the United States experienced witnessed two speeches yesterday one by President Biden from the Oval Office from the Resolute desk as he uh repeatedly reminded us the other by Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu delivered to Congress I will say straight away that though the content of neither speech surprised me both speeches basically to my mind give a good illustration of the many problems that we face today and why those problems for the moment at least continue to get worse let's start with President Biden's speech it lasted 11 minutes it was delivered as I said from the overal office from the Resolute desk um I'm not quite sure why President Biden felt the need to harop on the fact but anyway he did um and well what I had been hoping that he would at least provide was an explanation of the events of the last couple of days the events that caused him to change his mind and to decide that he was not going to seek the nomination of his party as a candidate in November's presidential election after all right up until Saturday we were getting reports which appeared to originate from him and from his original team that he had every intention of standing well there was no real explanation the one comment that President Biden did make over the course of his address was that he acted in order to preserve party Unity now I have to say that I found that a troubling use of words in a recent video I discussed the somewhat Soviet style of the events of the weekend the strange way in which um President Biden announced his decision that he would not be standing as a candidate in November's in the November's election the equally extraord way in which various members of the democratic party appeared to unite behind Camala Harris as the candidate um I said that it did all bring rather strongly to mind the history of the Soviet Union especially in its later phases The Disappearance of the old leader the appearance of the new the effortless transfer of loyalty from the old leader to you and all of that and here we have President Biden talking about the unity of the party which again I have to say to people of my generation and um my course of studies does again smack a little of some of the things that used to happen in the Soviet Union um not so long ago the unity of the party well Soviet officials would have been very well familiar with that particular Concept in fact in one of the power struggles that took place in the Soviet Union the losing faction was labeled by the Soviet leadership as the anti-party group anyway that was the only explanation that President Biden gave that he wanted to preserve the Unity of the party at an existential moment as we in the history of the United States as to that we will come back to in a moment anyway he did not discuss his health he did not discuss the questions about his health his um the issues that have been constantly discussed and talked about in the media by members of his own party over the last few weeks for the record over the course of this address well he spoke in a sort of horse voice as he has increasing increasingly been doing in recent months um his face was largely impassive but he managed to get through the speech without too much fluffing the words came out clearly he moved his hands I thought that he looked better for example the he did in his debate with Donald Trump just just say but anyway he said nothing about that he didn't discuss his health he didn't discuss the reasons why his party might have been divided if he had chosen to stay um he said nothing about um the complaints and concerns that um had been raised about him it might have been a good and correct thing to say for example that though he did not think that the concerns that people had expressed about his health and his um physical and mental state were Justified that he felt perfectly capable himself of remaining president he did understand that doubts were growing he did acknowledge that he his um conduct of the recent debate was not perhaps such as to have allayed those concerns and in light of this he felt that the moment perhaps had come for him to move on well that would have been a graceful way of explaining what had happened but of course he didn't do that he just avoided the whole topic he didn't provide any reason why he would want to step down he provided no reason at all why he intends to stay as president though it's quite clear that he does in fact intend to do so and frankly I don't think this is correct I think this is not treating the American people correctly or properly they are after all according to the Constitution The Sovereign power in the United States I think that they are entitled at least to an explanation from the president why he is not seeking reelection in November given that just a few days ago he indicated that he was but as I said he did not provide that nor did he provide much in the way of reassurance or explanation of why having taken the decision to go he insists nonetheless that until January he's going to stay the contradictions I suppose in that made it too difficult even for his wordsmiths and I think that he probably also felt that if he had discussed the concerns about his health too much that might have brought up the issue of whether it's really appropriate for him to remain president at this time and well we did get some insight into his thinking and to the kind of person um politically speaking that Joe Biden has become he used one phrase which to my mind confirms that Joe Biden the man has now completely assimilated the Neon uh beliefs he was not one always by the way um the Joe Biden of the 1970s and 1980s and I remember the Joe Biden of the 1980s was not yet the kind of Hardline neon that he has become there were people who you could describe as holding neon views in the 1980s but Joe Biden at that time was not one of them but now he has gone over to that complete and in this I believe in this one thing I believe he is completely sincere and he again used that phrase he what gave that away was his use of that phrase which he has used before but that phrase which is Central to the ne cono which is that the United States is not just a nation it is an idea now I have expressed my own deep concern about this this mystical view that the United States is something more than its people than its institutions than it systems of law than its governance but that it's something that exists also in the metaphysical realm of ideas I think that is something that automatically is going to put the United States in conflict with most other countries organized and perhaps representing what the neocons would say was a different set of ideas and in terms of the United States itself it constrains the United States if this view is accepted to act in