Date: Friday, 03 January 2025
https://ericzuesse.substack.com/p/biden-adm-knew-in-april-that-russia
Biden Adm. knew in April that Russia would win in Ukraine, but kept it secret, Alexander Mercouris documents.
3 January 2025, by Eric Zuesse. (All of my recent articles can be seen here.)
Here (without ads — but with the time-markings) is the video of his explanation of this, and the transcript of the relevant passage (in the youtube version. which is interrupted by ads):
21:04
Russians continue advancing, and for the moment the, um,
21:10
Administration, the new Trump Administration, is not putting forward proposals that the Russians consider
21:18
that they can work with. They see it all as very nebulous and very
21:24
uncertain. They believe that, um,
21:30
the Trump Administration does not have a proper
21:38
understanding of the realities of the situation on the battlefronts. Anyway, um, there has been
21:47
another report by Russia's intelligence agency the SVR, which came out on Friday, uh today,
21:55
and, um, it reads as follows: The information available to the SVR,
22:02
Russia's premier intelligence service, suggests that Western political
22:09
elites note the Ukrainian Army's reduced capability to withstand the thrust
22:16
by the Russian Armed Forces. It is not ruled out that the
22:22
Ukrainian Army's defenses may collapse soon,
22:28
and the SVR report goes on to say the outgoing administration of US President
22:34
Biden seeks to avoid the scenario, making emphasis on the deliveries of more sophisticated weapons including longer
22:41
range missiles. However, the White House admits that supplying the Ukrainian army
22:48
with material only, is insufficient for stabilizing the front lines. The
22:54
Ukrainian authorities have already prepared a decision to lower the mobilization age to 18 and will adopt it
23:03
shortly. Washington demanded recently that Zalenski lower the mobilization
23:09
call up age to 18 years. Kiev has prepared the corresponding decision, and
23:15
will adopt it shortly. Meanwhile, Eastern European countries bordering Ukraine are
23:21
already quietly preparing for receiving new waves of Ukrainian refugees who this
23:28
time will be fleeing not from the imaginary threat from Russia — well, the Russians are advancing, so the threat
23:34
might not be quite so imaginary as the SVR says — but, anyway, uh, not from an
23:40
imaginary threat from Russia, but from a real danger of getting a one-way ticket
23:45
to the front line. It is believed that residents of Kiev-controlled territories would be ready for everything to get out
23:52
of the hands of the Ukrainian ruling regime that has sold off their lives to
23:57
their masters on the other side of the ocean for a penny; the West is aware that
24:04
the conflict is of an existential nature for Russia and it will not back down. It
24:10
has been clear from the very start that Kiev's refusal, to negotiate, drives
24:15
Ukrainians into slaughter and Zalenski persistently follows the the path of
24:21
destroying the people of Ukraine. Well, that was the SVR. Now I am going to suggest
24:29
that this statement by the SVR that came out today might have been partly
24:37
inspired by a very interesting article that has appeared in Washington DC in
24:43
The Hill to be precise, one of the most interesting news magazines on
24:48
political matters, in fact an absolutely essential read if you're interested in
24:53
political matters in the United States. Anyway, a very interesting
24:58
article in the hill has been published, uh, just
25:06
before the new year, and which was authored by, um, an analyst called James
25:12
Durso who writes extensively for publications like The
25:18
Hill and other similarly weighty publications in the United States, and
25:25
James Durso, I should say, is a former naval officer um, he has been described to me
25:34
as a neocon. I have to take some issue with that.
