
• 3:01
  It was very, very cold, and I have some events on that.
• 3:05
  It was a lot of fun.
• 3:07
  I was in the military at the time.
• 3:09
  I only spent a month up there during winter, so it was always dark.
• 3:15
  I always wanted to get back there during the summer because the opposite is
• 3:21
  true.
• 3:21
  There, the day is a lot longer.
• 3:25
  When I was there, the sun came up at like 1030, 1045 and went down by
• 3:32
  230, 245.
• 3:34
  It was depressing, and I was always tired, but I would like to get there in
• 3:41
  time for the reverse.
• 3:42
  It'd be really nice to get up there.
• 3:44
  Vladimir Putin is the first Russian leader to come to Alaska.
• 3:52
  They sold us Alaska however many years ago, but nobody's visited, so
• 4:01
  this will be a first.
• 4:03
  I think there's much to be excited for in the upcoming
• 4:12
  visits.
• 4:14
  The Kremlin has released some of their thoughts on what they
• 4:23
  are expecting or are anticipating.
• 4:27
  I'm interested in seeing what it is, but perhaps the biggest news of the day,
• 4:34
  it's not big news.
• 4:36
  I mean, it happens every day, but another Russian city has been attacked by
• 4:44
  drones again by the Ukrainian side and apartment buildings damaged in Rostov-on
• 4:54
  -Don is what it is.
• 4:55
  They say that 13 people were injured in this Ukrainian drone attack, which
• 5:04
  occurred on Thursday.
• 5:06
  Well, they're however many hours ahead of us they are.
• 5:10
  They're like nine, 10 hours ahead of us right now.
• 5:14
  Governor Yuri Shluser reported the attack on his own telegram channel and noted
• 5:21
  that emergency services were working at the site of these damaged residential
• 5:27
  buildings.
• 5:28
  The photos are showing some cars blown up and things like that.
• 5:35
  Two people had serious injuries and 11 others were hospitalized.
• 5:41
  He said that information about the victims of the attack would be updated, but
• 5:46
  so far I haven't seen anything about that.
• 5:51
  Residents of damaged buildings have been evacuated to temporary accommodations
• 5:57
  at a nearby school.
• 6:00
  The state of emergency has been declared at the scene of the attack.
• 6:04
  Recently, the Ukrainian forces have intensified their long range drone
• 6:09
  operations.
• 6:12
  According to the Russians, they're targeting residential areas and
• 6:16
  infrastructure.
• 6:18
  Russia, of course, is doing the same thing in the other direction, but with
• 6:22
  much more with missiles and all of that.
• 6:25
  They say that Russia responded with high precision strikes on Ukrainian
• 6:31
  facilities.
• 6:33
  Military maintain that its operations are not directed at civilians.
• 6:38
  I tend to believe that and mistakes happen.
• 6:42
  This is war, but I don't think that Russia is intentionally bombing apartment
• 6:47
  buildings or anything like that.
• 6:49
  I don't believe the same to be true from the Russian side.
• 6:56
  I truly don't.
• 6:58
  National air defense in Russia have been under strain, of course, but Ukrainian
• 7:05
  air defense is almost non-existent these days.
• 7:12
  Russia reports intercepting dozens and hundreds of drones in any single day.
• 7:18
  They are doing the same thing in reverse to Ukraine.
• 7:26
  I don't know.
• 7:28
  I'm hopeful that something comes up on this meeting, this summit with Putin.
• 7:37
  The Ukrainians also attacked the border region of Belgrade.
• 7:42
  This just came out, oh, geez, this was several hours ago.
• 7:49
  They've attacked into Belgrade too and said that several people were injured.
• 7:55
  Unmanned aerial vehicles is what they were targeting.
• 7:59
  Vladkov stated in his, well, that's Governor Vyacheslav Vladkov, said that in
• 8:06
  his official telegram channel, said that Belgrade was also, and Belgrade's been
• 8:11
  a target for the entire war, basically.
• 8:15
  It's a region right next to the Kursk region that they were trying to get into
• 8:23
  before.
• 8:24
  They consistently have attacked Belgrade.
• 8:29
  He said that's something they have not yet lived through in modern history,
• 8:33
  saying it was a pretty bad set of strikes.
• 8:37
  He said the drones hit upper floors that damaged his office and the floors of
• 8:42
  the regional Duma.
• 8:44
  According to him, just a small number of staff were on site at the time and
• 8:49
  everybody else had been evacuated.
• 8:52
  There's some video of it.
• 8:54
  His telegram channel is called Nastayashi Vladkov.
• 9:00
  That's his name.
• 9:02
  You might be able to find it on that.
• 9:04
  The real Vladkov is what that means.
• 9:06
  The governor shared a video of the strike of a drone striking a passenger car.
• 9:13
  Three people were reported in the incident.
• 9:16
  It's kind of a horrific video that shows this drone strike of hitting a car,
• 9:26
  you know, a passenger car, a guy driving down the street.
• 9:31
  I'm sure the guy is, if he's alive, he's extremely lucky.
• 9:37
  Well, it looks like he got out of the vehicle and his car's not in good
• 9:43
  shape.
• 9:45
  Other drone attacks were on buildings that took place in Belgrade.
• 9:51
  Belgrade authorities, they have ordered state institutions to switch to remote
• 9:56
  working locations for Thursday and Friday and large shopping centers in
• 10:01
  Belgrade will remain closed through Saturday.
• 10:05
  Outdoor events were canceled until Sunday.
• 10:07
  Parks, beaches, and public gathering places are also going to be shut down for
• 10:12
  the next couple of days.
• 10:15
  Private businesses, of course, can do what they want, but the government has
• 10:19
  urged them to perhaps shut down as well.
• 10:23
  I'm hopeful that something will occur, but they are saying that there's going
• 10:31
  to be some sort of provocations, whether these are the provocations they were
• 10:38
  talking about or not, remain to be seen.
• 10:42
  But there's been a good amount of it, and they say that there's talk of false
• 10:50
  flag operations where they attack themselves, the Ukrainians attack some
• 11:00
  civilian sites and then blame it on the Russians.
• 11:04
  I don't know, but there's certainly been some discussion about that potentially
• 11:09
  taking place on the Ukrainian side and certainly with respect to the war
• 11:19
  and what's going to go on with the discussions between Putin and Trump in
• 11:28
  Alaska.
• 11:30
  So, I don't know.
• 11:32
  There's plenty going on.
• 11:36
  The Bosnians, there's a bunch of stuff going on in Bosnia, and then there's
• 11:44
  violence erupting at nationwide protests in Serbia.
• 11:48
  That's looking pretty frightening.
• 11:50
  There's plenty of news upon that.
• 11:55
  I told you yesterday about this.
• 11:58
  There's still more news about what we talked about yesterday with the
• 12:01
  Ukrainians glorifying Nazi collaborators in Poland and Poland trying to do
• 12:08
  something about it.
• 12:09
  So far, there's nothing that's really been done except for condemning this kind
• 12:14
  of activity.
• 12:17
  So, let's see.
• 12:19
  There was, where is this?
• 12:25
  In Hungary.
• 12:27
  So, Kyiv allegedly has bombed a distribution statement for the Druzhba oil
• 12:35
  pipeline on the Russian side of the fence.
• 12:39
  And so, Hungary is pissed off about this, of course, because it affects their
• 12:44
  supply.
• 12:45
  So, Ukraine is attacking Russian oil infrastructure.
• 12:50
  I'm not sure how I feel about this.
• 12:53
  It's war anyway, and the Russians are definitely destroying the infrastructure
• 12:56
  of Ukraine.
• 12:58
  And I'm still, my jury, my own personal internal jury is still out on what the
• 13:08
  old Trump monster is going to say to Putin in Alaska, because remember, he
• 13:14
  changes his mind like other people change their underwear.
• 13:18
  And he's just as likely to blame it all on Putin when this is all over
• 13:25
  anyway, especially if he doesn't make any progress.
• 13:29
  And Russia will, of course, stand by the same things that they have been saying
• 13:34
  consistently for years.
• 13:37
  And they're going to stick right by it.
• 13:40
  So, I don't understand what Trump thinks he's going to...
• 13:43
  I welcome the discussions, and I hope they do something different between the
• 13:49
  discussions.
• 13:50
  I really do.