particular ways and also not to act not to conduct actual necessary changes and reforms which the United States itself might need in order to evolve and develop properly after all if the United States is an idea then you could argue that any change to the United States is in some way or form a betrayal of that idea and again that to my mind partly explains the level of stasis the stagnation that exists in the United States today and it also explains partly why US foreign policies are so difficult to change why the United States finds it so difficult to come to terms with other countries with which it is in Conflict doing so again is going to be represented as a betrayal of the idea of the United States that the United States is supposed to be so I don't like that phrase as I said the Neons constantly use it and President Biden did in his address that brings us to to the next part of his address the part of his address which I personally found the most disturbing of all because perhaps in part because this idea of the United States that the neocons have an idea which I suspect most American people are indifferent and uninterested in is being challenged in certain ways some of the economic and foreign policy um Arrangements of the United States are indeed under some sort of challenge well President Biden depicted the United States of today as being surrounded by enemies on all sides enemies outside China and Russia enemies within and though he didn't Define or identify his enemies it was absolutely obvious who he was talking about and um it was he was talking about his adversary in the election and the political movement which that adversary represents and according to President Biden all of these various forces the ones outside and the ones within all apparently have the same purpose and the same objective which is to destroy democracy democracy being of course that which the Neons um are supposed to embody and represent and as I said Biden himself is now nowadays clearly one um it it was most interesting again how Biden the president didn't really go into any of the detail of what he exactly means when he talks about democracy he didn't really talk about institutions in any meaningful way he didn't talk about the American people in my opinion in any very meaningful way either he gave a long list of his various achievements um some of which one could challenge but he doesn't didn't address for example or acknowledge any more any of the concerns the many concerns that millions of Americans have about their in the as they go about their everyday lives those didn't really seem to um concern or interest him very much but he did talk about the enemies all around especially I have to say the enemies within and again as a result he raised the whole issue of the election in November to almost existential Heights and it was striking again to me that he talked about political violence political violence being unacceptable but he didn't of course mention the one act of political violence the most extreme Act of political violence that has taken place in recent weeks which is of course the attempted assassination of his opponent which came well just a millimeter or perhaps Less close to success that really didn't register with the president at all and I have to say I think this kind of apocalyptic IND language and imagery is extremely concerning it is deeply polarizing it is very in JY immediately after the assassination attempt we were hearing statements and comments about how the president himself and other people on his side would attempt to moderate their language not to give or appear to give um any kind of support to the actions that were made the the attempted assassination that took place of Donald Trump but sure enough in his address to the American people it seemed to me that the president was back at that all over again well oblique and heavy picture um as the president departs the scene he was supposed to be a um stabilizing unifying force this was how his presidency was represented when he became president in 2021 but it seems to me that his actions on The contary Have sowed and intensified divisions even as they have place the United States in what seemed to be confrontations with the other great powers for which the president of course and his team seem to have no answers anyway that's all I got to say about this address a very worrying one but at least at least we can hope that at some point over the next 6 months he he really will be going now the other address Prim prime minister Netanyahu in Congress was from a rhetorical point of view vastly more skillful Joe Biden as I well remember was quite an accomplished orator in his Heyday in the 18 in the 1980s and 1990s but he was never an orator of the standard that prime minister n yahu is and Netanyahu came to Congress and delivered exactly the kind of fiery defiant immensely manipulative speech which one would expect of him he played most of Congress like a violin he said all the things that they wanted to hear he was again extremely skillful and Conjuring up once again all the old Tunes from the 1930s and 1940s the uh churchillian rhetoric in fact the references to Churchill and to Roosevelt the I thought astonishing comparison of 7th of December 1941 with 7th of October 2023 which it seemed to me Americans might actually recoil towards but anyway let who made it he also for the first time that I think he has done he actually attacked certain groups of Americans he said some extraordinary things about the protesters he completely misrepresented their intentions um smearing them in the most crude way and he made an astonishing claim that many of them were being funded by Iran an allegation for which he provided no evidence whatsoever and which well for all I know one or two people might have received money from Iran I can't definitely say that isn't the case but certainly it is not true of the vast majority of them it's strange to me that Netanyahu can come to Congress as I said see things like that about a section of American society and it goes virtually unchallenged in the media and elsewhere but anyway put all that aside it was a very skillful very clever um speech one which will undoubtedly have shed up his support and the support for his policies in Congress but for me it could not conceal the ultimate holess behind behind the entire speech because Netanyahu came to congress with no ideas at all of how to lead Israel and by the way the United States out of the terrible predicament in which they find themselves I spoke I said that he was talking again using again to Chilean rhetoric he was talking about giv me the tools and give us the tools and we will do the job phrase attributed to Winston Churchill when he was pressing the United States um to uh