25:40
I've been reading various articles and things that he has written at various places on the contrary, he seems to me to
25:48
have been a consistent critic of the whole project of eastward expansion of
25:55
NATO. He was one of those people who appears to have predicted that this project
26:01
of expanding NATO eastwards would provoke a war in Ukraine and he
26:07
also um is one of these people
26:12
who is very critical of the whole American policy, the whole American role,
26:20
the role followed by the current administration, of supporting the
26:27
continuation of the war in Ukraine. Anyway, this article which the hill
26:35
published on, as I said, New Year's Eve, um, is entitled “Hold Ukraine accountable for
26:43
corruption, misspent aid” and uh the article goes into great detail about the
26:50
corruption in Ukraine which I am not going to return to because to say it
26:56
straightforwardly, um I don't myself, um, feel that on this specific question of
27:04
Ukrainian corruption, which has been discussed extensively both on this channel and by us on the Duran and by
27:12
many many others, the article says anything that is particularly new,
27:18
but midway through the article, this
27:23
bombshell is dropped: in April 2024 the
27:29
leadership of Ukraine's Military Intelligence participated in a series of
27:35
roundtable discussions at Washington think tanks and policy
27:42
makers. A former American diplomat familiar with the visit told this author [Durso],
27:49
quote: they expressed their reservations about
27:54
continuing fullscale conventional warfare. They were concerned that Ukraine had lost momentum and would be
28:03
overwhelmed. They advocated instead for increased asymmetric warfare inside
28:09
Russia to gain an upper hand in negotiations to end the war. end
28:16
quote. The result of this engagement was that the chief of military intelligence Kirilo Budanov was muzzled by Zelensky's
28:25
team in a series of media attacks in PR government websites. His key deputies
28:32
were fired without his consent, weakening his
28:37
agency. All very interesting. So, what does this tell us? It
28:43
tells us that in April, April 2024, shortly after the fall of of Avdevka in
28:53
February, and the fall of Ocheretyne in March,
29:00
um, Budanov — I presume that is who is meant
29:06
by the leadership of Ukraine's Military Intelligence — came to Washington with his
29:13
various aides and participated in a series of roundtable
29:18
discussions, and these involved Washington think tanks and policy makers.
29:25
Now, I heard nothing at all about these discussions at the time, and I assume that the discussions took place
29:33
in private, and the reference to think tanks and policy makers suggests to me that
29:43
members of the administration, senior members of the administration — probably the intelligence community, probably
29:50
people from the Department of Defense, and presumably the various think tanks;
29:56
and, of course, the think tank in Washington are very much a part
30:03
of the permanent government of the United States [i.e., Deep State] — they were all involved. So, this was a series of discussions about
30:10
the state of the war happening directly after a series of important events, the
30:18
defeat in 2023 of Ukraine's summer counter
30:23
offensive, the failure of the Krynky operation, the the fall of
30:30
Avdevka, the capture by the Russians of
30:37
Ocheretino, and the start of the great Russian offensive
30:42
westwards; and, by the way, shortly after, of the Russian
30:49
advance on Toretsk, and around the same time, there
30:55
were, as I remember, rumors about a pending Russian offensive in Kharkiv
31:03
region. All of this was going on in April, and Budanov and his people briefed
31:12
the people in Washington that Ukraine was going to lose the war because this is how
31:18
I understand these words: they expressed their reservations about continuing
31:24
fullscale conventional warfare, fullscale conventional warfare,
31:30
they were concerned that Ukraine had lost momentum and would be overwhelmed,
31:35
they advocated instead for increased asymmetric warfare inside Russia to gain
31:41
an upper hand in negotiations to end the war so Kiriilo Budanov and his people said
31:49
the Russians are too strong, they are going to win, we are going to lose the
31:54
war, and that was disclosed by Ukrainian military
32:01
Intelligence by Budanov and his people to the Americans in April. Now, April is a
32:08
very interesting month. It was in April that President Biden signed off on the
32:15
$61 billion appropriation which had just been voted
32:20
through by Congress and which included a significant allocation I think it was
32:27
about $20 billion [actually $44.3 billion military, and $7.9 billion non-military, aid to Ukraine, $52.2 total, (the rest to the Pentagon)], for Ukraine, um, it was also in April that the
32:34
United States first began its debate in connection with the Kharkiv offensive, of
32:41
authorizing missile strikes using ATACMS and Storm Shadow missiles inside
32:48
Russia, as I recently discussed an article in the New York Times has now
32:54
disclosed that it was at around this time that the United States government that the Biden Administration