• 13:51
  And that these discussions pan out, and that some sort of settlement, I don't
• 14:00
  want to see just a ceasefire with this starting back up again.
• 14:04
  That would piss me off to no end too.
• 14:08
  And I know it does the same for the Russians too.
• 14:12
  They're going to be pissed off over this sort of thing.
• 14:17
  So, meanwhile, the Ukrainians are starting whatever these provocations are to
• 14:23
  make sure, and the Europeans too, mostly verbally, that they're trying to throw
• 14:29
  a monkey wrench into the process.
• 14:33
  They don't want this war to be resolved, not remotely.
• 14:38
  And so, Hungary is chewing out Ukraine over drone strikes at a...
• 14:43
  It's called Druzhba, which means friendship oil pipeline inside of Russia.
• 14:49
  It's a key supply route to EU countries.
• 14:52
  And they say that these attacks are damaging to Hungary's energy security.
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  And Druzhba is one of the world's longest networks, transports crude some 4,000
• 15:07
  kilometers from Russia and Kazakhstan to refineries in the Czech Republic,
• 15:13
  Germany, Hungary, Poland, and Slovakia.
• 15:16
  In a post on Exxon Wednesday, Foreign Minister Peter Szijjarto from Hungary
• 15:22
  wrote that overnight the Ukrainians launched a drone strike on a key
• 15:27
  distribution station of the Druzhba oil pipeline in Russia's Bryansk.
• 15:33
  And so Bryansk, so we got Belgorod, we got Bryansk, and then where was the
• 15:39
  other one that I read about when we first started?
• 15:41
  But they've attacked multiple places.
• 15:45
  According to media reports, these multiple Ukrainian drones struck Russia's
• 15:52
  Bryansk region on Tuesday night.
• 15:54
  And there were fires started at several of these locations.
• 15:57
  One target was the Unicef station, which is a major hub for the Druzhba oil
• 16:03
  pipeline and links Russia and the EU, specifically Hungary.
• 16:08
  Ukrainian general staff confirmed the attack on the pumping station in a
• 16:12
  Facebook post, and Russia hasn't commented on it yet so far.
• 16:16
  But Szijjarto called the attack outrageous and said the pipeline is vital.
• 16:24
  As I said, he noted that Hungary is Ukraine's number one electricity supplier,
• 16:31
  and that without it, Ukraine's energy security would be highly unstable.
• 16:36
  And he urged Kiev to stop endangering Hungary's energy supply, or it's possible
• 16:44
  we could eliminate your energy as well.
• 16:50
  And he wants them to halt these strikes because this is a war that the
• 16:55
  Hungarians have nothing to do with in Hungary.
• 16:59
  And more and more people are taking that approach and saying, just leave us out
• 17:04
  of your war, Ukraine, Russia, leave us out.
• 17:08
  That's what Modi's saying.
• 17:10
  That's what the old Z man asked him for assistance.
• 17:18
  Sorry, there's a sip of beverage.
• 17:23
  In January, Ukraine attempted to attack a compressor station for the TurkStream
• 17:30
  pipeline, and that one supplies natural gas to Turkish customers as well as
• 17:35
  several other European countries, including Hungary, Serbia, Bulgaria,
• 17:40
  Slovakia, Bosnia and Herzegovina, and Greece.
• 17:45
  Russia repeatedly condemns these attacks on civilian infrastructure and calls
• 17:50
  them acts of terror.
• 17:54
  So I don't know, I kind of think that Russia destroys some of theirs, some of
• 17:59
  Ukraine's as well.
• 18:03
  So I don't...
• 18:06
  I do condemn it, I don't think it should happen, but it's not like Russia's not
• 18:12
  doing something similar on the other end, right?
• 18:17
  So there you have it.
• 18:22
  Let's see here.
• 18:24
  Speaking of missiles in Ukraine, there's also a report of Russia that is trying
• 18:33
  to derail this Western backed missile program.
• 18:36
  And so Moscow's force have struck several industrial sites that produce
• 18:41
  Ukrainian long range missiles that they're attempting to sell and produce for
• 18:48
  the West, which is interesting.
• 18:51
  So Russian forces have struck four Ukrainian defense industrial facilities that
• 18:57
  make these long range missile systems.
• 19:00
  And according to them, they have caused colossal damage and they have stalled
• 19:08
  Kiev's domestic missile program.
• 19:11
  In a statement Thursday, the FSB said operations mounted by the agency and the
• 19:17
  Russian defense ministry, which got rid of chemical and mechanical plants in
• 19:26
  Pavlograd, in Dnepropetrovsk, as well as the Zvezda plant in the State
• 19:31
  Scientific Research Institute in Shostka, which is in Sumy.
• 19:38
  The impact of these strikes was confirmed by satellite imagery, which are open
• 19:42
  source, and you should see these photos.
• 19:46
  You can get on and find these.
• 19:47
  Let me see if I can share a link.
• 19:50
  But the FSB said that Ukraine, with the permission of NATO, were planning to
• 19:57
  use Sapsan long range missiles for stripes deep inside Russia.
• 20:04
  But thanks to efforts by the FSB and Russian armed forces, this missile program
• 20:10
  in Ukraine has been severely damaged and thwarted any recent efforts in that
• 20:20
  regard.
• 20:21
  But the agency described the damage as, like I said, as major.
• 20:26
  And Moscow said that the attack, which involved dozens of drones, damaged
• 20:35
  aircraft as well.
• 20:39
  An unnamed FSB official said that the Sapsan missile systems were developed
• 20:46
  with financial support from Germany and other international actors.
• 20:52
  So a Sapsan is a Ukrainian missile, ballistic, and the warhead can be as heavy
• 21:02
  as 480 kilograms, and it can travel at speeds of 6,000 kilometers an hour, and
• 21:09
  a range of 700 kilometers, which would put it squarely inside the terms of the
• 21:18
  Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces Treaty, which I worked in a long time ago,
• 21:22
  and that Russia finally ceased subscribing to on their own after Trump
• 21:28
  cancelled that in 2019, because everybody's, you know, Russia has been self
• 21:33
  -limiting according to their own statements for years.
• 21:37
  But as of several weeks ago, they cancelled that, and now they are saying
• 21:44
  they're no longer limited by that restriction.
• 21:50
  So in May, German Chancellor Friedrich Merz announced that Germany was starting
• 21:57
  to fund Ukrainian's domestic production of long-range missiles, but he didn't
• 22:03
  specify which weapons he was talking about.
• 22:08
  The Ministry for Germany also stated that investing in Ukraine's production
• 22:14
  would enable Kyiv to have substantial number of weapons available to it this
• 22:21
  year.
• 22:22
  So I don't know.
• 22:24
  We shall see.
• 22:25
  Ukraine's Zelensky has threatened, you know, to do everything possible to bring
• 22:30
  the war into the Russian territory, including long-range missiles, if at all
• 22:35
  possible.
• 22:36
  So they're working in that.
• 22:39
  These stories are, you know, have been going around for months, right?
• 22:47
  And in this funding coming from Germany, you know, Berlin's support for Kyiv's
• 22:55
  military industry does nothing but increase the conflict.
• 23:03
  It's not making it go away at all.
• 23:04
  It's getting even worse.
• 23:06
  And so Ukraine is supposed to get, or should have gotten them here in the last
• 23:11
  couple of weeks, their first set of German missiles.
• 23:14
  I don't know if those actually were produced and given.
• 23:20
  And it looks like we have a host from New York City.
• 23:26
  New York City.
• 23:28
  Well, I'm very glad to have you as a listener, listening to the program.
• 23:34
  I'd like to chat with a bunch of Russians up in New York, or in English.
• 23:43
  Would be a lot of fun to have a conversation in that regard.
• 23:47
  So could be good.
• 23:50
  In an interview with the ZDF, Major General Christen Freuding, who oversees the
• 23:55
  coordination of Berlin's military support, said that Germany is going to make
• 24:00
  these systems available.
• 24:01
  But we're not positive that that's occurred yet.
• 24:04
  So we're not positive.
• 24:07
  It says in the high three digit numbers, meaning hundreds of missiles that they
• 24:12
  wish to supply.
• 24:13
  And he said, we need weapons systems that can reach deep into Russian
• 24:19
  territory.