enact lend leas so you know we had all of that again we had um the talk about Hamas and the tremendous evil that Hamas represented all of that was there but there was no clear explanation of any kind of strategy any kind of political strategy for Israel going forward no plan other than to go on doing that which Israel and prime minister Netanyahu have been doing ever since 7th of October which is to launch unending attacks on Hamas in Gaza turning Hamas into a completely destroyed place a humanitarian disaster for which by the way he appeared to blame Hamas but anyway all of that and hint always about larger Wars and new nates to be set up in the Middle East to confront Iran and all that kind of thing things we've heard from him many many times before but things which visibly are not working we're now in July 2024 there's been fighting in Gaza ever since October and Hamas is still there in fact he talked about how Israel needs to maintain control military control of Gaza apparently indefinitely so it seems War War Without End in Gaza and confrontation without end with Iran and talk about setting up a NATO type system in the Middle East with whom precisely with the Egyptians with the jordanians with the Saudis well that might have been a viable option a few years ago but with the crisis the ongoing crisis in Gaza it's very very difficult to see all but impossible to see how it could possibly be made to work so there we go it was exactly the same as what we have heard from Netanyahu before skillfully de delivered deeply manipulative refusing any compromise refusing any thoughts denying any thought of compromise um ideas by the way that prime minister Netanyahu might be open to some some sort of ceasefire arrangement in Gaza well as far as I could see that is as far from his mind as ever on the contrary it's move forward ever deeper into the hole or the culdesac into which he has been leading Israel certainly since the 7th of October but arguably for many many more years beyond that so in some respects another disturbing speech and of course one which was applauded by most of the people in Congress no fewer than 58 times the lack of thinking the absence of policy the absence of ideas didn't seem to concern anybody there they didn't seem to notice that the political ground in the Middle East is Shifting that Saudi Arabia and Iran are now both members of the bricks that the Saudis are talking with the other brics member states about setting up new Financial tra and trading Arrangements that Iran is about to receive weapon supplies from the Russians that Saudi Arabia has just sent massive delegation to China where apparently they've been discussing arms supplies by China that Egypt is becoming restless and unhappy the Jordan too none of that seemed to impinge on any of these discussions that took place in Congress it it didn't seem to affect any of the any of the support for Netanyahu in Congress and it doesn't seem to be reality that he recognizes nyaku himself recognizes and is prepared to work with so two very unhappy speeches one by Biden as I said the United States surrounded by enemies and enemies also now within a very different tune by the way from the one the triumphalist one the Neons used to sing back in the 1990s and the early 2000s they haven't changed their approach and they haven't changed their policies but where before they were full of boundless optimism and self-confidence now they see everything in paranoid andoc apocalyptic terms and as I said the president himself mirrors that kind of language and as for prime minister Netanyahu well he also wants to continue the same policies as he always has just to do the same things all over again only even more those policies have led Israel into crisis but he seems completely unwilling to change them we are stuck both the United States and Israel are stuck and the rest of the collective West is stuck with them anyway so much for those two two speeches the rest of the world continues to change and make its decisions and policies there was a big Plum of the Chinese Communist Party Central committee they discussed Economic Policy there the financial times was very critical it passed a very critical editorial saying that the Communist Party of China still seems to be committed to an investment LE model for China's development that what China needs to do is to open up its markets um allow more Western Goods to uh pour in increase um real incomes so that Chinese cons consumers can start buying all of these Western things all the things by the way that Japan was advised to do in the 1980s and which didn't turn out well for Japan anywh the financial times is very annoyed and unhappy that the Communist Party of China doesn't want to do them in China I I'm not going to get into the details of this I'm not as much of an expert about the state of the Chinese economy my sense is that it's gone through some rocky Waters in the last few years but it's managed to leave most of its problems behind and that manufacturing growth is now accelerating and Chinese surpluses are again growing and a fact which is now causing a certain amount of dismay China is using the vast receipts that it's getting from its tremendous export growth to stop our Commodities food oil precious metals all of those things and of course it's just forged an unbreakable strategic partnership with the country Russia which is most able to supply China with still more of those things and there are concerns being expressed now in the United States and elsewhere about the fact that the Chinese are doing this and there are worries that this suggests that China is preparing for some kind of conflict with the United States either military or economic to which of course I can only reply of course it is and if you listen to the of things that have been said about China in the west if you listen to what President Biden himself says about China even in his latest address he talked about China he bragged about the fact that people don't talk so much anymore about China overtaking the United States as they did when he became president as if that was really his major concern which I suspect it probably is anyway um given this marked hostility that exists in the west today against China and given the Wild Talk which isn't just wild it's WID spread talk that there has been in the United States about a military clash with China over Taiwan well of course the Chinese who are far seeing people are doing what they can to prepare for that possibility after all I've been reading about US military plans to impose Naval blockades of China to deny China access to raw materials and commodities and other things that it needs to keep its economy functioning I've been reading about these plans ever since the last years of President