33:01
actually made the decision to authorize missile strikes on Russia though they
33:09
postponed implementation of that decision until after the November
33:18
election. They also at about this time pressed forward
33:25
with the peace conference so called in Switzerland and of course there was also
33:31
a NATO Summit meeting at the end of June so all of this was going on at about
33:38
this time and it's likely that the reference
33:46
to increased asymmetric warfare inside Russia to gain an upper hand in
33:53
negotiations to end the war is an elliptic reference to the Kursk
34:00
operation, um, which I and many others
34:08
believe was intended to capture the Kursk nuclear power plant in order to
34:15
try to force the Russians into some kind of
34:22
compromise. That after all seems to me to conform closely with the concept of
34:28
asymmetric warfare to gain an upper hand in negotiations, just saying. It's also
34:35
likely that it was about this time also that a further green light was given to
34:40
the campaign of sabotage and assassinations inside Russia which we
34:47
have seen including the recent assassination of course of General
34:52
Kirillov, but the key point is that in April in
34:58
April the Biden Administration, the American government,
35:04
was briefed by Ukrainian military intelligence that the war was
35:10
effectively lost. Ukraine could not win a conventional war against the Russian
35:17
army if it continued fighting. There was an increased prospect
35:24
of it being eventually overwhelmed, and yet the Biden Administration
35:32
persisted, it didn't take immediate action to end the
35:38
war. It's completely unclear to me whether it briefed Congress which had of
35:44
course just voted through this enormous appropriation by the way, um, just before
35:52
the election, it actually approached Congress to see
35:57
whether Congress might be prepared to grant a further appropriation to keep
36:03
the war in Ukraine going, and instead it
36:09
went for escalation it went forward with the idea
36:14
of launching missile strikes against Russia, it also went forward with the
36:25
plan or at least looks like it gave some kind of agreement to the plan
36:32
for this operation in Kursk region and all kinds of
36:39
other things um about which we know a great deal less so all of this appears
36:45
to have happened in April, and of course the war has gone on.
36:53
None of the things that were decided in April have worked. Kursk has proved a
37:00
disaste,r the Swiss peace conference was a flop, the um additional, the missile
37:08
strikes on Russia which began in November have failed to achieve anything
37:15
of any military significance, all that they've done is highlighted how strong the Russian air
37:22
defense system, is and how many many missiles 500 ATACMS missiles the Biden
37:30
Administration has wasted on this enterprise, and they've also provided the
37:38
Russians with a perfect opportunity to
37:43
um display the capabilities of the new Oreshnik
37:50
missile system. Here again we get a brief glimpse
37:57
behind the curtain, and we could see
38:02
how strange and how frankly
38:09
dishonest the approach to this war of the Biden Administration has
38:15
consistently been. Back in April, they were talking about a stalemate in the
38:22
war. Ukrainian Military Intelligence had actually briefed them that on the
38:28
contrary the war was being lost. Well, there we are,
38:35
so it's been known by the Biden people since April
38:42
that things were going wrong. It's been presumably fairly well known by quite a
38:47
few people in Washington that the war was going wrong. I do wonder by the way
38:54
whether anybody briefed General Kellogg and Fred Fleits about this, because as it
39:00
turns out, they were penning a report around this very same
39:05
time about possible negotiations with the Russians which were also predicated
39:11
on the idea that there would be some kind of a, that there was some kind of a stalemate in the war, which we now know
39:20
wasn't the case, and needless to say it seems that Donald Trump [who chose Kellogg as adviser] who already by
39:28
April was the certain candidate of the Republican party, uh, going forward into
39:36
the election. It seems almost certain that he was not briefed about this.
39:42
PS: If you like this article, please email it to all your friends or otherwise let others know about it. None of the U.S.-and-allied ‘news’-media will likely publish it (nor link to it, since doing that might also hurt them with Google or etc.). I am not asking for money, but I am asking my readers to spread my articles far and wide, because I specialize in documenting what the Deep State is constantly hiding — what the ‘news’-media ignore if they can, and deny if they must. This is, in fact, today’s samizdat.
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Investigative historian Eric Zuesse’s latest book, AMERICA’S EMPIRE OF EVIL: Hitler’s Posthumous Victory, and Why the Social Sciences Need to Change, is about how America took over the world after World War II in order to enslave it to U.S.-and-allied billionaires. Their cartels extract the world’s wealth by control of not only their ‘news’ media but the social ‘sciences’ — duping the public.