• 24:21
  So that's what Germany is looking forward to, but not doing it themselves.
• 24:25
  They just want to supply it, supply these weapons to Kiev so that Kiev can do
• 24:31
  it for them.
• 24:33
  And we shall see what happens.
• 24:35
  And again, this is all with the focus to what happens with the old Trumpster
• 24:40
  today.
• 24:42
  Because we don't, or not today, I'm sorry, tomorrow.
• 24:44
  But the prep for it is coming on today and where we are.
• 24:48
  But the stress is that Germany is not providing Kiev with long range Taurus
• 24:54
  missiles with a range of 500 kilometers, despite what Ukraine says.
• 25:01
  But they are going to fund them to build their own, allegedly, right?
• 25:07
  And everybody knows that they
• 25:19
  want to give these weapons to Ukraine, but that the US has so far kept
• 25:29
  that from happening, to give all these ballistic missiles to Ukraine.
• 25:36
  And so Ukraine instead has been sending large scale drone attacks inside of
• 25:41
  Russia, and to make sure that they can try to beat up on infrastructure that
• 25:47
  everybody's been complaining about.
• 25:48
  But that doesn't mean that the bulk of Europe wouldn't like to have the ability
• 25:54
  to bomb Russia with, but they have to have the US support in order for that
• 26:01
  to occur.
• 26:02
  And the US has not given permission just yet, which brings up the other
• 26:09
  question of what happens when you give them the ability to use your weapons to
• 26:18
  bomb inside of Russia.
• 26:20
  It cannot be done without your targeting data.
• 26:26
  And so from the US perspective, giving them the military intelligence to allow
• 26:34
  them to use our missiles would be a big no-go.
• 26:38
  They already tried that with ATACMS. This is why the Russians keep saying that
• 26:43
  these missile crews, and even the Patriot batteries that are over in Ukraine,
• 26:49
  are truly being run by American crews, even if that's remotely done somehow.
• 26:59
  Somehow they're providing targeting data or defense data from US
• 27:09
  command and intelligence structure.
• 27:13
  And that is what the Russians have been bitching about all along.
• 27:17
  It's like, we're not fighting a war against Ukraine.
• 27:20
  We're fighting a war against the West, because the West is the ones doing this.
• 27:25
  And it's hard not to agree with them, because everybody knows that if they have
• 27:32
  any military background of any kind, they know that this is the truth.
• 27:38
  And so I'm so tired of it.
• 27:42
  And I'm an American.
• 27:43
  I'm a Patriot.
• 27:44
  I was in the military for 15 years by the time it gets all done.
• 27:53
  I'm an we're doing the right thing, but we haven't been.
• 27:59
  Not with respect to Russia, not with respect to how we acted after the collapse
• 28:08
  of the Soviet Union.
• 28:09
  We are on the wrong side of history as Americans.
• 28:14
  And this comes from a former arms control inspector and escort.
• 28:19
  That's what I did for a living.
• 28:22
  I did nuclear testing and the nuclear testing with the Russians on the other
• 28:27
  side.
• 28:28
  Those efforts are all gone.
• 28:31
  Those cheaties, they have no force anymore.
• 28:37
  Everybody has decided to not use them any longer.
• 28:43
  And so we have been to blame for that travesty upon the planet.
• 28:53
  And there are a lot of countries out there who are trying to stay out of
• 29:00
  this conflict.
• 29:01
  Like I just shared with you about the Hungarians and trying to say, look,
• 29:07
  Russia's our partner in energy production.
• 29:11
  Like India, Russia's our partner in energy production.
• 29:15
  Like China, Russia's our partner in energy production.
• 29:19
  We're not going to get in the middle of your dispute.
• 29:26
  We hope that the dispute is done.
• 29:28
  But for example, if you're Chinese, let's take the same approach that we think
• 29:34
  Ukraine should have in telling us that our land dispute between India and
• 29:41
  China, Ukraine shouldn't be involved in, nor would China or India allow them to
• 29:47
  be or require them to be.
• 29:50
  But because you've decided that you don't like Russia, we're supposed to
• 29:54
  everybody condemn Russia because Russia and Ukraine have a dispute, a political
• 30:04
  dispute between nations.
• 30:06
  And it'd be different if it was their own dispute, but everybody knows that
• 30:09
  it's really not.
• 30:11
  It didn't start that way anyway.
• 30:15
  It's frustrating and irritating to me that I live in a place in Florida where
• 30:22
  there are so many Ukrainians, they are everywhere.
• 30:28
  And there are times that I go to the Ukrainian stolovia, the cafeteria or the
• 30:34
  Ukrainian coffee shop or bakery or the Ukrainian grocery store, you know, and I
• 30:41
  like going to those places.
• 30:43
  I like buying these ethnic types of foods.
• 30:46
  And if you sometimes, depends on who's there working, but if you speak to some
• 30:51
  of these people in Russian, although they speak Russian just fine, they won't
• 30:58
  respond to you in Russian.
• 31:01
  They'll respond to you in Ukrainian, but I don't speak Ukrainian.
• 31:06
  They might respond to you for me, they'll look at me, respond to me in English,
• 31:12
  but a lot of them will not respond in Russian.
• 31:17
  And what kind of stupidity is that?
• 31:20
  I think these, which once again, we're going back to what I think about what is
• 31:29
  gonna happen with the issues coming up in
• 31:39
  Alaska.
• 31:42
  It's gonna be interesting no matter how you slice it.
• 31:47
  Trump, from his side of the equation, what Trump is saying is that he wants to
• 31:52
  have a pretty quick meeting after the fact with Putin and Zelensky.
• 32:02
  I've heard, and I don't know whether this is true or not, I haven't found any
• 32:07
  real source, but I heard it in some commentary on another channel, another
• 32:13
  video that I was watching, that Trump said, according to some, that he was
• 32:22
  requiring as part of this summit that he and Putin are having, he
• 32:32
  was requiring as part of the agreement to meet together in Alaska, that Putin
• 32:41
  actually meet with Zelensky or agree to meet with Zelensky after the meeting,
• 32:49
  like Trump's doing his intermediary part, and then he's gonna require a quick
• 32:54
  Putin-Zelensky meeting afterward.
• 32:58
  But Putin has consistently said that he doesn't really wanna meet with
• 33:03
  Zelensky, because Zelensky's illegitimate.
• 33:07
  Now, Zelensky, for his part, he definitely wants to meet with Putin, because
• 33:11
  that's one way to legitimize himself.
• 33:17
  Well, if I'm illegitimate, then why are you meeting with me?
• 33:22
  So that'll be interesting.
• 33:26
  But ahead of the meeting with Putin on Friday, Trump told journalists at the
• 33:30
  Kennedy Center that during the talks, he's going to find out where we are and
• 33:36
  what we are doing.
• 33:38
  Well, I think we already know the answer to that.
• 33:40
  So if I know the answer, how in the world does he not know the answer?
• 33:45
  And he says, if the meeting goes well, then we'll have a quick second one.
• 33:51
  I would like to do it almost immediately, he said.
• 33:55
  That one's gonna have to be in Russia.
• 33:57
  He suggested that the follow-up meeting would be to bring together Putin,
• 34:01
  Zelensky, and himself, if they'd like to have me there.
• 34:06
  I think that Zelensky will never meet with Putin by himself.
• 34:11
  Never in a million years would he meet with Putin by himself.
• 34:15
  He needs big brother in his back pocket.
• 34:20
  At least he thinks he doesn't.
• 34:23
  He knows he won't accomplish anything on his own.
• 34:26
  The fact is, Putin would eat his lunch.
• 34:29
  There's a lot of people who are saying that Putin is going to eat Trump's
• 34:32
  lunch.
• 34:33
  Now, I don't know what's going to happen.
• 34:36
  I don't think that really matters.
• 34:38
  I think he's going to be saying the same things that he has said forever.
• 34:48
  That's what I think.
• 34:49
  I think he's going to be consistent with the goals of his special military
• 34:54
  operation, with the goals of what's going to happen in any alleged settlement.
• 35:02
  I mean, Russia's winning.
• 35:03
  Why in the world would they capitulate?
• 35:08
  Idiots like Lindsey Graham are wanting them to do, okay, we give up.
• 35:14
  Yeah, there's a good plan.
• 35:15
  They don't have to give up.