Obama's president so I mean I I don't find it at all surprising that the Chinese are thinking forward and thinking ahead but going back to their third plenum it is understandable why the the latest Cal committee predom it is understandable why they would be doing all of these things but they were also discussing further measures to develop the Chinese economy which I think they will successfully do just saying I think that people who predict and expect that there's going to be some kind of Chinese economic explosion something that people like Gordon Chang have been predicting ever since the late 1990s I think all of those people are going to be confounded all over again China's economic growth will continue not perhaps 10% a year as was the case a few years ago but still at a very healthy clip and is probably sustainable as well anyway that is my own view so things do continue around the world but in Washington in Jerusalem in London in Paris where the political crisis by the way has just deepened president mackrel has just rejected the left's proposed proposed candidate for the office of prime minister a a highly regarded and heavily overqualified French civil servant who of whom I know absolutely nothing by the way Mrs castis I believe is her name anyway he's rejected her outright he says that the left does not have a majority in the Parliament and cannot therefore form a government which may very well be true but they are still the biggest block so it would be logical to at least give them the opportunity to try but anyway that is what maon has done he's rejected their proposed prime minister the fr the left is furious about this they are saying that mael appears to want to impose on them his own prime minister from his own party and is trying to force them into some sort of a coalition Arrangement against Marine leen's National even though they say that that is absolutely not something that they ever going to agree to well we will see but anyway political crisis in France um a state of status in Paris nobody there at least macron himself unable to think and come forward with anything new so there it is that's the situation that we face in the west a total paralysis of decision making in the United States complete uncertainty or so it seems to me about who now is truly in charge of the government I noticed that in his address President Biden stopped short of saying that he endorsed Camala Harris as and supported her candidacy as president of the United States in the election in November I got the impression that he remains still very angry and embittered at the fact that he's not being allowed to stand himself but anyway presumably Cala Harris will be the candidate but she's going to have to contend with the fact that Biden is still president and her own ideas are still being formed and still being developed and it's unlikely we're going to see any change at all in Western policy for the next couple of months certainly not before the election in November and perhaps not even Beyond now let me reiterate again that despite many who say that really this isn't the time to change things I think that the time to adapt to changing circumstances is becoming increasingly urgent that's the first thing and the second is that options to change things absolutely do exist now I'm going to give an example um Ray mcgaven former one of the former top an IST as the CIA a man who used to prepare the president's brief uh the the man who used who back in the 60s um advised the US that to General his belief that the sinos Soviet split was for real the same man who again to General disbelief just a few years ago was advising the United States that the Chinese Russian R rmo Is For Real this person who is by the way declaring an interest someone I regard as a friend anyway he's now come forward and has suggested that in fact if the administration President Biden or indeed Cala Harris or whoever is in charge in the United States now Jake Sullivan maybe if they really wanted to change the direction of policy in the Middle East this is a good moment in fact to do so because it's quite clear the Prime Minister Netanyahu and the Israeli Army are in conflict with each other the Army is as dismayed by netanyahu's aggressive and belligerent policies they are strongly opposed to prime minister netanyahu's insistence that they conduct some sort of military offensive against Hezbollah in Lebanon they've already had um a bad an unhappy experience in their war in Gaza and they don't want to have an even worse war on their hands against Hezbollah in Lebanon and as Ray mcgaven correctly says if the president of the United States were to make absolutely clear at this time that the United States would not support Israeli operation in Lebanon that might tilt the balance of the internal argument in Israel decisively in favor of the Israeli Army of course no one in the United States no one in the administration is going to do anything like that that kind of intelligent development of policy is not something you see any sign of today anyway let's move on and talk about that other conflict the conflict in Ukraine which um continues to develop and which President Biden by the way indicated would be it would remain his main priority so far as I could see over the next couple of months now in my program yesterday I gave an overview of the whole military situation along the contact line I said that the situation of the Ukrainian military is becoming disastrous I said that General syi the Ukrainian military commander clearly has given up any real Hope of Victory this has became very clear over the course of an interview that e gave in the guardian in which he listed the size of the Russian forces in Ukraine doing so in a way that showed that he clearly believes that Ukraine lacks the means to basically repel the Russian Avalanche that is heading in Ukraine's Direction This despite the fact that he provided all kinds of the usual boilerplate assertions that Victory is certain and all of the rest which as Ukraine's military commander he has no option but to do one point I admitted to mention in my program yesterday is what he what ssy also had to say about the f-16s he basically admitted that they were not going to make any difference he spoke about the Russian Air Force as very powerful very well organized very well equipped he said if the f-16s came into conflict with the Russian Air Force they would be quickly shot down for that reason they're going to be held back and won't go anywhere close or at least no closer than 40 kilomet to the line of combat uh because they would be or not even the line of comat Russian controlled airspace because they would be very quickly shot down if they did which begs the question of what he actually thinks that they're