• 35:16
  The people that should probably give up are on the other side of the equation.
• 35:22
  That's all there is to it.
• 35:25
  Moscow has always said that it's open to a peaceful resolution of the
• 35:29
  hostilities completely, not just a ceasefire for the sake of a ceasefire so
• 35:35
  that Ukraine can regroup and we start over again in 30 days.
• 35:40
  That's nonsense.
• 35:42
  But they would stress that this deal would have to address.
• 35:46
  They want a final deal, number one.
• 35:48
  They want to address the root causes of this conflict.
• 35:52
  Everybody knows what that is.
• 35:54
  It's the US.
• 35:55
  It's NATO expansion.
• 35:58
  The US provide military advice and support inside of Ukraine forever.
• 36:05
  From Russia's point of view, these things need to be addressed.
• 36:11
  And then, most importantly, it needs to address the reality on the ground.
• 36:16
  And the reality on the ground is Russia is winning.
• 36:20
  That's the reality on the ground.
• 36:24
  And so, people are gonna have to talk about these Ukrainian territories that
• 36:32
  have had their referenda and are now Russian territories.
• 36:39
  Zelensky, who called the Alaska summit earlier a personal victory for Putin, he
• 36:48
  went to Berlin on Wednesday to suck up to Friedrich Mertz and company, still in
• 36:57
  denial that he's losing, that Ukraine is losing this war.
• 37:02
  I don't understand how you could believe anything else if you know anything
• 37:08
  about military activity.
• 37:10
  Putin said he has nothing against meeting with Zelensky, but says that certain
• 37:16
  conditions have to be created for such a meeting to take place.
• 37:20
  And I'm not so sure those things have come about yet.
• 37:27
  He questions Zelensky's legal capacity because his term expired last year and
• 37:36
  he's under martial law.
• 37:37
  And so, Moscow calls him illegitimate.
• 37:40
  Russian officials have said that the upcoming Trump-Putin meeting is a chance
• 37:47
  to mend strained relations between Russia and the US.
• 37:51
  And I think that is the most key and probably most important aspect of this
• 37:59
  entire meeting.
• 38:00
  I've been pretty positive about what Russia
• 38:10
  is defending themselves against, and I've been pretty positive that Russia has
• 38:18
  zero intention of taking over Ukraine completely, or of going into Poland, or
• 38:26
  of trying to take over the pre-Baltic Latvia, Estonia, Lithuania.
• 38:32
  I'm going to be in Latvia later this week.
• 38:37
  I'm going to Vilnius and then headed into Minsk, and I'm going to broadcast
• 38:46
  hopefully from there as well and tell some stories about what it is.
• 38:51
  And then later on, I will be in Moscow and I've got some interviews lined up
• 38:58
  there as well.
• 38:59
  Those will be conducted in Russian with a couple of the platforms that I met
• 39:07
  when I was in Kazan at the BRICS conference last year.
• 39:12
  And so, I hope to build a little bit of that.
• 39:14
  I've offered my services to the Scott Ritter element for some of his peace
• 39:20
  missions.
• 39:21
  I saw that he was there this past week.
• 39:24
  I'm not sure if he's still there.
• 39:25
  If he's still there when I get there, I will certainly attempt to sit down and
• 39:30
  see him.
• 39:31
  So, now I want to switch gears a tiny bit, but not to just switch perspective,
• 39:36
  I suppose, and say what Russia is expecting because Trump outlined what he
• 39:42
  thought he was going to get out of it.
• 39:44
  But let's talk about restoring...
• 39:48
  This is Sergei Rybkov, who is a deputy foreign minister in Russia, and they see
• 39:56
  this as a chance to mend other areas of the relationship between the US and
• 40:04
  Russia.
• 40:05
  Frankly, I think this is...
• 40:07
  Needs to happen anyway.
• 40:09
  The huge mistake of not talking to Russia about other areas, all because you
• 40:18
  decide to put all your eggs in one basket and just...
• 40:22
  Well, we hate Russia.
• 40:24
  The end.
• 40:25
  We hate Russia.
• 40:27
  That's our cancel culture.
• 40:29
  We pick things we don't like and we don't dislike my point of view on
• 40:38
  whatever particular topic is.
• 40:41
  We hate you because you have that belief on that particular topic.
• 40:49
  But people have different beliefs on all kinds of different topics.
• 40:54
  And what are we all supposed to be, cookie cutter and believe exactly the same
• 40:59
  thing?
• 40:59
  That is the biggest single issue about all of this anti-Russian...
• 41:07
  I mean, Russophobia really does exist.
• 41:11
  You're supposed to just hate the entire culture across the board because of
• 41:19
  Vladimir Putin and Ukraine.
• 41:22
  What?
• 41:23
  That makes zero sense at all.
• 41:26
  That'd be like very similar, in fact, to saying that we hate America because
• 41:35
  America bombed Nagasaki and Hiroshima.
• 41:39
  No, no chance for anything different.
• 41:44
  You take one negative and that turns your entire country.
• 41:50
  That's it.
• 41:51
  The culture is gone.
• 41:53
  The sporting activities are gone.
• 41:55
  Everything is gone because of one act.
• 42:00
  There's no doubt that, in my humble opinion, using nuclear weapons was
• 42:07
  something that never should have occurred, but it did occur.
• 42:11
  Does that mean the entire country of the United States should be considered an
• 42:16
  enemy of the world?
• 42:18
  That's what we're doing to Russia on the other end.
• 42:21
  You can disagree with what they've done in Ukraine.
• 42:24
  I know a lot of people that do.
• 42:26
  I've had a lot of people that stopped talking to me because I do not condemn
• 42:30
  that activity.
• 42:32
  I do not go the way that many people have gone and said that you're supposed
• 42:41
  to hate Russia.
• 42:42
  I don't hate Russia over that.
• 42:44
  Frankly, though, I wouldn't anyway.
• 42:47
  Even if I did disagree with the topic, I would still say Russians should be
• 42:52
  allowed to play hockey, should be allowed to participate in the Olympics and
• 42:58
  all these other things.
• 43:00
  When Deputy Foreign Minister Sergei Ryabkov says, listen, we need to develop
• 43:09
  something and fix these strained relationships in other areas of US-Russian
• 43:17
  foreign policy, I think that is very important.
• 43:21
  He gave an interview to Izvestia.
• 43:25
  Now, this was on Tuesday, but this is where he was putting out what he thought
• 43:30
  should come about.
• 43:32
  It is let's make it better on this Ukrainian issue.
• 43:41
  Not take it off the table, but let's understand that there are other issues
• 43:46
  involved, not just this.
• 43:49
  We hope the forthcoming high-level meeting will give an impulse to the
• 43:53
  normalization of bilateral relations that will allow us to move forward in
• 44:00
  several other areas.
• 44:03
  For example, direct passenger flights between Moscow and New York, Moscow and
• 44:11
  San Francisco, these were suspended in 2022 as a result of sanctions.
• 44:18
  Foolish.
• 44:19
  I think that's idiotic, but that's what's happened.
• 44:25
  Ryabkov said that it is clear the leaders are going to focus on other topics as
• 44:30
  well, not just to the Ukrainian conflict.
• 44:34
  Earlier this week, Trump did say he's going to have a feeling this out, but
• 44:42
  many people are not expecting any serious progress on
• 44:53
  this summit or on any other issues like the US confiscated all kinds of Russian
• 44:59
  property after 2022, booted a whole bunch of officials out of the country after
• 45:06
  2022.
• 45:07
  They've gone after RT, Russia Today, the news network.
• 45:13
  I'm going to try to find somebody from RT to speak with me about that issue
• 45:19
  in Moscow, if at all possible.
• 45:24
  Remember, following Trump's inauguration in January, Moscow appointed Alexander
• 45:31
  Darchaev as a new ambassador to Washington.
• 45:36
  Finally in June, nobody met with the Biden administration, but Alexander
• 45:45
  Darchaev met with the US president and told him that he would do everything in
• 45:49
  his power to restore American-Russian relationships and bring them back to
• 45:54
  normal and common sense, is what he said.
• 45:59
  He said that the and the US are destined to have a non-confrontational,
• 46:05
  peaceful existence.
• 46:07
  Frankly, I'm ready for that.
• 46:11
  I'm definitely ready for that.