going to do obviously not simply like Idol on the Airfield at STL Constantino where the Russians will destroy them presumably he hopes that he could use the f-16s to shoot down Russian subsonic cruise missiles and drones but the Russians inevitably are going to go hunting for the f-16s their Air Force their aircraft have much more powerful missiles and far more powerful Radars and far from the f-16s being the hunters siski effectively admitted that as soon as they arrive they're going to be the Hun so anyway putting aside his various attempts to spin the disastrous picture for the guardian one can see why people like bezug Marina bezug the Ukrainian um MP think that privately cki has given up well the last couple of hours 24 hours have provided further news about how bad the situation for Ukraine is and have given further insight into the disastrous mood in Ukraine itself now let me begin with a whole series of messages published by the 79th Brigade of the Ukrainian Army as a said Dy Fighters that they are they're nonetheless becoming increasingly pessimistic about the conduct of the war and increasingly critical of the decisions that are being made by the military leadership the political and Military leadership in KF yesterday they published a whole series of statements on their telegram Channel about the situation in the area of the Battlefront for which they're responsible for this is constantina the village of constantina um south of kurakov and marinka and the stretch of road leading from constantina to vugar they said that the Russians are be are undertaking an offensive on a wide front along the entire Road and that they've crossed the road in many places and that their reconnaissance groups are operating well to the west of the road that's basically what they said they said that they are desperately short of men and machines and that all the best troops uh who ought to have been sent to reinforce them and other critical parts of the front have been sent instead to Haru region to try to push back the Russians in an offensive there which H will have only cosmetic importance everywhere else things are going from bad to worse they ALS o said that they had been the target of a colossal um artillery Miss and missile and bomb strike attack in constantina over the previous few hours they spoke about Panic amongst some of their troops they said that they'd lost control of some of the outskirts of constantina and they said that they'd suffered dozens of dead and wounded so a deeply a pessimistic picture from the 79th Brigade and well they gave us this report of this enormous Russian Artillery rockets and air strikes on um constantina and a few hours later a few a a film began to appear a video film obviously made by drone operators of the St of the 79th Brigade but it seems hurridly edited in KF and these pictures showed a large scale armored assault by the Russians on a place somewhere in the region of kurakov and of course it's not difficult to work out that it is in fact constantina and that this is an armored assault an assault by the Russians moving force a moving a large force of tanks and armored vehicles and troops towards Constantin ofka with the intention of storming this Village or at least beginning the occu the operation to capture this Village and well we're told that 45 armored vehicles um 12 motorcycles these assault troops um driving fast towards the um Ukrainian lines on motorcycles and around 200 um men of the UK Russian army participated in this attack and there's been any number of reproductions of this film um including by the way this morning in the Daily Mail and uh the ukrainians are saying that the Russians suffered catastrophic losses that dozens of their tanks and armored vehicles were damaged or destroyed and the the Russians um presumably were repelled though that in fact is not the information that they are explicitly giving now we've been here many times um the ukrainians have done this before they did this um as I remember in the early stages of the AA battles giving us all kinds of film about movements of Russian armed columns towards Ukrainian positions in the AA sector and of the ukrainians conducting counter strikes against these armored columns and on the basis of all that information all sorts of excited reports appeared especially in the western media about huge Russian material and human losses in the avva sector and they did the same a couple of weeks ago I can remember in the area of the aets and oscal River um in connection with a supposed Russian armored assault towards the village of tery and now they've done it again in with this film this film of this Russian armored assault towards um towards at the Village of constantina and always and invariably people jump to the conclusion that these reports these Ukrainian claims about these massive Russian equipment and uh Personnel losses allegedly up to 40 Russian soldiers out of the 200 um were killed or wounded in this assault anyway um supposedly this proves that the Russian assault has miscarried except if we go back to the earlier reports um the ones about abva of DEA was eventually captured in the terms of the terany assault well terany is still in Ukrainian hands but virtually all the other important villages in the osol and jobet rivers River areas have either Fallen to the Russians or are likely to do so before long including terney itself and in terms of this latest assort on constantina my sense actually looking at this film which as I said is clearly been heavily edited is that in fact the equipment losses are being overstated that most of this armored Force reached its destination which is presumably Constantin ofka and the 79th Brigade yesterday was in effect admitting that the Russian troops have broken into the village which would all imply that the assault has been in most respects a success just saying anyway that is my own view what exactly is going on in constantina it's very difficult to say we will probably get more information over the next couple of hours but the clear trajectory of events in the Constantin OFA area as was the case in the aeva area as is the case at the jeret and Oscar River areas is that the Russians hold the initiative are advancing are proving um Unstoppable are capturing more and more positions and if they haven't yet broken into Constantin ofka the apocalyptic tone of the 79th Brigade in describing the situation all but confirms that they will soon do so and that constantina itself will shortly fall so that's the situation in southern dbass at the moment this is a critical battle U constantina is an important Village even if the Russians have already cut the road in other places if Constantin OFA Falls the Russians will be able to move closer to kurakov um they're already of course advancing towards kurakov through the other Village of maximilan which they are also in the process of storming um but if Constantin OFA Falls uh the net round vuga is going to tighten very considerably and the ukrainians will be facing an even more severe operational crisis than the one in this region that they already are just saying so anyway that is that is the news as I said in this part of the battlefields um a crisis for the ukrainians the situation has sharp ly deterior deteriorated for them in the last 24 hours since I did my previous program and the same is now true increasingly in the otino bakov area the Russians appear according to most reports do have captured another important Village which is the village of vure the Ukrainian troops um in between Latka and progress remain trapped the Russians are said to be pushing uh further westwards there's reports that they're now moving south from V towards another Village called Jalan this is another one of these Villages that the Russians seem to be working towards capturing and the Russians also um are um apparently probing sending reconnaissance troops probing towards another Village called Ivanka ianka which places them even closer ever closer to Mirad and to pakros itself and a couple of days ago there were reports that the Russians were attacking a village called uh teoa and as I've discussed they're outside the village of venka which when they do storm it that will push them asroy the road between Mirad and pakros on in the west and the important um uh the the the other places that the ukrainians are seeking to defend uh places like um uh chifa and the town of constantina and of course tet's region um further uh further to the east now there have been as I've said um over the last couple of hours increasing admissions including a long article about this in the K of independent which finally acknowledges the disastrous situation that the ukrainians are facing in pakos now with some difficulty because um the copy the picture I have of his message is very unclear I'm going to read what I can read of a message which has been posted by the Ukrainian reporter yurius about the situation in the pakos area which is clearly becoming very critical and he says that the situation in the prosi area is critically difficult which immediate and immediately requires systematic and balanced Decisions by the headquarters of the Supreme Commander in Chief over the past 7 Days the enemy Advanced 6 kilm in the direction of mogr pakros on a narrow front the flanks were shot through but Advanced the city of myrad is 14 kilomet away 14 kilomet from the Russians a total of 14 km mirdrad is in the zone of long range AR artillery fire if the Russians are allowed to enter minad they get a zone of concentration and accumulation and we will and will be able to attract pakros itself the pakros mogr glomeration is the last area of defense before netos region in other words before the Russians um reach the Neer itself near to the great industrial city of Neo Pedros Neo the enemy is very close the situation is critical as the pace of the and the pace of the enemy's Advance is alarming and um um buus who as I said is a Ukrainian reporter very capable very talented Ukrainian reporter he complains about um how bad the situation altogether is he complains about incompetent leadership made major mistakes a lack of coordination by the uh Ukrainian commanders and what he says about the critical situation in the pakos area is mirrored by Julian rer the correspondent for the German newspaper build citing the Ukraine Ian Army lost six Villages and more than 40 square kilometers over the past week this is again in the pakos area does anybody have any idea how Russia will slow down this pace of losing the country towards the Russians and I don't think anybody actually does cuz for the moment at least the Russian Advance looks Unstoppable it's clear that the Russians have more of everything in this area and the ukrainians without defenses are finding it impossible to hold the Russians back the Russians have many more tanks many more armored vehicles they have far more powerful artillery they have complete control of the Skies we've seen that the F-16 cisi admits the F-16 aren't going to make any difference and there are also reports that the Russians are now dominant in drones in drone Warfare and here I owe debt to uh simplicius The Thinker because he's now provided us with a very interesting series of comments by the Ukrainian official who is in overall charge of of the situation with drones and this is one of the most interesting um discussions I've seen up to now because we are repeatedly told that Ukraine is not only um ahead of the Russians in drone Warfare but that all Ukraine has to do is hold out for a year and in a year's time fleets of AI drones will be supplied to Ukraine from the west and that this is going to change the whole situation on the battlefronts anyway the Ukrainian official who is in charge of drones is a gentleman called Colonel V Vadim suari and he's provided an account of the situation in terms of drone F Warfare in Ukraine to The Economist this is the same Economist which a few days ago was telling is that the Russians are about to let run run out of tanks and armored vehicles and can only produce 100 barrels U for their guns every year I've already explained why all of that is absolute nonsense anyway sukari who as I said is Ukraine's leading official in terms of drones he debunks all of this just as syi is telling us the real situation about the actual military balance in Ukraine so U sukari who does by the way come across as an extremely capable uh figure in terms of understanding drone Warfare probably um one of the leading figures in drone Warfare today anyway he tells us that the situation today for Ukraine is becoming increasingly critical in terms of drone Warfare first of all he's says that the Russians massively outnumber the ukrainians in drones and we have this section from the article Russia's full this is the article in the economies Russia's full scale Invasion marked a step change in drone Warfare initially it was Ukraine that got ahead developing an army of cheap small drones to counter Russia's overwhelming artillery and missile advantage that has since changed now enemy drones outnumber Ukrainian drones 6 to1 the article then goes on to say that ukrainians still have Superior Tactics and Innovation and Ukraine tends to be first in developing and adapting new technologies but Russia has advantage in mass production means it can adapt and scale up faster the pace of change is frenetic with feedback loops meaning that some software is updated every few hours by the time Russian drones reach the front lines Ukraine has sometimes already