• 46:13
  That's something that everybody should be ready for it, in fact.
• 46:22
  I hope that is definitely the case.
• 46:29
  Let's see, where else can we go?
• 46:35
  There was something that I think is important about BMW, about
• 46:45
  the Germans, and it's not just Germany.
• 46:50
  This story is indicative of it, but it's not just about BMW, but they're
• 46:56
  showing a 29% drop in profit.
• 47:04
  Isn't that crazy?
• 47:08
  That is unbelievable.
• 47:12
  Let's see, there has also been, you know, from the...
• 47:20
  To tell you about the weakness of what's going on in Europe and to show a
• 47:26
  strength of Russia and what they are doing, the person who can control the
• 47:34
  supply of something is probably stronger than the person who has to beg to
• 47:42
  receive it, yes?
• 47:44
  You don't have to agree with that if you don't, but from a purely economic
• 47:48
  standpoint, if you can turn down a purchaser, a
• 47:56
  demand category, then clearly you're doing something right.
• 48:03
  Russia has banned the export of gasoline.
• 48:08
  They imposed a full ban on gasoline export to any of their petroleum products,
• 48:17
  right?
• 48:18
  They announced this at the end of July, but it's ongoing.
• 48:22
  It took effect.
• 48:23
  The embargo takes place and will run until the end of August and probably be
• 48:27
  extended into September.
• 48:29
  It's a partial ban that was introduced earlier this year, affects traders, oil
• 48:36
  depots, small refineries, right?
• 48:42
  But major refineries producing over a million tons annually are exempt.
• 48:49
  So amid rising wholesale gas prices, Moscow has imposed this embargo.
• 48:55
  Prices at the pump have risen in Russia also since late June, even as the
• 49:02
  country, you know, showed its first deflation, you know, 0
• 49:11
  .05%, very small, but it's still a deflation.
• 49:15
  Gas prices rose just marginally, okay?
• 49:20
  So the official notice said the ban aims to secure a stable situation on the
• 49:25
  domestic fuel market during season of high demand and agricultural field work.
• 49:31
  Wholesale gas prices in the European part of Russia surged as well.
• 49:37
  And high octane gas is up 14%.
• 49:46
  And so experts cite logistical bottleneck, seasonal refinery, and other minor
• 49:56
  issues.
• 49:57
  So I don't know, but they're going up in Europe as well, these prices are.
• 50:07
  There was a similar article about Russia's diesel ban or the, well, it's
• 50:14
  affecting Russian diesel anyway, in the EU means the prices are going up in
• 50:21
  Europe as well.
• 50:23
  And somewhat dramatically, the latest sanctions that ban imports of oil from
• 50:29
  the Russian crude have driven up the prices worldwide.
• 50:36
  So the EU of course reduced their, or introduced, I mean, their 18th packet, as
• 50:44
  they like to call them, the packet of sanctions that they have increased.
• 50:49
  And they barred imports of oil products derived from Russian crude, even if
• 50:55
  it's refined elsewhere.
• 50:57
  And where that's been happening is in India, with the permission of everyone in
• 51:01
  India has said, well, too bad, we're still going to continue to do it, to
• 51:08
  refine it.
• 51:09
  European diesel futures spiked at times hit the equivalent of $110 a barrel.
• 51:19
  Bloomberg says, we think stronger diesel prices will become a persistent
• 51:28
  feature on the global market.
• 51:32
  Diesel now comes from the Middle East or U.S. refineries far, far away.
• 51:40
  And that increases the cost.
• 51:42
  He said that banning fuels made from Russian crude have further tightened
• 51:47
  supply.
• 51:49
  And the EU, and here's the key point, is the EU also sanctioned India's Vadanar
• 51:57
  refinery, part owned by Russia's Rosneft, which has been a major supplier of
• 52:04
  refined Russian crude.
• 52:06
  And people have underestimated this news.
• 52:09
  There is something far more structural in it, he says.
• 52:15
  So I don't know.
• 52:17
  The latest ban builds on those 2022, 23 sanctions that restricted direct
• 52:23
  imports of Russian crude.
• 52:25
  Economists warn that the move could and will backfire.
• 52:31
  I happen to agree.
• 52:33
  Especially if the block stays steady, and I mean BRICS, and the European Union
• 52:40
  block is short on diesel, and they got to get it from far away, like the
• 52:47
  U.S. or the Middle East.
• 52:51
  I can't believe we're still having this sort of economic discussion.
• 53:01
  It just makes no sense at all.
• 53:07
  What else did we want to chat about today?
• 53:14
  Where are we going?
• 53:19
  I told you yesterday about the natural disaster going on in India with that
• 53:24
  town that was wiped off the map.
• 53:29
  There's more to talk about.
• 53:31
  I want to go to a couple of opinion pieces, and here's one.
• 53:37
  This just came out not more than four or five hours ago, is when this came
• 53:45
  out.
• 53:46
  And basically, the title of the article is, Kyiv is trying to kill as many
• 53:53
  civilians as it can before the talks.
• 53:57
  That's depressing, if true.
• 54:01
  And it appears to be.
• 54:02
  I read this article earlier, and I wanted to share the bulk of it with you,
• 54:08
  because I told you about these bombings in Belgrade and Rostov-on-Don.
• 54:15
  I told you about the video I saw where they hit a passenger car with a
• 54:23
  Ukrainian drone.
• 54:27
  And all this two days after Russian Ministry of Defense alleged that Ukraine
• 54:37
  were preparing a false flag operation.
• 54:40
  We'll have to see how that goes.
• 54:44
  But these sorts of incidents are not and never have been isolated.
• 54:50
  They fit a larger operational and political pattern.
• 54:55
  Each time there are to be high-level talks between negotiating teams, here in
• 55:04
  this instance, it'll be Trump and Putin, every time Kyiv steps up attacks on
• 55:10
  Russia's border regions.
• 55:12
  And the results are always the same.
• 55:15
  Plenty of civilian death, plenty of civilian infrastructure damaged, and then
• 55:20
  this attempt to blame it on Russia and cloud the diplomatic process.
• 55:28
  Same thing happened in May and June, right before the second round of the
• 55:33
  Russia-Ukraine talks in Istanbul, when two bridges in Russian territory were
• 55:39
  blown up, rail bridges, remember that?
• 55:42
  And the attacks killed seven civilians and injured 70 others.
• 55:49
  In Moscow's interpretation, the timing was too precise to be a coincidence.
• 55:54
  It was about setting the tone for hostility or provoking Russia into walking
• 56:01
  away from the talks completely.
• 56:05
  But Moscow didn't take the bait and walk away.
• 56:11
  The negotiators still showed up in Istanbul and the Russians always show up.
• 56:19
  They do what is anticipated and expected.
• 56:23
  But what have they come up with so far for this Alaskan summit?
• 56:31
  The alleged Harkov region provocations and the strikes on Belgrade and Rostov
• 56:38
  -on-Don were seen in Moscow as a deliberate backdrop meant to derail the Alaska
• 56:46
  meeting between Putin and Trump, or at least make it so that nothing can be
• 56:55
  accomplished there.
• 56:56
  But just like in Istanbul, Putin's going to show up.
• 57:02
  He's going to say the same thing he would have said.
• 57:06
  He might add, but it isn't going to change his opinion.
• 57:12
  Why will he show up in Alaska?
• 57:15
  I mean, what's the reasoning for this?
• 57:16
  Well, everybody knows.
• 57:18
  The Harkov region provocation, strikes on Belgrade, Rostov and Moscow, these
• 57:24
  are intentionally being brought about to impact the process negatively.
• 57:33
  And so, the attending these talks is more than just showing up, more than just
• 57:41
  optics, political.
• 57:43
  It's a long held preparation.
• 57:46
  Russia is prepared to end the entire conflict, but not at the price of what it
• 57:53
  views as an attack on its core national interests.
• 58:00
  If they walked away now, that wouldn't make a whole lot of sense, would it?
• 58:06
  Because their aim is to secure a resolution that cements Russia's position in
• 58:13
  the world, ends the war on Moscow's terms, not by fighting to the last
• 58:19
  Ukrainian, but by ensuring that the outcome matches Russia's final and
• 58:24
  strategically advantageous position.
• 58:30
  But on the other hand, Zelensky is engaged in a political calculation.