developed count counter measures and then he goes on to say this is from sukki quantitatively Russia is ahead but qualitatively we are keeping them at par ity so it looks as if when understands if he takes that sentence at face value the ukrainians are able to match the Russians qualitatively because and even sometimes keep a foot ahead of them but that the Russians to the extent that they are behind in application of drones and that's far from clear the Russians ultimately have mass on their side they have six drones for every drone that Ukraine has and sukari then goes on to say military operations still depend on combined arms and other kinds of troops will continue to be just as important drones serve as a complement to traditional forces offering better reconnaissance and more precise capability at a reduced risk to soldiers but sukari basically ridicules the whole notion that uh drones replace artillery all of these things are necessary um um Ukraine can inflate more casualties on Russia but it cannot replace uh with drones but it cannot substitute drones cannot substitute or replace artillery which is a point that I've been making all the time but then he goes on to say and this is perhaps the most interesting part that the armies of The Fleets of killer drone swarms operating independent of human control are a myth and this is again from The Economist Ukraine already employs AI to optimize functionality for example if the link between drone and pilot is lost but the use is specialized and limited as a commander I will never Rel relinquish the bulk of decision making to artificial intelligence in the distant future we need such a decision we look at it carefully but you don't need AI to create swarms so the whole idea fleets of drones operating on AI robotically defeating the Russians is a fantasy the man who's in charge of Ukraine's drones Colonel sukari is now the person who's telling us as much and in the meantime and in reality it is the Russians who in terms of drones hold the quantitative Advantage the Gap in capability between Russia and Ukraine in terms of drones to the extent that it exists is small and of course as we are always reminded in war quantity anyway has a quality all of its own so there we are the Russians have more of everything and they're pushing forward relentlessly in pakros in the pakros area according to buus they're now 14 kilm from m um if they capture myrad pakros becomes not just vulnerable but basically undefendable if pakros falls the Russians are able to reach the Nea and um um challenge the ukrainians in NE Pro Petrov region and ultimately reach the Neer Neer opposite the city of Neo itself so an absolutely critical situation for the ukrainians and the ukrainians are acknowledging the fact and of course in other places along the battlefronts the situation is every bit as bad reports were appearing yesterday of further Russian advances in the toret and um in the Tet area um Russian forces appear to be gradually the two pins movements that are gathering around toret appear to be closing there were reports a couple of days ago that there's at least two battalions of Ukrainian troops um potentially trapped inside these two closing pincers uh we saw I discussed yesterday in the day before how it seems that there are two companies at least well some say two battalions I've now seen it suggested it's two companies but several hundred Ukrainian troops trapped in the Aros ortino area between the uh uh villages of loat and progress and there's a very bitter discussion of all of this between the soldiers who have been trapped in this way and um the DS mapping project the soldiers clearly feeling that they've been abandoned by their command who is telling them to stand and fight where they are and just before I started doing this program uh the military summary channel was reporting that Ukrainian troops in korovka apparently all all of them all of the remaining Ukrainian troops in kasor are apparently trapped as well um that the ukrainians have left it far too late to pull their troops out of korovka the Russians have now established fire control over all of the roads leading into korovka and that the ukrainians are effectively trapped there and just to finish you know my all of these updates to my summary my military summary of yest yesterday um more reports of more Russian devastating missile strikes um the latest one a missile strike using escanda M missiles on a Ukrainian um repair facility in the city of khov the Russians have produced very dramatic film of this you see large numbers of Ukrainian armored vehicles Les um brought uh concentrated in this facility where they were supposed to be um repaired you can see pictures of Bradley's and other machines there and of course the Russians with their round thee clock drone surveillance um identified this location and the esanda missile uh was launched with the its cluster Warhead and one must assume that the great majority of those armored vehicles were probably damaged Beyond repair so that's the situation on the battle lines constant Russian advances right across the battlefronts constant weakening of the Ukrainian Army I said yesterday that um Siri predicts that the Ukrainian Army will number somewhere in the region of 600 700,000 Men by the end of this year that this is where the Russians are heading and we're getting reports we continue to get reports that the ukrainians despite the mobilization are desperately short of men and again I'm going back to simple as The Thinker here he's found an article um in fact a video of a Estonian Army official the general aroi I'm probably pronouncing his name wrong but he said this Estonian Officer says that uh Ukrainian plans to form 10 new brigades turned out to be ineffective instead mobilization is mainly aimed at closing gaps at the front today many units claim to be fully staffed but in fact face a short of personnel inadequate training and the static nature of Tren Warfare makes it costly and dangerous and there is insufficient time to train new soldiers weekly training is not enough to effectively fight in the trenches insufficient training of new Fighters creates risks at the front which the Russian side is actually using and simplicius thinker found a whole thread with a Ukrainian officer called Maxim scinic and um he said that in this in this piece uh Scenic says that there are Ukrainian battalions which have no more than 20 to 30 men left in their ranks a battalion would normally number 4 to 500 men and in some companies that's a force that would probably number around 100 men there are no more than five and um there's a lot of descriptions of the desperate shortages of men in many units and um former deputy commander-in chief of the general former deputy chief of Ukraine's general staff Lieutenant General romanenko confirmed it as much at the front units are staffed by Third in certain areas difficult to say difficult say in such areas it's not necessary to count on serious ones so that there are offensive actions but also on the defensive ones so in fact there is a huge shortage of men not enough for defense let alone for attack and he says that the the shortage of middle and Junior officers in the Ukrainian Army leads to an increase in losses especially amongst the recently mobilized who have no experience in Warfare and um the situation in other words is critical Helmer in his recent piece and dances with bears gives a further sense of Ukrainian losses he starts in the first week of July a year ago average daily number of ukrainians killed uh wounded in action was 716 in the corresponding period of this month the level had jumped to an average of 1,948 an increase of almost threefold in the same week of 2023 the destruction or damage of us made M 7 artillery pieces was eight in the first week of July of this July the M 7 loss number was 17 and Helmer has written another fascinating article talking about how the Russians have come to the conclusion that the most effective way of destroying Ukrainian supplies is not to try to destroy the uh vehicle trains close to the border the supply trains close to the Border but to wait until they get closer to the front lines to track them to keep them under observation along the way and then to destroy them close to the contact line and apparently the Russians have been doing that with increasing Effectiveness so all for all it is an absolutely terrible picture now yesterday I spoke about how the ukrainians appear to be acting with growing desperation they've sent their foreign minister Demitri Kaba to Beijing where he's trying to talk to the Chinese about starting some kind of negotiations process with the Russians they spoke they've been speaking to the Vatican about the same thing but of course they continue to give contradictory signals because even as the ukrainians talk peace they also continue to urge their allies in the west to authorize them to conduct deep strikes with missiles far within Russian territory and they given no sign that they are for the moment prepared to negotiate in seriously on any one of Russia's core demands the seem to hope that if they say that they're open for negotiations and agree to negotiations that the Russians will be prevailed upon to agree to a ceasefire which the Russians have made absolutely clear that they're not going to do and in fact uh pesov Putin spokesman um has just made these comments he said Russia is open for a negotiation process but first we need to understand how prepared Ukraine is and whether it has permission for that from its handlers in other words on the Americans and the British at this point you could see that contradictory statements have being made and things are not clear and um um pcov pointed out that a ban on Communications with Russia remained in effect in Ukraine and a lot of things need to be clarified with regard to talks so the Russians remain utterly skeptical about this process and of course they've ruled out a ceasefire whilst the negotiations continue so there it is that remains the overall situation at the present time um we have a situation where Ukraine is losing the War I think in Kiev the penny has dropped as we say in Britain they understand finally that the way things are going they are going to be defeated they're desperately looking for a way out but they're not prepared to make the concessions that they must make in order to get that way out and in the West there's complete paralysis the leaders of the West remain intransigently incapable of changing their policy lines one event more than any other demonstrates this fact to me and this is the treatment the continued treatment by the European powers of Hungary and Slovakia now prime minister Orban of Hungary tried to carry out a mediation Mission between the ukrainians the Russians and he also spoke to the Chinese and he reported what was happening to the Americans and he had a meeting with the man who might potentially be America's president in six months who was Donald Trump the Europeans have blocked orban's attempt to convene a foreign ministers meeting where a proper report from the hungarians can be provoked did the Europeans are also refusing to take any action to support Hungary and Slovakia following zelinsky's petulent decision to block oil deliveries to Hungary and Slovakia along pipelines from Russia now at this point in the war these belligerent and aggressive steps seem trebly misguided as I've said already given the realities on the battlefronts given the re political realities in the United States there is a real chance that at some point over the next few months the Europeans might be might find themselves being left high and dry as either the Americans and the Russians or the Russians and the ukrainians St peace talks at that point it is essential for the Europeans to maintain open lines of communication and therefore they need to do that through Orban who is the only person who hasn't yet closed them and yet they are intent on punishing him and the ukrainians are intent on punishing him also by cutting off hungary's and Slovakia's supply of oil this despite the fact that Ukraine itself is going through a terrible electricity crisis and is supplementing its own electricity shortages with Imports of electricity from the European Union 60% of which come from Slovakia and Hungary I you it it makes so little sense it is almost beyond belief but that is where it is anger emotion stuborn stubbornness arrogance a denial of reality all of them are working to prevent any change in policy in the meantime in Ukraine the Russian Steamroller to conjure up man a metaphor of former times trembles remorselessly westwards crushing everything in its wake and trundles westwards towards Europe which has no plan and which could soon find itself cut off from the United States which is is also experiencing a leadership vacuum and which appears to be in disarray I've never known Times Like These I hope we get out of them soon anyway this is where I finish my program today more from me soon let me remind you again that you can find all our programs on our various platforms locals Rumble and X you can support our work via patreon And subscribe star uh don't forget also to check out our shop where you can find um all sorts of amazing things magic mugs hats hoodies t-shirts sweatshirts all those great things and last but not least if you liked this video please remember to take the like button and to check your subscription to this channel that's me for today more for me soon have a very good day [Music]