• 58:39
  From his perspective, well, maybe not his perspective, but his motives are
• 58:46
  clear.
• 58:46
  What he's doing, his motives are clear.
• 58:49
  Accepting a peace that involves territorial concession would be a bitter
• 58:54
  political defeat for him personally, and it will spell the end of his political
• 59:00
  career.
• 59:01
  I think his political career is over anyway.
• 59:04
  But more importantly, it would remove the emergency powers that he has seized.
• 59:11
  And he's jailed his opponents, he's destroyed the church, he's taken a lot of
• 59:17
  controversial measures without the need to justify it, because now he's just a
• 59:23
  dictator.
• 59:24
  This includes things like forced conscription, suppression of opposition media,
• 59:31
  intensified crackdown on any sort of dissent in his country.
• 59:36
  These steps have eroded his popularity, not only inside of Ukraine, but
• 59:41
  outside.
• 59:42
  If the war does end, so does all of his legal protections that he's holding
• 59:51
  onto for himself.
• 59:55
  Zelensky has both political and personal incentive to keep the fighting
• 1:00:01
  ongoing, even if it's at significant cost to the population of Ukraine, which
• 1:00:10
  it is.
• 1:00:11
  So then, if you wanna consider what the EU has to add in this, which isn't
• 1:00:19
  a whole lot, but think about this.
• 1:00:23
  European backers also want to prolong the conflict.
• 1:00:29
  They may say as Ukraine is our front line protecting the rest of Europe, but
• 1:00:37
  Russia doesn't care about the rest of Europe.
• 1:00:41
  They care about Ukraine not being in NATO, but I don't think they need Ukraine
• 1:00:46
  to be in the Russian Commonwealth of Independent States or in any sort of
• 1:00:53
  negotiated economic deal.
• 1:00:58
  I think it's foolish not to from the Ukrainian side, but that's not the point
• 1:01:06
  of this war.
• 1:01:07
  So, but if you can continue in Europe and Ukraine to turn Russia into a bad
• 1:01:16
  guy, a bad actor, then it will justify these unpopular
• 1:01:24
  internal policies in Ukraine and in EU countries.
• 1:01:32
  You know, the spending of going up dramatically for military restrictions of
• 1:01:39
  personal freedoms because of national security.
• 1:01:45
  So, for Moscow, this is political theater that depends on the war continuing.
• 1:01:53
  But if you take out the war, the threat narrative collapses and these
• 1:01:59
  governments have nothing to complain about.
• 1:02:03
  What, peace, prosperity?
• 1:02:06
  So, why does it matter that this is in Alaska?
• 1:02:09
  Moscow views the Alaska talks as promising, not because the talks or Trump will
• 1:02:18
  magically end the war in one session, but because of what is not on the table
• 1:02:25
  or present at the table, meaning Zelensky and the EU.
• 1:02:31
  If you can keep them out, it's possible that Putin and Trump could negotiate
• 1:02:38
  something to get rid of this and then enforce it upon the other.
• 1:02:44
  Frankly, that's probably the best that anyone could hope for right now.
• 1:02:49
  So, realistically, acknowledgement of Russia's current battlefield advantages
• 1:02:56
  is going to have to take place.
• 1:03:03
  Everyone knows that Russia is winning this war and that any serious settlement
• 1:03:10
  would have to reflect that fact.
• 1:03:15
  I can't imagine that people think that, oh, gee, Russia should just go back to
• 1:03:22
  the 1991 borders or even the 2022 borders.
• 1:03:27
  That's a nonsensical position because the reality is Russia has paid dearly in
• 1:03:34
  lives, in treasure, equipment to get to where it is located on the battlefield
• 1:03:40
  right now.
• 1:03:42
  Now, by the same token, Ukraine has paid dearly for the cost of losing those
• 1:03:50
  lands, but that doesn't mean that Russia can't be perceived to be correct in
• 1:03:58
  what they have done.
• 1:04:00
  So, I think that Moscow is going to stay the course.
• 1:04:05
  They're going to keep an eye out for these false flag operations, especially in
• 1:04:11
  Kharkov.
• 1:04:12
  They're going to appear and professionally negotiate with Trump.
• 1:04:20
  That's what I say.
• 1:04:21
  Now, what Trump does, Lord knows what he's going to do.
• 1:04:26
  He's an interesting character.
• 1:04:30
  That's all there is to it.
• 1:04:32
  And we will see what happens.
• 1:04:37
  I'm sorry, I'm hearing two things in my headphones, and that was a little bit
• 1:04:41
  odd.
• 1:04:43
  But let's see if I can get to another interesting topic.
• 1:04:53
  Well, according to Mertz yesterday, here's Mertz, the current line of
• 1:05:02
  contact.
• 1:05:04
  So, people are selling this even now to the Z-Man.
• 1:05:09
  The current line of contact should be the starting point in talks.
• 1:05:16
  And this is according to Mertz.
• 1:05:19
  Kyiv is ready to discuss territorial issues with Moscow, said Friedrich Mertz
• 1:05:26
  on Wednesday after his video conference.
• 1:05:30
  And I was waiting to find any news regarding that video conference or perhaps
• 1:05:37
  to watch it.
• 1:05:38
  And I haven't had time to go out and search YouTube yet for the full text
• 1:05:43
  of it or for the full video of it.
• 1:05:46
  I'll see if I can get that done and download it to watch on the plane
• 1:05:51
  or something.
• 1:05:53
  But there was a virtual meeting which involved the leaders of Germany, Finland,
• 1:05:58
  France, UK, Italy, Poland, and the EU, as well as Trump and Zelensky focused on
• 1:06:07
  the summit between Trump and Putin.
• 1:06:11
  Kyiv's backers in Europe were determined to ensure that the security interests
• 1:06:17
  of Ukraine and the EU are what they like to call safeguarded in Alaska, said
• 1:06:25
  Mertz.
• 1:06:25
  And he said that they relayed a message to that effect to Trump.
• 1:06:29
  The group put forth five key points.
• 1:06:33
  One of them is that Kyiv is willing to negotiate on territorial issues, but
• 1:06:39
  only if the current line of contact is used as the starting point.
• 1:06:45
  Legal recognition of Russia's new regions by Western nations is not up for
• 1:06:53
  debate, said Mertz.
• 1:06:56
  Other points include a demand for a ceasefire.
• 1:06:59
  This is never going to happen before any framework agreement can be negotiated.
• 1:07:08
  What are you going to do?
• 1:07:10
  How are you going to, for example, let's say you have a 30-day ceasefire with
• 1:07:17
  the intent to make that ceasefire permanent within 30 days, okay?
• 1:07:22
  Now, Russia has said that they're not going to agree to that for several
• 1:07:26
  reasons.
• 1:07:27
  One, the West cannot be trusted, and Russia is winning.
• 1:07:32
  Russia is routing the Ukrainian forces all up and down the front
• 1:07:42
  lines.
• 1:07:44
  They are beating up upon them.
• 1:07:47
  And so, I think this is important to acknowledge.
• 1:07:53
  And what are you going to give Russia in exchange for saying, all right, we
• 1:08:00
  agree to a 30-day ceasefire?
• 1:08:03
  We already know that Ukraine won't stop mobilization during that period, that
• 1:08:09
  Ukraine won't stop accepting new money and weapons from the West during that
• 1:08:14
  period.
• 1:08:15
  We already know that they won't stop Ukraine from reinforcing positions that
• 1:08:21
  exist now for that 30-day period, so that they have a far more powerful
• 1:08:31
  position when it starts.
• 1:08:33
  So, from the Russian point of view, if those things are present, then you're
• 1:08:39
  basically just starting the conflict over.
• 1:08:43
  And why do that if you're currently winning, if you're currently pushing them
• 1:08:50
  back the other way?
• 1:08:52
  So, Russia has been very consistent that they are open to reaching a deal to
• 1:08:57
  end hostilities, and that, but we got to talk about the facts as they are.
• 1:09:02
  We got to talk about root causes, and we will not agree to a 30-day
• 1:09:08
  ceasefire without something more.
• 1:09:11
  Russia will end the war, they've said repeatedly, and I believe that to be the
• 1:09:17
  case, but they will not just give a random ceasefire without something else
• 1:09:26
  being part of the deal.
• 1:09:28
  And how do we guarantee that that is what is going to end up, that's what's
• 1:09:36
  going to result?
• 1:09:37
  Is that the war, let's say they give them a 30-day ceasefire.
• 1:09:41
  How does that ceasefire turn into an end to the conflict for good?
• 1:09:49
  And what happens if it doesn't?
• 1:09:54
  Well, from Russia's point of view, they got to start all over, and they're
• 1:09:57
  winning right now.
• 1:09:58
  Why would they want to start over?
• 1:10:01
  It's hard to disagree with that logic because it absolutely makes sense.
• 1:10:07
  So, I don't know.
• 1:10:11
  I just don't know.
• 1:10:13
  Where are we gonna go after that?
• 1:10:18
  Let's see.
• 1:10:20
  Another part of the Trump Putin summit says that the Treasury Department has
• 1:10:27
  lifted some restrictions on Russia in a way to facilitate the meeting, right?
• 1:10:35
  So, the US Treasury Department gave a temporary waiver for sanctions on Russia,
• 1:10:40
  which allows transactions related to the upcoming meeting between President
• 1:10:46
  Trump and his counterpart.
• 1:10:47
  The announcement was made Wednesday, yesterday, by the Treasury Office's
• 1:10:53
  Foreign Asset Control.
• 1:10:55
  The sanctions waiver covers transactions that are normally incidental to and
• 1:11:02
  necessary for attendance at or support of meetings in the state of Alaska, but
• 1:11:09
  it doesn't authorize the unblocking or release of any property blocked or
• 1:11:16
  effectively immobilized as a result of sanctions.
• 1:11:20
  So, this pause is set to remain in effect until August the 20th.
• 1:11:25
  The summit is expected to focus on the Ukraine, of course, but there's gonna be
• 1:11:30
  other trade issues that they're gonna talk about.
• 1:11:33
  Both Washington and Moscow have been very cautious about expectations.
• 1:11:39
  I already outlined for you both sides of what they are expecting, and I even
• 1:11:44
  included the EU's periphery.
• 1:11:48
  They are not important.
• 1:11:51
  If Russia and the US resolve something, Trump can force it upon the EU without
• 1:11:59
  too much squabble, although they wanna posture and say that they are important.
• 1:12:06
  Everybody knows they aren't.
• 1:12:10
  Who knows what's gonna happen, but...
• 1:12:12
  And nobody has outlined what these specific waivers of sanctions have done.
• 1:12:20
  My thought process would be that some company providing security on the side of
• 1:12:30
  the Russian side would need to be able to travel to provide that structure and
• 1:12:39
  support to the Putin team, and that that cannot be done.
• 1:12:43
  If these sanctions are in place, they can't legally be done.
• 1:12:47
  And so, the Trump administration has modified these sanctions while this
• 1:12:54
  meeting has taken place for a five day period, all the way up until the 20th.
• 1:12:59
  So, I don't know.
• 1:13:00
  It'd be nice to know which they are, but without filing a sunshine request or
• 1:13:04
  knowing a little better exactly what they are, being part of the government, I
• 1:13:10
  guess we won't know the answer to those questions.
• 1:13:12
  I did a search to see if I could find anything relevant or recent regarding it,
• 1:13:22
  and so far, I haven't found it.
• 1:13:26
  So, there you have it.
• 1:13:30
  I already told you about Kiev trying to kill as many civilians as possible
• 1:13:35
  before this.
• 1:13:38
  Let's talk about the boycott proposed in agriculture
• 1:13:50
  by Indian farmers.
• 1:13:53
  Okay?
• 1:13:53
  Farmers groups in India have called for a boycott.
• 1:13:58
  Now, think about this.
• 1:13:59
  We're trying to force India to do what?
• 1:14:04
  Stop trading in Russian oil.
• 1:14:08
  Okay?
• 1:14:09
  That's the plan.
• 1:14:10
  But when these things, when the US said, well, we're going to sanction any
• 1:14:14
  country that buys Russian gas, that would be China, that would be Brazil, that
• 1:14:18
  would be India, that would, and quite a few others, but we're going to sanction
• 1:14:22
  those people.
• 1:14:24
  So far, India, Brazil, China have all told the US to go pound sand, and you're
• 1:14:28
  not going to get us in this way.
• 1:14:31
  This is in relation to that position, and now, it's stretching into other areas
• 1:14:39
  of production, other markets, if you will, not just oil.
• 1:14:47
  So, now, farmers groups in India are calling for a boycott of US products over
• 1:14:54
  tariffs, and they want New Delhi to open up its own agricultural markets to
• 1:15:01
  American companies.
• 1:15:04
  So, they're still in these trade negotiations.
• 1:15:11
  Washington imposed 25% on Indian imports and then added another 25% for the
• 1:15:18
  South Asian country's continued purchase of Russian oil, and the second set
• 1:15:24
  will be implemented beginning on August 27th, but New Delhi calls for the US to
• 1:15:33
  not input these, of course, and say that it's unfair, unjustified,
• 1:15:38
  unreasonable, and that no farmers in India should buy Coca-Cola, right?
• 1:15:46
  It's time for us to drink lemonade or buffalo milk at home, said a protesting
• 1:15:51
  farmer.
• 1:15:53
  Indian agriculture produce going to the US will be under that 50% tariff
• 1:16:00
  regime, and due to the hike, farmers are only going to get half of the profit,
• 1:16:05
  and the US will get 50% more from the import tax.
• 1:16:09
  Well, yeah, that's how it works, but Narendra Modi, who's the Indian PM, he
• 1:16:18
  spoke up for the farmers.
• 1:16:21
  He said, for us, our farmers' welfare is far more important.
• 1:16:26
  India will never compromise on the well-being of its farmers, dairy sector, or
• 1:16:32
  its fishermen.
• 1:16:34
  Over the past five months, Washington and New Delhi have discussed various
• 1:16:39
  trade deals, but recently, they had these big differences when it came to
• 1:16:44
  exemption for agriculture and dairy products because the US wants India to stop
• 1:16:54
  trade in oil with Russia, but agriculture and its sector is the largest source
• 1:17:02
  of livelihood in India.
• 1:17:04
  About 70% of the country's rural households primarily use the industry of
• 1:17:14
  agriculture, with 82% of farmers being small and not these huge conglomerates,
• 1:17:21
  so this will be an issue, but remember, and I've talked about this, I talk
• 1:17:28
  about this all the time, that BRICS is going to be increasingly important,
• 1:17:39
  especially the more the US tries to force its will upon the rest of the world.
• 1:17:46
  The rest of the world doesn't want to be forced.
• 1:17:50
  If you had a superior product, it'd be different, but the only thing we can do
• 1:17:55
  is say, well, we have the biggest market.
• 1:17:59
  Yeah, but multiple middle-sized markets can make up that difference, and your
• 1:18:08
  tariffs and your sanctions are driving these other countries to just such
• 1:18:16
  arrangements.
• 1:18:17
  That is exactly what's happening.
• 1:18:21
  This prior article, this prior discussion has been all about what Trump
• 1:18:31
  is forcing.
• 1:18:34
  When he...
• 1:18:37
  Trump's latest attacks, if you want to call them that, on India and BRICS
• 1:18:41
  countries have largely failed.
• 1:18:46
  What positivity has come out of it for Trump except to say, we're putting big
• 1:18:51
  tariffs on you?
• 1:18:52
  He's got a lot of Americans believing that this is a good thing and a lot
• 1:18:55
  of Americans thinking it's the bad thing.
• 1:18:58
  I, for my part, don't care one way or the about them, but it's clear that
• 1:19:05
  it's driving the rest of the world to make a more concerted effort to
• 1:19:15
  get rid of this type of behavior from the major, the dominant global player.
• 1:19:24
  It's making BRICS even more popular.
• 1:19:29
  They aspire, the BRICS countries, they want to play a greater political,
• 1:19:36
  economic, and financial role in global affairs.
• 1:19:39
  That's what they talk about.
• 1:19:40
  When I went to the summit last year, that's exactly what they were talking
• 1:19:43
  about.
• 1:19:44
  That's what all of us journalists were talking about when we were over there.
• 1:19:50
  These shifts in economic and political and financial power, especially toward
• 1:19:55
  emerging markets and middle countries instead of just one big country on the
• 1:20:03
  end, these activities are not going to go away.
• 1:20:10
  BRICS countries have already begun to use their national currencies to trade
• 1:20:14
  with each other.
• 1:20:15
  This is increasing and it's going to go up.
• 1:20:19
  Russia pays India and China in the ruble.
• 1:20:25
  India pays China and Russia with the rupee.
• 1:20:28
  China pays Russia and India in the yuan.
• 1:20:32
  A lot of countries are starting to pay with the yuan and not the dollar.
• 1:20:37
  Long term, what's that going to do to the US?
• 1:20:40
  Since we're so debt heavy, it's really going to hurt.
• 1:20:46
  I mean, really going to hurt eventually.
• 1:20:50
  Now, is it something that'll happen overnight?
• 1:20:52
  I don't know, but I've been telling this story for at least a year that every
• 1:20:57
  quarter, China is getting rid of 60 billion in US debt that they aren't
• 1:21:05
  rebuying later.
• 1:21:08
  Even our allies, even partner countries are beginning to get rid of US debt.
• 1:21:17
  They're not buying any more.
• 1:21:19
  Saudi Arabia isn't taking the oil dollar as much as it did previously in
• 1:21:26
  payment.
• 1:21:27
  The oil dollar is backed by what?
• 1:21:32
  US debt.
• 1:21:34
  These are huge issues.
• 1:21:37
  Today, almost all trade is some crazy number, like 97%, whereas literally only
• 1:21:46
  two, three years ago, it was like 14%.
• 1:21:48
  Now, between Russia and China, literally 98% of the trade is not conducted in
• 1:21:57
  the dollar.
• 1:21:58
  It's conducted in the ruble or the yuan.
• 1:22:02
  India is encouraging this same sort of activity.
• 1:22:06
  A significant portion between India and Russia is now settled using rupee ruble
• 1:22:13
  through their national banks instead of going through SWIFT or converting
• 1:22:18
  everything to dollars.
• 1:22:20
  Washington can't use these secondary sanctions to prevent countries like India
• 1:22:27
  from using the dollar to trade with Russia and then oppose de-dollarization if
• 1:22:31
  these countries are compelled to use such alternative payments.
• 1:22:36
  It's not working.
• 1:22:37
  If the US continues to weaponize the dollar, it will lead to more de
• 1:22:43
  -dollarization.
• 1:22:45
  There's no doubt about that.
• 1:22:47
  Trump is the one that should be concerned and not the other way around.
• 1:22:53
  Most of these countries are prepared to take on this short-term pain because
• 1:23:00
  they know that long-term, this is exactly where they want to be.
• 1:23:06
  Trump is exacerbating such disruption by his frequent use of sanctions as a
• 1:23:13
  political weapon.
• 1:23:14
  Now, he's not been alone in that.
• 1:23:17
  Biden before him, Obama before them have also been using these tariffs and
• 1:23:26
  sanctions as a weapon.
• 1:23:30
  People are tired of it.
• 1:23:32
  Why should you be allowed to severely impact our country just because you want
• 1:23:41
  to tell us what to do?
• 1:23:43
  Do you have any respect for the sovereignty of other nations?
• 1:23:48
  Most of these BRICS places say no.
• 1:23:51
  The people who are listening aren't just the five BRICS members.
• 1:23:56
  They're the 38 that want to join something.
• 1:24:00
  They're in varying stages of having joined or of participation with the BRICS
• 1:24:06
  countries.
• 1:24:08
  Trump using tariffs like a lever, like in Brazil, and Brazil just completely
• 1:24:14
  said, no, thank you.
• 1:24:16
  Did you see the video last night about coffee?
• 1:24:22
  The largest supplier of coffee to the United States, Brazil, Arabic of beans is
• 1:24:30
  what they call.
• 1:24:31
  And so all kinds of coffee refineries in the United States are having to figure
• 1:24:38
  out where they go from here.
• 1:24:40
  And remember, the only way we get coffee in America, they have specialty places
• 1:24:45
  like in Hawaii or Puerto Rico, but they aren't making coffee anywhere else.
• 1:24:52
  Brazil has been the largest and Lula basically told Trump to pound sand, bill
• 1:25:00
  it.
• 1:25:02
  You want to do that?
• 1:25:03
  We'll find other markets for our coffee.
• 1:25:05
  There are other people who will buy it.
• 1:25:08
  So Trump's repeated targeting of BRICS since his return to the Oval Office in
• 1:25:13
  January isn't working.
• 1:25:17
  He threatens countries with tariffs.
• 1:25:19
  He threatens them with sanctions.
• 1:25:20
  But in reality, the BRICS summit that was actually this year was held in Brazil
• 1:25:25
  showed no sign of being intimidated.
• 1:25:30
  We are not intimidated.
• 1:25:32
  On the other hand, they did show that American economic coercion may well drive
• 1:25:40
  them to the counter, which is, well, we better de-dollarize faster.
• 1:25:50
  And that appears to be happening even now.
• 1:25:53
  So in Washington, the administration appears to not understand the realities of
• 1:26:02
  life in these global trends regarding BRICS, regarding world currency,
• 1:26:09
  regarding the global south, all of these things.
• 1:26:13
  Trump positions himself as a peacemaker and requests openly, give me a Nobel
• 1:26:21
  Peace Prize, but then he wants to destroy economies with sanctions, tariffs,
• 1:26:30
  anything that he can.
• 1:26:31
  He's just using a different form of attack mechanism, right?
• 1:26:36
  But he's still attacking people.
• 1:26:38
  So I don't know.
• 1:26:40
  Threatening China as a BRICS member with 100% tariffs, he just does it
• 1:26:46
  casually, just, well, here it goes again.
• 1:26:48
  Remember, these things were delayed another 90 days recently.
• 1:26:52
  Every time it comes up, he just delays it another 30 days, right?
• 1:26:56
  He even talked about bombing Beijing if China invaded Taiwan.
• 1:27:04
  And he sometimes just can't keep his mouth shut about the way these things seem
• 1:27:12
  to go.
• 1:27:13
  Trump seems to believe that these organizations like BRICS, like China, like
• 1:27:18
  India, like Brazil, Russia, they cannot function or survive without the US.
• 1:27:24
  That's what he thinks.
• 1:27:26
  I think he really thinks that, that we are so important that they have to be
• 1:27:30
  there and you have to have our financial contributions.
• 1:27:34
  That is Europe.
• 1:27:35
  That is Ukraine.
• 1:27:37
  That's not the rest of the world.
• 1:27:39
  So in reality, the US is going to start losing its voice and its own leadership
• 1:27:46
  will be impacted by these international events that we are driving, that Trump
• 1:27:53
  is forcing upon the world.
• 1:27:56
  The space that is vacated by the US will be filled by others, especially China,
• 1:28:03
  especially BRICS.
• 1:28:05
  Beijing has carved out enormous influence in the UN institutions and it's now
• 1:28:11
  the second largest contributor to the UN.
• 1:28:14
  That's gonna continue.
• 1:28:16
  But Washington's also been bullying Europe and is destroying its own solidarity
• 1:28:22
  interests there.
• 1:28:24
  US absence from these organizations will have even less impact if that happens.
• 1:28:30
  The more the world learns to manage without the US being the dominant player,
• 1:28:37
  the more they're gonna do it.
• 1:28:39
  And it won't happen overnight, like I always say, but it appears to be coming.
• 1:28:46
  And these US decisions will accelerate and the influence of the US is going to
• 1:28:53
  decelerate on the global level as other important people like Modi, like Xi
• 1:29:02
  Jinping, like Russia, all of these things are accurate, especially when America
• 1:29:10
  has treated everyone like an economic enemy recently, and many as political and
• 1:29:17
  military enemies quite recently as well.
• 1:29:21
  My name is Samuel Trapp.
• 1:29:23
  You've been listening to International Flavor.
• 1:29:26
  You can download all of my past podcasts at www.internationalflavor.com.
• 1:29:31
  You can listen to me nightly, Sunday through Thursday, 9pm Chicago time, that's
• 1:29:39
  Central Standard Time in the US, and you can do that at www.damradio.com
• 1:29:46
  forward slash live.
• 1:29:48
  I very much appreciate each of you participating in the show, and I hope that
• 1:29:55
  you continue to do so in the future.
• 1:29:58
  Have a good night.